Why Journaling Works and Why YOU Should Pay Attention to Personality to Live Happier and Longer!
If you’re feeling that past trauma is weighing heavily on your life and relationships and you want and need to do something about it.
Well! You’re not alone. Maybee, you ask yourself “Could I have done something differently? or “Why did this happen to me? Maybe you ask yourself if “you are ever getting over this traumatic event?” or even if “you are to blame for what happened?”. I also ask those very same questions.
But I am here to tell you that you might be able to do something about that and why it works.
Dr. James Pennebaker came up with a brilliant solution to understand your past traumas lower your negative emotions and increase your positive emotions. Giving you confidence and reducing your blood pressure. Living longer as a result of it.
I was astonished with the results it gave me and what came out of it when I did the exercise.
What is trauma?
But I would like to start defining what traumas are.
Trauma is anything connected to anger, grief, anxiety, or makes you upset or stressed out. It can be the loss of a close one or past physical injuries. So why is this such a big deal and why can we not move past this quickly and just forget about it? It is all about how we deal with pain.
Neuroticism is the pain circuit in the body and mind.
Pain circuit
The pain circuit or neuroticism is most likely the one part you owe your life to.
It is both a survival mechanism and it works as a feedback loop so that you learn about yourself and the world around you. As you grow older. You build a more detailed mental model of your perception of the world.
Therefore, you do not react negatively to things as you grow older in contrast to the younger you.
The Power of Reflecting
The consequence of not reflecting and learning and dealing with everyday life and traumatic events sets you up for a rather less positive life.
If you refuse or fail to learn and try to understand what happened in different situations and why. You will keep your reactive level of negative emotion and stay neurotic. Not something becoming of an older person as you can imagine.
Ego
The reason for this to happen is most likely due to your large EGO.
Now you might ask yourself if having a large ego is a bad thing and if you need to do something about it.
Impact of Neuroticism
By now it should be apparent what happens to people with high neuroticism. It can simply kill you sooner rather than later and the reason why is that negative emotions increase your blood pressure that slowly destroys your heart.
It is called European heart condition and it reduces your life span.
Bad Karma in Reality
In some parts of the world, this is called Bad Karma.
Research published in Nature shows a 13% probability of a decrease in overall health by simply having a large negative emotional vocabulary. A 6% probability increase in overall health when having a large positive emotional vocabulary. Usually, people ask “Why can’t I just forget about it?” and that is due to neuroticism or emotionality to seeking control. If you do not look at what happened and try transparently and honestly to understand it. Well, then it loops in your mind until you do understand it.
Movie creators use the same psychological effect when making movies in that they open a loop for you that you then feel you have to close.
Having a larger negative emotional vocabulary has a connection to Depression within Neuroticism and a positive emotional vocabulary is connected, not so surprisingly, to Extroversion. But even more to Agreeableness.
Why YOU Should Pay Attention to Personality
So why does journaling have such great success in dealing with past and current trauma?
Managers and control
I mentioned this previously when you are neurotic or emotional. The first thing you do is seek control over the situation. It has a whopping probability of 30% that when under the influence of negative emotion you will seek control. You see this in managers that force you into the office so that they can see you with their eyes. Because when they see you. Their eyes which are the exposed human brain tell them you are working.
Even if it is a false sense of control through monitoring.
The manager calms down simply by watching you and knowing you are there.
It is a huge simplification by the manager but then they do not have the time or resources, usually, to sit down and ponder over their neurotic behaviors. The manager seeing you at the office does not mean you perform better or that the manager gets better results. But it does calm the manager down.
Yes, these types of managers should not be managers.
Mothers and control
Mothers do the same with their small children.
When they cannot see the child or everything is quiet then the feedback loop of anxiety kicks in and they respond to it by go looking for the child in panic. They seek control over the situation to calm down. Adult managers are the same. You need to worry if a male manager does this since it is a female personality trait to be anxious. It indicates neuroticism and the probability of vulnerable narcissism and controlling behaviors.
They will most likely not change.
What to do about it!
So you need to change your environment to live a happier way of life.
Remember how negative emotions decrease your overall health. Simply put not worth it! Just look for another job. If you confront such a manager he or she will only pay you back with at least passive aggressiveness or worse. The likelihood of the manager being a vulnerable narcissist is also higher since it resides within neuroticism.
I talked about this in the video about gossiping and who you should NOT give a job to!
Change Management as a leadership style
So why is change management such a bad managerial style?
Employees despise change management. The reason is that it has no rules or boundaries that give the employee control and safety in the future. They simply cannot understand what the impact is for them and therefore they worry.
Managers who choose change management as a leadership style always create neuroticism in the teams they manage and therefore the good employees leave or complain.
Successful leadership styles
Research shows that great managers master task and relationship-oriented management.
That is what employees want and need to thrive, outperform, and stay loyal to the company. It is also the very foundation for psychological safety in the workplace. If you want to reduce employees neuroticism you have to master these two leadership styles.
Set the boundaries through task leadership and have the ability to create good lasting, trustworthy, and HONEST relationships with your employees.
The Take Aways
So this is how negative and positive personality traits work in private and in the office.
You now know how your very vocabulary impacts your way of life and your health. So choose friends, partners, and managers carefully like your very life is dependent on them.
Because it does!
If you want to read about my own experience Journaling. Here is the link.
“How My First Journaling Experience Went!”
P.S. (I’m so grateful for your support!)
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