Have you ever found yourself Googling something far from criminal, yet it’s embarrassing enough (should you be found out) that you’d want to clear your search history, throw your phone in the ocean, and move to Canada?
Perhaps that’s some undue shame, but in the throes of a mental and physical slump on a suffocating February day, I Googled, “advice for twenty somethings.” I looked up at an invisible security camera, “The Office” style, and shook my head.
When did I start feeling so incompetent?
In my noble quest to research any line of curiosity (well.. self-diagnose), I recalled a phenomenon called Gifted Kid Burnout.
If you search “Gifted Kid Burnout” on Spotify, curiously enough, you will find hyper-specific songs that pertain to this experience. If you search “Gifted Kid Burnout” through a psychology database, you’re less likely to find anything robust.
So, is it real?
Gifted Kid Burnout is real enough to land its own WikiHow article, pages on certified therapists’ websites, and cause people to drop out of prestigious schools following bouts of depression. Learning about this common issue helps contextualize my experience, and it makes me feel a little less alone.
WikiHow defines Gifted Kid Burnout with its symptoms. “Bright” children undergo a progressive lack of motivation that starts in high school and can extend into the workforce years. When these kids were once so bright, how did they end up in a state of degeneracy?
The WikiHow article explains how the “gifted” label can place high expectations on children. These expectations induce long-term stress and, consequently, physical and emotional ailments. Once the inevitable underachievement occurs, the gifted child can experience symptoms of depression and health issues linked to high cortisol. Since cortisol is the body’s “fight-or-flight” hormone, it follows that a child under significant, chronic stress from meeting academic expectations would possess a surplus of this hormone.
High cortisol can result in inflammation, bone loss, diabetes, mood disorders, digestive issues, and more. It can even cause eating disorders unrelated to body image because of its damage to stomach acids.
If anyone claims that Gifted Kid Burnout doesn’t hurt anyone, or that it just means you’re a hard worker, kindly direct them to articles about cortisol.
For more information about the mental toll of Gifted Kid Burnout, I turned to Choosingtherapy.com for a licensed clinical social worker’s peer-reviewed perspective. Author Vallejo says, “Gifted kid burnout is when a child that’s endowed with above-average abilities becomes exhausted as a result of too much pressure from unrealistic expectations they set for themselves or others place on them.”
A key difference between this definition and WikiHow’s definition is that gifted children place unrealistic expectations on themselves.
Vallejo also observes that gifted kids are more prone to burnout than their peers. Gifted kids lack resilience and become maladjusted as they age.
This is a pretty grim outlook for kids who once soared above their peers’ test scores; And that’s another negative result from gifted kid burnout: Results trump experience and effort.
An individual driven by results is at risk for detrimental thought patterns such as perfectionism, high emotional sensitivity, and fear of failure.
Fear of failure breeds a fixed mindset. This is the opposite of ever-helpful growth mindset. The burnt-out gifted child sees him or herself as possessing a fixed amount of talent and competency. This leaves no room for failure that fosters growth.
Then what are some ways to overcome Gifted Kid Burnout?
Between these two articles, there are some helpful tips – some of which feel kitschy, like “find a healthy coping strategy.” That’s nothing new or revolutionary.
The one piece of advice I found particularly relevant to my experience was this:
PRACTICE STICKING WITH SOMETHING HARD
It’s easy to get defeated, lethargic, and eventually quit when living with Gifted Kid Burnout.
That’s the whole reason I looked up “Advice for twenty somethings.” I found myself in a state of potent lack of motivation. How am I supposed to feel ready for the next steps as a twenty-something when I’m so tired of it all?
My experience with Gifted Kid Burnout was as follows:
I skipped first grade
I won lots of academic awards at the end of every school year
I graduated as the Valedictorian of my class
I fast-tracked college
I get a semester of freedom from classes before I graduate, naming it The Gift Semester
I don’t want to do anything anymore.
In Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Ivan Karamazov says that freedom is the worst thing God gave to man.
While I ultimately disagree with Ivan’s philosophy, I can understand his emotional wrestling with the concept of freedom.
Freedom for the burnt-out gifted kid is rest. This rest feels lazy, but what we don’t realize is that our bodies were NEVER meant to deal with chronic stress. Cortisol is for dire situations, not to keep your academic fervor.
When you’ve spent the majority of your life on high alert meeting unrealistic expectations, rest can feel wrong. But it’s not. This semester of rest has been my body’s chance to catch up on things like learning to accept failure, enjoy play, and spending time with people without agenda.
My Christian therapist said something to me about this transitional period that quelled many fears while unfortunately arousing new ones. I admitted to him that I felt terrified of getting stuck at a job, terrified of never even finding a job, and terrified by my lack of urgency to start adulthood.
He said that my life has been school, school, and more school up until this point – that life has moved very fast between transitions. These changes included different grade levels each year (5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, etc.), phasing out of jobs every few months, and taking new classes each semester. He assured me that life will start to look very different than it has in the past, and that it’s okay to slow down. Often, people don’t feel “stuck” at their jobs, but they’ve just decided to stick with that job for a long period.
Sticking with something that’s hard? That I’m not already good at?
That is a nightmare for Gifted Kid Burnout.
In the same night that I Googled “advice for twenty somethings,” I refined my search. I typed “Christian advice for twenty somethings” into the search bar after some consideration.
Metaphysical truths can bring the burnt-out gifted kid back to life. Realigning my thoughts with the spiritual identity I have in Christ – the permanence of my value – swept the barrage of shallow self-improvement blog posts into the metaphorical dustpan.
No matter how well you perform, how gifted you once were, how tired you are now, your life has inherent value in this world and the next.
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