Generally speaking, anything described as a “spiritual practice” will tend to alter people’s personality to the degree they put effort into it.
It’s not normal for personality to change much. People’s personality changes under relatively rare conditions: trauma, enlightenment, extreme conditioning.
Another commenter mentioned psychedelic drugs and those are definitely catalysts for personality change.
The things that have changed my personality the most are:
abuse
violence while homeless
ayahuasca ceremonies
getting the 10-series from a rolfer
By “personality” here I’m talking about emotional patterns, which become the foundation for all sorts of beliefs, tastes, tendencies, social roles.
By emotional patterns I mean the overall averages of joy, sadness, fear, openness, guilt, etc, both over time and also in their typical daily cycles.
A long time ago I listened to a podcast episode (Probably Hidden Brain or something) where they discussed how memory affects your personality. People with dementia or some other memory related condition tend to have a different personality than they previously did. Then on another podcast, video or something I picked up another interesting piece of information. People can make new fake memories. Put these two together, and you got a strange method I came up with. If I’m able to come up with this stuff, then obviously smarter people have already done it and are using it on a ragular basis. It’s just that I haven’t heard of anyone doing that yet.
So, here’s the idea. Let’s say you don’t like the way just chill out all day and nothing gets done. You want to change that. Then you start fabricating new memories about how you are really hard working and how you have your life under control. Just imagine a bunch of stories like that about your fabricated past and those stories will gradually become proper memories inside your head. Once that’s done, it’s going to start influencing the way you see your self and how you behave in the future.
Other than hoping you are a teenager, such things have been tried. Self hypnosis, autogenic training… I don’t think anything focusing on implanting fake memories (and removing current ones?).
I have gradually turned myself into a more compassionate person by deliberately working on managing my emotions. I’m a lot less angry and far more open minded than me of ten years ago. There’s hope if you really want it.
If you wish to know more about the benefits through therapeutic approaches, I highly recommend Prof. James Fadiman’s book titled ‘The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide’. It is a rather large resource based on Fadiman’s involvement in LSD trials before research was halted abruptly and without warning, and is as close to a scientific approach to developing better pathways to preferred thought processes (through the use of psychedelics mainly LSD) that I am aware of.
Other resources include a therapeutic handbook, provided to health professionals such as psychiatrists prior to the illegalisation of LSD. This can be found on Erowid, alongside other documents that have survived.
First, you learn new things and you live new experiences. This changes your personality, for better or for worse.
Second, your personality is rooted in your ideals and beliefs, and you can purposefully change those.
Your personality can be described as the way you act and react, and both of those are learned. You may even say programmed. You can change the way you react to some situations, or the way you act in some situations. It takes a bit of practice.
Now that can sound easy, but it requires you to be very open-minded and honest about yourself, because you think with your beliefs already, so changing them may not be that easy. You need to litteraly think differently than you usually do. It’s a lot of introspection.
I did it just by myself. I just kept critiquing myself after a negative interaction and trying to figure out why I got angry or frustrated. I still give in to that anger once in a while but I’ve gotten better.
I learned it’s easier for me to forgive when I’ve had proper sleep, actually. I also look at it from the other person’s side and think of what problems that person is going through and excuse them for whatever is frustrating me.
It’s easy to think of it like a shitty driver and getting angry at them. Why are they speeding? Could be a bathroom emergency. Could be meeting a loved one at the hospital. I don’t know, so I’m not gonna judge.
I just kept critiquing myself after a negative interaction and trying to figure out why I got angry or frustrated.
This bit really is key.
Some of our emotions are legit. Sometimes someone really did try to screw you over or something. But a lot of times…our feelings are based on assumptions that aren’t true, and when you pick at the emotion a bit you start to realize you assumed the wrong thing, or didn’t consider something else.
So it’s important to critique yourself, and think about what happened, and try to dig down into the true root of the situation, separate truth from fact.
I grew up in an abusive home and generally am laid-back so it’s hard to get me angry. I had to learn that in my case, the anger I felt actually was valid and not just something I was blowing out of proportion–most people who talk a lot about anger are approaching from the other angle, and have to learn the opposite, that not everything is worth getting angry about.
But both of us, regardless of our “natural starting point”, have to learn how to think about stuff that happened, and ask questions, and try to figure out what happened and why.
I speed because then I’m not stuck in the 7-9 over range with every other asshole. Trust me. 15 over is worth the ticket. You hit way more patches of open road on the interstate if you blast ahead of the snarls. I’m taking 20 miles on a 3 lane with no one in front of you. It’s almost as nice as when everyone was dying from covid. The roads were so empty and stress free. We’ll never get back to that paradise.
I wasn’t like this before. This is one aspect of how my personality changed. Why do you care if I pass your 9-over ass? You shouldn’t. I don’t tailgate. I don’t drive crazy. I’m just going to go fast enough that I don’t get stuck behind every asshole that sets their cruise in the fast lane.
It is certainly possible to adjust some measurable elements of personality. For example, use of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) has been shown to alter measurable personality factors.
I think you mean 180. 360 would be a full rotation, you’d be going from the dark side to the light side back to the dark side. But yes, it’s possible to change someone by overshadowing their bad influences. Good influences, by definition, have more influential potential.
i would jump at the chance to have electro-shock. the only way into a better life (for me, BPD) would be to change personality altogether. i wouldn’t hesitate at all.
I haven't looked into the benefits of electroshock with BPD, but I'd recommend taking a look at Dr. Daniel Fox's workbook for an at-home DBT/attachment theory foucsed program. BPD is one of the few PDs that has been provably shown to be able to change. If you have $30 or so to spare, it can't hurt.
My ex was a chill stoner who got radicalized on the internet and became an abusive alcoholic raging racist, then got sober but is still an angry right wing asshole.
I was selfish/self-centered as fuck as a teenager and gained patience and perspective over time, I think most people do change in that way, become more aware of others, nicer. Not everyone, obviously. But most.
Add comment