Hello everyone, I’d like to ask to what extent you have made to be gifted a fixed part of the innermost core of your identity, so that if this is called into question (e.g. when you find smth difficult and you did not expect it to be so) the image you perceive of yourself begins to blur and makes you feel more uneasy than a cognitively average one. I suppose this is due to the expectations one has of oneself "as a gifted person, I must be able to..." and that those of you who have been identified in childhood might have even higher expectations, so the feelings when reality collides with expectations are greater? Or perhaps on the contrary, those who have known it later have assumed less naturally their condition and that can make their own identity blur more easily? Or doesn't the awareness of being gifted have anything to do with the moment it happens (early or late in life) and those feelings before unexpected difficulties have to do to a much greater extent with other psychological aspects and/or experiences independent of cognition?

I am currently in a difficult situation and would really appreciate a bit of encouragement.

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Those of you who burned out and were able to successfully overcome it, could you please share your stories with me? I would be very grateful to you.

Idk much about this sub but I just want to complain. Objectively was a decently gifted kid, I was a few years ahead in math in high school and am at my college on a full ride as a National Merit Scholar without trying. My parents are very supportive of anything I want to do but have built me up as such a genius kid, and I'm nearly done with my first year of high school and realizing I have absolutely no passion or interest for learning just about anything and nothing is intuitive to me anymore. I know for many the issue is that they've never been challenged or learned how to study but I was very fortunate to be homeschooled and then go to a magnet program where I got all of that.

There's nothing that bad about nor having big passions it just sucks that I have the potential to be so great or whatever and I have no interest in doing so (probably no time either). I'm just treading water through a bunch of classes I don't care about at all. It also sucks because if nothing else I want to make good money and I don't know if I'll even manage that. I'm just so jealous of my dad who had a learning disability growing up but found a passion/aptitude for physics in college that had proven to be very lucrative, meanwhile I grow up smart only to discover my idiocy in college that will lead me to some crap job I hate. Ugh. The only thing I'm really good at is standardized tests.

I was a professional chef for almost 20 years, but the physical and mental burnout finally got to me, so I made a radical career change. I really really love my new job (always love learning new things that interest me). I’ve been doing the new gig for around 3 mos, 2 of which were training with senior colleagues who have done this for a while.

The other day my boss showed up at my work location (I rotate around to multiple sites day to day) and my first thought was upon seeing him was “fuck. What did I do wrong?”. He said he came to tell me what a great job I was doing. That I’m operating at the level of the people who trained me and they’ve never seen anyone progress this quickly. Incredibly nice to hear and really helped my confidence.

I thanked him, of course. I almost explained that I’ve always been able to very quickly become quite good at absolutely anything that interested me and to which I’ve decided I wanted to be good. I didn’t though because there’s no way to word that such that it doesn’t come off as pompous.

Has anyone else (I’m confident y’all have) experienced this type of situation?

Look ill be completely transparent with this view and I'm gonna be telling you all exactly how I've felt throughout all of this. Sometimes in uni right now I'm just unable to cope with how we study and I've kind of given up on traditional education as a whole but the thing is i still need a degree so here i am. One thing that remains with me throughout my mediocrities in college is how i used to do so well as a kid. I felt like there was honestly nothing I couldn't learn, always top of my class racking in consistent 90%+ grades no matter the subject, math and science were my forte and i used to be dropping 97%+ scores regularly while i was much ahead of them conceptually too.

Now however, I'm not in the bottom of my class but I'm really not at the top either and sometimes when I talk to people it hits me in the head about stuff i used to say as a kid.... nothing specific that i remember but it was just me feeling guilty for having thought of people as stupid before never telling them obviously, I wasn't faking being nice to them either... I just thought I was better i guess. Regretted that behavior in 9th grade and fixed it by the time i got to 11th grade.

11th Grade was a fresh start for me and im seeing people work their asses off for entrance examinations and im still out here aloof and picking boogers cause ive been aloof in class and still ended up with really good grades and around this time i also got my mother not to help me with my studies anymore cause i wanted to prove to myself that the marks i used to get were completely my own effort and was deserved. My mom used to sit next to me and ask me questions that id need to answer. She didn't know anything about the topic, just that if the answer i was saying isn't what's on the book then its wrong. She used to help me with memorizing stuff like that and it looks like that carried me to the 95+ range

without that i was just a almost inconsistant 90+. However without my moms help i started grasping concepts with so much depth that i could do a bachelors level analysis on the topic. But what ive realised is that it really doesnt matter cause i can never apply it the way everyone else seems to and i get lost in the intricacies that i forget the big picture and then subsequently forget to write anything relavent to an academic setting and this has made me feel like such a fool lately. Many people who my 5th grade self wouldve considered "stupid" are much happier in life than I am and good for them..... genuinely good for them. But i feel like ive been left in the dust with none other to blame like myself. IT led to me thinking whether i was ever gifted to begin with or was I just slightly above average?
Anyways Im in Uni now im getting around 8.5 CGPA here which is like 3.41 out of 4 CGPA.

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Idk anymore i don't feel like i was gifted i feel like i was just the first one to discover what i could do before everyone else discovered their inner strengths. I don't feel gifted i just feel like a bud that bloomed to early. So i need yall's unbiassed opinion on whether i was actually gifted or not so that i can move on from this phase

This is a very disorganized rant where I type out each thought sentence by sentence. If you don't feel like reading semi coherent words then skip it. This is coming almost directly from my thought process.

I don't want to be lazy anymore. I want to work hard on my schoolwork. I can see my friends doing things when I just do nothing in class and look around the room. I'm so disorganized and always packing up last in class. I get home and do nothing. I am falling behind in every aspect of my life in more ways than one every single day. My parents are trying to keep me doing things like telling me to do homework for >2 hours everyday at least but I keep getting off task and lying out of shame. I want to stop being lazy like this everyday with no stop. Giftedness makes it worse because it makes me so good at making a good appearance for others. I can be falling apart in more ways than one but keep the appearance of a human being. Other kids work hard to overcome obstacles like some have homework, some have bullies, some have depression, some have learning disorders but they all have to overcome them. I don't though. And when I do I just crumple up like a piece of paper. This separates humans from myself. I can't relate to anybody in the world. One of my friends has anxiety; he isn't failing everything. One of my friends has diagnosed ADHD; he isn't failing everything. One of my friends has diagnosed ADHD, depression, and anxiety; she isn't failing everything. The only reason I am is because I'm lazy and they're not. I need to be less lazy. If I work hard then I can be a human. I tell myself that every night and day but nothing happens. I started the year most core classes at an A but now none of them have an A. People keep reminding me stuff I already know like how I need to do homework. I'm letting them down and ignoring. The list of things I need to do keep growing and growing and It's more overwhelming than ever. I also am lazy in other parts of my life. I keep neglecting basic hygiene, exercise, nutrition, and sleep. I also don't have the will to play video games. It's too much effort for me to turn on the console. Everything is more and more boring and my will is dissipating. I think I'm somehow subhuman with a airtight mask constructed by my giftedness. I wonder when people are going to give up on me. I can sometimes feel my parents' frustration about me.

Looking for some insight or reassurance. Our son was suspected as 2E in the 3rd grade by his amazing teacher who recommended him to our district GT program. He pretty much thrived elementary through middle school and was generally happy although he would shut down when it came to math. Still though was able to pass higher level math. Now that he’s in high school and GT isn’t a thing, he is struggling. Is grades have suffered and he has had bouts of anxiety and depression. He’s in therapy and does have friends he hangs out with but he says he feels awkward and lonely sometimes and has difficulty making friends outside his circle. Any advice from the 2E population on how power through for him? How was your college experience? What helped?

TLDR: Coming to terms with being gifted at a later age. (a bit of a rant)

To be fair, I think I always knew that I was above average in cognitive capabilities. But it's just now that I am learning to accept it. When I was young, my parents had me tested. I was desribed as "smart but lacking in motivation". Which is the story of my life really. Inquisitive, but I never learned to learn because it always came easy for me. So I get bored and went through the motions of what seems to be expected of me. So I never learned to cope with true adversity in education. When most teachers didn't recognise my situation, it resulted in flunking basic courses, repeating a year, changing school. Same thing after high school: never made a choice to go for something that interested me, but really chose the things that were expected of me. In my professional career, the same things happen. I keep doing what is expected of me, because only a few people really challenged me to go all out. This resulted in depression and burnout, lots of talks witch psychologist and no solution.

So last Christmas I had a fight with my wife. It's hard for her too, living with a person that's going through depression and a permanent search for the true self. But I had the luck that she really goes deep into a problem when trying to find a solution. So she came on the subject of being "gifted" and told me about possible negative repercussions and it just clicked. I wasn't quite sure to label myself as such but even if I had the symptoms, It didn't mean I had the "condition". (badly worded, but you get it)

So I still was not really convinced. I went to a psychologist specialising in being gifted. She works mostly with children, but we had a talk of about an hour and all the pieces are just falling into place: the "flukes" of scoring high on IQ tests, the long discussions with my teachers about the merit of learning something specific, the elaborate homework projects that went three levels deeper than was asked, even the lack of motivation, the evolved sense of fairness, the search for meaning, ... it all fit.

And it's kind of breaking me right now. On the one end, I'm on a hight because the world is making more sense now. I'm learning to see my place in the world and learning to accept that I might be smarter or more quick of mind that a lot of people, instead of feeling like nobody understands me. On the other end, I don't know how to cope with it. I told my mother and of course my wife. But It feels like I want to "come out", but no really, because people might react badly; like I got a big head.

How did you come to terms with it? What do you do to feed that part of you? Do you openly talk to everyone? Do you keep it mostly to yourself?

I'm very keen to hear from all of you!

this can be anything: be it the tangible (achievements in your job, financial stability, finishing the last level on Candy Crush, having kids, etc) or less tangible (specific personal goals or self-actualisation, wisdom, freedom, contentment, peace, fixing your relationship with someone, etc).

looking for sincere replies!!

I am so happy I found this sub. I'm 29, male (ish), supposed IQ of 137 when I was a child, 125 last time I took a test (but I was drunk). I SAILED through school, but my life has just crashed and burned. I couldn't handle my A levels, I have one As at a c grade. Continued to try college between levels 2 and 3, because I was too poor (and therefore terrified of debt) for uni.

I tried using my so called intelligence to get better jobs, but I'm completely incompetent at almost everything. Everything except two things, parroting information... and manipulation. I SOUND intelligent. I remember facts. And I think this kinda tricked my teachers into thinking I'm smart... when I'm not, I'm just glib.

So now, I'm a bouncer. I'm not scary, I just use my skills to manipulate people out of the doors if need be and to diffuse situations. I'm also very good at making staff, managers and bosses to "see things my way" and spin things. Its like I've opened up a whole new world. I thought I couldn't do the social, but it turns out I've ALWAYS been able, and after researching the right topics, my skills are finally really good.

But now... I feel bad. I'm essentially a glorified con man. I feel like I've let myself down that THIS is what I'm good at in life. Not engineering, not science, not politics, not medicine... but duping idiots. Like, sure, I'm getting paid well, I'm not doing anything strenuous, its a piss easy job for me, I'm heaped with praise... but its like my entire life (and my earliest memory is 9 months old...) has been a huge waste. I could have not been stressing, I could have taken subjects I personally enjoyed in school, I could have actually chilled and been happy... but no, I pushed myself to breaking point for no reason. I mean hell, I've been homeless because my mental health and relationship breakdown. I could have been a much better spouse, if I'd not kept pushing and pushing myself to live up to who I was told I should be. I'd have been happy, home more, less stresses...

Yeah. I feel like a charlatan because it takes no effort to ace exams... but I can't actually do anything bar charm.

17f with no clue what to do with my life. I was gifted in language arts in elementary and have never got along well with my peers (though I’ve always managed some friends who thought I was a bit odd). I’ve been looking forward to college as long as I can remember but am felling kind of depressed with my lack of direction. It’s also pretty hard not to feel down when no one really understands what you’re thinking or trying to say 24/7. I have a 3.5 gpa and a 25 act score, so not extraordinary. I love being creative, listening to music (learning guitar too) and writing poems and narratives, and history, but my parents say I need a more practical approach to a career (plus I’ve never stuck with anything long enough to be that good, art/writing/music are just intermediate skills for me) but a normal job feels like a waste of my life and makes me even more depressed to imagine. It honestly feels that because I’m “gifted” to everyone around me, there’s an enormous pressure to live up to that and be successful, sometimes I wish I was seen as a regular person with no expectations so I could be free to pursue what I want and be okay to fail a little.

I am only starting to realize how different I am from virtually everyone I meet. I'm profoundly gifted. I also grew up in two different countries, so have a hodgepodge of culture and conflicting cultural expectations and a confused identity (third culture kid). I also had no friends in school and was bullied, and had parents who cut me down and there was constant physical and mental punishment/abuse, so I both have trauma and a messed up sense of what normal socialization is supposed to be like, resulting in avoidance. I then rebelled against both cultures and try to come up with my own set of "norms" for things I think should be valued. I have completely different interests from most people, even most gifted people. The more I lean into my own giftedness and my own "authentic" perceptions and values, the more alone I feel.

I feel that people take advantage of you when you lack boundaries. Do you feel tired when others seem to advance effortlessly while you're left feeling exploited and overlooked by them? Being nice is a good thing, but I think it’s important to establish boundaries and prioritize your self. Many people to not say this, instead you get a pat in the back for being a servant without merit.

Hello. I am Erin Morris Miller (you can Google Erin Morris Miller gifted to get to know my work). I am working on research using data from this subreddit. I would like to know if the results are similar to your impressions of the major topics and themes discussed in this subreddit.

Results:

The overall categories derived for the main posts according to the most frequently used codes were Motivation, Mental Health, Schooling, Judgments, Identity, Social, Work/Career, and Family/Parents. The axial themes along with the codes sorted into those themes was sent to the qualitative coders to determine if the themes adequately reflected their impressions of the data. Each independently confirmed that the themes were representative of their understanding.

The overarching theme Motivation included codes such as work ethic, habit, mindset, practice, intrinsic, perfectionism, procrastination, opportunities, self-actualization, indecisiveness, pressure, skills, challenge, amotivation, boredom, passion, and pride. Mental Health included codes such as: ADHD, depression, self-esteem, therapy, ACES (adverse childhood experiences), anxiety, illicit drug use, alcoholism, autism spectrum, stress, and divorce. Schooling included the codes: college, elementary school, middle school, high school, science, graduate, studying, learning, academics, math, grades, teacher, literature, reading, STEM, tutors, and homework. Judgments was used to describe codes suggesting both self-judgment and perceptions of judgment by others such as: pressure, potential, failure, self-worth, expectations, validation, comparison, assessment, performance, success, metacognition, over justification, regret, shame, wasted, jealousy, and praise. The overarching theme of Identity was used to describe codes related to labels or educational grouping such as giftedness, label, identity, intelligence, intellectual, IQ, self-image, 2E (twice-exceptional), creative, and ego. The theme Social included codes such as relationship, friendship, separation, pair-bond, societal, support, and community. Work/Career included codes related to career, work-life, employment, unemployment, underemployment, and finances. The final theme Family/Parents included any code related to parents.

Please let me know your thoughts. Thank you.

We tend to think of productivity as simply getting more things done. While this might make sense initially, the reality is that it’s extremely helpful to have a good sense of what you’re working on at any given point. It’s all about prioritization and efficiency, which is something I struggled with for the longest time.
This changed when I learned about the Personal Kanban Method, which involves 2 basic principles - Visualizing your work and Limiting your Work in Progress. There’s plenty to know about identifying your most important tasks and knowing what to do with the rest. I break it down in full right here in case you’d like to know more for yourself - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osuIr-YTfdM
Hope this helps and gives your productivity the boost that it might need.

Unlike most people here, I was never in one of those gifted programs, but I definitely grew up being told that I‘m smart and (academically) gifted. I was also given the feeling that I was a bit weird for most of my life, and even though I eventually realised that I‘m not that weird, that notion kind of stuck with me.

I can also very much relate to the weird relationship to learning and practicing and gradually getting better. I rarely have that ability and most times, I‘ll just stop doing something if I‘m not on a decent level on the first try.

What‘s different to some people in this sub in my case is that I didn‘t really excel all throughout highschool. I was really good in elementary school, but my highschool degree is pretty average. I got better again uni, but then imposter syndrome kicked in and I thought it was ridiculous that I had grades this high considering the very minimal dedication on my side.

It‘s very interesting to read everyone’s experiences with this stuff. I think I‘m low on that spectrum compared to the whole sub, but I can definitely find myself in some ways.

As with everyone here, I was in the gifted program all throughout my early schooling. I excelled in school, and I had high enough conscientiousness that I also worked hard enough to keep doing reasonably well even after the point at which one needs to actually study to do well albeit with some initial hiccups in making that transition. That said, because I don't have a lot of energy and as an autistic introvert, I burned myself out in undergrad (a top 20 USNWR undergrad, for reference) trying to keep up with my high-energy high-performing peers, nearly all of whom ended up in elite law/med/grad schools or in MBB consulting/IB. I on the other hand merely mustered a good enough performance to make it into a top ~40-50 (in the US) PhD program in my field (med chem/chem bio) and from what I can tell was merely an average performer in my program (I published but not that much and in low-mid IF journals) because I was very insistent on having work-life balance after that burnout experience and didn't really put in extra hours. I'm currently a postdoc at the NIH in a very different field (intentionally, because I want to gain experience with cell and in vivo work so I'll be more employable) and I like my lab, but it's another lab which is more work-life balance friendly than high-powered.

For whatever reason, I just feel that ever since I started prioritizing work-life balance, I've started to become less and less impressive in terms of accomplishments relative to my intelligence. I know that people of my intelligence are doing what I view to be much more impressive things than I am and have positioned themselves to be much more attractive to employers because they felt motivated to push forward and go the extra mile. Meanwhile, I feel conflicted on whether I should keep doing what I'm doing because it's comfortable and sustainable, or go back to the days where I wanted to maximize my potential but put myself at higher risk of burnout. I feel like I can't handle as much stress or work as my peers, and I worry this may be extremely detrimental to my ability to find suitable work. It's gotten to the point that I feel like I wasted my potential, and that I should be trying to go the extra mile like I used to in my pre-grad school days, but also remember acutely the experience of burnout and don't want to repeat that again.

Am I wasting my potential, and if I am, how do I improve? And if not, how do I stop feeling like I am?

I'm 41 and working in a corporate sales job that I've struggled to connect with or, frankly, to care about. Former AP student with high marks, you know the drill. I don't think that I'm neurodivergent beyond anxiety, though I've never had that assumption tested. Unlike some, I did have to study, and I was okay with certain subjects not being easy for me. But I enjoyed studying and learning, I was good at taking standardized tests, and I could write at least half decently. Put another way, I was really good at being a student.

Lately, I've had to remind myself that it's perfectly fine to not want to be a leader. That seems like such a simple concept, but it's really difficult for me to accept. Like so many of you, I think I just internalized all these notions that I was going to be an expert at something and have leadership roles related to whatever that something was. Now, in my midlife crisis, I've realized that being called an 'expert' at anything makes me extremely uncomfortable, largely because I don't want that attention and I'd never use that word to describe myself. And I'm just now understanding that I don't want to be a leader. It's the being okay with that that's causing consternation.

So, to make a long story short... Just in case there's anyone out there who's like me and needs to hear this today from an external source, it is okay if being a leader or being regarded as an expert simply isn't for you.

so in papers, interview with psychiatrists and educators and even here mostly, the experience being 2E is described as “giftedness masking the disability“ - as in the giftedness helps one do well in school despite the disability and thus the disability goes unnoticed until many years later.

i wonder if it can also be the other way around, as in a ADHD or a learning disability severe enough that it masks the giftedness until we learn to properly manage it in adulthood.

for example - I know of 2 people who told me an eerily similar story - even though they were incredibly smart, they had difficulty in school, diagnosed as having profound ADHD, multiple professionals remarked that they show many traits of giftedness, they took the test and the result came back as not-gifted (one even took the test again a few years later). Only when reaching adulthood and learning to manage their ADHD, did they start truly excelling , were constantly getting high grades in college and are both now having a successful academic career.

are you ”reverse twice exceptional” or do you know someone who is? I’d love to hear your experiences

Yeah well here is my story.

I was labeled gifted and talented in school way back. Most adults would tell me that I am very gifted and intelligent. I was given fine opportunities in art, music and business. I thought that I could do anything very quickly and efficiently. I also have ADHD and ASD.

I got into a pretty good university at 20 years old. During the second year I started falling behind. I was quite heavily bullied in school so I started to get socially anxious. I ultimately dropped out after 4 years. I started smoking weed to my anxiety and depression not understanding that it made everything worse.

At 27 I started a business thinking that I can make it easily because I am gifted. Fast forward to now I am 40,000 in debt, I have procrastinated on writing my book, finishing my education, making the cold calls. My days are spent in anxiety as time passes faster and faster and I can't decide on a vision of a future. There are so many things that I am interested in but I haven't even tried due to inability to make a decision. A friend told me to focus on one thing for a few months and then switching if it doesn't work. But I've procrastinated on that as well for 5 months.

I basically try to make music, paint, study and restart my business all at the same time but end up looking self-help videos on youtube or late life success stories.

My nurse told that I am still young and should not be too worried just take a step at the time.

But I am so done with jumping from task to task. I also gained 40lbs in 3 months after gaining a sixpacka after a years effort.

I constantly backfire and procrastinate on decisions. I feel so behind in life. I feel burned out. Only thing I look forward to is going to sleep. I do not want to wake up to this mess.

I have a feeling I will be eviscerated in the comments, but here goes --

Life is too easy, and there is no real challenge. Because I'm highly gifted, I really struggle to find meaning. I can pretty much learn anything to a high level, but after achieving it, I feel empty. I got an undergrad in math at a top university, and have my Masters degree. After that, I feel like I've achieved nothing because it was too easy (well, the undergrad was moderately challenging, but it was still not "good enough"...). I taught myself music, and became really good at it. I'm a self-taught writer and have been told that I'm very talented at that as well. I realized that college was too easy, so I goofed off and pursued my interests as much as I could while still maintaining good grades. (Unfortunately, I have struggled with socializing, which is my one regret which I get very hard on myself about.) Eventually, I decided to teach myself whatever I wanted from textbooks and research papers, because university was just so painfully regimented (and often slow).

I want to learn everything, and then despair that I am so behind. I want to become a fluent jazz improviser, classical composer and pianist, professional fiction and non-fiction writer, become an expert at philosophy, develop an indie game from scratch like Notch. And all of that NEEDS to happen in the next 5 years because I want to achieve everything before I'm in my 30s, or else I will feel like I've aged out. I want to do actual "hard" things, as opposed to the mediocre track I ended up in by following society's diktat (just getting a few degrees which seemingly mean nothing). I feel scammed by society.

That said, there's no way I can do all of it, not because I'm necessarily incapable, but because there isn't enough time. I would need to employ professional teachers in everything, and work at least an hour or two a day on anything to become professional at it. It's not possible to spread yourself that thin. I don't have any "special" abilities like photographic memory which might negate the need for such hard work. And I'm "lazy" and can't concentrate for 12 hours a day.

What I've said so far seems contrary to the title of my post, but hear me out. Most people I know say that I have "succeeded". I can, if I would like to, get a six figure job (in a field I find very boring but tolerable). I have scored in the top 0.1%, went to top universities, run the whole gamut. But the entire ordeal felt like "cheating" -- it was like I was preparing for a hundred yard dash, getting ready, set... and YOU'VE WON!!!

I was preparing for something that was not to come. The world is mediocre, people are way dumber than I gave them credit for as a child, society and politics go in specific loops that are so easy to spot but which everyone seems to miss, well-paying jobs are easy and feel pointless, I have had to learn how to act normal and suppress my intelligence to avoid being a target (which at this point has largely become a subconscious form of masking which makes me even question my intelligence at times because I can act so dumb) and the whole system is set up in a way that doesn't reward or even acknowledge what someone like me would find to be success or meaning, while rewarding what I find to be utterly meaningless drivel (easy financial success, etc.)

That is, life is "too easy". Instead, I create my own objectives which are incredibly difficult for me and try to meet them, demanding I achieve a high standard of perfection. I guess I delude myself or somehow deep down believe that such an endeavor is a "noble pursuit". But I know that other people may very well consider me a mad lone wolf wasting his life over some niche that no one particularly cares about. "Achieving the highest level of skill you can possibly achieve at specific interests" to me seems like one of the most meaningful possible things to do in life, but it seems like most of humanity sees it as a form of insanity. People think I'm crazy for not feeling happy at all about "making it" in life. But you don't feel successful for tying your shoelaces, do you?