Shelena

No, not at all. It made things worse. I really think it is very good that many people benefit from exercise. However, it can in some cases also harm your mental health. I think it is important for people to know this. The benefits of exercise are so well known, that the people who it is harmful for often are pressured into exercising anyway and made to feel like a failure if it does not benefit them. It took me a long time and a lot of pain to find this out. I want to tell my story in case someone is in the same boat as me.

Years ago I was feeling so bad I could not get out of bed for a couple of months. The psychologist I was seeing kept pressuring me to exercise. So, I tried it and I hated it. I really had a lot of trouble even doing the smallest things, like making food for myself or go to the supermarket. It all seemed like an impossible task. Now I had to spend the little energy I had to regulate myself to go to the gym or to run.

When I was exercising, it felt like genuine torture. I just hated every second. Afterwards, I would just feel extra tired and very sad about the pain Inhad been in and anxious about having to go again next time.

I was too timid to really stand up for myself and I did not want to fail at yet another thing. I thought it was just my fault and I just was too lazy and should be harder on myself. So, I tried to keep going, even though I could not sleep the night before and I went there crying. When I said something about it, the psychologist kept pressuring me to do it like it was some magic fix for everything. I just needed to do it often enough.

On my way to the gym, I started to wish more and more that I would be in an accident and get wounded so I did not have to go anymore. One time, on my way to the gym, I tripped and fell. I had a big bruise on my knee, but it was not bad enough to not have to exercise anymore. So, I sat on my knee on the bruise the whole night in the hope that it would get worse. It hurt, but it was not nearly as bad as exercising. When I told my psychologist she said that she could not help me if I self-harmed and I should go somewhere else. However, I was not self-harming to harm myself. I was actually protecting myself against something that was bad for me. I could not explain that at the time.

Years later, I went to a psychosomatic physiotherapist. In the years in between, I got the advise to exercise for my mental health numerous times. Each time I tried it, I failed. No matter how much I tried, it keep feeling like torture, my mood got worse and physically I did not improve at all. I always kept thinking that it was my fault and just not trying hard enough.

So, when I went to the new physiotherapist, I started out with telling him that I knew I should exercise and that I was stupid foe not doing so. He immediately stopped me and told me I should not exercise at all. He explained to me that when you exercise, your stress levels go up temporarily and then they go down and usually lower than they were before you started exercising. That is why most people benefit from stress reduction after exercise.

However, in my case, my stress levels were extremely high, all the time. They were so high that if I started to exercise, they would be pushed up above the maximum that my body was able to handle (he drew a chart where the line hit the top of the chart). So, for my body, exercise did not feel like a temporary increase in stress that would go down after a while, it felt like an extreme emergency situation that it could not adapt to. This would further disregulate my stress system. That is why it felt like torture, and why my mood got worse and why I did not have any physical improvement from exercise.

He told me moving was good to calm my nervous system. So, slow walking in the forest and things like that. And just quit as soon as I did not feel like it, or it gave me stress and just try some other time when I felt like it again. And that worked like a charm. I walk now for 4 to 6 hours a week and it calms me down. I do not have to push myself. I just feel like doing it and if I don't, I just won't go.

So, the point is that exercise can be great to help with stress, if your stress is maybe at 70% or 80%. However, if your stress level is consistently at 95% then it is harmful and you should not do it. (Mindfulness probably will not help either in that case btw.) If exercise keeps feeling like torture and it does not help you, do not feel like a failure and keep torturing yourself. It is not your fault if it does not work for you! Go to a psychosomatic therapist instead that has expertise in stress management. They might be able to help you.

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.

I did not find out that I was gifted until I was 36. I had a terrible childhood where I was emotionally neglected and psychologically abused, so it is difficult to say what issues that I had were strictly from the giftedness and what of them were due to being abused.

One thing I do know that is likely due to giftedness is that in middle school I spend all my time in class reading comics or other books instead of doing assignments and paying attention to what the teacher was teaching the class. As I got grades that were okayish (not that good, but good enough to pass), this was ignored. In high school I also did the bare minimum that was necessary to pass. I never did any assignments that were not graded if I could get away with it and I often slept during class. They always thought I just was very lazy and they told me this often.

Then I started studying psychology at university. For the first exam, I was very afraid that I would not pass. This was university, so I thought it would be difficult. However I got a 9.8 out of 10. From that point on, I was not able to concentrate and only got grades that helped me to just pass the courses, but not much better. I wanted to do better than that, but I just could not get myself motivated.

All this time I felt very bad about myself. I thought that I was just lazy too. I tried to get myself motivated and do the work, but I just couldn't. I also felt that the time I was in class was completely useless and that the same was the case for making assignments. It just felt like I was jumping through hoops because, well, those were the rules. I still get angry about that. I wanted them to just tell me what I should be able to do and know in the end and just let me figure out myself how to get there, instead of just doing useless stuff. It was very frustrating.

I had a bit of a breakdown after studying psychology for two years due to my traumatic childhood. When I got better and wanted to start studying again, I went to the study advisor and simply told her I wanted to do something difficult. She told me to try Artificial Intelligence (which back then was something I never heard about). I went to the first lecture and I did not immediately understand what they were explaining. That created a bit of panic at first, as that was a bit of an unfamiliar feeling. All of a sudden, I really had to work for it.

And that is what I did and it was not difficult to get motivated at all anymore. I worked really hard and really did my best. I had an average mark of 8.6 out of 10 in the end for my master's, which is considered very high. However, most importantly, I was having a lot of fun! I had a lot of energy all of a sudden, I had all these new ideas. It just was a really good time. Learning did not feel like a chore at all anymore. After that I got my PhD and now I am an assistant professor and I hope to become a full professor one day. Once I can do that, I am thinking about starting a whole new career path to keep myself challenged.

I am telling you all this to illustrate what it feels like to be gifted, but having to fully adapt to your environment instead of your environment adapting to you. The psychiatrist that told me I was gifted once said to me "if you have an IQ of 70, people will help you and adapt to you, if you have an IQ of 130, people expect you to figure it out by yourself and adapt to everyone else, even though it is the same deviation from the average." That stayed with me a lot. Gifted people need help and they get exhausted by continuously being expected to adapt to their environment and having to jump through hoops that were not made for them.

With my experience in mind, I would think it would be best to get you daughter the help she needs, whether that is in a regular school or in a program. Also, it is very important to keep her challenged. If she is not doing well at school, she might not be lazy or not wanting to do better, she just might be very bored and unable to concentrate. If a program is needed to keep her challenged, that might be the best option. However, I think that lots of interaction with people outside of such programs remains important as it teaches you a lot about a variety of other people and how to work with them. I hated my childhood, but that's something valuable that I did learn.

Thanks! Was looking for something more privacy focused. I had not found this one.

I actually agree with this. This technology should be open. I know that there are arguments to keep it closed, like it could be misused, etc. However, I think that all the scary stories about AI are also a way to keep attention away from the fact that if you have a monopoly on it, you have enormous power. This power will grow when the tech is used more and more. If all this power is in the hands of a commercial business (even though they say they aren't), then you know AI is going to be misused to gain money. We do not have clear insight in what they are doing and we have no reason to trust them.

You also know that bad actors, like dictatorial governments will eventually get or develop the technology themselves. So, keeping it closed is not a good way to protect it from that happening. At the same time, you are also keeping it from researchers who could investigate how to use and develop it further to be used responsibly and to the benefit of humanity.

Also, they relied on data generated by people in society who never got any payment or anything for that. So, it is immoral to not share the results with that same people in society openly and instead keeping it closed. I know they used some of my papers. However, I am not allowed to study their model. Seems unfair.

The dangers of AI should be kept at bay using regulation and enforcement by democratically chosen governments, not by commercial businesses or other non-democratic organisations.

I think they have instructions on the website on how to unlock the bootloader etc. There is also a lot on how they support open source with their own OS. I think that your warranty also remains valid after you unlock the bootloader and install another OS, as long as you revert to theirs when asking for support. I can sortof understand that, as it would not be feasible to support all sorts of custom ROMs.

I can definitely recommend getting a Fairphone. I quite happy with my Fairphone 4. Bloatware is limited to Google stuff and they even give instructions how to easily install a custom ROM (have not tried that yet though).

The specs are not great, but good enough for me. But the main advantage for me is that it does not break that easily. I drop my phone all the time. My Samsung phones and Pixel phone I have broken within the first few weeks. Usually I dropped it and the screen cracked, even with a protected case.

I have had this phone for a lot longer now (maybe years by now) and I dropped it like a 1000 times and it is still fine. The screen has not cracked, it still works. Only the side is a little chipped. I don't even use a protective case. And even if it breaks, I can just buy the broken component from their website and easily replace myself using normal tools. So that is really nice.

Egg retrieval as part of my IVF treatment. So, lots of fun.

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.

This is what you get if you ask it to draw a room with an invisible elephant.

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.