Posts tagged Personality

Do you have a character trait, an addiction or a disorder that causes you suffering? If you have an instant, painless way to OCD, ADD, depression and panic attacks, addiction, angry outbursts, impatience, or shyness stop will be offered, would you want it? What if this treatment could wipe out a particularly traumatic memories for you?

This is not science fiction. Many of the diseases once considered to be in the field of psychology and psychiatry is now treated as neurological problems or chemical imbalances. MRIs give us an insight into the mind / brain that creating a proliferation of treatment options are not introduced.

In a recent article, researchers described a pacemaker implanted deep in the brain of a severely depressed woman. Minutes later, a smile lit her face. By their own description, she was twelve years since she had smiled. Other people suffer from depression, were also with the implanted device and the results are promising, not only for depression but for obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD).

When a small electronic device sends intermittent pulses can within minutes, literally, a smile on the face of someone who felt emotionally dead for years, what they do not have to say about our personality? As much as we identify ourselves is really our own?

As children we are often with others who share our genes compared. “She has her mother’s eyes.” It is sulking just like his uncle. “She’s stubborn, just like …” We learn our self by our trains, we identify usually stuck with at least something. By the time we are adults, many of us still own (or our employers) have been identified by the personality profiles such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. We know if we are ESTJs (extroversion, sensing, thinking, judging) or INFPs (introversion, intuition, feeling, perceiving). Discover our personality style can help us understand our motivations and characteristics as well as help us to get along with others. However, it is possible to over-identify with our labels?

Maybe you have researched the Sufi Enneagram derived. If so, you know “your number.” For example, a four on the Enneagram is the romance, esthete individualist. According to the Enneagram, as the Wikipedia quote, “Fours embrace individualism and are often profoundly creative and intuitive and at best they are very human. But you have the habit of withdrawing to internalize, search inside yourself desperate for something they never and are creating a spiral of depression. “That can very helpful information for a four. But could a four (or any other “Number”) to take this data and other aspects of the invalidity of his / her self?

When a small electronic device could be implanted in a four and depression are avoided by the person is not a four? Was the depression part of the human personality, or was it a by-product of a “misfire” of the brain, which required only a few high-tech improvements to get it right? If the four Miss aspects of depression? Does it fuel their creativity or intuition? If the four is the capacity for empathy / humanity by a deep understanding of what it means to suffer? Would you miss something in the other four? Would some of the lessons of life lost along with the depression? Is the growth require suffering?

If you waited for me to have to answer these questions, you have to wait longer because I’m finding more questions to ask! If a shock rise from a tiny electrodes immediately years, the ease the symptoms of depression or obsessive-compulsive disorder, it is imperative to ask, which means “free will”. If our self is simply the sum of our synapses in the brain? If these synapses are modified, as this can influence our sense of self? What do you want to change about yourself? Are you willing to risk and let your sense of the former farm to make the changes?

If depression or anger or shyness can be “zapped,” could encourage this information to us to let our prior judgments about others’ behaviors or even our own? Perhaps for all our best efforts, some of us are simply more vulnerable to the quick to anger or too shy to make eye contact or lack self-esteem to give us a pep talk or feel inspired by affirmations. Perhaps laziness or self-centeredness is built

What happens if you just a quick solution from being “cured” of these “mistakes”? If flipping a switch eliminates the need for therapy, meditate, read self-help books, but the use of antidepressants and / or anti-anxiety drugs, or risk your health, relationships, work and freedom, because you treat yourself with medicines and alcohol, that is, if one would zap you could eliminate your suffering, and most importantly, make you happy, you use it?

Brain pacemaker research do not lead me to answers to these questions but it leads me to recognize the value of attention to my thoughts. Every day we have consciously or unconsciously choose our thoughts, which then trigger our emotions, change them or to strengthen our beliefs that all contribute to what we call our personality.

The Buddhists teach us that we can no enemy as much damage as our own worst thoughts. The opposite is probably true that no one can help us as much as our own best thoughts. Our thoughts, whether by machine or by a sunset, listen stimulated by biofeedback or music that influence our perception, our identification with our personality and our sense of happiness. Implant or no implant, instant fix or years of meditation, therapy or medication, exercise endorphins or affirmations, if we pay more attention to our thoughts, so that compassion for our own and others’ feelings, and the question of the authority of our faith, hope We both meaning and joy in the discovery of our true self to be found.