Personality & Family
PSYCHIATRISTS, PSYCHOLOGISTS, AND PSYCHOMETRISTS
Problem. If you wanted to learn about your own mental abilities and interests, whom would you see? Would you go to a psychometrist, a psychiatrist or a psychologist ?
Background. Actually, you could go to any of these men. If he couldn’t help you, he would probably refer you to one of the others who specialized in solving your kind of problems.
Some of these names may seem strange to you. You probably realize that the psych in each of them refers to the mind and its workings. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and psychometrists all work with the human mind and study its behavior.
It has been only eighty years since mankind began thinking of the mind in a scientific way. Before 1870 people were somewhat superstitious in the way they viewed the workings of the mind. This way of thinking began to disappear when Sigmund Freud, an Austrian doctor, began studying the mind. He said that the unconscious part of the mind is extremely important in determining our actions. He developed a complicated theory to explain why we act in the ways we do. Because he was a doctor, he used these theories in the treatment of his mentally ill patients.
Freud’s theories formed the beginning of modern psychiatry. Psychiatrists no longer accept all of Freud’s theories, but they accept some of them.
Explanation. The study of the mind was not the concern of the medical men only. A few years after Freud’s work, two men, John Watson and E. L. Thorndike, became interested in making the study of the mind more scientific. They believed that the best way to understand the mind of man was to study his behavior. Understandably, the school of thought they founded is called behaviorism.
Once psychologists began studying behavior, they found that they could predict certain kinds of behavior and abilities. They devised tests to predict intelligence, personality traits, career aptitudes, and other areas of human performance.
Men called psychometrists specialized in giving and interpreting these tests. These tests are used to predict academic performance and many other aspects of behavior. Often clinical psychologists and psychiatrists use the tests to help diagnose the illnesses of their patients.
As you know, psychology is still a young science. In the short time since Freud, Watson, and Thorndike laid the foundations for this new science, men have found a new window into the human mind.
Further research. You may want to obtain more information about these subjects. You can consult the World Book. Look up the materials under the entries for psychiatry, psychology, and psychoanalysis.
Personality & Family - Activity for Health and Fitness
Is your body as healthy as you would like it to be? You can help keep it healthy by eating a variety of foods, getting the rest you need, and by exercising regularly. Here are a few good exercises that will help strengthen your body. After you have learned them try to practice them daily. You will be able to review them from time to time in other Activity for Health and Fitness pages.
Tortoise and Hare. This exercise will assist you in developing a more agile body.
Position. Stand at attention.
Action. Jog slowly in place. On the command, "Hare," double your pace, lifting your knees high and pumping your arms vigorously. On the command, "Tortoise," slow the tempo to the original slow jog. Alternate between the tortoise and the hare for one minute. Practice daily and slowly increase your time to two minutes.
Bouncing Ball. This exercise will challenge your coordination and strength. It is an excellent conditioner for many sports.
Position. Assume the pushup position by lying face down and extending your arms straight out with your hands directly beneath your shoulders. Keep your body straight and rigid, and support your weight on your hands and toes.
Action. Bounce up and down by a series of short upward springs with your arms and legs. Try to clap your hands while your body is in the air. Repeat this exercise five times.
Leg Extension. The purpose of this exercise is to strengthen your abdominal and trunk muscles.
Position. Sit on the floor with your legs extended and your feet together. Keep your body erect and place your hands on your hips.
Action. On the count of one, raise and flex your knees with a quick vigorous motion. Slide your toes back along the floor as far as you can. On the count of two, extend your legs back to the starting position. Repeat this exercise five times.
The Coordinator. This exercise is a difficult one. It will develop your coordination and body control.
Position. Stand at attention.
Action. On the count of one, hop on your left foot, swinging your right foot forward and touching your toe to the floor in front of your left foot. At the same time, bring both arms forward and upward to your shoulder level.
At the count of two, swing your arms to the sides at shoulder level, and hop once again. At the same time swing your right foot out to the right
side and touch your toe to the floor.
On the count of three, hop again on your left foot and return your foot and arms to the position taken on the first count.
On the count of four, return your foot and arms to the starting position. Repeat the exercise by hopping on the right foot. Alternate feet and increase the tempo. Repeat the exercise ten times.
Living by Your Values
Learning values. During your lifetime your parents and teachers have been teaching you the values of our society. Sometimes you have not been aware that you were learning new values, but you have been learning them every minute. You have learned from watching others, hearing others, and observing your own actions. You have learned that some things are considered right; others, wrong.
One interesting test of your values is to think of yourself as an invisible person. How would your actions change if you knew that no one could see you?
Try This
Test your own system of values by completing the sentence: I believe that the three most important things in life are ….
Your conscience. You have the power to weigh the worthiness of everything you do or say. All your life your mind has been at work filing away mental impressions of the way you have acted and the ways those you respect have acted. Out of all these impressions and memories, your conscience has been formed. Your conscience judges you for every action you make.
The society in which we live has certain standards of behavior by which we guide our lives. Our consciences and the consciences of our parents and loved ones have picked up these standards. Your conscience reminds you to study for a test, even though you may be tempted to do the opposite. In later years your conscience will help you to accept greater responsibilities and will become a more vital part of your personality.
Guilty feelings. You may find that occasionally your conscience conflicts with something you want to do. If you do not follow your conscience, you will probably feel guilty or ashamed. Everyone occasionally makes mistakes. It is important for you to know how to make up for them.
Perhaps the hardest part of making up for a mistake is admitting to yourself that you were wrong. If you quarreled with your sister or brother over some small matter, you probably do not want to admit to yourself that you were partly to blame. Once you have admitted your mistake to yourself, however, it is much easier to make a sincere apology or to make up for the wrongdoing. Certainly you can see that you will command greater respect if you follow your conscience and also try to make up for whatever shortcomings you can.
Values in your personality. You may have been able to conclude from the information in the last few pages that a person’s values can shape his personality. For example, a person who believes in the value of a good education is likely to be curious, interested in many subjects, and active in school affairs. His values have had a great effect on his personality.
You can see that a lack of strong values can affect personality, too. A person who does not value honesty would have a less than admirable set of traits in his personality. In the eyes of others, your values may well be the mark of your personality.
As you think about values and personality, you will realize that they relate to both mental health and family relationships. Because of these relationships, you are likely to improve your family relationships as you improve your mental health and personality. An improvement in one area is likely to affect other areas as well.
A Guide for Family Living
In the following paragraphs you will find ten basic steps which can help you to reach a better understanding of the members of your family group. Study these suggestions carefully to find the areas in which you need to put forth greater effort.
1. Plan to talk about your problems with your family. Try to develop the habit of discussing problems, not quarreling about them, with various members of the family. It is especially good to develop the habit of talking with your parents about your relationships with them and the rest of your family.
2. Learn to listen to the explanations of other members of the family. Remember that it is good for you to learn to express your feelings, but it is also good for other members of the family to do the same. You must be willing to listen to their viewpoints about family problems. This may take some extra effort on your part.
3. Give in some of the time in family disagreements. When you disagree with any member of the family, you should be willing to give in part of the time. Remember that there are not very many times when it is really important to "take a stand." Avoid petty disagreements.
4. Keep doing thoughtful services for your family. Learn to do things for all members of your family. These do not need to be big things. They can be little, thoughtful services. The important thing is that you continue to do these considerate things for each one in your family.
5. Try to stay out of conflicts. If family quarrels and conflicts do develop, you can help to calm people’s emotions. One way to help keep quarreling to a minimum among your brothers and sisters is to stay out of any quarrel that doesn’t involve you. In this way you aren’t adding more heated words to an already hot argument.
Another way you can help reduce tension and quarreling is to avoid arguing with your parents when they ask you to do something you would rather not do. Even if you are angry about their decision, you can leave the room without letting your anger show. When you have "cooled off" you may be able to reach a compromise on the point in disagreement. In a case like that, your self-control would have prevented a quarrel.
6. Inform your family of your activities. Often you do things that interest someone or everyone in your family. Even if you do not think they would be interested, try telling your parents and your brothers and sisters about the things you have done at school. When your family becomes involved in your activities, your life becomes more interesting and so does theirs.
Try This
The next time you are active in a school function that is open to the public, take your family and explain all the interesting details of your contribution.
7. Plan to do as many things as you can with your family. Not only should you tell people about your own activities, but you can lead the family to join in many activities. You can plan many activities yourself. Games and sports are a great deal of fun for the family. Perhaps everyone would enjoy a camping trip or a day at a fair or an amusement park. Use your imagination to think up things that everyone will enjoy. It is safe to say that the more things your family does together, the more fun all the members will have.
8. Make a special point of having pleasant mealtimes with your family. Mealtimes with your family can be some of the happiest times in your family relationship. Avoiding tensions and quarrels while eating is good for both mental and physical health. Try your best to compliment your mother for meals that you especially like.
9. Be more liberal in your praise and recognition of different members of your family. Everyone likes to be told that he has done something well. This is just as true of you as it is of everyone else in your family. Try your best to see the good things; praise the person responsible. If you are genuine in your praise, you will find that your praise is contagious. Other family members will begin praising your activities, too.
10. Make a special point of getting along better with your brothers and sisters. Quarrels between brothers and sisters can make family living unpleasant.
However, many quarrels can be avoided. Many times, quarrels between brothers and sisters arise for unimportant reasons. Something one person does may irritate his brother. Perhaps a game or toy is in dispute.
You can help eliminate quarrels in your family by exercising self-control and patience when someone irritates you. You will find that a little self-control brings great rewards to your family. The families that have learned to cope with their problems have used most of the suggestions given in this section. These suggestions should be useful for you and your family, too.
Your Family and Your Personality
Consideration. There are times in everyone’s life when he realizes that someone in his family is very considerate of him. When this happens to you, what do you do about it? You might stop and wonder whether you have done as much to help your mother, father, or brother. It is wise to remind yourself that everyone in your family wants to be treated the way you do. Their feelings are like yours and they need the same kindness and understanding you need. You can see the wisdom in treating people with the same consideration you would like from them.
Growing with your family. During your early teens you are beginning to enjoy new interests and activities. You may find that your interests are changing but that those of your parents and brothers and sisters are not.
When these differences become noticeable, you may find that you have to find new ways of understanding the other members of your family. They, in turn, have to find new ways of understanding you.
One of your new interests is probably an increased desire for independence and self-reliance. Because this feeling of growing independence is a new one, your parents may disagree with some of the responsibilities you want to assume. You should try to have patience and exercise self-control in your attempts to show your independence.
As you become more and more independent you will find that conflicts are most likely to occur in four areas. They are disagreements over spending money, outside activities and social life, time spent doing schoolwork, and clothes. These disagreements do no one any good and should be eliminated by talking about conflicts and by respecting others’ points of view.
Sometimes you can confide in adult friends outside your home. Your teachers, your pastor, or a counselor may be
a good person to confide in.
As you talk with your parents and friends about differences of opinion, you will find that you and they will reach a deeper understanding of each other’s wishes and needs. This process helps you to grow up and makes the path of growing up less troublesome than if you walked it alone.
Maintaining Mental Health - Understanding feelings of rebellion
Understanding feelings of rebellion. When you have become as old as you are now, you may find that you disagree with some of your parents’ and teachers’ values and ways of doing things. You feel that you want to make decisions for yourself and do not want someone to make them for you. You are learning to become independent and are forming more of your own personality.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that sooner or later you will work out your own ways of doing things. Instead of going your own way and ignoring the advice of adults completely, talk over some of your problems with your parents, clergyman, guidance counselor, and teachers. It may surprise you to find that they can be a great help in finding answers to your problems.
Never forget the possibility that you may be rebelling against people just for the sake of rebellion. You may be so eager to show that you are mature that you forget that most of your parents’ values are extremely sound. It is a mature person who can look at his own feelings of rebellion and realize that sometimes they have little basis in reality. If you can look at your feelings in this way, you have taken a giant step toward adulthood.
After you have considered these four areas of mental health–maintaining self-confidence, making adjustments, controlling emotions, and understanding feelings of rebellion—-you may have a better idea of the ways to change your personality and maintain good mental health.
Try This
Make a list of all the emotions you have felt today. Check the ones you think were not controlled as well as they could have been. Check the emotions you have felt today that you feel were of value to you.
Maintaining Mental Health - Controlling emotion
Controlling emotion. The third aspect of good mental health is the ability to control the emotions. Undoubtedly you have occasionally lost your temper when your parents have forbidden you to go somewhere or do something. This could be serious, if you could not control your temper, or habitually lost your temper.
Because people your age are likely to become very enthusiastic about some things and extremely critical of others, it is a good idea to "stand back and look at yourself." Can you see yourself usually losing control of your enthusiasm when your team wins a basketball game? Can you see yourself always arguing heatedly with an umpire? If you can answer yes to these questions, you need to practice controlling your emotions.
It is important for you to recognize that everyone has feelings of anger, and that nearly everyone occasionally loses his temper. However, a mature person does not allow himself to lose his temper habitually. Neither does he allow himself to become angry every time something happens he doesn’t like. If you think of the adults you like and admire, you will probably find that they control their feelings well enough so that they are pleasant people to be with.
Methods of control. There are many ways you can control your emotions. One is to talk over the situation with a friend, your parents, or a teacher. This way is often a good one because it can make you understand ways to deal with similar situations in the future.
Physical activity is a good way to get rid of your anger. If you are angry with someone and you cannot talk to anyone about it, it will feel good to perform some vigorous activity, such as washing the family car, playing basketball, swimming, cleaning the house, or mowing the lawn. This method of releasing strong feeling is called sublimation. You will be surprised to see how much better you will feel after sublimating your anger.
There are other ways of letting go of angry feelings. Creative work, such as woodworking, painting, or sculpture, is fun and useful. Writing is another way to get rid of your feelings of anger, rebellion, or discouragement. It sometimes helps to write down the reason for your feelings. Then you can control them because you know why you feel so strongly.
Another emotion that you can attempt to control is fear. Everyone has felt worried or afraid when he has approached a difficult test or unfamiliar situation. However, this fear should not be allowed to become too strong. If it does, you will not be able to do your best. The easiest way to get rid of such feelings is to make sure you have studied adequately. Then, if you are still worried, try doing something relaxing. If you are too worried to relax, you might go outside and play a game. It might be good to call a friend to see how he is progressing with studying. These methods will take your mind off your problems and help you to control your fear.
The important thing to remember about controlling your emotions is that you should do something about them. It never helps just to sit by yourself worrying about a disappointment or situation that made you angry.
Value of emotions. It has been said that emotion is the stuff of life. Any person who had not felt the joy of success, the anger of frustration, or the pride of victory has not lived very much or very well.
When properly controlled, your emotions are of great value. If you become supremely enthusiastic about supporting a friend who is running for the student council, you are using your emotions. Probably no one has ever been elected to anything unless his friends were a little emotional about his strong points.
Your emotions are helping you right now. When you become worried about your grades on a science test, your fears cause you to do something— study harder or obtain special help from your teacher. Have you noticed that when you are playing a game the excitement has helped you to perform a little better?
The important thing to remember about emotions is that they should not be hidden or forgotten, but should be used well.
Maintaining Mental Health - Making adjustments
Making adjustments. A second aspect of good mental health is the ability to make adjustments to different situations. You cannot succeed in everything you do, and in order to be happy you will have to adjust to situations in which you do not get what you want and to situations that you do not enjoy.
There are many things that could happen to make you unhappy or to disappoint you. Perhaps you worked hard and tried out for a part in a class play. But you failed to get the part. You may have needed more practice, or you may have failed to get the part because there were others competing for the part who had more talent and skill. Or perhaps someone else got the part simply because he seemed to fit the part better, physically.
There are several ways you could react to such a failure. You could lose your temper and complain loudly, making everyone around you uncomfortable. You could stay by yourself and daydream about being a successful and greatly admired actor or actress. You could make excuses for not going to the play and even become ill the day of the performance. But none of these would be a satisfactory adjustment. These are all ways of running away from the real difficulty.
What are some of the ways you could adjust? You could use the method of compensation. In this method, you would decide to do something to help make the play a success, whether that would mean painting scenery, selling tickets, ushering, or making posters. If you failed to act as well as others, you could accept the fact that you did not quite "measure up," and that perhaps you never would become good enough to take part in a play. Then, you could enjoy other activities that make a play a success. When you use the method of compensation to adjust to a failure, you are showing a mature attitude and signs of good mental health.
Think for Yourself
In what situations is compensation a mature method of reacting?
Maintaining Mental Health - Maintaining self-confidence
Maintaining self-confidence. Perhaps the most important sign of your mental health is your self-confidence. Young people often become discouraged and feel that they are failures. There are some good ways to help you avoid these periods of discouragement.
Being realistic. You need to set reasonable goals for yourself and then do your best to achieve them. For example, if one school subject seems more difficult than others, you may have to work diligently to keep up with the class in that subject. In spite of all that you can do, however, there may be times when you do not succeed in what you planned to do. This happens to everyone. But through your own efforts you can be successful most of the time.
Success can come only when you aim for what you can do, no more and no less. Your successes may not be great enough to put you at the top, but they will certainly give you a sense of satisfaction and help to give you a feeling of self-confidence.
Being realistic about what you are capable of doing does not mean, however, that you should feel satisfied with yourself and your accomplishments all the time. Most people do not work up to the level of their abilities. As you achieve each of your goals, keep moving each succeeding one farther and farther ahead. It is only in this way that you can improve your performance and achieve higher goals.
Think for Yourself
In what areas has it been easy to achieve the goals you set for yourself? In what areas has it been difficult?
Making an effort. Setting your goals will not insure your success; nothing can do that. Setting your goals is the first step to self-confidence. Making an effort is the second. If you allow discouragement or fear of failure to keep you from trying, you will never feel confident of your abilities. When you can continue to make an effort in the face of failure, you will find you have won respect for yourself and have gained self-confidence.
Maintaining Mental Health
As you have learned in the previous section, one way to improve your personality is to improve your mental health. Your adolescence is the time between your childhood and your adult years when your personality begins to assume new importance for you. During these years you form much of the personality that will be yours in years to come. And it is during these years that the knowledge of mental health and personality will be of the most help to you.
The descriptions of four major signs of mental health that appear in this section contain suggestions for maintaining your mental health and improving your personality. You can use many of the ideas presented here to help you know yourself and the reactions you commonly make. You can use the ideas to help you better understand your feelings. They can also help you understand your parents and your relationship to them.
