When you’re a smart person, and you have a particular type of personality (which I’ll talk about in a second), you care about being and looking smart. This is not a flaw or a fault. But it does create a pretty deep connection to “smart/stupid” insinuations.
(Especially if you were also a gifted kid.)
In fact, some of us have such deeply engrained radars for “smart/stupid” language, we don’t even realize when it has us by the throat. We find ourselves getting defensive, insisting we already knew the thing someone is telling us, or even worse, being hyper critical of our internal self.
As I was writing our monthly community development post this morning, because we’re talking primarily to the “smart” kids, I had to make some pretty aggressive instructions for how to consume the content. When smart people talk to each other, we tend to use “smart/stupid designations” without even realizing it.
Without realizing it.
But when you are high in Learner, Input, Strategic, or Analytical, you likely have such a high capacity to either take in or assimilate information, and you are far more likely to respond to other people with defensiveness around intelligence. That’s why I called this post “What, you think you’re better than me?” Because that’s the instinctive response when there’s a lack of safety around the smart/stupid judgments. (If you’ve seen How I Met Your Mother, there’s a very specific, “what, you think you’re better than me” moment I’m referencing… but I think most of us have heard this phrase, in sort of a Jersey accent.)
There’s a particular part of this interview where even I, as the interviewer, was finding myself doing the internal shaming (how could I not have learned this yet, how stupid are you, and such language), which immediately reminds me of the other “you think you’re better than me” responses. I had to pause and laugh at myself, and that hyper-critical adolescent who’s just trying to prove she’s not stupid. She’s proven it, plenty. But still, there’s a moment where, unguarded, she’s still worried she is.
The thing is, when we were younger (maybe elementary or junior high / high school age), many of us were either made to feel stupid because “there’s no way you are that smart” or because we came across the one thing we couldn’t learn… hello, calculus, my old friend.
In that moment, we developed an internal threat detector to protect us from feeling stupid. And that threat detector created the “what, you think you’re better than me” response as a way of normalizing our intelligence. Or our faith in our intelligence. Or our lack of faith in our intelligence. (And the worst part is, we almost never realize we’re doing this, because it’s so immediate.)
Aren’t our brains just fascinating? Anyway. Here’s the point.
That response helped at the time, but it’s not helping us now. When we find ourselves feeling criticized because our Strategic doesn’t act the way this person’s Strategic acted.
Or when we find ourselves being self-critical because we made the wrong decision at a particular time in our lives.
Or when we beat ourselves up for not having “seen that coming.”
Or when we get defensive because someone is telling us something we already know.
Or when we can’t understand something and we call ourselves stupid inside our heads.
Or we make hasty decisions and commitments because we’re afraid of looking dumb.
All of these things are the internal threat detector trying to let us know we should self-protect or self-critique as a way to survive the moment. But the threat is not life-and-death. Our survival instinct just thinks it is. So the response is aggressive. And for some of us, it’s so aggressive, we can’t control it.
This is why I gave such detailed instructions to the people watching that video. It’s why I try to stay in touch with my secure self throughout the day (I’m a #3 Strategic, so my smart/stupid detector is through the damn roof). Because if I get caught by a smart/stupid assessment that’s too big, I will respond in ways I don’t want to, only because the internal conditions are unsafe.
Why do I share this?
Because the four Strengths I named are among the most prevalent in our community. And an awful lot of the responses I see (especially on social media) are, at their core, a bunch of really smart people hearing smart/stupid language and responding instinctively to it. Self-protecting and/or defending, which is reasonable. But… awareness is so important.
Do you want to continue to be in that pattern? Or do you want to change? If you don’t want to change, I won’t judge you. Staying connected to yourself and doing the work to regulate is a lot. Not everyone wants to do it.
But maybe, in the future, even if you don’t do the work, you’ll remember this post when you feel your reaction to something and you’ll say… maybe this smart/stupid thing has some merit. Maybe I’m still smart, even when someone else thinks I’m stupid. Maybe I’m still okay, even when I don’t know something. Maybe I’m still good, even when I make a mistake.
Just a thought for the day.
– Becca