Some folk have it all. Or so it seems.<\/p>\n
Charm, looks, money, success, universal approval. And yet…<\/p>\n
How often we learn, with surprise, that privately they’ve been struggling.<\/p>\n
Perhaps depression<\/a> has them in its grip. Maybe their appetites have grown unchecked into full-blown addictions<\/a>. Maybe they feel fake, like a trickster imposter<\/a> waiting for public opinion to turn on them, constantly afraid that the mask will slip and reveal them as unworthy of their success.<\/p>\n We learn, some of us maybe with delighted horror, that they’ve been battling demons. Outwardly their lives shine with envy-inspiring luminance, but inwardly they’re falling apart. They’re mentally tortured, or feel empty or lonely.<\/p>\n I don’t know about you, but little alarm bells go off in my head when I hear some clich\u00e9s relating to mental health.<\/p>\n What, for example, does ‘battling inner demons’ actually mean? These words and phrases (being ‘tortured’ is another one) may sound<\/em> profound. But words and phrases can do as much to hide meaning as reveal it unless we dig deeper.<\/p>\n Interestingly, the metaphor of ‘battling demons’ may have come from a time when people experiencing mental illness were literally<\/em> believed to be possessed by demons.1<\/sup> It doesn’t tell us much in itself. We need to go deeper.<\/p>\n We need to know what<\/em> demons a person is fighting. To turn the metaphor back into something more literal so we can actually help vanquish said inner monsters.<\/p>\n Demons are either:<\/p>\n It’s this last aspect that I want to briefly highlight here.<\/p>\n Now, when we treat clients, we’re not seeking to change<\/em> their personality. But we are seeking to help them adapt<\/em> and modify troublesome personality traits<\/em>.<\/p>\n Some people are fatalistic about personality traits but the fact is, personality can<\/em>, and perhaps inevitably does, change through experience. Indeed, the emerging science of epigenetics seems to support this.<\/p>\n\n Epigenetics looks at how we are shaped not just by our base genetic code, but also by changes in the way our genes are expressed.3<\/sup> We each, of course, have a different genetic ‘blueprint’, but what we do in life \u2013 our experiences and learnings \u2013 influences whether and how our genes are expressed.<\/p>\n For instance, someone who is characteristically introverted can learn to become more extraverted, not as an act but as a reality. This can happen through skills training, for example in social skills or stress management, and just through practice. It’s even been found that simply pretending to be extraverted helps introverted people not just feel happier but become<\/em> more extraverted, at least while they are acting that way.4<\/sup><\/p>\n Personality type is not destiny. After all, what makes us unique as human beings is our almost infinite capacity to learn.<\/p>\nDeconstructing demons<\/h3>\n
\n
Personality change?<\/h3>\n