Can Your Personality Change?
By Colette Bouchez
Part 1: Is Change Possible? | Part 2: Can You Increase Your Brain Power? | Part 3: Personality traits That Affect Health
Cast in stone. Dyed in the wool. A leopard can’t change his spots. All phrases that, at one time or another, have been used to express the idea that when it comes to personality, we are who we are and nothing can change.
And yet, it’s also not so usual to hear — or speak — phrases like: “This book changed my life,” “You’re not the same person you were when I married you,” or “I didn’t know any better when I was your age, but I’m different now.”
So, is it possible to change our personality — and if so, to what degree? The answer, it seems, has some surprising twists and turns.
“Classic textbooks describe personality as unique and relatively enduring internal and external aspects of a person’s character that influence behavior in certain situations — suggesting that yes, there are genetic traits that influence who we are, or at least lay down the basic blueprint for how we will act in any given situation in life,” says Long Island, N.Y., psychologist Abby Aronowitz, PhD. Aronowitz is director of SelfHelpDirectives.com.
Indeed, says Aronowitz, one only has to look at a neonatal nursery to realize that, right from birth, we are who we are.
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“If you look at a baby, they have had very little influence in their life. And yet some are easily startled, some are not; some can be easily satisfied, others seem inconsolable. There are character traits already starting to emerge right from day one,” Aronowitz tells WebMD.
Psychiatrist Charles Goodstein, MD, agrees: “If you observe newborns in a nursery, right from the get-go you can see differences in how they react, so you could say those traits represent the nuclei that develop into a personality,” he tells WebMD.
Nurture vs. Nature
While this theory once comprised the entire concept of personality, more and more researchers are coming to see that while much of who we are is the result of genetic blueprint, not everything about us is written in indelible ink. Indeed, just how those personality traits unfold is largely the result of our life experiences, particularly during the early years of childhood.
“When we talk about personality today, we talk about the consequences of the interplay between those predispositions and genetic qualities unique to each of us, and our life experiences — the environmental factors and the relationships, especially with our parents, that play out over time and influence just how our personality evolves,” says Goodstein, a professor of psychiatry at NYU Medical Center in New York City.
Indeed, experts say that sometimes, even severe personality disorders can be tempered significantly when the environmental conditions are just right.
“A schizophrenic, for example, may never develop full-blown symptoms if they live a relatively stress-free life,” says Aronowitz.
So while change is clearly possible when our personality is molding, does it hold the same potential when we become an adult? Some believe it does.
In one study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, a group of Stanford University researchers found that certain aspects of our personality do change — gradually but consistently — as the circumstances in our lives change. What’s more, over time many of our less desirable traits seem to fade quite naturally, with more pleasing and social parts of our personality coming forward.
Making Change Possible
How does it happen? Aronowitz believes each personality type holds the potential for a wide range of behaviors. While our innate core traits may not be able to change, over time she says the behaviors that stem from those traits can and often are influenced by many other factors in our lives.
“There are many levels within each personality structure and the level at which your personality is performing at any given time can be sensitive to what is going on around you,” says Aronowitz.
Because of that, she says, it’s also possible to change our personality by willfully changing some of those circumstances believed to be affecting us.
“Situations very much influence what aspects of our personality come forward, so in this respect, sometimes changing jobs, social situations, even altering family dynamics can effect a change in our personality — mostly by allowing certain parts of our innate core that may have been hidden, to come forward and flourish,” says Aronowitz.
The classic example of this can be seen in the 1940s film Now Voyager. Here we watch the transformation of the shy, overly dependent, anxiety-ridden Bette Davis into a self-reliant, confidant social butterfly when she crawls out from under the crushing wing of a dominating mother.
For psychologist Scott Wetzler, PhD, the key to “trading up” on personality traits lies not so much in changing your circumstances as in learning to identify the parts of yourself that you don’t like — and then compensating for those character traits.
“By indulging in or avoiding certain behaviors you can keep certain innate personality reflexes from dominating your life. You can compensate for personality traits you don’t like so that other parts of yourself you do like can take center stage in your life,” says Wetzler, the chief psychologist at Montefiore Medical Center in Bronx, N.Y.
For example, says Wetzler, a shy person can learn the social skills necessary to do things their shyness would otherwise prevent. Likewise, a quick-tempered individual may learn anger management skills that make it easier to move ahead in his or her professional life.
While none of this will change your basic personality traits, says Wetzler, it can help keep certain of those traits from becoming dominant. So, in this sense, your personality does seem to change.
Goodstein agrees: “Despite the fact that we are born with a certain set of predispositions that lead us in specific directions, we also have the capacity for certain amounts of change throughout our lives.”
Making Change Happen
For some, a change in personality can occur abruptly, often the result of a tumultuous event in their lives. Indeed, how we cope with major upsets is part of our personality, and sometimes being forced to do so can lead to the discovery of a new and entirely different side of ourselves.
For most folks, however, change is a lot slower and more subtle — and the process is just a little bit different for everyone. However, the one thing that experts say we must all share before change can begin: the willingness to make it happen. As elementary as this sounds, Goodstein tells us that many folks who say they want change, really don’t!
“When you have been a certain way for most of your life, relinquishing certain aspects of your personality can be a very traumatic experience, and there is often great resistance to do that,” says Goodstein. This, he says, can sometimes be the case when others in our lives are prompting the change.
But if, in fact, you are ready for change, experts say the best place to start is with small adjustments in your thinking and your behavior.
Says Wetzler: “It’s a little bit like sailing a boat. You can’t expect to make radical changes in the steering, but over time, one or two degrees of change can put you on an entirely different course.”
While many folks find they can accomplish at least some of this on their own, if the seas get rough, or especially if you’re not quite sure just how to set sail, experts say don’t be afraid to look to professional help to take you through the process.
“Many of the determinants and manifestations of personality are of an unconscious nature, so you may not even know what it is about yourself that needs to be changed. You may know you are unhappy but you may not really know why,” says Goodstein.
While sometimes traditional psychoanalysis is necessary to produce a major change, experts say that often any form of therapy that helps focus attention on thoughts and behaviors can help.
Next week: As we continue to examine the concept of change, we turn our attention to intelligence. Can cracking the books and concentrating harder make you smarter — or just more tired? And are you bound by that third-grade IQ test — or can you actually get brighter as you age? The answers might surprise you!
Published June 6, 2005.
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SOURCES: Abby Aronowitz, PhD, director, SelfHelpDirectives.com, Long Island, N.Y. Charles Goodstein, MD, professor, NYU School of Medicine; former president of the Psychoanalytic Association of New York. Scott Wetzler, PhD, vice chairman, chief of psychology, Montefiore Medical Center, Bronx, New York. Journal of Personal and Social Psychology, May 2003.
Source: relationships.blog-city.com
A Real Man
Boys Don’t Cry
By: Willow Lawson
Summary: How do we help boys grow up emotionally strong?
“Don’t be a mama’s boy.”
“Be a little man.”
These expressions, so embedded in American culture, are our early attempts to socialize young boys into the roles we will eventually demand of them, says William Pollack, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Center for Men at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts. These sayings may seem innocuous, but such words “tell boys that they can’t show feelings of connection,” he says. “Boys are yearning for adult connection.”
Pollack, the author of the book Real Boys, believes our assumptions of how boys should behave—that anger, rage and aggression are normal, that “boys will be boys”—are at the root of rapid increases in the diagnosis of ADHD and depression in boys. He says violence is also a by-product of the struggles that boys and young men face.
“These are illnesses we create as a society,” says Pollack, who presented his research at a New York Academy of Sciences conference on youth violence prevention. He calls behavioral problems in boys a “silent crisis”: Many boys appear happy, tough and confident, but are really depressed, lonely and sometimes violent.
Parents often assume that giving boys too much attention and love will result in dependent and clingy kids, especially in their relationships with their mothers. As a result, boys are told to be strong and independent at the tender ages of 3, 4 or 5 years old, a process that stunts healthy emotional development and interrupts the attachment process, Pollack says. Frequently compounding boys’ detachment is the absence of father figures. Girls, on the other hand, are often encouraged to maintain a close bond to both their mother and father through childhood.
How can parents help their boys grow up emotionally strong? Pollack says parents should dispense with the notion that boys should get “hard knocks” to help them grow into independent, self-sufficient adults.
Source: relationships.blog-city.com
showing ass
