How to Become Less Neurotic

If you experience high levels of neuroticism, it likely impacts your life in a range of pretty shitty ways. As hard as it might be to believe, especially if you’ve felt the same way for years, it is possible to reduce your neuroticism and its negative effects on your life.

There used to be a widely held belief in psychology that personality traits remain stable over one’s lifetime. However, it’s now known that life experiences and therapeutic interventions can lead to meaningful changes in personality traits.

While it’s unlikely you’ll go from high neuroticism to not being neurotic at all, you can absolutely lower your neurotic thoughts and feelings. This article defines neuroticism and explains some ways to become less neurotic.

(Disclaimer: the advice in this article does not constitute medical advice and should not be taken as such. Please visit your doctor if you are seeking mental health treatment.)

What is neuroticism?

Neuroticism is a Big-Five personality trait that predisposes people to experience more negative emotions, higher anxiety, lower self-worth, and greater levels of depression than average.

One of the most detrimental impacts of high levels of neuroticism is that it often prevents people from living life in line with what they value. Avoidance behaviors are characteristic of neurotic people. A neurotic person afraid of making a show of themselves in public might never join a martial arts class even if it was something they really wanted to try.

Neurotic people easily dismiss any positive aspects about themselves and focus on the negatives. Rumination about the past and fear of the future are common to highly neurotic people. Engaging with the present moment fully is something neurotic people aren’t well-versed in.

Psychologists or psychiatrists don’t tend to diagnose people as neurotic these days. Instead, they focus on specific manifestations of neuroticism, such as anxiety disorders, dysthymia, or depression. However, neuroticism is unequivocally a dominant aspect in the personality of anyone suffering excessively from negative thoughts and emotions.

Highly neurotic people often consume more alcohol and cannabis than normal because these chemicals can provide relief from neurotic ways of thinking and feeling. Alcohol can allow neurotic people to do things they normally avoid, such as engaging in social interaction. Both can provide a break from one’s constant stream of neurotic thoughts.

Unfortunately, overconsumption of alcohol in particular quickly becomes detrimental and can end up making neurotic people feel, well, even more neurotic. Any naturally anxious person who has got shitfaced drunk and experienced ‘hangxiety’ the next day can attest to this.

I have always been quite a neurotic person. In fact, running a blog like this is one of my personal coping mechanisms to distract myself from neurotic thoughts and feelings.

For most of my life, I thought that being highly neurotic was something that would grasp me in its clutches until I die. I felt resigned to the fact that I would avoid doing many things I valued, simply because my personality was shaped a certain way by a combination of genetics and childhood experiences.

One day, I decided to question whether I really should be letting this personality trait dictate how I live so much. I sought out science-backed answers on whether it’s possible to shift neuroticism downward and how to do it. I researched the shit out of it and found that it is indeed quite possible to become less neurotic and reduce the control that neuroticism has over your life. The fruits of my research culminated in the tips and suggestions I’m about to share.

How to Become Less Neurotic

The ideas below on how to become less neurotic range from the seemingly innocuous, such as getting your heart rate up, to areas in which you need to tread lightly, such as exploring psychedelics.

Meditate

Meditation is one of my favorite areas of intellectual and spiritual curiosity. Thanks to people like Alan Watts and Sam Harris, I developed this curiosity and began learning about Eastern teachings, such as Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Dzogchen. Common to all of these teachings is some form of meditation.

There are different types of meditation, but the underlying aims of most meditative practices are to gain a better understanding of the mind, engage more with life as it unfolds in the present, and attach less to your thoughts. Regular meditation practice leads to scientifically proven positive changes in the brain^[1].

A simple Google search for “meditation studies” provides you with a plethora of interesting papers. One paper in particular, from 2011^[2], is of particular interest in the context of this article. The main finding was that sustained levels of mindfulness meditation practice can protect against the negative effects of neuroticism.

The authors of the paper suggest that the increased ability to label one’s experience without attaching to particular thoughts or emotions is the mechanism by which meditation protects against neuroticism. The fact that meditation requires little more than the ability to sit down and be present for 15 to 30 minutes makes it a no-brainer for me in terms of practices that can reduce neuroticism.

Get Your Heart Rate Up

Exercise and improved mental health are an excellent match. Study after study has shown impressive reductions in depression and anxiety when people work out regularly. If a pharmacological company could create the benefits of exercise in pill form, it’d earn billions.

In terms of how exercise curbs neurotic symptoms, the most interesting study was from 1989 when a diagnosis of neurotic was still commonplace. The paper, entitled “Exercise Intensity and Reduction in Neurotic Symptoms. A Controlled Follow-Up Study”^[3] found that people who exercised with higher intensity (jogging vs walking, for example) experienced lower anxiety levels after a six-month follow-up.

Anecdotally, exercise intensity matters for a reduction in my own neuroticism. A 30-minute walk perks me up a little bit, however, an equivalent length jogging or jump rope session makes me feel much better. This might be due to higher endorphin release.

Either way, I think getting your heart rate up via exercise is a crucial tool for reducing neurotic thoughts and feelings. It’s best to do a form of intense exercise that you actually enjoy, whether that’s jump rope, jogging, swimming, or cycling.

Practice Gratitude

Practicing gratitude to reduce neuroticism is my own personal contribution to this article rather than something with specific science-backed research to it. There are scientific papers on gratitude—a paper from 2010^[4] reports on an existing body of research that says there’s an association between gratitude practice and increased well-being.

Gratitude means appreciating the good things in your life. I can already hear your inner neurotic protest that there isn’t much to be grateful for in your life. However, speaking from experience, the reason it’s initially difficult to practice gratitude is that it’s a skill you need to learn.

One of the best purchases I’ve made in recent times was a dedicated daily gratitude journal from Amazon entitled “Start With Gratitude.” The beauty of this journal is that it helps you improve at practicing gratitude. It features tons of prompts and ideas that help you think of things to be grateful for. For the neurotic whose mind tends to veer towards pessimism and negativity, I can’t recommend a journal like this enough.

Try SSRIs

The most prevalent hypothesis for why depression occurs is that serotonin deficiency is the cause. The result of this hypothesis has been the development of SSRI medications. SSRIs like Prozac increase the levels of serotonin in the brain, and they are also prescribed for anxiety disorders.

In our post-truth world, some skeptics and conspiracy theorists like to spread the idea that Big Pharma only wants to exploit people and that SSRIs don’t actually do much. Most meta-analyses have found that SSRIs^[5] do statistically work better than placebo.

I am no expert in neurochemistry or neurophysiology, but suffice to say that I think the brain is so complex that we don’t actually know precisely how SSRIs work. We just know that they seem to work quite well for many people.

One very interesting paper from 2008^[6] postulated that the change in depression or anxiety from taking SSRIs is due to a reduction in neuroticism. The study followed 93 outpatients suffering from major depressive episodes. The conclusion was that “any treatment effect of SSRIs occurs through neuroticism reduction.”

Whether you want to take SSRIs is a personal decision. I am just presenting some findings from my own interest in this topic. I believe they’re worth a six-week trial run to see whether you notice any reduction in the severity and frequency of your neurotic thoughts and feelings. Always discuss these matters with your doctor, though.

Explore Psychedelics

Psychedelics are fascinating chemicals. Tons of research on their therapeutic capabilities was conducted in the 1950s and 1960s until they were outlawed and disregarded in scientific circles for 40 years. In the last 5 to 10 years, psychedelic research has experienced a rebirth, with institutions such as The Johns Hopkins Psychedelic Research Unit leading the way.

A study published in 2016 on psilocybin mushrooms given to cancer patients^[7] found substantial reductions in depressed moods and feelings of anxiety. I don’t know about you, but receiving a diagnosis of cancer sounds like a recipe for anybody to become more neurotic.

A relatively recent 2018 paper examined the effects of psilocybin on personality structure^[8]. The results were that people who took psilocybin became less neurotic and more outgoing.

Is the solution for reducing neuroticism to go out and take psychedelic chemicals that remain illegal in many parts of the world? I’m not sure. Set and setting are both incredibly important when experimenting with what are some powerful, reality-altering chemicals. Used safely, in a clinical setting, I think the answer is an unequivocal yes. But that likely involves registering for a clinical trial.

I couldn’t possibly recommend psychedelics in anything but a clinical setting, so I don’t advise anyone whether neurotic or not to take these substances outside a professional environment.

Personally, psychedelic exploration for the purpose of understanding myself deeper and getting to the heart of my neuroticism is something I am passionate about. If you want to further research psychedelics, I’ve picked out my favourite six best books on psychedelics.

Therapy

A really interesting meta-analysis of psychotherapy in 2017 found strong evidence that therapeutic interventions such as CBT or exposure therapy can alter personality traits^[9]. The authors of the paper specifically mention neurotic traits as susceptible to being reduced by therapy.

The type of therapy doesn’t seem to matter as much as engaging with the therapy and completing a full-course, which is typically 12 weeks in the case of CBT.

Is There an Upside to Neuroticism?

With all of the negative impacts of neuroticism in mind, it’s natural to wonder why this trait exists at all. Is there any upside to one’s neuroticism?

Pursuing a scientific line of thought, it’s clear there must be an evolutionary benefit to neuroticism. People who are neurotic tend to fear the worst outcomes and have high situational awareness. It’s easy to see how this can be beneficial—think wearing a seatbelt all the time when in a car or taking care of a toddler and ensuring they don’t put anything small in their mouths that they can choke on.

Because neurotic people see danger everywhere, they are likelier to take steps to prevent that danger. Aside from the examples above, a person with high neuroticism is probably likelier than average to build up a decent pension pot so they can avoid the danger of not having money to eat during retirement.

So, neuroticism can absolutely be a positive thing. My opinion is that it’s about balance. People like myself who score highly in neuroticism need to intervene and reduce that neuroticism using methods that have science-backed evidence behind them.

I hope any neurotic person reading this article has gained something of value from it. Please comment below if you have any thoughts. Thanks for reading.

Resources/citations

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471247/

[2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3191267/

[3] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/2816466/

[4] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010965/

[5] https://bmcpsychiatry.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12888-016-1173-2

[6] https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18384882/

[7] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5367557/

[8] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6220878/

[9] https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2017-00079-001