London, UK (BBN)-You know who we are talking about, these are the people who stress over the small details or come up with non-existent problems to worry over.
They can drive us crazy!
According to a recent study, these overthinking worries may be creative geniuses in disguise, reports the Davidwolf.com.
According to Dr. Adam Perkins, an expert in Neurobiology of Personality at King’s College in London.
“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 amygdala, 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.”
Creative people tend to create non-existent threats to worry over.
Thus, creativity is also linked with anxiety.
It is the people who worry that are the creators.
They are the ones who see the problems that need to be fixed before the happy go lucky people of the world.
Again Dr. Perkins states, “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.’
I can see this with one of my best friends.
She is a overthinking worrying type.
She creates multiple backup plans for her projects and seems to worry about everything.
However, she is also the most creative person I know.
She is a fantastic quilter and can play any instrument she picks up.
Her creative outlets help her to control her anxiety and worrying.
So, for all you overthinkers out there, that is one thing you can do to help calm yourself down.
Engage in the creative activities you enjoy!
Creativity has been linked to mental disorders before be it mild, moderate, or severe.
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