Gifted kid syndrome

I just read an article about this, and it resonated with me. It's the feeling of not building the right skills as a child, breezing through life only to find out that you're lacking those key skills as an adult and no one is praising you anymore. Having latent talent for math and english definitely doesn't prepare you for the time management and work life balance you need to wrangle later in life. In my case, having parents with extraordinarily high expectations also contributed heavily to this. I could never please them enough and felt I had to sacrifice myself constantly to do so. As if my primary purpose was to do well in school and everything else was secondary. I forgot why I had to do well to begin with, I just did. School became my whole identity; if I stopped doing well, I felt insecure. My mental health in high school was pretty awful. 

Gifted kid syndrome is also the feeling of betraying the potential you once had as a child. In my case it's not just academic potential, it's the hope and life I had in me as a child. I had so many hopes and dreams for the future and I seemed on the right track to becoming mature. I was trying so hard and putting my all into everything, I was emotional but I was present. I wanted to be social, I wanted to be a great artist and try everything, I wanted to one day be healthy. It was a goal so far away I believed I could reach, and it lifted my heart and made me happy. 

It's sad that I couldn't carry that momentum into adulthood. I realized that every day I struggle with the weight of feeling like I lost my dreams and, regardless of what I do I'm operating under a disconnected and disappointed past self. It makes me afraid to dream again.

Even beyond the lost hope I feel like my very mind has deteriorated. I can't remember things, can't recall words, my thoughts feel like they hold onto this world my a thread. Has depression and anxiety been destroying my executive functions? Even if they are, I haven't done anytjing about it all these years, I couldn't. Watching myself deteriorate mentally physically and spiritually and being unable to call out for help and get treatment.. it's traumatizing in a way I have yet to fully address. 

I've been very sad since yesterday. I know it's wallowing but it takes a real conscious effort to stop doing that. I know I should talk to somebody but this pandemic has me feeling more distant and dissociative from everyone than ever. I know I should find inner strength. But I'm struggling and I feel so lonely. It's a paradox. 

The one aspect of gifted kid syndrome that resonates with me especially hard is the constant need to be better than others. It's not out of arrogance, but we're so used to that being expected of us. I'm not sure why that is but it's a sentiment shared between people who struggle with this, so there must be a good reason. I've always held myself to a higher standard than other people. Academically, maturity wise, artistically. I always wanted my schoolwork to go the extra mile. I always wanted to be mature and cool headed, and a good honest listener. And I always wanted to be a "real" artist who practiced hard at their craft and didn't rely on fanart or social media alghorithms to get famous. I wanted to be someone who worked hard on myself and never gave up and became a positive influence on the people around me. Being extraordinary sounded so enticing. I always fell short achieving it, though I constantly egged myself in that direction. Slowly, I gave up on being extraordinary and began accepting that I was just like everyone else, a realization that brought me sadness but also relief. I'm still going through that process. I still hold myself to those standards out of habit, which leads to always feeling not enough, like I'm falling behind my goals. 

That's it for my dissertation on gifted kid syndrome. More of a ramble on how it's affected me personally. I know some people hold the idea of this "syndrome" in contempt. I believe that if nothing else it's a valid set of problems resulting from a set of existing factors in education and culture. Otherwise, it wouldn't be such a widespread thing. I completely forgot to mention that former gifted kids often develope depression and anxiety into adulthood. 

I forgot to add a lot of this is also characteristic of high functioning anxiety. Whether that's caused by gifted kid syndrome is an interesting question. 

Between that, my lack of love/socialization as a kid and my dysfunctional family, I really feel like I'm just learning to be human most days.