'I don’t recognize myself’ 🍏

Can you get your joie de vivre back?

Hello!

While mixing this week’s episode, Proxy engineer Kyle burst into my office to proclaim, “This might be my favorite one!”

It’s always interesting to see which ones hit for people.

This week’s guest is the incredibly charismatic podcast host, producer, and editor Zakiya Gibbons. If I could choose my personality from a vending machine, I might go for hers. So it was surprising to learn that ever since lockdown, she hasn’t felt like herself—her extroverted, open self. (A problem Kyle extremely relates to.)

What do you do when you don’t recognize your personality anymore? Can you get it back? Or should you just accept your new self? That’s what we explore in this episode.

We turned to Michigan State psychology professor and personality researcher William Chopik for answers. Here are some highlights.

Early twenties to thirties is “the period of most dramatic personality change,” Bill said. That’s because:

You're still figuring your life out, so you try a bunch of new things. Your situations shift dramatically. … The truth is people will often explore situations and try new things when they're young. But as a result, they find themselves in situations that change them and around people who change them.

Over time though, when people get older, they get settled in their career. They find a long-term partner. They just settle in such a way that they're not exposed as much to new situations. Maybe they're a little less sensitive to experiences too. So imagine the first time you did some kind of really fun activity like meditation or art or something that really fills your soul, that's different than the 50th time you've done that, right?

You know the conventional wisdom to do what your body is telling you? It’s not always helpful, especially if you want to change, Bill says.

There's this cruel irony where isolation and going your own way actually undermines your goals in the long run because when you think of people who shut off other people in the pursuit of this individualistic goal, that's where they become more and more stable, and then it's harder to change because their perspectives are never challenged. Their habits are never broken.

Everything about personality change, it looks like actually, it’s thrust upon you. So if you live in isolation you probably don’t change much. But if you live with other people, then you’re compelled to change. So even though everything in your body is telling you not to, if you were to go to this social event, the fact that you force yourself is really important. Because then if you start to get into those situations, that’s when you can get out of the rut.

There are limits to self compassion and self acceptance, especially when it comes to wanting to change, he said.

We're at a really interesting moment in the field where I think on the surface people endorse [self compassion and self acceptance] and you know, on the surface it's great. It's like, yes, you should accept yourself and you should be really attentive to your emotional and physical states, but I think actually if it changes people at all, it's not necessarily about the self acceptance. If anything, maybe it's the unburdening of stuff that's holding you back from doing other things. And I think the other things is the key.

So if you learn to accept yourself and that's what was holding you back from dating or seeking out new friendships, then I think that self compassion will work. However, if it's just, “I am perfect in every way and I'm accepting that and I never have to change,” then there's a danger to that, right? But the self-compassion people will often say it's meant to empower you to live the life that you wanna live and live in accordance with your values. But I think if you wanna change, the thing you have to do is change.

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REC ROOM

For anyone hankering for more personality content, Olga Khazan from The Atlantic went hard on trying to change hers: “I’ve never really liked my personality, and other people don’t like it either.” Ouch. Bill also said he found the books Be Who You Want and Me, But Better to be useful and accessible.

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INTUITION? HARDLY KNOW HER

And for those hankering for more Zakiya Gibbons, we released a bonus episode from our friends at Science of Happiness. They took on a piece of Zakiya’s conundrum that she mentioned in our episode, but we didn’t address. She said:

I actually did need to do nothing because 2023 was nonstop mayhem. And then I feel like I kept choosing that. What do I need to do right now? I need to not do anything. But then I got confused. Well, I’m listening to my body. My body is saying I’m tired and I want to watch TV. So then I would do that. But then that also doesn’t feel like what I need right now. So how do I know what I need right now?

How do you know what you actually need? Should you always listen to your body? Check out the episode to learn about the science of intuition.

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PROX VOX

Today’s featured listener review comes from Pretendcalifornian:

So far I’ve found it super compelling and fun to listen to. I like the behind the scenes analysis of the podcast too haha. I really really hope this show makes it!

If you’d like to help this show make it and if you like getting bonus episodes (12 and counting), consider becoming a Patreon member and supporting this indepenedent show. Thank you to our generous subscribers who’ve already signed up.

Your emotional investigative journalist,

Yowei

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Edited by Juliana Feliciano Reyes.