This post was actually part of the post: High IQ is Overrated! I started writing about High IQ out of my own frustration in trying to deal with this fricking brain injury. One of the big drawbacks of being “gifted” is that the brain injury was missed.
On my first appointment at CORP-TBI the doc told me that they frequently see people like me: someone who has a brain injury but it was missed for a long while because we “present well”.
She went on to say that she thinks people with high IQs sometimes suffer the most because they feel the gaping hole of the injury more than someone with a more normal IQ.
The holes simply can go deeper in someone with a high IQ because there is more “space” to fall through. Therefore, the holes may be more noticeable and more painful to the patient.
However, even though the caregivers at CORP TBI understand on many levels, I still had the experience yesterday of testing in the high normal level on a few tests that I know I did not do as well on as I would have pre-injury. I feel the frustration of that even if the cognitive therapist was impressed with the results.
I do not know how to suddenly go from operating at a high level to a normal level. My normal was not normal so normal is foreign and feels less than.
I am someone who has always striven for perfection (which happens to be one of the traits of high IQ) so to do less than perfect or less than some high standard feels like failure or at least poor and lacking.
The big thing for me is that I distrust myself. I no longer have the brain stamina to operate at a highly functional level. Though I can perform well in some areas I burn out easily.
Burning out can have catastrophic results. I rear-ended someone last week which is the first time I have ever caused an accident. And I know it was because I had done too much that week so that my brain was fatigued. Therefore I could not stay on task and pay attention to the traffic.
I am now terrified to drive in the city – not because the traffic scares me but because I distrust myself. I had a brain lapse and I fear it can and will happen again. If I had caused the accident by getting distracted by something legitimate; something that was truly distracting I might not be as upset. But I simply looked away. I think it was just that my brain was too tired to stay focused.
The other thing for me with now having a brain injury is that all my life I have sort of “winged it”. I have relied on my ability to quickly come up to speed on anything and everything.
I have jumped careers, jumped industries, (jumped freights too, but that’s another story) and worked in many jobs that required a degree that I did not have (like RN or an engineering degree).
I never obtained a label; some kind of handle that people could grab onto and know what it means; something I could grab onto to hold me steady or bring me back to myself. Now I am paying a price for that. It would be far easier if I had a degree, job title, or identity that I could fall back on; some place to start.
In relation to my brain injury, having a high IQ is a mixed blessing. It contributed to the situation of the correct diagnosis being missed for a long time.
It accentuates the sense of what has been lost.
However, it also enables me to develop successful compensatory behaviors with some modicum of ease and it allows me to “appear normal” or in the doctor’s words “present well”.
