In this article we will look at such a type of temperament as melancholic. It reveals the traits of his character and appearance, strengths and weaknesses, features of age-related changes, and also provides recommendations for communicating with people who have this type of nervous system.
Sofia Emelyanova
Author of the article. Psychologist.
About the expert
Characteristic
Melancholic is a person with a predominance of pessimistic moods and thoughts. He often does not believe in himself, does not try to insist on his own, and reacts sharply and emotionally to criticism. His performance is reduced, constant sad thoughts distract him from his activities, and he is not always attentive to what he is doing.
External signs
A person with a clear manifestation of this type of nervous activity looks depressed and weak. He often slouches, lowers his eyes to the floor, and has a predominantly pensive or sad expression on his face. Movements, gestures and gait are uncertain, the step is slow, the voice is quiet. It seems to him that those around him are opposed to him, they do not like him and do not understand him, and therefore his psyche is constantly under stress, and his body acquires thin and angular features.
In the case when a melancholic person tries to compensate for the lack of happiness hormones with food and sweets, he can become quite overweight.
Character traits
A melancholic person is introverted, withdrawn, not very talkative, and depressed. A low level of stress resistance, a melancholic person does not tolerate tactlessness on the part of others, and has a pessimistic worldview. He is immersed in himself and his thoughts, careful and thoughtful. Non-conflict, emotional, sensitive, most often quite kind and understanding.
Melancholic people are characterized by increased anxiety and fussiness. They quickly give up without achieving their goal. Often gets upset for reasons that seem trivial to other people. Concentration is often reduced, motivation is weak, and there is a high level of self-criticism. Sensitivity allows such a person to be creative in music, needlework or painting. Loves calm, emotional conversations with loved ones.
Extrovert and career.
The ideal profession for him is a “person-to-person” . For example, teacher, instructor, doctor, administrator, lawyer. Extroverts extremely rarely choose the “person-sign system” and “person-technology” types because of the need to work independently, separately from others.
Thanks to resourcefulness and eloquence, an extrovert quickly moves up the career ladder. And this is logical, because he is not afraid:
- ask for a salary increase or revision;
- take responsibility for the work of others;
- manage people, organize the work process;
- make quick decisions;
- change types of activities, take on complex tasks.
Monotonous work that requires attention to detail quickly drains an extrovert's strength. He becomes lethargic and his work performance deteriorates.
Strengths of a melancholic person
Each type of temperament has its advantages. Melancholic has the following advantages.
Creativity
A person with this type of nervous activity has a high level of sensitivity, including to what is happening around them. He has a keen sense of music, nature and other people. Melancholic people often become productive musicians or artists, as they find their peace in creativity.
Thoughtfulness
Due to increased anxiety, such an individual will never make a hasty decision: first he will think it over carefully. He will try to find as many facts and arguments as possible, compare them, consider the problem from all possible angles, and only after that draw conclusions and make a decision.
He usually has everything sorted out, he maintains order in everything, including his own thoughts.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to feel for other people. A melancholic person has innate empathy: he perfectly senses the emotions, mood and state of the people around him, understands when they need help and, most often, selects exactly the words that help a person cope with his feelings.
Pickiness in people
This quality is also developed due to the acute sensitivity of the melancholic person. He reads the positive and negative qualities of other people without much difficulty. In a matter of minutes of first communication, he understands what to expect: aggression or goodwill, activity or passivity, openness or isolation.
Writing activity
Reading the description of a melancholic person, one can come to the conclusion that such self-contained people are very talented. They are not good at expressing their thoughts verbally, but due to their education and reading, they can easily express their thoughts, feelings and life experiences on paper in the form of text. The words fall onto the sheets by themselves, and people don’t even make much effort to create a high-quality work of art. But, unfortunately, in the age of information technology, few people need good writers. But today other professions that are directly related to writing are in demand. For example, screenwriters, bloggers or writers of songs and poems. If a person has talent, he will need to try to sell it correctly. And here it is important to find a person who will help with PR of creativity. Thanks to the Internet, promoting your works and your blog is easy.
The problem with many aspiring introverted writers is that they are afraid to put their work out there for everyone to see. The very fact that their creations will be evaluated by some other person seems humiliating to them. If a person can get rid of such prejudices, then she will be able to make a career as a writer. And if a person cannot overcome himself, then disappointment awaits him.
Disadvantages of a melancholic person
Like other types of temperament, melancholic has its drawbacks.
Vulnerability and touchiness
You can offend this person even with a small joke or glance. He will be upset, perhaps cry, and nothing will be able to console him until he himself returns to his emotional balance. His shyness is also connected with this: he is afraid of criticism and negative evaluation from the outside.
Need for approval
Most often, a melancholic person is insecure and has low self-esteem. He is not decisive, therefore, before doing anything, he will try to find approval for his actions from others. The opinion of others about himself and his affairs is important to him; it is better that it be positive, otherwise the work of the melancholic person may be completely interrupted.
Perfectionism
Also, a high level of anxiety forces a person with such a temperament to strictly follow the rules. All jars should be in their place, the edges of the tablecloth should hang evenly on each side of the table, and the books on the shelf should be sorted by size or alphabetically.
Otherwise, the melancholic person is overcome by anxiety, forcing him to immediately fix everything.
An extrovert in childhood.
About studying.
The only school subject in which all children of this psychotype excel is physical education. Otherwise, everything depends on the teacher. If a teacher devotes more time to practice than theory, and often changes the types of tasks, then the child will most likely fall in love with his subject. And vice versa: the more monotony and theory in the course, the worse the performance of the extrovert.
The personality and skills of the teacher are also important. If the teacher is passionate about his subject and knows how to create excitement , an extroverted child will adore him and study diligently.
As a rule, extroverted children are average students because it is difficult for them to sit in one place for a long time and maintain concentration.
About friendship.
An extroverted child is a popular person with a large circle of acquaintances. With friends he takes a leadership position. If a group of children decided to play a prank, it was the extrovert who talked them into doing it.
Usually he does not worry about quarrels with friends and easily replaces them with new ones. Rarely maintains friendly relations with classmates after leaving school.
About the dangers.
- Such children try to pay attention to everyone, because of this the quality of their friendship sometimes suffers. Therefore, they can feel lonely even when surrounded by hundreds of people.
- The excitement and restlessness of an extrovert often leads him to trouble. If a child is hyperactive, it is better to make sure that he attends clubs and releases his energy there.
- These kids are very dependent on the assessment of others. If they find themselves in bad company, they may decide to take illegal actions and harm themselves or others.
Peculiarities
Despite the fact that all melancholic people are similar in type of nervous system, they differ from each other depending on gender and age.
Melancholic man
A man with this type of nervous activity is serious and shy. He tries to avoid other people's attention and remain inconspicuous when in company. Thoughtful, thoughtful, sympathetic, friendly. Not always able to adequately respond to other people’s opinions, think logically, and is subject to sadness and stress.
He strives for solitude and constantly thinks: about himself, about his loved ones, work and, in general, about life. He does not want to occupy high positions - he is more comfortable being a performer than a manager. Demanding of himself, has a high level of development of creative abilities.
Melancholic woman
Women of this temperament are also closed and indecisive, vulnerable and touchy. They do not tolerate scandals and quarrels; such situations quickly bring them to tears. They have an extremely small number of girlfriends and find it difficult to make new ones, as they need a long time to develop trust and affection for another person. They are not confident in themselves and are very self-critical. Intuition is well developed, there is no craving for conflicts.
For a family, such women are very faithful and sympathetic, they always come to the aid of their closest ones, they are sincere and serious.
Melancholic child
A child who has this type of nervous activity is shy, modest and unsociable. He trusts only the closest people, and feels very uncomfortable with strangers. He is not conflicted, he can calmly give away his toy, without trying to defend it, but only after quietly crying in the corner. Such a child constantly needs to be supported, talk to him calmly and without shouting, and most importantly, help him find his own activity in which he will feel comfortable.
Introvert
A melancholic person is a true introvert; he does not want to share his thoughts and experiences with the whole world. He tolerates loneliness calmly, he does not strive for large companies and quickly gets tired of the active company of people.
Extrovert
Melancholic people are rarely extroverts: they are too sensitive, withdrawn and vulnerable for this.
For woman
It is very easy to meet a woman with a melancholic temperament in society. It can be detected by such traits as calmness and thoughtfulness. She always tries to avoid quarrels and conflict situations, shows calmness and restraint in conversation, speaks quietly and measuredly. The same is expected from the interlocutor. A melancholic woman constantly doubts her own attractiveness, so she engages in eternal introspection.
There are times in life when she is very active and cheerful, but any manifestation of emotions makes her plunge into thoughts and go headlong into herself. Women with a melancholic personality type are often called dreamy and romantic. They paint for themselves the image of an ideal man whom they can wait for years. It often happens that their many dreams are not realized in real life. This leads to additional frustration, grief, depression, and the search for the chosen one drags on for a long time.
In everyday affairs, a melancholic girl is an ideal housewife and will be a faithful companion for her husband. When raising children, he shows maximum seriousness and responsibility. He will never fight for the position of head of the family. It is more convenient for her when a man does this, because this woman does not like to take responsibility.
She also shows a responsible approach to work, so she is an excellent performer, but nothing more. Ambition and the desire for leadership positions are not for her. It is much more interesting for a girl to be creative alone than to work with people and lead.
Compatible with other types
A melancholic person gets along very differently with other types of temperament.
| Temperament type | Ideal partner | More or less suitable | Not compatible |
| Sanguine | Sanguine | Melancholic Choleric | Phlegmatic person |
| Choleric | Phlegmatic person | Sanguine Melancholic | Choleric |
| Phlegmatic person | Phlegmatic Melancholic | Choleric | Sanguine |
| Melancholic | Sanguine | Phlegmatic Choleric | Melancholic |
Melancholic - melancholic
Of all such unions, two melancholic people will get along best with each other. They will feel each other and provide the necessary support. They will not suppress each other, they will feel comfortable around each other.
Melancholic - sanguine
A person with a melancholic disposition will get tired very quickly of a smart, cheerful and overly active sanguine person. In addition, a sanguine person who loves to joke sharply will often hurt and offend a melancholy ally.
There will be no understanding between these two types, but sometimes friendly connections between such people allow them to complement each other: one makes the other stop and think, and the second shows the first positive moments in life.
Melancholic - phlegmatic
The phlegmatic person is inert, indifferent and “thick-skinned”, the melancholic person is vulnerable and sensitive, while both of them have a tendency to solitude. They will feel good in each other’s company, no one will suppress anyone, but there is a possibility that such an alliance will not have any development in the relationship: everyone is self-absorbed, rarely ready for active interaction and spending time together.
Melancholic - choleric
This is the most difficult union for both representatives. A melancholic person here will always suffer and feel depressed, and a choleric person will always be irritated and, possibly, show aggression due to unfounded grievances over trifles and isolation, as well as manipulate and assert themselves at the expense of a comrade. On the other hand, with a high level of personal development, they can complement each other: one will receive a more confident character from such a union, the other will become less harsh.
Scientific activity
The advantages of introverts are that a person can do one study for a long time without getting tired of it. Drawing a conclusion from this, we can say that reserved people make excellent scientists. They have the drive to complete the research without losing motivation for their work. Individuals agree to look for their mistakes every day, find errors in calculations and start work from scratch, if necessary. Introverts and melancholic people do not disdain monotonous work. What may seem very boring to many will suit these people quite well. Remember the story “The Man in the Case”. The main character is a shining example of a true introvert. He could become a scientist if he wanted to.
Another advantage of people who keep to themselves is that they do not like to publicize their own achievements. And in science this can be very important. Therefore, it is beneficial for the management of various companies to hire those individuals who see a personal interest in the development of the project, but, having completed the work, will not claim any kind of co-authorship and will not demand patents for their inventions through the court.
Life of a melancholic
Throughout life, the traits of a melancholic person change due to age, accumulation of life experience and self-development.
Childhood and studies
In childhood, a person with such a temperament is vulnerable, shy, whiny, often with insufficient immunity, often sick and weak, with few or no friends. Melancholic people usually study diligently, this is due to high anxiety and fear of being disgraced in front of classmates.
Public speaking and oral responses are difficult.
Failures unsettle such a child for a long time; it takes him a long time to come to his senses and has difficulty finding the strength to continue working. Since childhood, he is prone to introspection and needs benevolent upbringing.
Career and professions
A melancholic person does not feel enthusiasm for high career growth - he is afraid of responsibility, he is haunted by a feeling of inferiority, complexes and pessimism. He is passive and feels calmer in the role of a performer. Prefers individual work to collaboration in a team. Responsible, punctual, striving for order and compliance with the necessary rules.
Creative professions such as artist or designer are considered most suitable. They will also be effective employees when working in the field of computer science and programming, creating texts and advertising, and activities related to various machines and mechanisms.
A melancholic person is good in helping and supporting professions - doctor, psychologist, teacher, but for him such types of activities turn out to be excessively energy-consuming.
Relationships and family
Family relationships depend on who the melancholic person decides to lay down his life with. But in general, he is flexible, calm, sensitive to his loved ones, supports them in everything and tries to surround them with love. The touchiness of these people can cause discord in the family. But if you managed to find a like-minded person, then the alliance will be quite strong.
Health and psychosomatics
Melancholic people in most cases cannot boast of excellent health, as they have a weak type of nervous system. In a stressful situation, the body is especially susceptible to viruses, so people with this type of temperament are often susceptible to colds.
Also, due to a weak nervous system, they are susceptible to mental disorders and disorders, such as neuroses, tics and depression. They often develop asthma, kyphosis and phobias.
Artistic activity
Having analyzed the pros and cons of a melancholic person, you can easily understand what kind of work a closed person can do. Such a person will make an excellent artist. A person living in his own fictional world can create bizarre worlds and populate them with incredible creatures. All these characters will live not only in a person’s head, but also on paper. By pouring out his vision of reality onto album sheets, a person can create unusual illustrations, comics, or entire works of art in a new genre. In order not to kill a person’s talent, it is better not to criticize him. It’s not worth interfering with your opinion to a person who is only taking steps towards creative realization. And when a person is formed as an artist, it is also better not to touch him with questions and requests to explain how a person creates.
They say that many artists are on their own wavelength. This theory is perfectly confirmed by introverts. They may have professional artistic flair, but they will not be able to convey their idea to their viewers. The works of many such geniuses become popular only after the death of the outstanding artist. True, in the modern world it is much easier to find your fans than it could be done several decades ago. But in order to promote a talented artist, a person must establish a connection with an experienced agent who will be able to profitably sell the work of his ward.
Recommendations
It is impossible to change temperament, but if desired, a person is able to “smooth out” acute manifestations, which often interfere with a peaceful life for both him and those around him.
5 useful tips for a melancholic person
- To take care. Avoid communicating with unpleasant people, do not allow yourself to be offended and do not show your feelings to toxic people: their negative emotions only make the other person happy.
- Praise yourself more often. Belief in one's strengths and capabilities helps a person feel more comfortable in any society and in any activity.
- If you don’t have a hobby yet, listen to yourself and find your favorite activity. It will distract from sad thoughts, increase self-confidence and relax the nervous system.
- Learn to look for positive aspects in any situation, even if everything is obviously so bad that it can’t get any worse. This helps avoid depression and distracts from negativity.
- Sometimes allow yourself to do something not according to the rules. Let it be a chocolate bar before lunch or a walk instead of drawing up another non-urgent work report. This will make you feel more free.
How to communicate correctly with a melancholic person
- The main rule when communicating with a melancholic person is to be friendly. In this case, he maintains clarity of mind, does not experience excessive anxiety and does not get tired of communication so quickly.
- It is important for a melancholic person to be approved and praised. If there is such a reason, there is no need to miss the moment, this will allow you to win over such a person and earn his trust.
- Try not to show your anxiety to such an individual, as he quickly gets “infected” and stresses himself out, which negatively affects his performance and condition.
- There is no need to try to force him into even the most friendly and noisy company, as he quickly gets tired of such communication.
Sofia Emelyanova
Author of the article. Psychologist.
About the expert
Pros of being an extrovert.
Good communication skills.
Extroverts are not afraid to take the first steps, to be leaders and initiators. They can find an approach to literally every person. All they have to do is start talking, and everyone around them already agrees with them, if only because it is impossible to argue with them. Their zeal and enthusiasm captivate their interlocutors.
Even if an extrovert does not have serious arguments, he will still manage to prove something deliberately false or unreal. They admire him because when he speaks with such passion and sparkle in his eyes, everyone involuntarily wants to smile.
Great adaptation.
If an extrovert somehow simultaneously loses his job, his house, his dog, and ends up on a desert island, he will still fit in just fine.
It is people with an extroverted psychotype who are the first to go to newly opened restaurants. They go on spontaneous trips with a minimum amount of money. They are the only ones who are happy when the crowded elevator gets stuck. Still would! This is a great opportunity to meet and chat!
This quality greatly helps an extrovert get out of trouble and build his life in any conditions.
Determination.
Despite their rashness, extroverted individuals never suffer from the “what if I then...?” complex. They may regret their actions in the past, but they don't have to feel bad about not trying something.
Yes, such people may get into trouble more often, but they are usually luckier, ready for anything, and do not get lost in unforeseen situations. Risk is a common and natural thing for them, so they receive more significant rewards for it.
Love of life.
Sometimes an extroverted person is sad, offended, doubts himself, and feels guilty. However, he still loves life. The following qualities help him in this:
- lack of fixation on problems, failures, bad emotions in general;
- the ability to let go, forget the past, find something good in the present;
- a well-developed sense of humor, the ability to sometimes be a child;
- the desire to take everything from life, to try new things;
- the habit of sharing your joy with others and expressing it openly.
If he calms down for a long time, often grumbles, gets angry, calls life unfair, most likely he has deep mental trauma and needs help. It doesn't have to be a psychotherapist. It is quite possible that a good friend will correct the situation.
