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As my family includes many sufferers of anxiety of varying degrees, I've done quite a bit of research on the subject (in addition to personal bouts with mental

As my family includes many sufferers of anxiety of varying degrees, I've done quite a bit of research on the subject (in addition to personal bouts with mental health issues of that type, going through psychotherapy, etc.) and this James fellow is definitely the exception rather than the rule. Typically childhood trauma like what the article mentions is much more likely to lead to mental issues (usually something like anxiety + depression) in adulthood. So yeah, take that one with a grain of salt. It was a silver lining for this guy that he had such a horrible childhood but that is a dangerous part of the thesis to not mention as being very abnormal.

nate 12y ago
Thanks for reading my article! And thanks for the insight here. I really wasn't trying though to make it part of my thesis that you should have a terrible childhood in order to create a non-anxious state to make yourself more observant, or that you should give your own kids a terrible childhood to make them more successful. But it was to show how relaxed James was, and it also seemed to stem from how he interpreted the terrible things that happened to him. I thought those stories could help some of us realize that if we could re-interpret some of the bad things that have happened to us the way James has, we could probably become more observant too, and hence spot more opportunities. Also, Malcolm Gladwell has some interesting bits in his latest book, David and Goliath, about how childhood trouble like dyslexia can turn into opportunities. I'm going to butcher the research if I try and bring it up now, but there's some neat bits there if you haven't read them.