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:
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:
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
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
