Personality Changes

[Cocobird]

I've had several major depressions, and was diagnosed with PTSD, which seems to make more sense.

I've noticed that my personality has changed a lot. I did the Meyer-Briggs test, and found that some of the results were the opposite of how I used to be. I'm very introverted and a loner, and while I always needed my own space, I enjoyed friends and had frequent parties when I was younger.

Has anyone else noticed something like this happening?

[arpy1]

sort of with this latest and most major episode. i have totally gone introverted and isolated.   i seem to remember i was like that as a little girl, but at age 13 made a conscious decision to be an extrovert - so maybe i have spent the intervening 45 years inventing a personality and acting it out. maybe i am just going back to what i was meant to be? Hve to confess i don't really know at this point what my real personality would be like. 

by the way, haven't met you before, so hi, nice to meet you 

[Cocobird]

Hi!

My name is Sue, and I've been here for a while.

Thank you for the welcome!

[arpy1]

  hi

[tired]

I don't fit well. Someone mentioned (a therapist) that there's a difference between the personality you start with and the one after you learn some compensations or coping mechanisms.

My handwriting and my house appearance and dress all change a lot even week by week to the point where people say things about it. It makes me look like my personality changes.  I don't feel this is normal.

[steamy]

Hi,

This is interesting. I have also had major depression, I am currently in one bout now, having lost my job.

I also become withdrawn when I am down, my experience has been that people don't want to see me when I am miserable and they don't want to hear my drama. So I withdraw.

I have never seen much difference in my MB personality type. I have always been INFP. I used to live with my opposite she was an ESTJ, I doubt that my personal values could ever make me an ESTJ, perhaps that's me clinging on to old behavioural traits. She did teach me things about being more realistic, whereas I taught her a lot about being patient, compassionate and creative. I don't think that after all that I have experienced both through my childhood and working in post conflict countries that I could lose the gift of compassion and idealism. Perhaps I project and empathise a little too much.

I found ESTJ to be highly goal oriented, I think that conservative politics are ESTJ, personal responsibility and lack of concern for others less fortunate. Pulling yourself up by your boot straps etc.we know that we're all different, have different abilities and needs. A lot of folks work hard but still can't succeed.

During my therapy I found myself changing, my partner the ESTJ, thought I was getting worse, but I was just letting go of old stuff. I started life in the military, it was the only way to escape my family. I lacked any self confidence and struggled with the recruits with big overpowering personalities, so created a similar boisterous personality. When I left the Navy I went to University, that big scary personality just didn't fit in there at all! I then had to drop the aggressive and develop in other ways.

It is hard to be yourself. I don't know how much sociology you've read but we are "socialised" which means that society has a bunch of norms and social mores termed "culture", that we must obey to fit in. A good example is that when I lived in the far East people share dishes and take a little food at a time, never loading their plates. Everybody starts eating immediately thecfood hits the table. In the west we wait until everybody has loaded their plate before we start eating. My mother in law refused to have me eat there due to my lack of table manners! Incidentally, being a foreigner in the far East allowed me to be more myself than I could ever be in the west. I worked briefly in the UK, people take themselves far too seriously, have very little ability to accept the faults and idiosyncrasies of the human condition. The NHS for example loves to strike people off the medical register for malpractice, consequently practitioners tend not to share their mistakes so that others might be able to avoid doing the same thing. Admitting mistakes means you lose your livelihood so everybody becomes closed off, on the one hand critical of others and on the other worried and secretive.

I digress.

Most therapists will help us to allow us to fit into a set of social rules, they will rarely work with you to find your true self. A good book about this is "life and how to survive it" by John Cleese and Robin Skinner. Society is not  healthy, social policy is dictated by partypolitics which isn't healthy. Our work, like with the NHS, the Navy and the University, is influenced by organisational culture which often isn't healthy so we must develop coping tools to fit in.