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> As one child described it, they feel "like abandoned aliens waiting for the mother ship to come and take them home" This is exactly how I felt. I ca

> As one child described it, they feel "like abandoned aliens waiting for the mother ship to come and take them home" This is exactly how I felt. I can remember thinking those exact words when I was very young - although I didn't really start questioning the nature of reality until my early teens. At some point, I realised that these thoughts were only causing depression, so I decided to simply stop thinking about them. I also became apathetic, and detached from my own emotions. Ultimately, my own existential depression led to self-destructive behavior - perhaps this was related to the coping strategy of "Seeking novelty and adrenaline rushes". Edit: I would like to add that I do not consider myself gifted. I simply have a rather narrow set of interests which I have become good at. I think it is particularly common for "technical" people to be told they are gifted, because to the untrained observer their skills can seem like wizardry.

voidhorse 10y ago
I know where you are coming from. I felt that I was a member of a different species, to the point where that idea quite literally manifested itself as a concrete possibility in my head. You're right man, it's all thought based...it's all brain weirdness. It's a conflict between biosocial and intellectual factors. The only way to push past it is to change your mindset. I can't speak for others, obviously, but for me that's been a long and arduous process. There are ways to question the nature of life and the world and to remain calm and serene about it. To remain level. I found too that little things are a big help...I lived a long time not bothering myself with "minor" and "vain" concerns... i.e. fancy clothing, delicious meals etc... but truly taking care and investing in these little things, concerning yourself with the quality of the little practices you partake in everyday really does begin to help. Caring about yourself in little ways slowly but surely leads to a more positive overall conception of your own self and your movement through the world.
- Retr0spectrum 10y ago
  I had a sudden "wake up call" about a year ago, and since then things have been getting much better. Partly because I have become more independent, but also because I have perfected the art of simply not thinking about things that I want to ignore. I'm not sure if that's healthy or not, but it seems to work.
  - M_Grey 10y ago
    I think it's healthy, especially if those things are truly and deeply beyond your influence or control.
  - ajmurmann 10y ago
    Do you have any advise on how you accomplished that? Meditation?
    - Retr0spectrum 10y ago
      I'm not sure really, it seemed to come naturally. Perhaps even as a symptom of depression. It might have helped that I stopped carrying a smartphone. I guess things like sitting on a train without any entertainment counts as meditation, although I never really think of it as such.
    - pmyjavec 10y ago
      Disclaimer: I've had an anxiety disorder most of my life and I already have had some professional CBT training to help with difficult times. I think if anyone reading this is really down / troubled, then seeing a professional would be wise. There are really good caring people out there that can help. I've recently experienced something very similar, I would like to share with you my story on getting (mostly) through it in hope that it may help others. First step for me, just getting out in the wilderness helped me immensely, even just a nice park and some sun/rain helps. It sounds really alternate but getting out and touching trees, just sitting under them has been a kind of medicine, watching animals in as wild of a setting as possible is nice too. Walking, or "wandering" for a long period of time has also been a great way to settle the mind, you could call it the most primitive form of meditation, but if you get the chance to walk for 1-2 hours along a quiet beach, consider yourself blessed. Just not having a set place to walk but just exploring is what I mean. More formal meditation practice is very, very good for me; however, it has to be taught / practiced properly. Getting the wrong idea about something like Buddhism can be quite destructive, especially for those in a vulnerable place. I found socializing to be critical, if you can talk to someone about the problems specifically it's even better. We are social beings. My episode I now consider a little bit of a gift, it has made me realize the value of our natural surroundings and how important their conservation, protection and our return to them is for us humans. Maybe more than some of us ever realize. I read the ancient Greeks would treat people with mental distress by giving them a nice quiet place to stay near the sea, maybe they were onto something?
borplk 10y ago
Wow. Maybe about a year ago I wrote a comment on reddit it read almost exactly like that abandoned aliens sentence. I think I said something like "waiting for the mother ship to take me to my people.".
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
I know the feeling. There's the existential depression, and than there's that special kind of loneliness of being isolated by having a different set of knowledge to that of your peers. I try not to mix the two...
M_Grey 10y ago
I just latched on to an intense fear of death, and struggle with sleep. It's hard to deal with existential crises when you're nine, and it tends to leave a mark.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
facetube 10y ago
Being called gifted only made it worse. I was not. None of them were. I'm still not. It was a lie. Why couldn't people just give me credit for working hard? That was the truth. Why was my success some magical unexplainable innate attribute?
- nicklaf 10y ago
  At any rate, psychologists will tell you how harmful it can be to tell a child how smart they "are", rather than letting them know they've simply "done" a good job. The distinction seems to be between being and doing, with the former being static and the latter dynamic.
- d215 10y ago
  Well, probably to not feel bad about themselves. If your skills were obtained through hard work, they could have done that themselves. Whereas if it was handed to you by magic then there's nothing to be done, right?
- chrisco255 10y ago
  Cognitive ability is an innate attribute. This is observationally true. We can't pretend that everyone has the same capabilities, even with applied effort. That's false. However, I still think that showering someone with praise and sectioning them off into separate classes throughout childhood is not necessarily the best strategy for dealing with highly intelligent children, either. My own experience was that socially, I was years behind my peers in high school due to the isolation of gifted classes. I think it would be best to have gifted students advance in grades but still have them integrated with the general student body along with some social interaction with peers of their age group.
- yodsanklai 10y ago
  At some level, everybody works hard, but some are incredibly more talented than others. But I agree that it's misleading to call someone gifted. Intelligence is such a diverse thing. Some people can be gifted for one thing and totally deficient for some other things. I'm not even sure that a very high IQ is predictive of success in science for instance.
superuser2 10y ago
Highly selective colleges are the mother ship. When the handful of isolated gifted students are plucked out of their widely dispersed high schools and collected in one institution, one dorm, it's incredible. People feel home for the first time.
- CuriouslyC 10y ago
  That was not my experience. I found that as I worked my way into elite institutions people were just playing more sophisticated, elaborate forms of the monkey-see-monkey-do game they were playing everywhere else.
  - superuser2 10y ago
    It was mine. To be fair, I think there is a tier of elite institutions which primarily attract the prestige/wealth crowd (Ivy League, etc), and a tier just below them in rankings which attract the nerds who want to do hard intellectual work.
  - jolux 10y ago
    This is entirely my experience. A lot of people at highly selective colleges are hyper focused on one area of study to the exclusion of others, for example a lot of my friends who are brilliant engineers hate the arts. I think intelligence is broader than IQ, because I think there's something to be said for the intelligence that allows you to recognize the value of many different intellectual pursuits at the same time. You can learn so much more if you get along with intellectuals of all kinds. Some people take their specialization too far, in my opinion.
    - MawNicker 10y ago
      I suspect the cognitive effects of depression may serve this purpose well. An endeavor (specialization) is a good way to battle depression. My inclination is to agree with you. Then I realize this "intelligence" you've described is essentially an adaption to the sluggish nature of dissonant reasoning. The more axes involved in mediating dissonance the more the set of thoughts becomes partially ordered vs fully ordered. This partial ordering demands active mediation. This is the domain for which this intelligence is just another specialization. I realize it's good but it isn't wholly superior to avoiding it outright. For instance, in noticing this I'm only more ambivalent and ultimately... depressed. I can see how I would be able to execute faster if I defaulted to the other heuristic.
brightball 10y ago
I remember being very convinced that everyone else was a robot for a couple of years in my teens. Really freaked me out. Mostly it was just that I was an only child in a stable household so everything around me was very routine and predictable.
- Retr0spectrum 10y ago
  That makes me wonder if an overly stable household is actually a bad thing. If nothing particularly unusual happens to you as a child, overcoming adversity in the future is probably more difficult.
  - brightball 10y ago
    To clarify, I was interested in a lot of things. The routine of everybody else around me was just so consistent. Dad got up and ready and out the door for work at the same time every day. Mom stuck perfectly to her routine. Birthdays, holidays, football season, school, church, etc. There just wasn't any really drama or family crisis that disrupted things. Unless you are a robot...
juliendorra 10y ago
About kids thinking they are aliens or, as another commenter, that everyone is a robot but them — or the reverse: I thought I was a robot like Daryl :) — it's really quite common, like kids thinking their parents are not their parents, etc. There is a nice comics that start from this common thought in kids, and, well… you'll see! It's called "the astronauts of the future"[1], and it's about a boy and a girl who believe there's alien everywhere or that everyone is a robot, respectively, and try to prove each other who is right. [1] http://www.eurocomics.info/astronauts_of_the_future.html http://www.eurocomics.info/astronauts_of_the_future.html
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
HiroshiSan 10y ago
> I would like to add that I do not consider myself gifted. I simply have a rather narrow set of interests which I have become good at. Are you Bryan Mills by any chance?

voidhorse 10y ago

I know where you are coming from. I felt that I was a member of a different species, to the point where that idea quite literally manifested itself as a concrete possibility in my head. You're right man, it's all thought based...it's all brain weirdness. It's a conflict between biosocial and intellectual factors. The only way to push past it is to change your mindset. I can't speak for others, obviously, but for me that's been a long and arduous process. There are ways to question the nature of life and the world and to remain calm and serene about it. To remain level. I found too that little things are a big help...I lived a long time not bothering myself with "minor" and "vain" concerns... i.e. fancy clothing, delicious meals etc... but truly taking care and investing in these little things, concerning yourself with the quality of the little practices you partake in everyday really does begin to help. Caring about yourself in little ways slowly but surely leads to a more positive overall conception of your own self and your movement through the world.

Retr0spectrum 10y ago
I had a sudden "wake up call" about a year ago, and since then things have been getting much better. Partly because I have become more independent, but also because I have perfected the art of simply not thinking about things that I want to ignore. I'm not sure if that's healthy or not, but it seems to work.
- M_Grey 10y ago
  I think it's healthy, especially if those things are truly and deeply beyond your influence or control.
- ajmurmann 10y ago
  Do you have any advise on how you accomplished that? Meditation?
  - Retr0spectrum 10y ago
    I'm not sure really, it seemed to come naturally. Perhaps even as a symptom of depression. It might have helped that I stopped carrying a smartphone. I guess things like sitting on a train without any entertainment counts as meditation, although I never really think of it as such.
  - pmyjavec 10y ago
    Disclaimer: I've had an anxiety disorder most of my life and I already have had some professional CBT training to help with difficult times. I think if anyone reading this is really down / troubled, then seeing a professional would be wise. There are really good caring people out there that can help. I've recently experienced something very similar, I would like to share with you my story on getting (mostly) through it in hope that it may help others. First step for me, just getting out in the wilderness helped me immensely, even just a nice park and some sun/rain helps. It sounds really alternate but getting out and touching trees, just sitting under them has been a kind of medicine, watching animals in as wild of a setting as possible is nice too. Walking, or "wandering" for a long period of time has also been a great way to settle the mind, you could call it the most primitive form of meditation, but if you get the chance to walk for 1-2 hours along a quiet beach, consider yourself blessed. Just not having a set place to walk but just exploring is what I mean. More formal meditation practice is very, very good for me; however, it has to be taught / practiced properly. Getting the wrong idea about something like Buddhism can be quite destructive, especially for those in a vulnerable place. I found socializing to be critical, if you can talk to someone about the problems specifically it's even better. We are social beings. My episode I now consider a little bit of a gift, it has made me realize the value of our natural surroundings and how important their conservation, protection and our return to them is for us humans. Maybe more than some of us ever realize. I read the ancient Greeks would treat people with mental distress by giving them a nice quiet place to stay near the sea, maybe they were onto something?

borplk 10y ago

Wow. Maybe about a year ago I wrote a comment on reddit it read almost exactly like that abandoned aliens sentence. I think I said something like "waiting for the mother ship to take me to my people.".

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

I know the feeling. There's the existential depression, and than there's that special kind of loneliness of being isolated by having a different set of knowledge to that of your peers. I try not to mix the two...

M_Grey 10y ago

I just latched on to an intense fear of death, and struggle with sleep. It's hard to deal with existential crises when you're nine, and it tends to leave a mark.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

facetube 10y ago

Being called gifted only made it worse. I was not. None of them were. I'm still not. It was a lie. Why couldn't people just give me credit for working hard? That was the truth. Why was my success some magical unexplainable innate attribute?

nicklaf 10y ago
At any rate, psychologists will tell you how harmful it can be to tell a child how smart they "are", rather than letting them know they've simply "done" a good job. The distinction seems to be between being and doing, with the former being static and the latter dynamic.
d215 10y ago
Well, probably to not feel bad about themselves. If your skills were obtained through hard work, they could have done that themselves. Whereas if it was handed to you by magic then there's nothing to be done, right?
chrisco255 10y ago
Cognitive ability is an innate attribute. This is observationally true. We can't pretend that everyone has the same capabilities, even with applied effort. That's false. However, I still think that showering someone with praise and sectioning them off into separate classes throughout childhood is not necessarily the best strategy for dealing with highly intelligent children, either. My own experience was that socially, I was years behind my peers in high school due to the isolation of gifted classes. I think it would be best to have gifted students advance in grades but still have them integrated with the general student body along with some social interaction with peers of their age group.
yodsanklai 10y ago
At some level, everybody works hard, but some are incredibly more talented than others. But I agree that it's misleading to call someone gifted. Intelligence is such a diverse thing. Some people can be gifted for one thing and totally deficient for some other things. I'm not even sure that a very high IQ is predictive of success in science for instance.

superuser2 10y ago

Highly selective colleges are the mother ship. When the handful of isolated gifted students are plucked out of their widely dispersed high schools and collected in one institution, one dorm, it's incredible. People feel home for the first time.

CuriouslyC 10y ago
That was not my experience. I found that as I worked my way into elite institutions people were just playing more sophisticated, elaborate forms of the monkey-see-monkey-do game they were playing everywhere else.
- superuser2 10y ago
  It was mine. To be fair, I think there is a tier of elite institutions which primarily attract the prestige/wealth crowd (Ivy League, etc), and a tier just below them in rankings which attract the nerds who want to do hard intellectual work.
- jolux 10y ago
  This is entirely my experience. A lot of people at highly selective colleges are hyper focused on one area of study to the exclusion of others, for example a lot of my friends who are brilliant engineers hate the arts. I think intelligence is broader than IQ, because I think there's something to be said for the intelligence that allows you to recognize the value of many different intellectual pursuits at the same time. You can learn so much more if you get along with intellectuals of all kinds. Some people take their specialization too far, in my opinion.
  - MawNicker 10y ago
    I suspect the cognitive effects of depression may serve this purpose well. An endeavor (specialization) is a good way to battle depression. My inclination is to agree with you. Then I realize this "intelligence" you've described is essentially an adaption to the sluggish nature of dissonant reasoning. The more axes involved in mediating dissonance the more the set of thoughts becomes partially ordered vs fully ordered. This partial ordering demands active mediation. This is the domain for which this intelligence is just another specialization. I realize it's good but it isn't wholly superior to avoiding it outright. For instance, in noticing this I'm only more ambivalent and ultimately... depressed. I can see how I would be able to execute faster if I defaulted to the other heuristic.

brightball 10y ago

I remember being very convinced that everyone else was a robot for a couple of years in my teens. Really freaked me out. Mostly it was just that I was an only child in a stable household so everything around me was very routine and predictable.

Retr0spectrum 10y ago
That makes me wonder if an overly stable household is actually a bad thing. If nothing particularly unusual happens to you as a child, overcoming adversity in the future is probably more difficult.
- brightball 10y ago
  To clarify, I was interested in a lot of things. The routine of everybody else around me was just so consistent. Dad got up and ready and out the door for work at the same time every day. Mom stuck perfectly to her routine. Birthdays, holidays, football season, school, church, etc. There just wasn't any really drama or family crisis that disrupted things. Unless you are a robot...

juliendorra 10y ago

About kids thinking they are aliens or, as another commenter, that everyone is a robot but them — or the reverse: I thought I was a robot like Daryl :) — it's really quite common, like kids thinking their parents are not their parents, etc. There is a nice comics that start from this common thought in kids, and, well… you'll see! It's called "the astronauts of the future"[1], and it's about a boy and a girl who believe there's alien everywhere or that everyone is a robot, respectively, and try to prove each other who is right. [1] http://www.eurocomics.info/astronauts_of_the_future.html http://www.eurocomics.info/astronauts_of_the_future.html

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

HiroshiSan 10y ago

> I would like to add that I do not consider myself gifted. I simply have a rather narrow set of interests which I have become good at. Are you Bryan Mills by any chance?