Personality Advantages, Challenges, Vulnerabilities

I really enjoy helping people maximize their personality styles, so they can cultivate their strengths and wisely manage their vulnerabilities. In fact, understanding and working with your personality is key to enhancing your quality of life.

Sometimes the unhappiness that brings someone into treatment is actually the result of a personality disorder.  That's the clinical jargon for longstanding, often recalcitrant patterns of ineffective or maladaptive ways of relating to other people. Individuals with personality disorders often report significant difficulties in forging relationships that are both satisfying and stable. Unlike patients who have discrete episodes of depression, mania, or anxiety, people with personality disorders tend to have difficulty identifying "pre" or "post" periods to their suffering:  Their difficulties have (almost) always been there.

All people -- yes, including those who don't meet criteria for a personality disorder -- have certain characteristics that remain stable over time and through which their current challenges are filtered.  A reserved, risk-averse person, for example, will experience workplace stress much differently than a gregarious daredevil.  Neither style is necessarily better, nor is either intrinsically pathological.  As your therapist, I will help you understand your typical, characteristic ways of handling success and adversity, and of dealing with other people in your life.  Together we can explore what aspects of your personality are advantageous, and which hinder you from your goals.