Hello everybody and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through some of the big life changes and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology.
Hello everybody, welcome back to the show, welcome back to the podcast.
New listeners, old listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is so great to have you here back for another episode as we break down the psychology of our 20s.
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 the you know, 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 20s, 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 to the golden child expectation.
I think growing up many of us who are 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 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 20s 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 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, have an addiction 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 berate 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 conducted in 2019, these researchers surveyed over a thousand people who were earning over $200 ,000 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 call 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 going to work really hard until I'm 35 and then I'll have enough of you know money to retire or I'm just going to 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 in 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 b it's quite exclusive.
It may prevent some kids from actually getting the support they need because they aren't termed as gifted and c 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 like research around this was a eight decade long study, 80 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 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 with an 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 overachiever 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 overachievement 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 or the most popular or the most creative but you could be the most hardworking therefore we begin to conflate our self -worth our self -concept how we feel about ourselves with external
validation we need that that buzz of being told that we've done well we need to receive praise or awards 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 short break 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 praise 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 pat on the 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 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 upping 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 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 ditching imposter syndrome she has this theory known as the four p's 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 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 in 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 trap 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 illusion 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 10 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 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 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 eric 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 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 burying 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 out 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 may be 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 with 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 you know 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 order 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 your extra duty you're doing at 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 ideas 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 an 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 20 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 bigger 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 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 20s the pressures to be exceptional and the pressures
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 is 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 other people see us and living up to our 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 podcast spotify wherever you are listening right now i read them all it really does warm 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 formerly 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 this year i've been really rethinking my relationship with alcohol and so i decided to commit to dry january to really kick start 2025 and just test myself heineken 00 is the perfect companion for dry january
because you feel like you're still participating when you're out for friends out for drinks whilst you're still meeting your lifestyle goals i'm a big beer fan so i also love the taste of heineken 00 plus being alcohol free you can enjoy whenever refreshment calls heineken 00 is available at your local
heineken retailer or for delivery at heineken .com you must be 21 plus to purchase enjoy heineken responsibly and good luck with dry january
