The Psychology of The Former Gifted Child

Comments · 2K

• AP

  @ApertureThinking · 8 months ago · pinned

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• MI

  @mikeyd7733 · 8 months ago (edited)

  I was the kid who didn&apos;t do homework and never studied once, but scored the highest in my class on all standardized tests. &nbsp;<br>It drove my teachers mad, in middle school because they knew I didn&apos;t take it serious but I still had the highest marks.<br><br>Later in life when I couldn&apos;t just instantly understand every concept with ease, I had no system or tools to fall back on. &nbsp;My ability to comprehend was still very well in tact, but I could not produce the end results because I had no drive or work ethic. &nbsp;<br><br>I ended up falling into a depressive spiral and substance abuse for nearly a decade starting in young adulthood. &nbsp;I lost all sense of who self esteem and became terrified of taking on any new challenges I wasn&apos;t confident I would succeed in. &nbsp;I became paralyzed to life until relatively recently. &nbsp;I still struggle to put myself into situations where I am not confident in the outcome, but I am learning to take pressure off myself.

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• SE

  @seabrin · 12 days ago

  I am a former gifted child. School was easy but common sense escaped me. Way too late in my adulthood I have started to state that I am not intelligent and the pushback is surprising. It makes me wonder if, as a society, we dangerously over-value intelligence. When what we should value is experimentation, humility, and resilience.

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• CR

  @Creeper-bm9yo · 7 months ago

  I think the problem is that a lot of people forgets the &quot;child&quot; part of gifted child.

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• AN

  @angelleiva36 · 9 days ago (edited)

  I was the “gifted” kid. Placed first in my school on the American math competition. Multiple AP classes. Self taught classical pianist(had a mentor later down the road). Got into all of my chosen universities. Instead, I joined the United States Marine Corps. I learned that I have the potential to be equally useless and that only my hard work, effort, and team collaboration is what will make me stand apart. Not some label that was slapped on me. I learned to stop being an individual. Best decision of my life. Now I’m studying engineering; on my 3rd year and maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Studying for the LSAT, shooting for T14. And let me tell you, studying for the LSAT is something else.

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• FA

  @fatima.c8111 · 7 months ago

  I’ve heard countless times different types of “you were so good at school what happened?” <br>I don’t have an answer. My classmates who got less good grades are more successful than me. <br>I’m stuck between depression and nihilism. <br>“You had some much potential”<br>“Do you still play music and do art?”<br>“You’re so talented in everything” &nbsp;<br><br>Yet here I am. Collage dropout, jobless, chronically depressed and unsocial. <br>I’ve stopped painting and playing music. Reading isn’t as fun anymore. <br>I think im scared of being average and I hate that. So I don’t challenge myself because fear of failure.

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• RE

  @realSerran · 8 months ago

  The reason society fails &quot;gifted&quot; children is because they see the potential and assume it will realize itself naturally on its own, regardless of outside factors or experiences that shape their more neurotypical peers. When those critical life skills like learning how to persevere when you&apos;re not instantly good at something and pick yourself back up from failure never materialize because they were never learned, it stunts their growth and progress in a way that society fails to account for. That, then, is the crux of the tragedy.<br><br>Society either fails to realize or fails to care that &quot;gifted&quot; children are special needs children too.

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• JU

  @jumblejym · 7 months ago

  As another former gifted kid, I can confirm that accepting being stupid is the most <b>liberating</b> thing I&apos;ve ever experienced.<br>The very second you embrace being an idiot and lose that fear of looking foolish is the second your life REALLY begins to take off.

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• FI

  @FilmNygma · 8 months ago

  &quot;You&apos;re so good at many things... That&apos;ll be your biggest problem in life&quot;<br><br>Someone told me that when I was 17... I&apos;m 26 now, they were right

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• GO

  @goatsandroses4258 · 2 months ago (edited)

  I think that one issue you might be missing here is neurodivergence...that is, autism. I was a gifted child, when to a school with some true geniuses (I&apos;m not one), and had no idea I was autistic until in my 50s. Many others have the same story. We&apos;re &quot;smart,&quot; recognize patterns, are often are a decade ahead in vocabulary, and are incredibly intense about our subject-of-interest, BUT that comes along with emotional struggles (sometimes alexithymia), a lack of intuition about social conventions, constant anxiety (possibly due to the inability to shift between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system), and often a burden of ostracism and trauma leading to deep depression. Some of us did well in school because children and even young adults are expected to focus on academics, but adulthood is about juggling taxes, aging parents, kids, pets, car, your own health, &nbsp;neighbors, AND your job. Adult life hits us where we&apos;re often weak: at multitasking, doing &quot;good enough&quot; rather than demanding perfection, and dealing with chaos. Real-world jobs are often not just learning information or doing research, either. Even jobs in academia require a certain amount of playing politics and socializing...another weakness. &nbsp;So even though we can tough things out and do certain jobs, it&apos;s EXHAUSTING to the point of emotional dysregulation and nervous breakdown, and then people say, &quot;S/he had SO much potential! What happened?&quot; Now, obviously there are some geniuses who are NOT autistic, but for many of us, the gift of being gifted comes with a high price. It&apos;s a package deal.

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• OC

  @occultxn · 6 months ago

  &quot;YOU HAD SO MUCH POTENTIAL!&quot;<br><br>This quote was said to me so many times and I don&apos;t think anything else said to me has ever stung more or caused me more internal distress. It helped reinforce that I had failed, so if any parents read this, do your kid a favor and never utter these words to them. It will almost certainly hold them back in some way and is too likely to be utterly devastating to their entire sense of self.

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• AP

  @ApexPsychologyYT · 8 months ago

  <b>Turns out talent expires if you don’t learn discipline</b>

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