What things, psychologically, can and cannot a person change about themselves?

Great Debates
21

Anecdotally speaking, the longer I live and observe people pass from childhood into maturity and beyond, the more I believe that we emerge from the womb with most of the basic traits of our personalities. As the adage goes (it is possible I made up this adage), parents can make their children hate themselves for who they are, but they can’t make them be different. Of course they can also help their children accept and appreciate their personalities. This is why it is so important to choose your parents wisely.

It is I think also true that with intelligent, conscious, determined effort, one can change one’s habits, including habits of mind. But your core persona is a fixed thing. Studies Have Shown that your Big Five traits remain essentially the same throughout your life.

(“Big Five” is the most widely accepted theory of personality traits, the five being where you sit on the scales of extraversion, agreeableness, openness, conscientiousness and neuroticism)

22

Changing your old behavior patterns is more like quitting your job, dumping your spouse, and getting rid of your dog on the same day…and then deciding to become a homosexual, completely change careers, and become a cat person. It’s adopting a number of choices and behaviors that may feel new, unnatural, scary, require significant work, require a total reshaping of how you view the world, and may go completely against your preferences and tastes.

23

This makes me think a little about “catastrophe theory” in mathematics, where (to put it too simply) you push at something until it suddenly gives way.

For me, the stress of treating my arachnophobia would be greater than any likely benefit from it, since I only bump into a spider every few months, and they’re usually small enough not to wreck me. Gradual deliberate exposure – like licking the toilet seat! – might work, but…um…no?

re significant religious conversion, I don’t know, in technical terms, what happens, but in some meaningful ways “it isn’t the same person any longer.” I’ve had friends who did that, and it was eerie. It was as if someone had swapped out big chunks of their “operating system code.” The behavioral differences were profound, and, yes, kinda scary.

I once had a psychiatrist advise me, “Become religious for six months, and see if it improves your situation.” To me, that’s meaningless. Might just cut to the chase and “Become non-depressed for six months.” How am I supposed to “become religious?” As alluded to above, it’s like deciding to change sexual orientation. It doesn’t strike me as amenable to deliberate choice.

24

Narcissism is very difficult to change.
The person with the disorder doesn’t see that they have a disorder, but what makes it near impossible to overcome is that the afflicted person will not seek out help. And from their point of view, why should they. There’s nothing wrong with them, and should they on the off chance get into an appointment it would quickly be decided that the psychologist doesn’t know what he/she is talking about. Just as most everyone else in the narcissist’s world doesn’t know what they speak of.
These days the term is bandied about a lot in reference to Trump. As it should be. Closer to home, my father was a narcissist. Was, because he’s now deceased (thank gawd). He destroyed our family. Having been through that, nothing that Trump did surprised me. I could almost foresee it.
Ok, that’s a bit untrue. Trump’s plain ignorance, arrogance & stupidity surprised me continually as it reached new heights. But the narcissistic behavior (which is somewhat but not entirely related) did not. I’d seen it all before in my father. Unless one is an enabler, or brainwashed - which I suspect my mother was, and who wouldn’t be after 50- 60 years - a narcissist is pretty much impossible to live with, given that one has a mind & opinions of their own.

25

Just to clarify, that would be an exposure for a germaphobe, and perhaps someone with OCD (which my husband also treats.) I think most people don’t encounter their phobias often so it’s not like these fears are ruling their lives. I did it for fear of heights because I was so afraid of flying I kept canceling my trips.

But the question was whether they could change. And yes, they can.

26

Wait-- if you won’t lick a toilet seat, you are a germaphobe?

27

No, but to overcome severe germaphobia you may need to do so. I don’t consider myself arachnophobic but I wouldn’t willingly put a spider on my face either; but if I wanted to become more comfortable with spiders as part of a desensitization process I might do so.

28

Am I the only person in the world who likes spiders?

29

I like them too, but I totally understand why people would be afraid of them. They are cool but freaky at the same time.

30

This. If you have licked a toilet seat and lived to tell about it, you probably will realize you don’t have to wash your hands 30 times a day to be safe.

This is getting into habit reversal training for OCD which I don’t have as much knowledge about.

And I love spiders! All bugs, really.

31

There’s one in the corner above the loft where I sleep. Has a bug in its web. I like the idea of spiders a lot better than the idea of bugs (it’s not a bedbug, although I’m not sure exactly what it is, but it’s too long and narrow for a bedbug). We’ve got a basement apartment; it’s impossible not to have bugs from time to time, so I like the spiders.

32

I should say I love most bugs. Mosquitoes and flies can buzz off.

33

This happens with some religious messaging, which essentially takes the form of, ‘you need to change yourself. How? By being changed.’

34

Please read my post (or show it to your husband). My fear of bees went away in an instant–the first time I was stung. My fear of heights is extreme–but never translated into a fear of flying. I love to fly (although I hate airports; that is a different matter). As long as I am in a solid seat in an airplane, or even walking on a solid floor, I am fine. Even looking out the window doesn’t bother me in the least. I could not drive counter-clockwise around the central mountains of Newfoundland but clockwise no sweat. It would be the opposite in Scotland.

35

This idea has been very much on my mind lately. After decades of failed attempts to redirect my psyche, I’m considering the possibility that I should finally resign myself to the idea it will never happen and I should just stop fighting it and accept the fact that I am irreparably broken. Hear me out.

CW: shit’s about to get ugly.

The most significant occurrence in my life happened a month before I was born. My mom was raped by 2 burglars when she was 8 months pregnant with me. When my dad came home (he was on the road, NFL) and she told him what had happened, his first response was “Why didn’t you kill yourself?”

It was much later in life, after endless fruitless attempts at therapy and self improvement, that I found out that, from the very moment I was born, both of my parents viewed me with active disgust and revulsion.

When I found this out, I spent several years in a literal daze: every single memory I had needed to be recalibrated against this new template: things I’d always believed were my fault were actually because of my parents’ own pathology. I could write a book of examples, but I won’t do that here.

As an adult I came to the conclusion that my parents had raised me to hate myself. Now I knew why.

But that knowledge hasn’t changed anything. Except perhaps to make me resign myself to the likelihood that, since it began so young, perhaps my pathways as they developed became hardwired to this “reality.”

At my most peaceful, introspective moments, the baseline of my sense of the universe around me is a feeling of hostility and fear. I describe my depression/anxiety symptoms as going through life in a constant state of low level panic. Unbroken; it’s simply the ocean I swim in. Meds and therapy help me tread water, but without them life is a terrifying effort not to slip beneath the surface.

So my response to the OP is that I’ve come to believe, through my own experience, that some things can only he survived, and might never be repaired.

36

Interesting. I experience anxiety in tall buildings, on planes, hell, on ladders. But I have learned to habituate to the feeling of anxiety, meaning I get used to it. The big mantra when I did exposure was discomfort, not danger. It keeps me sane (I have other weird phobias this helps with.)

I feel like this sometimes, too. Like no matter how well things are going I have this sense of impending failure. I keep waiting for that moment when it’s going to be revealed to the world and everybody who knows and loves me will realize that I am a catastrophic failure as a human being.

I know this comes from the abuse I experienced as a child. I remember one day in my teens I was so fed up with my mother’s personal attacks that I said, “Look. I do well in school, my teachers have a high opinion of me, I have good friends, and none of them seems to think I am really that bad.”

And she said, “That’s because they don’t have to live with you. If they had to live with you they’d know the truth.”

And on some level I think I’ve carried that fundamental belief about myself into adulthood.

I think about this less now that I’ve had all this treatment. But you know, on some level, that vulnerability is always there. EMDR helped me a ton. It was a miracle for me.

I hope you get the help you need. I believe there is hope for you. Trauma is just a beast to reckon with.

37

As hard as it is to change, staying changed is sometimes what proves too much. Like an addict falling off the wagon, some people relapse into their personality issues.

I’ve seen some of my clients change dramatically for the better. But I’ve also seen a few of them revert to their old ways, after I really thought they’d gotten their shit permanently sorted. But like the fella says, trying to have it “all together” is like trying to eat “once and for all.”

38

Wow, super sorry to hear about that. But…are you saying your parents loathed you because of your mom being raped? (struggling to connect the two things, since your conception had nothing to do with the rape) Anyhow, you had a terrible upbringing, really sorry to hear…

I think you may be right on the money about knowing how you were raised but it still not doing a thing to change your inner circuitry, which was/is baked-in by now. I have wondered something similar because it’s like I have two halves in me, a very religious half and a very unreligious half. My upbringing was hardcore religious, but my inner nature is not religious. So it’s very hard for me to separate the two circuitries or even figure out which one is the “real” circuitry, since numerous wires have been crossed together.

39

When I was 12, I had bad stomach troubles; I kept it to myself for several months, because I knew my mother wouldn’t take it well (she had a “suck it up” attitude toward chronic health issues), but my mother was going to Prague for nearly a year to work on her dissertation. Once she was safely in Czechoslovakia, I told my father.

Everything snowballed quickly: I was on Tagamet, which was an Rx med at the time, and horribly disgusting 70s era Mylanta, and within a month, was having an upper endoscopy.

They found serious gastritis, evidence of reflux, and what they called “pre-ulcerative lesions.”

The professional conclusion was that I was a terribly stressed-out kid, and my mother being gone was probably a factor.

Actually, I didn’t get along with my mother, and I was having a great time with her gone. I had more responsibility with her gone-- I had to make dinner a couple of times a week, but I loved doing it. I’d been making dinner for the family once or twice a month since I was 10. I loved coming home to an empty house. I made lunches for my little brother, and helped him get ready in the mornings. My father didn’t care when I got home on a non-school night, as long as I called at an agreed-upon time, and he knew who I was with, and I was able to get up in the mornings and not be late for school or synagogue, got my homework and paper route done, etc.

My grades improved. I was more inclined to do my homework with no one nagging me about it.

I didn’t find out until I was in my 30s, but the doctors had told my father I needed a therapist, and he refused (my mother probably would have killed him when she got back, if he’d allowed that).

Anyway, I grew up from the age of 12 being told I stressed out over things, and was a worrier, who worried so much, I worried myself into physical symptoms.

I started getting migraines, and throwing up when I got really upset over things (which I’d never done before). I started getting worried and shaky before tests in school, when I used to be a block of ice. I started getting the runs when I was worried. I couldn’t eat when something was on my mind.

By the time I was 30, I had a really solid self-image as a worrier who finds everything stressful.

Then, when I got sent for an endoscopy when I was 50, they found some stuff that needed surgery, and because I had an aunt who had died at 58 of stomach cancer, they did a biopsy.

No cancer, but they said they found evidence that I had once had a Helicobacter pylori infection, and that had probably caused the changes they’d found.

So, there it was. I was not a stressed-out kid. I had an infection.

It was official medical doctrine that stress caused ulcers. About 5 years later, someone discovered that H. pylori caused ulcers, but no one went back and revised my diagnosis. Probably because I wasn’t having symptoms anymore. I’d been given massive and long-term antibiotics for an very bad bladder infection, which probably wiped out any H. pylori infection I still had.

I’m still working on revising my personality-- or my self-image, I guess, to be someone who isn’t a worrier.

But I’m better than I was. I’m pretty sure I can eventually change this completely.

40

Yes their reaction was irrational. But neither of them ever made any effort to overcome or alter it. They just kind of went with it.