The 5 Personality Patterns: Your Guide to Understanding Yourself and Others and Developing Emotional Maturity

I have never written a review like the one I will now. It's been almost 2 years since this book came into my life through a recommendation from an integrative coach and long-distance friend. It's changed my relationship, my friendships, my understanding of my parents, my capacity to go deeper in meditation, and most importantly my relationship with myself - and the capacity to identify and communicate my deepest experience and feelings, often, without shame. It's true this is a verified and unique set of knowledge that leads to emotional maturity. After my wife and I worked with this ourselves, we brought it to our friends, who have transformed radically through it as well - and we used it in our somatic therapy practices - and found that this is one of the most accurate and profound sets of knowledge for helping individuals integrate their emotions and memories at the deepest level of the body-mind.For my relationship with my wife, it's transformed and deepened the intimacy and ability to navigate challenges and ability to be vulnerable (because we know what's happening within us so we can then share it). She dove into the book very deeply as well, at the same time as me. Reading the book can be a doozy if you really understand it. We laughed and cried, reading about these patterns that we've lived with all our lives (generally each person runs 2-3 main patterns) and realizing parts of ourselves and why we became the way we are. With this insight, we were able to compassionately meet each other in the deeps, again and again.We took this seriously - and that's why we got so much mileage with it. We have now introduced 45+ people to this material, and seen people's lives and relationships shift. Some people get alot more than others - because it TAKES TIME (months and months) to really marinate with this knowledge, observe yourself, try to identify your patterns - to clarify it.But you either gain clarity on these things or they WILL repeat in your life - and I have never seen anything more clear for this than the 5pp (vs. Enneagram, Myers-Briggs, Human Design, Astrology, and many other profiling approaches that all are rich and supportive).For many of us, we're familiar with the challenge of repeating patterns and miscommunication and inability to understand why we and others are doing irrational things in relationship. It's only irrational or over-reactive or doesn't make sense until we begin to understand the foundations of our psyche, which formed in our early 5 years.In this way, if both partners take this book seriously, this book lessens miscommunication between partners in a way that's nearly impossible with just practicing NVC or working on polarity or learning that men are from mars and women from venus, or boundary work - all those are supportive but in comparison to the richness and connectivity that awakens when you begin to TRULY understand your patterns, those are more tactical supports for a relationship - and this is the key foundations, in my view and the view of my wife.When you happen upon a map like this, it's worth a million points for your work life, your intimate life, your family, your friends... we're all stuck in these loops and they're deep - and it's hard to see the picture when you're in the frame - and this framework opens a rare window. Use it wisely.A big debt of gratitude to Steven Kessler for pulling together this profound body of work - and looking forward to his next book. It's important to remember that this framework of the personality patterns has been 100 years in the making, since Wilhelm Reich laid it out in the 1930's - and it has been evolved and worked on by many since then.As you might be able to tell, my wife and I (and our friends) are passionate about growth and yet we've never found a model and framework of information that is so eminently useful on a daily basis - that we're still talking about, learning from, using daily almost 2 years after first discovering it.

I'm a therapist and have been using the character structures in my work a lot. Steven Kessler has taken all the amazing, but also very dense work by Reich and the people who have followed him (like Alexander Lowen) and made it extremely accessible, very practical and a pleasure to read.If you're a professional or just curious about understanding the roots and effects of the most basic pattern in humans, our emotional defence mechanisms, then you will love this book.I am enjoying it a lot and this will definitely be a reference that I will come back to again and again!

Extremely helpful explanation of developmental trauma

Getting back to presence / the present moment is a goal I've been working towards when in a reactionary state. This book is immensely useful in noticing how I leave the present moment, reasons the pattern developed, the gifts that come from the patterns, and ultimately how to get back to presence.This book's premise is that when you aren't in the present moment, overwhelm has likely occurred and you're moving into pattern. Being in pattern may have been useful in the past. As an adult, it's likely that you've acquired more tools (and the book also suggest many tools) than your childhood had available, and being in pattern likely only makes situations worse.The author suggests that there are 5 ways in which the energy of overwhelm moves. Seeing how I have utilized all these patterns at different times of my life, this book led me to feeling seen in a way that really lands for me.My time was spent very well reading this book.

This book really simplifies the personality types. Easy to understand yourself and those around you.

As a psychotherapist, I've been using it with individual & couple clients for years. It's such an accessible way for people to understand the ways they're wired, their defense structures that both support & styme them in life. I've found the intricate many page chart illuminates intimately, people's core experiences & motivations, a real pulling back the curtain on Oz. It's helpful in self-understanding (& ultimately liberation), as well as in understanding loved ones, building compassion & creating new terms of engagement.

This book was recommended by a really wonderful therapist - after learning my own personality pattern(s), I had more compassion for how I am in relationships. I learned what I can do to help others to feel safer with me and me with them. I use this book often in my practice to help patients have more understanding of themselves as well - with kindness and compassion. I only wish there were more therapists trained in this style.Dr Barb MacDonald

I have studied Reiki, Bio-energetics, The Enneagram, Trauma Therapy, EFT, EMDR, boundaries, chakras and many other modalities, and this is the BEST book I have ever read in my life. Steven Kessler is able to combine complex concepts of childhood development, psychology and energy work into “user-friendly” explanations. This book outlines a “road map” for developing a healthy emotional sense of self, and outlines very practical exercises that really work. This book saved my marriage, and has helped me immensely to understand my wounds, challenges and gifts, as well as recognizing them in others. Many thanks and I look forward to future books by Steven Kessler.

Me encantó el contenido!

In diesem Buch werden die Sicherheitsstrategien der frühesten Kindheit sehr präzise beschrieben und Lösungsansätze gegeben, um aus ihnen herauszukommen und sie zu erlösen. Meiner Meinung nach eines der besten Bücher zur Persönlichkeitsentwicklung die ich gelesen habe.

Want to have compassion for others and self-knowledge? This is the book for youFrom a non-judgmental perspective Kessler lays down the formation of different personality types in simple, understandable terms. Were all damaged but not permanently!

For anyone on the path to personal development, curious about their inner world and eager to improve their own well-being, this book is a must-read. The author has made psychological knowledge, energetic wisdom and much more accessible to as many people as possible, and gives us precious keys to healing conscious or unconscious childhood traumas.This book really brought to light for me some of my deep-rooted inner workings and how to see and use them to my advantage rather than continuing to let them run my life to my detriment.It has also enabled me to understand others much better and to bring even more compassion into my human relationships.This book is a veritable bible of human behavior, and you can come back to it again and again. Each time you read it, you go a little deeper into the concepts explored.And I am thrilled to see that it now also exists in a French version !!!!

I've only just begun implementing The 5 Personality Patterns and it has already been life-changing for me. I've been doing inner work for quite some time now, based on that here 3 things which I loved about it:#1 - Safety Strategy, not TypologyEven though I'd liked Myers Briggs and Big Five, I felt they were limiting in some way. I didn't even know why I felt that way. When I heard Steven emphasise in multiple interviews how what he discusses are safety strategies and not typologies, I finally got it. The point is: these patterns of your personality are not who you are, in fact they were the patterns you'd developed to block who you are.#2 - Massive reduction in self-judgment & shameWhen I saw how my developmental trauma has shaped me, I've experienced a massive decrease in shame and judgment. Even though I'd done a ton of inner work, up until now it was all fueled primarily by shame.When I understood that beneath all these patterns, all my subconscious wanted was safety - it just made things so much easier for me to accept. I started treating myself with more compassion and I became more considerate. A large chunk of the voices inside my head became friendly as well (unlike a time when the inner critic was all I was)#3 - Great bridge between developmental and energy psychologyBased on my upbringing, I'm fairly analytical, and therefore, I'd been dismissive of energy psychology until recently. But this book ties developmental psychology with energy concepts beautifully and I can now understand why Steven recommends the practices he does. Just getting started on these!I hope this books aids you in a wonderful journey! :)