Can We Change Our Personality?

I’m slightly worried that that title is grammatically incorrect. Which bothers me, because I am high in conscientiousness. But it also just instinctively feels right, which I like because I am intuitive.

Yes, Dear Reader, I have been doing online personality tests… 

New Year brings the tempting illusion that we can change ourselves. So the other day, a rare day with no pressing work, I gave in to the siren call of the personality test.

I don’t really know why I keep doing these. I know my personality by now. Though I am not keen on it, and at this point I would swap with almost anyone else.

But that’s probably disingenuous because I actually think most people are unaware, uncreative, uninteresting pigs. That’s ‘superiority’, by the way, a narcissistic trait that is part of my personality profile. Luckily I am somewhat redeemed by having basically zero Machiavellianism or psychopathy. So that’s something.

On one test I scored anxiety 100 (out of 100), organisation 100, perfectionism 100, and conscientiousness 95 (obviously as a perfectionist I was annoyed it wasn’t also 100).

Imagine having to be that person. Like, every day.

Another test was based on one’s ‘hormonal archetype’, and unsurprisingly my defining hormone was cortisol—the stress hormone.

This test was particularly disturbing, as it suggested one’s nature is profoundly unchangeable.

My archetype is apparently colloquially known as the ‘defender’. Which at least sounds somewhat useful. Were my ancestors perhaps guarding the campfire at night? I do have insomnia (of course I have insomnia). Though I’m not totally convinced. Maybe God just distributes a certain number of ‘defender’ people around the place to keep everyone safe?  

This personality type presumably served a function at one time, and maybe still does (I suppose I could be called a ‘defender of the culture’, but that’s a bit grandiose for me, despite my mild narcissism). The problem is it’s no fun to live with anxiety 100. In fact it’s 100% awful.

I used to have more hope of changing, even though my life circumstances (what Eckhart Tolle would call my ‘life situation’—yes I’ve also been down the YouTube spirituality rabbit hole ) were much worse. 

Now I have lost that hope, and mainly just experience dread and fear. I dread going to work every day, even though my job is about the nicest possible job a person could wish for (except for having to deal with Lewis Schaffer).

I have days on end of abject panic due to health anxiety, which sometimes gets so bad I end up hoping to not wake up the next day.

As my ‘life situation’ gets better, just being me gets no easier.

One seems to become more oneself with age, which is a good thing in that we find what we’re good at and stop trying things that are stupid and crazy. But it can also imprison us in a kind of fortress of self where we have everything our own way.

I doubt anyone with a young family feels like this. But I now have my own two bedroom flat. Heck, I even have two bathrooms. And absolutely no other humans to deal with.

I’ve lived with six other people and no central heating. I’ve lived for several months in Guatemala. At one point I was living with my girlfriend with no bed in the house. I was working a demanding full-time job, while doing proper paid comedy gigs at night, both of us sleeping on the sofa. 

All of these things were unpleasant (except the last one, which I have vaguely fond memories of, before the inevitable implosion). But they forced me out of the fortress of self.

School is the ultimate example (short of, say, being in the army) because one is shoved together with random people, and required to fit into a fairly brutal (at least when I were a lad) one-size-fits-all daily structure. It is absolutely horrific, yet also humanising for weirdos like me, and is the reason I still have sentimental feelings about my school friends, even though I hated almost every second of school and spent the entire time in survival mode. 

These days I am still stuck in survival mode—as is apparently the nature of the anxious ‘defender’ type—but the threats are largely imaginary.

I have tried everything to change. I have gone through months of therapy. I have consulted a vicar. I’ve tried CBT, TM, Alexander Technique, yoga, hypnotherapy, homeopathy, nutritionists, running, strength training, and probably loads more things I’ve forgotten.

Nothing works. I can’t cure my personality.

During my most recent bout of health anxiety, I managed a brief grim smirk remembering Tom’s words in Succession, when he is in constant worry about potentially going to prison over a corporate scandal. Someone suggests just trying not to think about it, to which Tom replies: 

"No, what I'm preferring is to always think about it. And then, when you don't for a moment, it's like, ooh, someone's loosened their icy grip on my innards”.

That is how it feels during health anxiety when you manage to forget about your probably imaginary ailment for a rare five seconds. But it’s also how I currently feel about my whole life.

Because if I am being fair, there are moments when I’m not totally miserable, though really it’s just relief. For example, after I find out I don’t actually have a fatal illness, or when I’m in the taxi home late at night after work and can briefly relax, as long as the driver doesn’t insist on speaking to me about football, the Qur’an, or their drug dealing career (all real examples). 

Anxiety keeps me totally alone, and in a state ranging from vague dread to extreme panic, punctuated by occasional moments of relief.

Yet according to the tests, it may just be who I am. Conscientiously guarding the tribe at night, with 100% organisation and perfectionism (presumably why we all survived). Unhappy but vigilant, staring into blackness.

For a slightly more positive take on all this, check out my latest podcast with the Rev Dr Jamie Franklin here.