In your life’s journey, you probably took a personality test such as Myers-Briggs or DISC. Your workplace or a former one may have asked you to take the test to see if you would be a good fit, or you sought after one to discover more about yourself.
The Enneagram Test is one of the popular self-discovery personality tests, that has become wildly popular again, and has made a resurgence in our daily conversations. It’s fun to see what your (and your friends’) results are.
Personality tests help to indicate what you’re motivated by or how you process your life and situations. I discovered one that I found particularly useful in helping to stay balanced in the mind and body.
When you have anxiety and other bodily reactionary emotions, they can help or work against your day and hinder your work. If you know your body’s health personality type, you can better impact your day.
Humans fall into one of three main health personality types based on your natural mind-body type according to Ayurveda. In preventative health, Ayurveda is a century old science of life way, based on living a healthy, balanced life.
We are all born predominantly with one certain body type or dosha. It’s helpful for you to know which one you are, so you can help prevent diseases from occurring in your body. There are three main types, that categorize each of us naturally as prone to anxiety, irritation/anger, or lethargy/tiredness. We all naturally carry traces of each of the other body type category, but they are not as prominent in us as one.
It’s beneficial to know which body type you are, because often we get imbalanced especially because of uncontrollable life situations and our own behavioral habits. We then have an opportunity to fix our imbalances so we can have a better, more fulfilling day and life.
Take me, for example. Over the years I’ve learned to turn my victim mentality to an abundant mindset and balanced life. I’ve learned to transform the way I perceive and handle anxiety that started for me at a young age in an anger expressive household.
Anxiety symptoms and frustration followed me and showed up again in work eggshell environments, leading to a panic attack in my early 20’s that could have been avoided had I been aware then of the internal mind-body wounds I carried and neglected.
In the same way, you can get informative awareness on your tendencies, so you can learn how to calmly thrive and better navigate anxiety or anger that shows up and robs life of joy, control and peace. It’s actually a fun discovery process.
These are the 3 natural feeling personalities that you can restore and transform:
1.Anxious Personality
If you have an anxious body type, you have a naturally tendency to react with anxiety, panic or worry. Not everyone in the world suffers from anxiety symptoms, but according to the National Institutes of Health, 19% of the U.S. population has had an anxiety disorder in the past year.
Naturally prone anxious people tend to be light sleepers who can’t shut their brains off from worry. If that describes you, your sleep is inconsistent. One night you can get 6–7 hours of restful sleep, and then 4 hours another night.
Anxious personalities can fear uncertainty and let that build into their worry. They tend to prefer variety or be pickier about selections. Usually these types have a thinner or even slender body frame, and can get hungry easily. If this is your type, you can also feel cold easily in your general body or in specific areas.
In an imbalanced state, your minds can be forgetful and can lead you to jump from task to task, as reminded or prompted. You can also have daily stomach issues, including gas, bloating, constipation, or dry skin patches in certain places on your body.
If you’re the anxious type, you’ve likely experienced anxious reactions and feelings, more than once or throughout your life.
2. Irritated Easily Personality
If you have an irritated personality, you have characteristics of a “Type A” driven individual who is action oriented and can express feelings of anger or frustration easily. You can have a short fuse. This body type is usually the natural medium frame or more athletic body build.
You can be impatient, critical and intolerable of other people’s incompetencies or a child’s misbehavior. You can easily show heartburn or acid indigestion. If you’ve been popping Tums or Rolaids in your body regularly or all your life, this could be a sign you fall in this body personality type.
In an imbalanced state, you can overheat easily, sweat often, or get hot flashes. It’s best to avoid anything that will add heat to your body such as going outside on a hot day, entering a sauna room, or eating spicy, hot foods. These will only aggravate your condition or inflammation.
You can have urgent or diarrhea tendencies and be running to the bathroom more than usual. This behavior can be confused with anxiety, but it’s not the same. Combatting an anger/irritation imbalance requires different techniques than soothing anxiety.
3.Sleepy Personality
If you have a naturally lethargic or tired personality, you may desire deep sleep constantly and may be very good at it (the opposite of an anxious personality). Other characteristics of this less anxious type is they are the happy-go-lucky people in life. They may have a larger body frame or more heavy-set body type. They may not move as fast as the irritated personality (“Type A” individuals).
If this describes you, in an unhealthy or imbalanced state, you have a tendency to withdraw from the world, or carry unhealthy excess (stuff or weight). In a sense, you tend to hide or keep distant from the world with your material things or your physical body. People who live minimalist lifestyles or do regular heavy workouts, are usually not in this category.
How to Start to Fix or Restore Your Imbalances
If you learn which body type you naturally are, then you have a chance to correct or soothe your imbalances that can happen at any time or season. These days especially it’s easier to see anxiety in anxious natural body types.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say based on the descriptions above, you have a naturally dominant anxious mind and are worrying excessively (or you know someone who does). This is the normal tendency for an anxious type that can get strongly out of balance relative to your or that other person.
If with the anxiety, you also have a lethargy imbalance, then you have a second or multiple imbalances in your life. Your lethargy sign could be it’s hard to get off the couch, or up and out the door to go to work (even if you’re looking forward to the day). You could also have a third imbalance feeling daily irritation or annoyance over someone or a group that rubs you the wrong way, or be in a job that has aspects that bother you.
If you have all three imbalances happening, your anxious mind will naturally dominate over the other imbalances you are experiencing as you are predominantly anxious in nature. So you want to soothe or pacify the anxiety first.
But if you are experiencing a calm mind (no or low worry relative to your usual worry life), then you will want to soothe or fix your other imbalances. These other imbalances, such as excessively feeling daily irritation can be strong and take over life and situations, so they are just as important to pacify as any anxiety.
Point #1:
- Your imbalances can be in the other body types that aren’t dominant to you.
Point #2:
- Your imbalances require different solutions to soothe. I think you learned these two points from the above information and example.
Point #3:
- Your mind-body connect. So you can have anxious or irritated thoughts, or a sleepy mind, showing up in your body as distress or health ailments. As an example, if you were to think of disorganized room or pile of stuff that you have, and that sits as overwhelm in your mind, that could start an anxious chain reaction in your body.
If you are facing anxious body symptoms such as heart palpitations, trembling, or upset stomach, and your mind has a lethargy or irritation imbalance, you want to calm the anxiety first.
Between worry (in your mind) and anxious body symptoms, you want to use your external senses to correct the imbalance or bring your mind-body back to a balanced level relative to how you usually experience life for optimized living.