Friedman and Schustack (2016) discuss the concept of a self-healing personality stems from taking various schools of thought and incorporating them together. These personalities were defined by clusters of emotional styles and traits attributed to promoting health and equilibrium in an individual. The first is an active personality that is the busy, zealous, hard-working and confident individual while the second is a calm and more relaxed personality that can also be seen as active, alert involved and responsive as the first but more relaxed and calm, more philosophical. The first or more active self-healing personality type function best in a stressful environment and are highly extroverted. Individuals possessing a relaxed and healthy personality best function in an environment with low stress by portraying a philosophical reaction and calmness. Each of the two personality types has their own constructs, thresholds, and definitions for stress and their reaction to them.
Link Between Health and Personality
Behaviors provide a link between personality and health in numerous ways. The behavior of an individual can determine whether they will be healthier or more prone to illness (Friedman & Schustack, 2016). Healthy individuals tend to have an open gesture and a calm demeanor in addition to enthusiasm and a natural smile as their characteristics. Healthy people also portray a strong gaze with other people and have a smoother speech and body language. The individuals who are more prone to illness tend to be nervous, fidgety as well as have more closed gestures. Therefore, positive behaviors play a significant role in enhancing the health of the individual. A person’s immune system can also be enhanced by a positive behavior. In addition to assisting the body fight a disease, the extraversion in the individual with active character is also linked with higher counts of lymphocytes than the relaxed personality (Friedman & Schustack, 2016).
Although both personalities tend to play part in the immune system, an individual with an active character is more immune than the individual with relaxed character. Individuals who have high avoidance to harm as well as low self-directedness are more vulnerable to increased anxiety, depression and stress than the individuals who are less careful in avoiding harm (Friedman, 2008). Emotions are another behavior linking personality and health where happiness, contentment, and joyful behaviors are reflected as part of a healthy individual. These behaviors help people maintain a high sense of dignity and meaning to keep their body alive and in case they are gone, their hearts will be ill (Friedman & Schustack, 2016).
Other Links
Traits such as control, commitment, and challenge relate to well-being. Although society has stigmatized the term “control” and made it almost pejorative in usage, individuals will still need to have a sense of control and/or expectancy regarding various aspects of their lives. For example, we choose our employment and should this choice be taken away from us through unexpected means, such as being laid off, an individual would understandably experience a psychological setback until they readjust. Commitment and challenge are almost interconnected in that an individual is often committed to a family, a friend and/or life goals; these give boundaries and meaning. Fiske (2010) suggests individuals are motivated to fulfill five core social motives: understanding the world, trusting in a just and fair world, belonging to groups, controlling our environment by understanding action and consequence, and self-enhancement. Thus, a connection between self-healing personalities and the related traits of control, commitment, challenge, trust, devotion, and sense of coherence.
Another link between personality and behavior is fulfillment and playfulness. Among all the other human activities, playfulness provides fulfillment which every individual tries to get in life. Playfulness is a key source of our lives meaning since most of the important and interesting things are as a result of their playfulness in our lives. An individual who has a playfully light attitude is also creative which goes along with antithesis, perseverance, and endurance with the environment. With fulfillment and playfulness, one can alternate between fantasy and imagination in addition to a rooted sense of reality. With fulfillment and playfulness, an individual has a remarkable ability to adapting to almost any environment.
References
Friedman, H. S. (2008). The multiple linkages of personality and disease. Brain, behavior, and immunity, 22(5), 668-675.
Friedman, H. S., & Schustack, M. W. (2016). Stress, Adjustment, and Health Differences. In Personality: Classic theories and modern research (6th ed.) (pp. 275-295). Pearson.
Fiske, S. T. (2009). Social beings: Core motives in social psychology. John Wiley & Sons.
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