How to Cope With Being a Successful Child
By Emily
I won my first award for a coloring contest in first grade. My teacher called me “gifted” for staying inside the lines. I didn’t know what she meant by gifted, but she gave me a packet of stickers and a sheet of paper that said “good job,” and that was enough for me. A few years later, I was chosen to represent my class in an academic competition in front of my entire school. That felt great. When I was 13, I wrote a short story for a creative contest when everyone else drew pictures. The day I submitted it, I was called in from recess to speak with my teacher when everyone else was playing outside. “Where did you get this story from, Emily?” I didn’t understand. I wrote it. “I need to know where this came from. You didn’t write this.” I pleaded my case and told her about how much I liked to write. After several minutes, she believed me, but not before she said that the story was too good for a child my age to write alone. I would’ve felt proud of myself if it weren’t for the fear that came with the possibility of disappointing her.
My entire life I have strived to be a great student because I was told so many times how talented, smart, creative, and mature I am. “Mature” is the word that makes me beam the most. I loved when adults liked me and approved of me and my actions. The problem was, the older I got, the more I “averaged out,” not because I stopped trying, but because my childish nerves turned into violent anxiety that greatly revolved around the approval of authority figures. I always wanted to be the creative, talented, smart, mature girl they used to see, but it became harder when the daily panic attack and a breakdown hit each night.
My personal crowning disappointment occurred when I didn’t qualify for the National Honors Society in high school and all of my friends did. I felt like I had something to prove by earning that honorary, and it was an affirmation that I was not as “gifted” as I originally thought. Now, I’m not emphasizing this to imply that any student who didn’t make it into NHS is a failure or a burnout, but rather because my anxiety and my need to be seen as a star student ate away at me so badly, that my once daily panic attacks turned into chronic anxiety and panic disorder. I started going to therapy when I was 14.
We don’t usually think of success as a negative trait, but for me, success became the unattainable peak. If I did well on a project, I would have to do well again so my teachers knew it wasn’t a fluke. If I did poorly on a project, I had to do well next time to show them that it was a fluke. It was a never ending cycle of do well, do better, do bad, fix it. This mindset was very harmful to me, especially as college admissions started rolling around my senior year of high school. I decided to go to a public university for English, my passion, and just see where it took me. While I didn’t figure out exactly what career path to take, I realized that I was not faulty for underperforming or not being the best; I was the one who set those expectations in order to feel good about myself, and that ended up hurting me in the long run. College taught me how to simply be in my life and my pursuits with a combination of acceptance, medication, and a fresh start.
If I had the chance to go back and change who I was, I wouldn’t take it. However, I would go back to tell my younger self that I can only control myself and my actions, not how other people perceive me. I dealt with this issue by punishing myself for “underachieving” instead of allowing myself to figure out where my feelings of emptiness were coming from. I don’t think it was due to my teachers’ early praise of my work, I think it came from wanting to be seen and maybe even be good at something. There is no greater burden than being the best. Therapy taught me a mantra that I still think about on a daily basis: Affirm what you know, and know what cannot be changed. Focus on the former, and the latter may change in time, but forcing yourself to play every role only harms you while you are trying to grow.
