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Do you think geniuses are happy, contempt, at peace with themselves? Think again. People like Isaac Newton or Nikola Tesla worried about the world and their own existence in it. Their anxiety levels were so high that it triggered imagination beyond the contemporary limits. According to a recent study that focused on people who worry, it is this neurotic level of imagination that makes a genius.

The study, Thinking too much: self-generated thought as the engine of neuroticism, explains that overthinking worriers are diamonds in the rough, undiscovered genius, people with a label who have succumbed to that label instead of pursuing their dreams. Many of you will relate to this, but here’s the actual science behind it.

According to Dr. Adam Perkins, an expert in the Neurobiology of Personality, if you have a preponderance of self-generated negative thoughts, or worries, you can experience intense negative emotions even when the threat isn’t real. “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,” according to Dr. Perkins.

The paper goes on explaining that ingenuity is deeply rooted in this neurotic condition, and a vivid imagination spurs high levels of creativity, which not only conveys into art (like with Vincent Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, or John Lennon), but also in survival and advancement of one’s species. You can find the details in full,  over at cell.com.