You Can Change Your Personality
nymag.com
nymag.com
Personality disorders, on the other hand, are characterised by fixed traits of personality, rigid in time in spite of detrimental effects on the life of the subject or the life of others.
Without sources of external correction/feedback/perspective, even tiny negative thoughts can get amplified and spiral out of control, and a human can stop behaving within the range of personhood (that is, the usual social construction of normal behavior). Without any human contact, it is difficult to keep control over the focus of attention, find meaning in daily routines and projects, etc. Even trivial tasks can start to take monumental amounts of mental effort. With sufficient sensory deprivation someone can become dissociated or start hallucinating, or can fall into catatonic depression.
Some people are obviously better at handling isolation than others, but it’s tough for even the strongest willed. Involuntary isolation (e.g. solitary confinement, or long-term homelessness) is a torturous experience for most people, often causing permanent emotional scars. Voluntary isolation (living as a hermit in the woods to write a novel or whatever) should not be undertaken lightly.
Often people isolate themselves after some kind of severe negative shock, e.g. the death of a loved one, a bad break-up, a professional failure, etc. People experiencing strong negative emotions without any social support/comfort from family/friends can get themselves into situations that are difficult or impossible to climb back out of, especially if substance abuse is involved.
I became much happier after I chose to be alone. I realized that I'm not meant to have any close friends. I realized that I'm not a likable person. And I realized that it's totally okay. Even if I change to become a "better" (more likable, able to have more friends) person, I won't like myself. I like myself the way I am. Now, if people don't like me, it's their problem: I took every step possible for us to not interact. If they still seek interaction with me and, after it happens, don't like me, well, it's their problem, they chose to seek interaction with me, not me.
> cynicism
Cynicism is not a feeling. Cynicism is a belief that people always act selfishly. And such a belief has a lot of supporting evidence. Also, cynics are not always negative people. You can be a positive cynic.
There is enormous supporting evidence that quantity and quality of relationships are directly correlated to happiness
I like people. I have no trouble speaking in public, making new friends, or just engaging in small talk. I enjoy it, so it comes easily.
I simply enjoy being alone more, so I often am, and there is nothing wrong with me for choosing so. Nor is there with any of the other mostly-hermits I know.
The fellow with low self-esteem may have other issues at well, but telling him that the desire for distance from others is innately wrong isn't going to help him become healthier.
I think a lot of people with social anxiety would feel better about themselves if they were, instead, told that it's OK not to be more social than you want to be. There are still behavior rules to be followed; this isn't license to be a jerk. But for many people, they honestly don't do best with too much contact with others, and that is OK.
Other people want me to come mini-golfing. I want to go home and play with my kitten. Other people want me to go to a party. I want to stay home and have a nice bath. Other people want me to come to the beach. I'd rather put on some music and clean my house. Fuck what other people want me to be doing. A 9-5 is as much as I'll let other people control my life and only because that much is necessary until I'm financially independent. I lack the drive to work towards that and am happy with my job, so a 9-5 it is.
I agree with Baeocystin. This sort of "Literally every human must be enjoy being social/around others!" is infuriating at best. No. Not every human who dislikes other people is broken.
I haven't had a friend in 11 years. I haven't bothered looking because I'm content with my life. I do the things I want to do, I game when I want to game, I code when I want to code, I go for walks when I want to go for walks. I don't need to worry about making plans. If I want to go see a movie - I just go. I don't have people trying to call me/text me/email me. It's absolutely wonderful.
Also see Anthony Storr's Solitude: A Return to the Self.[2]
Many people have historically chosen solitude for religious or spiritual reasons, to focus on something they wanted to achieve, because they just preferred being alone, or for many other reasons.
Many societies have stigmatized solitude and those who choose it, but on the other hand there have been social movements which have praised and advocated solitude.
[1] - http://www.hermitary.com/articles/
[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Solitude-Return-Self-Anthony-Storr/dp...
The other is typically unconscious, often exacerbated by anti-social behaviour.
If you want to know why its "often" and not "always" visit your nearest library and take a look at the size of books on the subject.
And here lies the problem with the internet today and the comment boards such as these. People will actually walk away reading these kind of 2 minute summaries thinking they know something about the subject at hand. And on top of that you can get yourself a great rep "educating" and "informing" the public without ever actually "educating" and "informing" the public.
Disdain has its purpose. I probably should be using it better I will admit.
Now I think it's like the old Indian metaphor of dying cloth with natural dyes: you dye the cloth and it's bright, then put it in the sun and the UV smashes out nearly all the color. But if you keep rinsing and repeating that process, eventually the color is very bright and doesn't fade.
Remember that even if only 1% of your effort teaches anyone anything, the internet will allow a very large number of people over a very long time to "get it" and will preserve that nugget. So your efforts are actually extremely cost-effective - despite all the waste - even if you can't detect that. Then add in ripple effect outside the internet.
I've seen some of my contributions become part of common discourse, heard phrases I invented pop up on the news in just that context (after decades of slow spread), seen minor inventions of mine end up in common use across many kinds of sports, etc. It just took decades of slow growth as they spread.
I've also watched as reams of old shibboleths and (even academic) ignorance that had persisted for centuries even amongst experts swept away, in most circles anyway, by the gradual power of Wikipedia and Google book search.
Of course there will never be a fool shortage, as Barnum noted, more are born every day. But it's getting harder and harder to stay a complete fool.
Keep teaching!
I now know the physical and emotional values of interpersonal relationship, my mean of getting it isn't there anymore, I can't grieve because few people can understand, but I can't go back to the recluse old me after the memory of bonding as set root and left a mark.
The mind is a fascinating thing.
But at a higher level, I think the way you break out of cycles is to first just attack one part of the cycle, and then slowly add more and eventually you are attacking it all at once. If part of why you don't like going out is you don't feel good about yourself, just do your laundry, clean your apartment, take a shower, put on clean clothes, and go for a walk. Then (if you're me) go back to binge eating pizza and browsing Reddit. Don't beat yourself up for the parts of the cycle you're not fixing, just give yourself credit for cleaning your apartment and move on.
It won't give way all at once. You've got to basically get practice fixing some parts of the cycle, which will have some small benefit, and over time you'll get closer to having a day where the whole cycle collapses and you do a complete virtuous cycle instead.
TL;DR: just attack part of the cycle, focus on your successes, and don't beat yourself up too much.
Find your tribe, whatever it may be, and you'll be happier.
1: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/the-real-cause-of-...
And I do somewhat understand - I changed a lot of things when I moved overseas. I likely seem different: But I'm also happier and have a different knowledge base than I did a few years ago. People's expectations of me changed as well: As soon as people realize I'm not Norwegian (the English accent gives me away), it is OK if I break some social norms - those things that I had trouble grasping anyway.
That was the initial study, a followup with 943 Vietnam vets by the original researcher Lee Robins found that:
"In the 8- to 12-month period since their return, about 10% had some experience with opiates, but less than 1% had shown signs of opiate dependence. In the “drug positive” sample, three-quarters felt they had been addicted to narcotics in Vietnam. After return, one-third had some experience with opiates, but only 7% showed signs of dependence. Rather than giving up drugs altogether, many had shifted from heroin to amphetamines or barbiturates. Nevertheless, almost none expressed a desire for treatment." [1]
So the point still stands that environmental factors affect patterns of drug abuse, but it is complicated by two things, the numbers are less dramatic than "95% simply stopped" and also would raise one concern that addiction was clinically tested on return but was self-reported in the interviews.
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article-abstract/99/4/235/13845...
These experiments first of all show how people react in highly stressful situations. To equalize this with changes in their personalities doesn't seem right to me.
The hardest part of these artificial and mostly extreme experiments - because you want to see reactions in a short amount of time - is what kind of conclusions you can take out of them.
Look into the Birkman Method, it's a psychometric personality assessment that, unlike other pop-quiz type tools (MBTI et al), distinguishes between your usual behaviour, your fundamental expectation of the world (needs) and your reactions (stress) when those expectations aren't met. It's unlikely that your usual behaviour changes, although it's quite possible that your stress behaviour could mask that (even for years on end) if you're in an environment you can't cope with.
There is a weird meme that tech people aren't capable of being "team players" or working with other people. Maybe research will help address that perception; awkward is ok, but we shouldn't accept that techies will be dicks to people all the time.
To be fair, I went from poorly funded startups and contracting work to BigCo.
There seems to be such a strong correlation, curious if anyone has ever studied it. It seems we've gotten to the point that so very much of our adult behavior can be traced to childhood events/upbringing that this can't be an outlier.
Many racists were probably raised that way by society, too, and undoing that is probably both hard and unfair - but necessary and a reasonable prerequisite for being a part of polite society.
"Don't be an asshole" is what? "Being an asshole" means different things to different people. THAT is the core of the issue.
For instance: I've got coworkers, who if they screw something up, I can just straight up say - that was wrong, do it this way next time, then we won't have an issue. For other coworkers that direct interaction would be the absolute end of the world. And instead you have to tap dance around until you eventually get to a state where you're fairly certain they know not to do what they did again.
Would it make me an asshole for not knowing one person can handle direct feedback, and others can't? Is it "being an asshole" for telling someone factual information without sugar coating? I don't think so, plenty of people out in the real world do, however.
And, quite frankly, most of the people who want direct feedback consider people who tapdance assholes because so much effort is wasted on getting to the point.
It doesn't make you an asshole (intent) not to know that, but it does make your interactions less effective to not work "with the grain" of that dynamic.
At our company everyone takes the Birkman and we train everyone on how to leverage the knowledge it provides on your personality style and how that intersects with others' style. Whenever you're having trouble in an interpersonal interaction with someone, you can think about / looks at the profile and tweak your approach to improve things. It had been incredibly effective for making it easier, more effective, and more pleasant to work with others.
A racist may live in fear of the criminality of (insert race here) without seeing the bigger picture of poverty that causes it. A racist may have a majority of bad experiences with (insert race here) without realising their own prejudice was to blame.
Racism isn't "being mean", racism is potentially diverse set of prejudices and overly broad opinions that are founded on faulty logic or incomplete data. Racism can be propped up by an entire web of social beliefs and a lifetime of personal experience. Racists don't think they're "being mean", they think they hold sane, justifiable opinions against other "mean" or even "inferior" groups of people. Indeed, it may "not even occur to them they are being offensive".
The long and sordid history of racism around the globe can attest to the fact that racism is not something "easy to nip in the bud".
As you say, you can stop someone overtly declaring their racism, but that doesn't mean they won't still covertly (or even unconsciously) continue with racist behaviors. Which is why it isn't so "clear", because even a simple situation with coworkers, you can be facing an uphill battle.
Anyway, I would wager we both broadly agree and this is now just a semantic argument.
This appears to be still encouraged, or at least not discouraged.
On the other hand, if you're not a nerd and you act like a prick, people will just start to cut you out of their lives. You won't get invited to social events. You probably won't get promoted because no one wants to work with you. Your behavior will impact your life. You can be a prick and be successful, but it's harder, because you have to balance it by being really good at something else. You're an amazing salesperson so you get rewarded despite being unpleasant. You're wealthy so people hang out with you even though you're rude.
The bar for nerds looking the other way seems to be lower. You're rude, but that's just how you are. Obviously there are limits even for nerds, but the limits seem to be pretty high.
Once you finally meet someone sharing that interest, and it turns out that they act like a prick, you have a difficult choice (if you value sociable behavior over the opportunity to be social at all; willingly choosing isolation is frequently not a tenable position).
The cost and stakes for confrontation (and exclusion) are higher than it is in a "nerdier" group than for people with more common interests, simply because of the lack of people who are capable of the interest in the first place. So, more bad behaviors are tolerated. It's also worth noting that "bad" covers both "weird" and "malicious", which is also why groups with these interests tend to be much more accepting of people with other interests outside of those standard for the surrounding society.
The feedback loop is as such less; personality quirks don't get as rounded-off as they would in a less-exclusive group, so any conversions from asshole -> non-asshole in a small community will take longer if they even happen at all.
So, it should be no surprise that individuals more aware than most of the fact that "good people are hard to find" are willing to make certain sacrifices to retain them. For individuals whose interests and abilities involve a larger cross-section of the population, however, people are much more interchangeable, so excluding weird/malicious behavior is much easier.
As an example, consider the tech community's recent trend of attempting to exclude speakers with non-standard political views from conferences. The arguments for doing so come from people with the mindset that technology experts are interchangeable (which is valid in some areas), the arguments against it come from those who see technology experts as an unusually scarce resource (which is valid everywhere else in the world).
Personally, I work in a environment where most of my colleagues are also engineering professionals, and most everyone is friendly and helpful. And while probably being the most stereotypical tech nerd in my department, I still get occasional commendations for my good team play.
BUT...
even I will not for long put a good face for lazy whiners who would have me do their job for them, and hold their hand through every trivial aspect of things they should either already know, or be able to figure out for themselves with a bare minimum of brains and effort. And, unfortunately, those people are not quite unheard of.
For technical support roles, this behavior gets a pass unless it's really egregious because the employee is supposedly hired for technical ability and not hospitality. Plus in these roles the "customer" is often another employee who's basically captive. So largely this is the result of messed up incentives.
You see the same issue, e.g., at the DMV. Largely the employees are fine, but there are always several who clearly don't want to be there and a couple who are actively unpleasant. The incentives are set up to enable this because customer service is not "job 1". The customers are captive and there's little pushing out unpleasant employees.
The relative lack of women is probably multifaceted but to the extent that it's related to antisocial geeks, I again think it's more to do with enabling the behavior than with the volume. A very small portion of the population can do severe damage if the rest allow it.
This is purely anecdotal, but at one particularly memorable company, the head of HR would regularly make casual comments that cast the engineers as socially incapable and childish. Meanwhile, she was constantly offending people and her life was a chaotic mess.
At the same company, they always talked about team this and team that, but efforts to actually incorporate the team (e.g. clear communication, collaboration) were obviously seen as weak, and the "arrogant know it all" persona was rewarded.
I don't know how many of these things are simply cognitive dissonance, or poor communication, and which are deliberate efforts to gain power over others. Seems like a little of all three to me. I also think it's a convenient way for technically incompetent management to lord something over you. They may not understand your technical contributions, but they can finish the review by mentioning how you need to work on some undefined and arbitrary social aspect.
(A common cause of these complaints is people hearing "we can't do that" as "we won't do that", mistaking impossibility for insubordination)
These are usually techniques to weed out people that the people defending those strategies think (consciously or not) are unfit. If you follow the advice you really are unfit and they will exclude you.
This is common across the board in social situations.
I don't understand what you're trying to say.
Get a bunch engineers in a room and they'll argue forever about a solution because they don't understand their own biases or how emotion is clouding people's judgement. Bringing a bit of empathy can resolve these impasses so much more quickly.
The most effective technical people I've met have combined intelligence with an ability to get people on board with their vision.
Youre going wrong trying to paint engineers with a brush this broad.
I follow some developer advocates on Twitter who get very angry at engineers who don't prioritise web performance above everything else (UX, accessibility, features, actually shipping code). Given their experience battling bad performance all day every day this is understandable. But from the perspective of someone who is trying to juggle a million priorities this comes across as crazy.
In a great text written in 1880, Émile Littré, author of a great French dictionary that took him over 15 years to write, says this:
> je suis corrigible, ayant de bonne heure compris qu’il était peu sage de répondre aux suggestions d’amendement «Je suis comme cela» [1]
> I can change, having grasped early that it's not very clever to answer "that's just how I am" to people giving you life advice [my translation]
[1] https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page%3AEmile_Littre_-_Etudes_...
Don't get me wrong, I do believe that personality can change, just this article didn't seem to present a good basis for that thinking.
"In an analysis of 207 studies, published this month in the journal Psychological Bulletin, a team of six researchers found that personality can and does change, and by a lot, and fairly quickly. But only with a therapist’s help. (Imagine that.)"
Edit: someone tracked down the original. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13452075
I don't think personality actually changes much, it just has some latent and some manifested aspects, depending on circumstance. In different circumstances it can manifest different aspects. It doesn't mean it changes, just that it can variate depending on context.
It's often possible that trying to change your personality would lead to much suffering, because it's inherently difficult. I read some time ago a psychological study that applied MBTI to cult members. They were asked how they viewed their personality before, in the present and in the future. The trend was to attempt to emulate the personality type of the cult leader. Their happiness was inversely correlated to how much off-base they were attempting to be.
I suspect it's just a matter of how much change, and how the change manifests. If one of the classic attributes of personality is sustainably reset to a different level, like trust or sharing or kindness, I'd certainly consider that personality to be changed. I haven't read the article, but that may be what it proposes.
Like exercise (to change your body), changing your personality takes time and conscious effort. You need to dedicate time every day for honest self-reflection, self-awareness, meditation, reading and education in the topic, etc.
There are two ways you can lose weight. Accidentally, by getting sick or stressed, for instance; and on purpose, through concerted diet and exercise. The same can happen with personality changes. It can happen accidentally, through change of environment or mental illness like depression.
But doing it on purpose seems more wholesome. Losing weight on purpose is better than losing it accidentally, even though the result is the same, because those people are healthy and the others aren't. Put another way: you shouldn't have to get sick to lose weight.
Everybody should spend some time daily on those mental health items above. It's exercise. Through it you can point your personality and mind in the direction you'd like it to go, and with hard work and patience you'll get there. As your mind gets healthier the less likely you are to become mentally ill. You'll avoid common issues like depression, substance abuse, anxiety and eating disorders.
I think mental illness is starting to become a public health crisis. I know so few people that aren't constantly stressed due to work or school, I've seen many people fall into legitimate depression and only recover after changing their environment (ie quitting their job).
It's said that half of adults experience depression at least once in their life. I bet it's more like 90%. It's like the flu. Pervasive, transmissible and contagious, with most victims recovering quickly, but a small percentage experiencing fatal cases. Now we have flu shots at every Walgreens.
It's time to do the same for mental health.
And unlike the Woodie Allen analyst cliche, it is not something that has no end; a short series of sessions can often be enough to help a patient make huge personal changes that improve the quality of their lives.
As soon as you step out into the real world again fears resurface.
I'd say there's a market for trained therapists who will also coach people through real world stressful situations rather than just talking about them.
Given the expense of doing that it would have to be in a group and the incentives right so you can trust coaches not to exploit the vulnerable. Solve that and you could have a nice franchise.
There are plenty of outgoing introverts.
Written by a neuroscientist, it gives a thorough, scientifically tested framework for classifying traits of personality and changing them.
Science! It's not a real explanation, so much as a curiosity-stopper. You don't actually know anything more than you knew before I said the magic word. But you turn away, satisfied that nothing unusual is going on.