Mental Health Training

Experiencing occasional anxiety is a normal part of life, but you are not alone if you have experienced a mental health challenge over the past few years.

We were already in an epidemic of anxiety before the pandemic, and those rates have continued to climb. The international prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25 per cent in the first year of the pandemic, according to the World Health Organization.

Faced with this crisis, the mental health field offers a few suggestions. The presiding agreement is that our mental health struggles are the result of a chemical imbalance written in our DNA. 

The implication is that our anxiety is chemical, and our serotonin level, the feel-good hormone, is determined by our genetic destiny. Mental healthcare professionals offer medications and therapy to change our cognitive rituals to lift our suspected serotonin deficiency.

But what if these options don’t work for you?

While our current offerings help some people, the inaccessibility of therapy is at an all-time high. Far too many people were struggling with their mental health and experiencing disappointing results with medication.

Focusing on brain chemistry has led us to overlook what impacts our mood and behaviour; the body plays a critical and often overlooked function in mental health. This can come as good news for those who have not found satisfactory relief from medication and therapy.

The determinants of our mental well-being go beyond our genes and brain chemistry to include inflammation, gut health, sleep, nutrition, hormones, chronic limbic hyperarousal because of unresolved trauma, and even having our fundamental human needs for community, nature, meaning, and purpose go unmet. 

If we do have what is known as a chemical imbalance, it is probably a downstream consequence of these other states of imbalance.

In other words, anxiety is not all in your head; it’s based mainly on the body, where it should first be addressed.

I believe there are two types of anxiety: genuine anxiety (or purposeful anxiety) and avoidable anxiety.

Genuine anxiety is our inner compass nudging us to pay attention to what’s not right in our personal lives, our communities and the world. It’s not something to suppress or pathologise, and it’s not what’s wrong with us — it’s what’s right with us when we can viscerally connect to what’s wrong in the world.

With genuine anxiety, our symptoms communicate something to us that should be heard and honoured. Instead of asking, “how can I stop feeling so anxious,” we should ask, “what is my anxiety telling me?” There’s often a call to action baked into our genuine anxiety, and when we let our uneasiness fuel purposeful action, we don’t feel so mired in our anxiety.

On the other hand, avoidable anxiety is often as simple as our body getting tripped into a stress response, which transmits a signal to the brain telling us something is wrong. 

And the human brain worries and fears everyday situations.

Your anxiety checklist.

When I work with patients, I start with avoidable anxiety — the low-hanging fruit. We come up with an avoidable anxiety inventory. In a moment of peak anxiety, this list can cue them to reflect on possible causes of a sudden stress response taking over their body, help them identify the particular avoidable anxiety that might be occurring, and understand its straightforward remedy.

An avoidable anxiety inventory could include the following:

• Hunger
• Sleep deprivation
• Being over-caffeinated
• A hangover (what is known as “hang-xiety”)
• Gut issues
• Inflammation
• Long stretches of being sedentary
• Chemical fallout after consuming highly processed food
• Late luteal phase (the days before the bleeding phase of the menstrual cycle)
• Inter-dose withdrawal (the pharmacologic low-point when you’re due for your next dose of a psychiatric medication)

Ellen Vora is an integrative psychiatrist in New York City, and the author of “The Anatomy of Anxiety.”

A previous podcast discussed how jet-lag medication was used to treat young people for sleep problems. A dietary supplement containing melatonin was readily available in health shops throughout the United Kingdom until it was banned. In some cases, melatonin supplements may also contain serotonin. Be mindful that the human body can make melatonin from the enzymatic conversion of serotonin into melatonin. There have been reports of poisoning in children who needed hospital care, and several young children died from a melatonin overdose.  

Five of the seven deaths occurred in children younger than one year old. There have also been further concerns about how it might affect a child’s growth, development, and well-being, particularly during puberty. Studies found that morning sleepiness, drowsiness, and perhaps increased urination at night are the most common side effects that occur while taking melatonin. 

Always talk with your paediatrician about the proper dose and timing of melatonin for your child.  And remember, it should be something other than a good bedtime routine, young or old.

Let’s start by looking at this hormone in more detail. 

An article by Amelia Nierenberg wrote in the New York Times states that most people think of melatonin as a natural sleep aid, like chamomile tea in pill form. But melatonin is also a hormone that our brains naturally produce, and like it or not, hormones, even in minuscule amounts, they can have a potent effect throughout the body.

“There are some clinical uses for it, but not the way that it’s been marketed and used by the vast majority of the public,” said Jennifer Martin, a psychologist and professor of medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Experts strongly urge people to consult their doctor or a sleep specialist before taking melatonin, partly because the supplement does not address many underlying health problems that disrupt sleep. Anxiety can cause insomnia, as can a host of other potentially serious ailments, such as sleep apnoea, restless legs syndrome or mood disorders like depression, that may require medical treatment. In short, any stressor, such as sleep apnoea, chronic infections, allergies or psychological-emotional, can therefore raise cortisol levels.  

Melatonin and cortisol are in an opposite relationship; when melatonin is high, cortisol should be low and vice versa. When either of these gets out of balance, our ability to sleep is affected.

Melatonin, however, is relatively inexpensive and readily available at local pharmacies in the United States. However, in the United Kingdom and other countries, it typically requires a prescription, and many people will go out and buy it on their own. So what’s the best approach to taking melatonin? Here’s what experts had to say.

How does melatonin work?

Melatonin, often referred to as the molecular expression of darkness, is a hormone the pineal gland produces in response to darkness that regulates the sleep-wake cycle. During the day, the gland does not create melatonin. After the sun sets, darkness triggers it to secrete the hormone into the bloodstream to bind to receptors in various tissues and therefore enforce circadian rhythms causing drowsiness and other signals that it’s time to sleep. Melatonin is light sensitive and will react to morning light exposure when our brain is signalled to pull back on melatonin release. Morning light also signals the brain to release cortisol, our awake and defence hormone against potential predators. 

During the day, the brain’s pea-sized pineal gland remains inactive. A few hours before our natural sleep time, as it gets dark outside and the light entering our retina fades, the gland switches on to flood the brain with melatonin.

There shouldn’t be any surprise that melatonin is sometimes called the ‘hormone of darkness or ‘vampire hormone’” because it comes out at night,

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Helping your child sleep better.

The number of children being prescribed the previous jet lag hormone melatonin to help their child sleep has nearly tripled in the past seven years.

Melatonin is indeed not a sleep hormone but a biological marker of darkness.” For example, in humans and other diurnal animals, the release of melatonin into the bloodstream helps prepare the body for sleep. 

A recent study from the Netherlands suggested that teenagers’ sleep problems can improve after just one week by limiting evening exposure to light-emitting screens on mobile phones, tablets and computers. 

Overexposure before bedtime to blue light emitted from devices can affect the brain’s clock and the production of the melatonin hormone, resulting in disrupted sleep time and quality.

 So is sleep medication being overused by children?

Speaking to Colin Espie, a professor of sleep medicine in the Nuffield department of clinical neuroscience at the University of Oxford, is one of many leading experts worried by this trend. “We seem to be socialising our youngsters into the idea that sleep is difficult, and you need tablets for it,” he says. Instead, he explains, our focus should be on helping them to establish healthy sleep patterns at home.

As stark new NHS figures show, children are experiencing an epidemic of sleeping problems amid a sharp decline in their mental health triggered by the pandemic. Insomnia can exacerbate an underlying mental or physical health problem. 

Emma Thomas, YoungMinds’ chief executive, said: there is alarming pressure young people face with their mental health, with many experiencing isolation, loneliness, and reduced support caused partly by the pandemic.

Here are some valuable tips. 

Prepare children’s minds for sleep (even your three-year-old can meditate)

If we want children to sleep naturally, teaching simple, mindful noticing skills can be helpful, says Dr Guy Meadows, co-founder and clinical lead at the London clinic Sleep School. At Sleep School, children as young as three are taught to meditate. “You don’t tell them they’re meditating and put their favourite teddy on their tummy, lie on the floor with them, and they just watch the teddy go up and down.” It calms the mind, preparing it for rest.

You might also ask: “What are you grateful for today?” The important thing is that “we’re shifting the mind into a state more conducive to sleep”.

Don’t tell your nine-year-old to ‘go to sleep now!

We see an increase in sleep anxiety in children from the age of six, Meadows says — “an explosion of the mind’s ability to create worry”. Meanwhile, almost all parents tell their children, “It’s time to sleep!” or “Get to sleep now!” If a child is struggling, that can pressure them. Instead, say: “Let’s just see if you can rest.” Every child can rest. Rather than insist they sleep when you know they’re not ready, Espie asks: “How can my child have some quiet wakefulness?”

It’s essential to be a good role model, Meadows says. “You can’t expect your children to be off their devices if you’re sitting in bed watching Netflix, scrolling through your phone.”

Let your anxious seven-year-old sleep in your bed.

When primary-age children are anxious and sleepless, they often seek comfort in their parents’ beds. And many parents let them — for months. They often feel as if this is some failure. It’s the opposite, Espie says. No parent should feel guilty about this. Treating your child’s sleep issue as a shared responsibility takes effort and is the right thing to do. You’re guiding them towards better sleep habits. “This is about habit training,” he says.

In this situation, your child’s initial habit is struggling to settle and be awake alone in bed at night. They are stressed and need reassurance.” Letting him sleep with you solves that problem and breaks that habit.

Building upon a previous podcast on self-talk because many of us, when we read something, you hear a little voice in our head. Most of us would refer to this as an inner monologue. Just in case you didn’t know, many individuals don’t have one. 

Individuals often make assumptions about someone’s internal experiences, being identical for everyone, such as talking to themselves or seeing words in their heads as images.

According to psychology professor Russell Hurlburt, approximately 70% of people do not have one. However, if you are one of the ones that do not, don’t despair. He teaches this at the University of Nevada. “I’m convinced that inner speech is a robust phenomenon; if you use a proper method, there’s little doubt about whether inner speech is occurring at any given moment.

And I’m confident about the individual differences—some people talk to themselves a lot, some never, some occasionally.

An inner monologue happens when we use language but do not use our mouths; it’s merely thinking and hearing yourself without actually saying anything aloud.

Hurlburt concluded that only 30-50% of people had an inner monologue in a study that he carried out. Hurlburt took a sample of 30 students and then had them describe randomly selected experiences. 

“Five main characteristics emerged, each occurring in about a quarter of all samples (many samples had more than one characteristic). 

Three of those five characteristics may not surprise you: Inner speech occurred in about a quarter of all samples, inner seeing occurred in about a quarter of his specimens, and feelings only occurred throughout a quarter of all samples.”

Additionally, he said that subjects only experienced talking inwardly to themselves 26% of the time, and some never encountered it.

“Inner speech is the product of the default mode network of the brain,” explains Helene Brenner, a psychologist and creator of “My Inner Voice”. “It’s a network of different areas of the brain that become very active, all together, when we’re not engaged in doing anything task-oriented—when we’re just thinking or daydreaming. 

It also appears to be related to drug cravings, and it turns out it never entirely stops either—it just gets suppressed when we become more actively engaged. 

This phenomenon begins in childhood, as we develop language skills. Research believes that those who lack aphantasia (the ability to visualize) are tied into a lack of inner monologues. 

However, there are many theories about why- and more research is still being carried out.

Are you one of the few who have an inner monologue? Perhaps that little voice inside you speaks up every once in a while with tiny, insightful declarations. You would do well to listen to it with reflection and self-awareness. Let it be your friend and not your critic.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health, in 2020, young adults aged 18 to 24 had the highest prevalence of mental health issues.

Though mental health issues are common among Gen Z, indi­vid­u­als born between 1995 and 2010 — are grow­ing up in an age of increased stress and anxiety. And been called the most depressed generation are more likely to seek mental health counselling or therapy than their older counterparts.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted on Generation Z. The pandemic has radically changed their educational and social experiences. The American Psychological Association explains that psychotherapy, also known as talk therapy, will help people of all ages live a happier and healthier life with the assistance of a psychologist.

Talk therapy is the most common type of therapy today for mental health. It has numerous benefits, from helping you break unhealthy habits to pinpointing triggers.

However, everyone has varying needs regarding

mental health, and talk therapy isn’t the only outlet for the many different areas of mental health. Here are seven unique types of therapy that can help you take care of your mental health.

ART THERAPY

Sometimes words can’t encapsulate what you genuinely feel, but art can. Art therapy uses creative expression to explore your inner emotions, ultimately fostering healing and increasing self-esteem, self-awareness, and emotional resilience. Art therapy comes in many forms, but the most common are colouring, collaging, painting, photography, and sculpting.  

SAND THERAPY

Sand therapy is precisely what it sounds like. Through sand trays, patients create images that reflect their inner emotions. The presence of sand helps increase patient emotional expression, while also decreasing negative feelings that might arise while discussing traumatic events. Psychotherapists use this technique to assess and treat mental illnesses through a less intimidating space. Sand therapy can be used in cooperation with talk therapy or art therapy. Sand play Therapists of America can help you find a therapist specialising in this treatment closest to you.

GESTALT THERAPY

Rather than talking about experiences, gestalt therapy encourages patients to re-enact them. This therapy helps you dive deeper and experience your feelings rather than just talking through them. After re-enacting, therapists will ask you questions like, “What is going on right now” or “How does this make you feel?” This therapy helps you become more aware of your senses, accept the consequences of your behaviour, and learn to fulfil your needs while respecting others. 

DANCE/MOVEMENT THERAPY

You’re not alone if you need a random dance party to get you through the day — I’m right there with you! You can dance it out in this therapy instead of talking it out. Dance/movement therapy utilises movement to promote social, emotional, and physical responses to improve health and well-being. It taps into psychological and behavioural issues that speaking can’t address. Through exploring your mind-body connection, dance/movement therapy can help you overcome depression and anxiety, combat eating disorders, improve body image, and relieve everyday stress.  

Techniques of this therapy include: 

• Mirroring is the movement of others to develop empathy or to see a reflection of your feelings.
• Using dance to demonstrate a struggle in your life as a way to work through it and celebrate your overcoming it.
• Make a gesture, the therapist told you to do, so you can observe it mindfully and become more aware of your body.

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As the Christmas holiday is approaching, many consider it a magical and charming time for adults and children alike. However, it’s the least wonderful time of the year for sunlight.

Winter blues or seasonal affective disorder?

As many as one in five Americans report “winter blues” beginning around this time of year, making you feel more cranky and lethargic. For about one in twenty Americans, symptoms increase to a seasonal affective disorder (use the mnemonic word SAD to remember). 

It has been estimated that 10 to 15 per cent of Britons also struggle through Autumn and winter and suffer many of those symptoms, but are not clinically diagnosed as having depression.

A seasonal affective disorder (SAD) is caused by prolonged exposure to darkness and cold temperatures, and those shifts disrupt our neuroendocrine systems, particularly the hormones that regulate moods.

Traditionally, in the post-Agricultural era, human societies harvested crops in late summer and preserved foods in the fall or Autumn, depending on which side of the pond you lived.

Then pseudo-hibernation, staying comfortable and warm indoors with family in the winter. That annual cycle of birth, growth, harvesting and death is part of why so many societies have holidays relating to death, for example, in Día de Muertos, this time of year is the opportunity to remember loved ones who have died and honour their memory.

Sadly, for most current employment routes, less sunlight doesn’t typically equate to fewer working hours. Psychologists say that there is generally a sliding scale of seasonal sadness. At the lowest level, it makes us overeat, oversleep, and be grumpy.

Winter blues typically involve brief, low-level symptoms that don’t impact your day-to-day life. You might occasionally feel melancholic or tired, but those symptoms resolve quickly, if symptoms interfere with your ability to be productive and enjoy life during this stretch, seek help.

In contrast, you maintain typical mental health throughout most of the year but exhibit depressive symptoms simultaneously each year, most commonly in winter, thus only pointing towards A seasonal affective disorder.

Symptoms of a seasonal affective disorder include depression, listlessness, loss of interest in activities you used to enjoy, increased appetite (particularly craving carbohydrates and gaining weight), hopelessness or guilt, difficulty concentrating, weight gain, fatigue, excessive sleep and decreased sociality.

A point of curiosity, a high-sugar diet is associated with higher rates of mood and anxiety disorders and a tentative link to clinical depression. In disparity, sleeping well can work wonders in helping to boost our moods.

However, if these symptoms rise to a level where you feel you can’t control them with home remedies, or they disrupt your life to the point where you can’t function, it’s time to see a medical professional. You may need therapy, medication or other alternatives to help control your symptoms.

Strategies for seasonal affective disorder

Try light therapy

Brighten up your space

Create a routine

Get moving

Practice meditation and gratitude

Make a phone call that matters

Look on the bright side of life

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Positive Self Talk

Self-talk: 

How often do you hear that little voice in your head tell you that you aren’t good enough? Negative self-talk can hinder your progress in life and hold you back from fulfilling your dreams. There are ways to turn your inner voice into a positive one.  Follow the ten tips below and create a new positive and pleasing voice that will build your confidence and improve your life.

Pledges:  

Positive affirmations can help program your mind to speak in a cheerful voice more often. They are positive statements written in the present tense. You should say them out loud first thing in the morning when you wake up and just before you go to sleep at night, as these are the times when your brain is most receptive. Regular repetition throughout the day will reinforce the positive pledge and help them to become second nature.

Awareness:  

It’s essential to be aware of that voice in your head. Listen to what and how it is talking to you. If it is constantly negative, then you need to take action to turn it into a supportive and positive voice. Listen carefully, and when you catch a malicious thought, turn it into an optimistic statement instead.

Meditation:

Regular contemplation can help you develop greater power over your thoughts and emotions. You will learn how to listen carefully and to quieten your inner voice. This will help you create a sense of calm and peace, lessening stress and anxiety. As you gain greater control over your mind, you will be able to silence the negative voice when it starts to speak.

Be Appreciative:   

Think of at least three things you are grateful for daily. It’s all too easy to lose yourself in the day’s negative aspects and give in to the negative voice in your head. Instead, focus on the positive and be grateful. Write them down in a journal to remember them and revisit them if needed.

Little acts of kindness, it suggested, are not only contagious but also restorative.

Change Your Mindset:  

Catastrophic thinking can be all too easy and take over in times of stress or anxiety. Instead of thinking of all the adverse outcomes, stand back and look at the problem from a different point of view. Creating a positive image within your mind will set up neural pathways to help you reach your goals. The more you reinforce this mental image, the more routes will be created. If information is available online to help you with your vision, use it to your advantage.

Distance Yourself: 

Create some distance between yourself and your emotions. A practical yet straightforward way to do this is to think in the third person. So instead of saying to yourself, “I’m angry with myself because…”, say, “You’re outraged.

Why?” A study by Ethan Kross, author of chatter, the voice in our heads, found that participants could regulate their emotions and reduce hurt by creating psychological distance.

Change the script

You are still getting caught up in negative thoughts. Listen to what you say, rephrase the thought more positively, challenge the negative assumptions, and look for solutions.

I don’t do that:  

One simple change you can make is to use the phrase “I don’t” instead of, “I can’t”. By saying “I don’t” you are taking responsibility and ownership of your thoughts. If you are trying to lose weight, then instead of saying, “I can’t eat cake” say, “I don’t eat cake”. The power of this approach was found in a study by Vanessa Patrick at the University of Houston.

Address your emotional and cognitive needs

When individuals need support, they are usually trying to fulfil two elements. These may be emotional needs or tangible advice about moving on or gaining closure. Managing both conditions is vital to your ability to calm the mind and reduce the inner chatter. 

Use Neuro-linguistic programming NLP, Coaching or Hypnotherapy:  

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Overcome Obstacles by Removing Self-Doubt

People doubt themselves and their abilities. When it becomes a chronic situation, it can hold people back from getting what they want. Confidence will break through the barriers caused by obstacles.

You need to recognize when an obstacle is holding you back. Sometimes, people make excuses for their situations and pretend like they don’t exist.

For instance, you could be faced with a family member who has a substance abuse problem. It’s difficult to approach the person, and people ignore that a problem exists. They just keep pretending as if the person does not have a problem with the hope that the situation will resolve itself.

However, the person may be crying out for help and is looking for someone who has the courage to stand up to their addiction. If you are in that position, you may want to find ways to find that strength. The addict may resist you and may do so for some time.

But, if they know you care, and you keep at it to confront the situation, they do hear it deep down, especially if they really are looking to get help. You do have to be aware if they don’t want help, your efforts will not amount to much, unfortunately.

Self-doubt can also cripple you when others don’t have confidence in you. For instance, if your manager has reasons to doubt your abilities, he is constantly going to be harping on at you about your work.

This may cause you to doubt yourself and the situation will continue in a nasty loop. In such cases, you need to find out why he feels this way and try to work with him to help figure out what you can do to alleviate the situation.

Just having this meeting can show your manager you have confidence, which could be the catalyst to turn around the situation.

Confidence is going to be your greatest ally when trying to overcome self-doubt. This isn’t easy for everyone to come to grips with, and it does take courage. But, once you gain confidence, you will find there is no stopping you.

Dealing with most obstacles will become easier for you, which will lead to you succeeding more often. Many people find that after they get past a certain situation, they wondered why it took them as long as it did. It doesn’t matter, though.

As long as you eventually gain that confidence, you can make happen whatever you need to.

Six Beneficial Ways to Deal with Critical People

Constructive criticism is fine, but some people are so relentlessly negative that they can suck the joy out of life. No matter what happy news you might have, they are guaranteed to find the cloud to fit your silver lining. 

Here are 6 strategies you can use to deal with hypercritical people. 

Don’t Take It Personally

It’s a safe bet that it's not you, it's them. Some people just hug their negativity around them like a security blanket, and it colours their view of the world. They criticize everything because that suits them. Watch how they treat other people. It’s guaranteed, they criticize everybody, not just you. 

Listen to The Message

Is the person obscuring the message? Maybe your critical colleague or friend is tactless, or bad at expressing themselves rather than being mean. Try to see past the messenger to understand what is really being said, otherwise you might miss out on some valuable advice. 

Accept the Feedback

You can decide to make crucial feedback on its own merits. That is, as a source of honest feedback. At least with hypercritical people, what you see is what you get! If you can see past the blunt delivery, you may be able to find a kernel of truth that can improve the way you do things.

Deal with Your Discomfort

Criticism never feels good. Try to read your own discomfort as another source of information about what is being said. Does the negative feedback trigger a recognition deep within you? Maybe it subconsciously reminds you of a past event, but maybe there’s a ring of truth in the criticism. Sit with your discomfort and see what it’s telling you. 

If You Can’t Take the Heat, Stay Out of the Kitchen

If you can’t stand being criticized, then it’s up to you not to get into situations with people who are likely to criticize you. Don’t ask for advice or expose yourself to their negativity. They’re not likely to change, so you need to take control and avoid such conversations. Don’t share good news if you know they’ll throw cold water on it, and don’t seek their praise if you know you won’t get it. 

Stay Out of Their Way

You have a choice about how to deal with negative people. You can decide not to engage with their negativity, you can ignore them, or you can just avoid them altogether. If you must have contact with a negative person at work, for example, be helpful but don’t engage with them. Otherwise, it's up to you whether you want to have any contact with such negativity, or not. 

An individual’s personality traits define how they perceive the world around them. It is a set of characteristics and features that cause them to think, feel, and behave in a particular way.

Personality traits are characteristic of enduring behavioural and emotional patterns rather than isolated occurrences.

Although all aspects of your personality stem from both nature and nurture, many models of personality types attempt to explain why we are the way we are.

People have probably been fascinated by personality traits since the first Homo sapiens roamed the earth. The first profound personality test was created in 1915, during the First World War. 

Robert Woodworth’s “Psychoneurotic Inventory” was the forerunner of personality tests such as the Myers-Briggs test. 

Such personality qualities seem more consistent over time, being heavily loaded genetically. Five of the most studied factors that genetically influence someone’s personality: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Openness, Conscientiousness, and Neuroticism.  

Whereas, personality traits are the most common way we tend to describe human behaviour in people. According to Goldberg's five factors of personality, OCEAN model. We all have a combination of the five traits.

(Openness, Conscientiousness,  Extraversion,  Agreeableness, Neuroticism) or you could use the mnemonic CANOE instead, depending on your nautical preference.

It is important to note that each of the five primary personality traits suggested could represent a range between two polar extremes with the Jungian dichotomy. 

For instance, extraversion represents a continuum between extreme extraversion and extreme introversion. In the real world, most people lie somewhere in between.  

The five factors are not necessarily traits in and of themselves, but factors in which many related traits and characteristics fit.

For example, the factor agreeableness encompasses terms like generosity, amiability, and warmth on the positive side and aggressiveness and temper on the negative side. All of these traits and characteristics (and many more) make up the broader factor of agreeableness.

For example, those with the extraversion trait are described as outgoing, talkative, and gregarious. Conversely, introversion is a preference for solitary or limited social situations. It’s worth noting, though, that most people are ambiverts - enjoying their own company occasionally and social experiences at other times.

This is a tendency to be reliable, self-disciplined, and organized. Somebody high in conscientiousness may be a perfectionist, stubborn, and obsessed with neatness to an extreme degree, while those at the other end may be careless, undisciplined, and impulsive.

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