Hi, I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist,
and I make mental health education videos.
I've mentioned on numerous occasions the term temperament
and how it's your hardwiring.
Today, I'm going to explain what that means
and how your anxiety can be based
on having an anxious temperament.
You can think of your temperament as a building block
for your personality.
It's based on your individual genetic makeup,
which means you inherit it as a trait.
Your temperament is the basis
for how you react to your environment.
And as you develop,
your adaptation to your environment forms your personality.
So your personality is the net sum total
of your temperament, your mindset,
and how you process information
and your psychological defenses.
There's been a lot of research on temperament
beginning in the early 1900s.
And out of this research has come lots of models
for how temperament can be described.
Temperament is broken down into different dimensions,
and different researchers use different terms,
but a constant among all of them is a dimension
that corresponds to a tendency to become anxious.
In my video on what it means to be neurotic,
I talk about the personality characteristics of neuroticism,
which is a tendency to experience negative emotions
like anxiety and depression.
That form of neurotic is the personality that you develop
as you adapt to your world.
I only mentioned that because you may see neuroses,
or neuroticism, or neurotic
also referred to as a temperament,
so it can get kind of confusing.
But for the purposes of this discussion on temperament,
I'm going to focus on the model that was developed
by the psychiatrist Robert Cloninger.
In his research, he saw differences in brain activity
between people with different temperament characteristics.
So his model is considered biologically based.
He also created a temperament and character inventory.
In psychology and psychiatry,
we use the term inventory to describe a test
that we use to measure or quantify a condition.
The inventory is just a series of questions that you answer.
Cloninger's model breaks down temperament into four types,
novelty seeking, harm avoidance,
reward dependence and persistence.
And here's how they break down.
Novelty seeking is a tendency to be drawn to new experiences
and take risks.
People who score high in novelty seeking
tend to be easily bored, easily distracted.
They act on hunches.
They tend to be spenders rather than savers,
live on the edge and are impatient.
People who score low on novelty seeking
prefer to have routines, tend to be more reflective
and analytical and not impulsive.
They're rule followers, frugal with money
and can delay gratification.
And that means that they can work hard on something
without seeing the reward for their work for a while,
kind of like years of graduate school
or building a business for years without turning a profit.
Not everyone can deal with that,
and it's probably because of your temperament.
Harm avoidance is the trait
that's highly associated with anxiety.
It's a tendency to avoid anything that feels punishing.
People who score high on the harm avoidance scale
tend to be worriers and always anticipate failure
or being harmed.
They tend to be very anxious
when they're in unfamiliar situations
and can feel socially uncomfortable.
They tend to be shy around strangers and unassertive,
which means you don't make your needs
and wishes clear to people.
People who score high on harm avoidance also lack vigor,
which means or refers to mental robustness and energy.
So when facing adversity,
people who are high in harm avoidance decompensate more
and have trouble recovering.
This lack of vigor even extends
into your responses to physical illness.
There are people who get sick, and they're down for weeks.
They may even miss days of school or work.
This is in contrast to the person who gets the same illness,
but doesn't take time off even though they feel bad,
and they seem to bounce back quickly.
This is an example of how your temperament
can affect your self-concept or self esteem.
I have an upcoming video on the interplay
between temperament and self-esteem.
In this example of the person
who doesn't recover as quickly from adversity,
can you see how that can make you feel
like you're weaker than other people?
This can be especially the case
if you have a sibling who is not harm avoidant,
and your parent or other siblings are always saying,
"What's your problem?
"Johnny's not complaining.
"Why can't you just pull it together?"
Or if you're an adult, you can hear things
like, "Stop being a baby."
People who score low in harm avoidance
tend to think more positively,
feel more confident and secure in most situations,
are more assertive in their interactions with people
and recover faster from adversity.
We think of fast recovery as being resilient.
Reward dependence is a tendency to rely on social approval
and other kinds of positive feedback.
People who score high in reward dependence
tend to be more sentimental and emotionally expressive.
They also tend to be more open and engaging.
They work easily around other people.
They're sensitive to rejection and criticism,
and they tend to be people-pleasers and fear abandonment.
People who score low on this trait tend to be more practical
and less emotional about things,
but they can feel unapproachable
and not very responsive to social cues or social pressure.
They tend to be indifferent to rejection
and can be considered loners.
And then there's persistence, and that's the tendency
to push through unpleasant situations
to achieve a greater outcome.
In other words, it refers to your ability
to tolerate frustration without giving up.
People who score high in persistence are quick to volunteer
and see criticism as a call to action.
They invite critiques because that gives them a purpose
and a project.
People who score low in persistence
are slow to start tasks
and usually don't volunteer for things.
And in the face of conflict and criticism, they give up.
It's like if it's too hard, nevermind.
These are some of the factors that influence how you behave
and react to your environment.
All of these temperament styles have good and bad qualities,
and we all have vulnerabilities somewhere.
It's like being dealt a hand of cards.
You can start out with a good hand,
which in this case with would be a temperament
that's adaptive to stress.
But if you don't use your cards well,
you can still lose the game in the card analogy,
or still develop emotional problems
like anxiety and depression even though you started out
with a potentially winning hand.
And similarly, you can be dealt a losing hand
or a temperament that sets you up
for a lot of emotional problems
like anxiety or depression, or even personality problems.
But if you play your hand right,
you can overcome this negative predisposition
and learn to manage your vulnerabilities.
You can learn to do this by becoming more self-aware.
Helping you become self-aware
is part of what I aim to do on this channel
with my educational videos.
Seeing a therapist can help you dive deeper
into understanding yourself and your vulnerabilities
and how they affect your decisions, your relationships
and your life satisfaction.
Understanding how you're hardwired
can also inform the kinds of relationships
that you should seek.
Some temperaments and personalities
don't work well together.
Knowing who would be a good fit for you
can save you a lot of distress.
Your temperament is the foundation
that your personality is built upon,
and your personality dictates the psychological defenses
that you employ in your day-to-day interactions.
Watch this video on coping mechanisms
and psychological defenses.
Also, stay tuned for my video on self-esteem.
Thanks for watching.
See you next time.