How Stress Impacts Personality Traits
Do you remember how you felt when you were really hungry or needed to use the restroom urgently? Can you remember the feeling of not being able to think about anything else because it seemed impossible to function?
Imagine living in that state 24/7. Some people are not fortunate to have adequate food, shelter, clothes, access to life-saving medicine, or enough money to live. People may be battling abuse on a daily basis or drug addiction.
This may seem obvious but being in a perpetual state of stress impacts the way we function in general and how we respond to people. The more factors creating stress in your life, the higher the levels of cortisol in the body. Some of these factors may include chronic illness (which you can read more about here) and insomnia – usually a side effect of a lot of these problems. If you don’t have basic necessities or you’re in constant pain, you usually cannot sleep well.
Since constant stress affects the ability to think clearly, over time it interferes with the way we interact with others, severely decreasing our ability to communicate positively and effectively. It is because we live in an unbearably stressful world it’s no wonder why we have a lot of conflict. For some people, stressful times will not persist and will eventually get better; for others they may constantly live in survival mode.
Click on the type to read more about how perpetual stress may affect each type and how to reduce the negative effects.