What are the psychological benefits of neuroticism (as it's defined in the Big Five), either as objectively demonstrated or in your own personal evaluation, ooc? I can imagine some positive traits that can dovetail with neuroticism, but they're usually things I can imagine low-neuroticism people having, too. Like minding possible dangers--this seems to go just as much with conscientiousness as with neuroticism.
Many years ago, I read something that I don't think I can find anymore, but stuck with me. It was something like: some people manage to be responsible via self-control. Others only manage it via anxiety. Maybe it's not the best way, but it works for those who personally find the best way in short supply.
That's funny--what you describe is something that speaks directly to my own experience. I have anxiety and ADHD--for a while ADHD kinda fucked up my life, like until I was ~19 I def under-performed in school because of it. My process for getting it to fuck up my life less was to deliberately indulge my anxiety, stoking it so that I'd be sure to get shit done--until anxiety fucked up my life sufficiently that I had to get on SSRIs in early law school. Because my anxiety was fixed, ADHD then starting fucking my shit up again, so I needed to get on Vyvanse! And now, with both these disorders more under control, I'm finally able to learn regular-person methods to get shit done the standard ways, lol.
In Big Five terms, I think this speaks to the idea that you need to have either conscientiousness or neuroticism to make consistent progress in life--but the best situation is to just be conscientious and not neurotic lmao
Theorizing a bit on the spot, I think C and N are just what we can observe. They don't directly represent the real causal structure of cognition and emotion. The real structure, I suspect, is in your systems of reward and constructing goals, which includes things like
- how you break a big task down into actionable steps
- how you reward yourself for reaching milestones on the way
If your normal reward system isn't efficient at the kinds of tasks you're incentivized to achieve (either by internal or external social rewards) your stress system can temporarily enhance your abilities. But it has some sort of cost. Maybe it draws upon a limited resource in the body, or maybe it runs your systems in an "overclocked" regime that risks damage.
It sucks to run everything in stress mode, hurts your body and pushes you to higher N, but it can work. Optimistically, a person like this can achieve higher C with social and cognitive technologies like planners, GTD, forcing themselves to follow a time management system, brainstorming and rough drafts, or hundreds of other things. (I have my own task management system that has helped me a lot, you can find it in my post archives.)
I suspect the stables tend to be higher C, the volatiles higher N.
One way to get high C is to stick to a system and never deviate from it, even if your problems require fresh thinking. The people who are willing to engage that stress system and break out of stale patterns... they pay a price in higher N.
What are the psychological benefits of neuroticism (as it's defined in the Big Five), either as objectively demonstrated or in your own personal evaluation, ooc? I can imagine some positive traits that can dovetail with neuroticism, but they're usually things I can imagine low-neuroticism people having, too. Like minding possible dangers--this seems to go just as much with conscientiousness as with neuroticism.
Many years ago, I read something that I don't think I can find anymore, but stuck with me. It was something like: some people manage to be responsible via self-control. Others only manage it via anxiety. Maybe it's not the best way, but it works for those who personally find the best way in short supply.
That's funny--what you describe is something that speaks directly to my own experience. I have anxiety and ADHD--for a while ADHD kinda fucked up my life, like until I was ~19 I def under-performed in school because of it. My process for getting it to fuck up my life less was to deliberately indulge my anxiety, stoking it so that I'd be sure to get shit done--until anxiety fucked up my life sufficiently that I had to get on SSRIs in early law school. Because my anxiety was fixed, ADHD then starting fucking my shit up again, so I needed to get on Vyvanse! And now, with both these disorders more under control, I'm finally able to learn regular-person methods to get shit done the standard ways, lol.
In Big Five terms, I think this speaks to the idea that you need to have either conscientiousness or neuroticism to make consistent progress in life--but the best situation is to just be conscientious and not neurotic lmao
hoping next time i take the big five my conscientiousness score goes up and my neuroticism score goes down 🤞
Theorizing a bit on the spot, I think C and N are just what we can observe. They don't directly represent the real causal structure of cognition and emotion. The real structure, I suspect, is in your systems of reward and constructing goals, which includes things like
- how you break a big task down into actionable steps
- how you reward yourself for reaching milestones on the way
If your normal reward system isn't efficient at the kinds of tasks you're incentivized to achieve (either by internal or external social rewards) your stress system can temporarily enhance your abilities. But it has some sort of cost. Maybe it draws upon a limited resource in the body, or maybe it runs your systems in an "overclocked" regime that risks damage.
It sucks to run everything in stress mode, hurts your body and pushes you to higher N, but it can work. Optimistically, a person like this can achieve higher C with social and cognitive technologies like planners, GTD, forcing themselves to follow a time management system, brainstorming and rough drafts, or hundreds of other things. (I have my own task management system that has helped me a lot, you can find it in my post archives.)
Also consider this: https://randsinrepose.com/archives/stables-and-volatiles/
I suspect the stables tend to be higher C, the volatiles higher N.
One way to get high C is to stick to a system and never deviate from it, even if your problems require fresh thinking. The people who are willing to engage that stress system and break out of stale patterns... they pay a price in higher N.