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Do i need to change my personality traits?
- Thread starter KEANU4141
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Andy Bayliss
TMS Coach & Beloved Grand Eagle
I don't know that anyone can truly change their personality traits, and so this not necessary in order to recover from TMS symptoms.
Changes, if there are any are likely to be slowly over time, and related/fueled by your insights about your life. The more you see, the more you want to refrain from self-pushing, as a matter of kindness to oneself. Or if your challenge is to ask for what you want in relationship, you have to first feel what you really want, and be aware of your own suffering with the way things are. Over time more freedom from your patterns, and more courage to be attuned to yourself, your needs comes. And with this, action may come out of it, either with yourself internally, to for instance not believe negative self talk, or with others, for instance to assert your needs.
In the process of studying yourself --- seeing more of your patterns, self-acceptance is important. The more you can relax while you understand yourself, without pressuring yourself to change or be different, the less inner tension there is. Seeing yourself in the educational materials re TMS is beneficial to understand why you may have symptoms. Using this new knowledge to beat yourself is not beneficial.
Without changing much, just simply knowing you're prone to the personality tendencies which lead to TMS symptoms, you can begin to undo their inner pressure.
Also, cognitively learning to witness yourself, your patterns, and simply 'connect the dots' to symptoms is often enough. It is part of understanding the cause is not physical. And you may be able to correlate personality arisings with symptoms --increase or decrease, and have more feedback, more understanding. Ultimately it is this understanding more than change which will set you free, in my opinion.
Having ways to be kind to yourself in the midst of all this understanding ---learning self-compassion, is very important, I think. This is self-soothing regardless of the personality experiences, and this reduces Inner Tension (as in TMS). So this process as I understand it might be understood more as a process of creating a loving relationship with your personality, rather than changing it.
I hope this helps.
Changes, if there are any are likely to be slowly over time, and related/fueled by your insights about your life. The more you see, the more you want to refrain from self-pushing, as a matter of kindness to oneself. Or if your challenge is to ask for what you want in relationship, you have to first feel what you really want, and be aware of your own suffering with the way things are. Over time more freedom from your patterns, and more courage to be attuned to yourself, your needs comes. And with this, action may come out of it, either with yourself internally, to for instance not believe negative self talk, or with others, for instance to assert your needs.
In the process of studying yourself --- seeing more of your patterns, self-acceptance is important. The more you can relax while you understand yourself, without pressuring yourself to change or be different, the less inner tension there is. Seeing yourself in the educational materials re TMS is beneficial to understand why you may have symptoms. Using this new knowledge to beat yourself is not beneficial.
Without changing much, just simply knowing you're prone to the personality tendencies which lead to TMS symptoms, you can begin to undo their inner pressure.
Also, cognitively learning to witness yourself, your patterns, and simply 'connect the dots' to symptoms is often enough. It is part of understanding the cause is not physical. And you may be able to correlate personality arisings with symptoms --increase or decrease, and have more feedback, more understanding. Ultimately it is this understanding more than change which will set you free, in my opinion.
Having ways to be kind to yourself in the midst of all this understanding ---learning self-compassion, is very important, I think. This is self-soothing regardless of the personality experiences, and this reduces Inner Tension (as in TMS). So this process as I understand it might be understood more as a process of creating a loving relationship with your personality, rather than changing it.
I hope this helps.
JanAtheCPA
Beloved Grand Eagle
I notice that your question seemed to combine personality traits and habits as if they are essentially the same thing. I would advise separating them, because they are very different. Being hard on ourselves is actually a habit - one which is encouraged by our primitive fearful brains, which want us to stay anxious and worried. I do not believe that it is an inherent personality trait.
Doing this work means being willing to cultivate new habits, starting with the foundational one, which is to practice kindness and patience for ourselves, per Andy's advice. It's easier to create new habits than to give up old ones, so another habit that I recommend cultivating is to learn to listen to your inner negative messages, and consciously reject them as unnecessary and unhelpful to your mental and physical health.
I have always found therapeutic writing to be a great way to accomplish this (aka journaling, but I don't keep a journal, I throw out what I write as recommended by a number of experts).
Doing this work means being willing to cultivate new habits, starting with the foundational one, which is to practice kindness and patience for ourselves, per Andy's advice. It's easier to create new habits than to give up old ones, so another habit that I recommend cultivating is to learn to listen to your inner negative messages, and consciously reject them as unnecessary and unhelpful to your mental and physical health.
I have always found therapeutic writing to be a great way to accomplish this (aka journaling, but I don't keep a journal, I throw out what I write as recommended by a number of experts).