Agreeable people care well for others; not always for themselves.

This post is part of a series – read Part 1 first. 

Agreeable people have big hearts. Love and compassion come easy; words tend to be tactful and careful. 

If you’re agreeable, you’re a peacekeeper, and you likely avoid conflict for a greater good. When you do have conflict, you’ll want to end on a positive note. You are likely a good encourager. 

But there’s a problem with thinking so much about others: you think too little about yourself. 

Fusion, but Not the Cool Kind

Agreeableness pitfall #1: fusing or codependence. Codependency means you find your identity in someone else – your emotions are tied together. Simply put: too much psychological dependence. 

Classic archetypes include the overprotective mother or the needy boyfriend/girlfriend. 

One leads to children remaining children forever. A protected child means a child that doesn’t face fears, take responsibility, and become their own person. 

The other may lead to abuse or romantic relationships that lack mutual respect. A nice partner might mean a temporarily peaceful connection, but it might also mean a partner without a spine… or a personality. 

That leads to agreeableness pitfall #2: you don’t know what you want or you don’t fight for what you want. 

When you spend your life thinking about what others want or just “going with the flow”, your desires tend to get put on the back burner. That doesn’t mean you don’t have desires. You just don’t value or voice them. 

This can be frustrating. Why, you may ask, do I care about what others want but they don’t seem to care about what I want? It’s a fair question, but perhaps it fails to be realistic about the world (another tradeoff of agreeableness – you believe the best in people… but you also believe the best in people… people suck). Reality check coming below. 

Over time, frustration can lead to resentment. And of course it does. You’re oppressed, even if you’re the one doing the oppressing! (Maybe suppressed is the better word). 

Now you hate everybody, yourself included. Congrats!

Even Love Cuts Both Ways

If you can’t tell, the common theme in these pitfalls is the aforementioned double-edged sword: agreeable people value others. That’s both wonderful and dangerous. Thus, the necessary growth step for an agreeable person is discovering, and contending for, their true self. 

In therapy, these people get assertiveness training. Time to find your voice; speak up. Piss some people off, if you have to! 

Before that, you may need to figure out what exactly you want. That’ll take some soul searching. Think of it in terms of whatever category you need to. Career, spouse, hobbies, friendships, goals – whatever. 

I definitely struggle with this. How the heck do you figure out what you want? Shouldn’t you just know? No one ever taught me how (who thinks to?), nor did anyone help draw it out of me (who knows how to do that?). 

Some TED-talk wisdom helped: I learned that you can’t theorize your way into knowing what you want. You figure things out by action and testing. Exploration yields discovery, even when it comes to the desires of your heart. 

Then, I recommend some reflective journaling and talks with a helpful friend, mentor or therapist (or whoever you find helps you process well and can give you meaningful feedback). 

So get out and do. Try new things. Volunteer. Shadow someone whose career you find interesting. Watch some YouTube if you need inspiration. 

Then, when your heart feels drawn to something, go for it. Do more of it. For you. Not for anyone else. 

Agreeableness is beautiful, friends. Don’t shame yourself for it. But, like any piece of humanity, it requires maturation and, in this case, manifestation.

This post is part of a series. Check out the following as you dig deeper into your personality. 

The Tasks of Self-Discovery

Agreeableness: The Niceness Problem

Conscientiousness: The Perfectionism Problem

Openness: The Chaos Problem

Neuroticism: How to Manage Negative Emotion

Extroversion: The Bad Side of Bright Personalities

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