Hi everyone. I’m cheating a little with my letter Y post in the #AtoZChallenge, because I’m not really talking about any Y topic. That is, my topic for today is personality development from youth to midlife.
Many people believe that someone’s personality development is more or less complete by the age of eighteen. This isn’t true. The last phase in emotional development, which covers people’s individuation from everyone else, isn’t complete until a young adult has reached age 25 or so.
Similarly, cognitive abilities such as executive functioning, which is important for impulse control, haven’t fully developed until a person is in their late twenties.
As such, can we say that someone is well and truly an adult by the age of 30? Not necessarily. After all, life experiences also contribute to adulting. This means that in today’s society, where people leave home later, many don’t start a family until they’re in their mid-thirties, etc., with respect to life choices, someone hasn’t truly faced the most difficult ones until they’re around age 40. Which is midlife whether you want it or not. Yes, Millennials like me might want to pretend to still be youthful, and this makes sense from a personality development standpoint, but we’ve most likely had (nearly) half our life behind us.
What does this mean if you want to work on personal growth? What does it mean when you’re struggling with a personality disorder? Personality disorders are said to start in early adulthood and be stable over time, but are they?
I try to see it as there being hope. People with certain personality disorders, such as borderline personality disorder, do experience improvement of their symptoms as they get older. In fact, when I was in my mid-twenties, my psychiatrist told me my dissociative and emotion regulation problems (which were at the time not diagnosed as BPD, by the way) would likely get better as I got older. So far, they haven’t, but then again I (hopefully) still have half my life ahead of me.
A Multitude of Musings 
This was interesting, I do feel we all mature at different ages and everyone’s personality development is also different and unique to them.
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Very well-said indeed. Everyone is different and all our growth processes are different too.
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I was just talking about when someone is actually grown and why do some seem to be lagging behind others.
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Yeah, interesting topic. I think the “lagging behind” thing also relates to what someone considers to be the major signs of maturity.
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I am sure our personality does change over time, I mean we’re always changing and growing. X
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Agree, we’re never too old to grow. I mean, it’s actually the case that the very early signs of cognitive decline in old age can be slowed down if not reversed and I believve this means we can always develop.
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I had a doctor tell me once that male brains are not fully developed until age 35. Females tend to mature a bit faster. He told me not to worry because my sons were behind in some areas. They had plenty of time, which was right in their case
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I’m so glad that the doctor gave you hope and that he was right.
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Personalities change all the time. When you get to the age where you don’t care what other people think of you, you let a lot of baggage go and you’re able to be a bit freer. Or not. Some change is a choice. Some change does happen.
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I wholeheartedly agree. We can consciously improve ourselves to some extent, but some of our personal growth or lack thereof is luck.
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People grow throughout their entire lives. You never stop learning and you never stop changing.
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Agree. Thanks for your kind comment.
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I feel as long as we are open to new things and learning we are always growing more. And just like physical growth, no two people grow at the same rate. Even though I am nearing 60, there are times I feel I still need to grow up some. My personality is influenced by the life experiences I have and ever changing and adapting to.
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Thanks for sharing your insight! That makes total sense and I agree 100%.
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You are welcome, Astrid.
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