The Hidden Pitfalls of High Intelligence

The above image was made with stable diffusion using the prompt 'brain lighting up.'

Benefits and Drawbacks

When I was younger, I believed myself to be very smart. At age 21, heavily sedated by antipsychotic medication, I took a doctor-administered WAIS III test and was found to have a top 1% IQ, with a verbal IQ at the limits of what could be measured. A few years later, a mentor with decades of experience working with high intelligence individuals told me that he was convinced I was a genius level savant. This characterization always seemed a little grandiose, but for a long time I considered high intelligence to be a core part of my identity. A part of my identity that alienated me from everyone else.

Although having a high IQ is a predictor of success in many respects, it's also a risk factor for physical and psychological illness. Here's a quote from an article that gets into this:

A high IQ is also associated with various mental and immunological diseases like depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety, ADHD as well as allergies, asthma, and immune disorders. ... This hyper-reactivity, however, can also lead to deeper depressions and poor mental health. This turns out to be particularly true for poets, novelists and people with high verbal intelligence. Their intense emotional response to the environment increases tendencies for rumination and worry, both of which predict depression and anxiety disorders. Heightened psychological responses can affect immunity, write the researchers. People with overexcitabilites may have strong reactions to seemingly harmless external stimuli like an annoying clothing tag or a sound. This reaction may turn into low level chronic stress and launch an inappropriate immune response. When the body believes it is in danger (regardless of whether it is an objectively real one like a toxin or an imagined one like an annoying sound), it launches a cascade of physiological responses that include a myriad of hormones, neurotransmitters and signaling molecules. When these processes are chronically activated, they can alter the body and the brain, dysregulate immune function and lead to conditions like asthma, allergies and autoimmune diseases.

Cluster headaches are the bane of my existence and they're related to unusual brain connectivity and the kinds of stress responses described in the quote above. These stress responses arise from hypersensitivity to perceptual stimuli, which traumas in my youth probably served to amplify. This sensitivity may also have contributed to the bipolar disorder I was diagnosed with at age 37. My primary symptom was insomnia stemming from being too stressed out about a work situation, and I've slept every night since starting medication in 2019, but it's entirely possible that my high IQ contributed to the condition's onset.

Letting Go of the Label

At some point during the last several years, taking meds that likely shaved a dozen points off of my IQ, I stopped feeling like high intelligence was a core part of my identity. Instead of focusing on the trait, I started focusing entirely on its practical application. This shift in focus was most evident in my writing.

The stuff I was writing ten years ago employed an intense vocabulary and excessively complex sentence structures. It was often impenetrable to the average reader. When I go back and reread it, I feel like I'm trying to decipher Habermas all over again. And I wonder what I was thinking, penning such indecipherable text.

Since then, my writing has been greatly simplified. My novels are easy for average readers to appreciate, as are most of my blog posts. Maybe I'm not as smart as I used to think I was. But my writing is definitely better.

Today, mindful of the downsides of high intelligence, my routines are designed to minimize exposure to the kinds of stimuli that contribute to physical and psychological stresses. When I feel alienated, I no longer attribute this feeling to my IQ, preferring instead to see it as a consequence of being an outlier in general. In social situations, I'm more likely to feel embarrassed by my IQ than proud of it. I talk slowly, simplifying my thoughts before making them into words, and get along much better with others as a result.

Final Thoughts

As a kid, I felt like adults praised my intellect while other kids condemned me for it. Upon entering adulthood, I found myself in a society that was mostly anti-intellectual, surrounded by average people who fundamentally misunderstood what high intelligence consisted of. Instead of working to accommodate these people, I allowed my intelligence to separate me from them. This made my life more difficult than it needed to be.

At this point, I'm neither proud nor ashamed of my intelligence, but I am self-conscious about it sometimes. Although there are moments when this trait gets in the way, I've gotten better at navigating these moments appropriately. Unlike many people, I do require a steady diet of intellectual stimulation to stay sane. Fortunately, this naturally comes along with working as a writer.

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Read my novels:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is available as a web book on IPFS and as a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt.
• The Paradise Anomaly is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Psychic Avalanche is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• One Man Embassy is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Flying Saucer Shenanigans is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Rainbow Lullaby is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• The Ostermann Method is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.
• Blue Dragon Mississippi is available in print via Blurb and for Kindle on Amazon.

See my NFTs:

• Small Gods of Time Travel is a 41 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt that goes with my book by the same name.
• History and the Machine is a 20 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on my series of oil paintings of interesting people from history.
• Artifacts of Mind Control is a 15 piece Tezos NFT collection on Objkt based on declassified CIA documents from the MKULTRA program.