Watch any film or read any book and you see various personality archetypes emerge.

Take 90s TV hit Friends. There’s the joker (Chandler), the quiet geeky one (Ross), the neat and tidy sensible one (Monica), the emotional “quirky” one (Phoebe), and so on.

But did you know that there are six fundamental personality types? Knowing yours helps you understand your response to life’s pleasures and its challenges.

Let’s dive into a bit more detail…

Most of us display two of these personality types:-

• “Performing” mode – where we try to meet others’ expectations
• “Survival” mode – which we adopt in response to stress.

THE ENTHUSIASTIC OVER-REACTOR

(Performing)

The life and soul of the party. Enthusiastic over-reactors are imaginative, emotionally responsive with high energy. They makes great hosts and great mates to have around.

They engage through feelings and it is important to them that others care about their feelings. They are often nurturing or playful.

Their main driver is to please others – making them great hosts; they equate attention with love. They were most likely parented with an emphasis on socialising and keeping people happy, and so learnt to be emotionally responsive and pleasing, and discount their thinking.

Problems can occur when they are over-reactive, emotionally unstable, lose themselves in others and have inappropriate boundaries. They meet problems with feeling rather than thinking or acting so they can be seen as immature, self centred, and vain. They are often uncertain of their own reasoning. They may hide anger for fear of hurting others, and their response to challenge is to escalate feelings.

Their main learning areas for personal development are:-

• Realising they can be important and loved when not getting attention, and when others have space to shine as well.
• Learning that feeling or sensing something does not necessarily make it true.
• Learning to feel good about thinking and therefore start to claim their personal power. They need recognition for thinking and accomplishment as they often feel more lovable than competent.

THE RESPONSIBLE WORKAHOLIC

(Performing)

The Responsible Workaholic is high achieving, conscientious, reliable, capable, and grown up.

They were parented with an emphasis on achievement, equating worth, value and subsequent performance with approval, with a major emphasis on ‘doing things right’ and perfection. They learnt to believe that their parents will think more of them if they are achieving.

They are happy to be on their own, relate better 1:1 and will initiate relationships in this way.

Problems occur when they are overly responsible, overly inhibited and tense. They are anxious if not busy, their own worst critic. Sometimes they have rituals, and can expect perfection from others. Their response to challenge is usually to be super reasonable. They want to “Be Perfect” and are driven by “shoulds” – and so their needs often go unmet, as they did in childhood.

Their main areas for personal development are:-

• Accepting they are good enough; perfection is impossible.
• Learning how to simply “be”; how to relax and have fun. They need to realise how hard they are being on themselves and allow the child in them room to play, as well as recognition for simply existing.
• They often obsess instead of feeling: getting in touch with their emotions and allowing themselves to express them is key.

THE PLAYFUL RESISTOR

(Performing)

The Playful Resistor has lots of child energy and likes to have fun. They are engaging and enjoy being in a group, but often prefer others to initiate. Their dress may be a bit sloppy or incongruous. 

The Playful Resistor tends to see what is wrong, including with themselves. They criticise themselves internally and then fight back against themselves. Their response to threat is to whine, complain and struggle. They often pout or sulk, and resist any direction from others – they hate being told what to do!

They were parented in a manner that was over-controlling and probably quite competitive. The child had to struggle to survive and learnt to do things their way. Therefore problems can occur when they engage in pointless power struggles; they fight control even when there is none. Their behaviour can be aggressively passive.

They often want to be taken care of but don’t make their desires clearly known and then complain when they’re not. They can be passive and dependant in relationships too, liking lots of attention but often getting it in negative ways – substituting bickering for intimacy.

Areas for self-development are:-

• Lessening their ‘either-or’ viewpoint – learning that common ground and cooperation can be found.
• Understanding they do not have to struggle but can ask for what they want.
• Allowing themselves to grieve the loss of parents not meeting their needs is powerful, and can allow them to let go of power struggles and look for people and ways to co-operate instead.
• Developing a sense that they are free to be different and still be OK.

THE BRILLIANT SCEPTIC

(Surviving)

They are clear, sharp thinkers, organisers and like to maintain control. They are bright, highly sensitive and perceptive.

The Brilliant Sceptic seldom misses a thing, and are good organisers. Their clothing is generally conservative and immaculate. Generally they prefer to be on their own or with one or two people.

They often having unrealistically high expectations of themselves that actually cover feelings of insecurity and inadequacy. Their belief is that if they can control themselves and others they will be OK; therefore they spend lots of energy in being careful and trying to control everything. They were parented in a manner that was inconsistent, and unpredictable, and often their boundaries were intruded upon.

As a child they learnt to become cautious and wary, therefore they tend to make contact with others and then pull away. They can also be aggressive, competitive, grandiose or rigid in their thinking. They may tend to project and blame and can be a little envious and suspicious. If scared they attack; their response to threat is to attack with razor sharp intellect.

Problems occur when they misperceive stimuli and assume their perception is true and then develop or act on it. They are attempting not to feel embarrassed or humiliated and are usually trying to do the right thing. Because they equate criticism with shame they attempt to do everything in a way that no one will find fault. This can make them uptight, disapproving of playful behaviour and afraid to relax.

Key learnings for the Brilliant Sceptic are:-

• To reality-check their perceptions rather than assume they’re true.
• They may struggle with intimacy; perceiving being close as dangerous so protect themselves or feel that they have to protect others from them.
• Practising and learning to trust and relinquish some control.
• Learn to relax and enjoy themselves.

THE CREATIVE DAYDREAMER

(Surviving)

They are creative, artistic, kind, supportive and respectful of others’ space. They are deep thinkers, happy on their own, and want others to initiate contact.

Their main driver is to “Be Strong”.  They don’t like small talk but like non-verbal intimacy.

They can, however, get lost in daydreams; they may be overly compliant or behave with withdrawn passivity. They are often in dependant relationships and can take on the role of carer.

They were likely parented in a manner that was underdone, tentative, where as a child they withdrew so as not to place demands on parents (the parents may have been overwhelmed or preoccupied and the child somewhat emotionally neglected). So they grow fearful of making demands; their fear is that if they reach out the other person will be overwhelmed by their needs. Their response to threat is to keep a low profile.

Their main self-development areas are

• Learning to assert themselves and their right to take up time and space.
• Learning that it is ok to feel and have needs.
• Realising that they have a right to be heard and for others to take them into account.

THE CHARMING MANIPULATOR

(Surviving)

Charming and charismatic, they intimidate and seduce. They love excitement, with all the gusto of life, and have a need for external stimulation. They may dress to seduce, shock or impress.

Their childhood message was most likely that in order to be OK you need to be one step ahead of others. Problems can therefore occur when this leads to manipulating and taking advantage of others.  They were parented in a manner that was overdone, competitive, where the parent put their own needs first, or was anticipatory; so the child learnt to expect constant stimulation.

They may be actively aggressive and have an underlying fear of abandonment, of being left to survive on their own. So they cope by making others look bad, or intimidating and seducing to avoid it happening again. They may therefore have developed difficulties with intimacy – seducing and then abandoning before they are abandoned.

Their dilemma is between closeness and freedom – they can be commitment phobic and fear control. Having learnt to be tough and appear that they do not care, they are afraid to trust that anyone will be there for them.

The Charming Manipulator’s key development areas:-

• Learning that we cannot be abandoned as an adult – we can always be available to ourselves in the here-and-now.
• It’s safe to be real, and that they can get their needs met cooperatively.
• Grieving the neglect or abandonment of parents helps learn to trust again, form real attachments and join in genuine human connection.

***

Which of these sound familiar? We can all recognise our friends or family in these “types” – but it may not always be so easy to recognise ourselves.

Exploring our patterns of behaviour and why we act like we do can help offer us more options for how we want to behave now. Recognising old family patterns that led to us adapting in these ways helps us move on to more freedom and satisfaction now in our current friendships, family ties and relationships.

Self-awareness helps us be more authentic in expressing ourselves, in showing what we really think and how we really feel.

Every month we’ll curate a selection of  Circle Line articles for you, all written by psychologists and experts. Get our monthly newsletter on psychology and personal development straight to your inbox – subscribe below.