AIBU to find it incredibly frustrating that there are basically no resources in the UK for people like me?

[Maybeasd]

I’m genuinely starting to wonder whether I’m being unreasonable or whether this is just a massive blind spot in the UK.

I’m a woman, adult, functioning perfectly well in life for the most part, but I’m very cognitively able and have always been. I’ve been properly assessed and this a known entity (I was not born nor raised in the UK for context).

The issue is I’m finding that there are only pathways if you’re struggling but not if you’re just curious. I’m not only talking about the NHS, even privately I haven’t been able to find someone who hits the spot.

I’ve looked into:
ND assessments (very binary, very impairment-focused)
talk therapy - after years of it total waste of time and money.

People in the US suggested to find a neuropsychologist but they have eye-watering costs, mostly framed around brain injury or rehab

It’s either you’re ill or you’re fine, stop asking questions.

I’m not looking for validation, labels, or coping strategies.
I’m just trying to understand how my mind works, and it feels like that’s somehow illegitimate unless I’m suffering.

So… AIBU to find this incredibly annoying?

I call it picking holes, but what I actually do for work is review and improve processes, test proposals, find issues before we launch something, look for gaps and ways to bridge them, analyse data (patterns, love them), review and improve documents, write papers proposing new or improved things (and then see them get holes picked in them 🤣) and so on.

I don't think I'm ND either, more just logical and good at detail. I find it really useful but also appreciate it's not the only thing I am. And that I'm not the only person who can do things.

Putting hinges together is really interesting too, I wish I could do that.

Do you need a laughing emoji on that post?

You see if the OP was effectively trying to work out how her brain works she would know about recent ADHD research which strongly supports the hypothesis (that ADHDers already know is true), that people with ADHD are physically quicker at spotting patterns in fuzzy data than people without ADHD.

Yep 🤣🤣

Wasn't it Livy who was described by someone as having 'a fly paper mind' to which information stuck, but might not necessarily be analysed properly? (Bit unfair, someone had to write about the Punic Wars and it was history Jim but not as we know it)

That's pub quizzes though, that is.

I think a lot of real academic intelligence is realising that you know enough to know how little you know.

Whew. Nothing worse than an angry Mensa member 🤣😂🤣

I've also just realised I said I was good at detail and then didn't notice my phone autocorrected "things" to "hinges" 🤣

Although I do wish I could put hinges together. My kitchen cupboard doors are the bane of my life recently.

But that is not true, the thing you are posting here about bothers you very much!

I missed the traumatic childhood post but it reminds me of my mum, and a colleague at work. When i was a child my mum was constantly telling me how fab she was, different, special, best looking boyfriends, different from everyone else. She had an awful childhood and it was a trauma response although I didn't know it at the time. Similarly the person at work, always the busiest the most committed the best etc. She's got some kind of personality disorder but i also know her childhood was difficult.

I do understand it. Why does my brain respond this way when other people's don't seem to? It's probably why psychology exists in the first place.

It sounds like the OP wants definitive answers, though, and that's unlikely to happen. If you had the world's top psychologists, psychiatrists, neuroscientists etc all in a room , you'd probably just get a load of different hypotheses. They could sit the OP down and put sensors all over he4 head and run MRI scans or whatever, and they might see that a particular area of the brain fires up when that bit of music is played, and they might reach a broad consensus on likely reasons why, but I don't they will be 100% sure, because it's not like "you have that rash because you have been infected with measles." It'll be, "we can see this happening, which matches a pattern with other people who we've diagnosed as hyperspecial, but we don't yet know why. X hypothises that it's because of this thing, but Y reckons it's that thing, and there's a growing school of thought that favours this third thing..."

It is interesting (to me) to know which bits of the brain get fired up in different situations, but it still might not tell you the whys of it.

No, it’s not bothering me. I’m curious about it. Different things.

I beg to differ. The title of the thread, by you, is 'incredibly frustrating'. That indicates quite a high level of botherdness.

You don't seem to be able to let it go though. So it's not worrying you, but it is bothering you if you are obsessive about it.

OP, it really isn't coming across as "just curiosity".

I really think your fundamental issue is a lack of self awareness, to the extent that you're actually unable to recognise when something is very obviously bothering you, and you are unable to make sense of what's going on in your head to the extent that you need someone else's help to understand it.

I don't know what is causing that, but it is very clearly an issue for you.

Curiosity about things that are widely researched and reported online doesn't usually extend to writing to academics to see if they would like to study you or paying a counsellor to try to understand yourself.

I’m sorry but I can’t take this thread seriously.

I think the issue might be the DH of maybeasd when he said “ in no uncertain terms” OP was strange and issue over blood stains on her PJs.

My suggestion is for OP to get out of the house and do something to stop this self obsession.

Volunteering at a local food bank for eg to meet people as clever or cleverer than OP

Absolutely this. I said this too, upthread.

OP very much lacks awareness of herself in such a way as to how she can solve or improve her situation. All she seems to focus on is the fact she needs - no MUST - have validation of her superior intelligence and what makes her able to function the way she does.

I think it boils down to us all-all 7 billion of us and all those who have gone before- being unique and special and noone is more unique and special than anyone else, intrinsically, especially to themselves. Most people though don't want or need outside theory (because that's all it will be) on what makes them tick, unless there are issues affecting their lives, which OP says isn't the case.

I’m just intense I guess!

Some things actually bother me (and nothing really right now). This? Not really.

As a pp already pointed out, you literally said that it is “incredibly frustrating” in the title of this thread so it is obviously bothering you. How do you explain that?

Honestly I’ve had such a laugh reading this thread.

Op is a genius according to Mensa- but then so are so many people on this thread. I’ve never taken a Mensa/IQ test.
Op knows 3 languages and can read another, this is one of the reasons why she is gifted. Turns out loads of people on this thread are therefore gifted - myself included I can get by in 2-3 languages and recently took up another one whereby I had to learn a completely new alphabet, which I could therefore read before I began to understand it!

Everyone thinks op is ND and op does too, but won’t pay for that assessment herself, but won’t explain why.

Op has been part of studies on how exceptional she is, but only mentioned this when someone points it out she should have been.

Op finds people boring but thinks she is a good friend, colleague and partner, but finds people boring to the point she doesn’t bother.

Op does normal stuff too!

Op persists in calling herself gifted, but she doesn’t bang on about it, except all she has done is bang on about it. She states that not all gifted people use their gift, true, but the rest of us just think that it’s a useless trait, no more than a party trick, op ignores this, and carries on.

When asked why she can’t read up on stuff herself seeing as she is much more intelligent than us mere plebs, she’s says she needs some tests doing. When asked exactly what tests she wants to be performed, which she could easily research herself, she ignores the question.
Many sensible questions have repeatedly been asked by many different people and are completely ignored.

Most people have come to the conclusion that OP probably has ASD (including op), and along with a dollop of narcissism, which if she looked up and researched how these work/ combine together and pinpoint what characteristics of each she falls into/reacts to, she could save herself £3k, probably wrote an excellent research paper to add to exceptional giftedness.

You started this post with this title yesterday.

Are you in the habit of swinging around so radically within 36 hours?

Intense? No, not at all 😂

Because the battery of tests is called that “neuropsychological assessment “.