Do You Have a Healthy Personality?
Do You Have a Healthy Personality?
This guest post is contributed by Apex Therapy staff member Brady C. Malone, MA, TLLP.
Personality health is somewhat controversial. Some pessimistic professionals suggest that aiming for personality health is unrealistic and self-defeating; others believe having a “north star” to aim towards helps with motivation towards personal growth. Here we’ll explore personality health, its aspects, and how therapy assists in its promotion.
When thinking of personality health, we really should talk about personality functioning, which is a way professionals measure one’s ability to carry out a collection of psychological functions. Personality functioning is typically split between two separate but interconnected functions: self and interpersonal (social) functioning, each with a set of interrelated subfunctions.
Self Functioning
Healthy self-functioning entails a sense of self with a clear, realistic, unique, balanced, and stable identity. This means one can easily answer the questions “who are you?” or “tell me a little bit about yourself.” Further, healthy self-functioning means one can express and tolerate the full range of emotional experiences, self-regulating during times of stress and disappointment. A healthy person also possesses an accurate understating of their own strengths and limitations.
Additionally, healthy self-functioning requires healthy levels of self-direction such that one can invest in long-term and personally valued goals; maintain internal standards for behavior that are self-enriching, prosocial, and flexible (moral compass); and reflect on one’s past to make changes in the present and future.
Interpersonal Functioning
Fitness in interpersonal (social) functioning requires high levels of both emotional and cognitive empathy. This means one can comprehend both the underlying motivational logic of others’ emotional expressions and can directly intuit what it is like to be in others’ positions. Further, being able to recognize and tolerate attentive perspectives as well make logical connections between one’s behavior and their effects on others are necessary aspects of healthy interpersonal functioning.
Moreover, being able to manage closeness and connection in relationships (intimacy) is a fundamental capacity in personality functioning. Healthy intimacy includes first a desire and then capacity for trust, honesty, depth, and long-term investment in both romantic and platonic significant relationships. Lastly, healthy intimacy is upheld by the assertion of personal boundaries and the achievement of mutuality and reciprocity in relationships where “I” and “you” evolve to “we” and “us” when making important decisions and plans and enjoying the present moment.
To summarize, personality health is the outcome of fully developed abilities to manage oneself and relationships, especially in the capacity to regulate emotions, know of, reflect on, and adapt one’s sense of self, empathize with others, and invest in long-term mutually satisfying relationships.
As perceived by those pessimistic professionals mentioned earlier, this is quite a tall order, especially if one rigidly commits to the pursuit of an unendingly perfect healthy personality. There will always be times of high stress, loss, and medical illness that challenge even the healthiest personalities. At those times, it may look like the pessimistic professionals are on to something. That said, the standard of a healthy personality is much more a general guideline than a fixed finish line.
How Therapy Can Help
Contrary to what some believe, those without any observable mental illness or disorder can benefit from therapy. Often, individuals unknowingly struggle with one or several of the areas above. For example, a highly efficient and effective mother of three may think she is doing well and meeting all demands of her chaotic and stressful life. At the same time, she might discover in therapy that she lacks the skills to effectively manage personal boundaries, which has been contributing greatly to her stress levels. As a result, she might learn how to assert and prioritize her needs and delegate tasks to others in the family when she is feeling overwhelmed, leading to reduced stress and a more balanced family life.
This is one of many examples of how looking at these standards against your own personality and lifestyle might invite a level of curiosity about how you can make changes and improve your life. There is no better place to explore this question than in your personal therapy with a trusted and well-trained mental health professional.
Brady C. Malone, MA, TLLP, provides psychotherapy for adults and couples at Apex Therapy Services. He uses an integrative therapeutic approach for those interested in uncovering the roots of their problems. While experienced with a range of mental health problems, he has specialized training and expertise in narcissism, low self-esteem, long-term depression, exiting long-term relationships/divorce, and self-sabotaging behavior.
