I think we all know someone who you’d call a worrier or an
overthinker. It seems like they take forever to figure out what they need to
do. They might frustrate us, but according to a recent study, people with these
traits often have them because they’re incredibly developed, creative people.
Researchers at King’s College in London made the connection
between anxiety and a stronger imagination as well. According to Dr. Adam
Perkins, an expert in Neurobiology of Personality:
“It occurred to me that if you happen to have a
preponderance of negatively hued self-generated thoughts, due to high levels of
spontaneous activity in the parts of the medial prefrontal cortex that govern
conscious perception of threat and you also have a tendency to switch to panic
sooner than average people, due to possessing especially high reactivity in the
basolateral nuclei of the amygdale, then that means you can experience intense
negative emotions even when there’s no threat present. This could mean that for
specific neural reasons, high scorers on neuroticism have a highly active
imagination, which acts as a built-in threat generator.”
“In a sense, worry is the mother of invention. When you
think about it, it makes sense. Many of our greatest breakthroughs through the
years were a result of worry. Nuclear power? Worry over energy. Advanced
weapons? Worry of invasion. Medical breakthroughs? Worry over illness and
death.”
Vivid imaginations have helped humanity best nature. Again,
Dr. Perkins says:
“Cheerful, happy-go-lucky people by definition do not brood
about problems and so must be at a disadvantage when problem-solving compared
to a more neurotic person. We have a useful sanity check for our theory because
it is easy to observe that many geniuses seem to have a brooding, unhappy
tendency that hints they are fairly high on the neuroticism spectrum. For
example, think of the life stories of Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin, Vincent Van
Gogh, Kurt Cobain, etc. Perhaps the link between creativity and neuroticism was
summed up most succinctly of all by John Lennon when he said: ‘Genius is pain.”
So the next time you look down on someone for worrying, just
remember they’re probably a freaking genius.
Via : Higher Perspectives