Why everyone is the way they are
A look at the factors that cause people to adapt their behaviour, thinking, and beliefs.
It all starts with your genes. As the egg and sperm fuse, your potential has been laid down, as have some other characteristics inherited from your parents and, perhaps, their parents, through the power of epigenetics – but more on that later.
A person’s genotype is their genetic constitution (DNA sequence), and their phenotype is the observable characteristics produced through interaction between their genotype and their environment. For example, whether their earlobe is attached or not depends on the expression of a dominant gene. The child’s genetic make-up contributes probabilistic predispositions that interact strongly with their developmental environment, practice, culture, and opportunity. This affects their potential size, strength, intelligence, and abilities (such as how musical or artistic they could be). Genes can also control their predisposition to depression and other mental health conditions such as addiction, etc.
In fact, the DNA of any two human beings is 99.9 percent identical, however, the 0.1 percent variation represents about 3.2 million base pairs. If you think of a DNA molecule, the four bases are adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine – and adenine and thymine always pair together, and cytosine and guanine pair together. So, although humans have more-or-less the same genes, there are polymorphisms (two or more variant forms of a specific DNA sequence), which can result in differences in how they are expressed and even change their function. It’s these small differences that make each person unique.
As soon as that tiny bundle of cells starts to burrow its way into its mother’s uterus, its environment starts to affect that very small potential person. Is the mother fit and healthy? Is she stressed at work? Does she take drugs? Does she eat properly? And a million other factors can impact the developing child. In most cases, the mother is doing her best and everything works out perfectly. Fathers also play a part in the environment that the growing foetus finds itself. Stressful or absent fathers can make the mother’s life harder, and ultimately affect the life of that foetus. But, again, most of the time, dads are doing their best too.
However, parents and other family members will be adapting their behaviour and thoughts to the environment they find themselves in (the arrival of a new baby), and will have adapted their behaviour and thoughts throughout their life in the ways we’ll look at further in this article.
Once the baby is born, the environment plays an even bigger part in affecting the life of that child. How much space does that child have? Is it generally kept warm? Does it get enough sunlight? Does it have toys to play with? Does it get enough food? Does it receive unambiguous love? Do people talk to it? Do they sing to it? Do faces respond to it? How do people act around it?
Dr Szyf, working with rats, found that a mother’s interaction with her offspring in the first few days affected how those offspring responded to stress for the rest of their lives – confidently and appropriately, or with anxiety and over-reaction. These findings suggest mechanisms that may have parallels in humans, though human development is far more complex.
A child tries out different behaviours, and it adapts its actions to suit its environment. And soon those behaviours become its beliefs, and its values. It might learn that big boys don’t cry. It might learn that it is unwanted and not a good person. Or it might learn that its family love it and encourage it to try things, like walking, talking, going on the swings, playing musical instruments, drawing, cooking, etc.
For those first couple of years, a child learns about its feelings, emotions, and moods. The child builds its self-esteem. And if something bad happens – some other child takes that toy and plays with it instead of them – the child can quickly recover from the hurt and go back to its usual happy self. A child who has built up its self-esteem, can be more resilient to events that take place in its life. This is slightly simplistic because temperament, attachment, social support, executive functioning, adversity exposure, and meaning-making processes also play a role.
Children start to have habits – what they like to do, bedtime and morning routines, getting in the car etc. And they develop their own habits, like picking their nose, putting their books in size order, always putting on their left shoe first, etc. And they recognize that other people have thoughts and feelings too (theory of mind), which are sometimes different from their own.
Parents can co-regulate children, which means a soothing parent or other adult can help an upset child regain their usual equanimity quickly. As the child grows, it is able to regulate its own emotions better than a child that has been left to cry itself to sleep or overcome other upsets on its own. This emotional regulation is a useful skill to possess. It’s worth noting that some sleep-training evidence does not clearly support long-term emotional harm when done appropriately.
Children have strong bonds with their parents or primary caregivers, and they worry when those significant others aren’t around them. The child’s adaptation to their caregiver’s absence can affect their relationships for life. In fact, a child’s earliest attachment relationships with their caregivers, and the coping styles they develop to maintain them, form a template for all that child’s significant relationships throughout their life. However, it is also suggested that some attachment representations are plastic and can change through later caregiving experiences, romantic relationships, therapy, and reflective functioning.
Sadly, not all people have a good childhood. They can face adversity in the form of psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. They can experience physical and emotional neglect. And, they can live through household dysfunctions such as: alcohol or drug abuse in the home; death of a primary carer or divorce; depression; mental illness in the home; violence; or a household member being sent to prison; etc. All of these can have an enormous impact on a young child both in terms of their physical development and their mental development. They need to adapt their behaviour to whatever situations they are facing at home. The child may be rejected by its primary caregivers. The home may be full of criticism, humiliation, and bullying. All of these things can be traumatizing and lead the child to adapt their behaviour and thinking in order to survive the circumstances they find themselves in.
Alternatively, the child may grow up in a home that feels safe and is caring. The child is relaxed when at home. They feel loved and respected. These children will adapt differently to their different environments. In addition, early nurturing and warmth have long-lasting positive effects on mental health well into adulthood.
Life at home, at nursery, and then at school helps to instil the local culture into a child. They will learn, for example, that hitting is wrong or that they have to stand up for themself at all times. They will learn that women are the equal of men or that women are second class citizens, and all the other cultural norms of their particular society. They will also be impacted by the kinds of health and social services that are available to them and their family. The wealth of their primary carers will impact on their clothes and toys/games that they have available. This can have an impact when they are at school and everyone else seems to get a particularly desirable toy for Christmas and their parents can’t afford it. Or other children get the latest phone or other gadget, and they can’t afford it. And they will adapt to the world they find themselves in.
In terms of brainwaves, it is sometimes suggested that children up to the age of two have, primarily, delta waves – the slowest brain waves (0.5-4Hz), the ones usually associated with sleep. From the age of two to seven a child’s brainwaves are mainly theta (4-6Hz). Theta waves are experienced by adults when they are relaxed, meditating, or in a light sleep. It’s also the brainwave level associated with trance, where a person’s mind is more open to suggestion. Therefore, what people say to a young child and the way they act with that young child can have a huge effect on the way that child thinks and acts. And, after the age of seven, it becomes harder to make changes to that child. “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man” is a quote attributed to St Ignatius Loyola (who founded the Jesuits), Aristotle, and others. In terms of brainwaves, it does seem to be true.
It also seems to be a time when a person’s basic attitudes towards things are formed – the way they think or feel about something or someone. There are various theories about personality development – Freud’s five stages, Erikson’s eight stages, and others – but clearly a person’s behaviour and characteristics begin to be formed during these first seven years. That’s not to say that they can’t be changed as the child gets older, or even be changed in the adult. After all, behaviour and thinking are adaptations to the world a person finds themselves in. It’s just that, arguably, they don’t seem to change by much. Modern personality psychology shows that temperament appears early, personality traits stabilize gradually, but substantial change continues through adolescence and adulthood.
As children grow older, friends and what those friends think and say becomes more important than family. Teachers and their teaching styles and opinions of the child can have an impact on how successful the young person is at school. They influence the child’s thinking and their opinion of themself. Again, the child is adapting its behaviour and its thinking to fit into the social environment that it finds itself in. And that, in turn, will affect the child’s personality, how confident it feels, how motivated it is, and, importantly, its attentional control.
People do not only learn through direct experience. They also learn by watching others. Psychologist Albert Bandura demonstrated that children often imitate the behaviour they observe, particularly when that behaviour appears to be rewarded or approved of.
This process, known as social learning, helps explain why beliefs, habits, emotional reactions, and coping styles can spread through families, friendship groups, workplaces, and even whole cultures.
A child who regularly observes calm problem-solving may gradually adopt that approach. A child who witnesses anger, avoidance, blame, or fear being repeatedly modelled may come to see these as normal responses to challenge.
This modelling continues throughout life. Adults are influenced by partners, colleagues, leaders, media personalities, and social groups. We often adapt our beliefs and behaviours to align with those around us because belonging and social acceptance are deeply important human needs.
This means that changing a person’s environment – or changing who they spend time with – can sometimes create powerful opportunities for change.
An important part of adaptation involves what psychologists call executive function – the brain’s internal CEO. These are the mental processes that allow a person to focus attention, plan ahead, resist impulses, switch between tasks, remember instructions, and regulate behaviour in pursuit of longer-term goals.
Executive function develops gradually throughout childhood and adolescence as the prefrontal cortex matures. It is shaped by genetics, early attachment experiences, stress exposure, sleep, nutrition, education, and opportunities to practise self-regulation.
Children raised in calm, predictable environments generally have more opportunity to develop these skills. Chronic stress, trauma, unpredictability, or neglect can interfere with this development because the brain becomes focused on immediate survival rather than long-term planning.
This helps explain why some people appear highly organized and self-disciplined while others struggle with procrastination, distraction, emotional impulsivity, or poor decision-making. These are often not character flaws but adaptations shaped by development and experience.
The good news is that executive functioning can improve throughout life through repetition, practice, environmental support, and therapeutic intervention.
During their formative years, children will recognize that they are good at some things – for example running, maths, making people laugh – and there may be other things that they either aren’t good at or receive no encouragement to try. These can lead to limiting beliefs that they hold for the rest of their life unless they take steps to change them. They may believe that they can’t ride a bike, or use a computer, or cook, for example. Whatever they believe becomes part of their personality. So, it makes sense to think of personality as an adaptation because it is a combination of traits and conditioned coping styles.
Not all brains process information in the same way. Some children are neurodivergent, meaning their brains develop differently from what society considers typical. This includes conditions such as Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, dyslexia, dyspraxia, and other developmental differences.
A neurodivergent child is not broken or deficient. Their brain simply processes information differently. They may experience differences in attention, sensory sensitivity, emotional regulation, social communication, or executive functioning. These differences can create difficulties in environments designed for neurotypical people, particularly if those differences are misunderstood or criticised.
A child who is repeatedly told they are lazy, difficult, careless, or disruptive may adapt by masking their difficulties, withdrawing socially, becoming anxious, or developing limiting beliefs about their worth and ability. Equally, when neurodivergent children are understood and supported, they often develop remarkable strengths in creativity, problem-solving, attention to detail, innovation, and resilience.
The way a child’s differences are responded to can have a profound impact on how they see themselves and how they adapt to the world around them.
As people move through life, they build mental frameworks called schemas. These are patterns of expectation about who they are, what other people are like, and how the world works.
A child who repeatedly experiences encouragement may develop a schema such as “I am capable and safe enough to try.” A child repeatedly criticised or ignored may develop “I am not good enough,” or “People cannot be trusted.”
These schemas often operate automatically, shaping what a person notices, remembers, expects, and believes. They influence behaviour in ways that often reinforce themselves. Someone who believes they will fail may avoid opportunities, and that avoidance then appears to confirm the belief.
The encouraging news is that the brain remains capable of change throughout life. This ability, known as neuroplasticity, means that new experiences, repeated practice, supportive relationships, and therapeutic interventions can gradually build new neural pathways.
This is why people can change at any age. Old adaptations may have been useful once, but if life changes, new ways of thinking and behaving can be learned. The brain is continually adapting to the world it experiences.
Human bodies have hormones acting in them all the time, but puberty is a particularly obvious period of change as new hormones start to have an effect on a person’s body, which can have an impact on how people treat them, which can affect their self-esteem and the way that they think about themselves. And that can impact on their behaviour, which also affects how people treat them – and the cycle goes round again.
Hormones are chemical messengers secreted by our endocrine glands. The everyday hormones we may be familiar with are adrenalin and cortisol, but other important ones include melatonin, insulin, oestrogen and testosterone. Almost all of a person’s hormones affect their mood, emotions, and mental health in one way or another. According to Hans Selye, the most important stressors are emotional. B S McEwan’s ‘allostatic load’ refers to the wear and tear on the body from trying to maintain its internal equilibrium. The most widespread emotional triggers affecting a person are uncertainty, conflict, lack of control, and lack of information. And these all affect a person’s thinking and behaviour, which change by adapting to their new internal environment.
Hormones can be grouped as direct neuromodulatory hormones, metabolic hormones with indirect psychological effects, and context-dependent endocrine signalling.
Some people dismiss the emotional part of the brain as being primitive, and probably the cause of the problems of many of the clients they see. What they seem to ignore is the fact that emotions are full of energy and information. The information they contain tells us about an individual’s values and what they believe. They are an important part of an individual’s decision-making process.
Long-term stress in a person’s life may influence processes associated with disease vulnerability, though evidence varies by condition. For example, increases in anxiety or depression levels, suppression of immunity, promotion of inflammation, encouragement of cancer growth, along with increases in blood pressure and blood clotting, increases in abdominal obesity, and impaired cognitive and emotional circuits in the brain. People with stress-related disorders have a significantly greater risk of auto-immune diseases. These then require some adaptation in the way a person behaves. Neurogenic inflammation, ie stress induced inflammation, can be affected by emotions.
All through a person’s life, they are affected by how much sleep they get, how much exercise they take, and how much and the quality of the food they eat. Lack of sleep can make people eat more than they would normally. It can make them cognitively impaired – they find it harder to think, recall information, and learn anything new.
Exercise is often touted as a great way of burning off calories and getting fit. It is certainly good for your body and can result in the formation of new neurons in the brain. In tests, it doesn’t seem to be a good way of losing weight.
Many people, for a variety of reasons, don’t have the time to make traditional simple meals. They are very likely to find a packet with a great picture of something they like, and stick the contents in the microwave. These foods typically are ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which contain a large number of ingredients that won’t be found in a typical kitchen and which a person’s body may not be able to digest. The food can impact on the person’s gut microbiome, which can impact on their physical and mental health (through the gut-brain axis or GBA), which can impact on how they behave.
As children get older, they want to have more autonomy or agency in their life. They want to be able to choose what they do and when they do it. And they also want to feel competent in the things they do. And they can only get that feeling if people in their life – friends, family, and significant others such as teachers – celebrate their successes. As adults, they feel the same, although as adults, it’s usually bosses and life partners that have a significant impact on their sense of agency and competence. Additional significant other people in a person’s life can be politicians, film stars, pop stars, sports stars, business leaders, social media influencers, and others. They can affect what a person thinks about and how they think of it – whether something is a good thing or a bad thing. And that can affect how a person votes, and that could affect what sort of government is elected or imposed on them. It could affect whether a country goes to war or suffers trade embargoes, as well as other things that can affect the quality of life of an individual.
Throughout a person’s life, diseases can play an important role. It’s not just things like Covid-19, but in some parts of the world other diseases – some that children are typically vaccinated against in the West – can have a devastating effect, causing death to family members and friends of children and adults alike. Again, a person will adapt to the situation in both their behaviour and their way of thinking about the world around them.
We mentioned epigenetics earlier, this uses a process called methylation to turn genes on or off. DNA methylation is influenced by diet, exercise, stress, relationships, thoughts, nutritional status, toxins, sleep, infections, etc. This is an example of how the body adapts to world it finds itself in. And, as also mentioned earlier, in animal studies, epigenetic changes in one generation can be passed on to the following generations.
Illness and loneliness can affect a person significantly – not only in what they can and can’t do, their quality of life, but also in how long they live. The health services available to a person are important. In countries where health care is free at the point of delivery, people can usually be quickly helped, and the illness can be dealt with. In countries where this isn’t the case, people have to live with their illness and its consequences – they have to adapt by changing their behaviour and their thinking. The same is true with social services. Where social services are available, people have a better outcome. Where social services are unavailable or limited, people will have to adapt – again affecting their behaviour and their thinking.
In addition, factors such as poverty, racism, and urban blight are thought to impact a person’s genetic and molecular function. This might lead to telomeres on chromosomes shortening. Telomeres are DNA sequences and proteins at the ends of chromosomes that protect the ends of chromosomes from damage. Shorter telomeres have been associated with increased incidence of diseases and poor survival, ie people die younger.
Temperament refers to the innate, biologically-based behavioural and emotional traits that determine how a person reacts to the world. It forms the foundation of personality and is visible from early infancy. It is central to why people are the way they are.
Not all children begin life with the same emotional style. Even very young babies show clear differences in temperament – their natural tendency to react to the world in particular ways. Some babies are calm and adaptable, while others are more sensitive to noise, change, novelty, or frustration. Some are naturally more sociable, others more cautious and observant.
Temperament appears to have a strong biological basis and is influenced by genetics and early brain development. Researchers often describe dimensions such as emotional reactivity, activity level, attention span, adaptability, and self-soothing ability. These early tendencies are not fixed personality traits, but they provide the raw material from which personality develops.
A naturally cautious child growing up in a supportive and encouraging environment may gradually develop confidence and resilience. The same child in a critical or chaotic environment may become withdrawn and anxious. Equally, an impulsive and energetic child may flourish when given structure and encouragement, but struggle if met only with punishment or misunderstanding.
This is an important reminder that children are not blank slates. They arrive with their own neurological tendencies, and these interact continuously with the environment around them. Personality develops partly through this ongoing relationship between nature and nurture.
For most adults, their view of themselves is highly influenced not just by what happened to them, but how they remember what happened to them. Memories play an important part in how an individual sees themselves and their role in the world. If they remember their failures rather than their successes, then they will expect to fail when trying something new or when being assigned a task at work. On the other hand, if a person remembers their successes more than their failures, then they will expect success. Their thinking will affect their behaviour, and that will affect how they feel about themselves and the world in general. It will affect their model of the world, which, in turn, will affect which memories come to mind when they are in a position where they need to do something new.
Similarly, if they remember being fearful in similar situations in the past, and having survived the situation (which they must have to be in their current situation remembering it!), they will use the same successful(!) strategy again. It’s the same with people who get angry or violent. If the strategy worked in the past, they will use it again. Having, perhaps, tried other strategies in the past, this is the one – the adaptation – that works for them. So, emotions lead to adaptations to different types of environment. That’s why people behave the way they do.
People have different needs at different times. Some are very basic, like needing to eat or drink, or warmth, or to go the toilet. Other needs are things like needing to feel loved, or to have friends and a sense of belonging, some people need to have power, and some need to have significant achievements or mastery of something. That’s according to David McClelland. Tony Robbins’s list of needs includes certainty, uncertainty/variety, significance, connection/love, growth, and contribution. Abraham Maslow had his famous triangle of needs going from survive to thrive. Whatever their actual needs are, trying to satisfy them can motivate people to do (or not do) things. And satisfying those needs affects their behaviour.
Gabor Maté in his book, The Myth of Normal, suggests that our core needs are:
Belonging, relatedness, connectedness
Autonomy
Mastery or competence
Self-esteem
Trust
Purpose or meaning
As we said, trying to satisfy those needs motivates people to do something.
Changes in behaviour can affect the chemicals in the brain. Neurotransmitters like dopamine, GABA (gamma-aminobutyric acid), and glutamate, etc, may find their levels increasing or decreasing, and the available receptors for each of these neurotransmitters may increase or decrease. This can then further affect a person’s behaviour as they, for example, try to increase their dopamine levels, which is often found in people with various addictions and substance use disorders.
One of the things that hypnotherapists talk about is stress. Some stress you can cope with (eustress), some makes you stronger (like training for a marathon), and some can become debilitating, leading to feeling overwhelmed and burnout. Some stressful situations are temporary or ad hoc, others seem to last for long periods of time.
Ad hoc situations can result in a person dealing with the stress and moving on with their life. Strategies to use while still having the rational brain available are fawning or appeasing, where a person does and says anything that they’re asked to in order to protect themself. Or they can play the clown, to make people laugh. This is called the funster response. Or they can simply lie. This is called the fibbing response.
If other people are involved, then the emotional brain will invoke the fight-or-flight response. If that doesn’t work, there’s the freeze or collapse, which involves the vagus nerve. Lastly is flopping, which is similar to freezing except the body is floppy and the muscles have become loose.
Sally Cat PDA in her blog “The F family of 7 adrenaline responses” named ‘funster’, ‘fibbing’, and ‘freezing’.
With prolonged stress, a person’s responses can be anger, anxiety, and/or depression. These are obvious behaviours, and are adaptations to the way that life is for that person.
With adults, spending time in natural environments, such as parks, woodland, and green areas, can lead to a decrease in stress, anxiety, and depression, while also improving emotional wellbeing.
The famous bell-shaped curve applies to everybody. Each person is somewhere along the continuum for all things, such as height, weight, intelligence, happiness, stress, trauma, etc. Where they are in relation to the people who are significant in their life – or, perhaps, where they think they are – can affect that person’s behaviour and their way of thinking. These are all adaptations to the environment they find themselves in.
When a person feels some kind of disconnection in their life – this might be alienation, loneliness, loss of meaning, and dislocation – it can lead to addiction, chronic illness, and mental disorders. Why should people choose addiction? One suggestion is that it’s because it takes them out of the person they have become. Think of it this way, face-to-face interactions activate a child’s sympathetic nervous system. These higher levels of activation correlate with the increased production of oxytocin, prolactin, endorphins, and dopamine. These are some of the same biochemical systems involved in addiction. So, the addiction is replacing some of the things missing from the addict’s life.
Compassion focused therapy (CFT) is a therapy that aims to help reduce distress and psychological difficulties, and increase happiness, wellbeing, and flourishing. It says that instead of reacting to our internal world (thoughts, images, emotions, and sensations) and the external world (other people and our environment), we can proactively pay attention to particular aspect of life and choose a compassionate response.
Flourishing is about more than just wellbeing, it’s about all aspects of an individual’s life being good, and covers things like happiness, health, meaning, character, relationships, and financial security.
Results recently published showed the UK at 20th out of 22 countries in terms of flourishing. Indonesia was top.
So, life is full of ups and downs. People adapt to them. Sometimes those adaptations in the way they behave and think can be positive. They help the person succeed in life and can be beneficial to the people around them. Sometimes those adaptations can be negative. For most people, most of the time, the adaptations are a mixture of both – hopefully with more positive than negative ones.
And that’s why people are how they are. And it’s why a person’s history is important in understanding who they are.
It’s our job as solution-focused hypnotherapists to help people achieve their goals, which often involves them changing their thinking and their behaviour. For example, they may want to stop smoking, which they started as a way of showing how grown-up they were – because a deterioration in their health requires this new behaviour. Perhaps they have to give a presentation, and many years ago they came to believe that they were not good at public speaking. They now have to acquire the confidence to stand in front of a crowd and speak.
Therapists can help people make positive changes in their life. No matter what age they are, they can still adapt to changing situations. We can still teach old dogs new tricks.
References:
Gabor Maté. The Myth of Normal: Illness, health & healing in a toxic culture. April 2024. ISBN-10: 1785042734
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA
https://www.nhsinform.scot/ready-steady-baby/pregnancy/your-baby-s-development/how-your-baby-develops-week-to-week/
http://www.sallycatpda.co.uk/2021/09/the-f-family-of-7-adrenaline-responses.html