What’s Your Personality Type? And How Does It Influence Your Sleep Approach

Which approach to optimizing your sleep performance suits you best?

Everyone has unique characteristics.

Everyone has a specific kind of habit or routine that suits him or her best.

To sleep better, a mingle of how you set your day in line with those unique traits does the trick.

You can set up a whole list of strategic habits to prime your sleep, increase your sleep quality, and make you sleep longer. Still, this list of habits might work well for me, but how will it suit you?

“Personality tends to depend on a balance between excitation and inhibition of the autonomic nervous system.”

Everyone is set up with a different base code. Your specific personality trait can make the difference whether your daily approach succeeds or not.

You are pre-set from in the whom. Certain tests have proven that you are born with the tendency to be more introverted or extroverted type of person.

This again correlated with the effects it can have on sleep as well.

“An introvert starts the day fully loaded as for an extravert he receives more energy from every task he performs.”

-Simon Sinek –

Before going any further,

Understand that we are all predisposed to this base package. Still, you can influence this behavior and mold it to your specific needs. This depends on how consistently you schedule your day accordingly.

Far-fetched? This is based on the fact that your body’s greatest function is that of the physiological rule of adaptation. After a while, your body adapts to what you feed it, whether that’s food or a certain lifestyle. One exception overrules all of this, and that is the working of your ancient reptilian brain.

Mainly meaning stress. When stress becomes too much, everybody gets subjected. The amount of stress you can handle will again depend on the exact personality trait.

“The way you express yourself tells a lot about how you eat, sleep and feel.”

Your environment has a tremendous effect on your state. Nevertheless, you are born with a certain base code. Genetics.

What is your Bios?

What is your personality type?

Introvert-Ambivert-Extrovert

The neglected types,

Often I am dazzled that this doesn’t get taken into account more.

Understand that trait tags are to identify a person’s behavioral characteristics. Introversion and extraversion were popularized by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung in 1921.

Hans Eysenck coined the term “ambivert” in 1947. Ambiverts are intuitive. the trait offers a good balance, referred to as the stability “normal” by the famed psychologist.

In Psychological Types, Jung described how introverts focus their energy inwards toward more solitary, thoughtful activities. While, extraverts engage with external stimuli (Jung, 1921)

Your DNA and our hormonal cycles within the body differ. Think of male and female differences. But also within the gender itself, there are deviations. You are programmed a certain way.

Being an introvert or extrovert represents an expression of your hormones. Being an introvert or extrovert is the homeostasis state of your endocrine system.

Until you become angry or stressed! Being challenged or brought in danger, this state changes into another chape.

“By understanding your personality type, you can make what are generally good sleep habits, specifically your own.”

Matthew McConaughey had a great way of telling:

As an introvert, often you experience tasks as they were pilled up on your back, feeling like you carry a ton of load on the back. The more tasks, the more arousal and energy consumption.

An extrovert, however, sees tasks more like blocks to tackle one by one in front of them. The more tasks they finish, the more energized they tend to become.

Understanding this makes you aware of how both deal with a certain stressor. You can work to make sure you’re setting yourself up for successful sleep.

Introvert

“Introversion and attitude-type characterized by orientation in life through subjective psychic contents.”

-Carl Jung-

Characterized by reserve, passivity, thoughtfulness, and a preference to keep emotional states private. Introverts are most comfortable interacting in small groups and in one-on-one relationships and are energized by spending time alone.

“Introverts can read quietly alone in bed to wind down before sleep. In effect, it’s a way of shutting the lights off room by room, in the introvert’s mind.”

Introverted people start the day when fully rested with a huge thrive, but their battery runs out after a while when too many tasks come their way or are completed. Influenced by gender, introverts could largely benefit from adding a nap or an extra sleep cycle to their day.

They also prefer participating in less stimulating activities and pleasure from reading, writing or meditating. Typically an introvert prefers to concentrate on a single activity, analyze situations carefully and take time to think more before they speak. They recharge best on their own.

Someone introverted may appear to be withdrawn and shy, although this may not always be the case (Carrigan, 1960).

Just to name a few characteristics:

• You process your thoughts in your head rather than talk about them
• You tend to keep your emotions private
• You are energized by your own
• You are likely to enjoy solitude
• You learn by observation

In a nutshell: “An extrovert seeks focus by finding places of less arousal for energy.”

“When introverts don’t fulfill their needs of low arousal focussed work during the day, chances are that this will induce bad sleep ability.”

Stenberg, Risberg, Warkentin, and Rosen (1990) found that introverts have higher blood flow levels to their frontal lobes than extroverts. The frontal lobe is responsible for:

• Problem-solving
• Memory
• Planning

Therefore, it could be interpreted that introverts have higher functioning in these areas than extroverts. In reality, introverts make up an estimated 25 to 40% of the population.

Ambivert

Although many people view introversion and extroversion as two opposing categories, new personality theories have come to accept that it is more likely that introversion and extroversion are on a scale.

“In terms of sleep, an ambivert will benefit either way, as long as they are satisfied from their actions throughout the day.”

Some people may be placed around the extroverted end of the scale or towards the introverted end, and some may fall in the middle. On the other hand, an ambivert is a person who shows characteristics of both extroversion and introversion.

In other words, they fall somewhere in the middle of the scale. Ambiverts are moderately comfortable in social situations and enjoy some solitary time. An ambivert essentially changes their behavior based on the situation they find themselves in.

Extrovert

“Extraversion is an attitude-type characterized by concentration of interest on the external object.”

-Carl Jung-

A person whose personality is characterized by extroversion is a typically gregarious and unreserved person who enjoys and seeks out social interaction. Extroverts are more recognized because of their affable nature.

They show more assertiveness and cheerfulness.

Extroverts seek novelty, and excitement, and enjoy being the center of attention. Extroverted people can start up slowly when fully rested and get energized by accumulating tasks. They get their energy from being around other people.

Someone extroverted may appear very talkative and maybe popular among peers (Carrigan, 1960).

Characteristics of an extrovert are:

• Enjoying social settings
• Seeking attention
• Feeling energized by other persons
• You are outgoing
• You prefer talking and undertaking visible action over reading and writing

In a nutshell: “An extrovert seeks excitement.”

“When this excitement isn’t fulfilled throughout your day, chances are that this will induce bad sleep ability.”

Think about extroverts who were in a two-week lockdown.

Next to darkness and appropriate temperature, low levels of stress and feeling satisfied before sleep are presumed to be the most important factors to take into account.

Remember that extroversion isn’t an all-or-nothing trait. It’s a continuum, and some people might be very extroverted while others are less so. Feiler and Klein Baum (2015) assert that extroversion may not be as common as you think since extroverts tend to be over-represented in social networks. Extroverts typically have larger groups of friends and are often friends with other extroverts; they are disproportionately represented in social networks.

This is actually how chronotype schedules are being synchronized… At certain moments a day, you’ll be more likely to interact better with a person than at other moments, of the day with that same person.

Again how well your sleep pattern is and the actual timing of your schedule becomes more important!

Something rather interesting worth telling is that extroverts have higher blood flow in other areas of the brain associated with sensory and emotions. (D L Johnson 1, 1999) Traits are associated with the dopaminergic system around brain areas responsible for motivation, emotion, and reward. (Michael Schaefer 1, 2011)

The neurotransmitter “dopamine” turns on the reward and pleasure-seeking part of the brain; it reacts differently in introverts’ and extroverts’ brains. (Booker, 2013)

In extroverts, they found a stronger dopamine response to rewards, so they experience more frequent activation of strong positive emotions.

This could explain why extroverts may appear more outgoing and cheerful than introverts. The traits of extroversion encompass more ‘wanting’ traits like assertiveness and ‘liking’ traits like the enjoyment of social interactions.

fMRI showed that introverts tended to become stimulated very easily, whereas extroverts had lower levels of cortical arousal. This might explain exactly why extroverts may need to have more external stimulation, as they can become easily bored.

“For this same reason, an more introverted person could be easily distracted or stressed out before sleep.”

This explains why the environmental setup is so important to your behavior, the approach to sleep, and other aspects.

Extroverts seem to perform best in completing cognitive tasks with music in the background, although introverts seem to perform better when no music or noise was being played.

At school,

Our oldest kid Quinn had many problems getting in touch with the way the school environment is set up. Like myself, and possibly you as reader can relate well, Quinn has more introverted characteristics.

Something I am dazzled by these days, still not too many schools take this into account. For instance, when you need to take a test, small things like a headphone can already help in terms of getting that focus under control.

Often people call it being sensitive like it’s a fixed thing, without having a clue what it means. Having the notion that it’s a dynamic character and can be used optimally by approach seems to leak its awareness.

An adaptable approach within schools could make all the difference in how kids develop.

Introverts feel overstimulated because of too much cortical arousal. When you would like to catch sleep, certain types, like for instance extroverts facing sleep problems, especially to fall asleep. Whereas extroverts were shown in certain smaller-scaled military tests that they would be more vulnerable to sleep deprivation. (American Academy of Sleep Medicine, 2010)

Carl Jung was a pathway opener for these personality types, but, Hans Eysenck (1947, 1966, 1967) constructed a theory of personality that has a biological basis. Hans believed that personality resulted from biological differences in individuals’ nervous systems. This ultimately affects your ability to learn and adapt to the environment.

Jung believed that no one is 100% extrovert or 100% introvert. Instead, we carry both traits. However, most minds tend to lean either to one side or the other. He provides a different perspective and suggests that everyone has both an extraverted side and an introverted side, with one being more dominant than the other.

Understanding your personality type can open gates for you to solve your sleep problem once and for all.

Absorb, Read, Write, Sleep, Exercise, Thrive!

Thanks for reading this post! Personality types are very important to consider in many aspects of life. In terms of a great sleep approach, this can be crucial.

P.S.:

I’m a firm believer in building a prosilient mind.

I like to write about: Sleep & Dreams/Writing tips/Life lessons/Mental Health/Circadian Rhythm/Submarine Power Cables.

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