Disturbing Personality Traits
Disturbing personality traits are often an inevitable consequence of unresolved trauma.
Do you relate to any of these disturbing personality traits?
- Are you irresponsible?
- Do you have self-pity oozing from every pore?
- Are you miserly, callous, or cold?
- Are you irritable, critical, impatient and humorless?
- Do you dominate the whole family by a rule of iron?
- Do you lavish attention upon one family member and neglect the others?
- Do you try to control others with a constant outpouring of minute directions?
(This is often an attempt to create safety for self or others.)
These traits disturb others and block us from truly connecting and getting our needs met.
Often these traits were modeled for us, or we developed them in response to something in our environment.
I find it helpful to play the tape all the way through.
For each trait that I identify with, I ask myself,
What will I lose, if my life continues on this path?
How will my life play out if I continue relying on this disturbing personality trait to get my needs met?
(Like everything else we do, these are methods we use to try to get a need met.)
What might the final outcome look like in the end?
Do I know anyone who has this trait, who is further down the path with it than I am?
If so, what does their life look like?
I also find that doing a TAT to neutralize the origins of these traits can be very helpful.