Depression and what it's really like

so you guys were labeled with non-specific "talented" ?
Nothing like "you're really good at watercolors -- here's some art supplies"?

not really. if you're curious about specifics, i taught myself to read age 3-4, scored 99.9th percentile on some national aptitude test in verbal reasoning ... school did some weird tests on me, and skipped me a grade in my strong areas. that's about it. my parents barely paid attention to me as a kid so it made me feel like i was super duper special. frankly i wish that never happened.

do you think you'd have been happier/more productive in a montessori environment?

If you are in the 99.9th percentile of any category, it is rather futile to expect others to match or reflect your own abilities in that regard. It would be like Lebron James playing pickup games in Ames, Iowa and being disappointed when his teammates are a bunch of no-talent scrubs. He could show them exactly how the game ought to be played, but for obvious physical reasons, they will not be able to follow him.

However, this analogy is possibly misleading because Lebron James was lucky enough to be enmeshed in a system that not only identities those with extraordinary talent, but also helps the ultra-talented to develop some very specific, external, measurable skills. Those of us with broad mental aptitudes such as verbal reasoning are more often left to fend for ourselves. (Although, it occurs to me that in many ways elite universities play the role of scouting out ultra-talented individuals, developing them, and connecting their star players with the big leagues in all kinds of fields.)

In any event, your mission, should you decide to accept it, is not to pine for everyone to understand you and appreciate how you think; they won't, any more than they will play ball like Lebron. Rather, it is to discover how to leverage your internal talents and abilities into skills you can apply throughout your life, to meet every kind of goal you have. The key part is that you get to choose those goals yourself and prioritize them. All those expectations that you have and others have for you need to be sorted according to what you want out of life, nothing else. After that it is mostly down to effort and uncountable mid-course corrections.

Spectrum, kinda similar deal, sounds like. Always did great on verbal aptitude tests, told I was "gifted" all the time, but was always really undisciplined. Parents had minimal involvement in what I did, and I was never intrinsically motivated. I've always been highly distractible, emotional, perfectionist, and tending to depression, and really could have used some whip cracking. I had only one teacher in high school who called me out and told me I wasn't that smart. She ended up nominating me for the governor's honors summer school thing after torturing me for a year. (Didn't get in because I was a pretty solid D student by that time.) Anyway, I've always been really feckless and mad at myself for not being able to go through the motions or figure out what I want to do.

Re: not relating to people, I have to wonder if you don't live somewhere kinda lame. Maybe you should try to move somewhere with more freaks.

to be honest i'm creeped out by people who figured out at an early age what they wanted to be and stuck to it.
like i don't think g. gordon liddy was depressed for a day in his life, even when he was in prison.

there's a lot of "i'm broken" sentiment on this thread but maybe you guys aren't broken -- it's the lebron jameses of the world who are broken?

Framing things in terms of "broken" or "functioning" seems wrong to me. My daughter barely functions in terms most people can see or appreciate, but she's not "broken", either. A talent or aptitude is just an opportunity, not a destiny.

Got approved for foodstamps, saw pdoc today. Found a weird jawbone of some animal next to the parking lot at dr's office. Took a nice, long walk. Don't feel utterly doomed today.

I also taught myself to read around age three and scored the highest scores on all the standardized tests, realized waaaaaay too late that the real world doesn't actually care about those things that much. Which is what parents and counselors are for. I just didn't have any that knew what to do. I've told my pedagogical history to a few professionals and they've all had the same "jesus, they really dropped the ball, huh" reaction.

Which is just to say that I can really sympathize with what a lot of you are saying.

what would they have done ideally?

I'm not entirely sure, but I know that growing up I thought that being smart was the most important thing and that since I had that in the bag I'd be fine and happy and successful no matter what, and that view was implicitly supported by pretty much everyone around me. I knew that other kids had to do their homework and study but all I had to do was stay half-awake in class so I could get an A on tests and quizzes and maybe fill out the worksheets during the lecture. I took that attitude way past grade school because by then it was a fully-developed worldview. Add adolescent stubbornness and I didn't really get that it wasn't working until I'd amassed enough F's and Incompletes to make it a moot point.

Anyway, I really don't just want to barf out my school history, I just get it and wouldn't be surprised if this was a factor in a lot of depresso-ilxor's histories. Much like the over-thinking that's been discussed here before, I think there's a very familiar pattern in a lot of depressed former smart kids.

so if you all were scooped up by some bela karolyi-esque life coach to browbeat some kind of trajectory with your talents, that would have been preferable?

Doesn't have to be anywhere near that extreme. Smart kids just need to get a better grip on what smartness will do and what it won't do. F'rinstance, good test scores won't stand in for genuine accomplishments. As one of my high school teachers memorably told me, "Aptitude just means you're apt to accomplish something one of these days."

I disagree with kay, being smart is valued when you're in the right places. When your brain stuff gives you a seat of the pants closing statement that makes the judge's jaw drop and helps win an otherwise impossible case, that's nothing to sneeze at. or when a Washington DC bigwig buddies up to you because he liked your ideas. Thanks to depression I totally bungled the opportunities that opened up to me, it's impossible for me to accept this good stuff and i just compare myself to everyone and fail in some way or another. no matter what i was like i'd probably find some problem with it. I think kay's right, though, in that it's not everything... friends, family, love, all that shit's more important, but seeing great things possible right in front of your nose and then letting it go to shit is some high level of misery.

emily, you're on the ball with the freak thing, life was much better in nyc. i'm trapped in the burbs now and it's soul crushing. good to hear you're feeling less than doomed today ... i'm convinced there's a light at the end of the tunnel. wish i could offer more in that regard.

Aimless, your advice is great. I never thought about things that way. All my life I dreamed of being Uncle Ned in that very special episode of Family Ties, and unfortunately it became close to true.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlLvS1vH9Tk

anyway, i feel like i'm being selfish here, so i'm going to chill and take a bubble bath or something. i appreciate all the smart ilx folk for contributing, it's good to talk about this stuff for once... feel like if i tried to tell this to other people they'd think i was some high falutin' prick.

wait are we positing that depressed ppl are frustrated geniuses?

i mean damn straight i'm a genius obvs, but i think there's a bit more to it

seeing great things possible right in front of your nose and then letting it go to shit is some high level of misery.

Gawd, I well understand the misery of failure, when you feel like you screwed the pooch and there's flat-out no excuses for it, because you knew better and somehow fell flat on your face anyhow. Strange to say, but this experience is, as far as I can tell, universal to humans. Feels like shit, but that one bites everybody on the ass. You just learn to move on the best you can.

As a friend of mine once helpfully told me, "There's not much good in hoping for a better yesterday."

Aimless, your advice is great.

I shall choose to regard this as sincere, because sarcasm is just so played out in 2012. ;-)

this article recaps a lot of the same frustration here but from parents' POV, and also corroborates smart = crazy connection:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/magazine/how-do-you-raise-a-prodigy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

I went through the smart kid, high test scores, no clue, failure scenario.

I've speculated if some of the substance abuse has been about turning down the intensity of the running narrative and commentary in my head.

Then I've speculated about how to translate my perception about how I perceive things into art. Then I don't, because I can't afford to expose too much.

Intelligence helps to maintain the cognitive distortions. I've usually done better imagining what advice I would give another person than trusting my own brain to help me (my brain doesn't actually like me very much).

also, I'm probably incredibly mediocre.

I think I'm "too smart to be stupid, too stupid to be smart."

also known as average

tangentially related, some research shows kids who are praised for process ("you tried really hard") do better than kids praised for ability ("you are really smart") - the latter seems to lock in an idea of fixed innate ability, so when you fail you blame your lack of skill, instead of trying to learn and improve.
http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/27/too-much-praise-is-no-good-for-toddlers/

I was thinking about this this morning. When I've had periods of depression, I've tended to strongly link my self esteem with my ability to do stuff. So I would frequently have situations where "I can't do X, therefore I suck totally as a human being.". Times when I haven't been depressed, I've thought more along the lines of "I tried really hard to do X, but it just didn't work out this time.".

I'm always angry at myself for my apparent incapability of trying hard at anything

i think that many ilxors will share many of these sentiments, tbh, spending as they do much of their time and thoughts on a message board that's usually pretty smart

when we could be creating great cultural works evocative of our world-historical moment, yeah

but ilx is our collective great cultural work.

in some darker/sillier moments i kinda resent ilx for exposing me to so many people who much better at lots of things that i'd like to be good at than i am.

Oh god it's so true. You're all better at everything than I am except I have to believe that being in orbit myself is something that no one else quite replicates. It seems unlikely in the wide world of human experience, but it's a comfort.

if you guys want to feel smarter listen to this: i tried to refill a lighter last week with purell. it didn't work.

also i thought the cotton inside the lighter was packing material.

oh no

and with that one act, i raised everyone else's self-esteem to the level of hip-hop moguls.

merdey otm obv

Well, today I am depressed not by my inability to do stuff, but by the fact that I am a jerk and a bad friend. And by the fact that focusing on that is just another example of my disgusting narcissism. Wah!

whoa! hold on there a second, partner! narcissism is just plain a whole 'nother order of magnitude past any place you have ever spent more than one minute of your adult life, emilys. if you don't believe me, you can look it up.

as for being a jerk and bad friend, we all spend more than a few minutes there from time to time. just remember that apologies can work a lot of healing, no matter when they happen relative to the offense.

I don't know, I have like 7 of the DSM symptoms. (Obvi self-diagnosis is a bad idea.)

yeah, self diagnosis is pretty dangerous. when i first started tackling this stuff i thought i had aspergers or something. nope! turns out my parents were batshit crazy and totally blew my brain apart. this shit's so messy and complex, it's like each time a new door opens it's like a new world out there, then you find out that might be wrong, too. it's a real trip, maaaan.

even as a firm if unwise supporter of self diagnosis, I feel that narcissism is the kind of thing where if you think you're it, you're not it.

Yeah, reading some case studies... that's not me. Still uncomfortable to acknowledge some of these traits, those.

*though

Obviously anyone who would worry about being a capital-N Narcissist isn't one, but I think it can be worthwhile to acknowledge how depression can and often does lead you to some pretty shitty self-absorption. Worth talking about and guarding against I mean, not dwelling on.

(He says, dripping with hypocrisy).

depression has been described as an inward turn gone haywire, I think. Which is different from how I've heard narcissistic personality disorder described.

yeah, i thought narcissists were happy? or is it narcissist-hyphen-something that are like that?

i thought i had narcissism, too, emilys on my journey to figuring out what the fuck was up with me. a little narcissism isn't that crazy when it feels like life is a uniquely horrible nightmare because you're some permanently screwed up person. like you have DAMNED carved on your forehead for the world to see. makes ya feel special and perfectly unique, which is a really great feeling.

my parents are pretty narcissistic, and sorta fit the profile. the way they act and behave is absolutely beyond me. it's not just being self-centered. it's like ... you hurt others for your own benefit then laugh about it because the other person deserved it, or sucks, or is a weakling, or that you're only getting what you're owed in life and any damage done is to someone who is a "scumbag" because of some utterly capricious criteria. it's pretty twisted. my parents are perfectly content the way they are, even after years upon years of damage done to themselves and other people. me, I feel sick as hell for the times I've treated other people badly and I'm working my ass off to get better. they don't think anything is wrong with them at all - it's everyone else who has the problem.

Nah, narcissism is a whole other thing. What I'm talking about (and what I feel like em is talking about as well, let me know if I'm wrong) has to do with how amplified your own pain and despair can be, so much so that you become blind to the needs of others because all you can see is that pain.

xp

There is that, a lot of times even when I'm not depressed I have difficulty appreciating that my actions can really affect others. It's always surprising to me that I can hurt anyone's feelings, like why would anyone care what I say or think or do.

It's always surprising to me that I can hurt anyone's feelings, like why would anyone care what I say or think or do.

this is me to an extent, also the would-be comedian in me is always looking for the joke, so sometimes wanting to be funny outweights any potential "right" way to conduct myself.

Yes! Exactly, you're like a non-entity so no matter what happens it doesn't touch other people ... like you're a ghost or something. But it's not true, at all. People do care, you do affect things. It's a serious responsibility to be a person out in the world, took me a long time to learn that.

same sentiments to get bent, too. there's something about pain that leads to comedy.