IQ, depression, shame, & self-destructiveness

[HappyNihilist]

I'm having a bad day and really struggling. I just felt the need to write and process through some stuff.

This is long and self-indulgent, and I apologize. It is one of my personal defining issues in life, though, and something I've struggled with since I was very young.

I have an very high IQ (99.9999 percentile). The first time I was tested, I scored off the chart that was used, so I got to undergo much more rigorous testing and experiments and sessions with psychologists. A group of psychologists wanted to follow me throughout my life, but my parents eventually nixed that idea. (In retrospect, I wish they would have let them - there are always too few long-term studies of any condition, and research psychologists need job security, too. )

I'm in no way saying this to brag. This isn't about smartness. I very, very rarely talk about my IQ to anyone, and usually only when I'm asked outright. It's not like I did anything to get a high IQ (it just is what it is), and I certainly don't think IQ alone is an indicator of "real" intelligence, or that it correlates to being smart. I'm smart about some things because I like to study and learn, but I'm certainly not smart about all subjects, and I know tons of people who are smarter than I am in many ways.

I vividly remember my own tests, and only a small part of it was about "knowledge." Mostly I was observed as I reasoned through problems, interpreted stories, looked for patterns, and performed experiments. My interpretation of IQ is that it reflects more how a person processes the world.

And herein lies my problem. The way I process the world is... .different. At least from most people. It's not better or worse, just different. I don't particularly enjoy having my brain most of the time. I often have a difficult time truly relating to and understanding most people, or feeling like they understand me, because I don't always see/process the world in the same way. I just feel different a lot. And I don't mind being different in many ways, but when it comes to understanding and processing the world... .it would just be nice to not feel so out of place sometimes.

I did have resources throughout childhood and teenagehood that helped, like child psychologists who specialized in giftedness. But it's hard to really understand as a kid. Plus... .growing up in an impoverished rural small town - going to a public school where about 6 people in my graduating class went to college - was not easy. I suffered some self-esteem wounds for sure, got a little worn down (that's life). But until I was an adult, I didn't really understand what was going on with myself.

For these particular gifted individuals, the powerful inner drive to explore and master felt like an obligatory force of nature. When they gave into their explosive drives and permitted themselves to gratify their special sensitivities, they felt possessed. But, this same excitement and animation also made them feel peculiar and strange. From their earliest years through latency and into mid-adolescence, their powerful drives, special sensitivities, and precocious abilities were rarely a source of consistent self esteem. Instead, their giftedness frequently led to anxiety and shame, and they tried to keep it a secret by denying or restricting it.

For some, the emotional pain associated with giftedness could only be relieved by stopping its growth or limiting its use. For others, it meant slowly drifting away from their giftedness in ways similar to the prodigies described by Feldman (1986).

Dr. Jerold Grobman, "Underachievement in Exceptionally Gifted Adolescents and Young Adults" (full article)

Psychodynamic psychotherapy revealed that a group of unresolved core conflicts about the inner experience of giftedness were the primary causes of underachievement, self-destructive behavior, and serious psychological symptoms in a group of exceptionally and profoundly gifted adolescents and adults.

Dr. Jerald Grobman, "A Psychodynamic Psychotherapy Approach to the Emotional Problems of Exceptionally and Profoundly Gifted Adolescents and Adults: A Psychiatrist's Experience" (full article)

"Unresolved core conflicts about the inner experience of giftedness" should probably be tattooed on my forehead as a warning to the rest of the world.

There's a ton of research on the correlation between giftedness and depression, particular existential depression. Dr. James Webb's article, ":)abrowksi's Theory and Existential Depression in Gifted Children and Adults" (full article), has been particularly helpful to me, and I've referred to it a lot over the years.

It has been my experience that gifted and talented persons are more likely than those who are less gifted to experience spontaneous existential depression as an outgrowth of their mental and emotional abilities and interactions with others. People who are bright are usually more intense, sensitive, and idealistic, and they can see the inconsistencies and absurdities in the values and behaviors of others (Webb, Gore, Amend, & DeVries, 2007). This kind of sensitive awareness and idealism makes them more likely to ask themselves difficult questions about the nature and purpose of their lives and the lives of those around them. They become keenly aware of their smallness in the larger picture of existence, and they feel helpless to fix the many problems that trouble them. As a result, they become depressed.

This spontaneous existential depression is also, I believe, typically associated with the disintegration experiences referred to by Dabrowski (Daniels & Piechowski, 2009; Mendaglio, 2008a). In Dabrowski's approach, individuals who “fall apart” must find some way to “put themselves back together again,” either by reintegrating at their previous state or demonstrating growth by reintegrating at a new and higher level of functioning. Sadly, sometimes the outcome of this process may lead to chronic breakdown and disintegration. Whether existential depression and its resulting disintegration become positive or whether they stay negative depends on many factors.

(Side note: This article also led me to study Dabrowski's theory of positive disintegration and read his texts, which I highly recommend to anyone. It's beautiful, inspiring stuff. This link is a good summary of the key points.)

So, yeah... .anyway... .I struggle with this sort of stuff a lot, and have for years. There's no good cure for existential depression, although I've found that absurdism helps. (I love you, Albert Camus.) I have a terrible time trying to quiet my mind. I've spent years learning better coping skills, but I definitely have my self-destructive habits, too. The worst part is the deep feeling of loneliness, a soul-deep sense of being out of place in the world, that I often have... .even though I truly do love people, and want to belong.

I occasionally "joke" that my dearest wish is to have a lobotomy. And maybe that in itself says it all.

[Blimblam]

Yeah shortly after becoming lucid at age 7 I realized everyone was being brainwashed and that society is a prison system.  It just clicked one day while being forced to do the pledge of allegiance everyday i class or to be publicly humiliated and punished.  I questioned why and from that day on for the rest of my life I have felt different from everyone else. It has created a huge internal conflict within me because while I always had the top mark in my class but I was made to feel ashamed of myself for asking deep questions that challenged the teachers entire frame of reality so I was punished mercilessly and publicly humiliated.  They mistook me for one of those kids that acts out purely to be the center of attention but my concerns were just too deep for anyone in the room and it screwed me up.  In fact my capacity is less now than it was at age 9 because of the internal conflict within me it like I'm always distracted now by those thought patterns nurtured and reinforced by people who never thought to question,  "why?"

[HappyNihilist]

Thank you so much for sharing, Blim. 

Yeah shortly after becoming lucid at age 7 I realized everyone was being brainwashed and that society is a prison system.  It just clicked one day while being forced to do the pledge of allegiance everyday i class or to be publicly humiliated and punished.  I questioned why and from that day on for the rest of my life I have felt different from everyone else.

This made me smile big, because I stopped saying the pledge of allegiance in elementary school for similar reasons. I've always been a big fan of questioning and challenging.

It has created a huge internal conflict within me because while I always had the top mark in my class but I was made to feel ashamed of myself for asking deep questions that challenged the teachers entire frame of reality so I was punished mercilessly and publicly humiliated.  They mistook me for one of those kids that acts out purely to be the center of attention but my concerns were just too deep for anyone in the room and it screwed me up.

I'm so sorry - that's painful in any stage in life, but especially in childhood.   

My experience was similar. I fortunately had a couple of great teachers who always encouraged me, because otherwise I might have just clammed up and withered away in shame and guilt.

When I got to college, on the other hand... .completely different story... .college challenged me and helped my self-esteem a lot. My professors encouraged me to go forth in life and just be myself and go do "great things" - but, well, I didn't really. I got married young (mistake) and began to live the life that people like my parents feel is "successful."

After 15 years, it's worn me down even more. Every time I express a need to live more authentically for myself, I meet resistance from everywhere. I know I have to find it within myself - but I already feel isolated and lonely enough. It's just hard. (Wah wah, complain, )

In fact my capacity is less now than it was at age 9 because of the internal conflict within me it like I'm always distracted now by those thought patterns nurtured and reinforced by people who never thought to question,  "why?"

I've only recently begun to truly realize this in myself. I think about the difference between my capacity and curiosity and yearning when I was a child, as opposed to now.

People who become close to me, with whom I'm comfortable expressing what I affectionately call my "weirdness," often comment on how I "play like I'm not as smart as I am" in normal situations. But it's not even really a conscious thing. It's just how I've come to deal with the world in general.

[eeks]

This is long and self-indulgent, and I apologize.

I'm in no way saying this to brag. This isn't about smartness.

Hi HappyNihilist, I do not see anything in your post that is any more "self-indulgent" than anything that anybody else writes here!  (You wrote honestly about your experience and provided quotes and links to some external resources that you have found helpful.)  I don't think you need to apologize for talking about intelligence, giftedness and IQ, and I find your posts on this site insightful and valuable.   

The fact that you feel you have to put these disclaimers on your post illustrates precisely the misconceptions about and prejudice against intelligence.  I don't know where you live, but I live in Canada (I've written in other posts about my bad experiences in public school) but particularly when I see what goes on in American culture, there seems to be a bizarre dynamic going on "We don't like intelligent people very much, they just 'think they are better than everybody else', until they are rich and famous for inventing some technology, then they are our idols."

I scored high enough on the IQ test to be accepted into the gifted program, that's all I know, I don't know my IQ.  I have a hard time saying this "out loud", but I believe I experienced prejudice, just like racism or any other -ism.  Try telling someone that though, because when you are gifted you get perceived as having the golden ticket to success and what have you got to complain about.

It is interesting that I never identified with "existential depression" until reading that quote you included.  I know I'm idealistic, yes, but somehow more often than "asking difficult questions about the nature and purpose of my life and the lives of those around me", it turns out to be more like intense shame and self-punishment, because I don't fit in.  Specifically, I won't compromise my morals in order to keep a job, which wouldn't be a problem (I'm unemployed right now, but I figure I'll find something that works for me eventually?) other than the fact that it seems to be a barrier to emotional intimacy with people, and that causes me a lot of pain.  They don't seem to understand how difficult it is for me to give up my independence of thought. 

As an example of what I mean by "independence of thought", I was a lawyer, one of my positions was in-house at an insurance corporation.  Say the marketing department had a new promotional campaign, they wanted us to determine whether everything they planned to do was permitted by the statutes and regulations. I understood my role to be to tell them, "if you do this, x will happen, if you do that, y will happen." or "another company tried this in 2003, they received a warning letter."  Tell them the potential consequences as specifically as possible, and leave it up to them as the business decision makers to decide whether the risk to reputation and profits is worth the potential gains.   The General Counsel (my boss) and VP Legal, who I respected otherwise as competent professionals, would do what seemed to me like "saying no without actually saying no".  In other words, if another department had a proposed activity that was not permitted by the regulations, I listened to them on the phone with them a couple of times, they would not come right out and say "no, you can't do it that way", but they didn't say "yes you can" either (because that would have been lying).  Nor did they suggest an alternate plan, a way you could do it that would be in accordance with the regulations, because maybe they didn't have one.  There was just a lot of slippery language.  I was expected to do this, too.  I was surprised that, as I said, otherwise competent and intelligent professionals whose work I respected, would acquiesce like this.  But you see... .if your language doesn't indicate that you support making as much money as possible all the time, you're not "business-minded". 

[vortex of confusion]

I am so loving this thread. Thank you for sharing HappyNihilist.

I am not sure what my IQ. The BS online tests put it pretty high and I was in the gifted and talented program at school too. Like you, I tend to see the world differently than most people. I can see contradictions that other people seem to miss. I learned a long time ago to keep quiet and play dumb. I have met very few people that get me.

I don't consider myself intelligent because there are times when it seems that there are certain connections in my brain that don't work the way they are supposed to work. I was fortunate to have a dad that challenged me and I had a lot of great teachers that encouraged me too.

I had to laugh at the comment about schools being prisons. That is precisely the reason why I home school my kids. I don't know if I was blessed or cursed but I have at least one child that I think is highly gifted. She and I can talk about these deep subjects and we can talk about the contradictions in society that we see. It is amazing.

This:

Every time I express a need to live more authentically for myself, I meet resistance from everywhere. I know I have to find it within myself - but I already feel isolated and lonely enough. It's just hard.

It is very hard. I find it difficult to be authentic because I am so afraid of coming off as arrogant or stupid or a know it all. I feel like I am constantly hiding parts of myself because I don't want anybody to think that I am trying to be better than anyone else. And, my range of interests don't fit the stereotypes. I am a female with a master's degree but am quite content to go to the races or a car show. It is difficult to find somebody that is intelligent yet simple at the same time. I hope that makes sense. A lot of times, intelligence is equated with academics and good grades and all of that. I spent a lot of years as a child hanging out with my dad. He is wicked smart but you would never know it unless you got him to open up about something.

[enlighten me]

Hi happy

I have an above average IQ. Im no sheldon cooper (big bang theory) but I do alright. I used to dumb myself down at schooll to fit in better.

I have a mind that is adept to problem solving. I can just see solutions. This took my manager a while to comprehend. He would have a problem and i would give a solution. He would always look sceptical. It took him months to trust my advise. After that i became his go to guy.

This ability to see solutions is often misinteprited as being a know it all or being inflexible. In a way i suppose I am but i just dont see the point in doing things the hard way.

This is not a good way to be when dealing with pwBPD especially as they see any form of disagreement as criticism.

[fromheeltoheal]

Cool, a Mensa thread!  I too am reasonably intelligent, and just like everything else, it has its upsides and downsides.  For me it's not so much about feeling different from everyone, it's about feeling separate.  That's part of the human condition in a sense, when we develop a ego and become autonomous individuals we're separate by definition, unlike a borderline who never does that all the way and is constantly looking for that psychic fusing to feel whole; maybe when they do it successfully they feel a lot more connected than I do for a while, but look how that works out for them... .

It's said genius and crazy go hand in hand, and while true for me, it seems to be a larger truth in that the more brain power we have the harder it is to keep our feet on the ground and find connectedness; as I'm getting older that is less of an issue and it's easier to embrace my weirdness, freak flag flying baby, and I'm good with that.  And of course there's the frame of hey, I'm crazy so I must be a genius.  Ahem.  I've also been labelled 'weird' a lot, all the way back to childhood, which can really fck a kid up if you take it wrong, but somehow I never did, kind of considered it a compliment which it was and still is sometimes today, and I'm good with wearing it as a badge of pride.  It doesn't help with that separateness thingy though.

Happy and Blim you guys are deep, I really enjoy following you down the paths you take, although honestly you lose me sometimes.  Doesn't matter, I'll pick up your trail where I can.

Hey eeks:

"there seems to be a bizarre dynamic going on "We don't like intelligent people very much, they just 'think they are better than everybody else', until they are rich and famous for inventing some technology, then they are our idols."

I run into that all the time, and it's a pain in the ass.  And what it boils down to is 'you think you're better than everyone else' translates to 'I don't think I'm as good as you', but screw that, folks ain't goin there, so I get to be the bad guy.  I can usually win people over, since I honestly don't feel that way, well, sometimes I do, depends who it is, but generally I don't and that mindset just contributes to the separateness I feel.

I have a hard time saying this "out loud", but I believe I experienced prejudice, just like racism or any other -ism.

Humans have both the need to connect with others and the need to feel unique, opposing needs in conflict.  Intelligent people are seen as one form of unique, which is cool, although it can create distance from people ("Wow, you think you're so b___in'".  There's that separateness again.  As Happy says, she 'dumbs herself down' with people, my guess is to meet her needs for connection better.  I do that too, but I'm getting tired of it, easier to focus on boundaries; if you say something unkind to me because you're questioning your own worth, get the fck out of my life, I don't have time for you.  Still working on the nuances of that one... .

I've been a fan of Myers Briggs lately, never dug far before, and my INTJ label has been a comfortable coat to wear; it validates my introversion, the fact I rarely get bored, I usually look inside for answers, not outwardly, and I don't do well with the conformist automaton mindset Blim and Happy talk about either.  The way out of conformity is autonomy, I do much, much better self-employed and self-directed, although there's that separateness thingy again... .

Nietzsche speaks to me, even when I assize him a little:

"Those who can't hear the music think the dancer is a fool."

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

[Blimblam]

Happy nihilist,

I think a lot of it comes down to this. When I was young I remember asking the othe kids if they realized that well essentially if they knew what I was talkin about with the pledge and the way people seemed to be programmed and didn't question.   I would especially ask the other kids that had top marks but they had no idea it is like those thoughts had never occurred to them and it was completely foreign.  So while they were intelligent they were intelligent within the box.  Latter after university I saw a few of those kids begin to make posts about the kinds of things I was talking bout with them when we were kids but it's only because some new authority figure taught them to think that way it was not independent thought. 

Now if you actually did think independently and make the realization that we were being herded an indoctrinated at a young age with no external validation then it created a huge internal conflict because you want to fit in but no one else seems to comprehend this awareness that you posses and when you do bring it foreward people tend to punish you for it because it questions the system itself and people rely on that system and aligning with it for status and power within it. So the less they question it the less they become aware of its shadow.  Which is reinforced by seeing the people who have questioned it being punished.

Here's a link to a video about the Stanford prison experiment and it sort of portrays the dynamic I am talking about.  www.youtu.be/1Py3JJZ2ZrI

[Blimblam]

Here is the. Black doll white doll test. 

www.youtu.be/tkpUyB2xgTM

So basically if you grow up as the white doll then you question the entire black doll white doll dichotomy people will just pusnish as a black doll mentality.  Some people will just allign with the white doll and profess I felt like a black doll but when I realized I was a white doll I felt free and empowered and the world is beautiful.  But if you consistently are aware that the problem is the black doll white doll mentality then you are like a fly in the ointment and those that allign with the white doll saying "0h it's biology".  People would rather just allign an identify themself as the white doll and if you remind them that their entire frame of reality is flawed their is typically consequences such As the existential crisis.