Being Well Podcast: Who Am I?

Today we’re beginning a new series of episodes dedicated to a simple question: Who am I?

We all have different patterns and tendencies, and relate to them in different ways. As we move through the world we’re constantly evaluating, categorizing, and labeling other people and ourselves both consciously and unconsciously. Those labels take a variety of different forms: extroverted and introverted, masculine and feminine, progressive and conservative, or even Scorpio and Libra.

Labels have benefits and pitfalls. They can be useful, and even fun. A whole industry has sprung up around offering online quizzes and different methodologies for better understanding what makes us, well, “us.”

They’re convenient shorthand, but what does it really mean when we say, “she’s nervous” or “he’s aggressive”? What are the different kinds of tendencies people might have, where do they come from, and what can we do to relate to them as healthily as possible? And how is our answer to the question “Who Am I” shaped by the labels others have put upon us, or we’ve put upon ourselves?

To explore this big question, over the next series of episodes we’re going to get into what creates our individual variation in personality and temperament, how we’re impacted by our genes and environment, the ups and downs of personality typing, and even psychopathology – including very mild, day to day forms of pathology that we all carry some version of.

We hope you enjoy it!

Timestamps:

2:20: Where does personality come from?
5:25: Nature and nurture.
14:30: What can we really control?
19:45: Why we group people.
24:00 Personality typing.
31:00: Expanding the circle of your comfort
35:00: Stereotype threat.
38:30: The village in the mind.
40:00: Recap.