How to be less neurotic
The Gray Area with Sean Illing
In this episode of The Gray Area, host Sean Illing speaks with journalist and author Olga Khazan about her year-long journey to change aspec
Key takeaways
- Personality is not fixed; it consists of consistent patterns of thought and behavior that can be influenced over time.
- Neuroticism often manifests as catastrophizing and heightened sensitivity to stress, but it's possible to retrain these responses through deliberate practice.
Main topics
- The science of personality change
- Neuroticism and its impact on daily life
Notable quotes
"We all have goals we want to achieve, even if we all like our lives and ourselves."
Conclusion
While personality is deeply rooted in consistent patterns of behavior and thought, the episode
Transcript preview
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Check out the latest episode of Why Are You Like This wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. Speaker 1 (1:04) Hey, it's Sean. Today, we're revisiting a conversation with Olga Kazan, journalist and author of Me But Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change. I've always enjoyed this conversation because it really tries to answer the question, is it possible to change who we are, even just a little bit? I hope you enjoy the conversation. Speaker 1 (1:30) I think all of us, at some point, have wondered why we are the way we are. Maybe you're a little neurotic, a worrier. Or maybe you're a tad abrasive, confrontational, or a bit evasive. Maybe you don't think enough about others. Or maybe you do, but just a little too much. We see our faults as faults. But aren't they really just our personalities? And what is that, exactly? A personality? Is it something we're born with? Does it shift over time? Can we think and act our way into being a different and hopefully better person? I'm Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area. Speaker 1 (2:19) Today's guest is Olga Hazan. She's a staff writer at The Atlantic and the author of the book, Me But Better, The Science and Promise of Personality Change. The book is a joy to read, full of ideas, but also personal in the sense that Olga documents her year-long effort to change things she doesn't like about her own personality. Along the way, she does a nice job of weaving in the science and marking the limits of what we know and don't know. It's honest, curious, and reflective. And so it turns out is Olga. So I invited her on the show. Speaker 8 (2:59) Olga Hazan, welcome to the show. Speaker 2 (3:01) Thanks so much for having me. Speaker 8 (3:03) Let's start with the basics here. Because personality is one of those words that are one of those concepts that we all intuitively understand what it signifies, at least loosely. But it is pretty tricky to define. You've now written a book on it. So give me your neatest, clearest definition. Speaker 2 (3:25) Yeah, personality is the consistent thoughts and behaviors that you have every day. And some researchers think that in addition to just having those thoughts and feelings and behaviors, they also help you achieve your goals. So depending on what your goals are, your personality kind of helps you get there. An example of this would be the personality trait of agreeableness, which helps you make friends and social connections. People who tend to be more agreeable also tend to value friendships and connections and achieve more of those. You Speaker 8 (4:01) use the word consistent there. To what extent is personality? just a performance? And to what extent is it something much more concrete? Speaker 2 (4:12) So personality is in some ways a performance. Let's say you describe yourself as an introvert, but you have to give a big talk. And it's very important to your career that this talk go well, right? You are probably going to perform, to a certain extent, extroversion. Or let's say you're going into a room full of investors and you have to raise money for your startup, but you're just a very introverted coder guy who just wants to code all day and not talk to anyone. You're going to perform extroversion in that situation too, because it's very important for you to get whatever is at the end of that. performance. The money or the, you know, professional accolades or whatever comes with it. You know, it doesn't have to be financial. It could be, you know, going on a first date is kind of a performance as well. So we do all perform elements of these traits every single day. But what most researchers think is that there is sort of a tendency that we all have toward a certain pattern of behaviors and thoughts that are more or less consistent, especially if we don't try to change them in any meaningful way. But like you kind of get up and you have like these like little patterns that you fall into. And that's sort of like your quote unquote natural personality. Speaker 8 (5:31) So we have what people call the big five personality traits, neuroticism, extroversion, agreeableness, which you just mentioned, openness to experience and conscientiousness. Are these categories generally accepted in the field of psychology and how useful do you find them? Speaker 2 (5:52) They are generally accepted. This is that's now like if you read a personality study, it will be most likely based on the big five. So things like Enneagram and Myers-Briggs are not generally accepted. That said, they are imperfect. There are some cultures that have traits that are. very important in those cultures that the big five doesn't really pick up as much. Meanwhile, things like openness, it's sort of a catch-all. It doesn't really map very cleanly onto someone's personality as other people would observe it. So yeah, it is valid. It has weaknesses, but personality is so hard to measure and kind of scientifically get your head around that it's sort of the best that we have right now. Speaker 8 (6:39) Well, part of the inspiration for this project is that you wanted to change some things about yourself. So what did you want to change? And why don't you love yourself, Olga? Don't you know you're good enough and smart enough and people like you? Why do you want to change? Speaker 2 (6:59) Yeah, so I did want to change and I also love myself. The two are not mutually exclusive. Though I know that it can feel that way, that if you admit that you want to change, that it can feel like you're saying that you don't love yourself. But I think that's where the idea of personality traits as tools to help you achieve your goals can be really helpful. Because we all have goals we want to achieve, even if we all like our lives and ourselves. And for me, what I realized is that things were going well. I had a... pretty nice life. You know, nothing was seriously wrong. But my reactions to situations were not benefiting me. They were kind of undermining me and making me not able to enjoy my life. So I start the book out with this like actually great sounding now as a new parent of this great sounding day in Miami where honestly all that happened is that I got a bad haircut. then immediately had to get professional photos taken, then got stuck in traffic, and then had this like weird debacle with a grocery store shopping cart. And it honestly just like, because of my high neuroticism at the time, the accumulation of all of those like small things made me have like this epic meltdown when I got back to my hotel. I realized that that kind of happened a lot in various ways. Like small things would happen that would make me kind of not able to appreciate the big picture or not able to just be happy with what I have or be grateful. And so that's really what I wanted to work on is sort of appreciating my life for what it was. And also just, you know, outside of neuroticism, I really, like I was feeling the COVID social isolation and I wanted to deepen my... my social connections as well. So that's why I wanted to change. Speaker 8 (8:54) Would you say that you had or have a tendency to catastrophize? Because I do. And I don't know if that's a function of neuroticism or something else, but I would say that is the one thing that I'm trying most aggressively to stop. Is that tendency part of neuroticism or is it a little more complicated than that? Speaker 2 (9:15) Yeah, it's definitely part of. neuroticism. You know, neuroticism is sort of the trait that's, so to kind of simplify it, it's associated with depression and anxiety. And basically all those are just like a feeling of threat. Like you just constantly see threats everywhere. You, the reason you're catastrophizing is not because like you're silly or because you're not realistic, but because like you kind of can see the threats coming from every direction. And you're like, how do I? prevent those from happening. And that's what makes people who are high in neuroticism so miserable. Speaker 8 (9:50) Well, I like the, I think it was Jud Brewer argument that you talk about in the book that anxiety is a habit loop where anxiety triggers the behavior of worry, which feels like it's a temporary relief, but really it just makes us more anxious in the long run. And this is something neurotic people do. by default, right? I mean, it's just the first instinct. Speaker 2 (10:18) Oh, yeah. I always thought anxiety and worry were the same thing. But worry is actually, it's a behavior. It's almost like a self-soothing behavior. And people who are very anxious think that if you just worry enough, you won't be anxious anymore. But instead, worry kind of sometimes can make you more anxious. Like you're never going to get to the end of the worrying. Well, Speaker 8 (10:40) it's also about... the discomfort with uncertainty, right? You talk about like the neurotic person is the one who gets the, you know, have a second, do you have a