Healthy Personality

What are the elements upon which a healthy personality is built? This fascinating book identifies the key components and shares vivid case studies that demonstrate what happens when those elements are missing. What is "normal" when it comes to human personality? And is it possible to achieve emotional health through intended effort, just like physical health? Clinical psychologist Camay Woodall, PhD, addresses these complex questions and many more in this work that cogently discusses the parameters of emotional health. This book covers historical concepts; examines personality at its formative stages and beyond; explains how "normal behavior" varies widely, yet emotional symptoms are definable; and pinpoints the common aspects of normality in human personality, such as the need for social connection, the struggle for realism, and the ability to come to terms with guilt. Covering topics that include anxiety; self-esteem; depression; food (and the abuses of it), sex, love, and intimacy; shame and guilt; and spirituality, this book identifies common sources of dysfunctional personality traits and stresses the importance of individual responsibility in each area. Each chapter is richly illustrated by actual case studies from the author's 30 years of experience. The book will be of interest and highly useful to undergraduate or graduate-level students of psychotherapy, individuals undergoing therapy, parents who are concerned about their own or their family's behavior, and general readers.

Gary Trosclair explores the power of the driven personality and the positive outcomes those with obsessive compulsive personality disorder can achieve through a mindful program of harnessing the skills that can work, and altering those that serve no one. If you were born with a compulsive personality you may become rigid, controlling, and self-righteous. But you also may become productive, energetic, and conscientious. Same disposition, but very different ways of expressing it. What determines the difference? Some of the most successful and happy people in the world are compelled by powerful inner urges that are almost impossible to resist. They’re compulsive. They’re driven. But some people with a driven personality feel compelled by shame or insecurity to use their compulsive energy to prove their worth, and they lose control of the wheel of their own life. They become inflexible and critical perfectionists who need to wield control, and they lose the point of everything they do in the process. A healthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement are used consciously in the service of passion, love and purpose. An unhealthy compulsive is one whose energy and talents for achievement have been hijacked by fear and its henchman, anger. Both are driven: one by meaning, the other by dread. The Healthy Compulsive: Healing Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder and Taking the Wheel of the Driven Personality, will serve as the ultimate user’s guide for those with a driven personality, including those who have slid into obsessive-compulsive personality disorder (OCPD). Unlike OCD, which results in specific symptoms such as repetitive hand-washing and intrusive thoughts, OCPD permeates the entire personality and dramatically affects relationships. It also requires a different approach to healing. Both scientifically informed and practical, The Healthy Compulsive describes how compulsives get off track and outlines a four-step program to help them consciously cultivate the talents and passions that are the truly compelling sources of the driven personality. Drawing from his 25 years of clinical experience as a psychotherapist and Jungian psychoanalyst, and his own personal experience as someone with a driven personality, Trosclair offers understanding, inspiring stories of change, and hope to compulsives and their partners about how to move to the healthy end of the compulsive spectrum.

This book highlights international efforts to better understand the role of individual differences in healthy aging by exploring new directions, methods, and questions within the field. The book considers how to measure personality and personality change during adulthood, the associations between personality and healthy aging outcomes over time, and the role of personality in building interventions to promote healthy aging. The first section considers the value of personality constructs for healthy aging outcomes beyond the broad Big Five personality dimensions. It discusses the role of attachment, purpose, and affect, and also touches on the issue of psychopathology. The second section presents innovative assessment methods, research designs beyond classical longitudinal approaches, as well as sophisticated and integrative techniques for analyzing personality change processes. The third section raises new important questions, such as how interventionists from non-personality domains can incorporate personality processes in their intervention programs. It also discusses how different domains of individual functioning may interact in concert to predict healthy aging outcomes, as well as how more integrative lifespan models of healthy aging may advance research on personality and healthy aging. Overall, this book will spark interest and chart new directions for researchers, practitioners and interventionists in healthy aging, gerontology and applied fields.

There has been a recent resurgence of interest in personality psychology and its applications. This book is organised in three parts: personality and health outcomes; mechanisms relating personality and health; personality specific prevention and intervention. It covers child and adolescence health behaviour as well as that of adults and integrates new developments within personality psychology (such as neurophysiology and temperamental traits) with health psychology and examines major health outcomes such as disease, the mechanisms between these outcomes and personality, and prevention and intervention programmes.

Considers health of the body, mind, and spirit, offering advice on how to make sense of contradictory media information, understand the link between mental and physical health, and recruit support during illness.

Darcie Wilder's literally show me a healthy person is a careful confession soaking in saltwater, a size B control top jet black pantyhose dragged over a skinned knee and slipped into unlaced doc martens. Blurring the lines of the written word, literally show me a healthy person is a portrait of a young girl, or woman, or something; grappling with the immediate and seemingly endless urge to document and describe herself and the world around her. Dealing with the aftermath of her mother's death, her father's neglect, and the chaotic unspoken expectations around her, this novel is a beating heart at the intersection of literature, poetry, and the internet. Darcie Wilder elevates and applies direct pressure, but the wound never stops bleeding.