How is Anxiety Created and Affected if you have an Adventurer or Nomad Personality Archetype?
We complete our look at how different people are affected by anxiety depending on their personality archetype with Nomads or the adventurer.
Nomads, as the name suggests, are at their best when they are on the move, starting off on something new. They thrive on the excitement of the new and their life is a series of mini (and big) adventures. Of all the personality archetypes they are the most independent, but when they are with people, they love to be the centre of attention in some way. Adventurers tend to be unconventional and they are the ones who ‘think outside the box’, their lives won’t be the ‘norm’ 9-5, 2.4 kids existence; they are our entrepreneurs, entertainers, artists and creatives. They have enormous energy, drive and passion when following a new idea or interest, but just as quickly and with the same degree of enthusiasm can stop what they’re doing and go in a completely different direction.
Causes of Anxiety and Depression
So, what causes anxiety or depression for the Nomad adventurer – boredom primarily, feeling trapped and doing things they think, other people think they should do. That’s a tricky sentence to get your head around, it’s not so much doing what they SHOULD do, but making themselves conform to what they THINK is the right thing to do. Trying to squeeze themselves into predefined stereotypical boxes – in other words, the 9-5, 2.4 kids life. If the Warrior’s predominant personality word is ‘Control’, the Settler’s is ‘Nuture’, the Nomad would be ‘Freedom’.
It’s interesting that in the hypnotherapy clinic, we don’t see too many adventurers with anxiety, they tend to lean towards depression rather than anxiety. You could think about it this way:- If you were to put a wild animal in a cage without any stimulation, what would happen? Well I think to start with, it would do everything it could to break out of its confines, but if that doesn’t work, then it would give up, lose it’s drive and energy and do nothing – that’s a bit like depression for the adventurer. Adventurers sometimes fall into the trap of caging themselves by their own mental barriers and belief systems thinking they ‘should’ do something or behave in a particular way.
I have adventurer traits in my personality; I’m a combination of control freak and adventurer, and in 2002 I had a job for a major technology manufacturer, I earned a great salary and I worked from home much of the time, but I was bored. I remember thinking “what is wrong with me? I have a job many people would give their right arm for, I’m earning almost 6 figure salary, I’ve got a lovely house, great friends – I should be grateful, not feeling like this” I was trying to do something I thought other people would think I should do, but it wasn’t me. I became depressed and unable to function.
Adventurers are at their best when multi-tasking, having lots of projects on the go, and having things to stimulate their need for excitement, either in their work or personal life, things to look forward to. If life or work gets too routine or boring; stuck in a rut, then the adventurer often displays symptoms of anxiety initially in that attempt to break free and find excitement, but if they don’t manage it, then they can swing towards depression, giving up on ever finding fulfilment and settling for what they’ve got, but being miserable doing it.
Symptoms of Anxiety for the Adventurer
Symptoms of anxiety for the adventurer include causing chaos in their lives, throwing everything into the air and seeing what lands. They can do confrontation when there is no other way, they are certainly not afraid of a challenge, but they have to believe it’s necessary, they wouldn’t do it just for the sake of not losing or losing face like the Warrior Control Freak, so they have a tendency to turn their back on things, walk away and start something new – this can include job, house, relationships or even all three at the same time.
Adventurers have an inner drama queen which, channelled in a positive way is inspirational for others, they can make any lecture fascinating and inspire other people into taking action with their unfaltering positive belief in their current focus of attention. However, when anxiety and depression enter the equation, their drama queen will over-react, deem ‘everything’ to be wrong, a complete disaster and drastic action is needed to put things right again or if depression has set in there’s ‘no hope’. Adventurer’s don’t just move house, they move country!
How Can Adventurers Help Themselves?
Well for a start accepting and embracing that need for stimulation and change in their life and recognising that other people’s way of doing things isn’t necessarily right for them. Suitable jobs are those which give them the ability to switch focus, short term projects and contracts are idea. The Nurturer and Control Freaks are uncomfortable with the uncertainty of short term contract work, with the instability of not being able to plan long term, but for the Adventurer it’s ideal, they don’t tend to worry too much about long term future preferring to see things as ‘for now’.
Acceptance that their life will change frequently, hobbies are for now, not a life vocation – they might be mad passionate about horse riding as a child, but leaving it behind them never to return to that particular interest, or perhaps they will get into gardening for a couple of years before buying a campervan and taking off at weekends, leaving their one time pride and joy garden to become overgrown and neglected without a second thought.
Acceptance that their career and job will change and embrace their unique talent for being able to learn and adapt quickly. Adventurers or Nomads are chameleons, blending in to the life they have chosen to involve themselves in at the time, they don’t need to change their environment to suit them, they change themselves to suit their environment and this is one of their strengths, it helps them to adapt to different social situations and in businesses they are able to converse just as comfortably with the Managing Director of a multinational organisation as they are with the trainees.
If we were all walking a path in life which ultimately takes us to the same destination, the control freak will take the straight path to their destination, no matter how challenging the path is, but as long as they can see the destination or at least know which direction it is, they will tenaciously follow that direction striving to be the first to arrive. The Nurturer will take the same path everyone else is going, preferring to stay with a group they know; they don’t want to make the decision about which path that is, being genuinely happy to be part of the group going that way and when they arrive is unimportant, just as long as everyone else is also there. The Adventurer will start down a path, then take every fork off that path, just to see if there is something exciting there and stay on the new path for as long as it’s fun, then take a different one. They will probably be the last to arrive, usually late, but when they do, they will make a grand entrance with loads of tales to tell about their adventures on the way.
If this is you, then build fun exciting things into your life, hobbies which excite and stimulate and know it’s OK to change the hobby when they feel like it, then the tendency to cause chaos changing everything because everything is wrong will become less of a compulsion. Work with your strengths.
If you would like to learn more about how hypnosis can help with anxiety and/or depression for your particular personality type, we provide a free initial consultation at one of our branches or by Skype.