11 ms·

Existential Depression in Gifted Children

• pallandt 13y ago
  Very thoughtfully written piece. One would wonder what this has to do with HN, but the content is universally applicable, therefore not only in regards to children. Plus, we could suppose that the majority of HN's users consider themselves gifted :) Anyway, read the article folks, you won't regret your spent minutes.
  • JacksonGariety 13y ago
    I posted it because I think HN attracts people who have the traits expressed in the article: - high potential for development - innately aware of problems in the world - over-exciteable - drawn towards 'escapes' that help them grow
    • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Really? Here I thought HN mostly attracts white or East Asian mostly-male, mostly-20-30-something computer programmers who live in orbit around the Silicon Valley start-up industry.
• userbee 13y ago
  I like it. I have been accused of being gifted, but my best quality is my hair.
• nate_martin 13y ago
  Site is giving a 500 error, here is the gcached version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:piXqTtNWJk0J:theunboundedspirit.com/existential-depression-in-gifted-children/+http://theunboundedspirit.com/existential-depression-in-gifted-children/&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:piXqTtN...
• JacksonGariety 13y ago
  Aaaaaand it's down.
• stephengillie 13y ago
  http://xkcd.com/167/ http://xkcd.com/167/
  • jsemrau 13y ago
    There is always an XKCD, isn't it? :-)
  • cgag 13y ago
    http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=14 http://www.qwantz.com/index.php?comic=14
    • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      Yeah, I always wondered how the so-called existentialists aren't just yielding ground to ideological fundamentalists.
  • pallandt 13y ago
    Hey! Thanks for reminding me of this. I really needed the smile, those surprise squirrels always cheer me up.
• JacksonGariety 13y ago
  If a mod sees this, they should change the URL to this: http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10269.aspx http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10269.aspx The link I posted was a re-blog on a website with a nicer reading experience.
• zachlatta 13y ago
  A well written piece. The excessive use of "gifted" works against its intentions though. By referring exclusively to "gifted" children the author is throwing up a wall. Everyone has different levels of care and thought when it comes to the world around us.
  • angersock 13y ago
    Well put; thank you for not jumping on the "hurr durr look at the special snowflake language" bandwagon.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• hayksaakian 13y ago
  "The average person believes themselves to be above average" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusory_superiority
  • angersock 13y ago
    Read the article before spouting off.
    • hayksaakian 13y ago
      It was directed at the comments.
      • crgt 13y ago
        Perhaps HN attracts many gifted folks? Would that be so unexpected? The level of discourse is quite high.
        • kungfooguru 13y ago
          Is this a joke?
          • crgt 13y ago
            The idea that the level of discourse on HN is high? Compared to say, Reddit? Or YouTube comments? No, not a joke. It's my perception that many of the folks participating on HN are, well, both gifted and engaged in the world. Do you disagree?
  • sidcool 13y ago
    Not relevant here. I am not sure if you read the article.
    • notok22 13y ago
      It's relevant to the comments.
• AYBABTME 13y ago
  Let's all get in a circle and talk about our experience as gifted children.
• asveikau 13y ago
  Not sure why the emphasis is on children especially. This seems to affect thoughtful people of all ages. Or maybe, in that thoughtful, existentially-depressed way, the author is just understatedly asserting that adults are just big children. That would probably be overthinking it.
  • JacksonGariety 13y ago
    I think he author chose children to simplify the somewhat complicated theory of positive disintegration. He's also probably assuming the reader has some background on PD and knows what it is a psychological theory not at all correlated with age.
  • kevingadd 13y ago
    The issues described are dramatically worse for children since they don't have any agency over their own lives or the ability to actually grapple with these issues the way an adult can (emotional maturity really helps!)
  • Alex3917 13y ago
    > This seems to affect thoughtful people of all ages. This affects everyone sooner or later, thoughtful or not. I think this is basically just a case of the fact that everyone goes through more or less the same set of internal experiences, just in different orders and to different extents. Obviously though if you hit the dark night of the soul at age 7 then that's going to be somewhat problematic, not that it's easy at any age.
  • heurist 13y ago
    It's on a website about talent development in gifted children, they're speaking to their audience. The article has been around for a while.
    • asveikau 13y ago
      Ah. This makes my comment look silly then. Sometimes that kind of context is not obvious when these things come up on a site like HN.
• Vivtek 13y ago
  Gifted children are intense? Has the author ever actually been around children? They're all intense. That's the nature of children! Of course, they may simply all be gifted until they're hammered into their little social boxes; I've often thought that. Some of us weirdos just can't be hammered as efficiently, or break before bending or something.
  • Vivtek 13y ago
    (Also, the guy in the picture is probably not depressed due to nihilism, but because he forgot to put a dropcloth down before painting - I know I've cursed myself for that one before.)
    • angersock 13y ago
      Perhaps a very subtle hint at the existential crises we all have of living with the corners we've painted ourselves into?
  • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
    Gifted children are intense? Has the author ever actually been around children? They're all intense. That's the nature of children! You mean adults aren't intense? Wow, now I feel lonely.
    • sokoloff 13y ago
      Adults are far less intense than children, IMO. I expect children to be intense about nearly everything. Small boo-boos and set-backs are devastating, and small wins create enormous excitement in 2 and 4 year olds. That, to me, is intensity. It's perfectly normal for the majority of things in life to be intense in kids (and have more understanding for others' kids now), but it's entirely abnormal (and frankly inappropriate) in adults. Adults can have selective intensity and I look for that as a strongly positive quality in people I want to be around. Non-selective intensity is simply fatiguing, IMO. Interuption: "Dude!!! Are you guys out of toilet paper in the upstairs bath?! Because if you are, I just wanted to remind you that there's a lot of it downstairs." (Silently: "No shit, I bought it and put it there; next, care to interupt my reading in five minutes to update me on the stock status of dish washing detergent?")
• narrator 13y ago
  The book that taught me to spiritually make sense of a world that is a constant let down was "The Master and Margarita" by Bulgakov. The author wrote it in secret while living with totalitarianism and meaninglessness in Stalinist Russia. If you're not in the mood for a book, there's a great mini-series adaptation that was produced in Russia in the 2000s that takes about a week to watch. It does an almost perfect job of reproducing the book. I don't think it's available online.
  • dkural 13y ago
    I've often thought that in a warped, twisted way totalitarianism gives meaning to life for certain people. If it opression is so intense to make life worthless, then one has a cause dearer than life itself - to fight this opression. This struggle itself is meaningful. Many 'hero' movies are structured in this way, the 'good guys' have a cause, usually around defeating some kind of evil, that gives them ultimate purpose. Likewise, I've found friends with far worse actual problems in the developing world to be existentially happier. They derive great pleasure in being able to go to a rock concert, etc. The game dynamics still work for the majority. Lots of intermediary issues to overcome, bosses to beat. Threat of destruction (socially or economically) seems to be wonderfully stimulating. Game dynamics still work. What I find far worse is the banality of the first world. That seems to evoke and ferment existential concerns. Kind of along the lines of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LeLZ2crZE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98LeLZ2crZE In a way, it is the problem one faces once more basic things are taken care of. Hard to focus on existential angst when hungry. At the end of the day, even though the universe itself may be arbitrary and doomed, I found that the only things that infuse durable meaning into us as humans is our love for each other, our desire to understand this universe, and our appreciation of beauty in all its forms.
    • ahomescu1 13y ago
      > I've often thought that in a warped, twisted way totalitarianism gives meaning to life for certain people. If it opression is so intense to make life worthless, then one has a cause dearer than life itself - to fight this opression. This struggle itself is meaningful. Many 'hero' movies are structured in this way, the 'good guys' have a cause, usually around defeating some kind of evil, that gives them ultimate purpose. An even more disturbing take on this is that totalitarianism also gives some people a more sinister cause: the oppression itself. I think many people in the various surveillance agencies in totalitarian states actually believed in what they were doing, and many even enjoyed it.
• sidcool 13y ago
  I faced some of these issues during my early teens. It went away after that. Now I am 29 and facing the mid life crisis that the author has mentioned. It's a confused state of big dreams and crushing reality.
  • JacksonGariety 13y ago
    Sorry to hear it. Want to tell me about it over Skype? I'm a good listener and it's good to talk.
    • sidcool 13y ago
      Thanks so much for your compassion and empathy. I would love to talk to you.
      • JacksonGariety 13y ago
        Send me an email. It's at the very bottom of this page: http://jacksongariety.com/resume http://jacksongariety.com/resume (sorry, to prevent spam)
  • angersock 13y ago
    Shoot me an email if you need to vent--we all need can use someone to chat with now and again.
    • sidcool 13y ago
      Thanks for your kind words. It means a lot!!
  • adamnemecek 13y ago
    This might be relevant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quarter-life_crisis
• miga 13y ago
  I'd encourage statistics check. It is common that many of the "containment regimes" that are supposed to motivate children are more ruthlessly enforced on gifted children to "help them reach potential". And it is known that overly harsh rules induce depression too.
• jwheeler79 13y ago
  When I was in the third or fourth grade, I had an extreme form of this type of depression that lasted for maybe a year or longer. Instead of just reflecting on the meaning of life, I worried reality might not be real and understood even then at my young age there's no way to prove the people around me weren't constructs of my imagination. I came to these conclusions independently without ever hearing of Brain in a Vat, Evil Genius, or watching The Matrix, and it was very terrifying back then. As I've grown up, I still realize there's no way to prove the world around me is real, but I'm glad I encountered this theory so young because I've had a good while to be motivated by the fact that it doesn't matter if it isn't real. What matters is what I do with this experience and how much joy I get out of it.
• angersock 13y ago
  The only two real issues I've got with this article are that it limits itself in scope to the "gifted" and that it limits itself to children. As for the latter issue, I suspect that this may fit into a broader work or area that the author presumes readers are familiar with--these issues are certainly seen in teenagers and afterwards. As for the first point, a bit of a cliche but still accurate is the saying "The rain falls on the just and the unjust alike"; at some level, everyone I've met sharp or dull, gifted or not has run up against some version of the four issues (death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness). It may take until middle age and a house and a picket fence and seventy grand in debt, but it hits eventually. One of the best realizations I've come to is that everyone, at some level or another, faces these problems in their own way and that I should try and respect their experience--because for them, their existential conflict is at least as severe as my own, their circumstances and stakes at least as dire. What struck me as interesting was the author's specifically calling out touch as a mechanism for grounding and comfort--this struck a chord with me when I read it. It's part of the reason I have dogs: there is a very real touchable physical presence of pet, something to hold and hug and pet when you're mulling over some of the day's shittiness. tl,dr; life's a bitch, get a dog.
  • cbhl 13y ago
    The only two real issues I've got with this article are that it limits itself in scope to the "gifted" and that it limits itself to children. I think that can be entirely attributed to where it is published -- the website of a 501(c)3 that solely focuses on "gifted children".
    • mtrimpe 13y ago
      > Such concerns are not too surprising in thoughtful adults who are going through mid-life crises. However, it is a matter of great concern when these existential questions are foremost in the mind of a twelve or fifteen year old. Such existential depressions deserve careful attention, since they can be precursors to suicide. This paragraph explains why it is relevant to focus on gifted children. I can attest to that as I still have rather vivid memories of standing on the edge of the roof berating myself for not having the guts to actually jump.
• themodelplumber 13y ago
  I really enjoyed reading that--especially the poem at the end (I remember mentally rolling my eyes the first time I read it, thinking the message was self-evident. But in this context it's just wonderful). I do wish this sort of message could be part of an effective, formulaic prescription that could be doled out to web surfers who are suffering. "Depressed about things? Just keep scrolling down...watch this TED talk, heed this advice, read this article..." My friend who surfs the web all day and who tells me he has his suicide all planned out--I wish he could stumble on these things more often. Maybe instead of a "CSS Site of the Day Award" badge there could be a "Contemplating Suicide?" badge... Another example, I wish I had learned before I became a film major that imagery is powerful, and that our brains can confuse on-screen trauma with real trauma. I suffered needlessly--and that sounds ridiculous and maybe funny, thinking about a film major with wide eyes wondering just what he signed up for--but I watched things that I will never forget, and that have become part of a mental burden I work to release now that I'm a bit more experienced in discerning what I can and can't handle. I guess it pains me to think that while there are things we can do to ease others' pain, there are many extremely simple, almost thoughtless ways by which that existential depression worsens. Watch the wrong film. Read the wrong book. Make the wrong song lyric your mantra. (Wrong...well, maybe inappropriate is a better term; something that takes into account one's personal state) Traditions, cultures, microcultures...transcending that sort of thing is harder than most people realize, and certainly doesn't happen on autopilot.
• simonsarris 13y ago
  While I've read a fair bit of existentialist works I've never seen this term, but I think I know what it means. I also think the article would be improved by just titling itself "Existential Depression". The narrow focus is odd, even if true, and might serve better as a footnote. There's the strangest feeling I come across from time to time, and I think "come across" is the only good way to describe it. Everyone has bouts of doubt and melancholy, I think or would like to think, but there's something much larger that creeps up that becomes harder to relate. In spite of the difficulty to describe, I could imagine anyone might feel this way, not just gifted children. I always called it "The Cosmic Sadness", which is a name that I came up with after experiencing the feelings while I was reading about heat death of the universe (and associated articles) on Wikipedia[1]. This feeling ends up upsetting (not quite right, maybe disquieting) me much more than things like the death of a pet or a family member. It doesn't only have to do with cosmological things, but I think it addresses the scope of the feeling, where you get this sensation of being so zoomed out, so encompassed by (perhaps) all that might be, that you have a hard time coming back down to being you. It's like when you ponder the plight of some character in a novel you're reading, and you empathize enough to get a little upset, then you remember that none of that is real and its OK you've gone one level up now back to real life, no one is suffering like the character in the novel. You "snap out of it" - There's de-escalation, and some relief. But with the cosmic sadness there is no going up one level, it's all there to ponder and still real. No snapping out of it. I was shocked by how this article ended because the only way of coping I have (other than mere time), to de-escalate this feeling, is literature and poetry. I tend to read several poems a day[2] as a kind of cathartic ritual, and poetry brings a comfortable way to remember (or re-realize) the very meaningful and concrete parts of experience, so I end up surrounding myself with it, finding the most comfort in it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heat_death_of_the_universe [2] For example Where to Live, by Du Fu: https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/5472121 https://gist.github.com/simonsarris/5472121 Du Fu is a favorite of mine because he lived during a time that experienced one of the largest losses of human life on the planet (an lushan rebellion), so a lot of his poetry dithers between bleakness and hope. Somehow this makes it easy for me to reflect (perspective) and draw some inner sympathy for everything.
  • chrischen 13y ago
• smegel 13y ago
  > it is because substantial thought and reflection must occur to even consider such notions, rather than simply focusing on superficial day-to-day aspects of life. What elitist garbage.
  • bigiain 13y ago
    Really? I read it nodding, thinking of how many of my friends/family/cow-orkers, and if I'm being honest with myself - me a lot of the time, could be described perfectly as "simply focusing on superficial day-to-day aspects of life."
    • rads 13y ago
      Day-to-day life isn't superficial to everyone.
    • eli_gottlieb 13y ago
      I assure you: everyone else is having the same Special Snowflake Thoughts as you.
      • aridiculous 13y ago
        Probably something about being special, yes. But it's not the same thing. The OP is referring to a kind of critical thinking. If you don't believe in qualitative differences in thought, then we might as well just abandon education as a whole.
    • penguindev 13y ago
      1/4 of middle aged women in this country are on antidepressants. Is that 'existential' depression or some kind I don't know about, I don't know, but that's a pretty sad stat.
• MichaelAza 13y ago
  I cried a little. I'm 18 and since 3rd grade I was in a special class for gifted children. I know this feeling so well, from my experience and from those of my classmates and friends, it literally hurts. I'm no psychiatrist but from my nonobjective personal experience depression in gifted children and your regular "normal" teenage depression are completely different, in symptoms as well as in cause, which I think the article illustrates nicely. I think the people criticizing the article for focusing on children and on gifted children specifically don't understand it's a whole different world. There are whole fields of study in psychology, psychiatry, education studies and other fields that focus on gifted children because they need a completely different system to thrive. People, especially family and educators, need to know about this.
  • cbhl 13y ago
    I was diagnosed as "gifted" in third grade, but switched back into "regular" school in sixth grade in response to bullying, a short temper, and a diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome with Seasonal Affective Disorder. I think the only reason I got through high school was because of the immense amount of support I got when I was placed in a partially self-contained class with roughly ten other students with Asperger Syndrome and Autism. The thing that always bothered me (and my "gifted" classmates) is that lumping all such children together is a Bad Idea(TM). We had unique strengths and weaknesses, and having us march in lock-step in a traditional Prussian-style school at double speed just made our weaknesses that much more apparent.
  • dkural 13y ago
    Just don't get too used to thinking being gifted is particularly rare and requires a different system to thrive. Many acquaintances of mine at a certain crimson ivy university grew up with similar notions, and got into a different kind of depression once being surrounded by other 'gifted' individuals - due to having the 'world view' they've internalized so far, around the notion of them being special, getting totally crushed. Many also got used to explaining away their flaws as somehow being related to them being brilliant. This notion of specialness being crushed, they also saw those thing for what they are - failings, i.e. that they fail to connect with young people their age due to poor social skills, and not due to them gifts; and this becomes obvious now that others around them are also smart, etc. They realized that even if you're 1/1000 this means Facebook could staff the entire company with even more gifted Americans, and you'd still not make it, and so on. These people are also crushed to learn upon graduation that people don't automatically revel in their obvious greatness, and that they need to earn their place by actually delivering / 'executing' on some of that potential. TL;DR: Smart teenagers tend to not realize they are still 99% teenager, 1% smart. That itself is a teenager like habit. Humans have roughly similar meta-emotional makeups and thrive in environments that cater to this. Gifted or not, children and teenagers thrive where they can expand their social, intellectual, emotional, spiritual boundaries and capabilities in a trusting, safe, encouraging environment. Thus the 'system' is the same, the gifted merely require a different mix of 'content'. They may be advanced in certain ways but normal or behind in others.
• csense 13y ago
  I think there are two separate issues here: (1) Existential depression, and (2) Gifted kids have difficulties because adults don't talk to them as equals, and their concerns and thought processes are difficult for their peers to comprehend.
• amasad 13y ago
  I wonder how the "gifted children" whom were raised on religious believes react to the same sort of "ultimate concerns"
  • SpartanJ 13y ago
    Yes, it's the same. Any "gifted children" can see also the "problems" in the belief system that they were raised, it's part of the conflict.
• paranoiacblack 13y ago
  TIL: Children can be Nihlists too? Does it really take a gifted child to see the futility in the majority of life or to understand our insignificance? This is something that should be fairly obvious to anyone without privilege, not only children.
• 6ren 13y ago
  "As intelligence goes up, happiness goes down. See, I made a graph. I make lots of graphs." - Lisa Simpson
  • Fishkins 13y ago
    I know this post is at least partially a joke, but if there's any correlation between IQ and happiness, it's positive. http://theboostbook.com/2013/01/link-between-intelligence-and-happiness/ http://theboostbook.com/2013/01/link-between-intelligence-an...
    • eshvk 13y ago
      Apart from the fact that IQ as a measure of anything is completely bullshit, sure. We can make such a correlation.
• Arun2009 13y ago
  I googled Dabrowski and Positive Disintegration Experience and was led to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_Disintegration I found the following especially interesting: Dąbrowski also described a group of people who display a different course: an individualized developmental pathway. These people break away from an automatic, rote, socialized view of life (which Dąbrowski called negative adjustment) and move into and through a series of personal disintegrations. Dąbrowski saw these disintegrations as a key element in the overall developmental process. Crises challenge our status quo and cause us to review our self, ideas, values, thoughts, ideals, etc. If development continues, one goes on to develop an individualized, conscious and critically evaluated hierarchical value structure (called positive adjustment). This hierarchy of values acts as a benchmark by which all things are now seen, and the higher values in our internal hierarchy come to direct our behavior (no longer based on external social mores). These higher, individual values characterize an eventual second integration reflecting individual autonomy and for Dąbrowski, mark the arrival of true human personality. At this level, each person develops his or her own vision of how life ought to be and lives it. This higher level is associated with strong individual approaches to problem solving and creativity. One's talents and creativity are applied in the service of these higher individual values and visions of how life could be - how the world ought to be. The person expresses his or her "new" autonomous personality energetically through action, art, social change and so on.
• moneyrich 13y ago
  its late, its saturday, i read the title as: existential depression in grilled chicken. IMO... it's a real problem
• danbmil99 13y ago
  I have to point out that a good percentage of people seem to gravitate towards religious, spiritual, mystical, or other basically non-reason-based thought patterns, I suspect to help alleviate this sense of existential hopelessness. Perhaps these "gifted children" find it harder to go down that particular route, for obvious reasons.
• meric 13y ago
  I have felt those things before but then one day I had an epiphany. Everything in this universe, living or dead, are all made of the same universe, like gems cut from the same rock. So that even when I find myself having difficulties with someone, something or even idea, I remind myself that we're all in this together. The universe is us, its what we choose to make of it. The universe isn't just one state of the universe but rather the transitions between one state after another, just like how a movie isn't just the current frame I see, but rather all the frames put together, and although the movie is going to end, we don't know how the story is going to go. That part, is up to us, so let's create something beautiful.
  • throwaway0xFF 13y ago
    I also had an experience where the existential depression went away. I thought this comment on the original article described it pretty well: The solution to existential depression is counter intuitive, which is probably why it isn't well known. Existential depression is caused by wanting to have meaning when a part of us knows that meaning doesn't exist. We grow up in a life where everyone around us jumps from one 'important' and 'meaningful' thing to another, never seeing the pointlessness of it all. We think this is normal so adopt the behavior, but we constantly fight ourselves because part of us sees how pointless it really is. Our base state is where we see how pointless everything is. However, this state does not create existential depression. It's the conflict between the pointless state and the part of us that wants meaning that creates existential depression. We enter suicidal states only when we are unable to find a solution. (i.e. we are unable to find something that has meaning.) The solution, which is now obvious, is to remove all feelings of meaning and importance so that we return to our natural state. If everything is meaningless than everything is unimportant. If everything is unimportant than nothing is more important than anything else. When the feelings of meaning and importance are removed, our existential depression disappears. Basically it felt like the abstract notions I had been worrying over were indeed meaningless, but that the meaningful world from when I was a little kid was still around, when I could capture the same intense non-verbal awareness.
    • buro9 13y ago
• INTPenis 13y ago
  I'm not saying I was ever overly gifted, I was just a very introvert child who spent a lot of time thinking and through that became depressed about my seemingly pointless existence. Well I just wanted to say that what helped later in adult years was discovering true love. I know it sounds corny but once you realize that life on this earth is short, and that short time can be used to experience great feelings of love and togetherness with other humans, you do feel less depressed about it.
• e12e 13y ago
  "In an infinite universe, the one thing sentient life cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion." -- Douglas Adams
• hypertexthero 13y ago
  Another literary cure for the Great Sadness is Isaac Asimov's [The Last Question](http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm http://filer.case.edu/dts8/thelastq.htm).
  • Decade 13y ago
    So, the cure for the Great Sadness is basically... religion? Like a modern, high-tech version of the Wheel of Time. You do have to believe in a cause greater than yourself. All your passions and drives die with you, so if you want life to be meaningful then you need to contribute to something that will last.
• return0 13y ago
  In the end all psychology boils down to our brain circuits. It is interesting that nature has shaped us so that we have a constant existential anxiety, maybe it even served some evolutionary purpose (or maybe not, and it's just a side effect that becomes more evident to the few gifted children)
• jokoon 13y ago
  ok, I'm gifted and depressed, how can I get a job ?
• tokenadult 13y ago
  From the article, which is about a topic I discuss frequently in other online communities (including online communities hosted by the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that operates the website hosting the submitted article): "In essence, then, we can help many persons with existential depressions if we can get them to realize that they are not so alone" And this is why I strenuously oppose the term "existential depression" as a supposed designation of something that is rare in most people and more common among people who are "gifted." There is no evidence of such a thing. Rather, treating giftedness as a condition of life different from what most of our fellow human beings experience magnifies the sense of aloneness that too much of the gifted education literature promotes among people identified as gifted. When I was young, I read a science fiction story by author Philip K. Dick in which he made a statement I have seen made in much the same form by many of the lousier authors on gifted education: that if your IQ is high, you are as different from above-average people as retarded persons are from normal people. That's baloney. The social distance hypothesis of IQ has little empirical support, and seems mostly to be a cultural hang-up of twentieth century America. When I lived in east Asia (after majoring in Chinese language at university) as a young adult, I discovered a new cultural perspective, the cultural perspective that if a person is smart, there is hardly anything better to do with the smarts than to learn how to get along with other people. As Confucius said, 三人行，必有我師焉 ("wherever three persons are walking, my teacher is surely among them"). Whatever my IQ score, I have plenty to learn from essentially everyone, and plenty of reason to feel kinship with my fellow human beings. There is, however, a kind of isolation of the gifted that must be specifically counteracted. And that is the isolation of the gifted education literature, like the article kindly submitted here (by an author I have met at several conferences on gifted education) from the mainstream literature of psychology. Most gifted education gurus, and the author of this article is a salient example, have their highest formal degrees in education, from schools of education (such as from a "directional state university" that historically was a "normal school" for training teachers). The most rigorous research on human psychology--and psychologists have recently been painfully aware that all too little research on psychology is rigorous at all-- http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/ http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/ http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf is gained by persons whose highest formal degree is in psychology, from a major research university. Very little of the best insights gained from recent decades of psychological research seeps into schools of education, especially those schools of education that have programs in gifted education. The late author Dabrowski mentioned promptly in the article kindly submitted here and in much gifted education literature is an admittedly obscure writer (as acknowledged in the only book that collects commentary on his ideas, http://www.amazon.com/Dabrowskis-Theory-Positive-Disintegration-Mendaglio/dp/0910707847 http://www.amazon.com/Dabrowskis-Theory-Positive-Disintegrat... which I read part of recently) who produced essentially no testable hypotheses. Dabrowski's ideas are vague and open-ended enough to allow making up dozens of anecdotes when speaking at conferences on gifted education, but provide no guidance whatsoever to help young people face tough issues in personal development. The bottom line: the term "existential depression" is a euphemism used in the gifted education community for the same depression experienced by many people of varied IQ levels. The correct statement in the article submitted here is the statement that you help people experiencing depression by encouraging them to feel less isolated from the rest of humankind. And one of the best ways to do that for gifted people is to emphasize their commonality with the rest of humankind, rather than their IQ scores or poor fit age-graded school programs. http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html http://learninfreedom.org/age_grading_bad.html
• kapv89 13y ago
  I faced this "existential" crisis of a pretty severe nature in my college years. I kept reading stuff about psychology, philosophy, and physics in the hopes of an answer. The first breakthrough against this existential demon came in the form of a course "non-linear dynamics and chaos", the ability of chaotic equations to exhibit life and nature like behaviour, and understanding that life is chaotic, and so is nature. The second one came when I realized that philosophy and reason itself are handicapped, insufficient, powerless against this existential dilemma. The third one came while reading Carl Jung and his work, the fact that consciousness is a very small produce of the biological system that is human body. Fourth when I read Nietzsche's "On Truth and Untruth", which again showed how our speech has taken the form of animal's claws, we fight, threaten etc mostly by what we say, that's like a higher level of abstraction over the physical equivalent. Then there was Tolstoy, who pointed out that its logical that we humans, if we really want to stay true to ourselves, need a god, or something higher than ourselves to believe in, because logically, if you are going to die, there is no reason to live, yet every human and animal does. Then there was "Black Swan" by Taleb, which drilled the idea into my head that we humans don't know even a tenth as much as we think we do. And then there was programming, actually building systems that exist outside of you and do something. Over the years, I developed the worldview that as human body is formed by numerous of organisms working together, and how futile would it be for a "red blood cell", in all its consciousness, to ask "what is my purpose ?", the same way its futile for human to ask about his/her place in the universe. I started trying to live more like animals do (or rather, how a human animal would live if it only had nature imposing rules on it), copying nature for decision-making, and general wisdom (it even helps me with my work). We humans are basically nature forming a greater system , the human society, which then again competes with many other greater systems formed by other organisms, and till now, has been doing pretty well. I also have given up trying to control my conscious thought and efforts too much. I trust the biological system that this consciousness came out of to provide me with a better judgement than I can come up with consciously. Its been around 2.5 years since i cleared up the existential crisis in my head, and my growth since then has even astounded me. I have become better, much better in all spheres of life, and I can't remember a time I was more happier than these 2.5 years
  • aridiculous 13y ago
• oneiros 13y ago
  This reminds me a bit of the short film "Kid's Story" from The Animatrix. It revolves around a teenager who is waking up to the possibility of the matrix who finds himself alone in a world full of people unaware of its existence. He seeks the help of those who are woken up, specifically, Neo. In a way he is like these children, aware of the fleeting nature of life, waking up to these issues. I recently had a psilocybin mushroom trip that resulted in a bit of temporary derealization during which I needed one of my friends to hold me just so that I knew I was real. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life, but through it I learned that our existence in this world is entirely a perception of the mind, and that we create our reality through each and every action we take and each thought that we make. Particularly one of my most profound insights was that the concept of time is irrelevant, for there is only the now, and when one is able to perceive the now, then one can be free from the grasps of what if and can one see what is. I find it difficult to convey these feelings with other people, as I often find them saying things like "yeah, that's interesting", but I can see that they do not truly understand. There are some that do however and for those who do I am grateful. For the children and those of you who find yourself in this "existential depression", I can only offer this... Create. Create art, create music, create life. If you can leave something behind for the rest of the universe, then your life was not for nothing, for you created something, were a part of something. This at the very least is all that we can do, and that is okay, for even if all you can do is make someone smile, you have created a ripple in the world that will manifest itself as a wave in the lives of those who carry on.
• molbioguy 13y ago
  Giftedness is misunderstood. That even highly educated audiences don't get this is evident in some of the comments here. Giftedness is terribly named. It is more affliction than blessing. Giftedness is rare. Gifted kids are not the same as brilliant high achievers. They have high IQ's but are also underachievers (by regular standards, not some elevated bar) and often dropouts. They should be highly successful but are not and often commit suicide. Gifted children are routinely dismissed as overly privileged or advantaged kids, and usually do not get any special needs attention in schools. People see their intellectual side and ignore their emotional needs and problems. I can say from personal experience that while gifted kids are exceptional in many ways, they also tend to lead difficult lives with many challenges because they are so deeply misunderstood. Even by their own parents.
  • bsenftner 13y ago
    I second this. I was identified as "gifted" around 3rd grade, and from that point on, my teachers "guided me" (only allowed me access to) literature and texts they felt were "at my level". Third grade is way too young to be reading literature classics - they are all incredible tragedies, with the worse aspects of human behavior exhibited and analyzed to the extreme. By 5th grade I'd pretty much finished the entire classics section at our library, and I was as dark minded as an individual could get, with the vocabulary to support plus youthful piss and vinegar ready to debate anyone with optimism. Thank god I discovered literary science fiction, and soon thereafter Phillip K Dick. I found reading "unhappy" literature was comforting, and U.K. post-punk bands like Joy Division also lent a sense of not being completely alone. Also reading Malcome X was hugely uplifting, as a white Iowa boy. And the cyper-punk authors were just starting then; I remember reading Neuromancer when it first came out and feeling completely at home in the reality painted by that novel. About the only "good" thing that came out of my elementary school teachers only allowing me access to "gifted" activities was their taking me out of math class and leaving me alone with the school's first computer (this was the late 70's) for 2 hours every day.
  • gurvinder 13y ago
    I have one gifted son and another brilliant son, and I really understand what you mean. I can see these differences quite clearly in my sons. Giftedness is not same as having very high IQ, it has its own characteristics which are often overshadowed by the high IQ.
• ausjke 13y ago
  I have two kids both starting at age4 questioned me about death. I don't believe in God so it's hard to calm them, but there is no better way to comfort them, so I say we will all go to heaven when we die. One day we visited my grandparents cemetery,my boy started crying, and asked me why my grandparents are buried here while I said people went to heaven when they are dead. I had to say that our body remains here, but our soul/spirit go to heaven and we live there. Then one night he tears again, then cry, when I ask, he said if it's just spirits/souls go to heaven, we won't even have a face there, our family will never be able to recognize each other, and we won't be able to re-unite in heaven. I almost cried myself.
• peter303 13y ago
  I've only experienced this right after high school, college and PhD graduations. These were long term goals that dominated my life. There was bit of emptiness once these goals were achieved. Plus there was a dispersion of the social communities I had lived in for long time. This emptiness did not last long as there were always new projects around the corner afterwords. I expect the same feeling after job "retirement" and expect it to last as long.
  • penguindev 13y ago
    The greatest burden in life is not having a burden to carry. - Sadhu Sundar Singh.
• asolove 13y ago
  A somewhat different response is found in "The drama of the gifted child," which argues that gifted children, having been singled out for attention because of their impressive abilities, become dependent on validation from authority figures and then have trouble adapting to self-directed life as an adult: http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465016901 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0465016901
  • gboudrias 13y ago
    Well, it doesn't help that most parents want to see their child as "gifted". We as a society put a lot of emphasis on inborn qualities ("being smart"), rather than growth and hard work. It's not surprising when the dream of many is to have it easy. Being smart is easy. Working hard is hard. I remember there being a study where successful kids who were told they worked hard ended up working harder (and over time getting better results) than kids who were told they are smart. I guess what I'm saying is everyone has impressive abilities, but the authority figures' guidance may be what will differentiate a lazy "smart" person from a hard working (successful) one.
• j45 13y ago
  It is a unique experience at a young age when one especially feels that there is not a soul they can truly speak to, almost to the extreme that it is a luxury to feel understood. Since this isn't your usual teenage angst, making friends who are older than you can help a great deal. Realizing man has pondered the same things, for hundreds and thousands of years gives you a chance, to access their thoughts in the form of books, literature, poetry.
• mumbi 13y ago
  I remember thinking these 'existential' thoughts that cause depression my first day of pre-school. I am not as intelligent as a lot of people, but I know that I'm not unintelligent. I began failing my classes in school when I was 9, and my depression was beginning to really develop. I would walk around the playground, by myself, thinking. By 15, I had renounced my belief in God and refused to be brainwashed by anyone who wanted to tell me otherwise. I'm 25 now and after a lot of drugs and alcohol, I believe in God, again. I read the Bible, not as often as I should, but at least I read it. It makes me feel better. For those of you who are 'former Christians', I recommend you try to bring it back into your life. It does help, I promise.
  • penguindev 13y ago
    Thank you so much for sharing that, and I second your suggestion. I was born again at age 24, after swearing it off for years due to the evil and hypocrisy I saw growing up in it. But I had just hit another near suicidal rock bottom - even though my life was very monetarily successful - and I finally stopped fighting God's call and being so stuck on myself. I went to church and was blessed to meet my kind, flexible, and giving wife who is truly my better half. (PS guys, odds of meeting flexible and giving women is much improved there) It's been 9 years later and we have two wonderful sons. Even if God takes me home tomorrow, I know he made some good out of my life.
    • kirse 13y ago
      Fantastic to hear... I'm interested to know what you meant by "being so stuck on myself"? I like to hear stories of how God has changed people!
• dschiptsov 13y ago
  The French philosophy of the last century said nothing about children.) In some sense a realization of absurd and meaninglessness require some experiences of ageing adult which children simply cannot have. They cannot realize the attractiveness of youth and meaninglessness of that attraction. Time to reread Age of reason or something.
• DanielBMarkham 13y ago
  As a gifted child, I had a lot of this. It was finally in my 30s when I realized that existentialism for me was really the only way forward. I really wish I had been exposed to these ideas earlier (However I'm not sure I could have absorbed them as a young adult) Over the years I've become somewhat of a shill for the Teaching Company, which offers college-level courses on CD and DVD. Robert Soloman's "No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life" is an excellent introduction to existentialism. Highly recommended. http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.aspx?cid=437 http://www.thegreatcourses.com/tgc/courses/course_detail.asp... In my mind, if we are going to encourage and nurture kids at both ends of the spectrum -- highly functioning and less functioning -- we should provide some kind of intellectual bedrock to allow the gifted an anchor to succeed.
• alexvr 13y ago
  I think this is a really pathetic reason to be depressed. And these "gifted" people have it all wrong. No, the laws of physics don't directly dictate that all governments be democratic, or that people drive on the right side of the road. But if they thought about the world on a deeper level, they would realize that there is structure, and that it's breathtakingly-beautiful (albeit subtle and not always easy to pick up on when you don't explicitly seek it). No, you don't get to be a teacher's pet for your whole life, and you don't get paid for doing well on IQ tests. But one person can have an impact on the world: sometimes, a very pervasive, meaningful one. I fail to see why some gifted children can't appreciate the world and their existence enough to at least have a good time and explore it a bit. You only get to do it once, and you won't get the chance to do everything the world has to offer, but you should consider yourself lucky to be conscious in the first place. My theory is that kids labeled "gifted" end up dwelling on their "ability" to the point where they actually think they are entitled to something outside educational institutions. Or maybe they fail to realize, to their chagrin, that IQ grossly belies proportional intelligence, especially after a certain point, and that IQ tests don't measure what it takes to make a meaningful difference in the world. People like Elon Musk, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates are unequivocally gifted, but they don't dwell on it; they don't statistically determine the probability that they will make a difference; they don't spend their time researching IQ tests or bragging about their intellect; they go out and do their best to change the world. And they do.
  • crgt 13y ago
    Steve Jobs also struggled with depression. "I admit that in the past I have become angry, or have lost my temper when things are not going right. I feel that this type of behavior happened when I was in my early twenties. I feel that I have better control of these emotions at the present times. I have also have gone through highs and lows in my life, and have felt depressed at times." http://m.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/steve-jobs-pentagon-file-explains-why-he-was-jerk-drug-user-and-criminal/53395/ http://m.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2012/06/steve-jobs-p...
  • eshvk 13y ago
    > I think this is a really pathetic reason to be depressed. Who the fuck are you to judge why people get depressed? Someone I know got depressed because she was 70 and her cat died. The only other social contact she had in her life withered away. Is that a good enough reason to judge her? > But one person can have an impact on the world: sometimes, a very pervasive, meaningful one. Really? In the long run, how much does it matter? Oskar Schindler saved a bunch of people from the Holocaust. He died poor, broken; his saved people went on to create a state which is known for its war crimes. The cycle goes on. > I fail to see why some gifted children can't appreciate the world and their existence enough to at least have a good time and explore it a bit. You only get to do it once, and you won't get the chance to do everything the world has to offer, but you should consider yourself lucky to be conscious in the first place. You have never been depressed ever in your life, have you? This is like me going to a sad walmart employee and telling them they should be happy getting a job when there are people in Africa starving.
• amerika_blog 13y ago
  Having some experience in this area: Gifted children are aware just how dysfunctional this society is. They aren't fooled by shiny things. They look at the structure of things and analyze them. Thus they're a high-risk group because while most people see a few scattered small problems, gifted kids see one big problem. Naturally, there are solutions to that including contexting and acceptance therapy, but those are never provided. I bet they'll find gifted kids have a higher suicide rate, too, especially as an empire nears its collapse.
• future_grad 13y ago
  Great article. Sadly, I wish it wasn't focused on the gifted. I bet a lot of children suffer with existential depression and I also can imagine how hard it is to have to listen to the bullshit answers they will inevitably receive to their deep questions.
• davidxc 13y ago
  I think almost everyone struggles with this type of depression at some point in life. I'm not sure how much being gifted has to do with it. Strangely, one of the things that has helped develop my framework for life is a fanfiction (Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality) [1], written by Eliezer Yudkowsky. I think it's been recommended several times before on Hacker News, but it really is a great fanfiction. The protagonist is an atheist and transhumanist who wants to defeat death. The author has also written many other essays that I find interesting and sane. I'm an atheist who has occasionally struggled with the idea of death and meaninglessness, and his essays were the first viewpoints that seemed to make sense. [2] [3] [1] http://hpmor.com/ http://hpmor.com/ [2] http://yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda http://yudkowsky.net/other/yehuda [3] http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/sc/existential_angst_factory/ I really recommend that anyone here who has struggled with existential depression to read the above three writings. Of course, it's very possible that you'll still be depressed, in which case you'll need to look for other solutions. But Eliezer's writing helped significantly in cleaning up my life views.
• CurtMonash 13y ago
  Woody Allen already covered this in a scene in Take The Money And Run.
• pteredactyl 13y ago
  The fact there's something rather than nothing. 'Nothing' - like absolute zero - is only a referential concept. Beware of introspective traps. Light, breezy and not trying too hard.
• andrewcooke 13y ago
  It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression. is there any evidence (beyond the author's "experience") that this is true?
• dsugarman 13y ago
  parts don't make a lot of sense, not every gifted child is trying to spend every waking hour on improving their talents. I don't know a child that doesn't enjoy play.. I find that a lot of gifted children are opposed to authority, which causes frustration with non-stimulating class work assigned by poor teachers.
• fexl 13y ago
  The article says that freedom refers to the absence of external structure, as if it's a grim state of confused aimlessness. I say that freedom refers to the absence of external coercion, which is a happy state of purpose and possibility.
• j95tin 13y ago
  When I started to read this, I felt embarrassed and exposed, maybe little taken aback. But I'm really glad I came across this article. I'm in a weird place between a cynical bastard and depressed kid, and this kind of helped. Thanks.