ME, BUT BETTER, my book about personality change, is out now. If you haven’t yet, please pick up your copy today. And if you’ve read the book, it would mean the world to me if you could leave an Amazon review. Thank you!
Some news! I’m starting an occasional podcast, Why We’re Like This, consisting of interviews with personality experts who can shed light on, well, why we’re like this! Why do we humans do the things we do? Want what we want? React to adversity in some ways and not others? Fall in love with that person, but not this person. I’m hoping to probe these questions and more from the brilliant minds whose studies I mine for my books and articles.
Today’s inaugural episode is with Shannon Sauer-Zavala, a psychologist at the University of Kentucky. I first interviewed Shannon about her work on something called the Unified Protocol, which is a treatment that aims to help people reduce their level of neuroticism, the personality trait that underpins both anxiety and depression, rather than targeting anxiety, depression, OCD, or another ailment individually. Shannon has since expanded her work to helping people change other personality traits, beyond neuroticism, so I thought it was a perfect time to call her back and talk all things personality change. Plus, we were on CBS together!
In our interview we cover what your feelings do and don’t mean, why replaying anxious thoughts can make you less sensitive to them, and why sometimes, purposefully bringing on anxiety can be good for you.
Some other highlights from our conversation:
Olga: Do you ever get pushback on the idea of personality change?
Shannon: People misunderstand what personality is. They think it's their sense of humor, their values, like their tastes. I could see why you would think that. You know, “it's my essence.” No, it's your characteristic way of thinking, feeling, and behaving.
Olga: When would it be a good idea to change your personality?
Shannon: When there's something that's getting in the way of a client living in accordance with their values, with a particular goal that they have.
Olga: What is the difference between having depression and anxiety and having a neurotic personality?
Shannon: [With high neuroticism], it's not just that you feel anxiety, it's that you make changes to your life. So maybe you start checking to make sure that there's no typos in your email. And then you check again and again. And all of a sudden it takes you 35 minutes to send a two line email. That's where we're starting to see what we'd call impairment.
A lot of times people are like, “well, if I'm anxious, then I won't be able to do it.” And that's not a thing. You do lots of stuff when you're anxious. It's not ideal or it doesn't feel great, but you can do it.
Olga: Can you talk about like the different elements of the Unified Protocol and how they all come together to help people with neuroticism?
Shannon: [Regarding one part of the UP, called emotional exposures]: There's no better way to show that emotions aren't dangerous, that you can tolerate them, that they're just a part of being alive, than by deliberately bringing them on purpose. And that's exposure, right? So if I want to have a job that requires me to speak in meetings or to give presentations, then I gotta get cool with public speaking.
And so an exposure would be to publicly speak, maybe for our friends, maybe for a bunch of therapists at the practice, and kind of work up a hierarchy until we learn that I can do things even when I feel anxious. Because a lot of times people are like, “well, if I'm anxious, then I won't be able to do it.” And that's not a thing. You do lots of stuff when you're anxious. It's not ideal or it doesn't feel great, but you can do it.
Olga: What is the middle ground between beneficial and non beneficial anxiety? When I was working on my book and experimenting with reducing neuroticism, I was like, “well, if I didn't have anxiety, I wouldn't get anything done.” For people who think like that, what would you say to that answer?
Shannon: If you've always overworked, if you've always double-checked, you don't have any evidence of what happens if you don't. My favorite exposure for working with people like this, is, I call it “do 80 % of your best job.” Do that. It's so uncomfortable. Send an email with a typo.
Olga: How can you help people increase agreeableness, which is a trait that not a lot of people want to increase and that is also really hard to change?
Shannon: [One thing we do is] called dimensions of trust. So we have people list out important people in their lives and then they have to rate them on like, “would trust to pick them up from the airport, would trust to watch my kid, would trust to pay me back … I would trust this person to be supportive and not a jerk if I told them I was upset about something.” Often what we find is that trust is not black or white, that different people in your life can fulfill different roles and you can get your needs met across a breadth of relationships, not just one … And our data suggests that agreeableness increases.
Some resources mentioned on the show:
