Burnt-Out Gifted Students: A Real Life-Problem

A term that gained much more attention throughout the quarantine of 2020, the ‘burnt-out

gifted student’ trope is something that anyone who had social media at the time will likely be

familiar with. Starting out as a simple audio, it soon blasted off and got very popular. Creating a

trend of its own, the term became circulated and well-known, even helping people to realise just

exactly what had been happening to them in their last few years of school- or even just what has

been happening in their working life. Though the phenomenon didn’t gain attention until people

were able to have more frequent hours of being on the internet, several people have been able to

say that it is something they have experienced and that it greatly affects their everyday lives, and

people were describing it before the popularity on social media sites. So, what exactly is a

burnt-out gifted student? How does it affect peoples’ lives?

What is a burnt-out gifted student?

Erica Wirthlin, an author from the Davidson Institute, states, “The definition of gifted

child burnout is chronic exhaustion that stems from a mismatch between the individual and their

current educational environment” (Wirthlin, 2021). The start of a burnt-out gifted student comes

from being raised in an environment where they were placed to perfection, receiving frequent

compliments and rarely criticism, due to their heightened intelligence. However, because of

those expectations, which typically start from younger ages in grade school, the student feels

pressure to conform to those expectations and when they are unable to succeed in them, their

self-esteem can drop a significant amount. Alena Qin, a speaker on TEDx Talks on YouTube,

expresses this by saying, “Growing up, these expectations warped my view on intelligence. I felt

pressured to be the best at almost everything I did, from academics to visual arts, and even silly

things like Mario Kart. I was afraid that, if I were to fall short of these standards, people would
be disappointed in me and no longer see me as someone worthy of praise. My gifted identity had

become a mask, and I desperately didn’t want anyone to realise I wasn’t as smart as I should

have been” (TEDx Talks, 2022). Her statements show that she had a toxic relationship with this

‘giftedness’, to the point that it slipped into her natural life. As well, the toxicity of the

expectations shows through in how she says ‘should have been.’ She didn’t view her intelligence

as something that she was allowed to expand on and simply live with, but instead something that

she felt she needed and had to live up to; something that her parents and teachers accidentally

pressed onto her. After long-term situations like those that Qin experienced, gifted students

become exhausted, unable to push themselves to work further and begin to not care for their

education in any way.

Mental health consequences

From here, the pathway to mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, becomes

much broader and something that very few gifted students are able to avoid, or even handle in a

more controlled way. Though the mental illnesses start due to the pressure from schools and

parents, it’s really rooted in the perfectionism these students adapt to from their parents. Written

in an online article by Hailey Peck, “As these students get older, these perfectionistic habits can

manifest into more mental health problems. According to Healthline, “perfectionism can make

you feel unhappy with your life. It can lead to depression, anxiety, eating disorders, and

self-harm. Eventually, it can also lead you to stop trying to succeed.”” (Peck, 1). This

perfectionism leads to students hiding away, too afraid to speak out or try harder to show their

intelligence if it doesn’t come easily to them. In an article written by Kim Armstong,

psychologist Carol Dweck stated, “They tend to approach learning with the goal of looking

smart, and they often shy away from challenges because they believe that having to work hard at
something or making mistakes means they don’t have high ability” (Armstrong 1). This can be

applied to struggling with mental illnesses as a gifted student. Gifted students are raised to

believe they are intended to be independent, causing their ability to ask for help in any sense to

severely lack, which causes an even bigger issue in the mental health aspect. With depression

and anxiety, self-harm is not uncommon, and if a gifted student has been raised to not ask for

help, or raised to believe needing help is weak and a sign of being dumb, then they take on the

problem by themselves. But this problem isn’t something that many people are able to fight on

their own and keep at bay. The idea that the student might be able to take care of it on their own

leads to much worse situations and scenarios for the student and can put them in severe danger

due to their own actions on how to deal with their feelings. Sometimes, if they begin

self-harming, they can end up with life-long injuries and in hospitals, neither of which are things

any involved and caring parent wants their child to go through or have to live with. That might

also cause the parent to feel guilty, as they would slowly begin to understand that their constant

pressure put their child in such a vulnerable place that they hadn’t been taught to handle

healthily.

Burnt-out gifted students are raised in a way that almost perfectly sets them up for failure,

especially when they are labelled as gifted students. They start out as a normal kid going into

school, and while their intelligence is something that should be acknowledged and appreciated,

the way that schools and parents tend to handle these students leaves them in a place that doesn’t

end up benefitting the students. Even in the more adult world, such as a genuine job or even just

more college classes, a student that had gone through this kind of burn-out- a student that had

suffered from this mental illness struggle- is going to find it difficult to properly function.

There’s a hard recovery period after having to go through that kind of mental strain, and a lot of
those students still find themselves falling back into it. It’s a neverending and vicious cycle of

repeating behaviours and self-expectations. How exactly does a student recover from it, and what

solutions are there to keep them out of it?

Davidson Institution’s Solutions

The Davidson Institution gives several solutions and examples on how to help burnt-out

gifted students. The first solution they give is to bring meaning back into the work, rather than

making it something that just needs to get done. It starts off with saying to “Have educators use a

strengths-based approach to ensure that the curriculum and assignments have real-world

connections that are meaningful.” The text then goes on to explain that “Gifted students often

have a strong sense of social justice, so connecting schoolwork to the student’s values may

mitigate gifted kid burnout” (Wirthlin, 1). Gifted students lose their meaning in classes after a

long time of having to never push themselves, which is why bringing meaning back into the

classes and work they get can be very beneficial to the rest of their learning experience.

The second solution they suggest is to allow students to take care of their own decisions

in specifically the way and time of how the material is presented to them. “Students have little

control over their education, which can be a source of burnout, so providing autonomy where

possible for students, such as building their schedule or choosing how they demonstrate learning,

may increase their buy-in.” Being able to have a control over the way that things are in the

learning experience, like they suggested, can really help a student have a better grasp on what’s

going on in the materials and classes, so they are able to pull themselves out of the hole that

they’ve managed to fall in. There’s not a lot of control that a student is able to have, but the act

of scheduling is really helpful, and while most schools do not give the option for certain learning

techniques, a student is still able to go home and then teach themselves in their preferred learning
techniques. A parent should help their child find ways to properly learn if they are able to

provide such help, and shouldn’t shun outside help. Sometimes a student needs more help than

what is given to them in school, and there are tutors and such for that, so do not hold a student

back from seeking help.

The third solution that the Davidson Institution suggests is to “provide access to

advanced materials.” The article states that “Burnout can stem from doing too many repetitive

tasks and even boredom” (Wirthlin, 1). This means that sometimes students are in need of harder

materials and can’t focus on what the more ‘at level’ tasks are. Because of the ‘too easy’ things,

gifted students can experience a high burnout with the lack of any challenge. This goes against

when gifted students shy away from challenges, but the difference is that ‘at level’ assignments

aren’t at level with them. They need something that pushes their brain power a little bit, but not

so much that they push away from it.

My Solutions

In order to avoid gifted student burn-out at all, the expectations for gifted students should

not be as high nor as pressured as they are. The pressure these students face puts them into an

exhausted state, and it’s clear that it doesn’t do them any good to keep them in this constant push

of getting things done. As well, the toxic positivity that is pushed onto the students doesn’t help

them work to get better at the topics they think they are already good at. The toxic positivity

towards gifted students shouldn’t be so praised, either, since it doesn’t end up helping the

students in their future lives. Students have a right to exist as regular people, and not people that

are seen as nothing more than a machine.

Conclusion
 Overall gifted student burn-out is something that is based entirely off how they were

treated and raised as kids, not necessarily because of how smart they are. While intelligence

definitely adds to it, if teachers, the school system, and parents weren’t so adamant on these

students being pushed into labels, the students wouldn’t have to suffer with this burnout at all.

The problem comes down to the toxic positivity and way too high of expectations. The way to

fix this problem is by eliminating that awful expectation and mellowing out on the positivity that

is pushed onto the students with intelligence. Embrace the intelligence, but keep at it a place that

doesn’t make the students fall into an awful mental space.

 References

Armstrong, K. (2019, October 29). Carol Dweck on How Growth Mindsets Can Bear Fruit in the

Classroom. Association for Psychological Science - APS.

https://www.psychologicalscience.org/observer/dweck-growth-mindsets

Peck, H. (2022, March 23). Pressures in school lead to gifted kid burnout | The Maneater. The

Maneater. https://themaneater.com/pressures-in-school-lead-to-gifted-kid-burnout/

TEDx Talks. (2022, July 5). The Phenomenon of “Gifted Kid Burnout” | Alena Qin |

TEDxYouth@RHHS [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uw8ytKX8v60

Wirthlin, E. (2021, September 8). Burnout in Gifted Children. Davidson Institute.

https://www.davidsongifted.org/gifted-blog/burnout-in-gifted-children/