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Hi! I remember when reading about this stuff for my son's benefit hit me! It was quite a shocker! However, since then, I've drifted away from the concept of "overexcitabilities" which the gifted community has taken out of context of the original work which contains it.

I'm drawn to replying to your post because your mention of bipolar disorder and mania. I have a misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder (among about a dozen other psych misdiagnoses) and not surprisingly I first identified very strongly with "overexcitabilities". Interestingly, my son ended up with an ADHD diagnosis 2 years after we stumbled across the "giftedness" stuff. And another year after that, I got a SURPRISE! diagnosis of ADHD too. I was getting comfortable with my therapist of 3 year and told him some stuff about the way I think which I'd never told anyone except my sister and best friend of 16 years. I never knew my therapist was an ADHD expert and it totally tipped him off. He suggested some reading material. I read it and asked for an appointment with my psych nurse practitioner who diagnosed ADHD and helped me start some medication.

It's all very good and fine to frame the "overexcitabilities" and "mania" experiences as gifts and beneficial. I've certainly felt that way in the past. But relief of these "gifts" has been an extraordinary relief! I'm not "dulled" in my experience, but I can choose what sensations and emotions I want to attend to. I can choose to attend to the pleasant and am no longer dominated by attending to unpleasant stimuli and emotion.

I apologize for being forward, reading between your lines to draw some conclusions. I also felt strongly to offer a voice you're not likely to find in the "gifted" community. The concept of overexcitabilities predates the first ADHD diagnoses. The term is being used shockingly out of context in the gifted community. The original pretense is an old theory of psychology which is not evidence-based. It's on man's heavily religiously-influenced understanding of how some people act more virtuously than others, and who goes so far as to say that people without Christian/catholic religious values are lesser people, even mere animals. Overexcitabilities is a minor piece of an outdated piece of moral elistism.

However, the concept of "overexcitabilities" is actually alive and well under a different name in modern evidence-based psychology! In the 5-Factor Personality Model, the global personality trait of "Openness of Experience" is equivalent to "overexcitabilities", but it's fortunately evidence-based, not taken out of context from an outdated work, not derived from religion, and not elitist.

Wikipedia overview of Openness to Experience: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Openness_to_experience

And you don't have to take my word for the relationship between "overexcitabilities" and Openness to Experience, here's a bit of research from people with more capital letters behind their names than I have:

http://gcq.sagepub.com/content/60/3/192.short


I am looking forward to hearing your opinions and responses after your moderation is lifted! Welcome!

Oh, thank goodness! I have been reluctant to post because of the moderation delay. Great to know that it is only temporary.

Hi, I am psyched to be redirected here, I posted on another topic (which I quoted below), which I trust many of you can relate with!

I found out that I may be gifted about 2 years ago. I was told so by a gifted person, and a mother of a gifted teen (I believe the mother herself was also gifted). It was quite a sickening experience to me, I spent a few days like a zombie. I read about other gifted people's experiences, which were creepily like reading my own biography. I read the book The Gifted Adult by Mary-Elaine Jacobson, and there is a long self-evaluation "test" (you might want to check that out), and my score was so high it didn't fit in the graph at all. It felt somehow validating, yes, but eventually I brushed the whole thing aside as some kind of mistake...

But I never felt better and recently I came out of a hermit phase and began meeting new people. This has high-lighted a contrast of some kind between myself and the others... and plunged me into a state of perpetual down feeling and frustration (I wouldn't call it depression). I got so desperate, went back to read more about giftedness, and with 2 years of distance, I realise now that I can identify myself very likely to be gifted.

It is so comforting to read I'm not alone...