9 Career Challenges Faced by Gifted Adults

Gifted individuals often face unique challenges in their career paths. Many are not sure what they want to do with their lives. They are also more likely to change careers several times. Highly gifted individuals often have high expectations and tend to be perfectionistic, leading to difficulty finding a work environment that meets their expectations. They may also find it challenging to connect with most people. Here are some common challenges for the gifted on their career trajectory:

1. Finding It Difficult to Settle in One Career

You may find it hard to choose just one career path as a multi-talented, multi-passionate person. Gifted individuals can often do well in many different fields. This can be both a blessing and a curse. For example, you may find that you are good at science but also like writing. Or, you may be great at math, but you also love art. The downside of being multi-talented is that it can be hard to settle in a career.

Furthermore, intellectually gifted individuals are often pushed into stereotypical career fields at a young age, including medicine, engineering, the law, or research. These may not be ultimately fulfilling for you.

Due to the unconscious guilt of being different, you may also feel like you need to conform to society's expectations and not stand out too much. This can lead to you choosing a similar career to what others have done instead of following your passion.

2. Emotional Intensity and Misunderstandings

If a child is identified as a prodigy at an early age, the entire focus of people around them may be on developing that one talent. This comes at the expense of other aspects of their development, such as emotional regulation skills. Lopsided development is especially a problem when a gifted person has not yet honed the skills to manage their emotional intensity and overexcitability.

Others may expect you to be more mature than you are. They may pathologize your passionate quality and natural intensity as immaturity or malice. This can lead to social isolation and underachievement, both in adolescence and as an adult.

3. Being Faster Than Most

The gifted often have a difficult time relating to others. You assimilate information faster and can correlate information quickly. You may feel like they are constantly swimming against the current, trying to explain things that are obvious to you but confusing to others. For example, when others in a meeting are still discussing things, you have already drifted away to the next idea on your mind. The problem is that your colleagues may interpret your body language as a lack of interest or focus and an inability to work as a team.

4. Boredom and Feeling Trapped

The gifted usually are unable to thrive in a monotonous environment and need stimulation to be productive. Managers would likely fail to realize that you prefer to work at your own pace and require room to contemplate concepts and new ideas. You need a high degree of autonomy to thrive. However, most office environments don't function that way. In the absence of a conducive environment, you may experience self-doubt and dissonance.

5. Loneliness

Your lack of interest in participating in small talk can result in your colleagues perceiving you as an "outlier." In addition, the gifted often have a solid moral compass. Always wanting to do the "right thing" can bring you into conflict with colleagues and superiors. Your unique qualities can lead to feelings of isolation and loneliness, especially if you don't have a support system of like-minded people.

6. Being Seen as a Threat to Authority

A gifted person has the capacity to view things differently. However, your ideas might intimidate managers who are insecure or not open to input.

You likely respond well to logic and would find instructions that do not make sense to you challenging. However, when you are not convinced, your analytical mind kicks into overdrive, which can be viewed as a threat to authority.

7. Attracting Envy

In many ways, the gifted are envied by those around them. Since you process thoughts faster than most others, you communicate with a force that few can comprehend. However, this also makes you a target for bullies and detractors who can't understand why you cannot just "keep your head down" and fit in.

Though you have the emotional and intellectual acumen for a higher position in the organization, others may prefer a more conventionally competent person. People may frame you as being distracted, unpredictable, or disruptive, and someone who performs better as an individual than as a team.

In such a scenario, your prospects of getting a promotion might be adversely impacted.

8. Perfectionism and Fear of Failure

Studies have found that gifted people are more likely to suffer from the fear of failure than their nongifted peers. This fear can lead to a condition known as imposter syndrome, in which you doubt your own abilities and feel like you are constantly pretending to be something you are not. The fear of failure can be debilitating and lead to low self-esteem and underachievement. Gifted people who feel like they can't live up to others' expectations may also avoid challenging tasks or give up on pursuits they once loved.

9. Being Prone to Burnout

Your empathic quality and emotional sensitivities make you more in tune with other people's feelings, and you may find it unbearable to witness injustice and bullying. But your deep empathy also makes you more sensitive to disharmony in a professional environment and can eventually bring emotional burnout.

Sometimes you are so obsessed with getting everything right that you cannot stop working for long hours, which can lead to burnout eventually.

Thriving as Who You Are

Many gifted people choose paths of entrepreneurship to accommodate their work styles and needs. But that may not be for everyone. In fact, it is not absolutely essential for you to have your own business, as long as you get to enjoy a degree of autonomy, exercise creativity and make an impact in whatever you do.

Even if you cannot make any drastic change now, you can still learn to make the most of working in a conventional office setting. Your emotional sensitivity to the "unstated" facts and other people's feelings gives you a unique perspective. Your highly analytical mind and intellectual curiosity mean you see trends before others. You may use those insights to connect deeper with your peers, customers, and team members.

If you feel unhappy in the current role, perhaps start by contemplating what would be more ideal for you. For example, when have you been in "flow"? In what setting do you feel more adequately stimulated and engaged? What would an ideal day, if it is all up to you, look like? When in your life have you felt more fulfilled and satisfied?

Even if it is only a little, you may start adding elements in your life that feel more congruent to you. As much as you can, shift your focus to the direction you want your career to head in, and focus on what you can control.

Increasing self-understanding and awareness sets the foundation for deep acceptance. The more you can accept who you indeed are, the more you will be able to make the best of your traits and avoid common loopholes.

Although your path is not necessarily an obvious, well-worn path, it is still entirely possible for you to find an environment in which you can thrive.