Comment by JohnMakin

ACE of 8 here - I don't know how to qualify "gifted" but I believe I was and am a few std deviations away from median on most IQ tests I've had to take (therapists always insist I take one).

I don't feel the need to get into my childhood but there was instances of severe abuse/neglect, and extreme hoarding. Some light sexual stuff but it's all fuzzy. Our home and upbringing was a lot like that Turpin [0] family where they were basically forbidden outside contact despite maintaining normal appearances to the outside world. If that was a 10/10, mine was about a 7. I've had symptoms of PTSD since a very early age and subsequent traumatic events in adulthood.

My teens/early 20's were... difficult. I was independent by 17 and mostly was too busy trying to survive than to seriously attempt college. By my mid 20's I was able to enroll in community college and then transfer to a prestigious CS program and graduated with honors. I naively thought this would be the "end" of my problems - a lot of the trauma drove me to push through extraordinarily difficult circumstances during my time at school and trying to juggle several jobs.

In the decade since though, while I do have much more money and resources to get help than I used to, I feel I have declined. I've had persistent depression and anxiety for so long it's to the point I have difficulty recognizing it without the help of a therapist, who I see 2x a week. Found out I am very high functioning on the spectrum, and people often have difficulty understanding where I am coming from in terms of life experiences and I have difficulty relaying to them why I am the way that I am, so I often present a facade, which is isolating and lonely. My siblings fared a little better than I did and found family with their significant others that I for whatever reason did not. I suspect without being a gifted child I would have died a long time ago.

So all in all, not great, but probably much better than my peers in similar situations did.

[0] - https://abcnews.go.com/US/turpin-daughter-escape-happened-di....