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Posted By: Violet What is this? - 06/23/10 09:00 PM
I know that I am a twice-exceptional person, but I just can't figure out what I have. I score low on IQ tests (well, at least average) yet on achievement tests, I score around 99. I have a sort of paradox within myself that I can't get things that others understand, yet nobody understands what I understand. I am not suffering from any ASD, but I have a hard time with social situations in the area of talking to people. I have frequent anxiety attacks, and I lack any sort of athletic ability. I also have a hard time with details and I have a poor memory. I've been tested for ADHD, Asperger's, and occasionally on the internet, Bipolar I Disorder. My doctor even thought that I had the adult form of ADHD, but said that didn't make any sense. Please diagnose me before it's too late!
Posted By: chris1234 Re: What is this? - 06/23/10 11:06 PM
I am pretty sure asking for a diagnosis here is not a super fantastic idea, cause mostly we just play psychologists on 'tv'...that said, if I were you I'd start by reading up on giftedness, posting more details here, people might have ideas for you. (I imagine the 'diagnose me' request was somewhat tongue-in-cheek).
What sorts of things do you like to do? How are you employed, happy with job? etc...that sort of stuff. You probably already know a lot of these second exceptionalities can sound a lot alike. Finding the right sort of dr to consult with might be key if you feel the issue is keeping you from really doing what you want with your life. Best of luck, welcome! smile
Posted By: Grinity Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 02:50 AM
I love what chris1234 said - very wise!

Was the IQ score a group IQ test or an individual IQ test? If it was individual, can you set up a meeting with the person how administered the test and ask the same questions? If it was a group test, then I wouldn't put too much weight on it. No IQ test is perfect for every person who takes it, but the group tests are famously imperfect.

Even if the IQ test was individual, lots of people score average on IQ tests but when one looks at the parts that make up the test, the average score can reflect a mathematical average of very high and very low scores. Do you have someone who can sit down with you and explain the various subscores of your IQ test and how the parts might match up with how you experience yourself?

Violet, I love the way you described:
Quote
I have a sort of paradox within myself that I can't get things that others understand, yet nobody understands what I understand.
I think that is very common with most gifted people, if they are 2e or 'just gifted.' No one is uniformly strong across all domains. Some of the weakness are weak enough that they fell like learning disabilities, except that the weakness is still in the average range, or even above average. Here we call those bottlenecks. We help each other try to plan for them or go around them - but they are hard to get used to.

What I've found is that the things that other people find simple and I find difficult are things that I have learned slowly over the years - so don't give up! Flylady.net helped me so much, and lately I'm reading 'Getting things done' by David Allen, and that's helping even more. Part of my problem was a lack of reference. I sort of assumed that if I was strong in one brain function, that I should be strong across all the functions, such as spelling and keeping track of what needs to get done. It turns out that spell checker does a pretty good job of correcting my spelling, and getting in the habit of assuming 'I would forget my head if it wasn't attached' and so compensating by forming the habit of writing everything down as if it was leaving instructions for some one else to carry out and keeping the habit of checking my lists has been amazing. I'm walking around as if I could leap tall building. My brain is SOOOO happy it's off the hook for 'remembering to by eggs'

As for the anxiety attacks, it would be good to talk to a trusted adult who could help you sort out if you are having regular anxiety, but experiencing it more deeply, as gifted people do, or if you are having what a medical doctor would define as anxiety attacks. Pearl S. Buck said it best, I think:

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The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.
Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off...
They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.
Pearl Buck


You can read more in
Quote
http://books.google.com/books?id=lW...=0CC4Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q&f=false

Misdiagnosis and dual diagnoses of gifted children and adults: ADHD, bipolar ... By James T. Webb, Edward R. Amend
if you haven't already.

Lately I've been encouraging people to go all Harriet the Spy (by Louise Fitzhugh) and start documenting their families experiences with smartness/success/giftedness/special schools/grade skipping/strengths and weaknesses. Does that sound useful?

Great to hear from you - now I'm skipping happily off to bed!
Grinity
Posted By: Mom0405 Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 03:33 AM
Grinity, thanks for the Pearl Buck quote. I had never heard it.
Posted By: Violet Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 03:13 PM
OK. Sorry if I bothered you, but you seem pretty cool. If I move, I will move where there are specialists. Thanks for the help, and you all really did well. I appreciate it! ^^
Posted By: Violet Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 03:14 PM
And to Grinity, I love eggs. I liked the eggs comment. Do you want them boiled, because that's the only eggs that I probably won't burn! ^^
Posted By: Grinity Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 05:48 PM
For a while (4 days) I thought it would be great to write a cook book of recopies that 'even I' couldn't mess up. If you like boiling eggs, you may want to try cooking with a 'slow cooker.' I put the food in it in the morning, plug it in, check it to see that it's really heating up (is the switch set to on?) and in the evening it's cooked!
We may not do 'diagnosises' but we are jam full of helpful suggestions on any topic you could name!

Smiles -
Grinity
Posted By: chris1234 Re: What is this? - 06/24/10 06:23 PM
And you are definitely not bothering anyone!!! smile

I hope I did not sound bothered...
Posted By: Violet Re: What is this? - 06/27/10 07:35 PM
No you didn't! ^^ I'm just very anxious and wary because of all the at-times rauchy gossip people have spread about me! ^^
Posted By: aline Re: What is this? - 06/28/10 02:21 AM
Girlfriend -- repeat after me... I am weird,I will always be wierd, and it's OK because as I expand my world I will see that I am not alone!
Posted By: JJsMom Re: What is this? - 06/28/10 01:15 PM
Originally Posted by aline
Girlfriend -- repeat after me... I am weird,I will always be wierd, and it's OK because as I expand my world I will see that I am not alone!

I love it!
Posted By: Violet Re: What is this? - 06/28/10 02:56 PM
Originally Posted by JJsMom
Originally Posted by aline
Girlfriend -- repeat after me... I am weird,I will always be wierd, and it's OK because as I expand my world I will see that I am not alone!

I love it!


Weird gifted people/twice-exceptional people rule! ^^
Posted By: Lori H. Re: What is this? - 06/28/10 04:01 PM
You sound a little like my twice-exceptional son and we are still trying to find what he really has. He scores very high on achievement tests but because of a mild disability that causes difficulty with fine motor integration which I think is because of a visual processing issue, he would never do jigsaw puzzles and he hated drawing in front of other people because he was not good at it. He has no athletic ability even though he comes from a family with lots of athletic people and his dad played football in the army. I think to do well on the performance section of an IQ test his fine motor skills would have to be better than they are, yet his disability doesn't affect him academically. I am still trying to find out how the lack of jigsaw puzzle ability is supposed to affect someone academically and later on in life. He is slower at things like handwriting and writing out math problems and he can't draw well because of the motor dysgraphia, but he types well. I don't see how it affects him intellectually, but it does lower his performance IQ score.

He would practice jigsaw puzzles if he could see that it could help him in some way but he feels like it would be a waste of time--he would much rather learn something than do jigsaw puzzles. I think he is better off practicing piano or learning guitar. Our whole family is trying to figure out how this difficulty will cause problems in later life and we just can't see how it it affect him. He did well or better than the other kids in a homeschool circuitry class because he was interested in this.

I find it ironic that they call it a "performance" IQ when performing is something my son loves to do and he is good at it or he would not have been given a lead role. So I don't really see how IQ is useful for twice exceptional kids if they are smart enough to work around the disability.

My son was diagnosed with motor dyspraxia a year ago but he is not clumsy, his sequencing ability is very good, and his balance is good so I can't really tell teachers he has this when they can look it up online and see that most of it doesn't fit.

So my son and I know how it feels to wonder "what is this" and in trying to figure it out, we sometimes see things that are kind of scary, not because he has all the symptoms of the disorders we are looking at, but because he has as many of the symptoms as the thing he was diagnosed with. He has anxiety whenever he has to go to the doctor. It feels like nothing makes any sense.



Posted By: Violet Re: What is this? - 06/28/10 06:07 PM
Originally Posted by Lori H.
You sound a little like my twice-exceptional son and we are still trying to find what he really has. He scores very high on achievement tests but because of a mild disability that causes difficulty with fine motor integration which I think is because of a visual processing issue, he would never do jigsaw puzzles and he hated drawing in front of other people because he was not good at it. He has no athletic ability even though he comes from a family with lots of athletic people and his dad played football in the army. I think to do well on the performance section of an IQ test his fine motor skills would have to be better than they are, yet his disability doesn't affect him academically. I am still trying to find out how the lack of jigsaw puzzle ability is supposed to affect someone academically and later on in life. He is slower at things like handwriting and writing out math problems and he can't draw well because of the motor dysgraphia, but he types well. I don't see how it affects him intellectually, but it does lower his performance IQ score.

He would practice jigsaw puzzles if he could see that it could help him in some way but he feels like it would be a waste of time--he would much rather learn something than do jigsaw puzzles. I think he is better off practicing piano or learning guitar. Our whole family is trying to figure out how this difficulty will cause problems in later life and we just can't see how it it affect him. He did well or better than the other kids in a homeschool circuitry class because he was interested in this.

I find it ironic that they call it a "performance" IQ when performing is something my son loves to do and he is good at it or he would not have been given a lead role. So I don't really see how IQ is useful for twice exceptional kids if they are smart enough to work around the disability.

My son was diagnosed with motor dyspraxia a year ago but he is not clumsy, his sequencing ability is very good, and his balance is good so I can't really tell teachers he has this when they can look it up online and see that most of it doesn't fit.

So my son and I know how it feels to wonder "what is this" and in trying to figure it out, we sometimes see things that are kind of scary, not because he has all the symptoms of the disorders we are looking at, but because he has as many of the symptoms as the thing he was diagnosed with. He has anxiety whenever he has to go to the doctor. It feels like nothing makes any sense.





Wow....I know this sounds rather dark, but would this mean that we could be dealing with an orphan disorder? But, seriously, I hope that we find out what it is, and I hope your son will do well. I've got high hopes that, A, some teacher will identify that we are both gifted, and B, what is going on. I will pray for your son, too (my family and I are strong Christians, so we'll probably not forget...).

Posted By: Lori H. Re: What is this? - 07/01/10 01:44 PM
The really weird thing is, a lot of people just assume my son has a very high IQ because of the way he speaks and the way he instantly comes up with really good analogies and metaphors, and the way he not only learns concepts very quickly but is able to explain it in a different way, often an easier to remember way by relating it to something else. I think this ability would make him a really good teacher some day. He is so good at explaining things about the computer and electronics to adults who need help, like me, his sister, and my dad. We have had people tell us they think he will be a college professor, a politician, or a lawyer when he grows up and luckily these are professions that a mild disability in motor skills probably won't cause much trouble for him.

He wants to know how his motor dysgraphia and mild motor dyspraxia could be considered a "learning disability" when he not only doesn't have trouble learning anything, but learns faster than the average kid. His disability only causes a little more difficulty doing physical things and it isn't that he can't do them, he can't do them for as long because of the weaker muscles and the pain. He has some sensory issues and he deals with pain almost daily, yet he continues to learn so well that kids his age in his acting class think he is very smart. Even with his migraines and dealing with the pain from getting used to the brace that kept him from spending as much time as the other kids on doing school type work for the last six months, they still think he is very smart.

So in our family this "performance" part of the IQ test is kind of a joke. When I have to ask him for help or advice and he looks at me and says "Mom, you really need to learn how to do this yourself" or "Try harder"--the thing I used to tell him when he had a little trouble doing fine motor type activities--not a good thing to tell someone with a disability, I can tell him "Okay you are really smart in some things, but I can color better and do jigsaw puzzles better than you can." It is just that I can't see how that kind of intelligence did me much good. It didn't help me in my jobs as an executive assistant or accountant. My husband can't see where this type of intelligence really helped him in his job as a supervisor. If I am "smarter" in that area what good is it? What am I supposed to be able to do that my son can't do? Well, I guess I did teach myself how to crochet and could make my own patterns and he might have difficulty doing that, but I would gladly trade it for his ability to speak so articulately and learn things as fast as he does. Sometimes it is a little embarrassing to have a child that sounds so much smarter than me. I found out that my straight A's in school meant nothing. Nobody cares that I can color well and do jigsaw puzzles quickly. I could only do things the way I was taught. There is no way I could have taught myself to read or come up with my own way of solving math problems mentally like my son did to avoid writing. He is smarter than I am. He knows it, other kids see it, strangers see it, even public school teachers see it and make comments about it.

I think twice exceptional kids are amazing.

Posted By: PoppaRex Re: What is this? - 07/01/10 03:31 PM
The doctor is in. My diagnosis? Completely normal.

Take out the poor memory and low IQ score, add in ADD and I am you, you are me. You can probably change the gender too and add a few years on too.

Violet, we all are unique just like everybody else. I think many of us have difficulty understanding who we are, what we are, why we�re different and at times, probably wish we were more like �them�. The thing to understand is it really is OK to be different and have all these odd, confusing thoughts.

But here the IMPORTANT thing: As far as the anxiety regarding what people say about you� There�s only one opinion that counts and that�s yours. If you know that the things are untrue then, while it may be hurtful and it may cause problems with relationships, it doesn�t matter because it�s not true.

I will say this and please take it seriously! Absolutely NOBODY has the right to demean you by making up things to make you feel bad. You have every RIGHT to make an issue of it. You did not create the issue and it is not your fault and you don�t have to take it! PERIOD. PLEASE, talk to an adult. A parent, a school counselor or a teacher and they WILL help!
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