by Dawn Billings, founder of RelationshipHelp.com and PrimaryColorsPersonality.com
Could your personality kill you? Or, at times cause others to wish you were dead? Or can your personality actually kill your most important relationships? With all seriousness the answer is yes. But this only occurs when your strengths, or centered color personality tendencies morph into their toxic extreme versions.
Research tells us that personality traits can play a distinct role in determining the health we enjoy. As human beings begin to age they realize that health is their true wealth because when your health fails, no amount of money can buy it back. Just ask Steve Jobs.
According to the Primary Colors Relationship Personality Tests and Insight Tools, all color personality tendencies when they become extreme affect how stressed or angry you feel, as well as the level of frustration and aggravation you experience when interacting with others. People's levels of stress, frustration and anger have proven in study after study to have an enormous impact on their physical health, as well as the health of their relationships. When you are behaving out of your extreme color personality tendencies, (the worst of you), chances are you are behaving in such difficult and unsatisfying ways that people in relationship with you are going to want to run away, or fight back, which means you are both acting out of your extreme personality tendencies. Interacting out of your EXTREME color tendencies is toxic and destructive to all personal and professional relationships.
No person's personality is influenced by just one color tendency. You cannot be described simply as a 'Blue', or a 'Red' personality for example. People use a blend of color tendencies in each life or emotional context to motivate and actuate our lives. If we think of personality color blends as contextual, which means we use different skills, strengths and traits in different emotional and life contexts, we begin to realize how vitally important it is to understanding our personality from a broader, blended and more holistic perspective.
All people move back and forth from their centered strengths and tendencies into their extreme weaknesses. It is a natural part of being human. But you must understand that all good things, accomplishments, successes, professionally or personally, happiness, feelings of connection and joy are born out of your centered strengths and tendencies. While all misery, resentment, frustration, anger, bitterness, anxiety and unhappiness are born out of your extreme color personality tendencies. Therefore your thoughts and behaviors are positive, healing and revitalizing when you are in your centered personality tendencies, but quickly poisoned when you shift to the opposite - your extreme personality tendencies.
Take a moment to examine the six different extreme color personality tendencies and and how the extreme color tendencies of each actually harm your health, and the health of your relationships:
EXTREME RED Tendencies – Partners who always want things done their way have a tendency to be hostile, and controlling.
One of the aspects of the impatient, hard-charging Type A, red personality tendencies is that you want things done YOUR WAY, without delay. Extreme RED personality tendencies exaggerate the already driving and demanding aspects of your personality. With regard to your health, you are more likely to be overweight in middle age and have higher cholesterol and suffer from high blood pressure. These health factors are known to increase the risk of heart disease. Hostile and impatient people have a tendency to eat and smoke more and exercise less than other personality colors, says Redford Williams, head of behavioral medicine at Duke University Medical Center and author of Anger Kills. Most of these problems can be traced back to elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol, as well as increased inflammation in the walls of the coronary arteries, which leads to a greater risk of heart attack.
Hostile, and easily aggravated heart patients who attend workshops that teach stress coping skills, like how to return to their centered personality tendencies have a lower incidence of depression and healthier blood pressure than Type A’s who don’t. The key appears to be in a person’s willingness to learn how to communicate more clearly and how to control frustration, anger and other negative emotions. Remember that your red extreme color tendencies not only bring potential damage to your heart and health, but they can bring damage to the health of your relationship as they continually break your partner's heart.
We highly recommend that you learn to recognize as you move into your extreme red tendencies. You will feel it in your body. Your temper will want to take over your heart. You will become demanding and can be seen as a bully. People who bring their red extreme tendencies into a relationship can emotionally wound, certainly frighten, and often physically harm people they care about. Stop yourself. Use that red determination to modify your extreme behaviors and drive yourself back to your center. Ask yourself is the issue you are so frustrated by, truly important? Or is it your pride and entitled ego that are in the middle of your choices?
People dealing with extreme red personality tendencies need to look to their centered complimentary color green tendencies for self-calming, and relaxation options like meditation, deep breathing, self-control, self-reflection that have been proven to dampen hostility with a layer of calm. But remember that people with strong RED personality tendencies are the least likely to be naturally attracted to calming practices. Therefore what you need to improve your health and the health of your relationships is to develop some strengths that require you grow and strengthen your self-control, instead of focusing on controlling people and situations around you. Use the strength of your red tendencies to drive you to develop and appreciate the power of warmth as it relates to enhancing and fortifying your relationships.
EXTREME PURPLE Tendencies – Can work themselves to death.
People with strong purple personality tendencies are usually great managers, organizers and planners. They love to manage others, projects and their lives with diligence. They like having a plan A, a plan B and a plan C. Careful planning and feeling prepared can translate into less anxiety and stress and that can translates to a lower likelihood of heart disease. Experiencing less anxiety also strengthens the immune system.
However, people who are operating out of their extreme purple personality tendencies, who desire to have a plan for every contingency can actually create a great deal of stress and anxiety. Because life often fights even the best plan, people with strong purple tendencies experience stress and frustration when plans get derailed and are in danger of micro-managing and over planning to the point that they also stress out those around them.
People living out of extreme purple personality tendencies have little patience for anyone not following the rules. Whether the rules be societal, familial, or values based, breaking 'the rules' can send extreme purple into a tailspin. Think if you will of what has become a name that signifies purple extremes - a Karen. People designated as 'Karens' are people who insist that all people live by and behave according to their rules for life. Attempting to be in a relationship with a 'Karen' can be very challenging unless you have purple tendencies that align exactly with their rules.
People with extreme purple personality tendencies love lists. The problem is that their list loving doesn't just extend to themselves, they make lists for those around them to follow without deviation. People with extreme purple personality tendencies can be difficult to satisfy, as there is always so much more to do, at work, or around the house.
Over the long term people behaving out of their extreme purple color personality tendencies can cause life to be reduced to one never-ending project after another. Meals must be on time. Bath times cannot be rearranged. Partner's and family members can feel exhausted, unappreciated and controlled by people in their extreme purple colors tendencies.
People suffering from their extreme purple personality tendencies need to consider incorporating some of their centered complementary color orange personality tendencies that allow time to play, relax and simply enjoy family. Occasional spontaneity can help in not only managing stress, but to loosen the restrictive adherence to the rules that can choke the joy out of relationships. Incorporate and plan for play days. Spontaneous play might feel stressful at first, but it will feel good to check off the box called better health and happiness as you enjoy something other than your focus on your schedule around getting things done.
EXTREME BLUE Tendencies – Can see only the potential problems and manifest illnesses.
People with blue color personality tendencies love knowledge, are extremely bright and love study and details. They make wonderful scientists and researchers because they naturally see problems and are driven to find answers to cure all kinds of problems. This is a wonderful tendency except when they are studying their own symptoms. People in their extreme blue can gather so much information that they can convince themselves that they have symptoms of many different diseases. They are non-stop researchers and can get lost in the worry and drama of potential health issues.
People with extreme blue personality tendencies can appear to be like Chicken Little as they worry that they sky is always falling. This curious and potential problem finding quality can make them vulnerable to over-diagnosing their own problems. It can make them less willing to go to a doctor to receive what they imagine will just be “bad news”. As you can imagine this desire to procrastinate, especially around health issues, can in the long run create more health problems for them. When you have a gift to see problems, immediate and potential, it can actually inhibit the peace and joy you allow yourself to feel.
When people in their extreme blue tendencies focus on their worst fears, they can actually help manifest them. This isn't just with regard to their physical health. They get very concerned and fixated on the health of the world, climate change, food shortages, global pandemics, etc. This persistent anxiety and stress also carry their own health related issues.
But where extreme blue personality tendencies can be most harmful is to the health of relationships. When people are seeing the world through their extreme blue colored lenses, they can be disappointed and frustrated by most of what they see. They can get fixated on a small frustration that feeds itself on other small frustrations until they are agitated and angry beyond reason or logic.
EXTREME ORANGE Tendencies – Impulsive tendencies can take risks that put their lives at risk.
People with strong orange color personality tendencies who are driven by having fun and experiencing new things are prone to take risks and act without thinking, which, as you can imagine, is not necessarily the best action plan for their health. People with strong orange color personality tendencies are not know for the fore-sight. They do not usually stop long enough to think about what consequences might correlate with their actions or choices.
Since no person is ever just one color, but instead a color blend of personality tendencies, many color blends can include orange color personality tendencies. For people who have orange as one of their personality colors in their color blend, high-risk behaviors, and even addictions are simply a part of how they play. They’ll look at opportunities that come along and judge them on their level of perceived fun and immediate gratification, whereas people without a great deal of orange color influences might judge an experience instead, by the long-term consequences of the action or choice.
EXTREME YELLOW Tendencies - People who want to be recognized and appreciated can feel taken for granted and become passive-aggressive victims.
People with strong yellow color personality tendencies have a desire to please and serve others. People-pleasers are often conforming, passive, and want to accommodate. They believe that the most important thing in life is the quality of your relationships. People with strong yellow color personality tendencies are usually patient, very inclusive and compliant. Healthy relationships translate into healthy people, but unhealthy relationships can be very taxing both physically and psychologically.
However, people with strong yellow color personality tendencies can get so focused on taking care of others that if they begin to feel unappreciated and taken for granted. This causes them to complain, quietly seethe, and become sad hoping someone might love them enough to give back. People with strong yellow color personality tendencies are lovers, but once scorned, they can become bitter and passive aggressive, neither of which is good for their health. In their extremes, people with strong yellow color personality tendencies take things personally and spend a great deal of time feeling hurt.
EXTREME GREEN Tendencies– have a tendency to be Optimistic versus pessimistic
People with strong green color personality tendencies are usually hopeful and optimistic in their center. A study published in May in the journal Clinical Practice & Epidemiology in Mental Health after researchers followed more than 500 males for 15 years found that optimism “heavily influences physical and mental health”. The rate of heart-related deaths was 50 percent lower among optimists than among pessimists. Optimists have a higher quality of life, and they may be more resilient in the way they deal with stress. Glass-half-empty types harbor little hope for the future and tend more toward depression and anxiety disorders.
So you can see how when people with strong green color personality tendencies go into their extremes and become agitated, radical extremists who hold angry and judgmental mindsets that they become polar opposites of who they are in their centers, and that is very toxic and dangerous to their health.
In conclusion, all color personality extremes are unhealthy for your physically and emotionally, and they are certainly unhealthy for your relationships. Do all you can to stay in your centered tendencies and your life will be filled with so much more peace and joy.
Personality expert Dawn L. Billings is the author of over 15 books and hundreds of articles.
Dawn is the founder of RealtionshipHelp.com a website dedicated to providing resources to help strengthen and heal relationships.
Dawn is the creator of the comprehensive ONLINE relationship programs called Relationship Help At Home, and is the Executive Director of the Relationship Help Resort in Arizona where she hosts private couple's retreats and marriage intensives to help people restore the love and connection in their marriages.