Highly Intelligent People Usually Feel A Specific Emotion That’s Hard For The Average Person To Understand

Intelligence is celebrated in our society, and it often feels like life would be much easier if we were only a bit smarter.

There are plenty of advantages to having high intelligence, but there are downsides too. For example, Professor Bobby Hoffman, PhD, said people with high IQs may find it difficult to work in a traditional business environment, as well as holding themselves to an impossible standard they can never reach.

It turns out that highly intelligent people also feel a fairly universal emotion in a completely different way, which makes it harder for them to deal with than it is for the average person.

Highly intelligent people usually feel an intense shame that makes them lonelier.

A nervous system coach named Dana Doswell touched on what it’s like to be “a highly intelligent person who also has a lot of internalized chronic shame.” When people feel shame, they tend to isolate themselves, making them feel even more cut off from the rest of the world, creating a vicious cycle.

“You can have this experience of simultaneously feeling that you are superior and more intelligent than many other people while also feeling very ‘other than’ and as if there is something inherently wrong with you that makes other people not wanna connect with you, and then feel super lonely,” she explained.

Apparently, highly intelligent people tend to feel deep humiliation. This really just comes with the territory, according to psychotherapist Imi Lo. These people learn to hide who they truly are because the world doesn't know how to hold space for them. In turn, this leads to imposter syndrome and, as Doswell said, loneliness.

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Highly intelligent people can move through their shame by being vocal and open about it.

In another video, Doswell explained that de-shaming is “a practice that actively aims to dissolve shame from your nervous system and its related psychosomatic and physiological impacts by facilitating intuitive somatic releases of shame.”

“By mapping your explicit and implicit shame, we’re getting this kind of shame composition map,” Dana said. “So, we are bringing that implicit and invisible shame to the surface and recognizing where some of these internalized beliefs” come from.

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Seeking support and engaging in positive self-talk are avenues to releasing shame. Working through shame leads us to be more compassionate to ourselves and others.

“By de-shaming, we are making suppressed parts of ourselves OK to exist,” she said. “What happens when we do this is we are able to hold more truth about how we are, how our bodies feel, and who we truly are as people.”

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Shame is a deeply complex yet ultimately very common emotion to have. 

The American Psychological Association defines it as a “highly unpleasant self-conscious emotion” that’s “typically characterized by withdrawal from social intercourse ... which can have a profound effect on psychological adjustment and interpersonal relationships.”

Technically, most people will feel shame at some point on some level. But, cognitive neuroscientist Dr. Christian Jarrett shared that it may be possible for people suffering from true psychopathy to feel very little, if any, shame.

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Most of us all experience shame in different ways, though. Just like some people hold more anger than others, some can carry more shame as well. This is especially true when someone is dealing with a mental illness closely associated with shame, and it rings true for the highly intelligent as well.

Being human means we’re constantly seeking connection, even when we tell ourselves that we’re OK alone. The truth is that we all need other people, even if shame says we're not worthy of support. We all need to give and receive love in order to live a full, healthy life.

When we move beyond the shame we hold, we accept that we hold disparate parts and recognize that we are no less whole because of that.

RELATED: The Behavior That Makes Someone Seem Kind Of Dumb But Actually Means They’re Highly Intelligent

Alexandra Blogier, MFA, is a writer who covers psychology, social issues, relationships, self-help topics, and human interest stories.