Smart people often worry more due to heightened awareness of potential problems, overthinking consequences, deeper empathy, perfectionism, and constant mental stimulation, leading to analyzing future scenarios and feeling pressure, which can become overwhelming and link intelligence with anxiety. Their brains process more possibilities, causing them to worry about things others might miss, sometimes driven by a desire to prevent negative outcomes, creating a cycle of rumination.
``Ruth Karpinski and other researchers at Pitzer College found that people with a higher IQ tend to have overexcitabilities (heightened response to stimuli), causing them to feel worry and other negative emotions more intensely than the average person.
Studies have also found that higher IQ is associated with more mental illness, including depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder.
Individuals with high IQ often experience heightened sensitivity to stimuli and more intense emotional responses. Their brains show unique patterns of neural connectivity, which can lead to both cognitive advantages and a tendency towards overthinking and rumination.
Social anxiety is born out of this concern for unpredictability. Interacting with other people can be more difficult for smart people because these interactions don't follow a specific set of rules; they just happen. This lack of control over social situations can easily trigger anxiety.
Some studies showed that gifted children had lower anxiety scores than their non-gifted peers (15,16). For example, Guignard et al., (9) reported that gifted children display higher anxiety only when they did not have more perfectionism than their peers.
Overthinking is a big problem for both INFJ personality types and INFP personality types. As a writing coach who specializes in working with both types, I've seen that overthinking is tied to INFJs and INFPs struggling overall with creativity, feeling connected to their intuition, and life in general.
A 72 IQ is considered Borderline Intellectual Functioning (BIF), falling just above the threshold for intellectual disability (usually around 70), placing it in the lower end of the spectrum (70-79) and indicating slower learning and potential needs for support in daily living, though it's not low enough for an official intellectual disability diagnosis by itself, notes Quora user. It's in the bottom few percentiles of the population, requiring more time to grasp complex concepts but not necessarily severe impairment.
They are a natural strategic and independent thinker. In addition, they have a highly complex inner world that not many people get. Because of this, they may struggle with loneliness, relationship frustrations, and feeling misunderstood.
From a personality trait perspective, individuals with high neuroticism scores were more likely to feel anxious than those with low scores, and introverted individuals experienced higher state anxiety than extroverted individuals, suggesting a correlation between anxiety traits, neuroticism and introversion.
Highly intelligent individuals frequently ponder life's bigger questions, reflecting deeply on meaning, purpose, and ethical dilemmas. Such profound introspection can make casual social interactions feel superficial or unsatisfying, further isolating them from peers who may not share their depth or perspective.
Some studies have found an association between giftedness and internalizing problems, which involve excessive control of emotions and behavior, anxiety, social withdrawal, low self-esteem, or excessive perfectionism [e.g., 11].
You can say:
Due to their giftedness being overlooked or receiving inadequate support, gifted children frequently display behaviors that closely resemble symptoms of various psychological syndromes such as attention deficit disorder (ADD/ADHD), autism spectrum disorder (ASD), depression, narcissism, or oppositional defiant disorder ...
Yes, high achievers are often prone to anxiety due to perfectionist tendencies, fear of failure, and the pressure they place on themselves. The constant pursuit of excellence can lead to chronic stress and anxiety if not managed properly.
Slowness learning to talk, or continued difficulties with speech and language skills after starting to talk. Difficulty with self-help and self-care skills (e.g., getting dressed, washing, and feeding themselves) Poor planning or problem-solving abilities. Behavioral and social problems.
To calculate IQ, take a person's mental age, divide it by chronological age, and then multiply that number by 100. For example, if a person has a mental age of 12 but is 10 years old, then you'd divide 12 by 10, and multiply that number by 100, which would result in an IQ of 120.
Borderline intellectual functioning, previously called borderline mental retardation (in the ICD-8), is a categorization of intelligence wherein a person has below average cognitive ability (generally an IQ of 70–85), but the deficit is not as severe as intellectual disability (below 70).
The good news is that you weren't born an overthinker. Overthinking is the result of one fact of human existence: we all have patterns to our behavior. These patterns, good and bad, develop over time based on life experiences. And just as patterns are learned, they can also be unlearned.
When asked about the emotions they experienced most regularly, here's the percentages of each type who chose “Anxiety” from the list of options.
Research shows that overthinking (which most often comes in the forms of rumination or worry) can lead to anxiety and depression. Dr. Susan Nolen-Hoeksema, a Yale professor who has spent her life studying overthinking, calls it the “secret to unhappiness”.
Teas for stress and anxiety relief
What to avoid saying to someone with anxiety?
The rule is simple: Commit to doing the task for just five minutes. That's it. Once you get over the initial resistance and begin, even if only briefly, something shifts. Momentum builds, anxiety decreases, and your brain transitions from avoidance to engagement.