Judy2

This winter term, one of the lecture courses I am looking forward to the most is personality psychology. I read up on it a little and one of the central questions - that also happens to be one of the key reasons for why I am interested in psychology - is if personality is consistent/ unchangeable throughout someone's life. From what I gather so far, it is, for the most part, although neuroticism may decrease with age while conscientiousness will increase. However, your "peer ranking" will stay the same...so if you meet with some old friends 60 years from now, chances are that despite a general increase in conscientiousness, the most conscientious one of you at age 20 will still be the most conscientious one at 80, and so forth... Now, as this is a community with the specific goal of personal development, I wonder if any of you would be interested in sharing how you believe your peesonality has or hasn't changed throughout the years (the exact period of time this commentary may cover depends on your age, but technically, from childhood until the present). I believe changes in introversion/extraversion are probably going to be the most obvious ones, but the other dimensions you could comment on are conscientiousness, openness to experience, neuroticism and agreeableness (or anything else you may have to add). I also wonder what the implications are for someone like me who ranks high on the neuroticism (=negative affect) dimension if personality is not as fluid or changeable as we may think....in my experience, I can put a lot of effort into therapising and changing this aspect of my personality, I can make efforts to be mentally healthy...but the predisposition to negative affect very much stays the same. ...anyway, i'd love to hear your thoughts on all this:)

i feel dizzy from wearing headphones all the time...but it's not exactly safe when i take them off - not even in my own apartment, not even when i go to sleep, because i hear my neighbour stomping on the ground. when i fall asleep in the evening, i usually wake up again because i hear his steps...despite the fact that i started double-stacking noise cancelling headphones. i hate this, it makes me so uncomfortable and i feel so unsafe.

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this morning, i feel a little better. it won't last, but it's also good to remember that i keep coming back to this state, just as i keep coming back to the unhappiness. a few days ago, i started taking my gratitude journal a little more seriously again, and while this can easily be yet another thing that i do only to improve myself, perhaps it's still worth it, and it's a valid way of looking after myself - so i'll keep doing that for the next few months. a gratitude journal won't make me happy, but not writing down gratitudes will not make me happy, either. so i believe i've got nothing to lose, and it is true that this sort of thing can have an impact on the mind/brain.

i made myself write a lot of applications today, until i decided i don't want to anymore, and now i am bored and, you guessed it....still unhappy. i believe the boredom thing is more about not feeling motivated to do anything....and i don't have a lot of "nice things" in my life that i could do without experiencing the pressure of thinking how they must make me better in one way or another (or i must make them better to make me better?). i can't just be in the present moment, cause the present moment SUCKS. it is filled with stupid noises and cringe thoughts about things i did and said in the past, with dirty roads and pains and aches ...and everything sucks, nothing ever goes right, it is all so messy, so complicated... i still feel so empty, so hollow....and lately i've had too much time on my hands to think about it. i've tried to take some steps to improve my situation - perhaps too many - but i am still so empty, so unhappy. happiness is quite paradoxical, anyway. things can't make you happy per se, but then certain things can still be beneficial, at the very least....they can even be prerequisites for happiness. jogging can't make me happy....but not jogging certainly won't make me happy, either. a nicer apartment won't make me happy, not for long...but it also wouldn't hurt, on average. and i'd want all the most ordinary things to feel a little more special, feel a little better about myself. there's nothing particularly innovative about wanting to look prettier, or live in a nicer (quieter!) apartment, have a nicer job, wanting to have a baby. i just feel like i suck so bad, and i feel so stuck and aaaah.... and the life i want for myself still seems so far away.

i haven't read everything but i wonder what this subjective experience would be like. for human beings, it is centred around a physical, sensory experience or interaction with "the body's" "environment". what would that be like for a computer?

i felt pretty unhappy last night, but today's midday run genuinely helped and i felt really energised throughout it. after about 20-30 minutes, the bad thoughts went away. i can tell that the run put a strain on my right ankle, though...i'll have to explain that to my doctor next week and see what solution we can come up with.

yes, i am glad you see it that way. i explored the example of childhood emotional development in response to something Leo said. children are still people, though. some key aspects of dealing with children's emotions are the same for dealing with adults (male or female) while others are not (since kids are still developing and dependent on their caregivers for survival).

Yes. Not ignoring someone doesn't mean you have to agree with them. You can take the emotion seriously and still tell them "no more ice cream today" or "please give that toy back to your friend".

yes, sorry.

okay I think we do have to take children at least a little seriously, though. Even if we think their reasons for crying are silly. Otherwise, that's gonna mess with their emotional development. Imagine ignoring your 10-year-old daughter when she cries, or even your five-year-old daughter. Or telling them "ha, you're just being silly!" That's how you raise someone with serious attachment trauma. Of course, there are differences between children and adults. That is why i chose not to bring this up as an example. I thought it was obvious that there are good reasons to be sympathetic with children.

Who is the judge of what is silly vs serious? If I am crying about something, it's likely to be serious to me.

@Salvijusokay:)

okay, but when we are born, we are also born into ignorance, and depending on the environment we grow up in, certain stress responses can become someone's second nature. to a certain extent, they are natural survival mechanisms. this is not a choice per se....it's what a human body does instinctually, even before they are old enough to think, let alone speak.

yes:)

but the brain does exist? anyone who has ever experienced depression can probably attest to the fact that it is more real than "serotonin and some other chemicals in the brain".

yes, precisely. it might also be a matter of genetic predisposition to experiencing more negative affect in general. ane differences in neuroanatomy and neurochemistry as well. with bipolar disorder, for example, the brain goes through cycles of increased flexibility vs increased rigidity, which corresponds to manic and depressed phases.

for some reason, frozen berries also got a lot more expensive, though...

i think this is a tricky one. in a way, mental illness (or, at the very least, recovery) is a choice, but in a way it also isn't. that's something that needs to be experienced for someone to even begin to grasp the depth of that.

yes:) i think it's worth contemplating depression as its own phenomenon (which is the goal of this thread), but it's also true that for the individual, depression can be embedded in a network of other factors and diagnoses (as i'm aware it is for me).

berries also used to be much cheaper, but in terms of veggies, (cherry) tomatoes feel like the worst rip-off.

@Natasha Tori Maru yes, maybe what i have described is a maintaining factor rather than depression itself.

i don't know if this answers your question, but for me, depression is usually a reaction to how i implicitly (or explicitly) make sense of the world, and, in extension, myself. basically, it's like asking myself "is this world/life/experience a good enough place to live in? maybe not..." and it makes assumptions about the permanence and impermanence of pleasant/unpleasant experiences. although this isn't always "no feelings" - it could also just be an unpleasant mix of emotions. for me, one of the most depressing things is when "the good" and "the bad" seem so intertwined that i cannot, for the love of God, separate them neatly, and this stops me from being able to make sense of myself as 'good' (which is a core psychological need). so depression isn't the absence of good experiences, but the fact that they seem fundamentally "spoiled". but my head is also a little weird sometimes, so maybe this is just how it works for me.