Have you ever wondered why some people who you work or cooperate with raise your confidence from the very first moments, and others cause annoyance or a negative impact on way you feel or on your mood? How is it that some are able to convince you to your idea in a second and others cannot do it for a long time or not at all? Why is it so hard for you to sometimes get along with your superiors, coworkers, if the matter concerns the same subject, and you perceive it differently?
Have you ever wondered why some people who you work or cooperate with raise your confidence from the very first moments, and others cause annoyance or a negative impact on way you feel or on your mood? How is it that some are able to convince you to your idea in a second and others cannot do it for a long time or not at all? Why is it so hard for you to sometimes get along with your superiors, co-workers, if the matter concerns the same subject, and you perceive it differently?
What role does personality play in all this and what do you do if you encounter a person with impaired personality on your way? Let’s start with what personality actually is when can we talk about personality disorders. In psychology there are many theories of personality, but it will be easiest if I use the definition of Oldham and Morris. They define personality as ‘a system involving human characteristics’. It’s a way of thinking, feeling, how it behaves, and how to cope with problems. If you’re curious what feature of personality you have, you do not need to immediately undergo personality tests.
Just look at how you function in the six areas of your life: in the sphere of ‘me’, relationships, work, emotions, selfcontrol as well as perceptions of reality.
In order to fully understand yourself more, look carefully at who you are, what your identity is, your self-esteem, how you see yourself, what you think about yourself and most importantly, how you feel about yourself. This is important because the sphere of ‘me’ and how you function in it affects how you behave in situations requiring you to present yourself.
When you’re back at work, do you sacrifice everything and work for all, or are you rather demanding and do as much as you need to and not work for a minute longer? Ask yourself important questions: what do you think of yourself? What do you think about your appearance and body? How can others judge you? What do you wish for yourself? Who is more important for you, you or other people? Now pay attention to the realm of relationships. See how important others are to you and how you function with them. What is important is how we respond to others and how we engage in relationships. Another important sphere relates to work, which determines the style of action. See how you carry out duties, how you give and take instructions, how you plan, what you do if someone criticizes you, how you adapt to rules and regulations. The fourth, a very important area, relates to emotions. Here, pay attention to your normal emotional states: joy, anger, fear, desire, anxiety and sensitivity to praise or criticism. Now consider carefully how these emotional states influence your thinking and behavior.
Notice what the intensity of your experience is. This will depend on how you experience emotions, choose work, people and enter into relations with a particular pattern of reaction. Since we have already spoken about emotions, let’s move on a step further, to the self-control zone.
In short, the question is how you act, whether you’re spontaneous, or succumb to the moment; how you behave when faced with risk if you can defer gratification and wait for the reward or end result or if you can plan ahead. Perhaps you love risk, entertainment, gambling and act quickly without thinking. It is also possible that on the contrary, you plan, check, anticipate and calculate risk. As you can see, self-control plays an important role in the context of the professional area
I turn now to the last sphere, namely to reality. Therefore, how you interpret what surrounds you. Do you focus on facts and specifics? Do you see what others do not see? What is important is how your ideas about the world shape your behavior? Think for a moment about what your world is. Once you answer yourself honestly on a whole bunch of questions about you and your life, you will achieve greater insight into who you are, and you’ll be more alert to the behavior and attitudes of other people.
Now remember people in your environment that noticeably deviate from widely understood standards. They are always upset or frightened. Recklessly they go forward or generally avoid challenges. If you look at them closely, you may see within them the disturbed personality described by me in a later section. The personality disorders can say when the pattern of inner experiences and behaviors is clearly different from the expectations of the culture in which the person operates. The areas affected by the disorder relate to a method of perceiving and evaluating yourself, other people and the outside world, as well as emotional reactions (their intensity, variation and relevance to the situation), and relationships with other people. Now that you know what a disturbed personality is, you probably wonder how people who do not see themselves, others and the world as most of us, and this is shaky emotionally because they come to power, occupy high positions in organizations and have a real impact on you and your life .
Refer now to your personal experiences. Try to remind yourself of a person from your own work. On the one hand that person is extremely distinctive, attractive and arouses interest, on the other hand, he or she is fearful, irritating and negatively affects your emotional state. I decided to use Albert J. Bernstein’s book “Emotional Vampires” , and on its basis provide you with a profile of people who probably you had to, or you need to face each day.
Antisocial personality
The first will be the antisocial personality. You can recognize it mainly by the fact that a given person does not pay attention to the rules of social coexistence. He or she loves sex, drugs, good fun and risk. This all raises strong emotions, and this is what it depends on the most. The worst that can happen is boredom and stagnation. Every craving is to be immediately satisfied. They are the kings of life, sexy, hilarious and emotive. We are very easily convinced by them, though also lured (figuratively and literally), but also quickly notice that they cheat, are unreliable and unpredictable. Unfortunately, before you realize that you have been cheated and deceived by goodness, agreement and tuning, Individuals with antisocial disorders will feed your ego in order to achieve their benefits. And where do you most often encounter such a person? There are a lot of sales representatives that may engage in creative accounting or fulfilled by building legal or illegal pyramid schemes. They are generally there wherever money and great opportunities are.
Histrionic personality
Now it’s the turn of the histrionic personality. These are people who depend mostly on your attention and approval. You will know them primarily by their attractive appearance. They get work very easily, they gain a place in our hearts, but unfortunately all the time they are ‘performing in some show’ because their lives are saturated with theatricality. The histrionic believes that he or she is a great person who avoids conflict, but at the same time creates a problem. On the one hand, they are driven by motivation, often repeating the slogans of famous people, on the other hand they shun hard work, problem solving and details. There are two distinct types of histrionics. One is the theatre type who speaks out and gives motivational speeches; there is also the passive-aggressive type who solves conflicts by pretending that they are not there. These people rarely get angry, but provoke the occurrence of anger at you. They are mainly in middle-level managerial positions. They need a lot of praise and motivation to work. When something happens against their will of thinking, they start to play their theatre.
Narcissistic personality
The third is a narcissistic personality. They only think about themselves, do not take care about something which is not in their interest. If they need something from you, they treat you equally with them but as soon as they get what they want, they immediately forget about you. They are convinced of their uniqueness and always have to win. Usually they fight to the end, most importantly caring only about themselves. Another personality that I must mention is the obsessive-compulsive person. Their second name is ‘controlled’. These are people who very accurately perform tasks, try to anticipate everything and overly care about tidiness and order. Wrong-doing on their part can be experienced as soon as you expose them to the danger posed by the disequilibrium in their puzzle. These people do not like surprises, do not praise others and have trouble making decisions. I have left paranoid personality to the end.
Paranoid personality
People affected by this disorder have a continuous sense of persecution. They have clearly defined views and conspiracy theories that they are not afraid to proclaim. As soon as you cast doubt on the truth proclaimed by them, you are identified as the enemy and the fight begins by uttering threats or taking other steps to harm you or get you out of the group of co-workers. Paranoiacs are people who are angry, fighting with the “system”. Some argue that paranoia in small doses can be the essence of charisma, but in doses which are too large, it causes complete unreality.
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