In this series of posts, I’m putting two ideas together—the idea that smart, creative, sensitive individuals are confronted by special challenges and the idea that journaling is a valuable self-help tool—and turning them into a set of journaling prompts designed to lead you on a personal journey of discovery.
I hope that you enjoy these prompts. Here are five more challenges, and four journal prompts to go with each challenge. Engaging with any one of them may well serve you. I hope you find these valuable! And I hope you’ll take a look at Why Smart People Hurt and at my latest journal, Affirmations for Self-Love.
We don’t know the relationship between intelligence and that thing called “mental illness.” Many pundits suggest that smart, creative, sensitive people are more susceptible to “mental illnesses” like bipolar disorder, depression, schizophrenia, etc., than are other people. But it’s hard to say what that means exactly. Let’s do our own wondering and considering.
- The challenge that smartness might lead to despair. For instance, if you have a scientific bent and a clear understanding of the political and environmental perils facing our world, wouldn’t you find yourself in some rather significant despair?
+ What, in your view, might be the connection or the connections between high intelligence and the thing commonly called “depression”?
+ Are you susceptible to depression? Do you have a sense of why it arrives?
+ Do you have the sense that you are more susceptible to depression than the next person? Why might that be?
+ How might you employ your intelligence to help with the depression, despair or sadness that comes your way?
2. The challenge that smartness might lead to heightened anxiety. For example, if your smartness, sensitivity, and creativity propel you in the direction of, say, writing screenplays, won’t you experience more-than-usual anxiety by virtue of how hard it is to make it as a screenwriter?
+ What, in your view, might be the connection or the connections between high intelligence and the thing commonly called “anxiety”?
+ Are you susceptible to high anxiety? Do you have a sense of why it arrives?
+ Do you have the sense that you are more susceptible to high anxiety than the next person? Why might that be?
+ How might you employ your intelligence to help with the heightened anxiety that comes your way?
3. The challenge that smartness might lead to heightened distractibility. For example, if your brain is firing with lots of ideas, and you enjoy your own ideas, won’t each new interesting idea distract you from the previous interesting idea, making concentration difficult?
+ What, in your view, might be the connection or the connections between high intelligence and distractibility?
+ Are you susceptible to distractibility? Do you have a sense of why it arrives?
+ Do you have the sense that you are more susceptible to distractibility than the next person? Why might that be?
+ How might you employ your intelligence to help with the distractibility that comes your way?
4. The challenge that smartness might lead to susceptibility to addiction. For example, if you happen to have been born with a lot of life energy, passion, smarts, individuality, and a bursting creative nature, isn’t that the exact equivalent of having a very large appetite—and isn’t a very large appetite by itself a risk factor for addiction?
+ What, in your view, might be the connection or the connections between high intelligence and the thing commonly called “addiction”?
+ Are you susceptible to addiction? Do you have a sense of why it arrives?
+ Do you have the sense that you are more susceptible to addiction than the next person? Why might that be?
+ How might you employ your intelligence to help with any addictive tendencies that come your way?
5. The challenge that smartness might lead to unproductive obsessions and compulsions. For example, if your neurons love to gather to think, might they not also be inclined to gather to worry, brood, self-pester, and all the rest? Aren’t both productively obsessing and unproductively obsessing natural features of an active brain?
+ What, in your view, might be the connection or the connections between high intelligence and unproductive obsessions and compulsions?
+ Are you susceptible to unproductive obsessions and compulsions? Do you have a sense of why they arrive?
+ Do you have the sense that you are more susceptible to unproductive obsessions and compulsions than the next person? Why might that be?
+ How might you employ your intelligence to help with the unproductive obsessions and compulsions that come your way?
More to come! Enjoy!
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Promote Healing, Ignite Creativity, and Discover Writing Tips from Two Journaling Experts
“This book is a beautiful quilt, each chapter written by one of the wisest voices in the journaling world, on every aspect of journal writing imaginable.” —Ruth Folit, founder and past director of the International Association for Journal Writing
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