Identity Index: Intelligent

What is my relationship to being intelligent? I identify as intelligent. I have a story about myself that I am intelligent.

What does that mean to me?

Oof, I feel fear and some anxiety even approaching this one as a topic. There's a fear about how I'll be perceived, potentially as arrogant [see: arrogant] or self-centered [see: self-centered], or just delusional and wrong.

Regardless, I will say with certainty that in terms of "positive" attributes, intelligent or smart is probably the one that has most consistently been reflected to me from others throughout my life, going back to as early as I can remember (in terms of "less positive" attributes, skinny [see: skinny] and pale [see: pale] have been similarly ubiquitous).

That is to say, from quite early on I learned that this is part of how I was commonly perceived by the people around me, and that it was a Good Thing, and so I felt a desire to emphasize those aspects of myself that affirmed this identity, and deny or defend against those aspects that didn't.

Aside from just not even knowing what the word intelligent really means, I also have a judgement that it's not something that requires any specific work on my part, even if I might choose to move towards it there's really no work needed if I'm already being identified that way by others. In some sense it registers in me as innate or at least default, just like skinny and pale.

In fact, as related to my identification with being undisciplined [see: undisciplined], I learned from a grade school age that I could work less than my peers and not just still be identified as intelligent, but sometimes even more so! Ex., "Matt's so smart, he didn't even study for that test and he still got an A".

That is one small example of how this identity could and has become distorted into a maladaptive form. But there's a deeper shadow side I need to explore here.

A vital tool I use to explore my shadow is the feeling of being triggered or defensive. When I consider cases of that which might happen related to my intelligence, the most obvious is a scenario where I feel my intelligence is being belittled or that I'm being patronized. That feeling of trigger or defensiveness is exacerbated by this happening in a social situations where others are witnessing it.

Similarly, when I've done something that is clearly stupid and without excuse, I'm more likely to be unable to own having done it if I'm feeling insecure about how it might impact someone's perception of me as intelligent. There's nuance here, for example if I have an established relationship with someone and I feel more secure in their opinion of me, I can own a lapse more readily, and even leverage it as a demonstration of humility [see: humble].

The need to defend my status as intelligent comes from more than just it being a part of my identity, it comes from it being a central part of my identity that I've felt establishes me as having worth to other people. That is the signal I've received about it my entire life, that my worth, my uniqueness, my value is related to my being intelligent.

That then is the deepest trap of all in it. In buying into this story, I have allowed my sense of my worth to depend on defending it. Hence the trigger.

This goes even deeper, when I've internalized this story and at the same time find myself in cycles of behavior which negatively impact my own sense of my intelligence [see: addiction], then I feel shame and worthlessness [see: worthless].

In a world where I felt fully secure in my own innate worth beyond any identity markers, anyone could perceive my in any way at all as it relates to my intelligence, and it could not impact me.

In one sense then as I relate to it today, I can see my relationship to myself as intelligent as a gift, in that it points me at work left to do on my own sense of worth.

I can play with this shadow side simply by noticing it, by moving towards awareness in my trigger of when I feel my intelligence has been insulted, and how I react. Or when I behave outside my intelligence, whether shame or defensiveness arises. By being in inquiry with these feelings in real time I get to explore my agency and possibility in relating to the experience in a different way, as I have with other triggers.

What else? Being intelligent is an inherently relative judgement, so there's an aspect of superiority [see: superior] built into it. The shadow side of that might be a willingness to belittle other people's intelligence if it could be done in a way that both inflated the perception of my own and didn't conflict with other ways I want to be seen. That's a bit of a tightrope walk but I can see truth in it, for example when I participated in debates in college against the College Republicans, I would often be petty, belittling, and smug in my trouncing of them because of confidence that the people "on my side" would view it as virtuous [see: virtuous].

In that relative judgement of being intelligent, there's also a story I can relate to about isolation or loneliness or suffering, like the trope about ignorance is bliss, or smarter people being more depressed. I doubt there's much truth there, but I do think I've leveraged those stories to rationalize my own commitment to my suffering.

Actually I know I have, I had a story for years and years about my depression [see: depressed] that went something like, "Of course I'm depressed! The world is super fucked up and I'm actually willing and able to look at it, it's all the people who aren't depressed that must be either too stupid or too self centered to pay attention!"

That's all hogwash, to be sure, but I'm stupid enough to have fallen for it for decades.

Anyway, this all feels true and real to me. What more can I share? I'll revisit this later and see if more comes up.

For now: Intelligent Matt, I love you and am working on accepting all parts of you fully. You're a part of my wholeness and also you don't need to be forever. The story can change but right now it's great and complete.

Meta Reflection

On pressing publish: Damn, I feel some hesitance on this one, that's not exactly surprising and it makes me feel some excitement that this writing is meaningful.

But also if I imagine myself coming across someone else's blog and they are writing about their relationship to how intelligent they are, my first reaction might be something like, "Yeah fuck this idiot's self indulgent narcissistic nonsense."

Hopefully this content reads as something deeper than just indulgence and narcissism, but regardless, hit publish I will. Right now.