Yeah, i think we were raised in similar narcissistic households and maybe others didn't share that experience as much. My parents got a scent of the gifted child effect and tried to do everything to nurture it.

For so long they made me feel like I was super special but as an adult I can see how unhealthy it all was, and how much they fed off that attention.

Maybe for some children it was a normal gauge of how well the child is doing, but for myself every little achievement felt like, "oh so you felt okay with x? let's see how well you can do x+1. You know there's a kid who took college classes at 16? I think we should sign you up. What about astronomy? Have you heard of space camp?"

I felt like failure was terrible because of how disappointed they'd look if i didn't take well to some new assignment. Completely fucked way to grow up.