I've met some pieces of work in my time. One class that stands out is the people who, on purpose or subconsciously, will hammer on someone, manipulating there sense of rightness (and often lack of self-soothing skills) to extract... I don't know what. Overtime? Self-esteem/aggrandization? Something else?<p>I have a vivid recollection of a moment where I was explaining how we were actually going to fix a deep problem while in the corner of my vision I watched the face of the person who brought it up fall like a rock. He was clearly expecting a dodge, and I pulled some sort of 5 Why's judo move on him with a, "yes, and...".<p>Incidentally, one of the superpowers of being someone that people can have a frank and potentially confidential conversation with is that people will bring you 'maybe problems' that sometimes turn out to be nothing (teach them how to do it themselves next time) or a potentially very bad situation. Having even a half hour head start on people to start thinking about a big problem makes you look a hell of a lot smarter in the OMGWTF meeting that follows. If you save people from looking or feeling stupid in front of others, they will pay you huge dividends, including Right of First Refusal on all sorts of things.
> The single most impactful thing people can do to improve their intelligence is to learn how to soothe the shame and anxiety that comes from confronting the possibility that the world is not how you see it and experience it.<p>This includes learning from criticism even when it doesn't come in a neatly packaged easy to digest form. Dismissing feedback just because it wasn't what you wanted to hear is the best way to never learn uncomfortable truths, and the more you do it the harder going back and fixing it gets.
Acknowledge problem.<p>Accept problem.<p>Attempt to solve problem.<p>Accept outcome.<p>Rinse and repeat. Don’t waste cycles on the emotions of having problems.<p>(not saying that emotions don’t matter, often times they distract one from making progress)
This reads a lot like my life too, I just play up the stupid side really, people relax and like you more. I remember teachers being absolutely flummoxed by my grades and then would treat me completely differently, suddenly like an adult, as opposed to a retarded 10 year old. I also need to ask endless basic questions to understand anything and it seems to me like other people somehow have already received and read the rules to life. My understanding seems maybe to be able to reach a deeper level but takes longer to get to an intermediate level.
Honest question: does "sensory perception disorder" come out of evidence-based science? Is it diagnosed just based on symptoms, or can they actually tell something's going on with the brain specifically? I ask because isn't it possible that this could be a sort of "vanity disorder"? Not saying it's good to have it, but people might be tempted to think they do.
Showed this to my partner, who I find pretty intelligent but struggles with a lot of the symptoms the author presents in this piece due to dealing with a variety of medical trauma in her youth. The relation to anxiety rings especially true, in that she's perceiving herself to be failing at a simple task but in reality she's working with a model she can't trust - inherently very difficult! To her it just adds fuel to the anxiety and the problem gets worse and her performance suffers more, etc.<p>I agree with the author that tackling the cycle at the anxiety - being able to self soothe - seems to be the ticket to not only finding a card in her purse or whatever minor task a sensory processing disorder makes tougher but also to success in general. Being able to name our demons is helpful for contextualizing our experience. This is not a country that keeps people sane, so having alternative explanations beyond "I guess it's ADHD, try some speed" is great.
The article describes my actual life precisely. Yet it's kinda clickbait. I forced myself to read it carefully from top to bottom (which is hard when you have ADHD) in hope of finding advises on how to actually do that but didn't find any.
For the sake of the argument, I'm going to take the authors appraisal of her own impressive intellect at face value, however I'd like to add that I have met a few 150IQish individuals who had a far more modest view of their mental abilities.<p>My interpretation is that she was a genuine genius who, for whatever reason, had some learning disabilities/behavioural problems that prevented her from taking advantage of her own gifts. While I congratulate her for overcoming these challenges, I can't help but feel that an intellectually more average person, who also doesn't share her difficulties, would get far less out of the methods she describes in the article, or someone else who also has the same learning difficulties as her wouldn't get to join the intellectual elite just by following in her footsteps.
I have to say I strongly disagree that there's no genetic cap on intelligence. I have met people that I would consider to be geniuses. The level of intelligence they displayed just absolutely blew me away. There was no comparison between them and myself. Not to say I don't think I'm smart, but I'm not a genius, and no amount of self soothing will unlock that in me.
Is everyone an ‘eccentric genius’ with some magical disorder these days? Or just bloggers?<p>And where’s the source for the white matter structural deformity “delaying” signal processing by “a fraction of a second”, I’m very interested in how that works since it makes no sense that a signaling channel in the brain would suffer a large delay like that.
The medium post author posts this to HN and doesn't participate in the thread, and the post itself is membership walled. Annoying. I'll look at the archive.is link I guess, but I feel spammed.
In case anyone is wondering, there is no way to boost IQ. Whatsoever. You can obviously remove things harming cognitive ability, but that's the extent of it.
<p><pre><code> The single most impactful thing you can do to boost your intelligence is learn how to effectively self-soothe
</code></pre>
This sounds like absolutely unscientific, completely unfounded, feel-good-blogspam bullshit. And hey, maybe it isn't - maybe it's legit. But I see no sources, no studies that indicate that "self soothing" does anything for boosting general intelligence.<p>Absent sources that confirm the author's position, this feels like a pretty intellectually dishonest piece.
This describes me well. As a kid, I scored off the charts in math but was decidedly average in verbal. I can read technical literature all day long, but most works of fiction, historical writings, etc, are lost on me completely.<p>I was in G&T throughout grade school, anyway, since I was among the top students in math. My learning disability was unidentified until adulthood, unfortunately.<p>Now, as a middle aged adult, I'm broken, homeless, and destitute, socially and reputationally ruined, and a bit beyond the level of youthful neuroplasticity needed to engage in meaningful continued education, contemplating suicide day in and day out for years and decades on end. It's a miracle I'm still here.<p>The takeaway here is to take to heart the idea that such early disparities are indicative of a learning disability. Please address the child's disability concurrent to nurturing the child's talent.