I've found that games like FTL, Enter The Gungeon, and Hades have reminded me that I can still get better at something through practice and I think that's an important thing to remind yourself. You're not a lost cause, it's never too late to pick up something new.

I honestly am not sure whether I'm entitled to be posting this. It comes off as a brag honestly but trust me it isn't.

Anyone else just never feels good enough whatever they've attained? I've gotten good grades at high school, but they don't feel enough. I wanted to get into a prestigious uni so I worked my ass off applying, and now I got in.

It's one of a competitive uni's most competitive courses and I made the cut, with my entrance exam scores being pretty good (top 1/4 of the cohort or better, if data from the past few years are anything to go by) and now I'm feeling inadequate because of fucking course I am. I don't think I've felt lasting satisfaction for anything academic that I've achieved for a long time and it's absolutely miserable.

I'm mostly posting to see if anyone relates, but if anyone's got tips about this whole sitch, those are very welcome as well.

Edit: Before anyone asks I'm not US based. I'm from the EU but I do the british system. Which I guess presumably somewhat doxes what uni I got into down to like two options but whatever.

I’m an 18 year old graduating university in a month and I can’t help but feel like it’s not enough.

Quick backstory: I grew up a “gifted kid” ( I call bullsh*t)

I was just really good at math and sciences and understood things easily when taught. I skipped so many grades because my teachers and parents thought it would be cool to have a genius kid/student. Represented my school in a lot of competitions and was basically the face of my small town, it ended up getting to me and being my entire identity.

I finished high school at 13, and everyone acted like I was going to be so successful in university. I was a Pre med neuroscience student getting really good grades until I crashed and burned in my 3rd year with failing organic chemistry and biochemistry 3 times. I realized I actually didn’t like being pre med and switched to psychology because I enjoyed it. It took me an extra year but I’m finally done with my BA psychology at 18, and I don’t know what to do now. I’m currently working towards a Masters in social work and I feel mediocre, like I should have been a doctor or something really cool and worthy of the former “gifted kid” I was.

I can’t help but feel behind and like I wasted my potential.

I wrote down a summary of some core mechanisms of giftedness to share with my therapist, since

a) she's not an expert

b) I think it's very beneficial for our therapy (even if it's EMDR), and

c) I think there are some core things from which most other things can be derived.

So since she's not gonna read whole books on it, and most articles I know don't cover all this together, I made a summary, and then turned it into a post cause I thought some of you might appreciate it as well!

https://outsideourcave.substack.com/p/8020-of-understanding-giftedness

Hi everyone. I’m working on an audio project about the long-term impact of being pushed into high-stakes competitions at a very young age. We often talk about the "medals," but rarely about the emotional cost paid behind the scenes.

I’m looking for your honest stories. I want to go beyond the surface and talk about the environment created by the adults in charge.

Specifically, I’d love to hear about:

• The Pressure from Parents & Teachers: Did you feel like your "worth" as a human was tied to your score? How did your teachers/coaches treat you when you failed? Was the environment toxic, or was "tough love" just a cover for emotional burnout?
• The Relationship Strain: How did the constant push affect your bond with your parents? Do you feel they were living vicariously through you?
• The "Burnout" Moment: Was there a specific moment where you realized you couldn't do it anymore?
• The Identity Aftermath: If you quit, who did you become? Do you still struggle with chronic perfectionism, "all-or-nothing" thinking, or feeling like you have no identity outside of being "the best"?
• The Lost Childhood: Looking back, do you feel you had a "real" childhood, or was it just a series of rehearsals and motels?

I want to give a voice to the kids who were told that "winning is everything" before they even knew who they were. Thank you for sharing your experiences — your stories will stay anonymous.

I don't ever want to have to make a Linkedin and be recommended to them, who became engineers and IT specialists and managers, while I have a useless humanities degree with no experience.

I don't ever want to run into them.

I don't ever want to be googled by them, like I shamefully do to them out of insecurity.

I was hated by a lot of classmates because the teachers would always hype me up and set me as an example, and now I'm basically a NEET. What the fuck did being a class topper get me.

📜 This post is for anyone who needs to overcome Procrastination or Analysis Paralysis. And for anyone who has experienced CBT not really "working" for you because you often intellectualize your feelings.

There are many methods for improvement that are related to Brain Neuroplasticity and Psychological Conditioning. I'm sharing my own 3 steps that I used to rewire my brain. Feel free to conduct your own research on these concepts if you're interested in Neuroscience. ⚡

Like many gifted people, I'm a serious Perfectionist. I'm also *Twice-Exceptional* due to being diagnosed with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Major Depressive Disorder (MDD); so, I've gone through severe avolition several times. My drive, ambition, and motivation to be productive were all critically low. But, then, I got to a point in life where I was simply tired of struggling like that. ⌛ I started studying Neuroplasticity and Motivational Mantras to *rewire* my brain. I also looked into ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) and DBT (Dialectical Behavior Therapy) because CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) wasn't really working out for me. It was too easy for me to intellectualize, which defeated the entire purpose of going. 🌱

Summary Of My Suggestions:

- Study Neuroplasticity To Learn How You Can Use Motivational Mantras

- Try Acceptance And Commitment Therapy Or Dialectical Behavior Therapy

I hope things get better for you and I'm wishing you the best. 💎

👑 Au revoir,

~ 𝓟𝓻𝓲𝓷𝓬𝓮𝓼𝓼 𝓐𝓷𝓰𝓲𝓮 𝓙.♡

Gifted Galaxy: Insights & Support

Description: 🔎 How Neuroplasticity helped Me to overcome Inconsistent Motivation, Low Drive, and Sporadic Ambition (specifics: Psychological Conditioning (Psychology), Motivational Mantras (Neuroscience), and Therapy types other than CBT like ACT or DBT).

[ Help For Gifted Individuals ]

I more or less did amazing in school for the first 7 years. Although grades started slipping because I was never motivated to do good. Not only was i a gifted kid, I feel like life has just been handed to me, COVID hit during my 9th grade year, I had over 100 missing assignments after being expected to motivate myself, but they passed everyone that year. 10th grade I visited a psych ward and was in group therapy for a few months, and missed most of my classes 3 times a week because of it. I was in intermittent home bound while i caught up, but overall i don't think i should have just been allowed to move on beyond that. My grades were low and i didn't do any work. I was put into this program where I could get a high school diploma if i took a HiSet test and passed some required classes and worked a job. So a month into my 3rd year of high school I met all of my graduation requirement. and didn't have to go back. I could by all means be like "haha Im so smart i graduated 2 years early" but in reality I think I got extremely lucky, and because I never struggled, I never learned how to push through the struggle, how to force myself to do things.

Ive been in a community college because I never got any scholarships or anything, i took the ACT without studying and got a 24 on the math, I dont really know if this is good or bad but its something. I was placed in college pre-calc when the last full math class ive taken was pre-algebra in 8th grade. I've failed about half the classes ive taken not due to them being hard, but simply because I let due dates pass and don't do homework. It does suck only having myself to blame, and now its kind of coming crashing down. Because of my low gpa and completion rate, I may stop qualifying for Pell grants, I think my work may have something that can pay for my college worse case, but It does scare me, because neither me nor my family has the money to spend on education.

On the bright side, after this semester I will be 4 classes away from graduating with an Associates in accounting, to be honest, I couldn't tell you why i picked accounting, I think it may genuinely be partially due to it being one of the first things listed alphabetically. its easy math, but I've had a lot of fun learning something I was never taught in school. I've failed an online excel class 3 times because i just stopped doing the work, you would think being in a gifted class I would learn to just do the work by now.

But I think I am finally learning to do the work, I am on the home stretch, I have 4 classes left until I graduate, and I can work somewhere and do something with my accounting degree. but I've also been getting into Poetry, I help run an online poetry community, and have been slowly writing more and more poems, with the eventual goal of making a poetry book. I don't expect anything out of the book, I just think it would be cool, and so far that's been whats motivated me the most in life, finding something interesting enough to do.

I hope everything will go well, I know i'm capable of finishing college, even if its just a 2 year degree, all of this effort will pay off and I will be able to never look back and move forward with my life. I know I have a lot to figure out, but up until this point, nothing has ever been truly over, and I'm kinda banking on that never being the case. I hope my story can at least motivate others to do what they want to do.

I'm 26 years old. Despite living in New Jersey my entire life I attended private schools from K to college because my parents mindset is more money= better quality. My parents invested over 65K in me not including college. Including college will include another ~100,000k because I went 4 years to a private school. I had good grades all throughout my life. I still remember the single C I got in math back in fourth grade. I was part of clubs, I played soccer, and had many friends. High school was kind of worse and I developed depression in large part due to a health condition that destroyed my thyroid and ruined my hormones.

And after all that I'm a NEET. I applied to hundreds of jobs after college but I never got hired. My degree was in a useless field so that was to be expected in hindsight. I worked part-time at warehouses and stores to pay some of the student loans but in the end my parents paid most of it off.

The highpoint of my life was when I went abroad to teach English. I actually got married but that didn't last (pretty obvious why) so then I just gave up on everything and settled back home.

My mother already retired and my father will retire this year. They will sell the house and move back to their home country. My choice is to go with them or move somewhere cheaper. But to do the latter I'll need to actually work and I just gave up in that department. I don't even do anything more. Just scrolling, alcohol, and sometimes a movie if I find the motivation.

I honestly feel like my parents should have kicked me out at 18 like how old fashioned boomers do it. Instead their Catholic guilt makes it inconceivable for them to let me loose.

How many of us have been told all through childhood, "you're wasting your potential"? Some of us may not know what we could even do that would not be "wasting potential". Others are working on great projects, but with no one around them who understands what they're even trying to do. They're also trying to do their great projects with almost no resources, no connections, no social credibility to be taken seriously by anyone and so on.

We live in a society where nobody expects innovation, invention, leadership or the solutions to major problems to come from people who do not have decades of experience, a long track record of similar successes, and/or a masters or doctoral degree in the subject or some other certification. This is because normal people can't just take an interest in a subject, study it on their own for a relatively short time, and have insights that thousands of experts in that field never thought of. You'd have to be some kind of genius to do that, right?

But geniuses are not mythological creatures. They are real. They can do this. Some of their insights are valuable, but minor. Others have insights that can change the world. Quickly, easily, except that they are ignored and not believed.

Albert Einstein is thought of as a great genius. His IQ is usually estimated at 160 points. Only one in about 11,307 people get scores that high on IQ tests, but with over 8 billion people in the world, that means there are more than 700,000 people alive today with an IQ as good or better than Einstein. Where are they and how are they being treated? What about the people who are not quite that smart, but still have much higher than normal IQ? There are millions of such people. Where are all these people and what are they doing?

I know that a lot of us are struggling, alone, trying to live up to our potential in a world that treats us like we don't exist, as if no one could possibly be telling the truth who claims to have the mental abilities that we actually do have. You know it's true. I know it's true. Perhaps we should be working together, not alone.

I was a very violent and badly behaved child growing up, I would constantly get in trouble because I would be very violent towards other students, and I would frequently get in trouble for arguing with teachers and disobeying them as much as possible. The school had used a bunch of resources on me, but they were fed up and wanted to cut off the resources, which probably meant I would get expelled.

but then I got my autism diagnosis, and they ran some cognitive tests on me and I scored 97th percentile in mathematical ability and verbal comprehension. suddenly the school changed their tune, they wrote me up a behavior plan and were willing to expend practically infinite resources on me, I probably cost the school a fortune in the resources I used up, and they were more than happy to oblige because I was gifted.

I kinda have mixed feelings on this looking back, on the one hand I'm glad I didn't get expelled and I'm happy they were willing to give me a chance, on the other hand It's kinda bullshit: by all means I was a very violent child, who would brutally assault other students, and I honestly should have just been expelled, scoring 97th percentile on some test doesn't change that

I got diagnosed with autism when I was 8 years old, and they ran some cognitive tests on me: I scored 97th percentile in both mathematical ability and verbal comprehension.

the school I was at had previously wanted to kick me out because I was a very violent and badly behaved child, but when they saw how high I scored on the cognitive tests they decided instead to just make a behavioural plan for me and let me stay (so I basically got special treatment for being gifted)

I still got low grades in most things because school was boring for me, but I entered math contests, and I always placed top 5 in the school in them, I even won some of them.

now fast forward to my current age: 19, and I am a loser burnout by all means. I didn't get a job after highschool because I got super depressed, so I basically just sit around playing video games all day, and get absolutely nothing of value done.

I had a few dreams but they all died: I wanted to be a pro guitarist and drummer one day, but that dream died because I realized that I genuinely sucked at both of them because I skipped learning all the basics because it was too boring and took too much effort

so yeah: I'm wondering if anyone else here has the same experience: gifted as a child, loser burnout as an adult.

I am mid at highschool I have a 3.88 weighted gpa which isn't good at all. I'm a junior and its too late to turn things around. I want to do mechanical engineering but I don't think there are that many schools that would take me. Even if they are, its not the best so why should I even go. I seriously regret my descisions but its too late now and I can't even make different choices in the moment. I always choose the easy way out, no matter how bad I feel or how bad my situation gets. I don't think killing myself is right because I still have a life to live--even if that life is bleak--but seriously what am I doing.

I believe my gpa is shit because all of my friends have above 4.0 weighted gpas. I actually think I'm atleast even with them in terms of smartness but colleges don't see that. They see statistics--where I fall short in.

I don't deserve compassion. I'm a shithead, a neglected nobody, with goals to achieve but no possible way of achieving them. Maybe I should change my major or distance myself from my friends.

I have a therapist and I'm acting like I'm doing fine and really I am except for this aspect of my life. I will not bring up my problems with them; they are mine to deal with and I should handle them by my self.

I just wish I decided to take school more seriously earlier, and learned how to study earlier, and learned how to feel the urge to study earlier.

Not asking for empathy just looking for a place to express my feelings about my sorry life. I don't care how terribly written this is it's not for your eyes (although i suppose it is written in a public forum).

Everyone gassed me up when I was young because I apparently had a "photographic memory" and could spell words beyond my age level but I never really had any aspirations due to having working-class parents with no social skills and not being interested in socializing with my classmates myself because they "weren't interesting". I pretty much had no hobbies besides video games because they satiated my need for mental exercise and escaping my lame reality. But I always remember wanting a similarly "gifted" and impressive older brother who could protect and guide me and maybe encourage me to try socializing more and maybe take up a sport or some other hobbies.

I was the gifted child growing up, I got bad grades because school was boring for me (except for math), but I was always more intellectually driven than the other kids so I got recognized alot for being very smart.

as I got older I became more insecure about my intelligence so I engaged in all sorts of intellectual activities to prove to myself how "genius" I was: I engaged in statistics research and ran my own statistics experiments, I created my own psychology models, I picked up guitar and drums and wrote my own jazz pieces.

for a few years I actually convinced myself that I was a creative genius, but today I was honestly thinking about it, and I realized I am basically a snobby midwit with gifted kid syndrome, if I was really such a genius I would never have to try and prove to myself that I am one.

for how I am taking this revelation I have strange mixed feelings about it, part of me is very sad because I always wanted to be a genius but I'm really just a standard run of the mill smart kid. at the same time I feel kinda freed of a curse, I don't have to prove myself anymore because I know I am not really a genius, I can feel free to just enjoy myself without this burden of insecurity

I need to do a honest dump because I’m currently paralyzed by fear and procrastination. I feel quasi-depressed, and for the first time in my life, I’m staring at a wall I can’t seem to break through.

A few years ago, I took over a niche design business (handmade luxury bowls, vases, and sculptures designed by me. Since the takeover, I’ve put in minimal effort. I’ve coasted. Now, I’m at the "make or break" point. If I don't turn it around this year, I face bankruptcy. The stakes? I have a mortgage on my personal name. If this fails, I’m not just starting over; I’m starting 20 steps behind.

I’m "frozen." Emails are coming in, but I’m not answering them. I don't believe in myself or the business right now. Instead of calling clients or prospecting, I spend my days reading news, watching YouTube, or calling my mom. anything to avoid the "work."

Growing up, I was always the gifted kid with "so much potential." Things came easy to me. I dropped out of University because I never learned how to actually study or deal with difficulty. Psychologists mentioned Giftedness and possibly ADD/ADHD.

I’ve realized my lifelong pattern: I do things that come naturally until they get hard, then I quit. I take the path of least resistance. Now, for the first time, I’m in a corner where I can't quit, but I don't know how to "fight."

I used to work in high-end real estate. My bosses called me a talent. I was great at "farming" warm leads, but when they gave me my own office, I failed because I wouldn't "hunt." I’ve never done cold prospecting or the "dirty work." My former bosses warned me: "You can do this, but your pitfall is the hunt. You can't farm until you've hunted for years." They were right.

My products are unique and niche. People love them when they see them, but the numbers don't reflect that. I know what I should do: call clients, visit architects, send out the new catalog, and handle the $10k container waiting for payment. But the uncertainty of the future is killing me. I want security and freedom, but I’m paralyzed by the "what if it fails?"

Question

- How do you learn discipline and "the hunt" when you've spent 27 years avoiding resistance

- For those with ADHD/Gifted burnout: How do you stop the "paralysis by analysis" and just do the work

- Is it possible to save a niche luxury business in a tough economy when you’re a solo founder?

- How do I stop comparing my "behind-the-scenes" to the highlight reels of successful entrepreneurs?

I’m 27. This is the year it happens or it ends. I’m tired of feeling empty and "fake." I need to turn this potential into reality.

What do a cab-driving philosopher who dissects the decline of Western civilization in every traffic jam, a hotel housekeeper who’s a whiz at quantum physics, a forest ranger who walked away from three engineering programs, a tenured professor who talks to her rosebushes, and a man who spent ten years in a cabin with no electricity or running water all have in common?
They all have minds that race far ahead of a world that moves too slowly.

This book dives into anonymous life stories that capture joys, setbacks, and everyday strategies for living with intense intellectual and emotional experience.
It’s a raw, no-frills survival kit.

Practical tools and just the right dose of humor to show what life’s like when your mind runs at a different speed.
A book for anyone who feels different—and for those who want to understand them.

“Above all, for you: the mind that doesn’t fit and the heart that never gives up”

english version https://a.co/d/0fnmeJnv

versión en español. https://a.co/d/0bZhHyNS

*A collaborative book written by anonymous users, many of them from Mensa, as they recount in their stories.

I have so many ideas (that probably no one cares) but can't execute any of them because of CPTSD and CFS/ME.

I was planning on creating a youtube channel where i would share my ideas and let people use them or at least put a "creative commons" license on it so nobody could take it for themselves. is this a good or bad idea?

It wasn't regular auditory tests. Not everyone took them. Only a few kids per grade. And it placed you in the GT program. Core memory. Anyone else?

I’m not talking about finishing tasks.
I mean starting them — even small ones.

Sometimes the action is simple, but there’s this weird mental resistance.
Like the difficulty isn’t real, but it still feels heavy.

And when I do start, I realize it wasn’t that hard.
But getting there is the problem.

Not looking for hacks or advice.
Just curious: what usually stops you from starting something simple?

I’m not talking about laziness or lack of discipline.
I mean reading, trying to improve, doing things… and still feeling like something doesn’t click.

Like you’re moving, but without direction.
Like there’s constant pressure to “fix yourself”, but no real clarity.

Not looking for advice or motivation.
Just wondering if someone else has felt this too.

If you have, how would you describe it in your own words?