6 Struggles Highly Intelligent People Have, According to Psychology

One misconception a lot of folks have is that intelligent people get by easily in every aspect of life — that they are destined for success. They think belonging to the top of the ladder in terms of IQ level saves smart people from the struggle of doing tasks, mundane or complex.

Well, they’re not entirely wrong. Highly intelligent people do tend to thrive in the classroom and workplace, and for reasons still not fully understood, research links childhood intelligence with a longer life, among other things that just proves life is unfair.

But what if being smart is actually the reason for one’s problems? Experts and extensive studies have shown that there are some struggles highly intelligent people are more likely to experience.

You are overexcitable and highly energetic.

In other words, you are pretty intense.

A Polish psychiatrist and psychologist known for his theory of positive disintegration, Kazimierz Dabrowski, coined the term overexcitability (OE) when he found in his clinical observations that in comparison to the less gifted population, bright individuals tended to be “neurotically allergic or nervous”.

They exhibited a heightened way of experiencing and responding to stimuli within five specific areas, namely psychomotor, sensory, intellectual, imaginational, and emotional.

For example, people with intellectual overexcitability tend to have a high level of curiosity, deep concentration, and an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. Those with high emotional overexcitability may experience stronger and more complex emotions in response to their environment. Some may exhibit competitiveness (guilty), compulsive organizing, impulsive talking, and behavior, among others.

It’s really sad that gifted students who show intense behavior are labeled as problematic, more commonly because they, the students themselves, and concerned adults, like parents and teachers, are not aware of OE. They should instead be assisted in coping with their extreme tendencies.

You suffer from a psychological disorder.

In Dabrowski’s findings, he observed that overexcitability is associated with slight levels of neurosis, such as depression, mild anxiety, and tics.

Research by psychologist Ruth Karpinski, et al. aligns with the conclusions of Dabrowski, that individuals with high IQ are at higher risk for psychological disorders.

In her study, 3 715 participants — members of the high IQ society American Mensa — were asked to self-report any suspected or diagnosed mood and anxiety disorders, as well as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and physiological diseases that include environmental and food allergies, asthma, and autoimmune disease.

The research concluded high IQ to be a risk factor for affective disorders, ADHD, ASD, and for increased incidence of disease related to immune dysregulation.

You tend to overanalyze things.

Karpinski and her colleagues proposed a hyper brain/hyper body theory of integration, which asserts that individuals with high intelligence respond to external stimuli with an overexcitable behavior.

Since Dabrowski’s research links OEs with the occurrence of stress, physiological OEs would surface to respond to that stress. As a result, overanalyzing often occurs.

For example, if someone smart you look up to gives you a negative remark, you might overanalyze this comment, which then causes physiological OEs. This could be anything from more stress to anxiety. A highly intelligent person may dwell on this statement for so long, searching for implied meanings and creating scenarios in their head, while others will just shrug and move on with their lives.

You are a night owl.

Famous night owls include John Travolta, Prince, Christina Aguilera, Winston Churchill, Fran Lebowitz, Bob Dylan, Carl Jung, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Barack Obama .

And if you’re anything like me (or them), no matter how many times you tried self-care gurus’ advice of starting your day at 5 a.m., you were really just wired to enjoy the late evenings and early mornings.

The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals tend to adapt and acquire more “evolutionarily novel” behavior and preferences as opposed to those than less intelligent individuals. In simpler terms, this hypothesis states that smarter people are more likely to flourish taking on tasks that are “newer” to humans’ entire evolutionary history. They prefer liberalism and atheism, for example.

Research by psychologists Satoshi Kanazawa and Kaja Perina confirms this prediction in the domain of circadian rhythms, that highly intelligent people are more likely to be nocturnal than those less intelligent.

Although being a night owl sounds like a good thing, working through the night has its disadvantages.

First, you are not in sync with the rest of the world. Since your juices prefer the dark, you stay up through the night without getting exhausted, only to have to wake up early for work. And you end up feeling sluggish the whole day.

Your sleep schedule is messed up, so you likely won’t feel like doing what normal people do when the sun is out. You might feel disconnected in social meetings, or you don’t just feel as productive at work.

However, when the world stopped due to the pandemic, we were glued to our houses working and studying remotely. Many people responded with discomfort to this sudden change in their lifestyles. But being the introvert and night owl that I am, it took me no time to adjust. I found it was a better setup for the kind of workflow that suits my body’s rhythm — I had the freedom to choose when to hustle and of course, I was most productive at night. The anxiety I often had of having to wake up early and lacking sleep was gone.

You have high expectations.

Performing well provokes two things, and two things only: it’s either you are commended or condemned. There’s no in-between.

And as much as I hate to admit it, the latter prevails in our society. The moment you get those perfect marks as a child or recognition from your superior as an adult, you are faced with the stares of people expecting more from you. It’s like they’re criticizing the fact that you did better. No matter what, you are expected to be on top of everything.

Likely, they’re just projecting what they want from themselves, but you can’t deny the fact that you also tend to raise the standards you have on yourself. Being the person decorated with the characteristics of a highly intelligent person faces you with the burden of meeting such expectations.

If managed poorly, this would ultimately lead to stress. Understand where your high expectations are coming from. Assess if they are realistic and if they are from yourself, for yourself. If these standards are the absurd demands of other people, ditch them. You are not required to prove anything to people.

You are vulnerable to extreme stress.

Surprise, surprise.

With all the overexcitability and the high expectations from people around you, it ultimately had to lead to this.

Both Karpinski and Dabrowski have pointed out how individuals of high IQ exhibit traits that cause them to become super stressed. Overanalyzing things make you ponder for too long on different events that happened to you, creating scenarios in your head. Physiological OEs in response and in addition to this stress would most likely be negatively impacting your holistic well-being.

I find it ironic how we expect smart people to only get better--like how they are now with their skills, is far worse than the general population. The truth is, we are only projecting what we dislike about ourselves onto those who we want to see ourselves in.

It’s important to understand that this is not a scale to measure how intelligent you are. But if you are experiencing any of these problems, it’s best to consult an expert or people you trust.