This might just be me, but for being around since 2009 and covering a topic that applies to millions of people across the world, and seeing how many gifted people feel lonely because of their intelligence and most likely try and seek a place to talk with other gifted peers, 48k members seems small to me. Wikipedia lists Mensa as having around 150k members, meanwhile Reddit is a free, always available hub for everyone online. I couldn't find an free, online gifted community as large as this subreddit, yet it's still quite small to me. Does anyone else feel this way? Why could it be this small, or is it actually not small at all? (I'm new to this sub, so I don't know if something may have happened that affected its member count)

I was separated from my mother the first 3 days of my life, but eventually became "gifted", while my parents have average intelligence, as well as my sister, who was not separated after birth.

of course long-term maternal deprivation usually has an adverse effect on intelligence. but one 2001 study on rats showed that taking them away from their mother only for one day after birth (the third day) was enough to change their whole life, seemingly giving them either high or low intelligence – not changing the total average, but severely increasing the variance. (they didn't investigate why this may be, but other studies show that maternal deprivation increases synaptic plasticity in the prefrontal cortex, which is definitely part of the explanation for this phenomenon.)

I couldn't find any more research on a relation between intelligence and short-time maternal deprivation. the only similar case I know is that of the "Unabomber" Ted Kaczynski, who was separated from his parents for many weeks at age 6 months, and also came to be exceptionally gifted.

is your personal case (or that of your child) similar to mine? let's collect! (I'm also happy if you reply many years after this post. hello to the future!)

I get mad that people don't see how our brains are being programmed. & I often question what thoughts are my true thoughts vs the ones that has been placed there. What goals are my actual goals vs what the world tells me I should be accomplishing lol has anyone else ever thought about

How do we know what we actually want ?

My brain has this weird thing where it solves problems or remembers information way faster than my conscious thought process. Like, if I’m trying to figure something out, I’ll start thinking about it normally — but before I can even finish asking myself the question or saying “I don’t know,” my brain has already made 5, 10, sometimes 15 makes incredibly fast rapid unconscious in under a second and just gives me the answer fully formed. It’s not like I sat there and thought it through step-by-step — it just appears in my head, almost like it was stamped there instantly. But I can backtrack the connections afterward if I need to explain how I got there. This happens with problem-solving, memory recall, jokes, comebacks — pretty much anything. Sometimes it makes me seem really witty or random to people because I’ll say something out of nowhere, but in my head I just made a ton of quick connections in the background. I don’t control it, and it feels completely separate from my slower, conscious thinking process. It’s incredibly useful, but I’m wondering — is this common? Do other people experience this or am I "gifted"?

For example, I feel like I am in a room and making conversations with people

I know the room that I am inside and know the people I am interacting with and where each person is sitting, and it feels like I can really see them and

But somehow , even though it feels like I see things in my mind

I cant know any visual informations about the people and the room

For example, I cant know the face of the people or their skin color or the color and design of the walls or ceilings or the shape of the table no matter how hard I try

Something I find really frustrating reading through and overhearing everyday discussion is the belief that “women are more emotional, men are more logical” and other categorical ideas along those lines. I’ve met plenty of emotional men and plenty of women more logical than me (a man).

Through all my exposure to many different types of people, the only reasonable conclusion I can draw is: people vary.

I’m curious if gifted people follow these categorical and belief-based lines of thought.

Pretty much the title. What challenges do/did you face? Was the process of nurturing your child different than what it would be for a regular parent? Do you feel close or distant from your children, and do you like the process or hate it? What would you recommend an adult like you, conceive or avoid bearing children?

I formerly thought yesterday that my maximum forward span was 8 maximum backwards span was 10 and maximum sequencing span was 8. But then I practiced for several hours using a better chunking strategy and now my Forward Span is 12 (50% of the time 100% of the time for 11) My Backwards Span is 11 (50% of the time 100% at 10) and Sequencing Span is 11 (50% of the time). How rare is this? The WAIS-IV only tests to 9 Forward Span 8 Backward Span and 8 Sequencing Span and getting all of those right is 19 scaled score (1 in 1000)

Digit span test - tools.timodenk.com

I used 2200 MS As my Default Option

When you're online (slightly more than in real life, I'd dare say) , you never really know if the person on the other side is safe or dangerous. There’s always a risk. I’ve made connections here, even friendships, but I’ve hidden key parts of myself: my IQ, my personality, all masked with careful lies to avoid triggering narcissistic backlash. I'm not proud of it, but fear made it feel necessary, and I might do it again. Even tried to be as annoying as possible when someone got too close. Again, not proud at all.

Even without sharing personal details, just being seen feels like exposure. No matter how much I like someone, there’s a boundary I can’t seem to cross. And in the end, the cost is big. Some of them, are really great, the problem it's me.

Has anyone actually found a way through that?

Hi everyone, I'm a neurotypical person (nothing mentally special about me), currently doing my Master’s in chemistry. The materials are getting really complex and I feel like I just can't keep doing it this way anymore. So far, I’ve been studying by writing pages of notes and using rote repetition, but it’s starting to feel exhausting and inefficient.

I suppose many of you in this group have exceptional learning styles or cognitive strengths, so my question is: What learning technique do you personally find the most interesting, engaging, or effective—especially for deep understanding or long-term retention?

I'd really appreciate your insights, even if the methods sound unconventional. Thanks in advance!

I love learning and adding new facts and connections to my network of knowledge. Subjects that are based on understanding and connecting knowledge bring me incredible joy. I am so grateful for the opportunity to study sth I am so interested in. However, my intrinsic motivation to learn is not always helpful and makes it harder to study for those exams that are solely based on learning facts by heart. I am so repelled to study like this. It feels like wasting time because instead of going over these facts over and over I could spend my time researching questions that come up but aren't relevant for my exam. I know that it is a matter of conscientiousness and I can not always just do the things that are fun. The root of the problem is that I never had to study much at school because most things were easy - now I don't really know how to. Can you relate? Do you have tips on how I can use my intelligence and intrinsic motivation to learn how to study? Do you have study methods for this type of learning you can recommend?

Hi everyone! New to the sub. It's been refreshing to dive in and find so many relatable posts. I've looked for resources and posts about this topic but haven’t found anything quite specific enough.
Just a small note: English isn’t my first language, and while I tried to keep the writing as natural as possible, I used a bit of AI assistance to clean it up for clarity.

First of all, I am not gifted. However, I spend a lot of time with someone who is, and whom I care deeply about. I want to tell you her story in hopes that you can suggest a meaningful new pointer for her social emptiness and lack of belonging.

I'm a 29m and she's 46f. We both live in Madrid. She divorced when she was 40. She has two children (12m and 14m), and shares joint physical custody 50/50, alternating weeks. So, one week she’s busy as hell and can’t really work on her issues, and the next, she has to endure the full weight of her loneliness and lack of belonging.

I'll talk just a little bit about us in case it might matter. We met three years ago doing improv. We started off as two people who connected through conversation. I love talking with her—she’s smart, witty, and fun. She enjoys deep conversation as much as I do, and we often analyze random parts of life together for no particular reason. We're both very physically affectionate, but we don’t spend a lot of time together. We try to see each other 2 or 3 times a week, but we live independently and like it that way.

She discovered her giftedness fairly recently—about 4 or 5 months ago. But before I get into that, I should explain that for the past two years, I’ve been trying to help her find her place in the world. To do so, I suggested something that worked for me in the past: share your hobbies—in her case, improv—with more and more people until you connect. And she did. I was honestly astonished by her willpower. I’ve never met anyone so committed to proactively connecting with people and trying to fit in. But even after two years of serious effort and growth, she still feels like an outsider everywhere.

I should mention that I dropped improv after six months of trying it, so it's more kinda her thing. She keeps going. Mostly because she enjoys it, but every day, she feels more and more out of place with those people, and she’s even considering quitting because she can’t shake that feeling. She can’t try other improv groups because they’re too far from her, and she can’t move due to the divorce agreement until the younger one turns 18. So, she pretty much has to make the most of her current location. Also, hobbies aren't really inclusive with people who have availability every other week, so that's another added difficulty. She can manage to do her own stuff a bit on the children's week, but her costs are high because they also need her.

Now, on to the most important part: giftedness. A year ago, after a lot of persistence, she managed to get her older child tested for giftedness (her ex was really against it). At first, the results pointed to ADHD, but it was later confirmed that he is gifted. She began studying the topic a lot. And the more she learned, the more she realized the descriptions also applied to her. She started stumbling across more and more women in their forties talking about giftedness, until she finally realized that it explained a lot—especially her lifelong struggle with belonging.

She’s been doing her best to support her son, who is now improving his grades, actively working on balance, and trying to manage his constant defiance against perceived injustices in everyday life. But when she looks at herself, she still feels lost. She’s learned a lot, but she still doesn’t belong anywhere and hasn’t found any real solutions to that burning sense of isolation.

So here’s where I turn to you—random people of the internet who might have been in similar situations:
When you’ve spent most of your life feeling like a misfit and only discovered why a few months ago, what proactive steps can you take to build real connections with people that actually work for gifted minds? She’s open-minded and reflective. Just truly at a loss as to where to look next. Is it a good online community she might get into? Should she focus on finding other gifted people? We could plan a trip to some kind of experience that might help. We really don't know her / our options. Any suggestion might help, even if it feels obvious to you.

Thanks for reading my long post. I really appreciate your time, and I’ll happily answer any questions if I’ve left out important details. Also, she doesn't know I wrote this yet, but I will show it to her if it gets any visibility. If you have any questions for her specifically, I will pass them on to her so she can also engage.

It's so hard to have genuine friends and to be truly happy when considering everything that's happening in the world...

I already posted this in a Spanish community, but there is very little information about it

Hello everyone! I received my diagnosis today; I had suspicions that it was autism because I identified with many characteristics, but it turned out to be High Abilities. I have always excelled in school and university, but I thought it was all within the normal range. I guess I should be very happy, but I’m not; I really feel like it’s a pretty heavy label. For someone who is a perfectionist, knowing that I can do even more makes the internal pressure even worse. Maybe deep down, I knew my mind was racing too fast, but I was not willing to carry that burden. I see that there is very little information on the topic, as if everything is focused on children. And society presents it as a complete blessing. Stereotypes make expectations even stronger, as if it were a failure for not being able to solve a Rubik's cube in seconds, for example. And no one talks about sensory and emotional hypersensitivity 🫠

Is there anyone else here with High Abilities? What difficulties have you faced and how have you been able to cope with them?

The aphorism "Never judge a book by it's cover" may at first glance seem limited in application but that is a result of our own interpretation and how we think it should be applied.

People are often analogized to books as they are both layered, simplistic or obscure in style, vacuous or knowledgeable, can be imprinted on and will eventually lose relevance.

If we were to place a book concerning mathematical proofs in a factory, the book could be labelled as useless and irrelevant. The knowledge it carries simply doesn't prove it's utility within it's current environment. This knowledge/information is analogous to one's skills and abilities - someone talented linguistically would not excel in an environment solely demanding spatial reasoning (vice versa). Sometimes, certain qualities are ascribed to an individual and are thought of as inherent but the fact is these 'objective' labels don't instantiate an object's qualities moreso than they represent certain qualities alongside the influence their environment has on these qualities.

Labels can sometimes be thought of as invariant yet we would find that they would change depending on the environment and circumstances surrounding that which is labelled. Something equally as concerning is our desire to easily stratify ourselves according to these 'labels' - presuming that potential is something which can be measured in predetermined environments, that these environments should be equally as conducive to the Expression of potential and the resulting measurement's accuracy and that our initial measurement is gospel.

Nurture plays just as critical a role as nature, to ignore this would be to lie to oneself. Our environment either inhibits or elicits our potential - what was once inept suddenly becomes dexterous, what was once stodgy suddenly becomes vivid and luminous. In the end, labels are a tool ~ a short hand for what naturally varies.

We are not labels, we are ever changing processes!

I’m not even trying to be condescending But a lot of the times I catch myself getting irritated over ignorant comments or threads, or how someone can post something on social media that’s bigoted or straight up misinformation and it’ll get thousands of likes.

I used to argue with people on the internet (I don’t anymore) But has anyone else have this experience? I have to consistently remind myself that a lot of people are unfortunately simple minded and don’t think over things multiple times or in depth. I’m having a hard time understanding.

I just saw a twitter thread where people were saying that evil people don’t get karma because it’s not real/you never see them suffer.. And someone used slavery as an example because black people had to experience intergenerational (lasting) trauma while white people “never got anything” I don’t wanna bring politics here, but god.. Ignorance/lack of empathy is not bliss at all. If you’re obsessed with hurting and putting down an entire group of people for 400 years that must be stressful. It’s just kind of frustrating the type of things people think in the mainstream.

Hey everyone,

M37, gifted. I’ve been reflecting a lot on my life journey, and I wanted to share my story here to see if others relate—or maybe offer new perspectives I haven't considered. I feel like I'm at a crossroads, trying to make sense of my past so I can move forward in a way that feels real and meaningful.

As a kid, I was diagnosed with ADHD, but looking back, I don’t think I ever had it. I was deeply curious, hyper-focused on things I loved, but easily disengaged when something didn’t seem meaningful. Instead of recognizing this as a sign of cognitive intensity and selective focus, doctors prescribed ADHD medication that made me gain weight and struggle to stay awake, resulting in bullying. I felt like I was moving through life in slow motion, disconnected from myself.

A few months ago I was diagnosed with giftedness and suddenly a lot of things started making sense. My mind processes things deeply, making connections between abstract concepts quickly, but I also get overwhelmed easily—especially with repetitive or shallow tasks. I struggle with delayed emotional processing, which means I can feel something intensely but only understand it fully days later. At the same time, my brain craves meaning so intensely that I have difficulty engaging in things that feel purposeless.

I wonder how different things would have been if someone had recognized that I wasn’t inattentive—I was just not being challenged in the right way. Did anyone else go through something similar? How did it affect your self-perception later in life?

On top of that, I was raised by a narcissistic father. Praise was conditional, love felt like a transaction, and any sign of individuality that didn’t serve his image was crushed. Over time, I learned to suppress my emotions and second-guess my own thoughts. Even now, I struggle with trusting my own instinct, especially when it comes to my own worth.

Being highly analytical didn’t help either. I became hyper-aware of inconsistencies in people’s behavior, but that only made me more confused when it came to relationships. I could predict others’ reactions but had difficulty feeling safe enough to express my own emotions.

It’s frustrating because I know intellectually that these patterns were imposed on me. But emotionally? I still feel like I’m stuck proving something, even though I don’t even know to whom anymore. For those of you who have worked through something similar, how did you break free from these mental loops?

Now, as an adult, I find myself caught in this cycle:

1. I push myself to make progress.
2. I accumulate stress and tension over days or weeks.
3. I burn out, hit a wall, and crash—often with anxiety that leaves me frozen.
4. I recover just enough to start over, but I don’t break the cycle.

It’s like I’m constantly trying to fix myself, but I don’t know if I even understand what’s broken anymore. I see others around me thriving, and it makes me feel even more stuck, like I’m failing at something I can’t define. I don’t feel envy—I just feel lost.

I also know that this struggle isn’t just psychological—it’s tied to the way my brain works. I hyperfocus, but only in bursts. I process emotions slowly, so when I push through stress, I don’t notice the damage until it’s too late. I feel a deep need to understand everything, but that same need keeps me trapped in analysis rather than action. If you’ve been in a similar place, what helped you shift your perspective?

One of the biggest challenges for me is feeling disconnected from my emotions. Sometimes, I sense that there’s this “other part” of me—a younger version that holds all the feelings I wasn’t allowed to express. But it takes days to understand what I’m feeling, and by the time I do, it’s like the moment has already passed.

I’ve been exploring different frameworks (philosophy, psychology, even spirituality) to make sense of things. I identify as INFJ and 5w6 (for those who find these useful models), and I know that abstract understanding is often my way forward. But I don’t want to just understand.I want to live differently.

I really need this. I’ve been stuck in this cycle of intense suffering for 8 years since I had a severe burnout, and I feel like I can’t take it anymore. I’ve been in psychological and psychiatric treatment since then, and while I feel like I’ve improved a lot, I’m still trapped in this exhausting pattern.

So, if you resonate with any part of this, I’d love to hear your thoughts:

• Have you broken free from patterns imposed by a narcissistic parent?
• How do you stop feeling stuck in your own mind and actually move forward?
• Have you found ways to reconnect with emotions when they feel distant?

I really appreciate anyone who takes the time to read and share. If nothing else, it helps to know I’m not alone in this.

There are some coaching programs but they are expensive and they seem a lot of marketing to do business

I was the classic gifted kid: top of the class, intense curiosity, emotionally raw, deeply sensitive. But under that, I carried undiagnosed autism (Asperger's), anxiety, and later — depression. I was always either praised or misunderstood, never just seen. I studied Biotech because I dreamed about being a scientist, dreaming of discovery… until university crushed me, severe depressive episodes, I isolate myself... etc

Parents who had gifted babies, what was it like? How do you advocate and manage the struggles?

Right after her birthday, it seems she had a language explosion. I am not really sure if it's an actual explosion but she used to only know "Oi' by 10 months up to 11 months. But when she turned 12 months, her vocabulary quickly expanded. She's more or less at 130 words now at 14 months, but is speaking phrases and unclear compressed sentences. Since then she started proactively naming while pointing things/characters/shapes/letters/numbers she can recognize may it be a simple drawing I made, from a book or real one when we go out to the mall or wherever. She can differentiate a circle and a ball and bubble with ease. It's draining me because everytime she says something repeatedly I have to acknowledge it each time. When she recognizes something, she repeats it for like ten times! Also, while she is making a huge progress, bedtime is a dreadful. It takes at least 45 min, worse 2 hours for her to settle. She would move constantly crashing to me, head banging while practicing sounds and/or words. Her teething is the worst. It's like torture. She has been very alert, curious and sensitive. It's like she's on crack! I just can't keep up. When she's understimulated she would hit her head against the wall. When she's bored with the stuff in the room, she'll do or play with the things she's not allowed to.

A bit more overview of what she's like: She's been obsessed with stacking different objects. She can stack 7-8 blocks now. She can recognize 9 letters and their sounds. She knows more phonics that its names. Knows one color which is blue consistently recognizes it. Can recognize 3, 6 and 8. Knows sun, moon, stars, earth, saturn and jupiter.

I don't know but she also seem not playing her toys normally. I don't know if she's advanced or behind. When playing shapes sorter she would only insert them inside the circle as she had successfully put in some same with matching puzzles. I bought her a kitchen set but she jist always disassembles her toys if she can. She used her kitchen set as a car, she's riding it and says "wee!"

As for the motor skills, she crawled at 5 months, sat up and pulled to stand independently at 6 months, cruised in her crib thr same month, walked independently st 10 months. Now I have a spiderman. She just keeps on climbing. We don't have stairs at home but I'm surprised she knows. She's now running and loves playing tag.

People have always pointed out how she always looks like she's always judging them. She stares at strangers and locks her eyes on them. But I can say it's much manageable now for her.

I am tired thinking that she may be twice exceptional. So far she has great eye contact. Plays peekabo, do silly faces or silly sounds proactively. Her mimickry is incredible that we have to be extra careful. Often she instantly copies words we are saying when we are talking.

How do I advocate or teach this stubborn baby? She's very independent. Throws toys when I show her how it's being done. Doesn't like being held when walking, shoos my hand away. When I teach her, she loses interests. It's almost like she doesn't want to hear me say anything.

Not to mentioned we are facing financial instsbility currently because baby daddy had a motorcycle accident. I want to give her the right resources, but we can't just afford. We used to read 18 books a day divided into six sets. But now we stopped because she's now bored with the books. She can predict the story and even tell me before I even read the line. Preloved books are still out of the budget. I'm lucky we have a printer. I feel really bad not being able to buy her educational toys. I feel like I'm failing.

Please help.

So I have a very good memory when it comes to conversations with other people. I remember details of what I said and their responses without any effort to commit them to memory, but other people obviously don't have this.

I often get frustrated when someone doesn't remember a thing I mentioned weeks ago. I don't let this show or anything, but I still feel it. I recognize it's ridiculous to expect others to remember things so well but every time they don't it still disappoints me. It feels redundant and boring to have to explain something again.

How do you deal with such feelings? The best I've come up with is bury them and pretend it doesn't irritate me. Obviously I can't bring it up to them as again, it's unreasonable.

Found this cleaning out my parents' house. Just wondering if anyone can shed light on the accuracy of this assessment from about 1990 when I was 8. Also any idea what the large VIQ PIQ spread means? Thanks!

https://i.imgur.com/5n6gFTG.jpeg

While at first glance, the question may seem somewhat futile, it's interesting how topics that pose fewer certainties and more speculation, in my case, lead me to search and search for data to give them context.

Perhaps this detail constitutes a very personal peculiarity and not a common situation of gifted individuals.

My 8 year old is neurodivergent. He has limited communication and has issues with social interactions. He is good with maths and able to do multi stage word problems, geometry, scratch programming, percentage, decimals, and much more. Yesterday, I advised my kid to write whatever you like in class in your notebook and do not disturb others. It was his first day of class 3. He wrote entirely periodic table. He is aware of atomic numbers, use, and where it is found for every element. I posted this in another group, and many advised him to get tested for giftness. I am recently retired and teaching him as per his progress and interest. Please advise how can I help him

The first time I saw a movie that showed a psychiatric ward, I developed the fear of what if I am committed incorrectly and then I can't convince the psychiatrist that there is nothing wrong with me, rather, I am just misunderstood?

And now I have the fear what if I am accused of something incorrectly and then I have to defend myself against , a judge. How can the judge understand me? They will be operating 100% based on cognitive biases and fallacies and emotional reasoning. Meanwhile I operate nearly 100% by rational/critical thinking, so there will be a huge mismatch.

In case you haven't noticed, I am quite disillusioned with people, based on a high sample size over many years. 80-98% of people lack even the most basic critical thinking. IQ is actually not correlated. Neither are jobs: it doesn't matter if you are a plumber or astrophysicist, you are both likely to be extremely low in terns of critical thinking. The astrophysicist might breeze through complicated math and physics, but would for example comically mistake cause and effect, or not realize that correlation is not necessarily causation, and abide by cognitive fallacies/biases as opposed to critical thinking and instead operate based on emotional reasoning on 100% of domains outside their job. But I am only posting on this sub because there is no sub called "critical thinkers". But my assumption is that some of the high IQ people here who may also happen to be critical thinkers may also feel like this.

Anyone else felt like this? It is draining having to interact with the masses, when they are purely led by emotional reasoning and are deficient in terms of even the smallest amount of rational/critical thinking. It is quite bizarre. I go around knowing the solutions, but there are no buyers. It is like telling a kid hey if you want that fish to survive put it in water and then 100 people all look at you and say "LOLz look at this guy he is saying to put the fish in the water. GET HIM! NAMECALL HIM! HOW DARE HE INDUCE even .1% cognitive dissonance in us. ENEMY ENEMY! (blood diamond movie when son sees father after being held in child soldier camp and the father tries to convince him that he is his father- best way for me to convey how I feel, hint: I am the father)." Imagine having to live like this daily. That is why I minimize contact with others as much as humanly possible.