How your personality deals with tension

Your personality prefers to do all kinds of things that will be received with great acclaim and applause, and that can only be done by you and nobody else. When reality turns out to be a bit different from this, then your personality will attempt to twist it in such a way that he at least still will emerge from it in a good way. Blaming others is a very popular way to do this. But still, he will not always be able to twist reality in such a way. And then he gets stuck with the tension that his interpretation created in the first place.

It almost seems like a universal law, and you can read about it almost everywhere: stress should be caused by our survival instinct of fight-or-flee that should be misplaced nowadays. According to the BE company it is about a choice indeed, but we se it as a choice of your personality: in which situation does he expect himself to be the most successful. How can he maintain himself the best: through attacking or through withdrawal so that he does not have to face his own limitations and adjust them.

In the first case, an active response is to be expected: forces are gathered, people approached, there is a search for allies, arguments that will prove that he is right are collected, etc. And, either through a direct attack, or in a more indirect way, the "enemy" is approached.

When your personality chooses flight as a response, then you can think of reactions like: excuses, withdrawal, leaving, blaming the other and make him feel guilty, "take your hands off the case", becoming ill, drinking, start to work hard and "not having time to deal with this kind of futilities as what you are doing here is very important".

There are reactions that are more socially acceptable than others. Someone who uses his fists, usually does not get much applause. Someone who obviously withdraws himself either. There are of course situations that are socially more acceptable. Like being very busy. Being ill is also an unassailable bastion. Someone with stress "forces" others, through his symptoms, to show some consideration and to bother him as less as possible. The work that he now may do, will be welcomed with applause, because see what he does now, despite of the difficult situation that he is in. His personality now is successful, because what he does is no longer subject of criticism. It is likely to take quite a while before someone with stress will accept that there needs some work to be done within himself. Because his personality is likely to make him believe that change means that there is something terribly wrong with him, so he is not very eager to start and take a look. But in the long end he cannot uphold this resistance and he will understand that something has to be undertaken.

Now when you feel a bit embarrassed because you recognize this, let it be a comfort to you that everybody does it. Only the one maybe more often or more obvious than the other. It is what personalities do. Solutions cannot be found in reestablishing and strengthening your personality and teach it another trick, but in diverting your attention away from your personality to your inner Self. Be prepared to be fully aware of all the input of your personality in a situation, even if it is very painful for you to face. Notice your standard reactions and feelings, whether you only think them or when you express them as well. Accept that this is your personality, this is the starting point for you, whether you like it or not. Should you resist it, then your personality would start to fight that in itself, and before you know it, you have lost completely what this was all about in the first place.

And then let it go, do not invest any energy in "solving" the situation according to the rules of your personality. Thus you allow yourself to break through the vicious circle, and make place within yourself to remember other aspects. Becoming aware of your personality is a logical step in your personal development. There is nothing wrong with you. We all have one, and it functions likewise in each of us, even though you may notice some differences at the outside.