Direct Link Between Personality And Illnesses

Our personality can impact our lives massively in a variety of different ways. Personality and individual differences can affect our health, social relationships, academic and occupational success.
Researchers have proposed four likely ways in which personality and health could be linked (Maltby, Day & Macaskill, 2013). There could be a direct link between personality and illness, in that personality traits can cause illness, a correlational link, a mediated link and another direct link, in that illness causes personality change. In terms of social relationships, personality is a key factor in attraction. For occupational and academic success, openness and conscientiousness are important factors for success, much more so than intelligence

Anxiety can be categorised into one of two different types: state and trait; the latter being linked to personality. State anxiety refers to anxiety experienced in response to a situation perceived as dangerous or threatening to the individual (Hatfield, 2017). Trait anxiety is an aspect of the personality of the individual; eventually becoming pervasive across all situations and experiences until finally becoming a characteristic of the personality ("Trait and State anxiety", 2017). Proper anxiety management can have a wide range of psychological and biological benefits including improved emotional stability, immune system, self-esteem and confidence (Robinson, Smith & Segal, 2017). It is important to me to properly manage my anxiety and stress as I believe it will improve my confidence especially around other people, thus reducing my shyness and embarrassment scores and increasing my extroversion score.
Assessment of strengths and weaknesses
My scores for optimism, openness, health locus of control and social information processing are in or around the same as the class average. However, my scores for mastery, extroversion and social awareness are lower than the class average; whereas my scores for shyness, embarrassment, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and social skills are higher than the class average (See Figure

With regards to physical activity, I will exercise five times a week for thirty minutes as this is what is recommended by the Department of Health (Laskowski, 2016). I will vary the exercise between high and low intensity as both are effective in reducing anxiety. I will achieve this by doing treadmill sessions as it is easily accessible to me. In terms of relaxation techniques, I will engage in a ten to twenty-minute full body meditation every morning. To do so, I will use the website headspace.com to ease myself into the meditation process. Finally, to strengthen my network of social support, I will be more proactive with family and friends. Its important to make an effort when it comes to social relationships and with modern technology and social media; it becomes easier to sit in silence on smartphones. To combat this, I plan to sit down with my family and talk to them about my day, my problems, what is going on in college, ask them for advice and keep them in the loop. This will, in turn, use my social skills to increase my social