There is a silver lining to all the worrying and anxiety, as it seems neurotics could be creative geniuses due to their tendency of overthinking a situation and imagining non-existent problems. It’s an issue that plenty battle against, but it’s not all bad news.
Beneath the swell of worries and tendency for panic attacks, there might be an immeasurable amount of creativity that’s just waiting to burst out. All you need is to find the right outlet, that might serve well into taking neurosis and turning it into something great.
Dr. Adam Perkins, researcher and a personality expert at King’s College, says that neurotics self-generate problems and threats in situations that might be clear of either one, thus using their brains in a similar imaginative manner they might while creating art. Their tendency would explore options and perceive matters in a dissimilar manner than others.
Neuroticism is usually seen as a negative trait that makes life much more difficult, and is attached to numerous dampening emotions such as anxiety, jealousy, worry, frustration, loneliness and envy. It’s been discovered to pave the way for depression, and many who are inherently neurotic tend to suffer from depressive thoughts.
However, highly creative people often show the same traits. Ranging from Isaac Newton, to Vincent Van Gogh and to the more contemporary Woody Allen, all of them have been known to be severe worrywarts who took their crippling anxiety and used it to fuel their creativity.
Neurotics watch and interpret a problem differently by seeing possible negative effects of everything or perceiving non-existent threats, creating scenarios in their minds that might not even occur to others. Their brain is far more active in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area normally associated to regarding threat or danger.
The high activity triggers their imagination, that while could be crippling and plant the roots for anxiety or depressions, may also serve to boosting creativity. Brain scans have shown that people who are often representative of the very definition of ‘neuroticism’ have great activity in the area that generates thoughts and imagination.
In the 1970’s, psychologist Jeffrey Gray, has suggested that people who are neurotic, also have a heightened sensitivity to threat, after conducting a series of experiments on rats. Anti-anxiety drugs reduced the rodents’ response to threats or hints that a punishment is coming, helping them relax even in the face of possible danger.
So, when a person known for being neurotic imagines and creates problems or threats where there are none, they also prove themselves capable of great creativity and shown signs of a highly active imagination. All it takes is finding the right outlet to unleash that potential creative genius inside.
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