Last night I was watching one of my favorite YouTubers, Dr. Alok Kanoja, AKA Dr. K from HealthyGamerGG. He’s a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, trained in India to become a monk, and is also a big gamer, so his focus is helping other gamers with their mental health issues. The video I was watching was about these so-called “gifted kids.” You know, kids who grow up getting perfect grades in school and never having to try to study, but just end up succeeding regardless. I identify with this experience. Lucky me, right? My life must’ve been so easy. The thing is, as Dr. K points out and explains, growing up “gifted” actually makes life harder the older you get.
Basically, things came easy for us in grade school, but because we relied too much on our intellect, we end up trying to theorize and think our way through problems instead of actually learning other critical skills for life, including emotional regulation and socialization. Our advantage is our IQ, but we use it as a crutch when life requires other skills. He compares our IQ to our dominant hand: if it’s so easy using it for everything, why on earth would we try to do anything with our non-dominant hand? Plus, as this sort of behavior becomes ingrained in us, even though we want to change it becomes very hard for us to actually do so.
Our awareness and understanding of emotions are underdeveloped too. Logically, I know what to do when around others in an emotional setting, laugh when someone makes a joke, frown when something sad happens, but I don’t necessarily feel the motions of joy or sadness when those things happen.
Another good example of relying too much on intellect for me is that I tend to look for answers to all of my problems in books, especially self-help books or books on studying, when it would be much more beneficial for me to actually practice studying. It didn’t help that my environment growing up was always filled with people helping me through life by doing things for me, instead of teaching me how to do them on my own and letting me practice that. I know it’s my fault too for not taking initiative sometimes, but I feel like I didn’t know any better. When I don’t know what to do, when I’m anxious or depressed or just lost, I tend to simply go with the flow of things.
Below is a link to the video. Writing this blog is my way of practicing how to take action, contribute to society, rather than just thinking about it. And I’ll try to notice my emotions more too and how to respond to them. Thanks for reading, until next time!
Austin