Definition of melancholic. Let's start with the undoubted advantages

This is necessary not only for families and educators. The manager also needs to know this in order to use the employee’s talents with maximum benefit for the enterprise.

Let's consider this type of temperament as melancholic.

The characteristics of this person include such traits as introversion, tendency to think, and pessimism. It seems that the prospects are not very bright? However, it is not. And a competent leader knows that no one can cope better with painstaking work that requires attention and analytical skills than a melancholic person. The characteristics of this type of temperament include thoughtfulness and the ability to delve into the essence of things and processes. And dislike of communication plays only a positive role in a number of professions. It is the melancholic person who can work concentratedly, without being distracted by empty gossip and hour-long gatherings over tea. This is a serious, often creative person. A melancholic person can also ideally cope with a task that requires deep analysis.

Ideally, it should contain an indication of the type of temperament. This is especially important in those enterprises where it is possible to distribute tasks depending on a person’s abilities and inclinations. Suppose we are talking about a manufacturing company or a sales company. It is impossible for one person to cover the entire spectrum; there will always be a variety of tasks that require different qualities. Eg,

Phlegmatic and melancholic people can best cope with planning, accounting, calculation, drawing up schedules and reports. The characteristics of these personality types include the necessary qualities: perseverance, thoughtfulness, but a choleric person does not have enough endurance or patience to complete what he started. But in his passion he will be able to infect others with a thirst for vigorous activity. And a melancholic person is best occupied with the details. A choleric person (the characteristics of this temperament imply increased emotionality, pressure, and the ability to subjugate people) can be a project manager or an ideological inspirer. But people with different

Creative tasks - design development, writing texts, editing and all kinds of programming, perhaps, can be performed best by a melancholic person. The characteristics of this type of temperament include attention to detail, scrupulousness, and the ability to deeply understand and feel a problem. This is why such people make excellent writers and journalists.

Of course, they also have plenty of disadvantages, and they are often associated with psychophysiological characteristics, with a special type of nervous system. For example, a melancholic person has difficulty withstanding stress; it can incapacitate him for a long time. He is unsociable, withdrawn, prone to depression and despondency. However, people of this temperament type are sensitive to beauty. For them, moral values and principles are not an empty phrase. They are conscientious and considerate of the feelings of others.

Melancholic people are also excellent listeners. Consequently, people of this type may be suitable for the work of a consultant psychologist, a helpline employee, or a social service.

The melancholic's tendency to can be used for the benefit of the common cause. After all, it is he who is distinguished by special perfectionism - the desire for perfection, for the thorough fulfillment of the entrusted task. He is his own harshest critic. But the advantages are that he is a permanent, reliable worker who carefully weighs everything. He easily sees the essence of the problem and finds creative solutions. As a rule, he always brings things to their logical conclusion. And although a melancholic person works best alone, a smart leader will be able to use his qualities for the benefit of the entire enterprise.

U melancholic very weak nervous system. Psychologists say that people with this type of temperament have great difficulty enduring great emotional and mental stress. The psyche of melancholic people is very vulnerable, they quickly get tired. Such people are characterized by emotional instability; for example, even the most insignificant difficulty can unsettle a melancholic person for a long time. They worry about any reason, but at the same time they feel the world and people around them very subtly.

Characteristics of a melancholic person

For people with a melancholic type of temperament, an inner life is inherent, overflowing with deep experiences. These people, as a rule, are sensitive and vulnerable, they live in conditions of increased anxiety, have a rich imagination and dream a lot. Almost all melancholic people are creative people.

Melancholic people do not waste words, they are ready to attach special importance to every little thing, they always try to keep their promises and, if this fails, they worry for a long time and sincerely. Any difficulties for a melancholic person are a big problem, so in order to cope with life’s troubles, a melancholic person needs to increase self-confidence.

Self-esteem

Without a doubt, melancholic people have very low self-esteem. They are often not just shy, but even timid. Melancholic people are pessimistic, tend to exaggerate their own shortcomings and not see their merits, often and for a long time engage in introspection, and almost never look for excuses for themselves.

Performance

Melancholic people have low performance, they get tired very quickly, so they need frequent rest and a change in activity. People with a melancholic type of temperament are very slow, they are often distracted by trifles. Performance depends to a large extent on the mood of the melancholic person and outside support. Melancholic people almost never occupy leadership positions; work in extreme conditions is also alien to them.

Communication skills

Melancholic people do not like communication, they are not interested in other people, they care exclusively about their own inner world, which is where they live. Such people are not socially active, they avoid the team, and it is difficult to interest them in anything.

Rivalry is alien to melancholic people, so they quickly obey the leader and continue to live in their inner world. They love to be looked after, while remaining in the shadows. When communicating with melancholic people, you should not raise your voice or speak harshly, this only makes them withdraw into themselves.

Love and friendship

There is no more devoted friend than a melancholic person. In love relationships, as a rule, they take a passive role, and almost all melancholic people are monogamous. They are ashamed to show feelings and emotions, so they always wait for the first step from their partner. It is difficult for them to get along with sanguine people, as they cannot stand their activity.

Sleep and appetite

Melancholic people sleep little, so they often feel tired. They have trouble falling asleep and often suffer from insomnia. The appetite of people of this type of temperament is usually reduced, they eat poorly, little and very slowly.

Melancholic people allowed people to feel this world, everything that fills it and surrounds us. Melancholic people are very interesting to study. It has been generally accepted since Soviet times that all melancholic people are whiners. A well-known method for determining the type of temperament many people remember is when a melancholic person suffered and cried because a stranger sat on his hat. But despite all their shortcomings, such people have a lot of advantages, thanks to their type of temperament.

A melancholic person is a person who has a melancholic type of temperament. This means that the processes of excitation and inhibition are weak. If they are exposed to any irritant, the threshold of excitability of the nerve receptors of innate reflexes and sensory organs will only decrease slightly. This is not enough to activate auxiliary reflexes. For this reason, it is difficult for a melancholic person to perform certain tasks.

When there is no reflex support at the physiological level, the human psyche perceives simple tasks at the level of complex and impossible. This is a process of arousal. With braking, everything is exactly the same: the braking mechanisms are also weak, so the time for braking after the completion of the reflexes is delayed. This becomes the reason for the constant dull and sad appearance of a melancholic person.

The nervous system of such a person

The type of nervous system of a melancholic person is unbalanced and weak. This suggests that such people cannot work long and intensively; they periodically need rest. People like melancholic people are characterized by constant fear and search for difficulties where there are none. All difficult situations are perceived by a melancholic person as a disaster, since he attaches a lot of importance to the events that occur.

Characteristics of this type of temperament

Psychologists say that there is no bad type of temperament. There are bad and good sides of all types. The description of a melancholic person largely consists of characteristics that are unacceptable for the modern world. Due to the acceleration of time, melancholic people cannot react in time to stressful situations; this is also due to their temperamental characteristics.

What traits are inherent in a melancholic person?

Closedness. In contrast to sanguine people, melancholic people are thoughtful, silent, and prone to pessimism. He is thoughtful and “digests” a lot within himself.
Impressionability. Melancholic people are overly sensitive to everything that happens to them. They are touchy because of their hyper-vulnerability. Then for a long time they cannot calm down, constantly twisting the situation of insult within themselves. Such situations are deeply felt.
Unsociability. Melancholic people tend to have difficulty communicating, as it is often difficult for them to find common topics for conversation. Even if a melancholic person is educated and smart, he will not always find the right words to explain a particular concept or maintain a conversation.
Meticulousness. This trait can be viewed from both a positive and negative side. A melancholic person can do monotonous work; melancholic children love intellectual games and various construction toys. This is good, but this same trait will prevent them from finding a quick solution to the problem. With their meticulousness, they will prevent themselves from finding ways out of difficult life situations.
No conflict. Melancholic people try their best to avoid quarrels and conflict situations. They know that they will have to worry a lot later, and on a subconscious level they are already trying to prevent these experiences.
Affectivity. This trait is more characteristic of choleric people, but it also manifests itself in melancholic people, but first you need to bring the person to it. A melancholic person can wait a long time to be “pissed off.” But when the patience of a stressful situation is overflowing, such people can no longer control their behavior. He can do things that he would never do in a calm state.
Stupor. The other side of a stressful situation is stupor. Such a person's will is paralyzed, he is overcome by stiffness, and he can spend a lot of time motionless.
Anxiety. The vast majority of melancholic people are anxious people. They are worried about everything around them, even the peace in southern Africa can also affect their vulnerable soul.
Integrity. This positive trait of melancholic people is sometimes dictated not by all-encompassing hard work. People with this type of temperament have been afraid of reproaches, punishments, and insults since childhood. Therefore, they get used to performing all tasks efficiently and conscientiously. With outside support, they are ready to move mountains. Achieve good results at work.
Conservative. They are not flexible. It is difficult for them to move to a new place, adapt to new rules, or start a new job. Such people make good family men, capable of maintaining traditions and rules.
Empathy. Such people are sensitive, feeling and empathetic. They know how to empathize and sympathize. They can feel the mood of their interlocutor and support him in difficult times.
Talent. A melancholic person can feel those around him and the space around him. This trait is one of the main ones for talented creative people. They are tolerant and endowed with talents, they tend to constantly concentrate on their thoughts, as they are introverts. Among them there are many artists, musicians, poets, writers, sculptors. They go towards their goal for years, which cannot be said about sanguine people.
Organized. A melancholic person is a person who loves orderliness and organization; he perceives systematized information. Melancholic people are polite, well-mannered (even if not by their parents, with their own self-control), and neat.
Caring. Melancholic people tend to constantly show concern for someone. They perceive and process every little thing. For this reason, the family ideally combines pairs of people with sanguine and melancholic types of temperament.

The life of a talented and sensitive “neatist” among other people

A melancholic person cannot stand it when someone intrudes into his personal space, especially when he is busy with his favorite and important business. It is important for such a person to be alone with himself for a certain time.

A melancholic person will never be the center of attention; he will observe the events taking place from the outside. Melancholic people often act as “gray cardinals” who skillfully manipulate people.

Friendship relationship

A person with this type of temperament selects friends with great care. He will not be exchanged for short-term relationships, both in friendship and in love. If he has chosen a friend, he will be faithful to him for a long time. But if he survives the betrayal, then there is no hope for recovery, at first that’s for sure.

Love relationship

The vast majority of such people are monogamous. It is quite difficult for them to find a partner, since they have high demands on the person who should be nearby.

Relationships work best with sanguine people; they are the ones who can stir up melancholic people. But such spouses do not like it when someone overly commands them, so the sanguine person needs to restrain his ardor in time.

An alliance can work out with choleric people if the spouses learn from the first days to come to a common opinion through compromises.

In the marriage of a melancholic person with a phlegmatic person, serious difficulties are possible. The regularity and indifference of a phlegmatic person irritate the second spouse, so one will sit quietly and watch TV, while the other will not find a place, worry about misunderstanding, indifference, inattention, and lack of expression of love by the phlegmatic person.

With the same type of temperament, a union practically does not survive. Two touchy, vulnerable, closed and meticulous souls will not get along in the same space.

Victory over melancholy

A melancholic person himself is sometimes not happy about his excessive experiences. How can a melancholic person overcome his melancholy?

try to look only for the positive;
communicate with optimists;
during experiences, weigh whether they are worth it;
strive for communication and not be afraid to express your thoughts in a group of people;
develop the skill of weighing the pros and cons when solving problems;
not be afraid to make decisions, even if they are wrong (if it does not affect people’s lives and health);
allow frivolous and adventurous actions in moderation in order to relax from tension and anxiety.

In general, everyone probably has an idea of who a melancholic person is. Surely most readers immediately imagined someone like Pierrot from “The Adventures of Pinocchio”: a sensitive sufferer who constantly dramatizes events. Indeed, a melancholic person has such traits. But not only them.

Established by nature

The division of people into four types of temperament - phlegmatic, choleric, sanguine and melancholic - belongs to Hippocrates. Temperament is an innate set of characteristics of the nervous system that determine the strength and stability of experiences and the impulsiveness of human behavior. Based on temperament, certain personality traits are formed.

Impressionability, reaction speed, frequency of changes in emotions, the degree of their expression are the specifics of all these processes and allow us to classify a person as one of four types of temperament. Although it would be more correct to say - to several.

You should always remember that in reality it is almost impossible to meet, for example, a pure choleric person or a pure sanguine person. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a person will find in himself traits inherent in all four types, and assignment to one of them is based only on the predominance of certain qualities.

So, we said that temperament mainly manifests itself in sensitivity to experiences. A melancholic person is a person whose impulsiveness is low, but every experience, on the contrary, leaves a very (sometimes too) deep mark on his soul.

It is probably the latter feature of melancholic people that determined the meaning of the word “melancholy.” In everyday use, as is known, this is the name for a sad mood, a depressed, melancholy state.

Until the beginning of the last century, this concept was also used in medicine, but now it has been replaced by another word adopted to denote a depressed state of mind - “depression.” But in no case should one assume that people belonging to the melancholic type of temperament suffer from some kind of mental disorder; We are talking only about the physiological characteristics of the nervous system.

Advantages and disadvantages

Like representatives of any other type of temperament, melancholic people have both strengths and weaknesses.

Let's start with the undoubted advantages

Yes, the melancholic is extremely sensitive, but it is precisely this characteristic that makes him the most receptive to beauty among all types. Artists, musicians, writers - everyone who is able to see beauty even in everyday life and show this beauty to others - all these people are most often melancholic.

Thanks to this feature, a melancholic woman always furnishes her home with taste, and she herself looks elegant. And what unforgettable impressions a romantic melancholic man can fill the life of his beloved! By the way, another undeniable advantage of men of this type (as well as women) is loyalty to their partner.

Sensitivity also helps a melancholic person notice the slightest changes in the emotional state of loved ones. No one is better able to listen, support, comfort and surround you with care.

Melancholic people love to analyze and put things into perspective, which means they will make excellent scientists who can get to the bottom of a process or phenomenon. In general, intellectual work is the most suitable field of activity for representatives of this type.

Analytical skills, perfectionism, and ingenuity will come in handy here. In addition, the ability to plan and calculate to the smallest detail different options for the development of events would also be useful - melancholic people also have this in abundance.

What can be attributed to the disadvantages of the type

A melancholic person is characterized by indecision, lack of self-confidence, and has a hard time experiencing both objective failures and what seems to him like them. Tossing and turning without sleep, thinking that then there was no need to say this, and then that, is a typical situation for melancholic people. At the same time, the melancholic person accumulates all the fears and doubts inside, without expressing them outwardly.

People of this type get tired quickly, both physically and emotionally, and need regular rest and recuperation more than others. They are prone to mood swings and quickly become infected by both the gaiety of their interlocutor and his gloomy state.

Among the others

Melancholic people are almost always, which means that such people feel much more comfortable alone than in company (especially in the company of strangers). And if a melancholic person still finds himself in it, then he participates inactively in the conversation and remains immersed in his inner world.

A person of this type quickly gets tired of noisy gatherings, but in a close circle of close people he feels good and can talk for a long time about everything in the world. It’s probably not even worth mentioning that the number of friendships melancholic people have is small, but they are all strong and time-tested.

This type of temperament also manifests itself in appearance: a melancholic person is usually thin, his facial features are refined, his nose and chin are pointed, and his limbs are elongated. Facial expressions are poorly expressed, the voice is often quiet, and movements are not sharp.

How to communicate with a melancholic person so that both he and you feel comfortable:

Avoid harsh criticism and ridicule, especially in society.
Be respectful of the feelings of such people.
Strengthen their self-confidence.
Don't rush them into making decisions.

Remember that melancholic people take a long time to get used to people, but then they make the most loyal and sensitive friends. Particularly harmonious will be the communication between a melancholic person and an energetic person with leadership inclinations, who will protect the subtle, vulnerable melancholic nature. Author: Evgenia Bessonova

Phlegmatic are types of human temperament. This term should be understood as a stable combination of characteristics of an individual that are associated with dynamic, but not meaningful aspects of his activity. The division of temperament into 4 groups is due to the peculiarity and intensity of the course of nervous processes and human metabolism. Sometimes this includes

What is temperament?

In psychological practice, it is generally accepted that an individual always has a mixed temperament, that is, he cannot only be sanguine or melancholic. Traits of all types of temperaments are inherent in every person, but in different proportions. At the same time, some scientists put forward a theory according to which a person can have only one type of temperament (in connection with the type of higher nervous system). Thus, the traits of other types of temperament are individual characteristics of the psyche of each person, but not a manifestation of a certain type.

In today's article we want to pay attention to only one type of temperament - such as melancholic. This is due to the vastness of the topic.

Melancholic - who is it?

People in this category belong to the intuitive-logical type. They have a weak, unstable melancholic - this is the instability of emotions, the presence of unreasonable fears and worries, inconstancy and easy excitability. In addition, people with this type of temperament have high fatigue and indecisiveness. The feelings of a melancholic person are unbalanced, the reaction is slow, from the outside they seem inexpressive, without active accompaniment by facial expressions. But despite the apparent slowness, the nervous system of such an individual is very sensitive to stimuli. External influences greatly influence the mood of a melancholic person. Just a few minutes of communication can completely ruin or, conversely, lift his mood. This property is characteristic only of this type of temperament. As you can see, the melancholic turns out to be not so closed. What is this in relation to others? This is a violent reaction to the words of the interlocutor, but without emotion.

A melancholic person can be distinguished externally by his mobility. It changes flexibly under the influence of the situation, environment or behavior of the interlocutor. A melancholic person is a person who is drawn to movement. The constitution of such a person is generally dry and changeable. In terms of thinness and weight loss, a melancholic person is second only to a choleric person.

Professional suitability

Melancholic - who is this by profession? The mental abilities of a person with this type of temperament are as good as they are unstable. He can easily understand the material, but just as easily forget it. Such people need to occupy themselves in the intellectual sphere of activity. This is where he will feel most confident. Recommended areas of activity include:

programming;
data-mining;
planning and design;
analytics.

At the same time, melancholic people need to avoid emotional stress and should not overload themselves with contacts with other people.

External signs

A melancholic person is a person with a high metabolic rate. That's why he rarely gains weight. But at the same time, the metabolism is unbalanced, which can lead to severe fatigue.

A melancholic person can be characterized by the following signs:

Facial features are refined. The appearance is a little fragile. Quite pronounced thinness.
Body parts are elongated. The limbs are noticeably elongated (compared to the general proportions of the body).
The muscles are weakly expressed and thin. The bones are protruding and flat.
The chest is concave or flat. The costal angle is acute. and narrow.
The waist is narrow, while the pelvis and shoulders are wide.
square. The skull tapers downward. The volume of the upper part of the head is greater than that of the lower part.
There are protrusions on the back of the head. The shape slopes strongly towards the neck. The parietal region is usually pointed.
The chin protrudes forward. The lower jaw is weak, with a noticeable narrowing downwards.
The cheekbones are well defined and often pointed.
The nose is pronounced, protrudes, and is pointed.
The neck is thin or medium thick, long. The Adam's apple is well defined.

The Importance of Temperament

Determining temperament is important when building relationships in both professional and personal spheres. In many ways, the success of a business or relationship depends on understanding the fundamental characteristics of the human psyche. It is especially important to understand the type, because the difference or incompatibility of its type with its parents can cause additional problems.

Thus, a melancholic child has a very difficult time understanding the imbalance and harshness of his choleric father. This greatly complicates the child’s communication with the parent. At the same time, a child with such a temperament adapts well to structured time and activity at school or kindergarten, but it is difficult for him to fight for a place in a group of peers.

The parent of such a child should understand that a certain slowness and vulnerability is a natural feature of the perception of the world, and actively insisting on one’s position or trying to change the child can lead to problems in the future. Remember, a melancholic person is a person who sees everything through the prism of internal emotions!