Something I’ve been reflecting on recently is how we become ourselves. It seems like quite an existential and somewhat confusing concept, considering that you have been and always will be you, but I’ve been thinking about this from the lens of personality development and our understanding of ourselves and it got me curious: What drives us to interact with the world in the way that we do? What drives our interests? Our friendships? Our political beliefs? Our values?  

How much of who I am is actually me, and how much has been shaped by my history? 

I became inspired to explore this after listening to a podcast episode with Dan Siegel where he talks about his research into the importance of both interpersonal and intrapersonal relationships on personality development. Siegel emphasises both nature and nurture as driving factors of personality development, with the most interesting suggestion being that personality development occurs while in the womb, with factors such as the parents experience, as well as the grandparents experience, having an effect on the child’s temperament, which can ultimately influence personality.  

I’m aware these a lot of concepts being thrown around here without much definitions so I’m going to start by defining what personality is. According to Allport (1937) personality describes how we are in the world, through a combinations of emotions, behaviours and thoughts. Personality spreads across all aspects of our lives and helps explain how we related to others as well as how we relate to ourselves internally. Yeomans (2025) defines personality as how we process experiences and take life in, including how we process and experience ourselves and others.  

When we talk about temperament we are talking about something that is distinct from personality and are characteristics that we are born with and not learned. Temperament is developed sub-cortically (before the development of our rational/ thinking part of the brain) and is responsible for things like our capacity to predict events, our ability for agency and our bonding networks. Siegel sums this up as the ABC’s of development, Agency, Bonding and Certainty. Siegel suggests that personality develops from our temperament. Our temperament isn’t necessarily genetic but it does develop in utero before we are born (Siegel, 2024).  

Importance of Attachment and Relationships 

Our relationships with our primary caregivers are important factor into our personality development as these early relationships help our brain create templates for future relationships. These relationships are used as the blueprint for our brains to learn from and are key data for our brain to begin to make sense and understand ourselves in relation to the world. Because we are all born with our own temperament, the impact of these relationships can vary depending on our capacity to make sense and understand them. For example two children can be brought up in the same household, with the same model relationship but can develop a different understanding of themselves and relationships due to their temperament and the meaning that their brains have made from it. A child’s early experience influences the development of the nervous system which can have an impact on how a person interpretates important information such as threat response and safety.  

As we grow older in our development our relationships continue to have an impact on our personality development. Kohut (1971) describes how our sense of self develops in relation to others, and as we continue to grown and build relationships this can then inform our view of self and development of our personality. For example, if we grow up around people who validate our experience and show interest in our lives we can develop self esteem and a positive view of ourselves, however if we are bullied or experience social isolation we may develop a view that we are not worthy of connection or develop a wariness of others. Being accepted by those around us has an evolutionary function and for most people we figure out what parts of ourselves are acceptable through a relational means. This does not mean that all personality is developed through our relationship with others, but it does acknowledge that these experiences can have an important impact.  

Can you change your personality? 

So, can we alter or change our personality after it has developed? The answer isn’t straight forward. If personality is influenced by temperament, attachment and our experiences, are we stuck with the person those experiences have created? I believe there are components to our personality that deeply imbedded in who we are as people but I don’t believe personality is a rigid concept. For example, someone who is introverted and prefers limited social interaction might struggle to become an extravert who spends all of their time around others. However, someone who struggles to be outgoing in large groups may find a means to express extroversion around the right group of people, in the right circumstances. Someone can remain recognisably themselves while becoming more emotionally regulated, socially confident and open.  

Perhaps it is less about changing the personality itself and more about changing the relationship we have to the patterns, behaviours and belief that make up our personality? 

Why is this important to therapy? 

The reason I find these ideas important in my client work is because clients often come with questions around “which part of this actually belongs to me? And which is something I’ve developed or inherited?”. Clients often come with behaviours, beliefs and personality traits that they find unacceptable or negative but find that they struggle to remove them for fear of losing a part of themselves. This creates an inner conflict that brings up questions around who they really are? 

“Is this just who I am?” “Is this just part of me that can’t change?”. These questions can be both confusing and distressing.  

While it can be hard at first, this is where some of the deepest work begins in the therapeutic journey. Where clients begin to separate themselves and their value as a human being from some of these element of personality. Is it the job of therapy to change people’s personality? Probably not, but the exploration does allow client to make these decisions themselves and move towards what they see as their core values. When we begin to understand what clients value in their life and how they are either moving towards or away from these values allows us to begin to see clearer the true nature of our being. I could write so much about the idea of core values and I think I’ll save it for another post. But exploring what we truly value in life, is in my eyes, the key to living a more fulfilling and fruitful existence.  

References 

Allport, G.W. (1937) Personality: A psychological interpretation. New York: Henry Holt & Co. 

Kohut, H. (1971) The analysis of the self. New York: International Universities Press. 

Siegel, D. (2024) in Hatterjee, R. (2024) ‘The science of personality: How to transform your life, find inner peace and become a better parent with Dr Dan Siegel’, Feel Better, Live More, 30 October. Available at: https://drchatterjee.com/the-science-of-personality-how-to-transform-your-life-find-inner-peace-and-become-a-better-parent-with-dr-dan-siegel/ 

Yeomans, F. (2025) in Puder, D. (2026) ‘Episode 234: Transference Focused Psychotherapy, Borderline Personality Disorder, Narcissism, with Frank Yeomans, MD’, Psychiatry & Psychotherapy Podcast, 22 February. Available at: https://www.psychiatrypodcast.com/psychiatry-psychotherapy-podcast/episode-234-transference-focused-psychotherapy-borderline-narcissism-frank-yeomans