William Shakespeare wrote, “Present fears are less than horrible imaginings.” It is important to remember that when one’s mind tends to drift, imagining can be positive, negative, or neutral. It is the state of our reactions to our emotions and bodily sensations, whether we attach or detach to our fears and anxiety. Ultimately, the stories we tell ourselves can dictate our state of mind and well-being.

Psychologist Kazimierz Dabrowski proposed that bright individuals have greater imaginations, intensities in five domains (intellectual, emotional, sensory, psychomotor, and imaginative), and elevated experiences in the world. Bright individuals may be more prone to disabling and destructive elements of anxiety because they typically have expanded emotional brain networks, increased sensory processing, and elevated physiological responses to stressors, both real and imagined. Intelligent people report 25 percent greater rates of anxiety compared to the national average. In particular, the brain circuitry, hormonal stress response, and bodily reactions to stress can become hard-wired, where bright individuals can get stuck in a negative cycle. When the sympathetic nervous system is activated, elevated levels of cortisol rewire brain circuits where the emotional networks cycle and the prefrontal cortex (responsible for decision-making) is temporarily offline, inhibiting effective decision-making. Effectively, the body moves into three states—fight, flight, and freeze—where the inflammatory response is elevated. In turn, a low-level stress response is continuously activated, causing the individual to experience the world on “pins and needles.”

Consider a child who has been tagged with slow processing speed, which can be related to numerous learning differences, asynchronous brain development, sensory integration, metabolic processing, attention, executive functioning, or emotional development. Parents and........

© Psychology Today