As a bit of a background, my partner of 3 years has recently been diagnosed with ASD and is undergoing assessments for ADHD, my sister is also being assessed for ADHD. As any normal person, I have been researching ADHD to understand these two important people and how I can support them through this.

But here is where it gets confusing for me.. I have been noticing some of the traits in ADHD are things I’ve done throughout my life (forgetting where I’ve put things (ID, keys, work badges, important documents) being “fidgety” especially in cinemas or training settings, feeling rejected before it’s even happened.. the list goes on.

I asked my partner if he’s noticed these things over the years, he instantly giggled and said “yeah, I’ve noticed a lot but didn’t want to say anything to influence your own thoughts”.

Now I’m going down a rabbit hole trying to figure out if this is worth pursuing or whether I’m reading too much into it. I looked up the ASRS screening test thingy, I was often or very often on 7 of the initial questions😅🤷‍♀️

Can anyone help me understand if I should pursue this or if I’m just overthinking it because I’m researching it?

Thank you for reading this incredibly long message😅🫶🏻

Disclaimer: (New on the 2e subreddit, but lived with a 2e diagnosis my entire life...and as of recently, I decided it's time to put myself out there, so, here's a little about my Life story)

By 7¾ months old, I spoke my first word(s); "Dog...dog...dog", while I watched our Dog run outside.

By age 1, I could speak in full sentences, however, it was discovered that I had a major developmental learning disability, a visual cortex processing disorder. Along with, zero presence of fine motor skills, and zero presence of depth perception, whatsoever. In other words, a severe case of completely separate ocular nerves -- known as a strabismus.

Additionally, once I turned 1 as well, I strongly disliked going to sleep, and I would stay awake all night...speaking aloud to myself, and playing with my eyes.

When I did fall asleep, I had a potent streak of intense sleepwalking that routinely happened for a long time, so even if I'd fall asleep, it wasn't traditional sleep. (Sleepwalking stopped around age 6).

I had to wear glasses, with specific lenses. For the Left eye, a triple prism lens, and for the right, the eye that all of my focus naturally stays in, the lens was not as intense.

Shortly after my visual conundrum was discovered, my family moved to a different country, outside of the United States.

Where I was living at that time, I was massively exposed to an environment that contained, predominantly, the French, German, Deutsch, and English languages.

As well as, a seemingly infinite well of different accents, tonalities, and phonetics...that I was constantly around, all the time, and so, by age 3, I could comprehend, and understand what people were saying, meaning, etcetera, pretty much instantaneously, regardless if it was someone who did not speak English -- my first language.

So much so, that, someone speaking to me in German, for instance, I could comprehensively understand them, and they'd understand me as well, even if I was just speaking English. Although, I did know and grasped basic conversation in each of the languages I was exposed to. German and English, i'd say, were the easiest. (I did not continue practicing these languages, when I moved back to the U.S.)

During pre-school, still while in another country, my family was presented a cautionary suggestion from one of my teachers, about how I convinced another teacher in our classroom, without really knowing I did, that, my visual developmental learning disability was not as bad as it was.

My goal was to draw little, to no unwanted attention to myself. So, no one would be focused on reminding me about how I wasn't able to cut out a simple circle, hold a pencil properly, so on and so forth.

Thankfully, one of those teachers, wisely, and correctly, told my family to keep a close watch, due to the likelihood, I would attempt to downplay my vision issues, as I got older, throughout the rest of my childhood development, because I did not like being singled out.

Brilliant decision by that teacher.

Eventually, not long after I turned 5, we moved back to the United States, and that was right before my Life's trajectory totally altered. For a plethora of reasons.

As a result, at age 7, without a choice in the matter, I began traveling as an unaccompanied minor. A solo passenger on airplanes.

My separated families could only afford to fly me unaccompanied, and likewise, that's why I had to experience a lot of connecting flights, a massive amount of delays, layovers, arrivals, departures, terminals, thousands of people everywhere, and I also have had to stay over night on many occasions in airports.

Most of the 11 years I spent flying, from ages 7-18...was within the U.S.

However, from ages 10-12, I had to fly to a different country, still as an unaccompanied minor. So, the itinerary changed during that period.

For the majority of my childhood though, One family was slightly over 2k miles away from my other family, so, for perspective, I'll provide the average number of individual planes I rode in each year, just for the metrics of flying back and forth in the U.S.

Each year, I had to fly 3 different times. For Summer, alternating Xmas/Thanksgiving, and spring break. It was 4 flights to where I was going, and 4 flights back.

A few times, I did not have to fly for spring break...so that would've been just 16 individual planes the few times I didn't fly for spring break. Otherwise, it'd be 24 individual planes that I had to ride in, unaccompanied, each year.

I pretty much was raised in the skies, in terminals, whilst being pinballed, back and forth between separate families.

It was not easy, but, I made the most of it, I absolutely could have.

All in all, what I taught myself during that period of my life, became my saving grace, that bridged the gaps between my extreme asymmetrical development, profound level of cognitive ability, with the emotional department of my Life not trailing too far behind, since I had no choice, but to be exposed, which, personally, gave me a close, and magnified look at what emotional intelligence meant for my Life.

In 8th grade, when I was 14, I was told a miracle happened. My Doctor, he told me, I no longer needed glasses, didn't need contacts, or laser treatment/surgeries.

When people meet me, unless I explain my story, and deliberately show them what my eyes do, if I cross them, nobody ever questions, or notices I live with this, at all. My eyes to this day, both see 20/20. And, I am grateful for that.

Interestingly also, which surprised me the first time I found this out, is the fact that, the most dominantly expressed metrics, in my own cognitive profile are VSI, and MPI. It surprised me because, for a long time, I was constantly told how eloquently I use speech, so, I figured that would've been at the top.

When I took the stanford-binet test at 7 years old, the psychologist who proctored my testing, told my parent, that, every time I was asked to recreate the same shape I saw on the paper in front of me, I visually reversed it, over and over again. They stamped me with, "Perfect Visual Reversal".

Although for me, it's as if, it's just in my mind already, but, it's activated by my ears, and not my eyes, if that makes any sense? If not, I apologize. Sort of strange to describe.

I suppose, subjectively, in my personal case, its sort of a combination of a very fast metabolic recovery rate, in tandem with a large amount of neuroplasticity and a peculiar way in which my brain, when I was very young, went through a massive compensatory modal realignment process, by which, it rerouted, and mapped all of the correct ocular inputs, and outputs...in such a backwards, 180° way, yet, somehow, simultaneously corrected itself, as much as it could, to a point where others wouldn't even know I had an intensive, IEP until I got to 8th grade.

Anyway, this is a portion of my life story, that I felt was important for me to share, and put out there. (And, I'm sorry to the moderators if I got something wrong, that I missed, I'll do better next time).

Thank you, sincerely!

Most IQ tests are biased against WMI and PSI

I have been testing a diverse range of community made IQ tests like CORE to see if I could gain some insight from them, however, I found major downside to most of them that could definitly benefit from an upgrade: they seem to have a processing speed bias.

The majority of these IQ tests use harsh time limits. While timing isn't inherently bad, it forces participants to speed through tasks. This creates an unfair disadvantage for those with twice-exceptional (2e) profiles or ADHD, who often present with low PSI and WMI (Working Memory).

This is especially bad once you realize that WMI and PSI arent actually fluid intelligence but rather acts as a conveyer belt for the brain, and putting strain on the PSI basically stalls your ability to use the other skils

I tried to talk to the cognitive community (Those that likes to test and improve cognitive capabilities) about the issues i saw with those tests, and everyone got super angry when I mentioned this descrepency.

It seems that to to everyone who isnt 2e or ADHD having low processing speed is just equal to being stupid, and there is no convinching them otherwise. No amount of research papers can change this bias.

Edit: had to remake the post because the description was wrong.

Hello! Long story short, all my life, I felt something was wrong with me. For some time, I started to ask myself if I may be neurodivergent. I tried to open up to my psychologist about this, but I was immediately shut down. I was told I can't have ADHD because I didn't fail in medical school, and I've had decent grades so far (even though I always feel behind others at studying and my grades are significantly lower, despite the effort I've put in, not to mention I dread to study at a subject that I really lack interest of and during studying I tend to daydream a lot).

I was told I can not have autism by my psychologist because I am not deranged by every sound (even though some sounds, like laughing from other people, can be quite annoying to me).

Anyway, I went to a psychiatrist when I was at a low point during the end of the semester. I went there cause I needed answers. I felt something was wrong with me, and psychotherapy didn't help me anymore.

So, I did the tests. First, DIVA-5. Then the CAARS-S:SV and RAADS-R.

Now, for the DIVA-5, I got:

\- for the attention deficit a 1/9 in childhood and 5/9 in adult life

\- for hiperactivity/Impulsivity 3/9 in childhood and 6/9 in adulthood

Now, the lower score in childhood may be because of my strict childhood, with parents that monitored every step.

But at the RAADS-R, I got a definitely higher score, and it seemed more evident that I may be on the spectrum. Now, I am not sure if I can say that I am autistic just because of these tests, or I need to do more research and testing in order to get an official diagnosis.

Truth is, finding out that I may be high functioning autistic felt a bit disturbing but also relieving because this may answer to my never ending questions "Why am I so weird, why I always feel out of place, why it's always so hard to read people, why I always feel behind other people, why I always feel tired after socialization, why am I so sensitive to criticism and failure, why I suck with attention especially now when I am an adult...why...and why..."

My question is, should I ask my psychiatrist to do other tests, like the CAT-Q?

I have been testing a diverse range of community made IQ tests like CORE to see if I could gain some insight from them, however, I found major downside to most of them that could definitly benefit from an upgrade: they seem to have a processing speed bias.

The majority of these IQ tests use harsh time limits. While timing isn't inherently bad, it forces participants to speed through tasks. This creates an unfair disadvantage for those with twice-exceptional (2e) profiles or ADHD, who often present with low PSI and WMI (Working Memory).

This is especially bad once you realize that WMI and PSI arent actually fluid intelligence but rather acts as a conveyer belt for the brain, and putting strain on the PSI basically stalls your ability to use the other skils

I tried to talk to the cognitive community (Those that likes to test and improve cognitive capabilities) about the issues i saw with those tests, and everyone got super angry when I mentioned this descrepency.

It seems that to to everyone who isnt 2e or ADHD having low processing speed is just equal to being stupid, and there is no convinching them otherwise. No amount of research papers can change this bias.

My gifted/ADHD son just finished 6th grade at our highly rated local public school. He hates it. He says he’s bored and he already knows everything they’re teaching. I think he’s exaggerating but he did get 99-100’s all year in honors math and ELA (no gifted offerings, no honors options for social studies or science). He did complete the middle school math curriculum before the end of fifth grade so I asked his math teacher if it would be possible for him to skip a grade in math. She thought that was a good idea so she brought it up to admin but apparently they will “run out of math curriculum” before his senior year of high school and they are legally required to be enrolled in a math class at all times.
He has a 504 plan but he didn’t want to include any of the accommodations that were actually helpful in elementary school because he doesn’t want to be singled out. He is on a stimulant.
He’s a quiet/shy kid and it takes him a long time to feel comfortable and make friends but he’s got a FANTASTIC group of buddies he’s actually comfortable with and I don’t see a way to duplicate the social aspect homeschooling.
I don’t know what to do for him. We’ve told him there are parts of life that are boring and this is a good opportunity to learn how to deal with that. I’ve looked into online college course so that he can “clep” some credits but he won’t be old enough until halfway through the year. I just don’t want him to get burnt out with school so young and I worry about his mental health. I’ve encouraged him to read when he finishes assignments early which he does usually enjoy but he has access to “educational” games on his chrome book and he mostly manipulates the games into doing ridiculous things to show his friends (creates quiz games where every answer is correct and he can accumulate a lot of points for in game rewards, creates silly canva slide sets, etc…).
Any ideas or encouragement would be very appreciated!

I just watched a YouTube video on highly intelligent people and the scientific research surrounding their unique struggles. As someone with ADHD (potentially AuDHD) and an IQ around 130, I recognized several traits in myself that I previously attributed solely to neurodivergence. There seems to be a massive overlap. Is it possible that many of my struggles actually stem from high intelligence rather than ADHD? How can one differentiate? Are there any scientific studies about this?

• Unceasing Inner Monologue: My brain is constantly processing thoughts; I am in a perpetual internal dialogue and crave sharing these reflections. There is no off-switch.
• Emotional Intensity & Empathy: I feel emotions much more deeply than others and possess a highly developed sense of empathy.
• Rapid Boredom: In ADHD, this is a dopamine deficiency requiring constant stimulation. With a high IQ, repetition is an absolute nightmare. The result is identical.
• Procrastination & Overwhelm: High-IQ individuals procrastinate because they are acutely aware of a project's vast complexity. ADHD minds require urgency over priority, engaging only when adrenaline kicks in. Different mechanics, same paralyzing outcome.
• Constant Re-evaluation: A tendency to rethink everything. In ADHD, this is due to unfiltered sensory input; with a high IQ, it is the ability to dynamically update your mental model when faced with contradicting evidence.
• The Alienation Factor: Highly intelligent people seek deep, intellectual connections, but the statistical pool is tiny. Even meeting someone with the same IQ does not guarantee a personality match. This leads to masking and feeling disconnected—a struggle mirrored exactly in ADHD.

35M with a stable job and two young kids. On the outside I’m functioning fine and handling my responsibilities, but internally I’ve been feeling quite flat, bored and low on motivation for a long time.

Most things don’t really engage me or bring much enjoyment unless they’re exceptional. I recently started ADHD medication but haven’t noticed much effect so far.

I’m looking for Discord servers with other adults in a similar situation — people with jobs and families who are still functioning but dealing with this kind of emotional flatness and low internal drive. I’d prefer smaller or more mature communities rather than big public servers.

I’m open to a few different types:

General/casual servers (movies, random conversation, hanging out)

Servers focused on MMOs or gaming with older players

Servers related to ADHD / twice-exceptional experiences, as long as the overall tone is practical rather than purely venting-focused

If you know of any decent, smaller servers that fit this kind of vibe, I’d appreciate the recommendations.

Thanks.

Hello, I am 14 years old, I recently have been hyper fixated on my own intelligence.

On anything that isn't interests, I feel a sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT), however, for intense interests I have extremely fast thinking and learning on them, often becoming masters of a given topic in just a few weeks.

But, I feel like my ASD gets in the way, whenever I try to seek out anything that could help me identify my raw intelligence, I all find it so flawed, biased, and cannot find a secure answer, I have well accepted this conclusion many times. But, my ASD has a need to verify my intelligence once and forever.

So, I have been stuck in this infinite loop of thought, constantly reading as many sources as I can, just go find them all wrong, and then keep going for more. Everyone's needs and struggles are different, but, in my case I would prefer my ASD over my ADHD, the massive inconsistencies of my performances across various subjects is what injures my self estimation the most.

In conclusion, I don't know what to do, I find everything reaffirming to be wrong, and anything that I find right I flag as my own emotional bias. I found my group of people (neurodivergents) but I also want to see if I fit into 2e, I am not the gifted kid anymore, just the lost 14 year old.

Any advice, words of affirmation, and more will be greatly appreciated.

Edit 1: If my writing appears confusing or repetitive, this is my raw thoughts and my current sleep deprived state 😅

Edit 2: The reason why I have been in this infinite loop of hyperfixation is also telling myself that I cannot verify if I am intelligent or capable to deem any sources biased or factually incorrect, nor I can draw better statistics.

I see intelligence as a abstract, messy, and non-linear spectrum. Perhaps the most broad spectrum I've ever witnessed.

Edit 3: I also gravitate towards older neurodivergent peers who are widely accepted to be gifted, I see how they flew through university and stuff, even with worse environmental conditions I have, they always manage to correct others. If I am explaining my intelligence, I feel like I understand explanations at a gifted level, whereas my ability to curate these answers is fairly average. But I could have a skewed perception of gifted and average.

Everything is just a total mess and nobody around me can reciprocate it without giving me shallow answers.

Hey everyone, I’m 16. My high school life has been an absolute hell for the past two years, which is what eventually led me to a psychologist. After taking the WISC-V, I found out I have Inattentive ADHD, but I also scored an unusual 143 in Perceptual Reasoning (PRI), officially putting me in the 2E category.

On one hand, I’ve always felt like an alien around my peers. On the other hand, I never felt "smart" either. As I mentioned, my grades in high school were terrible—I was literally at the bottom of my class, despite having the highest cognitive potential on paper.

How did you guys survive your school years? Or if you're still in school, how are you coping with it?

I was wondering, hypopthetically, whether a person who is formally diagnosed with ADHD and has a veriafable VCI (verbal comprehension index) of 135 and a below average WMI (working memory index) and PSI (Processing Speed Index), overall culminating into an average FSIQ (full scale IQ) would be considered twice exceptional or not. If yes/no, why?

Hi everyone, I recently found out I am 2e (ADHD) and I am currently suffering a lot because of my university career. I've watched a ridiculous amount of videos on study methods, read posts on reddit and quora, read articles on the web and still I still haven't figured out how I should study certain subjects that aren't strictly conversational. So I ask you for advice on how to do this and how I could compose my study method.

To make it short I'm studying medicine and I haven't figured out how to study for almost 3 years: I've passed some exams but I'm extremely behind my peers (I have to study for my 2nd year exams and by some miracle I passed those first).

While I was at school, I simply had to read and understand, and I excelled in subjects like philosophy and history (while I had very little education in mathematics and physics, both for external and internal reasons, and even today I don't know how to study them).

The pattern I'm experiencing is also very similar to the one I experienced in high school with these last two subjects: no matter how much I read and reread, it's as if my brain physically refuses to acquire and try to understand. The point is that I really enjoy medicine, and clinical reasoning in particular (in some internships, I performed well despite having studied certain subjects less than others).

To be more precise about my reading problems: when I find myself reading a text it is as if the content were completely disconnected and thrown away for no reason. For example, I'm studying neuroanatomy and when I find myself studying a part of the brain (for example the amygdala) the book gives me a brief introduction and then throws anatomical details and other things at me that seem genuinely out of context. It's as if he didn't give an introduction to the topics: the feeling I get is that of starting to watch a film and starting from a random scene where characters appear one after the other and in the meantime I have to explain the protagonists and the plot.

A recent intuition I had is to approach certain sentences by always asking myself the causal and finalistic reason for what I am trying to understand and to look for the logical thread even at the cost of reading completely random pages of the book. Furthermore, I always try to draw a mental map in the meantime to keep track of what I understand.

Thank you for reading this far, I wish you a wonderful day.

I had a discussion with someone on the nature of intelligence and I suddenly found myself sifting through endless amounts of biased scientific papers and misinformed statistical correlations.

I was flabbergasted by just how biased everyone in this field seems to be, everyone is just making sweeping statements that completely ignores previous research, wasn't science always supposed to be about finding truth even at the cost of ones pride? So why does this field feel more like a goofy History channel production rather than a valid search for truth?...

One scientist might make a distinction between crystallized and asymmetric giftedness, then the next one just randomly combines them under one name and makes broad statistical statements disregarding the other paper. And in most cases they are both peer reviewed without scrutiny, what a mess!

Honestly I'm starting to doubt if I can even trust my own 2e diagnosis, if everything is up to bias like this then how can we truly know that the science our diagnosis are based on wasn't affected by this too?

This is going to be a rant from a throwaway account.

The story should start from my childhood. I am a 19 year old female. I was a shy and introvert child till 11. Lacking in social skills, emotional intelligence but always an A-grade student. Around 13, I got inspired about courage, discipline, etc and could motivate myself to do almost anything. I started interacting with teachers and my coursework. I set high goals for perfection (cause, how could I be the same as everybody else, I needed to stand out and be praised) and honestly, at that time, course work was just so-so. I never revised properly, but always remained a topper. Everyone praised me and most important, I had no distractions. All this changed in covid. I got addicted to dramas and novels, and started consuming them voraciously. My grades started suffering.
On the night before my 10th grade exams, I was just staring at screens, trying to make up my mind to study, but I also have this nasty obsessive, rebellious streak. I could not.

Chapter closed-94.8%.
Everybody expected so much from me. My teachers, my parents, relatives, friends. How could I?
Still, it was not as bad as to wake me up. I tasted the pleasure, the ease of scoring 'decent' marks doing nothing. Grades suffered. My time spent on academics decreased.
Fast forward to 12th grade, 84%. This time, my parents were visibly shocked. I had already done so bad on in my college entrance exams- with this score, there was no possibility of premier institutions. There was an air of gloom around the house. Everybody consoled me.
My father though, could calm his mind and directed me to study for improvement in mathematics. At that time, I was interested in pursuing in career in mathematics, cause I could honestly understand nothing except it. As a result, it became my favourite subject and I wanted to pursue a BSc in Mathematics from any institute.

But, my father believed I was gifted. I had 'potential'. It was just that I was lazy and could not work 'hard enough'. He advised me to take a gap year and prepare again, which I agreed to, because I also wanted to go to a top institute. After all, I had to have a perfect CV. What is there in life, if you could not stand out from the crowd?

Though, I wasted my entire year. Now, I'm sitting here, contemplating ways to successfully choke on food and die an unexpected death. It seems that I won't go to a perfect institute after all.
And what is ridiculous, all those students who could not measure up to me in class while solving questions, all got a better score than me. Every teacher believes that I can do much better. They all lament at my marks and console at a potential wasted.

I'm honestly confused. How to accept going to an average university?