PREVIOUS: Resilience #2
SITE: “7 of Everything – Qualities of the Soul”
ACoAs: As you read through all these lists of Resiliency characteristics & the background needed to provide them in the first place,
PLEASE remember to not use them to be discouraged or cause S-H.
Instead, let them be a road map to guide your growth.
The Recovery process gives us the opportunity to develop any that we’re weak in. We have survived, now let’s thrive!
RESILIENCE & TEMPERAMENT
A recent study with Australian family doctors examined the relationship between resilience (in R. & Traits) & personality, to identify the main qualities that promote or impair R. in relation to 7 characteristics.
Researchers started from the idea that R. is a process influenced by each person’s combination of personal traits & their environment.
They found that Resilience is —
⭐︎ strongly associated with high level Self-directedness & low level Harm Avoidance
— moderately correlated with high Persistence & high Cooperativeness
— not significantly correlated with Novelty Seeking, Reward Dependence & Self-Transcendence
IMP: The 2 most prominent beneficial traits are the complete opposite of how most ACoAs live. We function from:
— High Harm-avoidance, spending much of our time & effort trying to avoid anything that could potentially cause an abandonment in any one of PMES ways – which includes suppressing our own emotions & needs
— Low Self-directedness, which fuels our co-dependence, is about not being our own internal motivator. (More later).
PS: A recent study with a sample of Korean university students (Kim, Lee & Lee, 2013) examined the connection between Personality traits & Resilience. The most striking similarity to the Australian findings is that in both R. was strongly related to high Self-directedness, high Persistence, and low Harm Avoidance…..
But in looking at males vs females differences, one surprise was that the Asian sample of men was higher in Cooperativeness than the women, whereas in the West, it was the reverse. (CHART)
Philosophical Questions
• Active vs reactive : Do we primarily act through individual initiative OR because of outside stimuli ?
• Freedom vs Determinism : Do we have control over our own behavior OR is it caused by forces beyond our control?
• Heredity vs environment : Is Personality determined largely by genetics & biology, OR by environment & experiences?
• Optimism versus pessimism : Are we an integral part of changing our own personalities, OR is everything predetermined?
• Uniqueness vs universality : Is each human an individual OR are we all similarity in nature ?
★ Ultimately we’re a combination of factors – nurture & nature.(Wikipedia)
DIMENSIONS of Personality (Human Science)
Energy = the strength or intensity of personality which is very tangible to observation & experience, but extremely hard to define &
measure (Napoleon vs. Gandhi)
Direction = whether the person’s attitudes, motives & actions positively or negatively impact the welfare of others & society (Holmes vs. Moriarty)
Strength = difference in the size & intensity of personality, separate from a person’s vital or mental energy, as shown by an ability to influence people & change their environment (Churchill, Hitler….)
Values = what is most important or valuable to a person. If Direction is a horizontal measure of good vs. bad, then Values are a vertical measure of higher vs. lower. (Selfless vs selfish)
Consciousness = development & strength of self-awareness:
• Physical = re. the body – fixed physical & material needs, & deals only with the here & now
• Vital = re. the centers of energy – emotions, sensations, desires & urges
• Mental = re. ideas, ideals, plans & initiative – the capacity to think, analyze, understand & organize
Depth = Personality considered as onion layers, from surface behavior to inner depths, & noting how much the deeper layers are developed
• Behavior – capacity for directed activities, based on conscious understanding & intensity
• Character – fixed qualities reflecting values that are fully organized, internalized & subconscious
• Individuality – core uniqueness, independent of social conditioning, personal experience or character
• Manners – superficial, external forms of formalized responses, a subset of social or interpersonal skills
• Personality – capacity for expansive or creative initiative in spite of any limitations of character, society or personal experience
NEXT: Resilience #4
HEAL & GROW for ACoAs 