142. The curse of being an overachiever

down the psychology of our twenties. This topic today is devoted to all of my overachievers, all of my former golden children, gifted children, perfectionists, the people who have grown up with the idea instilled in them that they needed to be the best, they needed to be doing the

most to have value, to be worth something. Today, we are going to break down the paradox, the curse of being an overachiever, particularly in our twenties, and all of the pressure, the burnout, the anxiety that comes with it, kind of with the hope that we can release ourselves from the expectations we have internalized that are holding us back from actually being happy, from pursuing the kind of

life that we want in a balanced and healthy fashion. We, of course, are also going to explore all of the psychology, the family dynamics, the early childhood experiences that have made us into the person that we are today and navigating. I think that identity crisis that I think we all naturally experience as we age and we mature, and we realize that perhaps this version of us, this overachieving version of us, is not really who we want to be.

We cannot live up the golden child expectation. I think growing up, many of us who were labeled as quote unquote gifted or smart or mature for our age, were very much encouraged, if not pressured, to excel, not just by our parents or close family, although they are a huge contributor, but also by a society in general and our broader schooling and education system that placed so much

value on success and tangible accomplishment. This value, this norm is so profound and impactful that I think it actually becomes part of who we are. We were the ones who had to get an A on every test, who won every school award, We volunteered whilst playing three sports, working a part time job, doing extra credit constantly, you know, seeking the validation and the praise from our teachers and

our peers and our families. I think from the outside, that gives off the image that we have it all together, and maybe we even enjoy the sense of accomplishment and pride that comes with it, even if we know what it's costing us. But a very common experience is reaching your twenties and kind of hitting a point of burnout

where you just simply cannot be that person anymore. If you grew up always being an overachiever, it's a pretty rude awakening to reach adulthood or university or post grad life and come across challenges that you cannot overcome by simply working harder. You no longer have the mental energy to be this version of yourself. Or a big one, A huge one is encountering people who are naturally just smarter than you, or more creative or more talented, and

you experience and it's somewhat of an identity crisis. You know, we are no longer this exceptional, gifted child. And if you are not the gifted child, the golden child, who are we? Who are we? Really? So we're going to explore this transition today and all that comes with it. I think being an overachiever basically means you are someone who continually performs beyond what is expected or to a

really high level. That is often applied to academic success, but it relates to things like athletic or sporting ability, our creativity, our entrepreneurship, how many things we can seemingly manage to juggle at the same time. There are some pretty clear indicators of what an overachiever looks like, and although there is not one definition, I think psychologists often identify these types of people as individuals who focus on success,

haveing a a diction or an obsession with success. But regardless of how much they achieve, they are never satisfied, They never feel like they deserve what they have, or they fail to see their own accomplishments and achievements from an objective perspective. When we think about it that way, overachievers are also typically perfectionists. These two personality traits come hand in hand, and they do a lot of impressive

things at a high level. They are constantly challenging themselves with new projects, but they simultaneously engage in a lot of excessive self criticism. They have a tendency to brate themselves for failing to live up to their own high expectations, they have poor work or study life balance. They are only ever focused on the future. That is a critical component of being an overachiever. And more importantly, they are

motivated by fear. Fear of failure, fear of regret, fear of embarrassment, fear of disappointing others, or maybe not living up to your potential. Maybe the person I'm describing is you. You recognize yourself in that description. It's probably something that

you have slowly come to realize. But I think the curse or the paradox of being an overachiever is that because society typically rewards and praises people who work hard, who stretch themselves too thin, we think that our behavior, our overachieving tendencies, they can't possibly be bad, right, You know, this can't be harmful if we are excelling and we're

also getting praised for it. But this compulsion to push ourselves to our limits is really dangerous, and I don't think that it's part of a longer term equation for happiness. There was such a fascinating article published on this a few years back, so in the study Conductor in twenty nineteen, these researchers surveyed over one thousand people who were earning over two hundred thousand dollars, who had obtained some form of post graduation education a master's, a diploma, a PhD,

and they also self identified as overachievers. They then asked these people three questions. Are you unhappy? Do you believe that achieving more will make you happy? Does the success of other people make you jealous? Or increase your level of unhappiness? Over half of these people answered yes to all of those questions. We think that tangible success and working really hard is going to make us happy, is

going to create a fulfilling life. But actually what we're seeing is what these researchers called the superstar paradox, whereby the people who seemingly have it all are objectively really unhappy at times. I also see this a lot with people who work really high paying jobs straight out of university, like investment banking and such, and they always say, I'm just gonna work really hard until I'm thirty five and

then I'll have enough money to retire. Or I'm just gonna work three jobs, all of these hours as all of this year, for as long as I can so that then next year I can rest, and rarely does that actually happen normally. When we get stuck in this cycle of overachieving, we're working towards creating our dream life, but we're never actually giving ourselves time to enjoy the life that we have now or enjoy that dream. So what makes us overachievers? How do we become these people? Oftentimes?

I think with most things that cause stress or disorder or discomfort in adulthood, the original roots are in childhood. More times than not, this is the case, and I think that is the case here. It's likely that being able to work really hard, to push yourself has helped you get to where you are today. Maybe you have developed it as a defensive or protective mechanism, and you have derived a lot of these expectations from your parents,

from your family, from your culture, from your environment. I see this a lot with people who are labeled as gifted children when they were younger. At some stage, someone has noticed or decided that you were above average intelligence or you had more natural abilities than the average person, and that they decided you are going to do amazing things, that you are going to be exceptional, and they begin

to treat you differently they expect more from you. You get put an accelerated classes, you get harder assignments, you skip a few years at school. Everything has to be better. You always have to give more. When that occurs, you are not actually getting the chance to be a kid, to just be a kid, because you've been deemed mature for your age, so you're required to grow up faster than those around you and take on additional expectations, responsibilities, burdens.

I absolutely despise the term gifted child when it's used out of context because a I think, I know it sounds cheesy, but every child, every person is gifted. They might not just show it in an academic context or a school environment and be it's quite exclusive. It may prevent some kids from actually getting the support they need because they aren't term just gifted. And see, when you label a child this, you don't let them figure out their own identity. You don't allow them to be anything

but what you have expected them to be. And part of that is an expectation of accomplishment and success and accolades. Not everyone wants that. The older they get kids, as they become adolescents and then adults should be able to independently determine what they want from their life, and a label that comes with that expectation might not give them

that opportunity, and there's been research on this. One of the most exciting pieces of research around this was eight decade long study eighty years conducted at Stanford University starting back before World War One, and what they did was they followed children who were very bright as kids for their entire lives, observing them every three years, and they

identified this phenomenon known as early ripe early rot. The researchers expected these formerly gifted kids to be happier, to be making more money, to be successful, to be fulfilled, and that was the case sometimes, but beyond the tangible success, many of the individuals that they watched actually faced significantly more emotional problems as they grew up. They reported that their self concept was really excessively based on being intelligent, so they were really never given a chance to see

who they were. Beyond that, they experienced a lot of self doubt. They felt like they that their life path was kind of determined for them. And I think often when we prioritize tangible success over the smaller joys in our lives, we miss out on the things that actually bring beauty. We don't see our friends, we don't travel, we don't take time to rest, we don't invest in our relationships. It's really similar to what psychologists call golden

child syndrome. So a golden child is someone who is considered special by their family and chosen as kind of

like a proxy for their parents' own achievements. Unfortunately, this child must live up to perhaps unattainable levels of perfection because they constantly need to satisfy their parents, or in some case they kind of act as like a symbolic trophy for their parents to show off and so that they can kind of point to their child and say, look, we raised them, so we must be doing something right. They wouldn't be that smart, that talented if we weren't

also smart and talented. So unsurprisingly, at that level, most psychologists suggest that one or both of the parents is probably narcissistic on some level. Maybe they're even experiencing parentification, whereby the role of the parent and the child is reversed. You have to support your parents emotionally by validating them through your accomplishments, but after a while, those standards that your parents have kind of forced on you, become self imposed.

They begin to really matter to you because you've been exposed to them enough. They've become repetitive. So no longer is it I have to practice for five hours otherwise my parents will be disappointed. Soon it becomes what we call introjected motivation. I have to work hard otherwise I will feel guilty. Even when my parents my family is not around, even when no one is telling me to be this version of myself. I have been indoctrinated into

this ideology of success. That is how an overachiever emerges. This is super common within eldest children in particular. I think because so much family pressure gets placed on them to set the standard for younger siblings, they feel more of a responsibility to maybe support the family, to keep the family going. We could honestly get into a whole separate episode on what it means to be the eldest daughter specifically, but oh my god, that is a whole

other psychological profile to dissect. We do not have time. But I also think that being an overachiever may have become somewhat of a survival tool for a lot of us when we were younger. There are three specific reasons for that. Firstly, your academic, sporting, musical accomplishments whatever they were, they allowed you to please the people around you, and they were essentially a protective mechanism against anger or disappointment. If you were this perfect child, no one could find

fault with you, and you were safe. Secondly, being an overachieverer may have enabled you to survive in a social environment where you felt left out. If you worked hard enough, you could leave your hometown. You could get as far away as possible from the people you grew up with or you went to school with. You could leave this kind of life that made you unhappy. It may also be that you used work and achievement and grades, whatever it was, as a proxy for self worth and self esteem.

For many of us, I think our over achievement at the end of the day stems from feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Maybe you didn't feel great in your own skin. You weren't the funniest person, or the most attractive, all the most popular, or the most creative, but you could be the most hard working. Therefore, we begin to conflate our self worth, our self concept, how we feel about ourselves with external validation. We need that buzz of being

told that we've done well. We need to receive praise or rewards. We want to be that person, that version of us who quote unquote does it all. So to give up being an overachiever, to give up working yourself to exhaustion, you would have to give up a really core element and foundation of your identity. You know, you

do not know who you are without your accomplishments. I think this makes a lot of sense as well in the kind of society we're living in today, where we really do expect everyone to be exceptional and accomplished, and there is such a high degree of competition to get into university or to get that internship or that dream job. There's just also a general fascination with hustle culture, with success,

with being a millionaire, with productivity. So in those situations it may be why despite feeling really exhausted, really burnt out, we continue to grind away, we continue to just keep working. One of the final reasons that is really significant is that we overwork ourselves as a distraction for the other things that we're dealing with. For example, I remember when I experienced like heartbreak for the first time. I worked so much harder in my classes. I studied more than

I ever had before. I just like took on so many different responsibilities. And this pattern of behavior was actually a reaction to that deeper emotional distress and discomfort, where if I buried myself in work, it would mean that I never had to give myself time to really think about how I was feeling, you know, out of sight, out of mind, right, So you exhaust yourself with a million commitments and goals and projects so that you don't have to see what you're really needing to deal with

in those moments at the end of the day. Focusing on achievement, working yourself to the point of burnout again and again for whatever reason, is a type of obsessive behavior. And obsessive behaviors are rarely what they seem at the surface level. Normally, they stem from needing control, needing a sense of safety or security, or to feel better about ourselves. So I think we know that, but a lot of people might make the argument that being an overachiever isn't

the worst thing in the world. It probably isn't, you know. There are so many other things that do sit heavy on our mind, and I actually posted a video about this the other day and someone commented being like, you only hate on overachievers because you could never do what they do, Like you're a failure, so you're just jealous, And I was like, you know, firstly, ouch unnecessary, but secondly,

that is not the point. You can still admire the things that you have been able to achieve whilst realizing that maybe you didn't need to push yourself to the point of needing to achieve that much. You know. The point here is these people may have everything that they have wanted. Everyone might think that they are super impressive and incredible, but are they really happy? What's the cost? Here?

We are going to discuss all of that and more, also including how to heal that former gifted child version of yourself after this shortbreak. Being an overachiever is kind of like a drug because, despite how destructive it is, you will undoubtedly receive praise. You will be rewarded for doing things that others cannot do or aren't capable of doing, and that that admiration is something that we can't help

but live for. It feels really nice to be recognized and celebrated, so there's no question that accomplishment brings a source of energy, it brings a source of strength. It's important to feel like, yes, I can do this thing, Yes I have worth, Yes I can bring something to

the table. But the thing is, as overachievers, or as recovering overachievers, you're not actually gaining anything from your accomplishments other than a sense that you'll need to work harder for the next For the average person, achieving something gives them a sense of pride, It gives them a confidence boost, might even allow them to relax for a little bit, give themselves a pad on a back for a job

well done. That reaction does not exist in overachievers, whereby our successes do not serve to reinforce our sense of self worth or feel comfort in the fact that we are doing a good job. They just create more self doubt, whereby we constantly need to be one up being ourselves, or once we've finished maybe a huge project or a huge goal that's taken us months, we feel guilty for giving ourselves time to rest because that feels like time

I'm wasted. This really relates a whole lot to imposter syndrome, the constant sense of doubt about your skills, about your intellect, about your accomplishments, no matter how much you achieve or how much others tell you differently. Imposter syndrome is, to be honest, something I've personally struggled with for many years.

I continue to struggle with it. I don't really have the solutions for you, but when I looked into the relationship or the correlation between imposter syndrome and overachieving, they are so intimately and closely related. Imposter syndrome is rarely, if not ever, seen in people who are underachievers. It's reserved for those who put a lot of pressure on themselves. When we are in that kind of place of innate self doubt, often we experience what this author, her name

is Claire Joseph. She wrote this book called Teaching Imposter Syndrome. She has this theory known as the four peas of imposter syndrome, perfectionism, people, pleasing, paralysis, and procrastination. The chances are, if you're struggling with the need to overachieve, or you're wrangling kind of your past life as a gifted or golden child, you are experiencing some combination of these things.

Perfectionism obviously being a huge one. Not being able to be satisfied with anything unless it's the best, unless it's perfect, including in some ways your life, and always wanting or working for more. There's another consequence that we need to talk about here, and it feels so obvious, maybe it's not even worth mentioning, but I do think that it's an important part of this equation, and that is burnout.

Burnout is a state of complete mental, emotional, physical, social exhaustion that occurs when you have been pushing yourself beyond your limits for far too long. It leaves us more susceptible to getting ill, to withdrawal and isolation, despair and just feeling detached. And it's so common these days, and obviously naturally comes about during really stressful periods, like if you've just done all of your exams or you're in

a particular busy time at work. Sometimes we do reach a point of burnout, but overachievers have been pushing themselves for years, so it becomes chronic. And the real challenge is that burnout creates a really dangerous cycle because when you can no longer perform at the level that you've expected from yourself, you push yourself harder, leading to further exhaustion, leading to further self doubt, and then further attempts to repair your self esteem by working harder again, burnout occurs.

It's this whole It's a mental trap, and it's why I think a lot of overachievers leave high school or university and just feel completely lost because they are completely exhausted. I think the biggest delusion that we try and tell ourselves is that we can cure our burnout by just taking a day or an afternoon off. This study conducted a few years back, it was published in the Journal

of Applied Health, Psychology and well Being. It found that it actually takes about three months to fully recover from burnout. Three months. Now, think how long it's going to take you if you've been in a constant cycle of burnout. I always say this, but if you don't give your body a break, your body is going to take a break for you, and it is going to be at

the most inconvenient time. I'm going to out myself here and say this happened to me like a few months ago, maybe about a month back, where I was just so drained, I had the most intense brain fog, I couldn't concentrate for more than ten minutes, and then of course I got sick. I got sick for about two weeks. And I think every time that happens, in hindsight, I can see the pattern of behaviors that have led me to

that point. So I think all of these examples of the consequences that we face from being overachievers are important because I think for everyone there comes a day when we start to question our identity as this version of ourselves. We start to wonder, is this actually who I am? Is this actually healthy? Do I want to be this gifted child and constantly live up to people's expectations for

the rest of my life? And I think there are a few common experiences that almost act as triggers for us to realize that maybe our work ethic isn't sustainable, isn't as sustainable as we had thought, or maybe that we aren't as exceptional we as we've been made to feel so. Firstly, encountering people who are better than you, who outperform you no matter how hard you try, and beginning to question, you know, am I actually special? What

has this all been for? Secondly, of course, is experiencing burnout, our injury, illness, severe mental exhaustion. Thirdly, is failing at something that you've tried really hard at. I relate to this. I remember the first time I had to sit exams at university after like coming from a public school where most people weren't too focused on academics, so it was

very easy to do well in that environment. And then suddenly I was in an environment of all the kids that were the best in their schools, and I just was like absolutely floundering. I had this huge sense of, oh, maybe I'm not actually smart, maybe I shouldn't be here. And I think the final trigger is having somewhat of an existential crisis about what you want from life and realizing that accomplishment is no longer making you happy. All of these create an identity crisis. So an identity crisis

according to Erickson, he's a very famous psychologist. He pioneered a lot of the research on this. It occurs when an event a situation makes you reevaluate who you are, and part of this reevaluation is contemplating what actually makes you happy. What is your conception of a happy and a fulfilled life, what are your sources of motivation. What are you doing all of this for all these hours, all these sacrifices. Is it for personal satisfaction and growth?

Or is it another element that wants to impress others or appears your family, or another element of you that doesn't understand that your worth is beyond your output. I think I'm going to go back to that need to impress people, because I think our need to use our business and our productivity is kind of like a marker of our worth is huge. I used to see this in my old workplace all the time, where no one

wanted to be the first person to leave. Everyone would stay back past five even if they had like no work to do, just to prove that they had a good work ethic, just to prove that they were a hard worker. Another way this shows up is like bearing yourself in projects and never ending to do lists. This is not sustainable. So how do we recover from being former overachievers? How do we reframe our relationship with success,

with productivity, with our value. Firstly, you need to have some compassion for this past version of yourself and acknowledge why you are this way. Sometimes I see this all the time when we identify things we don't like, you know, about ourselves. When we identify old habits or ways of being, we try and criticize ourselves out of it. We turn to like self hatred or shame. I don't think there's any room for that here. You've already really put yourself

through enough. Take some time to think back to your childhood or teenage self and just say to them, you didn't have to work that hard. You never had to be the best for me to still love you. You know. I'm such a huge proponent of inner child healing, and a big part of that is realizing and appreciating the environment and the factors that have made you who you are right now. Overachievement and all, you were not in control.

You did not have a say, You did not get to decide what kind of values were imposed on you. So I think part of that maybe by starting to realize the relationship that your parents had with success, or the position they put you in as a proxy for their accomplishment, or how you have conflated your value, you would tangible achievement. You have an opportunity now to be

in charge. You are the parent now, even if your parents are still alive and around and well, you are now the most important adult in your life, so you get to decide how you would like your future to be. But in order to undo some of those past beliefs, you do have to be nice to yourself to begin with. Part of showing yourself that compassion is, of course, giving yourself time to rest. I know this sounds common sense, but I also know that it can be really difficult

when you haven't done that for a long time. There is such an intense guilt that we sometimes associate with taking a break, especially if you've been on the overachieving path for a while. For you, taking a break, taking a day off in your mind is associated with choosing to be lazy, or with the stress of deadlines that keep piling up. But if you take time to rest, you will work more efficiently. If you properly restore your cognitive functioning by letting yourself switch off, your body and

mind is better able to operate. You have to remember like your brain is one of your most important possessions. It is priceless. You would not walk around with like a smashed phone that doesn't work and not get it repaired. You would not keep driving a car that only had two wheels and a faulty engine. You know that is dangerous, so you shouldn't let yourself continue to operate when you

know that you need rest or repairs. Practical ways to do this involves scheduling time off once a week, twice a week, once a day, the same way that you would schedule things like an appointment or study time, or class or work. Make rest an immovable part of your schedule like your other obligations, because in all to overcome your overachieving tendencies, you need to treat rest and time off like an obligation. It needs to be something that

is important to you. Thirdly, I would say clear your schedule and your life of the things that don't actually make you happy. You know that volunteer position that you have, that extra credit or extra duty you're doing it work, that you don't have time for extra classes, side hustles, or projects that you aren't really motivated by. Not everything can fit into your life at once, and it doesn't mean that you're quitting. It doesn't mean that you're giving

up on yourself. It just means that you're actually helping yourself by allowing more space to be focused on really you know what really matters to you right now by actually giving yourself permission to be happy and to have free time, recognizing that even if that thing is important to you, there will be time for those things in

the future, and redefine your idea years of success. I read this in the Harvard Business Review that some of the top kind of regrets of the people of people who are dying is living a life that wasn't truly for them and secondly, working too hard. If you don't question your motivations and definition of success now, you might be one of those people. How much more time are you going to spend in an everlasting state of burnout

and dissatisfaction and exhaustion. Some really important prompts for this are the following, and answer truthfully. Whether you're driving right now, or you're at work, or you're doing laundry, pause and just answer these for yourself. What would a good life look like for you in twenty years if you could only achieve one thing in your life, what would it be. If someone asked you for your definition of happiness, what would you tell them? And are you living this definition?

Are you striving towards this definition? What would you want to do with your life if there was no one watching you. I love these questions because I think it turns the attention away from socially imposed ideas of success and accomplishment and allows us to actually reflect on what we want. It allows us to contemplate life on a more holistic, biggest scale, like achievement feels good, but it's not everything. Getting good grades is not everything. Life is

more than how busy you are. Life is more than just being the best. Life is more than being the last person to leave the office or being someone that other people think is impressive. Finally, actually make a big

deal out of your accomplishments. This relates to what I mentioned before, whereby overachievers often undervalue their achievements, and normally they just have this tendency to move on to the next task, the next project, the next big thing, and it kind of feels like a bit of a rat race. At that point, it feels never ending. You never actually sit down and give yourself credit for your efforts. If you've got a big promotion, tell your friends, invite them

over for a drink. If you got an A on your exam, go and buy yourself like an ice cream cake. Go and get yourself a little gift. You need to make a big deal out of your successes so that you don't forget them, so that you don't feel like you need to be doing more. And then when the imposter syndrome does kind of rear its ugly head, you can knock it back and be like, hey, no, I remember this really cool thing that I did a few months ago. This voice in my head is lying to me. Also,

talk about your experiences as an overachiever openly. We need to be more honest with each other about the pressures that we are facing in our twenties. The pressure is to be exceptional, and the pressure is to be the best. We have something to contribute. And I was speaking about this with my friends the other day when I was researching this episode. I was like, do you think that you know you were a gifted kid? Do you think

that you had pressure placed on you? Do you think that you were told that you were too you know, more mature for your age or whatnot? And so many of them, almost all of them admitted that they felt that way and were able to like kind of explain how that had had a bleed on effect in adulthood. It was such a Catharsis moment to realize that you I am not the only one that doubts our abilities, who never feels like they're doing enough, who was scared

of the future, scared of wasting their potential. It is so much more common than we know. Really, it is so much more common. I know it's so cliche to be like you are not alone, but I think sometimes when all we're focused on is our worth and our value and how the people see us and living up to expectations being the best, we forget that there is a whole world out there where this doesn't matter, where we are just another person who is allowed to actually

just enjoy our lives. So I really hope that you enjoyed this episode. From one former Golden Child, healing, overachiever victim of imposter syndrome to another, this topic was such an emotional release for me, Like I feel like I personally learned so much about what this means and what it means to be this kind of person, to have this kind of personality, So I hope that you did as well. As always, if you enjoyed this episode, please feel free to leave a five star review on Apple Podcasts.

Spotify wherever you are listening right now. I read them all. It really does wear my heart, so thank you so much for all the love recently. Make sure that you're following along so you're notified when new episodes come out and if you have an episode suggestion, just some feedback, if you have an opinion on this, if you are a formally gifted kid and you have something to share, I would love to hear from you. Follow me at that psychology podcast, shoot me a message. It's so great

to kind of see that community growing. So thank you so much for listening along. As always, we will be back next week with another episode.