Trait or State?

Seeking Discernment on Issues of Character

I remember a person from my youth mentioning that a tiger can’t change his stripes. I would debate them with the opposite point; I thought we were more affected by nurture than nature. Both sides of the argument have valid points. I see the tiger argument as being cover for a person who doesn’t want to change and thus has formed his beliefs around this resistance. “I’m just like this.”

My therapist in high school mentioned a useful dichotomy and it stuck with me: Trait or State? I love how a term can illuminate and expand the depth of inquiry. He was asking me about my depression and related behaviors. Are these core traits, or are they choices brought on by temporal states of consciousness? I didn’t know. Perhaps the curiosity it invokes is more important than conclusions.

Another question arises: what are the long-term effects of these states? Do states ever make de facto traits? Or do we ever get fooled into thinking something is a trait because we’ve been in a state for so long as to render it second nature? These questions are beyond my pay-grade. Again, perhaps the state of curiosity can suffice.

I feel obliged to point out when I see an error in perception. I want to map it so that others may avoid the pitfall. Maybe I want to feel more understood, put a name to a face. Perhaps I want to instill a sense of beginner’s mind in my readers and myself. I love sureness, but we are so often artificially sure because we skip steps in critical thinking. I want people to arrive at sureness via open-mindedness, objectivity and close scrutiny of their thought and feeling processes. We can convince ourselves of anything, especially with the help of others, social media, and our old wounds. What happens when we question everything we profess to believe?

I’ve presented this question as an error in judgment and perception. The error is assuming a person’s tendencies are ingrained and unchangeable. That assumption leaves out the conditions, what’s going on in their life. Can we contextualize the behaviors and believe that this person is capable of change?

If so, maybe we can come to believe that we are capable of change and growth. We can view our personalities and tendencies as fluid and mutable. And we can view others as dynamic instead of static. When we view others as static, we may be protecting ourselves from pain or from having to grow, change, or give others a chance. What we don’t realize is that we protect ourselves from the vagaries of vulnerability, only to subject ourselves to the vagaries of loneliness.

We do this because our attachment injuries try to recreate the same familiar scenarios from our youth or relationship patterns. And we think, I’m just like this. I always screw up relationships. But we really just need to retrain our neurology, our behavior patterns, our attitudes and responses. Then we can have the love we want without losing ourselves.