I’m realizing that what looked like status issues wasn’t so much that it looked as though you were trying to get high status by being intelligent as that it looked as though you were trying to avoid low status, and the low status issue was self-imposed.
At that point, I was twitching pretty hard, because while this may or may not be what’s going on with you, I’ve got similar issues around competence—again, conceived as a single lump of a trait. And if I hadn’t been for this discussion, I wouldn’t have realized that this is a big chunk of what I’ve been beating myself up about.
I’m realizing that what looked like status issues wasn’t so much that it looked as though you were trying to get high status by being intelligent as that it looked as though you were trying to avoid low status, and the low status issue was self-imposed.
At that point, I was twitching pretty hard, because while this may or may not be what’s going on with you, I’ve got similar issues around competence—again, conceived as a single lump of a trait. And if I hadn’t been for this discussion, I wouldn’t have realized that this is a big chunk of what I’ve been beating myself up about.