Being Very Smart: The Dark Side Of What We Don’t Talk About
Being very intelligent is not always a guarantee of success or happiness. Behind a very high IQ there is a flip side that is not always talked about, such as angst, social isolation, emotional issues, or personal and vital dissatisfaction with not meeting a number of high goals. that people with high capacities settle down.
Some do not hesitate to assert that intelligence is not the same thing as wisdom, and that the latter is lacking many people (not all) whose IQ is above 120-130. Thus, Jeanne Siaud-Facchin, psychotherapist and one of the most recognized experts in the field of high capacities, explains that nothing can be as paradoxical as the brains of these people.
Being very intelligent brings with it a certain fragility. We are faced with a type of mind capable of generating thousands of ideas at a time. They are fast, original and can produce endless arguments and concepts in seconds. However, they are not always able to handle all of this information. Their cognitive worlds have so many capabilities that one stimulus is enough to instantly ignite neurons, giving shape to many ideas. Corn .
All of this can generate great frustration and confusion. Not everything is so amazing or so simple for a person or a child with great abilities. No one has taught them how to use such a sophisticated brain, so hungry for information and productive ideas. In fact, things get a lot more complicated for people with an IQ over 180. In these cases, as we saw in the story of the world’s smartest man with an IQ of 250, their lives can turn into real tragedies.
Being very intelligent, a paradoxical gift
We live in a society where gifts are revered. We are fascinated by people with unique talents and abilities, we admire those who dominate certain aspects of science, art, sport… So much so that there is no shortage of fathers and mothers who would love to have a child with a high IQ, because in a way the idea that being very smart is synonymous with success is very much held these days.
On the other hand, children themselves believe that nothing is as fabulous as “being very smart”. Can there be anything better? The “gifted”, they say, pass exams with good grades without effort or study. Now every educator, psychologist, or father of a child with great ability knows that these ideas are not always true.
For starters, it is very possible that the high IQ student will go unnoticed for much of their school life. It is also likely that he does not receive good grades, that he is not good at making friends, and that he is, this student, inattentive and absorbed in his own sleeping world. in the back rows of a classroom where it doesn’t attract attention.
In other cases, there are pupils who do not know how to control their ideas and their ramblings. Sometimes, on a simple examination question, the child can be subject to sorts of ramblings, reflections and inferences which do not always allow a concrete answer to be given. In fact, in the book Too Smart to Be Happy , a girl explains that while her classmates dig a trail for the solution, she follows 25 and feels unable to come to a conclusion.
- Tree thought. This type of reasoning performed by people with high abilities is called tree thinking and is explained as follows: when a stimulus is received, the mind begins to generate one idea after another, although without clear associations. in many cases. It is like a very dense tree with endless “branches” where the person cannot control or organize their data.
Emotional cataclysms
Another aspect that must be considered is related to hypersensitivity. Being very intelligent involves taking on a very deep and transcendent vision of reality and of the world itself. Sometimes it is enough to watch a news item on TV and the person with the high skills will feel incomprehension, anger and skepticism in front of humanity itself.
Emotions take hold of them, they cannot control the impact generated by certain events which, for the rest of the people, generally go unnoticed.
Also, far from the misconception that very intelligent people are cold, it is necessary to understand that their empathic capacity is immense. This sometimes makes them prefer to isolate themselves so as not to suffer, to maintain a distance so as not to get too involved or be injured in any way.
Their emotional worlds are complex, but they channel this intensity through creativity and inspiration, maximizing many of their natural talents.
Being very smart shouldn’t be a wall of happiness
At this point, it’s entirely possible that more than one might think that being very intelligent is little more than a pathology. It is not true, it should not be seen that way. Faced with this list of elements, we must reflect. The gifted child who goes through school life undetected, will develop little book interest and live in isolation where other types of issues such as anxiety or depression may emerge.
On the other hand, the WHO itself warns us of the following: IQ cannot be used as the only diagnosis ”of intelligence. Because intelligence is nothing without the emotional part, without its hypersensitivity, hyperesthesia, hyperemotivity, hyper-maturity, hyper-stimulation, without its arborescent thought and its speed of thought …
Being highly intelligent can mean living in a very private corner where emotions and thoughts are chaotic, deep, and very intense. Our role as parents, mothers, educators or psychologists is therefore to offer appropriate strategies so that they find calm and balance. So that they can reach their maximum potential and of course, happiness .
Our thoughts Knowing how to stimulate the vagus nerve with exercises such as diaphragmatic breathing will help us reduce negative emotions on a daily basis.
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