Gifted Kid Syndrome - Tumblr Posts

Did anyone else come from successful families on both sides where each generation is expected to succeed or do better than the last but you're in your final year of high school and have done nothing to prove so by wasting your potential despite having worked hard for most of your life?

Is anyone hear the youngest of your family and already considered the smartest or the best of your already highly capable older siblings, but because in everyone's eyes they wasted their potential everyone's putting the expectation to be the "successful one" even though said siblings are already doing well in their own right and it's just the way your family has perceived what they've done as failing?

Did anyone else constantly succeed growing up in terms of either academics or extra curriculars to the point everything became a complete bore to you so you get accepted into an international private school in hopes of giving you a challenge with your families encouragement. So you go and you thrive but over the years your mental health begins deteriorating so you beg to be let to go back to public school where you think you'll do well because what they're teaching now was already taught to you at private school but you brain just wants rest and doesn't care about failing or succeeding you just want to be able to sleep everything away?

Did anyone else do really well in one languages but not know they're mother tongue because of systematic racism so when you're school finally gives you a chance to learn it you're family convinces you to go but you were already doing so well in a different language and now have to transfer to another so you don't let your family down?

Did anyone else do so much extra curricular activities because you were afraid of making friends and these were some of the only ways you could talk to people but you did them for so long and you became so good at them that these became boring to you as well and for once you just wanted to have a weekend, lunchtime, or some after school time to yourself where you didn't have to worry about practice, training, and homework without missing one?

Did anyone else have to take extra swimming lessons because it's an essential life skill but your fear of deep water prevents you from ever using these skills so you stay in the shallows and feel like the money and time spent on those lessons went to waste?

Did anyone else's family sign them for an after school club because you appearently need to learn new skills for the future but you're already so busy and these lessons are expensive so once again you're wasting more time and money but this time even though you've confronted your family they tell you no but you're suffering of boredom and anxiety of not having learned or understood anything for two and half hours?

Did anyone else miss out on the chance to learn basic life skills like communication, cooking, and cleaning, and first aid because you were too busy trying to succeed at everything else to the point it caused you crippling loneliness and made you think that everyone else's opinion if you was more important than you yourself?

Did anyone else have complete plan for the future because you thought said plan would go the way you were expecting things would work out but the world was already shit and because you're failing at just about everything you were good at now you don't know if you'll make it to uni because you don't have enough credits and you might have to repeat. You don't know if you'll go to art school because no one cares about artists careers. You don't know if you'll become an architect because now you're always destroying your work in frustration because it didn't turn out the way you wanted it to. You don't know if you'll write a successful book because you can't sort out in your head how to sort out the plot, characters, and symbolism and weave everything into a compelling story. You don't know if you'll become an animator because of the crappy work hours compared to payment.

You're plan failed and you have no idea what to do. You've wasted everyone's money and time and you've wasted your potential and lost your future.

No, Just me? Okay then.

So, uh, I have diagnosed depression and generalized anxiety that I figured out I had in middle school thanks to a friend, took me until high school to seek out professionals. Except for the last two, I deal with all of this and just chalked it up to my depression and anxiety. So I’m planning on getting that checked out when I can. If anyone else sees this, could this be the reason I had issues sticking to medication and therapy? Because I had issues applying myself in therapy and would end up severing my relationships with my therapists because I’d get too nervous to call.

If you are an adult who identifies with the concept of Gifted Kid Syndrome and:

You have an unusually intense reaction to the concept of rejection, whether personal, professional, or academic

You have consistent trouble meeting deadlines

You have big dreams and ambitions that are completely achievable, but you consistently can’t take steps toward achieving them and you don’t know why

You procrastinate, like a lot

You like video games, like a lot

You switch seemingly at random between binge watching your favorite shows for absurd lengths of time or not being able to sit down and focus on them unless you’re doing something else at the same time

You cannot for the life of you keep your living area clean and organized

You struggle with substance dependencies, whether with alcohol, tobacco, weed, harder drugs, or even just caffeine

You struggle with texting/calling/emailing back, even for people you care about deeply and/or even for important deadlines

Please, please, please consider seeking out an ADHD evaluation.

I’m not a psychiatrist or any kind of a medical professional, but personally I can’t help but notice how many elements of what I was perceiving as personal failures before my diagnosis stem directly from my executive dysfunction. Meds and an adequate support system can make a world of difference!

Just some advice from your friendly neighborhood nonbinary-mom-friend blogger!

Just to be clear, we can all agree that Raf is absolutely going to go through Gifted Kid Burnout Syndrome in the next 2 years, right? Like- Potentially neurodivergent, super smart kid who wants attention from his family. PRIME (pun intended) EXAMPLE OF A KID WHO GOES THROUGHT GIFTED KID BURNOUT.

I'm going to hunt down fics of this

I think the worst part about my father’s reaction to me being queer is not the anger and lashing out and emotional manipulation, that I can handle just fine, it’s the ”now I’ll have to put my effort into making [my little sister] something” because I have so fucking clearly just been coached to be something, anything, important and successful instead of, you know, happy. Or fulfilled.

And now I absolutely relish in all my wasted potential.

I am simultaneously consumed by the fear of being too much while also dreading not being enough

I always feel like I'm teetering on a ledge where I am simultaneously too much and still never enough... for anyone.

Touya: How do you deal with the crushing pressure of everyone else’s expectations?

Keigo: By outrunning them.

Touya: But… what if I’m not fast enough?

Keigo: .. I don’t know.

Keigo: I don’t know.

i am genuinely really annoyed with the stated of "former gifted kid" discourse. it seems to be the current prevailing opinion is former gifted kids are just whining because oh boo hoo i was only good when classes was just naming colours. but that isnt the case. its a group of literal children who were failed by the education system in a manner different to people who werent considered former gifted kids, and werent given the tools to cope with that and in fact were expected to be able to cope. there was the expectation to cope that lingers with them and means that now there are issues that have gone unaddressed because they should be able to cope with them the system told them they should be able to cope why cant you cope you were such a bright child what happened i thought you were going to become a brain surgeon or a world leader its such a shame surrounded on all sides.

and i dont know. i think people should be kinder about other peoples struggles that they havent had.