My giftedness almost ruined my life
It all started in 4th grade when the teacher noticed I was doing algebraic equations while others were figuring out multi-digit multiplication. Soon, it led to me skipping a few grades and being in the gifted program from here on out.
Academics, without studying and being the annoying kid who always got high marks without studying for the exam, left me with an extreme ego that I carried into adulthood.
I thought everything should come easy to me. I thought I had it all figured out.
And I’ve been proven wrong and wrong again since I left school.
This then also leaves a sour taste that I was #1 in school, why am I not #1 in life right now at my age? In my grade?
I always thought the people who said gifted people often end up suffering later in life outside of school are rubbish, how can they say my future might be doomed.
Now I realize the traps that most people would end up falling to.
Get Tejas Sharma’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
On top, I was recently diagnosed with BPD + Bipolar 2 + ADHD. My ‘giftedness’ contributed to this because I never sought to seek a diagnosis. Mental health conditions holding me back? Preposterous. I can manage on my own.
I raised $420k in VC funding and despite working hard 10 hours a day many weeks in a row, I kept seeing the balnace dwindle. It was after burning half of it, I realized I need to seek something out.
They invested in the potential of me, without realizing the underlying crazy me and everyone was not seeing.
But why is this related to giftedness?
I feel my superiority complex that deveoped from school. That these exams, tests, homework came so easy to me. How could these people have to go to prep classes and spend 6 hours a day studying while I got it done an hour before class and spent time coding my fun side projects, and playing league?
Meditation, medication, and DBT are great helps. With high rational, logical ability (“high IQ”), we often don’t pay attention to our emotions (“low EQ”). It’s not that we will be forever bad at it.
It’s just that we didn’t to use this muscle so it is weak. Similar to someone who always drives around because they were born with a Mercedez Benz and a driver in their hands (well, the people who have this is gonna be like 1 in a millino, but hope this analogy makes sense).
I think I’m still unraveling so many things that I refused to see because I felt it was pointless. But at the same time, based on the book “Mind is Flat” also just not caring about whims and emotions. Sort of just letting them be there without letting strong feelings, which I mistook for intuition, dictating my life.
That’s all I wanted to share.
