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Home | Psychology of Wellness  | Personality Article Archive | Stoically Aloof

Stoically Aloof

BY: T. Franklin Murphy | November 2018 (edited June 10, 2022)
Distinguished man with violin, representing healthy aloofness.
Adobe Stock Images
We live in an age of diagnoses and corrections. Every oddity is labeled as an illness. Someone who is aloof may seem odd but it is just a trait, not an illness.
Quiet, even-keeled and living inside oneself, once the characteristics of stoic individualism, now diagnosed as pathologically lonely. Many states of being previously accepted as a personality type are falling casualties to our expanding introspective attitude towards improving well-being. Often wrongness isn’t felt as disagreeable until it is labeled wrong. Our expanding definition of psychosis is making us all ill.

I was raised by two emotionally different parents. My mother is very open and expressive with her emotions. My father, on the other hand, is very reserved, aloof, stoic. As a child, understanding parental personality differences isn’t typically a conscious exploration. Your parents are just your parents. Moving out and looking back, the differences become more salient. From a distance, I could identify the different personalities of my mom and dad, seeing benefits and drawbacks to each. I often stated to friends that my father sails on very smooth waters.

​When confused, I turned to my father; when lonely, I turned to my mother. Neither personality would I label as dysfunctional, although, depending on the circumstance, one or the other may better suited the situation.

Key Definition:

Aloof personalities appear cool and distant. They are suspiciously uninterested in others, marching to their own music.

Personality Styles Differ

Life doesn’t obligingly bow to our personality preferences. Our relationships require measured approaches of openness and protection—emotional expression or stoic aloofness. Too much emotional expression may feel hostile to an emotionally protected partner, while too much emotionless communication may threaten the warmth of connection for the more expressive. We each have an emotional style. Connection to our particular style is dynamic, beyond a simple prognosis and remedy.
"Life doesn’t obligingly bow to our personality preferences. Our relationships require measured approaches of openness and protection—emotional expression or stoic aloofness."
I emerged into adulthood more like my father in many aspects. I married into a culture where emotional expression was forbidden and threatening. This environment further cemented emotional aloofness into my personality. The stoicism protected tender insecurities while allowing for stability. It also stunted growth necessary for deeper connections.
 
Change often creates hurtful tradeoffs. Introspective investigations into feelings brought a new richness to life. I escaped the simpleness of puritan action, widening the world with the expansiveness of felt experience. Unfortunately, my new world collided violently with the fearful world of a companion threatened by emotion. Changes often create incompatibility. Once acquainted with emotions, concealing the liveliness feels wrong—limiting. The constraints of incompatibility damage relationships leaving both sides reeling in fear.
 
Carl Rodgers wrote:
I have learned that in any significant or continuing relationship, persistent feelings had best be expressed. If they are expressed as feelings, owned by me, the result may be temporarily upsetting but ultimately far more rewarding than any attempt to deny or conceal them. For me, being transparently open is far more rewarding than being defensive. This is difficult to achieve, even partially, but enormously enriching to a relationship. (1980)
I largely agree with Rodgers, except sometimes the expressions may be enormously destructive, ending compatibilities that once co-existed with the limitations. Some may refer to these relationships as co-dependent where one or both partners limit growth to maintain a relationship that would otherwise fail.

​Depending on the goals, one must ask, if growth creates hardship, is it really growth or just change. If we are unhappy but don’t know it, are we really unhappy? The definitions and labels we attach to experience radically can change felt experience, creating new rules that we begin to judge our current state against.

Aloofness and Autism

While aloofness may not be a flawed personality characteristic, it may be included in identifying a larger underlying condition. People suffering from autism often are socially aloof. It is a characteristic of the condition.

They even found that parents exhibiting social aloofness may be more likely to have an autistic child than parents not exhibiting social aloofness (Klusek, Losh, & Martin, 2014).
I’m still emotionally aloof. I feel emotions and work towards openly sharing more of the budding feelings inside. My body still instinctively withdraws from emotionally explosive situations. I’m not ill, suffering from a psychosis in need of treatment. It’s who I am. The challenge isn’t discovering a cure but blending my own peculiarities with someone else and their peculiarities.
 
The collisions in life, on-going conflicts, create the illusion of illness. Some individuals invite more stress by continuously rubbing against personalities more common in their society. These persons may need help to become more inline with others, not because they are suffering a defined psychosis, but because they desire a more congenial existence. We can be stoically aloof or socially vibrant only adjusting if these attitudes fail to bring the manner of living we desire.
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T. Franklin Murphy
T. Franklin Murphy
Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
​T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.

Resource:

Klusek, J., Losh, M., & Martin, G. (2014). Sex differences and within-family associations in the broad autism phenotype. Autism: The International Journal of Research and Practice, 18(2), 106-116.

Rodgers, C. (1980) A Way of Being. Houghton Mifflin. Kindle Edition

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Articles on Aloof Personality:


Aloof Personality Test (A 4 Point Guide)
8 Traits of an Aloof Personality & What It Means to Be One
3 Types of Emotionally Unavailable Partners
How Many Types of Introverts Are There - and Which One are You?

​Other Flourishing Life Society articles of interest on this topic:

Personalization. A Psychological Definition. A Flourishing Life Society definition link
FLS Links. Personal Preferences. Dislike without disrespect
FLS Link: Dark Triad Personalities
Belongingness. Our Emotional and Psychological Need to Belong. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Personality Disorders. A Psychological Vocabulary article link
Frightening Encounters with Emotions. A Compassionate Reaction to Other's Emotions. A Flourishing Life Society article link
We worry. Thinking about the future is an adaptive response to complex problems; we prepare and we avoid. But too much worry interferes with constructive action. We even worry about our worrying.
Maladaptive Behaviors. A Psychological Definition. A Flourishing Life Society article image link
Achieving the most from the wisdom of emotions requires purposeful effort to integrate emotions into our larger concepts of self.
Conscientiousness: A Personality Trait. A Flourishing Life Society article link
We are engaged in a constant work of becoming, satisfying needs, entertaining wants, and creating meaning. We can do this purposely or haphazardly.
We unwittingly promote unhealthy defense mechanisms on line. There are plenty pf social media participants willing to support life limiting adaptations.
Negativistic Personality Disorder. A Psychological Defintion. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Emotionally Detached. A Flourishing Life Society article link
We get hurt, not because others necessarily hate us; but because we have different needs.
Flourishing Life Society Link. Neuroticism. A personality Trait.

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Flourishing Life Society article link. Stoically Aloof
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