gidted womwn think they are freaks.

I'm not talking about being young and constantly required to slow down, dumb down, be less, dont challenge,.

I didn't have a functioning gifted adult female who could help me learn to avoid triggering other peoples unhappiness when they felt not so smart around me. My mother loved the television show Columbo. . She didnt know how to be an unusually intelligent woman in the suburbs without going crazy. I had no one to teach me.

No one likes to be around someone who can see through them. I know i feel uncomfortable around a profoundly gifted cousin and literally wanted to cry when I noticed two bolshoi trained ballet teachers, and gorgeous dancers they were too, watching me learn a piroette. I dont have body shame. I just wanted to push them out the door and close It in their faces and return to my class.

I know people i like and want to like me feel that about me.

Ive tried to rein in so I could fit in and I cant, and still remain functional. I only do violence to my own psyche and run down my own neurotransmitters.

This is the cause of my getting PTSD instead of being resilient i adolescence. That and having a Kant for a mother. But I know she was what she was in part because she too didn't know how to fit in, a profoundly gifted suburban housewife with few friends, because she could be as pleasant and friendly as she could be and never mention anything other than what they all had in common and use their exact vocabulary, and they still felt inferior. Her few friends were like her.

I know that being a gifted female set me up for trauma. Giftedness is not just a steep learning curve. We are sensitive in all areas of life.

Its such a shame to live in a society that ranks and judges everyone and makes us compete. That may get more work out of the middling ranks but at what cost to them? And to people like me who get culled from the herd one way or another?

I might have survived my mother because I did have a nurturing father. When mom turned all fairy tale evil stepmother on me, I had kind neighborhood moms who mitigated some of the damage.

Everyone told me to hang in there until I could go away to college. Then in the first real class...

It means nothing. This life means nothing.

Im tired of not saying what I know to be true.

Your life didn't mean nothing Teacake, you raised a son and made sure he had what you didn't have.

I get tired of saying what I know to be true, being ignored and denied and constantly seeing the unhappy or sad consequences. When that happens people don't want to admit it but have chosen to instead hurt me and deny me even more.

People do not like to be "told what to do" either Teacake. That is yet another message that was expressed in Good Will Hunting, the question people want to hear, need to hear, is "what do you want?". People who are accomplished or "gifted" tend to intimidate others unknowlingly because of how they can "take away or threaten a want". For example, if someone "wants" to be a dancer and these accomplished dancers come on to the scene, yes, they can be intimidating because they "know" whatever has not yet been accomplished by the one who is trying to learn and improve their own attempt to "learn and do and be".

That is what I hated about that yuppie neighborhood I built a house in. The people that were there were too busy with the mindset of "who had what and was it good enough, or did it fit into what their standards were". These different people were so miserable and while from the outside looking in, driving into that small neighborhood, it was so pretty, but the people living there were not happy. I thought it was terrible that these people could not just "respect" that different people had different tastes and were mostly young couples that just built what they could afford to build. So what if something was not some kind of "designer" label. People do not know "how" to be original, they need society to define what is "acceptable or respectable or worthy". No one is perfect, it is just that simple, it is insane to "need to be perfect" or "try to be what society deems perfect".

That is why you did not get your needs met, that is what sets "anyone" up to experience "trauma" too. You have hurt people who love you because you feel they can't see you the way "you" wanted them to, they are offended by you because you don't see them they way they wanted you to either. Your mother got stuck in "the image" and she didn't really do well with that, she could not see you, because she didn't know how to be seen herself.

That is exactly what my sister does and doesn't realize she hurts people and they don't enjoy her company. My sister has everyone labeled, but she doesn't really see their "good parts, their gifts, or that child in them that just wanted to be who they wanted to be". No, you have to play by "her" rules and it always had to be in "her" sandbox too. Oh, I have to give her credit, she can throw a celebration Martha Stewart perfect, no one can do it as good as she can. Oh, she just knows others better than they know themselves too and she lines them all up and puts them in boxes in "their place" too. God forbid they don't stay in that place too, then she gets "mad" and feels "violated" somehow. I will give her credit though, she was always gifted.

Yes, you were very bright, yet innocent too, and you were not expecting college to be a place where others around you would have ways of "trying to be heard" that were "extremes". You were looking for a safer "structure" that you could harness your gifts in too, unfortunately, that was not the reality of that kind of institution.

But, you at least knew that so when it came time to helping your son with that reality, you did. You mourn, 'if only I had someone like me to help me when I needed it".

We live in a world where people just don't know how to "listen", and because of that we have a lot of "dysfuctional" people walking around and they don't know how to listen or be heard. Therefore "genuine trust" remains elusive.

OE

It is annoying to have reflected back to me what I have not said.

There is something about being intimidating.

When I wanted to push the Bolshoi ballet teachers out of the studio, It was a very visceral feeling. They alarmed me. I saw them looking at me and had to fight to stand still with the ballet face on and self talk, that they did not scorn me, that they were teachers observing a class, that I was interesting to them because I was an example of a good body for dance that hadn't trained in youth, that they had been to the beach and the mall and were aware of body fat, that cellulite did not frighten them.

I remember I thought of the children's book Frog and Toad. Toad wore an absurd swim suit. All the woodland animals heard him say so and came to look at It. Eventually he mustered his dignity and got out of the water. The animals all said his swimsuit was absurd. He pointed out that he had told them so.

Toad was my hero and model as I continued to piroette.

These dancers were incredibly beautiful dancers and I got to see them rehearse and on stage in small venues. In the studio they were routinely ignored. The moms chatted in the foyer but when the dancers camee in they were silent. It's the way people snub those who intimidate. I wasn't going to do that
to them.

At the same time the emotions I felt when I saw them watching me were hostile. It is a rare occassion that I can empathise with what makes people bigots and jerks. I felt pain and the impulse to close the door in their faces, to run them off, to say "you don't belong here". Because they were superior to me. Ita not a fatal flaw that I am not a ballerina. I never wanted to be a ballerina. Perhaps that's why I could master myself and get over myself and be a little objective. Or maybe I am developed enough to intellectualise while others project.

I've seen gifted people snubbed and disliked in instinct. It happens a lot. It is a form of intolerance and discrimination. The basic mechanism is "i feel uncomfortably self-conscious in your presence and I blame you".

I find I get blamed for BEING. I want to shake people by the collar and say, "im not the one who made you feel inferior when you had difficulty learning to read. It was the wrong method. It was your mother and teacher. I wasn't even there. I had nothing to do with me. Wake up. Come to now. I am not your authority figure of the past. I am not your parent, let me reintroduce myself".

I work so plunking hard to be on top of myself that It annoys me to have to do everyone else's emotional work too. But that's how It is.

If you didn't really "want" to be a ballerina, why were you there?

Just curious Teacake.

"It is annoying to have reflected back to me what I have not said. " quote Teacake

If you are referring to my post, I was just talking about things I didn't care for myself. I also thought about things you talked about experiencing and what I see of such things taking place and what they mean.

What makes me angry is the abundance of people who insist on telling others how to feel, instead of just listening to how others feel. There is no shortage of people who utter or act as, "Oh, I need to be all about me, and not about you".

It is very disheartening to be in the presence of someone who has all kinds of degrees in child psychology and so self important and "its all about how important they are too" because they carry that essence about them. Yet, to watch them with a child and see that what they "really" know is "how to bark orders". Then when that doesn't work, all I do is the "basics" of stopping and actually asking the child about "what they want to be", then I have no problem "encouraging" that child to learn or "listen" to me. It literally astounds me that I am considered very gifted for that.

What astounded me in that neighborhood I described is how hardly anyone "cared" about how others felt. It was such a small little neighborhood yet, divorces, and a young 14 year old boy hung himself in the basement of that pretty little perfect home, and a young mother of twins committed suicide right behind me.

"At the same time the emotions I felt when I saw them watching me were hostile. It is a rare occassion that I can empathise with what makes people bigots and jerks. I felt pain and the impulse to close the door in their faces, to run them off, to say "you don't belong here". Because they were superior to me. Ita not a fatal flaw that I am not a ballerina. I never wanted to be a ballerina. Perhaps that's why I could master myself and get over myself and be a little objective. Or maybe I am developed enough to intellectualise while others project. " quote Teacake

You didn't really get a chance to know them, you wanted to just shut the door on them because you felt they threatened your sense of mastery or authority. You assumed that your feelings of "they were going to be bigots or jerks" was the truth, but that is "all about you" and what they "may" have been able to offer is how at one time they were like you and what they had to work hard at to achieve where they are. The truth is "they were not perfect and neither were you".

However, I am no big deal myself, I have taken chances on other people and been hurt badly. I tried to get along with my neighbors, I showed them respect, thought they would respect me too, but I found out in a horrific way how very much they did not, and still don't and never really did, not with me or anyone. They are "only" happy when others step back while they are "all about themselves" even when being all about themselves invades on others.

I am writing these posts to you Teacake, but in all honesty, I am not doing well at all. I very, very tired so my tone is probably very "off".

OE

You could try applying an attitude similar to that, to yourself. You seem to be blaming everyone else who was or wasn't in your life, yet it angers you when others blame you. It goes both ways.

I could spend days and days going over all the opportunities that I missed out on due to not having the "right" people in my life.. or all the opportunities that weren't available around where I lived, or having some opportunities flat out denied me. I can blame everyone else for all the things that I missed out on... but what is it going to do? Nothing at all.

I find having empathy for others is a key part in my life - I'm not superior to anyone at all. I feel inferior sometimes, but I know that I am not. I live by the philosophy that everyone I meet will be better than I am at something, and that I in turn will be better than them at something. Considering one person to be superior to another is flat out wrong; we're all human.

You seem so focused on separating yourself from others Teacake. You aren't any more different than anyone else. But you keep judging everyone, either for not "giving" you what you feel you needed, or for being "less" than you. You're isolating yourself, and it isn't surprising that you seem so unhappy. It's lonely when you separate yourself, and live in the past.

If your life means nothing, that is because you have chosen it to be that way.

Teacake, I'm not here to diagnose you, or to deny that PTSD on its own is not a an all encompassing, debilitating condition.

I'm also not saying this out of desire to hurt you in any way.

But you really may want to consider that there may be more at play here than just PTSD. I'm concerned that you may not be getting the right treatment. Some of your posts seem a little out of touch with reality.

As a fellow sufferer of mental illness, I really hope you may be open to having a fresh evaluation with a good Pdoc. The right support and meds really can change your life. Even if the trauma is never directly addressed, so much more than dealing with trauma can be gained through therapy.

Honestly, I think you might really need meds. I'm only saying this because I understand the feeling of everything in the world being off kilter. It's terrible, and it doesn't have to be that way.

I was a doughy sahm fighting depression. I wanted to try "diet and exercise" before drugs and my college PE classes were riding and ballet. I was the most unathletic kid ever, the kid sneaking a novel out into left field praying no one would hit. Or God forbid, the ball to me.

I was looking for a stables and chances upon an ad for a ballet studio. I would not have called much less shown up if I'd known the teachers credentials.. But I didn't know, and I was really bad, and awkward, and my teacher took me from review of the five positions to being strong and so athletic when I checked out a dojo for my kiddo I didn't think twice about putting on a borrowed gi and joining a coed class.

I lucked into two very excellent teachers. My ballet teacher treated her adult beginners with the same attention she treated her pre-professionals and auditioning professionals. Sensei was the same.

I had coasted through school, been too disabled to benefit from the really excellent college I chose, and finally in my thirties got to have very positive gifted student-gifted teacher relationships. I was very lucky.

Sorry, OE, I didn't mean to sound so curt. I felt you were blaming my college for not being what I needed. College was a great college for a girl like me. I was disabled. Not disabled st 9am. Disabled at 11am.

We are sensitive people, OE. We see what others do not. We feel It too. We are not wrong to be as we are. Not so gifted people advise us, with good intentions, to let It go, to not worry about right or fair, to get ours and let others get theirs. They don't know why we cant.

They say if you are not for yourself who will be for you?

We may be too quick to retort. But if I am only for myself what am I?

When gifted traits, gifted development, gifted issues are NOT addressed It is difficult to distinguish our very nature, our needs and our strength, from a pathology.

Red Panda,

Is It possible you are speaking very authoritatively on a subject about which you actually know very little?

I my family we have been learning about and discussing issues of giftedness since the seventies when my aunt became acquainted with an educator who remains an authority in this specialised field.

People with all manner of neurological atypicalities from right brain dominance to toiretres syndrome to ADD to minimal brain damage to giftedness have been discounted, belittled and shamed for being different, and then again for identifying their difference. Fortunately the unhelpful attitude of derision and blame yields, at least among the informed, to science. We now can "prove" that people who exhibit differences are not rebels or undisciplined nonconformists but people with identifiable, measurable brain differences that affect
much more than number recitation or block design.

We all have the right to our emotions, whatever they may be. It is not wrong to discuss them. It I'd not wrong for you to advise me either, but perhaps you might ask yourself whether you intend to be supportive of me or to argue with me. I welcome alternative views. Just keep it friendly and unabusive so I don't have to report abuse to save the thread. It's all about freedom of expression. Everyone gets to speak her truth.

I wasn't being abusive, nor was I belitting you which is what you are doing to me... I was sharing my opinion and observations based upon the things which you have said in this thread and was trying to offer you a perspective that is different from yours.

And yes, I do know how it feels to be discounted, shamed, belitted for being different - for being more intelligent academically than my peers. I lived that too. But that is only one kind of intelligence, and even when I am academically more intelligent than someone, it doesn't make me superior. It just happens to be my strength, what my body and brain are good at.

Oh, I didn't know you were older when you did the ballet. I thought you were much younger Tea, I had it somehow in my mind you were around 11.

Hey, Doglover

Isn't It funny how one person's reality can be so unlike another's? Even our own reality changes over time with education, information and life experience.

I will ask doc if she wants to refer me out for a new diagnosis or if she has any qualms about my reality contact. I will also share your concerns that I may be inadequately treated. I assume you would be available for consultation if she needs more specific information than you have so thoughtfully chosen to share with me.

I was Hansel and Gretel's wicked stepmother when I was around eleven. . And something in a yellow tutu. A dancing flower no doubt.

Dancers are fascinating creatures. I saw some at university when I was little and asked my mom where they went at night. I imagined them roaming the city park eating leaves from trees, blending into the shadows.

PLEASE DON'T DERAIL MY THREAD.

If It offends you, please move on. This is a thread about how the vulnerabilities of gifted girls may contribute to the development of PTSD and the impact of PTSD upon gifted girls.

It is not a thread asking opinions about whether giftedness has any influence upon the experience of PTSD. It presupposes that it must. It's ok for my thread to do that. It isn't harming anyone.

There is nothing in my content about "superiority".

I am sorry, I didn't know I was derailing your thread. I will refrain from posting and leave it
be.

Teacake is talking about me, OE, not you. My thoughts and perspectives aren't welcome here by her.

I just wanted to point something out here Teacake. Yes, you are right one person's reality can be so unlike anothers. Yes, our own realities do change over time with education, information, life experience and help from a qualified therapist.

When a member opens up and talks about their history, while they struggle with PTSD, they are "trusting" others to "listen" and be supportive and not judgmental or decide to label them or diagnose them.

You "have" intruded on others here including myself by insinuating that others do not have "real PTSD" and you have also told them they are disordered, and you did that to me. I took your input about me to discuss with my QUALIFIED THERAPIST WHO SPECIALIZES IN TREATING PTSD, and showed him. I was very badly triggered because I genuinely was misdiagnosed and have been receiving therapy for "bad therapy". It was the closest thing I could do to bringing "you" in to consult with "my qualified therapist" about your need to say his diagnosis and treatment and "talk therapy" was wrong. He pointed out how "your need to analyze was wrong and why it was wrong".

PTSD is a beast that each person who struggles tries very hard to understand, and during that healing process, yes, the sensitivity is great and it can be a challenge to "listen" and support as there are a lot of "eggshells" around those who genuinely struggle. Also, in sharing challenging memories, the sufferer sees and feels the trauma unlike those who are trying to "listen" and often telling a story can come out sounding a bit distorted and it is important to realize the other person is recalling somethings that were, in fact things that have profoundly affected them in some way.

Personally, for myself, I have struggled through some very challenging stages of PTSD during my time here at PC. I have been triggered and have also responded while triggered and it took me "time" to slowly calm down and revisit each place where I struggled with another member or in a discussion.
When someone struggling with PTSD gets triggered, it hits on a deep hurt that often that person is not aware of yet, because that person is triggered, they react often before they "think about that reaction", that is what most complain about PTSD and how to manage it better. Lets all be frank here it is a big challenge.

Opening up and talking about our history is a big challenge because it is exposing our deep wounds, may even expose how we try to self protect too. I did that and that is extremely hard for me because I had suffered a lot of abuse when I did reach out or opened up in my past. I have experienced some very "disordered" people in my life too. In my time here, I have noticed how others have had those challenges as well.

Well, we try, we don't always do it right, hopefully, we can see that and do our best to learn from it and be more supportive and understanding, and even appologize if we have made an error. PTSD is tough and at times can be extremely debilitating too.

You have "real PTSD too Teacake" but so do others however, they may have developed it differently than you have, it doesn't mean theirs is not as real as yours is.

Yes, our realities can be different, we have all had different lives, and we all struggle with different traumas and somehow not getting help and support when we really needed and deserved it.

I am sure you "are" gifted, however, you do tend to make quick decisions about others that you "should" take more time with. I have had to do that myself, a part of PTSD is slowing down and learning how "quick decisions may not be all that accurate". As I mentioned, my therapist has explained to me that people who suffer from PTSD notoriously get misdiagnosed with NPD, and Bipolar when a PTSD cycle is "not" a manic cycle but can appear that way, or a person's extreme moods, especially anger can appear as NPD, but is "not the case".

The PTSD forum is a difficult forum, we are all going to make mistakes. It's just the nature of the beast. What is important is trying to see it and learn from it if we can, that can be hard.

OE

I find this Thread very fascinating. Thank you for sharing your thoughts Somehow I can relate to this.

OE, your insight is always welcome and appreciated. I know you know the issues of gifted, female and PTSD.

I think a lot of is have been discounted in the past because medicine hasnt recognised that females are relational. Add giftedness and youve got females who get PTSD symptoms from witnessing a medical event or a massacre of animals, and we really do have those symptoms and our bodies do have PTSD, and the old school medical doctor who can effectively dissociate to save lives in emergencies in the field just dont get us.

Thank you! It means a lot to me to hear that. Its hard to be open about being different or not fitting in. Women and girls are built to be relational. We all have strong relational needs. If you can relate, then im alone in These woods!

Teacake, I have never thought of myself as "gifted", actually, I always felt that I was less than and was always treated that way by my older sister though too. All I saw of myself is that I was very resourceful. My art teacher told me I was gifted too, I did not believe her because I often was lax and put together things for her "last minute" and didn't spend a lot of time thinking much about it. I did have limitations, I was not great at everything, I didn't sew like my older sister did, there were things she could do that I could not.

Gifted, means something different to me, it feels like a big kick and it feels lonely and sad.
I have deep values in things that others simply do not, that is sad to me.

OE

So...women are built to be relational. We have strong relational needs. Our brains are built to need relationship.

Gifted people are different. We develop differently. That is a relational challenge. We may feel like aliens who cannot relate. We may become "overly dependent" on the few gifted people we know--our relatives and a few friends. If our family of origin is disturbed we may be stuck between, "these smart relatives get me, but abuse me, and those neighbors, I dont know if I can trust them because they dont get me or relate to me. My family causes me pain but the others cause me despair. "

I know I retreated to an abusive, emotionally incestuous family because I was so despairing of life away from other gifted people.

If gifted females are already "at risk" because we have relational challenges due to giftedness, PTSD with Its irritability, hostility, and general feeling of being cut off from humanity only drives us further away from the sense of belonging in community that we need.

In my patriarchal family, as in much of society, Men were allowed to express irritation and anger and women are not.

Being a gifted PTSD woman has isolated me and made me vulnerable. Ive suffered from lack of relationship with society. I dont fit into groups. I dont know how. I dont have practice. Maybe knowing, I cn l
arm.

Its worse to be a fundamentally kind compassionate empathic woman with flareups of scathing fury pr just cutting biting irritation than to be a total ladydog or a mean old curmudgeon. It hurts people worse and males them more afraid.

Sorrynfornthe streambof consciousness blog. Im suffering here. Writing helps me clarify and you may know the feeling of...sometimes we have to say It to someone.