# Existential Depression in Gifted Individuals



## Entelechy

Selene said:


> One of the most understanding posts from a total stranger who understands my plight more than people in my life.


If this were "The Price Is Right" you'd win the Showcase Showdown.


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## Selene

Haha! Of course I understand when you write that much. ^_^


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## SeekJess

I can definitely say the key things that were brought up in this article.. are some of my trigger points for my depression. Once I start pondering things, it is a downward spiral from there.


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## TaylorS

That describes me very well. I am gifted AND disabled (Asperger's Syndrome), which only exacerbates the issue. I have trouble relating with what interests most people and always got the feeling most people go around oblivious to the wider world, unable to imagine that a better world is possible, addled into docility by television, and seeing self-worth only in how much wealth and environment-destroying consumerist junk they have. When most people to try to discuss the "Big Questions" with me they mainly give simplistic notions, often based on religious dogmas about "God's Plan", or some paranoid conspiracy theory.


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## agv

Hey guys.. I found this, it's more of the same, 38p of it to be exact. 

Dabrowski’s Theory and
Exis tential Depres sion in Gifted
Chil dren and Adults1
James T. Webb, Ph.D.

EDIT: Wow... After reading this thoroughly I have to say that anyone who felt any relief by reading this thread should probably give it a chance! I also realized that this guy, James T. Webb, created the non-profit Supporting the Emotional Needs of the Gifted or SENG. I've been subscribing to their newsletter for a while.. I feel that their cause is both one I can relate to on a very personal level and that enabling and helping our gifted young (and old for that matter!) is without a doubt one of the most productive and insightful endeavors one can undertake to help ourselves as a race. I feel like sending him a some flowers and chocolate ^^


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## conscius

"treatment" for "existential depression" is spirituality/ religion.


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## Lucretius

conscius said:


> "treatment" for "existential depression" is spirituality/ religion.


Perhaps, if you want a placebo.


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## Vaka

Azrael said:


> Perhaps, if you want a placebo.


Not to start anything...I'm not religious or anything...anymore at least, but it does work, I can confirm that...no proof, but it does work in my experience.


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## Nearsification

Azrael said:


> Perhaps, if you want a placebo.


You are such a stereotypic INTP.roud:


And I would have this. But I am not depressed. Or am I? My doctor said I had some medicine that should of been making me depressed by accident. But I never felt depressed.


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## Lucretius

Queen of Leaves said:


> Not to start anything...I'm not religious or anything...anymore at least, but it does work, I can confirm that...no proof, but it does work in my experience.


That's the _point _of a placebo: a belief in something with no demonstrable potential can have very real effects.


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## Vaka

Azrael said:


> That's the _point _of a placebo: a belief in something with no demonstrable potential can have very real effects.


lol I was thinking of placebo as...a fake...not in that sense...my bad >.>


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## knght990

placebo, the wonder drug
It has exactly the effect you need exactly when you need it. Take as many as needed to achieve desired effect. 
Available now at your local drug store and joke shop.


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## Zygomorphic

conscius said:


> "treatment" for "existential depression" is spirituality/ religion.


I honestly tried this in middle school during my bout of existential depression (I was not raised religiously).

I tried praying, attending church weekly, befriending Jesus/God, and hoping that one day the clouds would part and give way to light; desperately wanting to be optimistic that suddenly life would be worth living.

It felt fake and I felt stupid and foolish for continually trying despite an awareness that perhaps it ultimately would not matter; how can anyone other than I impart meaning to_ my_ life, let alone someone whose existence is in question? When one abandons the optimistic bubble of religion and spirituality, the outside seems terribly bleak. Yet I cannot abide by simply running back into the bubble; there is something there that needs attending to because it has been observed, and that observation is the concept that there is no intrinsically-objective meaning to life. I recognize now that despite this lack of an objective meaning of life (provided we set religion aside), there is still a subjective meaning to it that can matter. The issue I had back then was that I could not establish a subjective meaning. 

In the end, treatment for existential depression came only from within myself through introspection. Spirituality was not necessary, and it arguably even hindered me from establishing any personal meaning to life.


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## Aether

Yeah I almost did that, but with Tao. When I was pretty depressed, I was thinking long and hard about the questions in the OP, I typed into google what I was thinking of and a link came up with a script from their book or whatever. It very much related to me at the time and it felt amazingly good that my thought had paid off. After I felt better I sort of left it at that and haven't given it much thought since. Keeping your mind on superficial things can be the easiest way to go about life in all honesty - but I will always know there is so much more to it.


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## conscius

Zygomorphic said:


> how can anyone other than I impart meaning to_ my_ life, let alone someone whose existence is in question? When one abandons the optimistic bubble of religion and spirituality, the outside seems terribly bleak.


I do have respect for your views but I have my own: 

How could* I* impart meaning to my life? I did not create it. I don't know how my body works. I don't know how my consciousness works. I don't know where I came from. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where the life around me comes from or where it's going or how it works. I could not possibly learn and understand everything that other human beings have learned (or think they have learned) in this short time I have here. In short, I'm in awe of it all. 

I must think very highly of myself to think I am the one who can impart meaning to my life. I do not deny the importance of your subjectivity. Only you are in your head and not anybody else. And you get to look for meaning in your life, be it in materialistic philosophies or spirituality/religion. But I see myself as looking for meaning and trying to be open to receiving meaning, as opposed to imparting it--which seems to me almost like naming a baby, which is sort of random.

And your categorization of religion as an "optimistic bubble" seems odd to me. Optimistic how? There is heaven but also HELL. Optimistic, meaning that there is inherent meaning to life? Then why "bubble"? In fact one could argue that religion/spirituality take us out of our materialistic bubbles and expand our views, so that we don't get bogged down by little trivial things of our daily life, our little circle of friends, coworkers, and family, and materialistic things, and are able to find compassion for universal human suffering, find our place within this universe, and live our lives to the fullest.


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## conscius

Azrael said:


> That's the _point _of a placebo: a belief in something with no demonstrable potential can have very real effects.


sort of like your worldview? :laughing:

I was kind of kidding with "treatment" talk which is why I was using quotation signs. But I guess you took it seriously. The article medicalizes our search for meaning in life by calling it depression. Hence my reference to "treatment."


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## Lucretius

conscius said:


> sort of like your worldview? :laughing:


My worldview does not contain any placebo-esque beliefs.


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## conscius

I was kidding.


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## Lucretius

conscius said:


> I was kidding.


Hmm, and you were kidding about the last thing too? It seems that the irony isn't translating well over text...


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## Zygomorphic

conscius said:


> I do have respect for your views but I have my own:
> 
> How could* I* impart meaning to my life? I did not create it. I don't know how my body works. I don't know how my consciousness works. I don't know where I came from. I don't know where I'm going. I don't know where the life around me comes from or where it's going or how it works. I could not possibly learn and understand everything that other human beings have learned (or think they have learned) in this short time I have here. In short, I'm in awe of it all.


Right, and this is part of the basis for the lack of any objective meaning to life. Subjectively, we (may) defy this truth and brazenly create our own meaning. Perhaps this is naive, but it seems to be an imperative for the sake of our sanity nonetheless.

Anyways, it matters not to me whether meaning is found through spirituality or not, but I ultimately wanted to note that it is not a fail-safe mechanism for the entire population.



conscius said:


> I must think very highly of myself to think I am the one who can impart meaning to my life. I do not deny the importance of your subjectivity. Only you are in your head and not anybody else. And you get to look for meaning in your life, be it in materialistic philosophies or spirituality/religion. But I see myself as looking for meaning and trying to be open to receiving meaning, as opposed to imparting it--which seems to me almost like naming a baby, which is sort of random.


Fair enough, but I assure you my methodology is not arbitrary. As for thinking highly of myself, it is important to me that I bear a favorable disposition towards all individuals, and of course I think any individual is "allowed" to define any sort of meaning for his or her life.



> And your categorization of religion as an "optimistic bubble" seems odd to me. Optimistic how? There is heaven but also HELL. Optimistic, meaning that there is inherent meaning to life? Then why "bubble"? In fact one could argue that religion/spirituality take us out of our materialistic bubbles and expand our views, so that we don't get bogged down by little trivial things of our daily life, our little circle of friends, coworkers, and family, and materialistic things, and are able to find compassion for universal human suffering, find our place within this universe, and live our lives to the fullest.


Optimistic in the sense that there is a potentially better tomorrow that you are empowered to actualize - this tomorrow in question as to its actuality. As for being "...able to find compassion for universal human suffering, find our place within this universe, and live our lives to the fullest," that can also be achieved without religion. I think it would reflect poorly on humanity if religion was necessary for us to be compassionate, but that clearly is not the case if we even look at other animals.

One could indeed argue that religion helps with the above, but one could also argue that simply stopping to thinking about these issues would bear similar results.


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## conscius

thank you for your views Zigomorphic. Despite having different views, I sense some commonality.


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## conscius

Azrael said:


> Hmm, and you were kidding about the last thing too? It seems that the irony isn't translating well over text...


I put that little laughing smiley face to indicate I was kidding around so I thought that was obvious. 

As far as the "last thing", that's my fault. Diagnosing our search for meaning as "existential depression" sounded funny to me so I used quotation marks to point out how odd it looked to me, saying "treatment" for that depression is religion. Religion is not a medical treatment. Anyhow, I should have been more clear.


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## UndercoverJanitor

Hello, first I must say THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING THIS ARTICLE. i googled some key words with what has to do with my problem and something came up that told me its existential depression. so I googled that and came to this. I don't even know where to start with this as i just found out so many truths in this 1 little article.

To start off, im 16 years old, and I might be what I call a late bloomer. This article is focued on gifted children, but I haven't begun to realize my true potential until recently (since 15-16). I have to say i am what you call gifted. I have been told that as a kid but i mean i always took it as just being nice. Now let me explain my story.

Recently I have noticed that I really think outside the box and question the world around me. I dont know how long I was actually doing this for but i *noticed* this phenomon recently. I have at least 2 of the issues about existance you mentioned. 

1. death - i cant stop thinking about death, i obsess over it, I always try to imagine what it would feel like to die, and i know how limited my life is and how I can die instantly 3 seconds from now. I always wonder where we go after death. if god is real, when will i die, etc.

2. isolation - its as you said, people like that are not understood, and everyone i have talked to never seems to get this problem and are just puzzled. I've always thought that no one really knew me, or could connect with me.

3. meaningless - i always wonder why were are here, how we got here, whats the hell is the point of living if there is no purpose. i try to find the answer but am left frustrated and angry, which leads to depression.

all of this causes me great stress and i feel as though i am alone. i dont want to be gifted, and actually before reading this article i tried to talk about this issue with my mom. i wanted to see a psychiatrist or something for help, she said it wouldnt help. and she could not help me at all. the best she could come up with was "just live your life" yea, i thought i was wrong and she was right. that was before i knew about me being gifted , no wonder she couldnt understand me. 

like you said this develops early in life, and i found myself in constant arguements with my parents and never getting close to them or understanding them or them me, never really makin much friends, and just being misunderstood.

i am just like you described. i notice people's mistakes in being normal human beings (best i could do to put it in my own words) hypocrites, ignoranuses, jerks, greedy people. i could spot them all a mile away , and i would never even doing something like that. im still appalled how people can kill others for money or some worldly possession (since i know life is finite and has an end just like you said) and other people dont even think about that stuff.

i think of how people can be so greedy to get millions of people killed like some wars that have happened. 
but now it all makes sense, the reason i have these thoughts is because my intellect is pretty high, higher than most peoples. i had already realized this but now its confirmed 100%, i have always been able to reason and solve problems easier than others. 

but im not very smart, i mean im a fast learner, and i have an appetite for interesting information, my greatest asset is being able to put myself in someone else's shoes and feel what the other person feels, this has evolved to a point where i can almost read people's minds without them tellin me anything.
and NO ONE my age thinks like me, i almost gave up on the world i was so upset.

but i hate being gifted, i hate thinkin outside the box. it brings me great pain, because i feel others' pain. 
you know as they say ignorance is bliss. sorry for the REALLY long rant, i just needed to share this.

because of you good sir, i have found a place i belong, finally, for the first time in my life i have found people that are similar to me and i know im not alone. thank you so much. i was just so depressed today and my mom of course didnt care when i told her about this thread i found, she was at a party. 
still though im so grateful i found this. i feel like a few years worth of stress has been lifted off me.
and AGAIN JUST LIKE YOU SAID, i was also very angry too. i mean i didnt mean to be, but i just snapped at people somtimes, now maybe this will solve my anger problem.

if you have anything to share about me being gifted or am i just fooling myself, please reply. thanks a lot good sir, truly.


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## SuperunknownVortex

Thank you so much for this article! I read it, and I found that it was exactly what I needed to hear at this time.



LadyAutumn said:


> This is a soapbox I've been standing on for a really long time. My older son had to go to school, and he never fit their mold. It was trouble almost from the beginning. I took my younger son out of public school after his second grade year, and I homeschooled him the rest of the way through. It was actually "unschooling," because I allowed him to study and spend time doing the things that he was naturally good at. Contrary to what most people think, children love to learn...they just need the freedom to learn what they're interested in. My son is constantly doing something, learning, researching, digging for whatever.
> 
> He's 18 now, and he loves music. Everyone else is telling him he needs to get a job, but I said "No, you pursue your music." If he gets a job, he won't have as much time to continue to develop his musical abilities. He works for me when he needs extra money, and we're both happy with that. If he had gone to public school from grades 3-12, how much time would have been taken away from his dreams? He has my complete support!


By the way, you are an awesome person.


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## Psilocin

Triggers like walking through certain doors after a particularly depressing experience, or when I'm just down will trigger everything to go plastic. It's a feeling that nothing's real. I go totally numb.

Yeah. I realize that my bouts of existential depression have now become depersonalization. But it happens very seldom, and only when I'm under extreme stress.

It's largely changed over the years. It used to last a week but be more of a lingering feeling. Now, it comes on only in very stressful situations and lasts, well, until I'm out of that situation- Any little bit of something good happening can trigger me to move out of my void and be in a much better place for a short while.

I'll also mention that I had all of the _classic_ symptoms of Existential Depression when I was younger. I do believe it just manifests itself in different ways now that I'm getting older and changing.


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## Mendelevium

This is almost mandatory, but painful. I keep going back to it because one day, in the midst of my ponderings, I might just find the solution and not just a quick fix-it patch...


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## IllBeBach

I relate completely


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## EYENTJ

Perhaps a related topic (see article below) which sparks the question; does this relationship work in reverse? Do gifted or creative individuals, perhaps unconsciously, seek the anguished state because they have found their greatest successes there?

www4.gsb.columbia.edu/ideasatwork/feature/7213496/The+Dark+Side+of+Creativity

*The Dark Side of Creativity*

Modupe Akinola explores the connection between mood and creativity and finds that stressful situations and bad moods can spur some types of creative thinking and problem solving.

Creativity is vital. It can generate new products, invigorate old ones, launch or enhance a brand and introduce efficiencies that increase the bottom line. But where does creativity come from, and how can it be harnessed?

The answer may be a dark one, says Professor Modupe Akinola, whose research examines how stress affects performance. Consider the archetypical artist-as-tortured-genius. “Vincent van Gogh was said to have painted some of his best known works, such as Starry Night, after some of the most trying events in his life,” she says. Akinola wanted to learn if there are personality characteristics that, when coupled with situational factors like mood, can enhance creativity. “If you make someone unhappy or stressed out,” she asks, “will he be more creative?”

Akinola worked with Wendy Berry Mendes of Harvard to answer this question. The researchers set up an experiment in which participants were asked to give a short speech about their dream job. The researchers measured levels of the hormone dehydroepiandrosterone-sulfate (DHEAS) in each participant and asked participants a series of scaled questions about their moods both before and after the speech.

In the last stage of the experiment, the participants were given glue, paper and colored felt and asked to make anything they wanted using those materials. Professional artists then evaluated how creative each collage was. (It may seem subjective, but the judges’ assessments were highly consistent and other research has validated the use of the process.)

The DHEAS measures taken before the speeches allowed the researchers to observe a factor specific to each individual participant that would provide insight into the relationship between personality and creativity — information that the pre- and post- self-reporting mood surveys could not reveal. Endocrinologists have long established that people with low DHEAS seem to be more susceptible to depression, so the DHEAS sample taken before the speech gave the researchers a sense of each person’s affective vulnerability, or how susceptible a person is to experiencing wide mood swings. Participants were also asked to self-report their moods, so the researchers had both subjective and objective baselines from which they could observe mood changes.

Prior research has shown that evaluative situations trigger different moods: being praised after an annual work review usually makes for a good mood while a critical review makes for a bad mood. When participants received positive feedback — smiles and nods — during their speeches, they reported feeling the same or better than before. For participants who received negative feedback like frowns and shaking heads during their speeches, they reported feeling worse compared to before their speeches. Self-reported mood changed very little for participants who received no feedback.

Overall, participants who received negative feedback were more creative than those who received positive or no feedback, their collages clearly reflecting, for example, deep attention to detail and the specificity required of creative work. Of this group, those who had the lowest DHEAS to start with — an internal rather than external factor — were the most creative of all. (A separate follow-up experiment confirmed that effort alone did not explain the differences between the most and least creative collages.)

These results confirmed that mood is a factor in creativity, and it can be manipulated. However, the most essential part of Akinola’s hypothesis supported by this study is that while external events like negative feedback or social rejection can play a role in prompting creativity, some people have biological presets that make them more sensitive and so, in some cases, more creative.

Moreover, while there appears to be a dark side to creativity, there may also be a bright side. Employees who are vulnerable to mood shifts are generally most effective on work that requires a good deal of scrutinizing, or on projects that demand vigilant attention to detail, or testing, selecting and rejecting ideas. Akinola and her colleagues suspect that different moods affect different types of creative processes and are exploring whether positive moods may provide the best prompts for problem-solving strategies that rely more on filtering or seeing the forest for the trees, for example, the way an analyst might take in the details about a firm’s financial and strategic condition before making a recommendation.

“These questions are important,” Akinola says, “because in business settings we often find ourselves in situations where we come out of an important meeting feeling really good or really bad. But then we need to work on whatever is next at hand.” Akinola says. “If creativity is affected by these mood-triggering situations, what is the best way to capitalize on that? There is no one-size fits all answer. We need to better understand these triggers.”

Modupe Akinola is assistant professor of management at Columbia Business School.


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## mustihayya

nice topic got to read this when im not busy


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## Darner

That was a great article! I also found myself very much in it. 

I looked at one check-list for gifted children and as I thought, it mostly doesn't apply to me, especially in the parts that I should have a lot of interests etc. I always had a very short span of concentration, so nothing interested me for more than a day (or maybe that is just the ISTP in me ). But I have the wit and due to it I was also always considered as weird. I had panic attacks when young and they stopped when I realized that they were panic attacks (before I didn't know, what is wrong with me and I just feared another attack coming). My mum was always telling me that I think too much and that I should do sports to exercise also the body and not just mind. I think it helps a little but not with singular sports which make me think even more.
Anyway, I have identity and existential crisis every time I have too much free time (like holidays). That is why I try to occupy my mind as much as I can and not let it wander around too much. I once asked my friend how she handles identity crises. She looked at me all surprised and asked "what is an identity crisis?". I envy her so much  I think those who do not think so much are happier. They just live in their own little bubble and the only thing they care about is if they've done what they were supposed to. Amen.

Speaking of religion:



Zygomorphic said:


> Anyways, it matters not to me whether meaning is found through spirituality or not, but I ultimately wanted to note that it is not a fail-safe mechanism for the entire population.


I tried many religions; I found them really interesting and I would love to become more spiritual, but again my lack of longer interest doesn't help. I think that for the really productive use of religion, you should be really into it. But it is also that I believe in my version. So I still let myself fall into existential crises because I am upgrading my theory of what is really the meaning of life. Luckily I'm learning how to not let it affect my "general" life too much.


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## velociraptor

wow, this pretty much describes my childhood. I still have this vivid memory of swinging on the swings in first grade and thinking about the afterlife. basically I just couldn't come to terms with the fact that time would go on for infinity, even after the sun blew up and the universe disappeared -- the very _concept_ of time would still go on, and I would be dead forever and ever and ever (okay so having taken a couple classes in theoretical physics I don't know if time would still continue but still). so maybe I would be born again as someone else, but with no memory of my past life. that got me to thinking about the separation of body and soul, because if we were just reborn again and again then our souls would have to continue if our bodies died, so that we could be reborn again. I guess I was also confused about how consciousness was gained -- basically how that soul went into the body, and I kind of imagined this line where souls were lined up and were assigned a body and that's how babies got their personalities.

ideas such as this continued to grow but I don't think they ever got destructive for me. I was able to connect with some really good friends as I grew up, with whom I'm still extremely close, and I think I was successfully able to compartmentalize everything. perhaps it would have been even better for me growing up had I had someone there with whom I could share my ideas, but I don't think it got unhealthy. besides the usual teenage angst, I think I was able to cultivate my own musings without having it intrude in other parts of my life. 

but now that I'm entering my senior year of college, I feel like I'm getting back everything that I thought I had eluded. I am double majoring in entirely two different intellectual subjects -- meaning that it'll be hard to combine the two -- and it would already be hard enough to pick between the two, if I also wasn't so concerned about meaning in my life. I'm seeing those same friends I am so close with and grew up with confidently take their first steps towards the rest of their lives, and I'm still scared shitless in the corner. I want to do something that has meaning, that'll make me happy, but I don't even know what meaning is. I feel like I still have a lot of the same issues as before. I feel like I'm insignificant, that nothing I'm going to do is going to have an impact on the world. even if I make a huge scientific discovery, who is really going to care besides my direct field? is science even that important in the face of bigger questions of life? perhaps I could go into philosophy, but who's to say that I'm anyone to preach my own views to others as a professor? the world itself is built on a set of human constructs. perhaps those constructs could be different. perhaps if we came up with a completely different paradigm of "calculus", all of science would suddenly become invalidated. does this subjectivity even matter? I don't know.

to this effect, I kind of want to say that the only true thing in the world, the only true path, is art. art is exactly what I want it to be and what anyone wants it to be: it doesn't impose or direct, it only presents and allows itself to be manipulated into anything the manipulator wants it to be. but I've never been a particularly artsy person -- I stuck to math and science in high school, and will get a degree in science and history -- and I don't feel like I would be successful at all in art. I'm not creative enough... not to mention my parents would have multiple aneurysms if I told them I was throwing away my degree to go be a starving artist. should I care, if this is what makes me happy? is it even _going_ to make me happy? is the only meaning we can find grounded in our own self-fulfillment that's independent of the construct of the world that we find ourselves in? is that all we can ask for?


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## kaycee

The first time I can recall my existential angst (though I didn't know that was what it was at the time) was when I was 15 or 16. I started questioning my belief in any god at all despite going to Catholic schools all my life, leading retreats, singing in masses, etc.

It pretty much continued through to today. I'm on medication for mental illness, but I can't help feel that there is no chemical imbalance, there is just an impending sense of doom that is accurate.


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## Pyroscope

The Isolation part was one of those mentioned four that gets me most. As many people here know, it's hard to explain it to a lot of people. I can't help thinking about the fact that relationships ultimately don't seem to mean much because people make them for convenience. I find it hard to see how people can think it's okay to 'replace' their friends because they don't 'fit' into their lives any more. If these people are so important to them, how can they leave them behind? Apparently it doesn't seem to bother anyone else that we live such separated lives where by the time we've been halfway through our life, we probably don't know anyone apart from our family (and many won't even have that) from the first people who came to mean everything to us.

I'm partly at a loss to why I get existential depression. I don't consider myself particularly gifted. I need time to absorb things, I have the worst short-term memory ever so I don't feel like I can absorb things as quickly as gifted people. Yet still it seems to overwhelm me sometimes that there is a lack of meaning in these short sightless lives many of us live. I fear for my future because it feels to me like so many people have got themselves stuck, either with a family they never wanted or a job that will consume them or some other crushing burdens that serve only to illustrate the laughable claim of 'freedom' that we have. How free are we when we live in a world where imaginary numbers on computers dictate whether humans will help other humans out?


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## ohepi

Yes, but no. That's as clear as I can be in my response to this article without rambling about my entire life story.


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## imaginae

Viktoria said:


> *
> I'm not try to come off as conceited or arrogant, or anything else of the sort, but I really related to this article, more than I've related to anything in quite a while. I just wanted to post some comments about it. *
> 
> 
> 
> *BAM! Instant hit.
> Death. I've been thinking about this so much lately, and I'm trying to come up with a reasonable answer to this. What happens after you die? What really happens after you die? Where do you go? People have souls. I can see it. It's life, souls are, and every body has them. Energy can't just disappear when people die. When a body is lifeless, it's actually missing something. But where does that something go? What happens? And how can you prove it? How? You can't, can you? I just don't know, I've stayed yup hours trying to just figure it out but I can't, and my teacher wonders why I'm late to school the next day.
> 
> People are born to be free, right? To do what they please, think what they want. That's part of the reason people have minds, to think what they wish, have their own thoughts, dreams, aspirations. So why do we take this away? something dies in people after they start working and getting a job. Some people, like my mother, say it;s the 'realization of reality', bu i'm not so sure. I think it;s that real responsibility hits, and you don't have time to do the things you actually want to do. What kind of life is that?  Why should you have to work, non stop, just to get by? Why aren't we allowed the time to live, and enjoy? Everything revolves around work...no one is free. You don;t get the choice to be sent to school for 12 years or however long it is. You don't get any say. do you have any idea how many art projects, how many movies, how many pictures, poems, songs, i could have finished in that amount of time? My time that I want to live is being stolen from me, because other people think it's what's 'right'. It's not!! Why can;t I have the freedom to do something I love? Why do I have to work for such long periods of the day, against my will...because somebody else says so?? what right do they have to dictate what I'll be doing with my life until I'm 16, when i'm 'legally' allowed to drop out? I hate it. This is why we don't have any more people like leonardo di vinci or Einstein. they get KILLED. No one has freedom to do what they want, because everything is so structured and there's so many exspectations of what you should be doing instead of what you want to be doing. But that's so contradictory. You live in America, the land of the free....after you finish high school. You can pursue your dreams...after you get a job. What?
> 
> Everything is meaningless, if we have to live like this. See above. Why does it have to be this way, why? The world could be so much better, but no one cares.
> *
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> *I'm an idealist. Imagine that.
> AGE ROLE RESTRICTIONS. I hate age restrictions! =I would type an paragraph fpr this one, but i would end up being several pages, and I really don't want to get started on that. Basically, i find it frustrating that because other teenagers are stupid, i have to pay the consequences and not get the rights I wish I could have.
> 
> and as far as the way the world should be, the world is full of limitless possibilities. The inventions, the ideas, everything, is limitless. So why are we holding back when we should be moving forward?
> 
> How much difference can one persons life make? I wonder about this one every fucking day. I've looked at it from so many points of view, and each one comes up with a different answer. Like the starfish mentality. When there's thousands of starfish stuck on the shore after the tibe on the ocean goes down, and a man tosses as many as he can back into the water. Another person goes up to the man and asks "Why do you even bother throwing them back in? It makes no difference, there's so many." The fisrt man looks at the stranger, picks up another starfish, and simply says "It made a difference to that one." as he throws it back into the ocean waves. Meaning: Say the starfish was a person. Can that man really make that much of an impact on another person's life? and if you make an impact on somebody else's life, even just one persons, is it enough?
> Then look at it from the cosmic viewpoint. You are tiny compared to the earth. The earth is tiny compared to the sun. The sun is tiny compared to the universe, and so on. What makes you think, that your tiny little life, has any impact on the universe whatsoever? It's doesn't. You're tiny, small and insignificant. Now shut up.
> *
> 
> 
> 
> *My mom laughed at me when I tried to share this with her, and every so often while i'm in the car she overdramatically and insultingly asks me "What is the meaning of life?" It makes me so mad, so mad. I just tell her to ask me again next time I have a dictionary, that way I can simply read the definition to her. i'm partly joking, partly not, because I wish she'd understand. My teachers don't 'get me'. I've had several convinced I'm a genius, and tell me so. i'm just kinda like, ehhhh. But when they ell me this, and im starting to think someone understands and i can finally discuss more important issues in life, thy just kinda look at me and don't ever know what to say. I want to say I've given up on finding somebody who understands, but maybe one day...
> (That paragraph probably didn't make alot of sense)*
> 
> 
> *Sometimes I have to stay up until 4 in the morning, when I know I have school tomorrow, because I have this sudden burst of inspiration, and i have to use it because I never know when It's coming back again. More often then not,when this happens, it;s for a period of three days where i'm running of of 2 hours of sleep a day, because of school. I want to go to school and do my art projects, but I end up not doing as well of a job as i should on either because I feel like I have to do both. Is this making any sense? I wish so much that there was just more time to do what I wanted. *
> 
> 
> 
> *That's all i have to say about that. Thank you for posting this, marino, it was extremely interesting. I think I might suffer from this. *


You remind me so much of myself, not just when I was your age, but at the age I am now which is 28. How old are you, exactly?


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## imaginae

I am speechless! I have been suffering with existential depression since I was very young! I remember, vividly, questioning reality at 3 years old! No one ever recognized me as gifted though. Quite the opposite. I was the quiet little red headed girl who made terrible grades, not because I wasn't smart, but because I would rather spend my time drawing, exploring, or playing. In high school, it only got worse. The awareness that kids my age were nothing but shallow and mean alienated me further, as well as the feeling that school was simply a mind control machine trying to groom me to be another cog in the wheel of a broken society. I became angry and depressed. I spend most of my time alone in my room, drawing, dreaming, listening to music, dancing. I was weird. Different. Lonely. I longed for an answer to my purpose in life, because it was NO WAY going to be to live it as a "slave" like everyone else. Eventually, however, I discovered psychedelics which helped me a great deal with depression and the acceptance of my uniqueness. Man, I can only imagine if as a young child people considered me to be "gifted". It probably would have saved me a of pain and confusion.


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## itssoOHMYGOD

dear god this was a wonderful thread to read. this really sums up myself and it is so lovely to see others stuck in this with me. i wish we all lived near each other to meet, drink and discuss our curse/gift. i err more on the side of gift, personally.


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## Ash ley

*originally posted by: Viktoria

I'm not try to come off as conceited or arrogant, or anything else of the sort, but I really related to this article, more than I've related to anything in quite a while. I just wanted to post some comments about it. *



*BAM! Instant hit. 
Death. I've been thinking about this so much lately, and I'm trying to come up with a reasonable answer to this. What happens after you die? What really happens after you die? Where do you go? People have souls. I can see it. It's life, souls are, and every body has them. Energy can't just disappear when people die. When a body is lifeless, it's actually missing something. But where does that something go? What happens? And how can you prove it? How? You can't, can you? I just don't know, I've stayed yup hours trying to just figure it out but I can't, and my teacher wonders why I'm late to school the next day. 

People are born to be free, right? To do what they please, think what they want. That's part of the reason people have minds, to think what they wish, have their own thoughts, dreams, aspirations. So why do we take this away? something dies in people after they start working and getting a job. Some people, like my mother, say it;s the 'realization of reality', bu i'm not so sure. I think it;s that real responsibility hits, and you don't have time to do the things you actually want to do. What kind of life is that?  Why should you have to work, non stop, just to get by? Why aren't we allowed the time to live, and enjoy? Everything revolves around work...no one is free. You don;t get the choice to be sent to school for 12 years or however long it is. You don't get any say. do you have any idea how many art projects, how many movies, how many pictures, poems, songs, i could have finished in that amount of time? My time that I want to live is being stolen from me, because other people think it's what's 'right'. It's not!! Why can;t I have the freedom to do something I love? Why do I have to work for such long periods of the day, against my will...because somebody else says so?? what right do they have to dictate what I'll be doing with my life until I'm 16, when i'm 'legally' allowed to drop out? I hate it. This is why we don't have any more people like leonardo di vinci or Einstein. they get KILLED. No one has freedom to do what they want, because everything is so structured and there's so many exspectations of what you should be doing instead of what you want to be doing. But that's so contradictory. You live in America, the land of the free....after you finish high school. You can pursue your dreams...after you get a job. What?

Everything is meaningless, if we have to live like this. See above. Why does it have to be this way, why? The world could be so much better, but no one cares.*

*I'm an idealist. Imagine that. 
AGE ROLE RESTRICTIONS. I hate age restrictions! =I would type an paragraph fpr this one, but i would end up being several pages, and I really don't want to get started on that. Basically, i find it frustrating that because other teenagers are stupid, i have to pay the consequences and not get the rights I wish I could have. 

and as far as the way the world should be, the world is full of limitless possibilities. The inventions, the ideas, everything, is limitless. So why are we holding back when we should be moving forward?

How much difference can one persons life make? I wonder about this one every fucking day. I've looked at it from so many points of view, and each one comes up with a different answer. Like the starfish mentality. When there's thousands of starfish stuck on the shore after the tibe on the ocean goes down, and a man tosses as many as he can back into the water. Another person goes up to the man and asks "Why do you even bother throwing them back in? It makes no difference, there's so many." The fisrt man looks at the stranger, picks up another starfish, and simply says "It made a difference to that one." as he throws it back into the ocean waves. Meaning: Say the starfish was a person. Can that man really make that much of an impact on another person's life? and if you make an impact on somebody else's life, even just one persons, is it enough?
Then look at it from the cosmic viewpoint. You are tiny compared to the earth. The earth is tiny compared to the sun. The sun is tiny compared to the universe, and so on. What makes you think, that your tiny little life, has any impact on the universe whatsoever? It's doesn't. You're tiny, small and insignificant. Now shut up. *

*My mom laughed at me when I tried to share this with her, and every so often while i'm in the car she overdramatically and insultingly asks me "What is the meaning of life?" It makes me so mad, so mad. I just tell her to ask me again next time I have a dictionary, that way I can simply read the definition to her. i'm partly joking, partly not, because I wish she'd understand. My teachers don't 'get me'. I've had several convinced I'm a genius, and tell me so. i'm just kinda like, ehhhh. But when they ell me this, and im starting to think someone understands and i can finally discuss more important issues in life, thy just kinda look at me and don't ever know what to say. I want to say I've given up on finding somebody who understands, but maybe one day...
(That paragraph probably didn't make alot of sense)*

*Sometimes I have to stay up until 4 in the morning, when I know I have school tomorrow, because I have this sudden burst of inspiration, and i have to use it because I never know when It's coming back again. More often then not,when this happens, it;s for a period of three days where i'm running of of 2 hours of sleep a day, because of school. I want to go to school and do my art projects, but I end up not doing as well of a job as i should on either because I feel like I have to do both. Is this making any sense? I wish so much that there was just more time to do what I wanted. *

*That's all i have to say about that. Thank you for posting this, marino, it was extremely interesting. I think I might suffer from this. 


Reply to Viktoria:

*oh my god, everything you said is *e**xactly* how i feel! I still can't believe someone else thinks just like me, nobody ever knew what I was talking about when I brought all this up!! i wish i could find somebody like you to talk to, who really understands.
"*Sometimes I have to stay up until 4 in the morning, when I know I have school tomorrow, because I have this sudden burst of inspiration, and i have to use it because I never know when It's coming back again." 
-It is** currently 4 something A.M. and I have school tomorrow, you hit everything dead on, with the burst of inspiration.. with everything you mentioned
I am truly amazed. 

*


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## notdariana

I'm sixteen years old and I suffer from clinical depression. I've never been able to really pin point what was causing my depression, but this article and the responses have put into words what I couldn't piece together. I've been a "gifted" student since the age of six, and I've always felt detached from others. I'm very outgoing though, I have many acquaintances and several close friends. I'm not antisocial, but there are times when I completely cut communication from everyone and focus on music, or whatever is catching my interest at the time. I've been struggling with problems at home, but usually I never pay attention to small things, even if they do have a large impact. My depression is exactly because of what I see in the general picture of things. I feel so belittled and I never find much meaning in ordinary things. I'm irritated by people so often because of the tedious things they talk about, or even their mannerisms. I get really frustrated and annoyed because I know I shouldn't care, since it's none of my concern, but other people do bother me. I feel like this isn't normal. But I'm so glad I found this article and that my depression isn't uncommon. I always came to the conclusion that smarter individuals were more likely to suffer from depression, but I never thought that not only is it proven- but it has an actual name. I relate so perfectly to this.

But I always over think everything. How corrupt the government is, how useless the educational system of where I live is, everything. I'm not a lazy student, I just fucking hate having to work so hard, aspiring for scholarships and partial tuitions at institutions, knowing I won't be able to afford them, realistically speaking. Optimism and realism really clash here. I don't want to be such a downer, but I really feel that I'm going to school and working so hard to have a wonderful IB degree, hang it on my fridge while I go to the college closest and most affordable to home. It all has to do with each individual's situation, of course, but frankly it applies to everything. We're born, we slave in school to go to some college maybe, and then land a job that pays minimum wage and you make enough to get by. Never mind what you're fed as a kid that you can reach for the stars. Reality is, there are things that individuals have no control over. The economy of a country, for instance, sets the pattern for each citizen. High economy signifies a boom in jobs and everything's great because we're compensated for our work. In contrast, when the economy's down, and you have young lawyers and scientist who can at most land a job teaching some course in a university. Nothing seems to pay off. My mom, for instance, is a bank accountant and can be making a higher paycheck than she is. Due to the current job deficiency where we live (south fl), she had to find some crappy job and is frustrated. Life isn't fair, but what the fuck are we supposed to aim for when reality sets your boundaries? 

The best part of it is, no one notices or cares. There's such few people like us that know what's going on, but we can't really do much about it, but watch it all go down hill. Have our lives pre-determined for us by a situation we have no control over, and then everyone fills the cookie cutter molds society sees fit. These are the kinds of realizations that can take an honor-roll student such as myself to want to drop out of high school because nothing makes sense, and everything seems so pointless.


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## costellocostello

Parts of the original article are such a scarily accurate description fo my depression. I've been "gifted" since starting school and I've always felt like that. In some ways it's nice to know it's a result of my situation...


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