Confessions of a Recovering Gifted Kid

How I'm healing from an education of anxiety, perfectionism, and burnout.

Photo: My Hero Academia. “Calculus: one thing Deku can’t solve by punching.”

A fourth grade aptitude test I took while eating a Rice Krispies Treat led me down a path of crippling anxiety I’m still trying to dismantle.

I’ll give you a crisp Benjamin Franklin if you’ve seen a writer open using this line before.

See, I love this line. The morbid absurdity of it made me chuckle to myself in the coffee shop when I first jotted it down. I knew it was how I wanted to open this story.

Yet even now, there’s a big, gnarly, uncomfortable knot in my stomach trying to persuade me into writing a different intro:

It’s too vague. It’s too ridiculous. It needs stronger adjectives. It needs fewer words. ‘Took’ looks stupid on paper. You should use ‘filled out’ instead. Change it. Now, read it about twenty more times until it looks stupid again. Speaking of stupid, how long have you been writing this article today? And it STILL isn’t done? This is pointless. You should give up. You should do something else. You should…

Okay. I think you get the idea.

This is often how it feels for me trying to undo the mental conditioning of years’ worth of academic pressure and emotional self-negligence so I can become the man I want to be.

Up until recently, I wasn’t aware this mindset had been termed on the internet by many others in the same shoes as me:

“Gifted kid syndrome.”

It’s a phenomenon that encompasses a range of lasting mental challenges experienced by adults who were labeled “gifted” by their teachers or parents and held to high academic expectations and demands as children.

These challenges include—but aren’t limited to—anxiety, perfectionism, burnout, and an inability to cope with failure.

Its effects have been felt by a modest but vocal group of people. Much of the documentation is anecdotal, but I was surprised to see a growing number of empirical studies and published books written on the subject as well.

Today, I’d like to add my story to the ongoing discussion.

If you’ve been struggling to escape the mindset produced by “gifted kid syndrome” for a while now, I’m hoping my perspective can open some new avenues of healing and growth for you.

Let’s get into it.

First, how does someone become “gifted.”

The word “gifted” means “having exceptional talent or natural ability.” By this measure, a lot of people are gifted.

I’m innately good at certain things. You’re innately good at certain things. But you didn’t need someone to tell you the things you’re good at for you to become good at them, did you? You probably found this out intuitively.

Understand: when I say become “gifted,” I don’t mean gaining the quality of giftedness itself. I’m referring to the expectations the label “gifted” places on a person’s shoulders.

I became “gifted” when I took the aptitude test I mentioned in my intro.

In 4th grade, my teacher passed out a handful of exams to the class one morning. Presumably, these were IQ assessments, the results of which would secure me a spot in Mr. Marshall’s 6th grade Talented and Gifted (TAG) class a couple of years later—but none of us knew this at the time.

I’ll never forget my first day in TAG. I nervously entered a small classroom with eleven of my peers. As Mr. Marshall made his introductions to us, I was quickly under the impression this class would be unlike any I’d experienced before.

This was a humanities class. We were going to read challenging books. There would also be creative research projects and a public speaking unit.

Most of all, I was told I was among the best and brightest students in my middle school. I was made to believe my smartness was something inherent to me—an innate ability to do things with ease which others struggled to do.

Dude. My ego trip was insane. Eleven-year-old Jack felt like he’d just been recruited into the Avengers of his middle school.

But TAG was also the turning point when my curiosity and passion for learning became something more insidious. It marked a subconscious transition from, “I’m a smart kid,” to, “I’m a smart kid—but now everyone in my life is going to hold me accountable to smartness as a core piece of my identity, and I must affirm this at all costs.”

Uh-oh.

The thing is, plenty of kids go through gifted programs and come out well-adjusted. So why are there others who don’t? Why does the anxiety of “giftedness” plague me—and maybe you?

It goes deeper. For a long time, I was too stubborn and ignorant to see this but…

I was emotionally immature.

This created a fertile seedbed for lasting, troublesome developments in my psychology.

I was a sensitive kid—easily overwhelmed by small things and afraid to address my uncomfortable feelings. I also lacked the boundary skills I needed to respectfully assert myself and defend my emotional needs.

Upon self-reflection, I believe my emotional immaturity was often masked by my intelligence. In other words, my stronger IQ for my age overcompensated for my comparatively poorer EQ to such a degree where I thought I was more mature than I was.

I could analyze and discuss my “feelings”: I feel like my peers don’t care as much about class as I do.

But I couldn’t access and resolve my real feelings quite as effectively: I feel scared and frustrated when my peers misbehave in class.

Notice how one of those was an evaluation, while the other was an expression of something felt internally. There’s a BIG difference.

As a boy in middle school, these characteristics guaranteed a couple of things.

One, I felt lonely. Many of the boys were rough and rowdy; I wasn’t. Some of them caused trouble in class; I didn’t. This upset me, and I didn’t know how to engage with them.

Two, I was a kid who my teachers mistook as “wise beyond his years.”

I remember one teacher of mine made me—a ten-year-old—responsible for looking after students who were disruptive or struggling in class. My own needs as a student had been ignored in ways I felt powerless to affect.

So, when you give a boy like me an escape route from his emotional discomfort—especially when this route makes him feel important and special—of course he’s going to run towards it at full speed.

There was a subtextual emotional promise communicated to me with this new accelerated path. By distinguishing myself through academic excellence, I wouldn’t need to be with the “fools” of my graduating class anymore, and I wouldn’t need to babysit them either. Under the guise of “giftedness,” I could rise above them. I could hide completely and bypass my emotions entirely.

It sounds disgusting to admit those words. I would never say it to anyone’s face at the time, but it’s the truth. I had a sneaky superiority complex pulling my strings the whole time.

Being disruptive, unfocused, or stupid: those were bad ways to be.

But me? No. I was smart. I followed the rules. I didn’t upset people. I made them happy and proud.

These were the right ways to be. I was right, and because of this, I would be safe and loved.

Sure, buddy. Here’s how that turned out for me…

My life became more about pain avoidance than goal achievement.

Do you want to know the awful thing about being conditioned to see intelligence as a fixed trait?

It offers no grace for mistakes, and—thereby—no meaningful growth.

Remember: as a “gifted” kid, the perceived expectation was my smartness was supposed to be inherent. I was supposed to be able to do things easily.

However, I did struggle in high school, intellectually and emotionally. Not all subjects came naturally to me. AP Calculus was like pulling teeth; I had to apply myself to succeed.

But I applied myself no more than I needed to.

Because if I was seen struggling—if I couldn’t grasp a concept, if I missed a few points on an assignment, or if I outright bombed a test—then what would it say about me?

Maybe I’m not “gifted” like everyone thought I was. Maybe I’m just like everyone else. I’m stupid. I’m a failure…

I’m unloveable.

The answer to this emotional dilemma? Don’t struggle at all. No matter how passionately you want to pursue something—don’t! Stay comfortable and constantly make excuses as to why you can’t start. Because if no one can see you being bad at something, then they can’t prove you’re a fraud. And if they can’t prove you’re a fraud, then you can keep being smart and loveable all the time. Easy!

It’s highly irrational, but it’s real. The anxiety of being “found out” gripped me terribly and often sent me spiraling.

In 6th grade, I cried when I was eliminated from the spelling bee qualifier because I couldn’t spell the word “hydraingea.”

In 10th grade, I had a nervous breakdown at 12 AM because of a single question I didn’t understand on my chemistry homework. It didn’t matter if the other fourteen answers were correct; I knew my teacher would lambaste me the next day because of the one answer I couldn’t fill in.

Wait. This next one’s my favorite.

In 12th grade, I once overslept my alarm and rushed to school in my Jeep with the windshield completely frosted. There was no time for it to thaw, but the horror of tarnishing my attendance grade in Journalism B or getting restricted lunch was more dire than the possibility of killing myself—or someone else—on the highway.

Now that’s stupid.

My love of learning had diminished. School became a system to be gamed, and much of my value as a person was in my GPA. I stopped seeing most assignments from a perspective of growth or understanding.

Instead, my thought process was, how little effort do I need to put forth to score a ninety-five or higher and not unmask my fragility today?

The day-to-day of this was exhaustive. Somewhere along the way…

I lost myself.

I’d buried any sense of real identity beneath grades, accolades, and expectations. My experience of myself resentfully became “the guy who was the best at being everything everyone else wanted him to be.”

For so long, it didn’t matter how I felt in school. Emotions weren’t important or necessary for my academic success—which is entirely false.

You can’t succeed from an empty cup.

I had needs. I wanted help. I just didn’t allow myself the grace to cast aside my mask and ask for it. I was afraid I’d disappoint or burden people, so I didn’t speak up, and the expectations just kept piling on.

The most effective life strategy I had at the time was to muscle through everything, disregard my body’s signals, and pray I’d make it by the skin of my teeth until a break in the school year.

I would burn my candle at both ends, pushing myself way too far to juggle my mounting responsibilities. I would “revenge procrastinate” by playing Xbox past my bedtime to account for all of the downtime I was upset about missing during the day.

But cutting into my sleep only made things worse. Less sleep meant more mental fatigue and more emotional dysregulation. It meant I often started my mornings feeling like I was already losing, and my body had insufficient rest to stay healthy.

My all-time record is six common colds in one winter.

And with the onset of full-blown burnout, the first thing to suffer was always my relationships—which is exactly the last thing you want to suffer during burnout. To accomplish more, I pushed people away. I selfishly held them at arm’s length until I felt I was good enough to put up the facade and welcome them in again.

By the time I would acknowledge my need for help or rest, my head was already underwater.

But it was fine. After all, I was being good.

…drowning, fragile, and afraid. I recall nights when I dreaded waking up the next morning because I couldn’t muster the courage to stop my charade, nor scrape together the will to continue it.

It feels nice to confess this now. I’m giving a voice to my past experiences in a way I couldn’t before. Hopefully my story has helped you do the same.

As I begin to wrap this up, I’d like to offer a few more insights I’ve found to be helpful in my recovery.

Accept it. You’re not “gifted.”

I did, and it set me free.

Initially, I’d planned on doing four years of full-time study at a public university in the same full steam ahead fashion I did in high school. But a brief quarter-life crisis in tandem with the COVID-19 lockdown persuaded me to reconsider my approach to college.

For the first time in my life, I slowed down.

I transferred to a new university to complete my undergraduate degree on a part-time basis while commuting from home. This was much more cost-effective and offered more freedom than staying in a dorm.

At first, my old patterns of thinking intruded. I was afraid that staying at home or taking an extra year to graduate would reflect poorly on my pre-established image:

Jack, you’re lazy! You’re wasting your potential. Is this slackened pace REALLY befitting of someone who graduated in the top 1% of his class?

But I chose to embrace my new path anyway, and I was surprised by the results.

Because I was only taking three courses per semester, I could pursue my studies with a similar intensity, but still have lots of room for all those important things I’d largely neglected before. Outside the pressure of high school, there was now time for rest, play, and reflection.

There was time for me to simply exist. This changed everything.

My emotions gradually came to life again, as did my passion for learning. Somewhere along the way, I found the courage to share my inner experiences with the people around me—old friends and new. Once again, I was surprised.

These people were like me.

Messy. Complex. Dynamic. Contradictory. Beautifully, beautifully flawed—yet incredibly, incredibly loved.

Being disruptive, unfocused, or stupid: I started to understand these things are not just acceptable, but sometimes necessary for leading a fulfilling and intentional life.

I was wrong to make presumptions and judgements about my peers whom I knew nothing about as an excuse to disengage from them and defend my own insecurities. Admittedly, I was probably the biggest fool of all. In my attempts to avoid and hide my mistakes, I’ve made so many.

Now, being “like everyone else” gives me peace, because I can finally find the grace I need to stumble my way towards becoming the man I actually want to be.

I understand choosing a forward direction can be challenging for someone stuck in the paralysis of “giftedness,” so I’ll close with this thought.

“Giftedness” is an emotional issue—not an intellectual one.

You need to confront your emotions if you finally want to escape the trap of anxiety and perfectionism that “giftedness” produces. You must do the hard, uncomfortable work to resolve the root issues beneath. There are no shortcuts.

This type of confrontation contradicts the mindset of “giftedness.”

Former “gifted” kids like to stay “in the right.” We like taking actions that prove our smartness and competence to others. Sometimes, these actions give way to appeasing. This is how we learned to feel emotionally safe.

The anxiety of losing this love and emotional safety imprisons us in comfort-seeking behaviors, endless analysis, and vapid “wins” until the pain of stagnancy and regret ultimately become much more unbearable than the pain we feared in the first place.

But the pain of discipline now is always preferable to the pain of regret in the future. If you don’t do the work, the work—or lack thereof—will do you.

To address your anxiety today, it’s essential to implement a daily practice for regulating your nervous system and improving your internal awareness. Some of my favorite practices are prayer, self-hypnosis, or yoga nidra—a form of guided meditation.

Becoming reattuned with your body’s signals will help you increase your emotional resilience. It will also help you understand when you should push harder, when you should rest, and when you should seek help from trusted others to avoid further exhaustion.

As you practice, I want you to consider this question often:

Who would I be today if the fear no longer controlled me—and what’s the simplest action I can take to be this person?

See yourself living from an abundance of love and security. See the fearful weight of making a mistake or being “found out” lifting from your chest. See yourself stepping off the hedonic treadmill of endless, hollow achievements and instead walking with confidence towards the challenging pursuits that bring you (yes, you!) genuine happiness, fulfillment, and mastery.

Then, realize: this person you see is more than a figment of your imagination. You are this person—right now! You can make a difference in your life.

For me, altering the old patterns of “giftedness” feels like walking into the formerly manicured china shop of my mind, grabbing the prettiest vase I can find, allowing myself permission to smash it on the ground, and then asking, “okay, how did that one feel today? Do I still feel safe? Do I still feel loved?”

Oftentimes, I’m surprised to find the answer is “yes.”

It’s prickly, provocative work. It takes a whole lot of patience to continuously sweep broken glass shards off the floor. But this can be a good thing. Be mindful you’re not mistaking resistance as a reason for quitting.

Sometimes healing means embracing those things that feel uncomfortable or “wrong” at first until they become a healthier, more functional baseline.

It means building a tolerance for imperfection. Those of you with keen eyes might’ve noticed how I mispelled “hydrangea” earlier; I intentionally did this to make my skin crawl a little.

And it means—at some point—I need to relinquish my irrational need to say all the “right” things in all the “right” ways and simply get a helpful message out to the people who need it.

Because there’s always next time.

Be brave, my friend.

We’ll talk again soon.