That is really cool! Especially with the watches. I was hoping there would be some video of the city my great grandparents lived in. It would be nice to be able to see what their life was like. Maybe I might even see them without knowing it, as I am not sure what they looked like.

You forgot to mention Slash in the title! Perfect way to trick my boyfriend into watching this. He loves Slash.

That sounds very similar to what my psychologist told me in the beginning when I had trouble believing I am intellectually gifted: “you are smart enough to know when you make mistakes.” I think you are definitely right. I am always focused on trying to find mistakes or stuff I do not understand or that I do not know that I do not know (that one is the most interesting). So, I spend much of my time on thinking about that. So, often I feel like I make mistakes all the time and do not know anything.

Also, I work in academia with a lot of very smart people and I was comparing myself to them instead of the general population. And with other people, I don’t know. It is just not the way I view them. Most people can do a lot of great stuff that I cannot do. For example, my neighbour makes these really nice bags by hand and I am in awe by them. And I look up to her because she can do that.

I agree that what makes you smart is the way you think, not the knowledge you have. Although I do think that being smart often comes with a lots of curiousity which makes you gain a lot of knowledge.

I am a very emotional person, but, like you, I am able to detach and analyse. I think that is even an important part of my job. It is really nice your brain works like that as well! It is a valuable thing to be able to do, I think.

What I like to do most is design stuff and being creative. I design systems as part of my work and in my free time I draw and I write. And when I do that I get in some kind of creative flow where I have like a 1000 ideas and I just know what to do intuitively. That is the thing I love to do most. Unfortunately, I do not get to spend a lot of time on that in my work. There is always too much other stuff to do. But I try to do design as much as I can. Apparently, the need to be creative can be part of intellectual giftedness as well.

That is the nice part. But it also has some downsides. I am very easily overstimulated. I have issues with attention, especially for ‘boring’ tasks. I have a low tolerance for my own mistakes and I am too perfectionistic. I am insecure. I have trouble respecting hierarchy (I think this is a good thing, but some people don’t). I am very emotionally sensitive and I was able to mask my CPTSD for years, leaving me without help and treatment for it. I think some of that stuff I found recognisable in what OP said.

Not sure whether this is useful to you, but I recognise a lot of what you are saying. For example, the being able to do a job until the newness wears off and it gets boring and the huge difficulty with doing household tasks, etc.

I was diagnosed with CPTSD en intellectual giftedness and this explains my symptoms. I do not seem to have ADHD as I get extra active if I take ADHD medication. Most intellectual gifted people do not believe that they are intellectually gifted. I am still sceptical about whether I am, because I feel far too dumb. So, even if you do not feel gifted, it might still be something to check out if you want.

I think that most people on earth are good people, still. Most of them are not invading countries and hurting others, they are just trying to live their lifes and help others. Some of the people that commited the horrible acts are misguided or have been hurt themselves to the point of madness. Which does not make it okay. Far from it. They are dangerous and should be stopped. But it also does not make them purely evil.

No human should be viewed as an animal, even if they have done the most atrocious things, which Hamas has. This is not to reduce or deny the severity of what they and the Russian government has done or to deny the suffering they have caused. Not at all.

But they are the ones viewing other as less than human, as animals. This is what makes them able to hurt others like this. And while it is very understandable that our own pain and empathy with those that are hurt makes us want to view them as animals, so we can hurt them back, I do not think it is the way to go. I think it is far more powerful to stop them while keeping our humanity. The more we do that, the more we show that we cannot be broken by them, no matter what they do.