The popular articles concerning personality disorders are increasingly numerous. It is not unusual to meet people, outside of professional contexts, who speak of narcissistic, borderline or employee disorder with descriptions that do not then differ from the essential concepts (albeit with understandable cognitive limits).
In the professional field, spending many hours immersed in psychopathology, we run the risk of being very skilled in describing what is pathological losing sight of the characteristics of normality or even what makes a loved one.
Does it make sense to talk about amiability?
In initiating writing, the doubt arises if it is necessary to offer the reader a similar theme. Each company describes the rules it must respect and the fees to be proposed. Trying to be pleasant, pleasant, it is still to be considered a value Towards which to tend?
There will be people who do not matter to be lovable or pleasant. There are those who consider a guy beautiful and lovable who, singing, kicks the planters. Or such that speaks on what is saying the other with screams and decomposed gestures. Or an individual, with a gun tattooed on a coprolalic larynx, which praises the pantoclasty.
There are models, emulated by a not so small number of people, in which amiability is contrasted if not despised. So does it make sense to speak of amiability? I really think so and I will try to explain it in the end.
The characteristics of the loved one
The pleasantness or pleasantness of an individual in the social field – we exclude from reflection the dynamics of couple – rather than a specific personality structure is to be considered a set of characteristics that we find transversely in different personological types. An superordinate section that rests on some of the areas on display below.
The degree of trust In the relational approach it allows you to start the assumption that the intentions of the other are benevolent, at least until proven otherwise. The aprioristic idea that the other can be suspicious, dangerous or dishonest does not emerge in the first instance, thus maintaining Low levels of perceived threat.
THE’assertivenessfrankness and honesty in communicating with others allows you to adopt active styles that do not resort to manipulation and deception to achieve certain purposes.
There generositythe kindness and the consideration for the other constitute the foundations ofaltruism which orients their conduct not exclusively based on personal interests.
There cooperative capacity It is of particular utility in the management of conflicting situations. It preserves from implementing exasperated antagonism patterns, quarrelsome conduct or nourishing feelings of revenge.
There modestyunderstood as the conscience that personal realization always takes place within the frame of our real possibilities. It is a feature that refers to the concept that an individual has of himself (unlike the points listed above that concern interpersonal or social behaviors). Let’s say that arrogant, self -celebrating and self -exhorting styles, which besiege us from many sides, are not really a cure -all for the development of this stretch in the youngest.
There tendernessunderstood as the ability to formulate judgments or manifest behaviors by integrating the positive shades of an evolved emotion, it is usually kept in poor consideration (perhaps for fear that it is exchanged with childhood by those who put it in place) when it has a great relevance in determining the degree of pleasantness of a person.
The pardon (which is not synonymous with justification or oblivion) measures the response that a person puts in place when he suffers wrong. It allows you not to remain hooked to the past in its negative experiences
THE’mental elasticity It allows you to observe the situation from different points of view and adopt non -stereotyped and more adaptive answers.
There patience leads not to act their unpleasant emotions in immediacy.
THE’humor It allows to transmit and share positive emotions, reduce tension, as long as it is not used as a tool to denigrate or humiliate the other.
The ability to manage the feelings of loneliness And social disconnection in order to create and maintain the relational bridges efficient.
Keep a good emotional balancecontaining the oscillations within one range such as not to destabilize the other.
Pleasant people are still people
People who satisfy all these characteristics, keeping them constant over time, probably find them on the calendar, with the proper name preceded by a “San/Santa”. Maybe not even there. All the pictorial representations representing the scene of Jesus and the merchants of the temple come to mind.
We must not imagine the people considered pleasant as immune from negative feelings. These are not fanatic subjects of the “beautiful at all costs” nor osteners of light -heartedness as a trademark.
Instead they are people who experience all moods; The peculiarity is in the way they are developed.
Merit of how mom has made them nature and the early life experiences that they can, but not necessarily, have been propitious.
The biology of pleasantness
From a neurobiological point of view we know that when people deemed pleasant feel injured, their brain activates cognitive, emotional and motor areas in response to the threat.
The situation assessed as unpleasant determines one negative emotional response By activating the limbic system and the thalamus which, in turn, affect the circuit of salience (the importance that is given to the event and target to be monitored) identifying possible motor responses.
So far is what happens in any human being. Different will be the task of the prefrontal cortex that will inhibit any impulsive conductto modulate the underlying emotional states, to highlight positive experiences and formulate more functional forecasts.
It is still a brain that works in a certain way.
Can you improve your level of pleasantness?
Being a pleasant person could be evaluated in a statistical perspective: how many times are the interaction with the other, elements of intentional or perceived degrees from the outside.
It follows that everyone can actively do something to improve this trait and make sure that it emerges more frequently. Cognitive behavioral therapy, together with some third generation therapies, has developed different techniques to work on this aspect and indicates some things to do.
Practice mindfulness It helps to keep anchored in the “here and now” and develop concepts such as awareness, kindness, acceptance, not judgment, tolerance and patience
Look for to cultivate optimism. It is not a question of being positive or “seeing pink”, aspects that I first do not believe (and that at times I find irritating).
The scheme of the optimist is not based on the trust that everything will be fine but adopts more complex strategies: it limits the problem to a specific and defined area (so to speak, it does not extend it in a pervasive way to all its existence), considers it dependent on itself only in part (does not believe that everything that happens is exclusively his fault) and in any case considers the problem with a duration defined in time (which does not last an eternity).
Recognize rumination And don’t confuse it with logical thought. Ruminative thought – from anxious forms to the angry ones – is the basis on which a lot of psychopathology and traits of unpleasantness rests.
Exercise the forms of inner dialogue flexiblethat it is able not to trap in bias of reasoning such as jumping immediately to conclusions or seek only confirmation of their beliefs by avoiding everything that might disavow them
Know the assertive techniques and don’t forget to always keep them trained; The risk is that the passive or aggressive methods whose (apparently only) advantages are prevailing are known as the (certain) disadvantages in the long term. Understanding and respecting the other’s point of view while we expose ours is not simple or spontaneous, we must practice (and sometimes the results are partial even among the best).
Understand the usefulness ofhumor in our life and try to keep it active, using a long -range vision of things. Charlie Chaplin when he said that life is a tragedy if seen in the foreground, but a comedy if seen in the long field, already had some experience on the subject.
Don’t forget that smiling, using voice and gestures well are always important elements in determining levels of pleasantness
So does it make sense to try to be pleasant?
As we said at the beginning the pleasantness not that one of the constitutive elements of a personality. It is not a self -celebration of one’s beauty, it is not needed to emerge, it is not wanting to be pleasant at all costs.
It is the indirect result of many elements, mostly unaware.
It would be said that trying to be pleasant should be a matter of common sense, even if the latter is sometimes hidden for fear of common sense, a bitter manzonian reflection still current.
And if the common sense changes quickly, with increasingly kaleidoscopic models, it is even more difficult to identify styles of conduct capable of arousing in the other feelings of pleasantness. Trying to be pleasant is an act of love that is good first to those who put it in place.
To the pleasant people, and who cultivate the pleasantness, we must be infinitely grateful, with all our hearts, not only because they transmit beautiful sensations.
These people play a fundamental social role in maintaining a healthy interstitial fabric and capable of connecting all heterogeneous diversity.
These are the many people who do not impose themselves, who do not make noise, unaware of the fundamental role of social glue they have and of which I hope they can be aware. It is to them that I dedicate Borges’ wonderful poetry.
Who is happy that music exists on earth. Whoever discover with pleasure an etymology (…). A man and a woman who read the final triplets of a certain song. Who caresses a sleeping animal. Those who justify or want to justify an evil they have done to him. Who is happy that Stevenson is on earth. Whoever prefers that others are right. These people who ignore themselves are saving the world.
Jorge Luis Borges “The righteous”
