I'm at the gifted end of the spectrum (a member of Mensa and 3 other high IQ societies), but it took years for professionals to recognise that I also had OCD. The common response was to look at the fact that I seemed an extremely able student, and that if I just worried less about my work I'd be OK. The fact that I had crippling panic attacks associated with my academic work and was compelled to practice everything in multiples of 50s (100 if that then wasn't 'perfect' enough) was completely overlooked because of my seeming ability. "Oh well, highly able students always tend to be perfectionistic' was a typical comment. Gifted students aren't supposed to struggle or need help, are they But that masked the fact that my perfectionism went way beyond the typical gifted student 'pickiness' and into the realm of an actual disorder.

It took ten years for the OCD to be picked up by anybody, and only then because the lack of treatment left me spiralling into clinical depression.

Once recognised, educators and psychologists mostly didn't know what to do about it anyway. I did find a fantastic clinical psychologist who not only helped me with cognitive behavioural therapy, but who also acknowledged the gifted component and drew on that as well, encouraging me to get involved in developing my own strategies. I did this by enrolling in postgraduate studies in gifted education, specific learning disabilities, and individual differences in learning. There I began to read the research literature in both education and psychology that would help me use my strengths to overcome my weaknesses, a common approach in the case of gifted learning disabled students. (Yes, research does indicate that it's possible to be both gifted and have some form of learning disability.)

That was important, since I found that people with special educator backgrounds would apply the same approach that they used with people at the struggling end of the spectrum, whilst gifted ed people would ignore the struggle and focus on the giftedness only. Neither is fully adequate for dual diagnosis students, who require modifications in both approaches.

Recently I also underwent IQ and memory testing, and a significant short term memory weakness was discovered (3 standard deviations below my high IQ). At this stage, we don't know whether it signifies a learning disability or is a result of physical damage due to epilepsy. But it means even further modifications to academic strategies for me to reach my full potential and a supportive educational structure in place to enable me to do that.

There are a lot of people out there not reaching their full potential. Stereotyping means that we just look at a tag and make a glib decision based on that tag instead of being excited at the prospect of how individuals can work around one or more special need to accomplish things in their lives.

And the end of my story? I'm trying to take it one step further by completing a Masters degree in specific learning difficulties. I would like to (1) work with kids whose problems are somehow 'outside the square', (2) raise public awareness, and (3) do future academic research to work out new and better ways of doing that. It may take a while - I have to work more slowly because of the OCD and short term memory problems. But that's just another individual difference!