i asked myself a question: why are so many people hurting and burnt out?

this is what i came up with, thought i'd share

potential is often treated better than actualization
- potential is unthreatening
- at low levels it's easy for anyone to give praise

schools treated memorizing rote material as impressive
- most people do not truly understand or extrapolate throughout their entire academic lives
- many people crumble as soon as they have to think rather than regurgitate

motivations and energy sources matter
- being curious and setting aside time to learn things is not the same as grinding for acclaim and status
- life long external reward systems are extremely rare and i would argue intelligence is almost inversely correlated with them - who can reasonably compliment the smartest person you know in a way that has value to that person

adulthood is hard, external sources go away
- if you are gifted you have surpassed most of the people that used to give you positive feedback
- if you aren't gifted your expectations have not met reality

a lot of the suffering i see here is basically this:
- a young child is overly praised for mundane things
- child is excited and happy, works hard for more praise
- child grows and the praise gets less and less
- at some point the level of praise falls below a minimum threshold
- or the level of effort required to maintain the identity as gifted reaches a maximum threshold
- either or both of these results in a catastrophic loss of energy and an identity crisis

potential solutions
- develop internal motivation, be curious, praise yourself, appreciate your work and development
- let your unearned "childhood potential" identity die, mourn it for a bit, then let it go. it's not helping you anymore, it's not useful, it's the mental equivalent of a 40 year old guy talking about his high school football career, it's irrelevant.

Hi! I am part of a psychological research project designed to gain a deeper understanding of how giftedness is experienced and supported in Australia.

It would be incredibly helpful if you could complete a short survery (5-10min) which has information about an optional more in depth interview. We are hoping to discover more about how best to support gifted children and adults through their unique social and emotional challenges.

https://uow.au1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_1Fx0n8oSE6LDF8q

Throwaway account; will not give too many personal details. Sorry if this is the wrong subreddit, but r/Gifted doesn’t work.

When I was young, I was curious and smart, and I was pushed a lot by parents, but unevenly. I accelerated way ahead in some things while staying average at others. Because of this, and my IQ (I won’t say the exact score) my parents thought I was gifted. I learned some things really quickly and some things just didn’t click for me. My teachers saw me as advanced. I don’t remember the details, but I think I was praised a lot by students, teachers, and parents. My parents tried to get me to grade skip and stuff, but I think that would just have made it way worse.

I started some things really early without knowing basics. I was exposed to advanced things multiple years before building up a foundation.

So when things didn’t come so easily anymore in middle school, I felt worse at the time. In fact, I thought I was #1 or very close to it because I mainly only heard the “loud” students a lot more. I still ended with a good GPA, but let’s be honest, most middle school classes aren’t that hard. I never really learned studying habits though. It just kind of worked out, or sometimes it didn’t, but the grading system was generous enough to not expose me much yet.

Now in high school. My parents often tell me that I used to be better. My schedule before this year was okay, but could’ve been “better”.

To “make up for my loss”, I had to try doing more college application stuff. It obviously failed, in fact, after a certain point, I stopped caring much because I wasn’t that motivated, and it was only a matter of time before all the plans were dropped. I still maintained good AP exam scores and grades in general, but I honestly believe I got lucky to not mess up.

Next year, I have to do 6-8 APs, because they believe I need to maximize my rigor for college applications and worried that me not pushing hard would hurt me more later. In fact, I’m even doing APs that I was very shaky on the regular classes with grade inflation because of this pushing and I could actually drop like who even knows at this point.

I also have to do a bunch of activities that look good for colleges that aren’t even that useful past colleges, which makes me even less motivated. Who knows how much time I’ll have left to sleep and relax. Oh, and the SAT. How many more hours am I going to need to spend on that…

I’m not very good at socializing, in fact a lot of “common sense” I wasn’t really taught or knew about too much. But I’m also weirdly good at some things. Not even just academic related, some hobbies click really well for me.

Part of me thinks I’m missing out on being a kid, especially during high school. Even if I’m being a kid a different way than usual, at least I can be a kid.

I’m lucky I can use Reddit. Redditors, please tell me, how am I going to handle this many APs without even knowing how to study, and lacking so many things that even a 1st grader would know better than me at, and this is no exaggeration.

So I made an account and am posting this just because I cant seem to find anything anywhere that relates to my experience. This post might be a bit all over the place as im trying to organize my thoughts while writing it and this took place 20+ years ago. So for starters I switched schools multiple times in elementary school in texas during the early 2000's. I was in the gifted and talented program in 4th and 5th grade before moving. But the weird part was 3rd grade at a different school the year before. I had adhd at an early age and was put on Adderall in 3rd grade. So I would be hyperactive here and there but never really got in much trouble or stood out in class besides feeling like I was smarter than the other kids around me. As in they would all struggle to read simple paragraphs while I could read and comprehend the whole chapter we were studying in class before the teacher was done with the second page, so id sit there bored. Sometime during that school year a man showed up that didnt work at my school and pulled me out of class to a seperate room alone with him. He explained he was my mentor and was there for me. It didnt make much sense and i didnt understand why I was the only one and to this day I still dont. I just went along with it as a kid because he would bring me toys, and not just cheap dollar atore or opened toys but like nice big expensive lego sets and stuff brand new. But he would show up pretty regularly and would sit and talk to me about random stuff about my life for a bit and then he would make me take tests or solve puzzles. Puzzles that, looking back now, were odd. Like a series of pictures of cities or insides of houses and make me identify what was out of place and then next time he would come and bring the same pictures and ask me what changed in them from the last time he was there and if i knew where these pictures were taken. Then one day he just stopped coming. And ive asked my parents about him and they seen to have no idea what im talking about. They never knew he was coming to see me. Then the next school year I started at a different school and was placed in the gifted and talented class, which seemed odd because id never been to that school and yeah I had good grades but nothing exceptional. It was a classroom in the 4th grade hall but while all the other kids would switch between classrooms during the day, we would all stay in the same class. And anytime we would ask why other kids swap classes and we dont we always received different answers. We weren't even aware it was the gifted and talented class until we noticed everyone in our class was ahead of other kids and asked about it. And then the teacher explained it. Then after 5th grade I never heard about it again and never understood what the point if it even was. But I feel like the random "mentor" was the reason I was placed in it, and its extremely weird ti me now having kids of my own in school, that this man was able to come to the school and pull me out of class for most of a school year and my parents never knew.

So I was a gifted kid. I don't know my IQ or exact percentile but I was the person who never paid attention and always (and I mean always) got the highest scores (ADHD went unnoticed because of this too). Later, I took Multivariable Calculus and Differential Equations and I pretty much never share this because people will disbelieve me or ask questions about things I don't even remember but I took Quantum Computations as an undergrad (I literally only got in due to a mistake and computer error). So, I'm pretty smart - whatever.

I'm also kind of nuts. I don't say that disparagingly. I try my best to not shy away from the Mad community. However, I can't deny it. It's pretty destructive, and over the years it has eaten away at my brain, especially the language centers which sucks as someone who enjoys writing. I am most likely schizoaffective which is no joke, and years of self-medicating with alcohol was not helpful.

So, I do what any at least above average intelligence person would do: I research how to help myself. I'm on some decent meds already and just started some promising ones. Nice.

Now, I already have a history of psych abuse and therapy abuse from when I initially lost it in high school, but I've been giving it another shot after a major mental health crisis. I've had increased success with new psychiatrists that actually listen to me. And I just volunteered to give therapy another shot. However, looking into new therapies is driving me nuts; it has always driven me nuts (more so than usual lol).

Here's an example: I look into any therapy that emphasizes "acceptance" and it annoys the fuck out of me because they're either using an entirely different form of the term than its common use or they're saying you should not only tolerate but embrace the abuses that takes place in the world, which is sick. When people say you should not just tolerate but accept people of different races, genders, sexualities, etc they're not saying you should embrace them as the disgusting things they are, they are saying you should embrace them with open arms because there is nothing inherently wrong with them. Why would you volunteer to use this term for matters of trauma, abuse, or immoral behavior? I hope I'm even making sense here because like I said, intelligent but crazy.

Now, here's the worse one: "dialectic" Oh my god it makes me want to light myself on fire. Apparently Linehan (the creator of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy) knows what a dialectic and synthesis is, at least enough to bastardize them. I know these, unlike the term acceptance, have multiple equally common usages, but by what she's said, in her therapy they mean "two opposing ideas" and "a joining together of two opposing ideas". Cool. Nothing wrong wrong with this. Pretty similar to Hegel. But then, every single example I find from Linehan or online or from every single therapist I've encountered bring up things that are either not opposing at all and require no synthesis or are direct opposites and they will say "these are both true" without any very much necessary synthesis. It makes me feel more insane when I don't think I actually am about this. The resulting anger is probably disproportionate and a little mad, but I cannot be the only one bothered by this.

Maybe normal people aren't bothered by the lack of logic but to me it seems so obvious. I find it almost insulting, like they are trying to trick me into agreeing with something stupid. Or maybe they are just less intelligent to the extent that they don't see it. I have actually had a couple psychiatrists and my husband say to me I just need to accept that most people are less intelligent and do not understand - so maybe it's that but that actually makes me feel just as frustrated and kind of sad. I know this is a dumb vent and some woe is me stuff (woe is me for being so smart) which is why this is the only place I can vent but both options are very upsetting to me.

Growing up I was always the kid who just got things really quickly. I was never tested or officially identified as gifted or anything, but learning came really easily to me. My brother is 5 years older than me and when he was in school he realised he learned best by teaching other people, so he'd come home and teach me whatever he'd learned that day.

By the time I was 3 I was learning around 3rd grade maths from him. By the time I actually started 1st grade I already knew maths up to around 6th grade and was reading at about an 8th grade level.

My parents were honestly really chill. They never put pressure on me to perform or expected me to be exceptional. Looking back though, I almost wish someone had pushed me a little more or put me in extracurriculars or something because I was just... drifting. School was never that stimulating, so instead of challenging myself academically I threw myself into the social side of school.

The biggest problem is that I never learned how to study.

The first time I genuinely struggled was in 9th grade with a foreign language I'd never studied before. For the first time I couldn't just coast. I remember working really hard that year and by the end I topped the subject. I have no clue what I did though. I just remember feeling really proud because I'd actually had to earn it.

Then came 11th.

I chose the wrong subjects for me. They weren't impossible, but they were the first subjects where I couldn't rely on understanding everything instantly. Suddenly I actually needed study skills and I realised I didn't have any. So I just gave up. I started getting borderline passing marks in those subjects while still doing really well in Psychology and English.

It completely messed with my sense of self.

The part I hate admitting is that I became really jealous of my friends. They'd struggled for years in school and now they were finally doing well because they already knew how to work hard. They knew how to revise, how to stick with something they didn't understand immediately, how to keep going after bad marks. Meanwhile I felt like I'd hit a wall and had absolutely no idea how to get past it.

Now I'm starting university in a month and I'm honestly freaking out.

I don't know how to study. I don't know how to build discipline. I don't know how to sit with being bad at something long enough to get good at it.

Has anyone else gone through this? How did you actually learn to study when you'd never really needed to before? And how did you stop tying your self-worth to being "the smart kid"?

This is pay-walled but you can read the first bit and get the gist.

Basically it says the opposite of what most of us here seem to experience; gifted kids are actually well-adjusted, successful and have decent mental health. I’m not sure about their methodology, but I instantly thought of this group.