Ever think a LOT? Like, do you ponder all sorts of situations and ideas and feelings? It’s all fine, isn’t it, until you voice those thoughts and someone tells you ‘oh, no, no, no, no…you’re overthinking it! It’s simple!’ Sometimes, to really annoy you, they’ll say it’s ‘simples’.
But anyway, actual science says that you are more likely to be a genius than the peers who tell you to stop thinking so much.
A recent study of cognitive sciences: 'explains not only the association of neuroticism with threat sensitivity but also the prominence within the neurotic mind of representations of information that are unrelated to the way the world is right now, such as creativity and nonsituational ‘angst’.'
In English, researchers at King’s College in London have also made the link between anxiety and a stronger imagination.
Dr. Adam Perkins told Higher Perspectives: '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.”'
Hmm. Sorry to overthink this, but we’ll raise you an Amy Winehouse, a Sylvia Plath and a Virginia Woolf, Dr Perkins.
Like this? You might also be interested in:
'My Fear Of Dying Consumed Me' Confessions Of A 20-Something With Anxiety
Young Women Are Feeling Far More Anxious Than Men These Days
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.