Being highly intelligent can have a profound effect on how individuals cope with everyday interactions and can even impact sleep, science suggests.
Though being brainy has all sorts of upsides, research suggests those with high IQs can struggle with inescapable things like shallow conversations with colleagues and it can even make sleeping difficult.
MailOnline spoke to experts who revealed the kinds of things that drain the energy of intelligent people, including something that can be hard to avoid: small talk.
Martina Cola, a psycholinguistics researcher at Think in Italian told the outlet that people with the most grey matter “seek complexity in conversations, making routine or shallow exchanges mentally draining”.
She says when faced with conversations of this kind, which can often lack depth, “maintaining polite exchanges becomes tiring as it lacks the cognitive reward they seek”.
Dr Jennifer Hartstein, a psychotherapist at Hartstein Psychological in New York City, says it can also affect people’s ability to keep up with trends, as highly intelligent people “don’t often have the mental energy for the small or superficial.
“Something like keeping up with fashion trends may cause a sense of fatigue because it lacks any sort of mental challenge,” she told the paper, adding: “People who are highly intelligent may feel bored when they are not stimulated, which triggers some exhaustion.”
Jonathan Alpert, a psychotherapist and performance coach in New York City, says very clever may also find maintaining friendships or romantic relationships challenging.
“I’ve seen highly intelligent people struggle with relationships as they sometimes intellectualise things and struggle to forge connections with others based on feelings and emotions,” he told The Mail.
“There’s a bit of a double edged sword with this. As they struggle to fit in, they might feel anxious and withdraw, making it even tougher to develop friendships,” he added.
Managing emotions can be another struggle, according to Dr Dakari Quimby, a clinical psychologist with HelpGuide Handbook.
“Balancing one’s own emotions and those of others can be challenging, especially for those who are more logical and reason-oriented than emotional,” he told the news outlet.
Another impact identified by experts is sleep deprivation, with clever people thought to be less good at self-care.
A study in the Journal of Sleep Research published in 2022 found that people with higher fluid intelligence, the ability to solve problems and think logically, had better cognitive performance after normal sleep but a larger vulnerability to sleep deprivation.
Dr Hartstein said people in this group may also find getting a good kip tough because they “do not do a great job of taking care of themselves”.
“In fact, they may not really know how to relax, which will impact their quality of sleep and their ability to get a good sleep,” she said.
“They don’t really know how to recharge. It does overlap with overthinking, but can also overlap with one’s inability to get things done or wanting to always do things perfectly, which pushes off the focus on self-care and what the individual needs.”
