Deep, (and Str8up too I guess
)
You seem like a rather bright guy. By bright I mean 'gifted' bright. The misdiagnoses of ADHD and Asperger's Syndrome are common among the gifted. I'm not trying to pop your balloon here, I'm offering a different perspective.
Many gifted and talented children (and adults) are being mis-diagnosed by psychologists, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and other health care professionals. The most common mis-diagnoses are: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Oppositional Defiant Disorder (OD), Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), and Mood Disorders such as Cyclothymic Disorder, Dysthymic Disorder, Depression, and Bi-Polar Disorder. These common mis-diagnoses stem from an ignorance among professionals about specific social and emotional characteristics of gifted children which are then mistakenly assumed by these professionals to be signs of pathology.
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_counseling/Webb_MisdiagnosisAndDualDiagnosisOfGiftedChildren.shtml
Here is what most people don't understand about the intellectually 'gifted': the way they think is different
in kind from ordinary people. Because of that, behaviors and thought patters that would be considered neurotic in a normal person would be perfectly fine in a gifted one.
Unfortunately, the role models with which the gifted child is encouraged to identify are likely to be adults or children who have been successful in a culture which rewards social and ideological conformity, and which values a comfortable and non-threatening mediocrity. In fact, these models are unlikely to be intellectually gifted (Schunk, 1987). What happens, then, if the identity that the peer group applauds and accepts is a false identity with which the gifted child herself feels uncomfortable--an identity based on surface similarities but with no real depth? More importantly, what happens if the gifted child comes to believe that her true identity is based not on superficial similarities to the peer group, but on differences--differences that they are unlikely to understand, ignore or forgive?
The emotional needs of the gifted are often not met by our society for a number of reasons, not the least which is that most gifted do not have the opportunity to be around others like themselves. Take a gifted child in school, because of their advanced development they are ready for things sooner than other children. So if a child is in a classroom with age-peers who are ready for 'level 3' friendships but the gifted child is ready for a 'level 5' friendship, that child will not have their emotional needs met at school because those around him (or her) are not operating at the same level of functionality. Is it any wonder why such a child may be aloof or depressed, or confused about interacting with others? Considering how our culture tends to pathologize anyone who is different the gifted child may be looked at by teachers as 'having something wrong with them', when in fact he is right on track for
his development.
"Positive disintegration" is one of those different-in-kind things of the gifted. The gifted are driven by their very nature for self improvement. By this it doesn't just mean they wake up early for the gym, it means they would rather work on self improvement than go to a party because the drive is that strong. This drive can be very overwhelming for them and others will see this a weird because the gifted child or adult will push themselves rather than 'relaxing and having fun'. What isn't understood here is that for the gifted
learning and improving is fun! Their internal compass is telling them to go one way while pop culture is telling them to go a very different way.
Emotional insensity is also a different-in-kind thing:
Emotional intensity in the gifted is not a matter of feeling more than other people, but a different way of experiencing the world: vivid, absorbing, penetrating, encompassing, complex, commanding - a way of being quiveringly alive... Feeling everything more deeply than others do can both be painful and frightening. Emotionally intense gifted people often feel abnormal. "There must be something wrong with me... maybe I'm crazy... nobody else seems to feel like this." Emotionally intense gifted people often experience intense inner conflict, self-criticism, anxiety and feelings of inferiority. The medical community tends to see these conflicts as symptoms and labels gifted people neurotic. They are however an intrinsic part of being gifted and provide the drive that gifted people have for personal growth and achievement.
It is vitally important that gifted children are taught to see their heightened sensitivity to things that happen in the world as a normal response for them. If this is not made clear to them they may see their own intense experiences as evidence that something is wrong with them. Other children may ridicule a gifted child for reacting strongly to an apparently trivial incident, thereby increasing the child's feeling of being odd. Also sensitivity to society's injustice and hypocrisy can lead many emotionally intense gifted children to feel despair and cynicism at very young ages.
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Sword_EmotionalIntensityInGiftedChildren.shtml
What I'm saying is that what you (both) think is so wrong about yourselves, may actually be what is
right about you. Your social difficulties may have nothing to do with a (misdiagnosed?) disorder, but rather that you live and work around people who don't think the same ways you do.
... the social isolation experienced by these children is not the clinical isolation of emotional disturbance. It does not arise from the child's giftedness itself, but is caused by the absence of a suitable peer group with whom to relate.... "One of the problems gifted children often face in school has to do with their being developmentally out of synch with their chronological peers... A gifted six-year-old first grader may have reached the level of development (normally reached between the ages of eight and nine) at which she especially likes games with complex rules. She plays the simpler games the other six-year-olds like to play on the playground, and then she suggests that they play one of her favorites. The other children refuse. How does she interpret this rejection? Seldom with a sense that she is better than they. She is more likely to think, "They don't like me." And it is a very short step from 'they don't like me' to 'I'm not likable'." (p. J85).
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_social/Gross_TheMeBehindTheMask.shtml
I could write more, but there's a 19 yo redhead waiting for me at a coffee shop! *woosh!*
Resources:
http://www.sengifted.org/articles_index.shtml
