Blog Posts Tagged "Personality".

Something I’ve learned as a therapist is that people keep a heck of a lot of their best qualities hidden inside rather than expressing those qualities so other people can see them.

Because people are often willing to be far more open in therapy than in life, I typically get to see far more of what makes a particular person awesome than the people in their life ever get to see.

Today’s DIY Psychological Challenge

Identify a characteristic that you have lurking inside but don’t express much

For example

- you’re more fun that you let people see
- you’re more romantic than you let people see
- you have more of a sense of humor than you let people see

Express the characteristic you have lurking in one way that you wouldn’t normally e.g. attempt to tell a joke or funny story in the staff room over lunch.

If the thought of expressing your lurking characteristic *scares the crap out of you* reading this post about the costs of avoiding feeling awkward might help you.

Good luck <333

End of this Post. But wait.... There's More.....

Consider that people have basic personality styles and then a range of different behaviours that stem from those basic styles.

Sometimes the personality styles we love most about our partners are a double edged sword – they lead to a mixture of desirable and undesirable consequences.

Often what perpetually irritates us about partners is behaviour that stems from an aspect of their basic personality that we actually like a lot.

Imagine a fictional couple. Peter and Simone.

Simone is very consciousness and prides herself on being thoughtful, considerate, polite, and reliable.

Something that attracted Simone to Peter is that he’s a free spirit. He’s spontaneous, outgoing, enthusiastic and relaxed. He lives in the moment.

What really irritates Simone about Peter is that he makes lots of plans for them to see friends together and doesn’t leave much time for them to do things alone as a couple.

Simone has asked Peter not to commit her to plans without discussing it with her. However his behaviour never changes. When they argue about it, Simone has thoughts that Peter doesn’t understand her, doesn’t care enough about how she feels, and doesn’t value them spending time together as much as she does. She doesn’t want him to see her as nagging, controlling or trying to ruin his fun and worries this might be the case. However, she also sees her wants as valid.

In Couples Therapy, often it helps people feel less irritated if they reframe some types of unwanted behaviour as unwanted consequences of wanted basic traits. The unwanted behaviour and wanted traits are two sides of the same coin, and although it would be nice to pick and choose, sometimes reality is messier. They learn to work around some types of unwanted behaviour rather than fighting against it.

Lets look at some other examples:

1. Someone who is very ambitious > Someone who is in a constant state of change and finds it hard to relax

2. Someone who is conscientious > Someone who is nit picky, fussy, and at times critical

3. Someone who is extroverted and likes to please others > Someone who shows off at parties (e.g. acts the jokester) and is sometimes embarrassing

4. Someone who is easy going and doesn’t feel life is a pressure > Someone who’s not super ambitious or hard driving

5. Someone who is very stable > Someone who is set in their ways and doesn’t want to change

6. Someone who keeps a very even keel emotionally > Someone who is not prone to big romantic gestures and doesn’t get overexcited, seems to lack passion

7. Someone who is spontaneous and open to experiences > Someone who doesn’t like to make plans or commit

8. Someone who is optimistic > Someone who spends too much money and doesn’t save for the future

9. Someone who is smart, competent, goal-focused and efficient > Someone who can be rude

10. Someone who is very agreeable, kind and generous> Someone who is over focused on avoiding conflict or pleasing other people

End of this Post. But wait.... There's More.....

In this article, I’m to going to explain the relationships between Self Esteem, Depression, Personality, and Anxiety.

Self Esteem

Self esteem has two main aspects.

1. People’s overall sense of “self worth” and

2. Their sense of their competency in specific domains. For example, you might have healthy self esteem in the domain of Work (e.g. You think you’re good at your job), but low self esteem in the area of Relationships (e.g. You’re not sure if you’re as well liked as other people. Or, you have doubts about whether you’re a good partner or friend).

If you want to test your self esteem, you’ll find instructions here – Self Esteem Test. This test covers the self worth aspect of self esteem.

Relationship between Depression and Self Esteem

Clinical Depression is a syndrome of different types of symptoms that includes 1. emotions, 2. particular types of thoughts and thinking patterns, 3. behaviours, and 4. physical aspects.

The main link between depression and low self esteem is about thoughts/thinking styles that are common to both.

Feelings of worthlessness (thinking you have have less worth than the worth you perceive other people to have) is one of the symptoms of depression (people need to have at least 5 symptoms to be classified as having Clinical Depression).

One of the thinking patterns that’s common in people who are depressed is what Psychologists call the “Negative Triad”.

The Negative Triad is negative thoughts about:

1. the Self (e.g. negative perceptions of yourself),
2. the World/Other People (e.g. thoughts that people are generally untrustworthy, cruel and rejecting), and
3. the Future (e.g. pessimistic thoughts about what your future holds or the future of society/the planet).

Low self esteem is most closely linked to the first part of the Negative Triad – Negative Thoughts about the Self. But, on average, people with low self esteem also tend to be more pessimistic about other people and the future.

Part of treatment for Depression is learning to overcome low self esteem thoughts (using Cognitive Behavioural Therapy).

Relationship between Self Esteem and Personality

The most important model of personality used by psychologists is called the Five Factor Model or “Big 5″. More Information about the Big 5 and How to Test Your Personality.

The name “Big 5″ refers to five dimensions that are thought to be the most important dimensions of personality. Everyone is either low, medium, or high on these dimensions. The Big Five Dimensions are:

1. Neuroticism (this is mainly about your predisposition to experience negative emotions).
2. Agreeableness
3. Conscientiousness
4. Extroversion
5. Openness to Experience.

On average, people who have low self esteem are more neurotic and more introverted (less extroverted) than people with high self esteem. Some studies also show that people with low self esteem are less agreeable (more disagreeable), less conscientious, and less open, on average, compared to people with high self esteem. The strongest association between self esteem and personality is between low self esteem and neuroticism (experiencing more negative emotions than average).

Relationship between Self Esteem and Depression

People who are:

More Neurotic
Less Agreeable
Less Extroverted
Less Conscientious, and
Less Open

tend to experience more negative emotions and fewer positive emotions.

Anxiety

There is also a lot of overlap between anxiety and self esteem/depression/personality.

People with low self esteem, tend to have higher than average levels of anxiety (and vice versa).

This makes sense given that people with low self esteem often expect to be judged negatively by other people. People with low self esteem also tend to expect more bad things to happen to them in general, which further “tangles up” low self esteem and anxiety.

Depression and anxiety are also linked. People who have been depressed tend to have higher anxiety levels than people who have never been depressed, people’s anxiety levels tend to increase during times they’re depressed, and people who have untreated anxiety are at risk of developing depression.

In some ways, depression, anxiety, and neuroticism are very similar concepts.: all three are about negative emotions. However, one of the differences between depression and anxiety is that depression tends to be linked with both low levels of positive emotions and high negative emotions, but anxiety is mainly linked to high negative emotions.

End of this Post. But wait.... There's More.....