Returning to "Giftedness" or Reinventing my Acuity?

 As a child considered “gifted” and diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, I was a part of the twice-exceptional crowd. I was, and still am, a very intense person. Now, that doesn't mean I am volatile or someone who is necessarily prone to black-and-white thinking. It means I naturally think more profoundly about the world and feel emotions deeper than most. Feeling emotions deeply coupled with a disorder that is often misunderstood can lead to something called “rejection-sensitive dysphoria.” 

Rejection-sensitive dysphoria is when someone has a strong, negative reaction to criticism, even when the criticism is minor. As a twice-exceptional child, I was very different from my peers academically and socially. Academically, I could not focus long enough to get my homework done, yet I could understand quite complex topics for a child. Socially, I couldn’t understand my peers and their hobbies, but I bonded with adults quite well. Being different led to feeling misunderstood by my peers and many of my teachers. I was met with a lot of criticism about this or that. Since I was an intense person, every negative remark from the people around me punctured my skull and ebbed into my mind. I internalized everything. This made growing up a challenging time for me. However, it wasn’t until later that the real criticism came from within and the rejection-sensitive dysphoria was mainly a response to my own thoughts.

When I was around 16 years old, I developed my chronic illness. Becoming engrossed in my health with all these new symptoms popping up, I became even more different, even more ostracized. While being socially distant from people didn’t help my confidence, what was happening to my mind was impacting me on a whole new level. I used to be able to teach myself math and science with ease. I was a “very talented writer” as my English teacher would say. Well, my cognition took a hit. 

The combination of medications and my illness has significantly impacted my cognitive abilities. My thoughts quickly became dampened as the ability of abstraction took a vacation from my mind. Learning new topics in math became very hard, and solving unique problems was a struggle. My memory started to fade and my foundation of eloquent vocabulary began to crumble with the earthquakes of higher doses of medication. When all of this started to happen, I felt crushed. Something I had built my whole world on, my mind, was different. I thrived off of quenching my thirst for knowledge, but somewhat suddenly, my thirst for knowledge dwindled. I became stuck in bed for a while, on my phone, doing nothing productive. This allowed me to get into the paucity of my thoughts, so I could ruminate on who I once was.

The label “gifted” seems to have its uses in school and child psychology, but in my experience and many others’ experiences, the label hurt more than it helped. I did not find out I was “gifted” until I was speaking with the psychologist at my school. The psychologist broke the news to me in front of a girl who struggled in school. Right there, it had already hurt someone. The other girl, who was usually hilarious and full of fun, got quiet and seemed down. She felt bad about herself already, then she had the same person who diagnosed her with severe ADHD and dyslexia, call another girl “gifted” right in front of her. 

Because of my academic deficits, I honestly thought I was stupid until I was tested in school. This might make it seem like the label was helpful for me because I could then know my true potential. However, being labeled “gifted” ruined my confidence for years. When I lost my cognitive abilities, I became my worst critic. I became hopeless. Every little mistake I made over the years I’ve struggled with my illness was proof that I was, and always will be, stupid and deficient. I longed to go back to the days when I’d write beautiful poetry, ace tests without studying, and find solace in learning new things. When I learned that I will be on high doses of medications for at least a year, I knew that becoming “gifted” again would be nearly impossible.

Do I want to be able to define myself as “gifted” again? Do I want to label myself with a word so pretentious and exclusive, or do I want to be an individual with superb cognitive abilities? Well, while I’d like to have the cognitive abilities that would get me grouped in with the “gifted” folks, I want to be my own person with a unique set of mental abilities. I want to reinvent my mind and redefine myself as a blossoming intellectual, not with some arbitrary label that confines someone to the walls of their own mind and puts pressure on children and even adults. Society’s expectations of “gifted” people are what lead to burnout, anxiety, depression, and even drug use to cope. When someone can’t live up to these expectations, they develop imposter syndrome and feel like a fraud. I want to break free of the expectations and pressures and just be. I want to just learn and enjoy learning. I want to just create and enjoy creating. I will try to develop my intellectual faculties to be better than they were before medications and my illness. I will write, create, learn Spanish, learn how to play the piano, learn psychology, read, and take care of my body to rehabilitate my mind. Reinventing my acuity will not be easy, but I am more than willing to try. No matter how intellectually developed I become, I will never return to the confines of the gifted prognosis.

-Sophie