Personality - Does our Trauma shape us?

 

        Personality… It is as fascinating a study to psychologists, as it is a topic to laymen. As much information as we have about it, personality is an ever-growing concept since it is a concept rooted in human behaviour and as we all know, humans change. So, as humans grow and evolve, personality changes too. Except for growth and time, external factors, stimuli, and experiences affect personality too.

        Trauma is another word that has become popular as we move into a more accepting, more informed world. But do we really know what trauma is? The popularity gained by the word has desensitized the world to the severity of the impact that trauma has on us as humans. Any small discomfort that people experience, they term ‘trauma’.

        So, what is trauma really? According to the APA, trauma is an emotional response to a terrible event like accident, rape, or natural disaster. It is the psychological response (mental response) to an event that an individual finds highly stressful. It can also lead to a wide range of physical and emotional symptoms.

        So, how would trauma work as an external stressor o affect the changes in personality? Let’s take a peek into it. The world statistical data shows, as is fairly common knowledge, that individuals who are exposed to intense traumatic events suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or as it’s popularly known, PTSD. EPCACE is one such form of complex PTSD added to the ICD-11 as of June 2018. It is defined as an enduring personality change – durable personality change lasting over a long period of time – that an individual undergoes for a minimum of 2 years following a catastrophic event. The event that acts as the stressor must be extreme, such that the other factors like genetic vulnerabilities and predispositions should not be considered.

        It's like how as a child if we ever felt nauseated by eating porridge, the chances that we would skip that type of a meal even decades later. Food aversions are deeply ingrained, however, according to research, they can be formed after just a single unpleasant meal. This exemplifies that one of the features of personality change is that alteration in personality is seen more due to highly unpleasant memories, since they affect us to a much greater extent than the highly pleasant ones.  It may be so because painful experiences may signal imminent threats to survival. And hence, traumatic experiences – obviously being unpleasant ones - have a great role in changing our personality.

        A research conducted by Munjiza, J., Britvic, D., Radman, M. et al found that cases who tested IPDE positive – International personality disorder examination scale – were eight times more likely to report exposure to severe war–related trauma than those who were tested negative. Their level of interpersonal dysfunction was considerably higher than that in controls. Alcohol consumption in cases was significantly higher with a mean of 14.24 units per week when compared to controls whose mean number of alcohol units was 9.24. Similarly, a significantly higher number of cases reported current substance misuse. So, it seems fair to say that long term exposure to trauma, does not just have effects on our personality, however does lead us to self-derogatory habits that would also lead to a change in our personality.

        War is particularly traumatic for soldiers because it often involves intimate violence, including witnessing death through direct combat, viewing the enemy before or after killing them, and watching friends and comrades die. Their experiences are traumatic above and beyond the amount of time spent in military service or other military events. Young adults exposed to military combat may also be at greater risk than their older peers. Vietnam Veterans who were 19 years of age or younger during the war were significantly more likely to have substance abuse problems, criminal activity, employment difficulties, and problems with social relationships after discharge, and long-term distress and symptomatology is higher among Vietnam veterans who entered military service at a younger age.

        After experiencing traumatic events, self-care becomes an important aspect. It can contribute to your healing process more than you may imagine. While such effects of trauma are unavoidable, victims can be comforted slowly and gradually. To normal people, self-care sounds like a day of pampering, food, binge watching movies, snuggly blankets and maybe a few friends around us. Although, to trauma victims, self-care may seem to be something they are undeserving of. However, while difficult, it’s still imperative that they try to rewrite those scripts and retrain our brains to accept the nurture and compassion they crave. The longer they deepen the pathways of self-neglect, self-hate, obsessive caretaking, people-pleasing, overwork, isolation, or self-harm, the harder it is to break free and the more displeasing it feels to try. And, unfortunately, when self-care doesn’t immediately “feel good”, we’re no longer incentivized to try again. But we must. Self-love is the purest and greatest expression of love. If that is achieved, we are able to get ourselves out of most problems that we find ourselves in.

 

References

Munjiza, J., Britvic, D., Radman, M. et al. Severe war-related trauma and personality pathology: a case-control study. BMC Psychiatry 17, 100 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-017-1269-3

  

About the Author
Prisha Gohil

Head of the PsyCreative Column
Psychology Committee, SDSOS, NMIMS
Prisha Gohil, born and raised in Rajkot, Gujarat, is a 19-year-old, full of youth and quirky enthusiasm, something clearly visible in her writing. She is currently studying psychology at SDSOS, Mumbai. Her biggest strengths are her family and friends, who have always been an inspiration to her. She is full of energy when she is awake, which she rarely is. Her dream is to sleep but does some productive work in between here and there while reaching her final goal. Communication is one of the best skills she possesses, that she has nurtured over time. Confident, charismatic, hard-working, and passionate are words that would appropriately describe her.