In a very real way, a merging-patterned person is stuck in the infant state: empty, helpless, and needing to be cared for.

The rigid pattern develops in people who are strongly identified with their inner critic, and for most rigid-patterned people, that identification remains in place for their entire lives. When their inner critic speaks, they hear it as their own voice. In a sense, the rigid pattern is the result of an inner critic that over-develops and grows into

TYPE ONE: The Perfectionist.

Because merging-patterned people are developmentally so young, they are not good at self care.

Enduring-patterned people need to develop autonomy and self-confidence so that they can complete the tasks of separation and individuation.

At the other end are milder but more chronic forms of trauma that cause problems in adulthood not through the creation of networks of personalities but by interfering with the developing relationship between the left-brain labeling and planning aspects of the self and the right-brain feeling and doing aspects of the self. This particular sort of di

Psychologists measure personality across five domains, which can be useful for writers doing character work to know. Those high in extraversion are gregarious and assertive, seekers of attention and sensation. Being high in neuroticism means you’re anxious, self-conscious and prone to depression, anger and low self-esteem. Lots of openness makes fo