HealthyGamerGG - Why Smart Kids Are The Loneliest

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

Smart kids often find themselves walking a solitary path, their intellectual acumen sometimes creating a barrier to social connections. In this episode, we unravel the complexities behind the solitude that often accompanies exceptional intelligence. Check out HG coaching: https://bit.ly/47dF7rF Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Want to get started? Head to CarMax.com for details and get pre-qualified today. Want to drive? CarMax. Today we're going to talk about why smart kids end up lonely. And one of the most important lessons I learned as a psychiatrist is that the solutions of today become the problems of tomorrow. And if you're a smart kid, you may sort of understand what I'm talking about because as a smart kid, you faced certain problems when you were growing up. And since you're so smart, you came up with solutions that worked really well. But despite the fact that you've come up with lots of successful solutions, oftentimes smart kids find themselves to be

sort of stuck and incredibly lonely. So in order to understand this, we have to start by understanding how identity develops. So when we're young kids, let's say five years old, six years old, seven years old, we tend to look at the world in a one-dimensional way. So if I'm a kid like, I like trucks and I like Spider-Man or I like wrestling or I like G.I. Joe's or ninjas, we tend to be like pretty one-dimensional, right? I like ponies. And so what happens when we're kind of one-dimensional kids is that we sort of develop these one-dimensional. identities. So if you look at school, right, and if you think back to your school days, what were the different kids known for? There were some kids who were nerds and some kids who were

jocks and some kids who were like the cool kids, some kids who were like the teacher's pets. So if you sort of think about the sense of identity early on, the sense of identity is very, very one-dimensional. And so since it's one-dimensional, what tends to happen is some of us will adopt the mantle of being a smart kid, right? So our parents will tell us, hey, you're so smart, Our teachers will tell us, wow, you're so smart. The other kids will push you around on the playground because, damn it, you're so smart. So the first thing that happens is that we start to develop an identity as a smart kid. Parenting in the digital age is becoming increasingly complicated.

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And one-dimensional, identities are actually completely normal for kids. The problem is that if your one-dimensional identity is that you're smart, that starts to sabotage things later in life in a way that other one-dimensional identities usually don't. Like, if I love Spider-Man and that's my identity, it doesn't really cause me problems necessarily later in life. And if we want to understand why the identity of being smart causes problems, we have to understand what it means to be smart. So when someone calls you smart or when you call someone else smart, or you say, oh my God, this person, this person is brilliant. Like, hi, I'm Dr. Kay. I'm so brilliant, right? Everyone thinks I'm so smart.

Why do they think I'm smart? Like, what, have y'all seen an IQ test for Dr. Kay? You have no idea, right? I could just be average intelligence. What we equate with smartness is really effortless success. And so when you take a child and you say, wow, you are really great at effortless success. When all the other kids are sweating and trying hard, you waltz through here and because you're so brilliant, it's easy for you. When everyone else needs to be. You're so great. You're to study for a test, you don't need to study for a test because you are so brilliant. And so this child starts to adopt this identity that intelligence means effortless success. And that results in a narrowing of possibilities and a narrowing of identity.

So if the source of my identity, if I'm a smart kid, then I can't do anything that requires effort, right? Because if I do something that requires effort, that makes me feel dumb. So if I do really well in school, but my teacher comes to me and and says, hey, you're so good at math, you should compete for our school as sort of a math lead. And then suddenly, like, that may sound like a good idea, right? Because I'm a smart kid. That's what smart kids do. But then suddenly, if I start competing against other smart kids, I have to start putting forth effort. And if I start putting forth effort, I don't feel smart anymore. No one, if I start competing in math competitions, no one calls me brilliant anymore. I can't waltz in

and be at the top of my class. And so suddenly what happens is that becomes a threat to your sense of identity. So what smart kids start to do is they stop doing things that require effort. And this is really when they get screwed because that's a solution that works really well, impresses a ton of people when you're young. But as you start to grow older, you start to move away from other activities. So there's sort of a narrowing of your life, and this is what I've seen working with tons of smart kids, that you're not able to do things that other kids are able to do. Because that other kid actually doesn't have the burden of being smart. So they're sort of allowed to practice do poorly and then eventually get better.

But as a smart kid, that's not an option for you. So as this narrowing of identity starts to happen, as you start to move away or retreat from things that are difficult and require effort. And the other problem with that is as you grow older, your raw intelligence can no longer like get you to the top of the class, right? Eventually you're going to be learning, you know, pre-algebra and then algebra and then calculus and then like calculus two and then whatever advanced number theory crap.

And then like eventually you've got to start working. But the problem is a smart kid is that the second you start working, you stop being smart. And this kind of becomes a vicious cycle because the less I start doing, the more I'm left with the identity of being a smart kid. Because now I'm not multi-dimensional. I'm not also a graceful dancer. I'm not also very charismatic, right? All I am is smart. And so as that becomes all I am, it becomes harder and harder to put myself in places that threatens that.

So this results in a very, very sharp narrowing of hobbies, of exposures, and eventually leads to social isolation. Because let's think about it, right? So if I don't end up joining this team and I don't become a athlete and I don't start doing sports, what I'm going to sort of be left with is like a lack of opportunity to like socially engage with kids. And this is where being smart also kind of sabotages kids. Because as I start to reduce my social activity, how do I solve that problem? I use it with my intelligence. So there are studies that show that kids who are pretty smart will start to develop something called cognitive empathy.

And that may sound kind of weird because isn't empathy like emotional? Isn't the whole point of empathy that you can feel what someone else is feeling? But as you reduce your social activity and your social exposure, the empathic circuits of your brain start to shut off. They start to become rusty. And so what a smart kid does is they've got this one awesome tool in their tool belt, which is their intelligence. And so then they leverage their intelligence towards social interactions. So now social interactions become puzzles to be solved. I'm feeling lonely.

How can I say the perfect thing? How can I run through a thousand different scenarios to make sure that I get invited to this thing or that kids don't make fun of you? And so we start to really lean into this intelligence to start to manage social interactions. The problem is that that becomes very, very energy intensive. So you can run a thousand different calculations. but at the end of the day, like, if you're shutting off half of your brain that's used for social interactions, there's no way that your intelligence will be able to, like, fill in for other parts

of your brain. The problem with being a smart kid is that that actually worked for a while, right? You were so damn smart that you didn't need empathy for the first 13 years of your life because you could calculate social interactions. And so when everyone else is sort of relying or their intelligence doesn't solve the whole problem for them in terms of lonely, is. They have to lean into things like empathy and their empathic circuits start waking up in the brain. But for you, you are allowed to keep them dormant because your intelligence could do all of it. And what this ends up in is sort of social isolation because cognitive empathy is not a sustainable way to maintain relationships. It becomes cognitively exhausting, right? So then you don't even have fun. It feels like social activity is a chore and is

incredibly draining. And then half of you all diagnose yourselves as introverts because social activity is draining. Social activity isn't draining for introverts anymore than it is draining for extroverts, which I know sounds really bizarre, but even extroverts feel drained after three hours of social activity. What's draining is your cognitive load or things like social anxiety, because every minute that you are engaging people socially, your mind is actually running on overtime, so you run yourself ragged. So as your social skills start to atrophy, you start to feel lonely. And then what happens is your intelligence kind of comes in and your ego comes in. You your identity comes in, and you start to develop something called defensive arrogance.

And you'll notice this with smart kids on the internet. So, like, if you try to talk to, you know, anyone on the internet, there's a thousand of, there's a thousand, 140 IQ people who are going absolutely nowhere in life, who learned quantum mechanics on their own and are like expert philosophers and know more about medicine than the experts and all this kind of stuff. And they're happy to engage with you with arguments on the internet, right? And so what this sort of starts to become is this defensive. So as you start to feel lonely, what do you have left? Oh, I'm a quiet genius. My intelligence

is so great that I cannot interact with the normal humans. I have difficulty connecting with people because they're so dumb. So this is that defensive arrogance. And even if you're not that bad, you'll still sort of notice that there are times in your life where you're, you kind of feel very, very reluctant to engage with other people. And so as you're, as you start to become more lonely, this defensive arrogance comes with a correlating low. self-esteem. So anyone who's defensively arrogant really doesn't feel confident in the selves, right? And you may have sort of noticed that as you feel lonely, you start to have low self-esteem, but you've got one bright point left, which is your intelligence. Even though every other part of

your life, you may not be, you may be lazy, you may be kind of socially isolated, you may be lonely, but at least you're smart. You've got that left. And so then what happens is we run into another problem, which is that we start to use intelligence to boost up our ego and self-esteem, right? We try to use rationality to buffer against our self-esteem. But there's a fundamental problem with that, which is that intelligence, from an evolutionary standpoint, is not a defensive tool. It is not a self-esteem tool. It is a problem-solving tool.

So if you literally look at the research on IQ, why do we even have IQ? Why are some people, on the whole, actually smarter than other people? And it's because IQ is a problem-solving tool, right? It's the way that our brain fixes problems on the outside. And as smart kids start to feel more lonely and as they start to have self-esteem problems, they really have one thing left, which is that I'm a smart kid. The other dimensions of my life may be crap, I may be lazy, I may be socially inept, but at least I'm smart.

So they kind of hang their whole identity on that hat. The other problem that happens is that y'all have actually one major tool that's really, really good, right? Which is your intelligence. And so then you start trying to fix your self-esteem with your intelligence. But the basic problem is that IQ did not develop to address self-esteem. That's not what it's for. IQ is a general problem-solving capability that we evolved to fix problems on the outside. It's not a tool that was designed to buffer our self-esteem. What's designed to buffer our self-esteem is actually emotions, right? So just think about this for a second. You can't logic your way to self-esteem.

If you could logic your way to self-esteem, your fucking 140 IQ ass would have already done it, and you would be filled with confidence. Because if anyone can figure out how to logic their way to self-esteem, it would be you. But that's not actually how it works. Because when you were six years old and you scraped your knee and you went to mommy or daddy or any sort of adult,

how did they make you feel better about yourself? Did they say, well, logically, the injury that you have is a small scrape. So it's nothing to worry about you, have not been damaged, you're not going to be disabled. There's no problem. There's no, there's no harm, really. It's a small scrape. It'll heal on its own. So you should be okay. That's not what helps, right? Logicing your way when you're feeling bad doesn't work. What works is, oh, let me see that. Oh, my God. Did you get a little boo-boo? Oh, I'm sorry, it's not a little boo-boo. Oh, my God.

Look at those three scrapes. Wow, does that hurt a lot? Okay. Well, should we put some ice on that? Right? Okay. Like, do you need a hug? Oh, baby. Let me hold you. Let me hug. you, right? This is what actually works. So this is another thing that we don't quite understand, which is that IQ is an offensive weapon. People who are super smart are like wizards and DPS mages. IQ is like flinging fireballs and lightning bolts to fix problems on the outside. I can take a high IQ kid, drop them into my private practice and say, hey, help me optimize patient flow through my workroom. Like, I can do that and y'all can solve those problems. I've literally done that before. On the flip side, when it comes to buffering your self-esteem, a wizard is like not really

great at casting healing spells or defensive magic, right? That's really what a healer is for. And that's kind of that emotional capability. That's kind of what healers are, is they're really built into that emotional capability. And so what starts to happen is we start dumping our whole manipool instead of solving problems on the outside, trying to buffer up our self-esteem. Because if our self-esteem is in shambles, we can't even leave the house. And this is the core. And this is the core trap that people with high IQ fall into is that they've had sort of emotional stunting because they've leaned so much on their their cognitive development. They start to develop these things like cognitive empathy. They start to become lonely and have low self-esteem and then they puffed themselves

up using their logic. This is why I'm still a good person. I will logic it out. But fundamentally, that's like a wizard dumping their whole manabar into trying to heal something. Instead of actually using the right kind of magic to actually heal yourself, which is emotions. And so now the question becomes, okay, if we're in this situation, what do we do about it? So the first thing that we've got to do is abandon our identity as a smart kid. Now, this may sound really terrifying because it's all I've got left. This is the only source of my self-esteem. But my friend, your self-esteem is already in the trash, right? If we stop and think about it, it ain't doing a whole lot for you anyway. So get rid of it. And here's...

the reason why? So the fundamental problem with having self-esteem based on your intelligence is that it teaches you that your self-esteem has nothing to do with your actions. If you really think about it, being proud of being smart is the stupidest thing on the planet to be proud of. Because what did you do to deserve that? Right? Did you work hard? No. IQ is primarily dependent on genetics and maybe some amount of upbringing and whether you smoked a shit ton of pot when you in your teenage years, right? That's really all it depends on. It's something that people are born with, which is why a lot of IQ testing happens with like four-year-olds. So the basic problem is that your identity is based on something that you don't even need to take credit for. Like,

you don't deserve to take credit for that. You didn't do anything. So now this becomes a huge problem, because if your sense of identity is based on things that are outside of your control that you don't actually do anything to deserve, it becomes really hard once you learn that, okay, my identity is based on stuff that is out of my control, actions have no impact on your self-esteem. So when I work with smart kids and I ask them, well, did you try your best? They can't take any pride in that. What matters is the result, right? Well, like, it doesn't matter if I tried my best.

If I tried my best and I fell short, I actually feel worse about myself. Well, hold on a second. Why is that? Well, if I tried my best and I didn't get it, that means I'm stupid. That means that I'm not good enough. That means that failure is inevitable. So now hold on a second. Let me understand this right.

You're telling me that if you try your best and it doesn't work out, you view that as a failure instead of a success, right? Obviously, because it didn't work out. But think about what that does for the strategy of your life. You're not allowed to try your best. You're not allowed to fail. And if you try, you even have to self-sabotage. Because if you try your best and you fail, then you're absolutely screwed.

But if I half-asset, then there's a point. part of my ego that's like, aha, the reason I didn't get it is because I half-assed it. It's not because I'm stupid. And so now you develop the strategy of either you half-ass it or you don't try it all. You develop the strategy where trying your hardest becomes something to avoid at all costs. And no wonder you're stuck. No wonder you're lonely because you will not let yourself give 100%. And that is the core problem that kids who are smart run into.

The second thing that we need to do is catch that sense of identity in the present when you try to do something. So your smart, intelligent brain has figured out that, okay, in order to put together my life, I need to do certain things. But when you try to do those things, pay attention to what sabotages you. What sabotages you is that defensive arrogance. Oh, I can't do that because I'm not like that. I can't do that because other people are like that. I can't do that because I won't seem smart. I'll feel embarrassed to have to go into training where there are nobs who are teaching me how to use PowerPoint.

I know how to use PowerPoint. I can figure it out on my own. I don't need someone to train me. I don't need to sit in a class for two weeks to learn how to use PowerPoint. I could watch YouTube in two hours and figure it out using my own, like, watching tutorials and stuff. I don't need this. But the question is, do you end up learning how to use PowerPoint? Do you actually do that?

Of course not. You may start to watch one tutorial, but then you click on to something else and then you actually don't acquire the skills. two weeks go by and you should have sat in the class. But you can't because it's humiliating. And so catch that in the moment and go to the class anyway. Say, wow, this is me sabotaging. This is me not wanting to be humiliated by going to the class. And so then you have to ask yourself, I have a choice.

I can make progress and feel humiliated or I can feel proud and stay stuck. And if you're the person that I think you are, chances are you've chosen the ladder. many, many, many, many times over. Anything but be humiliated, right? I will stay stuck on my ass for a long time rather than grow as a human being because I can feel good about myself. So that identity has to go.

The second thing that we've got to do is start working on your emotions. So this is where you can absolutely check out stuff that we have on Alexa Thymie and all that kind of stuff, but I'm going to start super, super, super small. So generally speaking, when smart kids are lonely, one of the things that happens with loneliness is that it's like, how do you fix that?

Do you spend time with someone? Is that sufficient to fix loneliness? Because you've tried that before. And this is where another thing I've noticed with a lot of smart kids who are lonely is that there's a lack of physical touch in their life. And if we sort of look at how human beings feel less alone, if we look at activating those emotions, human touch is one of the simplest ways in which we activate our emotions and activate a sense of connection. So the simple thing that you've got to do is, I know this sounds kind of weird, engage. in human touch. Now, I don't mean go out there and start, like, touching people. Like, oh, Dr. K told me that I need to engage in human touch. And so you go and you just like touch someone,

don't do that, right? So what I would say is very simply, offer someone who needs a hug, a hug. So it can feel really embarrassing to ask for a hug. It can feel really creepy to ask for a hug. But as you go about your day, you may notice that there are people who are not having the best time. And you can say, hey, it sounds like you're not having the best day. Do you need a hug? Just offer them a hug. And just give you. him a simple hug. That's it. Nothing more, nothing less. Remember, we got to start small and you're like, well, what do I do after that? Right? So there's your intelligence again saying that's not enough. That's not going to fix my problems. I don't want to take the first step unless I can figure out how to do the

last step. What comes next? And that's the problem. You can't always know what comes next. You have to start taking simple steps to start making progress, right? That's the strategy. The strategy is not I need to figure out one to 100 before I take step number one, that's what got you here. The strategy, if you want to get to 100 is you got to take one step, and then you got to figure out the second one, and you got to figure out the third one, and then you got to figure out the fourth one. But you can take one step at a time. That's the only way you can do it. You can't climb a mountain in any other way than taking one step at a time. So what I encourage you all to do is try to engage in some human contact, right? And I know that everyone's going to meme about that. But I'm serious. Like, we

know that hugging people leads to a release of oxytocin. Now the, the common pediatric recommendation is that when you have a newborn child, that you do something called skin-to-skin contact. And there are some physiologic reasons for this. Babies have really thin skin and they can't maintain their own body temperature. So their skin is actually really absorbent for your body heat. So that's one reason. But the other thing is that we know that this actually facilitates bonding with kids, right? So human beings are wired to bond through touch. And even though it can feel kind of embarrassing, and that's why I'm saying don't go out there and ask for a hug, right? So how can we make it easy for you? You can

offer a hug. And it may hurt to get rejected, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're rejecting you. That means that they may not want a hug right there. And so just offer people a hug if they need it. That's all I'm asking. And so if you're someone who's ended up being kind of this lonely genius, I don't blame you at all. Chances are you're in this situation because you've had to adapt to a lot of circumstances in life. And the basic problem is that all of your adaptations tend to be cognitive in nature. And cognition just simply can't solve all of our problems. That's why our brains have emotional circuits instead of CPUs, right? A computer is a fully cognitive machine, sort of, I don't know,

that's AI stuff, I guess, or theory of consciousness or whatever. But the whole point is that if you're smart, you probably let certain things like social skills, empathy, emotions, atrophy. And we have to start engaging some of those if you want to develop self-esteem and get connected to both yourself and other people in life.