⚠️ Content Warning: This message discusses suicide. Please skip if you’re not in the right headspace.
There’s a quiet truth about suicide that most people don’t know:
There’s a threshold of intelligence you must cross before you can even conceive of suicide.
It’s called the Intelligence Threshold for Suicidality—a theory proposed by researcher Denys de Catanzaro.
That theory was supported by a large study in Austria that found that young men from higher-IQ regions had higher suicide rates—even when adjusting for income, unemployment, and divorce.
In other words:
🧠 It takes a certain level of abstract thought to imagine your own death as an option.
Children under 10 rarely die by suicide. People with profound intellectual disability almost never do.
There’s a cognitive line—and many gifted adults cross it early in life.
That creates a painful paradox in giftedness:
The more intelligent the mind, the more capable it is of despair.
Why is this the case?
Because gifted adults see what others miss.
They forecast, simulate, and imagine bleak futures in vivid detail.
And if meaning feels lost, if belonging feels out of reach, if purpose feels elusive… the very mind that creates brilliance can also create despair.
This doesn’t mean intelligence causes suicide.
But it does mean gifted minds are often more capable of imagining meaninglessness
—and more vulnerable to it.
You see patterns others don’t.
You think deeply, ask the big questions, and carry a level of inner intensity that’s hard to explain.
I remember first experiencing suicidal thoughts back in the 9th grade.
I don’t remember exactly what triggered it—but I do remember the feeling: a profound sense of not being heard or understood. I felt desperate, confused, and alone.
That wasn’t the last time those thoughts showed up.
Over the years, I’ve come to understand that when I have suicidal ideation, I’m not actually seeking a physical death—what I’m craving is the death of an identity, an ego, a part of me that no longer fits.
The more I learn about giftedness, the more this makes sense.
Talking about suicide is so taboo in our culture—it makes people uncomfortable. I get that. But keeping these thoughts bottled up often makes things worse. That silence is part of what isolates us in the first place.
I believe we need safe spaces to talk about this—not to be judged, but to be seen. Spaces where we can make sense of what no longer fits, without fearing we’ll be thought to be crazy or treated like we need to be locked away for our own good.
For me, when I’ve talked about it with people who can hold that space – I often realize more quickly and with greater clarity that I’m not trying to destroy myself—I’m trying to let something go.
A part of me is dying so that another, more actualized part, can emerge.
🛠️ Support yourself with structure:
Don’t wait for motivation. Create small rituals of care—sleep, movement, nourishment, connection.
💬 Speak the dark thoughts out loud:
To a friend. A coach. A therapist. When you give the darkness a name, it loosens its grip.
🌱 Come back to meaning—on your terms:
Gifted adults don’t need generic self-help. You need purpose that fits your depth. That honors your wiring. That feels true.
🌤️ Expect the return of light.
This moment, however hard, is not forever. There is a way through. Your intensity is not a flaw—it’s a clue.
Your mind will always ask what others fear to.
But the answers don’t live in logic alone.
They rise from being—from presence.
You were born to seek. That’s not the problem—it’s the path.
