Mental Health Awareness – Who Am I?
Who Am I?
"It's like your brain keeps switching between30 different channels and somebody else has the remote." ~ Brett Thornhill
I don't know about you, but I have found myself wondering, "Who am I," more than a few times in the past. Typically, this thought precedes some careless mistake, transgression, trial, anything that turns into a life lesson, really. Through those life lessons, though, we come to learn a little bit more about ourselves, who we are, what we can or cannot accept, what we will or will not allow into our lives. Our personality begins to take shape.
Ok, so what exactly is a personality?If you Google the definition of personality, you will find that Oxford Languages defines personality as:
- the combination of characteristics or qualities that form an individual's distinctive character; qualities that make someone interesting or popular.
- a famous person, especially in entertainment or sports.
- the quality or fact of being a person as distinct from a thing or animal. [Archaic]
- disparaging remarks about an individual. [Archaic]
Synonyms for personality include, but are not limited to:
- Character
- Individuality
- Identity
- Temperament
If you are really into personality tests and things of that nature, you may have come across what are known as the Four Temperaments.This personality typing system is one of the oldest around and it has been adapted and modified more than a few times over the years, such as DISC and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Through some observation, the Greek physician, Hippocrates, theorized that there are four fundamental personality types:
- Sanguine
- Choleric
- Melancholic
- Phlegmatic
A temperament is our nature, innate tendencies that affect our behavior. Our temperament determines how we react and respond in a given situation. Understanding our temperament can help with relationships; romantic, professional, friend, etc. When we are with people who are like-minded we feel more comfortable, and when we are with people who do not share the same ideas as us we can struggle to find common ground.
Learn More About ADHD
We also like working with the Enneagram, which posits that people fall into 1 of 9 different personality types:
- The Reformer
- The Helper
- The Achiever
- The Individualist
- The Investigator
- The Loyalist
- The Enthusiast
- The Challenger
- The Peacemaker
What makes the Enneagram so unique is that it is more fluid, so you don't feel "boxed in" by your type. For example: if your core type is an 8, the Challenger, you take the unhealthy tendencies of a type 5 when in stress and the healthy tendencies of a type 2 when in growth. (Trust me, it'll make more sense if you take the test and read about the types).
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October's Book Recommendation
"For over 100 years, ADHD has been seen as essentially a behavior disorder. Recent scientific research has developed a new paradigm which recognizes ADHD as a developmental disorder of the cognitive management system of the brain, its executive functions. This cutting-edge book pulls together key ideas of this new understanding of ADHD, explaining them and describing in understandable language scientific research that supports this new model.
It addresses questions like:
- Why can those with ADHD focus very well on some tasks while having great difficulty in focusing on other tasks they recognize as important?
- How does brain development and functioning of persons with ADHD differ from others?
- How do impairments of ADHD change from childhood through adolescence and in adulthood?
- What treatments help to improve ADHD impairments? How do they work? Are they safe?
- Why do those with ADHD have additional emotional, cognitive, and learning disorders more often than most others?
- What commonly-held assumptions about ADHD have now been proven wrong by scientific research?
Psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and other medical and mental health professionals, as well as those affected by ADHD and their families, will find this to be am insightful and invaluable resource."
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