PERSONALITY MARKERS IN EARLY LIFE

Environment has its own impact on the development of an individual's personality. Relationship between parents and the relationship between parents and their children matters a lot, as every person present in our environment contributes in modeling our personality in one way or another. Every relationship of our life has something to tell us, as relationships are like a mirror, which facilitates us to see a reflection of our attitudes, opinions, and most importantly how we seem to others. Why people like us? What makes them to hate us?

The last question always bothers a healthy mind as how one appears to others, what people think of me? How much trustworthy my attitudes are for them!

There are many factors that one can evaluate before assessing an individual’s personality. These factors are thought as predisposing factors for modifying one’s personality make over. Early relationships with siblings, social response on mischievous behaviors or on compliant attitudes, attitudes of our friends towards ourselves, bonding, social approval or persistent rejection in the family or outer settings are all the factors that can lead one to make basic templates in his or her mind . All these shape the way we think or see the world. From early times of life, these reactions, which we receive frequently from outside sources, engross such templates in our brains. By the time we grow up, these templates make us react, think and feel in a monotonous way for different people and in different settings.

We harbor fears and use defense mechanisms to come to play in accordance with the feeling of security that we have for our environment. The level of vulnerability that we feel within ourselves leads us to decide whether to trust or not to trust others. 

There are some pertinent behaviors that usually end up in psychiatry/psychology clinics in their early phases of life. 

These particular behaviors are precipitated earlier due to some common risk factors in life. These risk factors include parental discord or separation, poor parent-child relationship, history of physical, emotional or sexual abuse, lack of appreciation and praise, poor bonding in outer circles (friends, relatives, and neighborhoods).

These behaviors include persistent anger outbursts that are not in proportion with the trigger, repeated self-harming attitudes in the form of wrist slashing, overdose of sedatives or other measures that can threat others, manipulation in trivial matters, difficulty in setting boundaries in relationships which is manifested by enmeshed bonding alternating with episodes of fiercely despising the same individual, impulsivity, unable to stick on one decision, prone for verbal or physical abuse, gets easily bored from constructive or engaging activities, too much demanding approach and on slight refusal, a continuous effort to coerce others through extreme measures . There is a constant shift among friends circle; characterized by repeated jolts from idealization to extreme devaluation, instability in relationships and mood swings. These mood swings render one to think or act irrationally.

These individuals have problems in keeping themselves away from maladaptive coping strategies. During stressful times, as a way to deal with a particular situation, they are prone to acquire poor coping techniques and incline towards addiction, dependence, antisocial or reckless behaviors such as rash driving, gambling, sex games, truancy, teen-age pregnancy and homosexuality.

Identification of these behaviors should lead parents or care-takers to consult psychological assistance as soon as possible. Behavioral reinforcements by teachers, parents, elders and guardians are first hand methods in today’s life to deal with bad conduct or defiant attitudes of adolescents. But before all these measures can be considered, it’s crucial to inspect retrospectively the pre-existing social, environmental and developmental factors that a child found since the time he or she gained consciousness.

Sometimes, merely the correction of some triggering attitude by any family member abolishes the consequential bad behavior in a teen. 

So it’s not always the fact that the younger ones are wrong. Many times their behaviors represent an outcome of stimuli that they had found since their childhood. In most of these cases behavioral management takes major role as compare to mere medications.