Author, Personality Type & Behavioral Change Expert

ANNE DRANITSARIS, PH.D.

​​Want more information about how brain-based approaches could make a difference in your life?

Contact Anne for a free introductory discussion.​

BRAIN-BASED APPROACHES

 
We now know so much about the brain and emotional maturation. Most working with human development have fallen behind neuroscience and psychology in terms of the approaches being used to help people develop. Jung’s theory of psychological type is still as relevant as ever as it can now be connected to brain lateralization theory and brain physiology. When integrated with an understanding of psychological need and brain development, it gives us the key to expediting development and unlocking human potential.

The Striving Styles Personality System is the first comprehensive, neuro-psychological framework for learning how a person’s cognitive functions are organized in their brain, and which of the functions is hard-wired from birth to be used to meet the psychological needs of the self. It shows how behavior is used to get the need of the function met.

The SSPS is a way of understanding the more dynamic and interpersonal aspects of an individual’s personality, and how their needs and emotions cause shifts in behavior. Dysfunctional patterns of thought and emotion can be directly connected to frustrated emotional needs and arrested development.

Using the Striving Styles to Enhance Therapy

The Striving Styles is a complete development system that that incorporates Jung’s Psychological Type Theory, Emotional and Social Intelligence, Needs Theory, Mindfulness, and the latest advances in brain development and neuroplasticity as it relates to emotional development. It provides people with a structured and systematic approach to developing the quadrants of the brain and the integration of the functions – just as Jung intended.

Using recent findings in how the human brain develops during the lifespan, it shows the stages of development of our three brains, based on Roger Sperry’s Triune Brain Theory (instinctual, emotional and rational), and how failures in childhood nurturing and environmental factors can lead to maladaptive patterns of behavior in adulthood. It states that these maladaptive patterns of behavior are emotionally driven, and get in the way of brain development and achieving one’s potential.

The SSPS promotes the premise that automatic maladaptive patterns of behavior that get the predominant need met and ensure psychological survival will get in the way of development. It states that these maladaptive behavioral patterns can be changed and new neural pathways in the brain can be laid as a result of choosing different behaviors and having different experiences.

In other words, by understanding the psychological need that must be met, individuals can consciously seek to meet their predominant need in their work, relationships and leisure activities. This increases self-awareness and self-mastery, putting people in the “driver’s seat” in their lives and helping them actively develop their true potential, rather than simply surviving. ​