Finally, after almost two years of waiting, my insurance cleared me to do a neuropsychological assessment. After ten sessions speaking with a specialist, she diagnosed me as 2e, gifted and ADHD. Yay.
I was pretty certain that I had ADHD, but I also thought I might be on the autism spectrum. This is a very important result for me, because in case I ever need to find a new psychiatrist I won't have to go through that old loop of being treated like a drug addict because I want ADHD medication. Lisdexamphetamine works extremely well for me, and it would be a shame if I had to stop taking it.
I have to admit I was surprised at her assessment that I'm not autistic. I scored pretty high on the RAADS-R and I notice several aspects of autism in my behavior. It would explain many things. However, she thinks I am... gifted.
Let me tell you folks, I need some help with that. I hadn't thought about this before, and I'm really sorry to say this, because I feel like I'm really close to being ableist here, but... I hate being gifted. The reason why I say that is that I had never really considered what it looks like to even discuss giftedness.
I've been online for a couple of years, lurking in spaces that discussed neurodiversity, this site included, and I found these spaces to be full of incredibly cool people. Open-minded, welcoming, warm people who want to share their experience being neurodivergent. People who discuss ADHD and autism not as something to be ashamed of, but as a unique part of their own identity.
But then when I look for communities dedicated to gifted people, I might as well be trying to browse a MENSA forum. Everywhere I looked it was always a gaggle of people humblebragging about their IQ and how it's so difficult to be so much deeper than everyone around you. The "highest IQ" people were out there saying the dumbest shit I had ever seen.
That's when I realized that I don't even know how to talk about this. Neurotypical people are largely open to discussing autism and ADHD. Nowadays, with increasing awareness of the implications of neurodivergence, I find that people have become increasingly open-minded and willing to learn about how to accommodate the needs that neurodivergent people might have.
However, how am I supposed to tell people that I'm gifted without sounding like an asshole? According to this assessment, I have a very high IQ, but that's not something I feel comfortable discussing with most people. I will talk openly about my ADHD, but it really sucks that this other aspect of my brain that I'm so eager to discuss and learn more about has to be kept under wraps, because otherwise people will think I'm an arrogant prick.
I hope you folks understand. How do you even deal with a giftedness assessment? What's your experience talking about it with people who are less informed about neurodivergence, and do not understand the negative side of giftedness? It honestly feels like the loneliest part of my brain.
Also, one last thing. My personality assessment had a category of traits related to openness, as in the Big Five personality model. Within this category, there's a trait identified as liberalism, and I'm in the 80th percentile for that. I believe this means I've been officially diagnosed as the least liberal person on this website.
It's not that I feel compelled to, quite on the contrary! It's just that I hadn't really given the term much thought before it was applied to me by a professional, and now I realize how incredibly loaded it is. I certainly would identify with other people who have a similar life experience to me, but it seems like "gifted" is a unique term in the sense that it is also used as a generally positive term, like "he's a gifted [job description]" as a compliment rather than a reference to a type of neurodivergence.
I mean, people generally don't say "he's an autistic writer" unless they specifically want to reference the fact that this is an autistic person who writes, whereas they would say "he's a gifted writer" when they mean that he's very good at his job as a writer. So when you apply "gifted" to yourself to discuss your neurodivergence with people who are unaware of this aspect of the word, it can sound like you're just complimenting yourself, which may come across as arrogant, even if you don't mean that at all. Does that make sense?
Yeah, I agree, but still, isn't that kind of weird? If you say you have ADHD or are autistic, it can earn you some grace, as Poutine put it in his comment. There really doesn't seem to be anything similar to that in giftedness. I feel weird about being called "gifted" because it's a diagnosis that I feel like I have to hide. I'm still processing that.
Just chiming in that self-diagnosis is valid when it comes to neurodiversity. You don't have to accept the "gifted" label for all the reasons you stated. Not sure if it was already pointed out but I am very tired after work and could not really focus on all the comments here.
The gifted label is pretty harmful. I was labelled as just gifted as a kid and it's probably the main reason I dropped out of uni when young and burnt out severely. The expectations that were put on me and the inability to see that I in fact would have needed help, kindness, time and space ended up burning me out very young. I was just like: "Everyone keelps saying I have it so easy, because I am gifted. So why is everything so incredibly hard when nobody is looking and why am I exhausted all the time?"
My upringing also featured those toxic ideas about giftedness you mention and I hated it. The elitism and misplaced confidence of some of my relatives who honestly also struggled and never finished much was disgusting, it had become generational.
Also, autism is a spectrum and afaik to be audhd you might not have enough of the tism to meet diagnostic criteria (which is a moving target that "being gifted" effectively masks). It doesn't mean it isn't there.
Fully understand why you feel uneasy with the label, I hate it.
Oh shit, my bad! I'm not fully with it today, I misread you, and I'd like to take back the compelled thing. I think I'm with you now. Yes, "gifted" is loaded af. Excellent points about "autistic writer." I'm a USian old enough to remember the "Gifted and Talented" program in elementary schools. I think that the Gifted term has fallen out of favor for the reasons you and others have described.
Just wanted to take a bit to say thanks for sharing all this. I'm curious about the way you describe "gifted" as a diagnosis... like, not trying to make a joke here, is that a thing in the new versions of the DSM nowadays? I'm personally not sure of the utility of the term in a clinical context... it's just already too loaded, y'know?
No worries, comrade! When I was a little kid a teacher approached my parents to suggest a similar program, but here in Brazil it's called "superdotação" or "altas habilidades", the latter being something like "elevated abilities" and the former something harder to translate literally, like "super-skilled-ness", which seems to be falling out of favor recently as well.
Huh, I didn't check the DSM and, looking at it now, apparently it's not understood as a disorder. It was included in my assessment in the results section, but since I'm not in the US, maybe in my country there is a different way to approach giftedness? I'm not sure. Like I was saying before, I never dug too deep into the topic because I was more interested in learning about ADHD and autism, and I just kind of assumed it was officially in the same category because of the amount of people that discuss all three in similar terms!
I think this is a case of a word being used in two different ways. There is gifted, meaning "good at", and Gifted, as in the special categorization of giftedness. I think in your example, the former definition is being used.
It's like stoic (unemotional) versus Stoic (specific philosophy).