I’m doing a ‘People and Organisations’ class this semester and in its first few weeks we have been looking closely at personality traits. This has involved doing a couple of questionnaires to determine our own personality type, including the Myer-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the five factor model, also known as the Big Five or the OCEAN model (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism). It was no surprise to get quite a low extraversion score. I scored on the high side with openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness. On neuroticism my score was about mid-way. Tellingly perhaps, the scoring for this last trait seemed to have generated some consternation in class. I guess no-one likes the thought of being neurotic, we all aspire to being emotionally stable.
According to Jennifer Tzeses on psycom.net neuroticism is basically how a person handles stress. She quotes clinical psychologist Kristin Naragon-Gainey who explains that neuroticism is related to the ways people experience negative emotions in response to stress – feelings like sadness, anxiety, fear, hostility, irritability and anger. Sometimes the level of emotion is disproportionate to the reality of the situation. A psychiatrist Grant H. Brenner explains how this becomes unhealthy when it “can become a ‘crash and burn’ dynamic, where negative beliefs about yourself lead to ineffective social functioning, which then confirms those negative beliefs, and further re-enforces neurotic tendencies”.
It is a dark spiral which I’ve experienced through many years of social anxiety and depression. Cognitive therapy has helped me understand what is going on at these times and I find it a lot easier now to lift myself out of the worst of the debilitating depths in which I would dwell for weeks on end. I remember many years ago, discussing depression with a friend who was also prone to it. We agreed that while it made life utterly terrible, conversely it also brought with it an exquisite appreciation of and for life and experience. So there is an upside.
The clinicians agree. “These personality types tend to be intelligent, humorous, have more realistic (if cynical) expectations, a greater self-awareness, drive and conscientiousness, they take fewer risks, and have a strong need to provide for others” says Dr Brenner. According to research, neurotic people are more likely to be creative thinkers and possess more emotional depth. “They have more experience handling negative emotions, which, though difficult, can also make them deeper, and facilitate empathy and understanding for other people’s struggles” explains Dr Naragon-Gainey.
They suggest some simple techniques to help shift a negative mindset:
- Be mindful
- Take some deep breaths
- Practice self-acceptance
From “What Being Neurotic Really Means” by Jennifer Tzeses, accessed 22/06/2022 from https://www.psycom.net/neuroticism
Photo by Callum Skelton