Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Twice Exceptional High IQ low Achievement Scores

Anxiety is often tied to intelligence, if you can come up with more solutions to a problem, you can also come up with a million ways that you can die….imagination is a double-edged sword. You can also look into separation anxiety/ocd and see if any of that fits… obsessively thinking about scary things can mean he has a bit of OCD. But perhaps taking him to a developmental psychiatrist might be the easiest place to start. OCD and/or anxiety can be treated with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

Also just remembered something my son's doc said.. he said that anxiety can often be a result of the fact that they understand at a higher level but that they cannot cope emotionally with what they know. NT kids learn about the world and learn to cope around the same time- gifted kids are asynchronous, so you can learn that meteorites can kill you and understand what that means, but not have the emotional ability to deal with the fear that results. So as a parent, you have to ramp up teaching him coping skills (or finding someone who can) to compensate.