We Are All a Mixture of Opposites

Examining our mash-up of emotions and behaviours gives us something to work with.

Key points:

• Psychologists are coming to recognise that personality is not fixed.
• We all exhibit contradictory behaviours at times.
• We can celebrate our different aspects and learn to alter behaviours that don’t help in certain situations.

Decades ago, I lived in a house in which my neighbour, Joanne, in the flat below was a senior nurse who worked in an operating theatre. Over time we became good friends. She told me how she was stern and scrupulous in ensuring that everything in her working environment which needed to be sterile was indeed kept sterile and that no stray items were ever where they shouldn’t be. Surfaces had to be left scrubbed and bare. The surgeons were terrified of her.

Yet, at home, her flat was a riotous jumble, discarded clothes thrown over chairs or on the floor, used breakfast bowls and mugs left teetering in the sink, drawers left hanging open after panicked searching for something lost, letters tossed aside any which way, regardless of importance. Those surgeons wouldn’t have believed it.

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