New career, new you? The science of personality change with Dr Shannon Sauer-Zavala

Caitlin: Hello, hello. Welcome to the place for offbeat health professionals who have bravely swapped their healthcare hats for nonclinical creative caps. I’m Caitlin, a psychologist, turn copywriter, and this is healers with hustles.

Caitlin: Now I can’t wait to introduce my guest today as an, an international guest. I’m always love, talking to people overseas. It’s always a bit of fun. So Dr. Shannon,

Caitlin: Sawyer Zavala is a licensed clinical psychologist, researcher and professor at the University ofKentucky where she directs a clinical trials lab focused on helping people create intentional personality change. She’s a treatment developer behind the evidence-based programs like The Unified Protocol and BPD Compass and her methods have been featured in major media outlets and taught to clinicians worldwide.

Caitlin: Through her coaching and mentorship program, Shannon helps ambitious women move from hidden overwhelmed to calm, confident, and values aligned success.

Caitlin: So cool.

Caitlin: Well, Dr. Shannon, welcome to Healers with Hustles.

Shannon: Yeah. Caitlyn, thank you so much for having me.

Caitlin: Yeah, it’s a pleasure. Thank you. I was just saying before that it’s always so exciting having an international guest, so you’re all the way from Kentucky. So yeah. Thank you so, so much for coming on.

Shannon: Yeah, of course.

Caitlin: Now, I think we should start maybe at the beginning, because you’re a personality researcher, which is so fascinating.

Caitlin: I remember when I stumbled across you on Instagram, I was like, wow, this is so cool. Like, I, you know, I love personality. it’s definitely one of those things like in my masters that I wish we covered more of. You know, it’s seems to be this thing though. Was just like, oh yeah, and personality, blah, blah, blah.

Caitlin: Then talking about other things where I find personality, it just, it’s, yeah, I’m often thinking about that like in my clinical formulations. Right. So how did you get into it and like, tell me your psych journey.

Shannon: Yeah, so I think there’s really two, two prongs to how I got really interested in personality. One is personal and then the other is, is really just thinking about the most of. Efficient, cutting edge way to increase access to mental healthcare on kind of the research side. So I can, I mean, I can talk about that first.

Shannon: I

Shannon: mean, basically. Basically I am a CBT cognitive behavioral therapy researcher and provider, and, have been fortunate to work on teams where we’ve developed treatments and, you know, my trained therapists. It’s great. but I read this really staggering statistic that’s like, you know, if you’re a, a client right, and you’re trying to find care in a community setting, you only have a 30% chance of getting evidence-based care.

Shannon: So treatment that’s been

Shannon: tested in a clinical trial that we know works. and

Shannon: So for me.

Caitlin: offer then? I

Shannon: Yeah, Yeah, so, so I think like, and this is definitely not to blame care providers, right? Like

Shannon: I think.

Caitlin: of course.

Shannon: Supportive care can be really, really beneficial for a lot of people. And that’s like,where the therapist is providing, you know, how was your week?

Shannon: Let me, let

Shannon: me

Caitlin: more of that supportive, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Shannon: And if somebody doesn’t have that in their life, then that can be really beneficial. However, if somebody has panic disorder where they’re having six panic attacks. A week, right? I can

Shannon: treat that in eight sessions with a very structured protocol. And so, so often there can be a mismatch between what is the sort of evidence-based protocol that we would use for a particular disorder and what clients are getting.

Caitlin: Yes. So then you, you’ve developed things, so yeah, like help those populations, but then did you, so how does personality come into the mix

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so we’re getting there. One of the que the big questions I have is like, why don’t therapists in practice use evidence-based treatment?

Shannon: And I think a major reason for this is because there is a different protocol manual treatment for every disorder in the DSM or the ICD, right?

Shannon: And so that’s

Caitlin: Yeah, for sure.

Shannon: You’re a provider, like a full-time provider, you’re seeing clients or patients back to back all day long. It’s not really feasible to be up to speed on all these different, you know, the protocol for depression and the protocol for GAD and the protocol for panic.Personality factors into this because there’s really, really good research that suggests that personality traits are sort of core vulnerabilities that different mental health conditions share. So. Most of the anxiety disorders and depression, a, a major vulnerability that predicts whether a person goes on to develop those conditions is high levels of neuroticism or just like the biological tendency to experience negative emotions. So for me, in my research, like. Well, gosh, like isn’t it more efficient to target the personality trait, the vulnerability, and then have simultaneous improvement on all of these different disorders than to kind of play whack-a-mole with the different, the different disorders.

Caitlin: clever and very creative, thing to think about because yeah, like that’s right. Like I remember learning something about that, but never once was like, oh, let’s, yeah, like target their personality factors. So that’s really cool.

Shannon: Well, yeah, so the idea is to try to make, you know, one treatment or like I study the five factor model or the big five, right? So. Five treatments that confer risk for all these different conditions. And that’s like just a more streamlined, efficient s system for therapists is less burdensome to learn. On the other side of things too, like if you are from like the patient side, if you are, you know, if you see patients right, like it’s pretty rare that a client comes in with, you know, depression and that’s it.

Shannon: Like usually

Shannon: there’s depression and anxiety together, so like.

Shannon: Well, there’s not a manual for that. What do you do? And so a trans diagnostic personality focused treatment is gonna

Shannon: map better to, comorbidity.

Caitlin: Wow. That’s so, that’s so fascinating. Do you find there are like different personality traits that are more vulnerable to certain, like disorders?

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. So neuroticism tendency to experience negative emotions is really important for, for anxiety disorders, eating disorders, depression, low extroversion, which is like low, you know, kind of like. A lot of people think extroversion is like just how sociable you are, but really it’s like energy and positive emotions.

Shannon: And so people that have deficits there are also at risk for depression, for agoraphobia, low conscientiousness is a risk factor for A DHD for substance misuse. low agreeableness is. Like it’s a risk factor for, for PTSD or for personality disorders because it’s

Caitlin: Yeah, I was just thinking personality

Shannon: people. Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah.

Caitlin: That’s so interesting. Well, that’s so cool. Have you, like, how has that been in your career? Have people been really receptive to the idea or like, have you had some pushback or what does that look like?

Shannon: I think people have been pretty receptive. I mean, my, I was telling you about my, my trip to Sydney. I think it was like nap. Go. That’s why I was there because I was giving a talk at the International Society for the Study of Personality Disorders and, and talking about my personality focused treatment. it’s called compass. It stands for, cognitive behavioral modules for personality Symptoms.

Caitlin: Nice. Love it. Oh, wow. Yeah.a, it sounds really fascinating. And so you’ve done your, did you do like a PhD then? Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah,

Shannon: you find that? Like what’s the process like that. yeah. it was great. I mean, I, so like I am an academic, so I love reading and writing and I loved

Caitlin: Not is my happy space.

Shannon: Yeah, and so I think like what really? Appealed to me about graduate school and why I like being a professor is that you get to do a little bit of everything.

Shannon: you get to do, you know, your science, you get to see clients.

Shannon: I mean, I do, I do treatment outcome research, so I’m seeing clients and I have a private practice on the side. get to mentor graduate students, which I really love and I like writing. So, so it really is just, my days are different each, you know, each day. It’s great.

Caitlin: That sounds like the perfect thing. And what does, like, you did mention about the, That you’ve had like personal experience in like with personality as well. So does that fit into it where you like I wanna find out like what, what I like and all of that and that seems like a perfect fit, or how does that look like?

Shannon: Yeah, so, so I think for me, like. I was really interested on sort of the like mental health system accessibility side of things,

Shannon: developing these interventions for intentional personality change and then kind of like taking a pause and realizing, oh my gosh, like my personality has changed a ton. and not really like going into like my work sort of being like, oh, my

Caitlin: Yeah.

Shannon: changed. Teach other people, but sort of realizing that maybe why I gravitated towards this is that I’ve had a similar experience. So, you know, it’s funny you were asking about like my experience in graduate school

Shannon: and you know, by the back to graduate school, I was like highly conscientious and really passionate about what I was doing, but that definitely wasn’t like.

Shannon: From, yeah, where I was, where, where I was starting from. So I definitely, like, you know, when I think about myself in, in high school, right? Like I, I mean I skipped class all the time. I ended up failing math for the year in my junior year and had to repeat it my senior year. I mean, people. You know, I’ll talk about how I used to be lazy and kind of like all over the place and the people that know me now are like, yeah, lazy.

Shannon: I’m sure you were lazy. And I’m like, no, seriously. I was really,

Shannon: no, it’s true. And so then when I went off to university, I, you know, these traits really persisted with most

Shannon: of my classes. But I just by chance had signed up for an Introduction to psychology class and it was at eight o’clock in the morning. And so I there, I don’t know, I ended up, I went to the first class and was like, this is really interesting. And for somehow was able to get myself up and go to every class meeting. And I ended up performing really well in the first exam, which is sort of like a rite of passage and most people do really poorly.

Caitlin: And the teaching assistant was like, Shannon, you should really consider majoring in psychology. And I was like, okay. Sure. Yeah, sure.

Shannon: Yeah, yeah. but when I think about like what the principles in personality change, right? It’s like you change the way you think about yourself and you change your behavior, get reinforced for it over time, and that kind of snowballs.

Shannon: And if you keep that up characteristic way of thinking and behaving is gonna change. And that’s literally what your personality is.

Caitlin: Yeah. Wow. And so you like saw that firsthand and then what a beautiful thing is because I’m just thinking about, one of the things I definitely know that I struggled with when I was studying, like particularly like the clinical side of things and doing treatment with therapy was like a. This like actually gonna work, you know, like I’ve been like having to trust the process.

Caitlin: So like how cool that you’ve like Yeah, like it’s worked for me and so like I’ve see, I’ve felt it firsthand. So you like have that, I don’t know, level of confidence. Not that you probably would’ve told your but patience about that, but it’s just like for yourself, like having that, what a gift and, tell me I.

Caitlin: For people who’ve maybe like they’ve been clinic like psychologists for a while, or even health professionals, not even just psychologists, but they’ve reached a point in their career, like maybe it’s mid career, maybe it’s early career, maybe it’s like right at the end of their career, but a lot of the time, mid-career and they’ve kind of have a bit of an itch and they’re like, I want to do something else.

Caitlin: Or maybe they’re a little bit burnt out or something like that. And they, yeah, decide to do something a little bit different. Like how do you explain that?

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I can give, I can start with an example for my own life, and then we can talk

Caitlin: Yeah. Beautiful.

Shannon: what that.

Shannon: means and how I think

Shannon: particularly women find themselves in,

Shannon: I mean, and that’s like post therapists too.

Caitlin: yeah.

Shannon: So for me, like, I mean anyone that’s listening and kind of hearing the first part of this can tell that I’m really passionate about my work.

Shannon: I love it. I’m so excited about it. I do it in the context of working at a university, which, you know, I really thought was this like institute of, of finding the truth and you know, that it was something. More special and hallowed than like, I don’t know, like working for Google or whatever. And now that I’m a little now mid-career, right?

Shannon: Like, and have checked every box, you know, I have tenure, I’m going up for full professor next year. Like all of

Shannon: these things I should be like, I. Oh my gosh, my dream. The curtains kind of pulled back a little bit and I’m like, this is a business and it’s not a

Shannon: meritocracy. And, you know, you’re not necessarily rewarded for doing good work.

Shannon: You’re rewarded for like, knowing how to say the right things in the hierarchy,

Shannon: and that stuff really turns me off. And so for me, like with the mid-career itch, like there are still so many aspects of my like day job that I love so much. Like I love mentoring, I love. My research. so I’m happy to keep doing that. But at the same time, like I, I didn’t get into psychology because I wanted to like have my worth judged by how many publications I have or how much money I get from

Shannon: the government to run my studies. And so. I’ve, I’ve pivoted a little bit in the past couple years, so I’m, I’m in the middle of writing a popular press book on

Shannon: changing your personality. Right. That would be for

Shannon: everybody. So not like a clinical workbook, but like

Caitlin: Yeah. Wow.

Shannon: just

Shannon: a book. Hopefully someone could buy at an airport. I don’t know.

Caitlin: Yeah. Oh, nice. I just imagine, yeah, how lovely that would, it would feel like to see that, but also to know that like your research is having that like wider impact,

Shannon: Yeah. And

Shannon: so that’s a real goal. And then you mentioned you found me on Instagram, so,

Shannon: so basically I, you know, was like, I’m gonna write this book, how hard could it be? Right? And so then I learned, ’cause I’ve written academic books before. They’re boring. I don’t recommend them, but.you know, I’ve written books before I’ve worked with publishers.

Shannon: How hard is this gonna be? No. To write a popular press book, you need an agent, and to get an agent, you have to like write this whole book proposal. So I, you know, I just Googled it and figured out how to do it and sent my stuff out. To like 40, 50 different agents, and a couple of them responded back to me and were like, we love you.

Shannon: We think you’re great. We think this is a great idea. However, at this point in my career, I only represent people that have like 70,000 social media followers or more.

Shannon: And I was like, excuse me, What

Shannon: I’m gonna be an influence.

Shannon: Yeah. and. So I did find an agent and he was like, this is great. I’m gonna represent you. And so I signed the contract and then he was like, we’re gonna hold the proposal until you have more Instagram followers.

Caitlin: Wow,

Shannon: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah. so I spent. Right. And so I spent the past year, year and a half, like really, I mean, still doing my job, right? But like in my spare time, like learning about marketing and learning, I, I took a, I literally took a course on how to make an Instagram reel ’cause I’m elderly, so I needed to, I needed to learn that, you know how to. You know who my ideal readers would be and how to, I mean, and this is probably, this is your, your neck of the woods, right? Like,but really spending a lot of time learning about this and I realized like something that I really value. Well, part of the reason, let me back up a little bit. At first I was really

Shannon: resentful. I was like, you mean I have to spend all this time on social

Shannon: media just to read book? People should wanna hear from me ’cause I am like making the science.

Shannon: But then.

Shannon: I think I had sort of a mental pivot in my brain because I realized that there were some itches that weren’t being scratched by my day job.

Shannon: Right? So, so I like communicating with people. I love science communication and so I can do that through Instagram. I gave a Ted Talk, like really thinking about ways to, to describe my work and like real science in a way that resonates with people. and

Caitlin: We need more of that, particularly in today’s climate, so that’s awesome. That’s.

Shannon: exactly. Exactly. And like, you know, I was a psychology major and you know, they don’t, I mean, and probably your listeners, you know, if they’re healing helping professionals, right?

Shannon: Like you don’t learn how to run a business in

Caitlin: No, you don’t. There’s no marketing. Yeah, of course there’s,

Shannon: Yeah.

Caitlin: no how to do Instagram or

Shannon: how to have a business, I realized, you know, my values are. Helping people and not just in one-on-one therapy, but like communicating information that could help people make, informed choices about their mental health care. And like having a platform to do that is really important. And, I also realized that one of my values is learning, right? Which is not a surprise. Like I would have a PhD, I went to graduate school, right? But I had kind of like, could do my job at my university and my sleep, right? So learning all of this new stuff.

Caitlin: Yes. Yeah. It’s like such a, it’s a change, but how beautiful that you’re like, no, it actually fits perfectly into like, you know, like my values and like who,

Shannon: who I am or, and you can, yeah. Like do something I. Different. I think there be a lot of, that’s like kind of a similar theme is what I hear from people.

Caitlin: It’s the initial like, oh, social media, I don’t wanna do this. You know, it’s like, okay, it’s so different. Like I don’t wanna waste my time doing it. But then when they start doing it and they get really into like exactly like the marketing, like who are my ideal people? Like how can I communicate in a way that’s like, you know, everyone can understand and it’s quite a creative thing and people generally quite enjoy it for sure.

Shannon: Yeah.

Shannon: Yeah, so it’s ended up being really fun. I’ve met a lot of cool people and.

Caitlin: Yeah, I was wondering about that. Like is there a good community? What’s that like?

Shannon: Well, I mean, I’ve met people through, like through my agent and people I’ve met, I’ve had people reach out to me and say that my content has really resonated with them.

Shannon: And that’s been really awesome. I mean, I’ve seen like old friends that I haven’t seen in a long time, like in

Shannon: person who like don’t say anything or comment on my post, but they’re like, oh my gosh, that really spoke to me that, that, you know, that thing that you were doing. And it, it feels really good because it, I mean, I, I, write these, these articles, right, for academic journals that like, you know, seven people read, so this feels like let’s spread the word.

Caitlin: Yeah, exactly. Definitely. and you know, definitely ha like absolutely having that bigger impact. It feels nice as well to kind of get like acknowledged and you know, I think we need that little bit of, you know, kind of like zinc in our day because I should imagine, yeah, people probably don’t necessarily reach out and like, I read your journal article and it was so impactful, or something like that.

Caitlin: Or maybe they do, I don’t know, but it’s a

Caitlin: different type of

Shannon: though. It’s like the people that reach out like are like perspective graduate students and that’s so

Shannon: great. Like I love that because I really love mentoring, but they’re not the people that need help.

Shannon: Right. Or like need to have this push like, oh, like maybe you should, maybe therapies for you.

Caitlin: yeah, exactly. Oh, that’s so cool. but tell me, like in your research or like in your readings or anything like that, what can you tell me? Like in general about like, creativity and like personality and are there certain traits or like certain themes or things you’ve seen or.

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. So, one of the big five traits is, called openness to experience. And so, with openness to experience. It, it, it’s a wide range of openness, but it includes interest in like aesthetics and beauty and like just interest in emotions and the types of things that, you know, that I think like really foster creativity.

Caitlin: Yes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.I haven’t talked about this for a little while on the podcast, but, when I, like with my masters, my research and my master’s, clinical masters was, I did an, like an arts intervention for psychologists to help with burnout, which was really like, so fun. And, but I’m now thinking like, oh damn, I wish I would’ve, like measured personality.

Caitlin: It wasn’t something that I thought of, like I measured, you know, like, of course like burnout and I measured like self-efficacy and like all of these other things, but

Shannon: Yeah, I wonder if you would’ve had like, like a moderating effect. So like people that are higher in openness would have benefited more from the. Like an art intervention for burnout versus people that are lower that like just tell ’em what to do. Tell them the

Shannon: traditional thing to do.

Caitlin: just that’s it exactly. And I’m like, oh snap. It would’ve been like really interesting on that level as well. See what that would’ve, Yeah, sure. Like, definitely like the self-efficacy was like, definitely like significantly, different, like in terms of people who went through it, their like self-efficacy, like increased, which

Shannon: Yeah, that’s cool.

Caitlin: was, yeah, it was cool.

Caitlin: but yeah, very openness would’ve been like, yeah, been a moderating factor. Hmm. I have to, no, I’m not gonna do it. Do it again.

Caitlin: Really hectic, but I still haven’t published that though. I, it’s been on the list of things to do. this is a bit of a tangent though, but what’s the process in America for publication? Is it, I wonder if it’d be similar to here. I guess it is like

Shannon: Probably similar. And I know like people like at Australian universities, awesome. I sometimes publish with, with folks that are in Australia and they’re publishing in like. International journals or American journals, but basically, you know, you do a study and then you write up the research article.

Shannon: And if you’ve ever written a research paper, like, I mean, I know you have, as I’m thinking broadly for your audience, right? If you’ve ever written

Shannon: a research paper. Your introduction and your method and your results and your discussion. Right. So you write that up, a PA format, at least, where, where we are

Shannon: and, and then yeah, so you submit to a peer reviewed journal and it gets sent out to usually three, external reviewers and the, it’s masked.

Shannon: So I don’t know who’s reviewing my papers and they don’t, I mean, most of my papers are about Compass, which is the intervention I developed. So I, my guess is people

Caitlin: If I kind of

Shannon: My student, it’s harder to mask that.

Shannon: but like obsessively, it’s masked And, yeah, then usually you, well, two, two things happen. Three to four months later, you get an email back that’s like, this was interesting, but like, here is a list of 37 things you need to change so that it’s acceptable for publication or it just gets rejected. And so,

Shannon: um. So then you most often, for me, it’s like a revise and resubmit, that’s what it’s called.

Shannon: And so you edit everything and that’s why peer review is really helpful. You know, in this current climate where, you know, we talk about science and studies, right? Peer review is so important because. people make mistakes or people use the wrong stats and come to the wrong conclusions. And so having another expert in the field look at your stuff and be like, I don’t know if you, that’s the right, could you retry it this way and see if that finding, because we don’t want public policy to be based on like faulty work, right?

Shannon: So that’s why peer

Shannon: review is really important.

Caitlin: Yeah. So, so important. I have another question there, but maybe I’m, I have a habit of derailing. I got a big tension over. Is that something that you have done, like done, been involved in peer review of other people’s? Yeah.

Shannon: Yep. So, in, in like academia, they call that service and you

Shannon: have to, it’s basically free work that you do to be a good citizen. And so the rule of thumb is like, if, if you submit a paper for publication and that. Get sent out to three different reviewers. You should review three papers for every paper you send out.

Caitlin: Oh

Shannon: So, so I do it all the time,

Caitlin: a lot then.

Shannon: It’s a lot. Yeah.

Caitlin: Whoa. That’s, yeah, that would take like a bit of time for sure. Oh my gosh. Yeah. but to bring it back to like,your book actually, have you, have you got enough Instagram followers now that you can

Shannon: Yeah, so, so I mean, I don’t know. There never was a number for, with my agent. It was always just more, but the proposal is officially finished. Like we went back and forth and revised it a ton and I sent it to him yesterday morning and it’s done. So it’s going out this week.

Caitlin: Congratulations. That’s so exciting.

Shannon: Now, hopefully a

Shannon: publisher will wanna publish it.

Caitlin: yeah, for sure. I’m, I’m sure absolutely you’ll find someone I feel like, but even that must be like. A creative process, right? Like, because you have to write in a different way. And then like, I’m just thinking of like fun things like, and names for the book and all of that.

Shannon: I, yeah, I mean, that stuff is really important to me. So like, you know, I, I, I kind of mentioned this, like talking about like making social media posts and thinking about what to say and what metaphors to use, but like I really, I mean. For, for people that are more creative and have actual skills and use like Adobe or other product, like I use Canva, but

Shannon: like, it has been so fun, so fun and so creative.

Shannon: And I, for my first book, my academic book, I actually, my neighbor is, is like a really good artist and he’s done the, the like album cover art for the weekend at Kesha. I don’t know, do you, do you know them? Yeah. He made a cover for my book and my publisher was like, this won’t work. I was like, God, be kidding me. So I was bummed about that because I do care

Shannon: about those things.

Caitlin: yeah, exactly. I feel like it’s some point, like it’s the first thing that people see and they get a feeling for the book and like who you are and what it’s about and all of that.

Shannon: Right.

Caitlin: I was just imagin. It’s like, have you enjoyed the process of like, the whole writing the book? Like has it just kind of come out of you or has it been like a real, like, okay, I’ve gotta sit down and like, I’m, I have to write a thousand words today and it’s been quite a laborous process.

Shannon: Well, so when you write a nonfiction book, you write a sample chapter and then you do a proposal. So it’s like

Shannon: chapter summaries and you have to talk

Shannon: about your marketing plan and you send an overview. So it’s a little bit different. And I haven’t sat down to like writing, but I think that doing the book proposal on the chapter summaries was really clarifying for me

Shannon: around like.

Shannon: To it and. What’s really cool, and this is something that I think in doing the proposal I’ve gotten better at and I’m sort of ready to dive in, is the switch from like data tell us this or study show to like, lemme tell you about this client that I had that really struggled with trust and here’s how we worked on that and this is how it’s different for

Shannon: her.

Shannon: And like, you could too if you did X, Y, and Z. So it’s like

Shannon: a, it’s a different, it’s more storytelling and it’s pretty fun.

Caitlin: Yeah. Way more storytelling, which is really cool. yeah, like with like the writing of, Okay. I was gonna say business book. It’s not a business book, like, you know, an academic book or something, or a journal article or something like that. You’d be really like behind the scenes, right? It’s like, oh, I’m not, you know, Dr.

Caitlin: Shannon’s not here at all. It’s just like someone telling

Shannon: Right.

Caitlin: know what’s happening with the data, but then with this, you’d really see you in it. Right? I should imagine. Anyway.

Shannon: Yeah. And a much more conversational tone and definitely

Caitlin: Yeah.

Shannon: more like I talk and more, you know, inviting and warm.

Caitlin: Yeah, definitely. Which is cool. Like, I could imagine like, are you, what are your personality traits? Are you kind of, what do you see in terms of like extroversion and,

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah. So, so we could get really specific with it because these, the big five traits, they are divided into facets. And so for me, so like different com sub components,

Shannon: like I’m, I’m like middle of the road in neuroticism. Like I am a big feeler, but I don’t have a lot of like interference because of it.

Shannon: I am pretty middle of the road in terms of extroversion, like I’m very high in positivity. And at the same, but I don’t really like to be around big groups, that kind of thing, so, so it’s sort

Shannon: of in the middle there off the chart in conscientiousness that has been reinforced and that’s a place where I’ve really changed my personality.

Shannon: And you kind of have to, if you want to. I mean, I just do so much stuff. , and then, you know, I thinkI’m pretty high in agreeableness. but it’s gotten lower over the years and I think

Shannon: like women, like listeners will, will relate to this

Shannon: really warm. but I am not a doormat, you know? So like I have a, like, I have some boundaries.

Shannon: Boundaries, but I wasn’t always quite like that.

Shannon: and then pretty high and over.

Caitlin: it’s good to, yeah, I feel like that would be a thing like a lot of women would potentially struggle with. Right. Like the agreeableness part. Like when you were talking, I was just like, oh yeah, I can like totally relate, like super warm. But yeah, people pleaser and it’s something I’m working on.

Caitlin: But still, yeah, it’s definitely there. But I could just, Ima, I was imagining myself like working in the academic environment and being like, yeah, I would have to be like, well, I want no choice. I’ve gotta like shore myself up a bit more.

Shannon: Yeah, absolutely. and if people are listening, I have a free, version of the, the Big five Personality Test

Shannon: on my website

Caitlin: that would be epic.

Caitlin: Yeah. Yeah.

Shannon: and

Caitlin: I love a quiz.

Shannon: I know, right. And you know, part of the reason I, I developed it and put it on my website is because, like most personality tests are not based in science.

Shannon: So, you know, if you’ve taken like the Myers-Briggs or Enneagram, like they’re fun, but they are not scientifically tested, and

Shannon: the studies that they have been included in basically show that they don’t predict anything. Like, they don’t predict career success or any the, the stuff that they’re supposed to do.

Caitlin: yes.

Shannon: So if you’ve taken those tests before and you are, you know, you are interested in taking, a different kind of test, that’s available.

Caitlin: I love it. Yeah, no, definitely. I would love, and I’ve like said that before in my like, Instagram posts about like, you know, Myers Briggs and all of that isn’t, you know, scientifically validated and people will be like, whatcha talking about. So it’s nice to have to have some allyship with that.

Shannon: Yeah, people are very, some people especially I’ve noticed, like some of my younger clients, they’re like more interested in like Zodiac and like have taken Enneagram or have taken Myers-Briggs and they’ll be like, well, you know, I just, there’s no point in learning assertiveness skills because I’m an INFJ, so I just can’t.

Shannon: And it’s like,

Caitlin: Yeah.

Shannon: love it.

Caitlin: Ah, so it’s like almost like an identity thing then like

Shannon: Yeah. And so, you know, I don’t love it for two reasons. One, because Myers-Brigg types are not valid or reliable. Like you take the test and you get a different result.

Shannon: You know, if you take it multiple times and it’s not valid because it assumes like you are a type and you’ll always be that type. And so you should like pick your partners and pick your jobs

Shannon: and you know, kind of like. Stay in your lane. But you know, kind of circling back to what we were talking about at the beginning, personality changes, it changes across the lifespan naturally. And we can speed up that process by taking intentional action, right? And so

Caitlin: Hmm.

Shannon: I really wanted, I mean even like with the result, like the report that you get with my personality test, it’s like, here are the things that are maybe strengths of this trait, but like, here are the things you might wanna nudge or work on.

Shannon: And really with this kind of growth mindset kind of

Shannon: idea.

Caitlin: yeah, what a, what a great, resource to have. I’m, so, I’m really keen to take it myself and see how I’ve

Shannon: I’ll send it

Caitlin: changed as well. Yeah, definitely, definitely. I’ll put the link for that in, but that actually might be a really good place to, also talk about like how people can Yeah. Just in generally get in contact with you, follow you eventually by your book.

Shannon: Yeah. Yeah.

Caitlin: come out soon, hopefully.

Shannon: me on Instagram so that my agent, mentor publisher will think that I have something important to say. You know, because Instagram followers are, are very highly correlated with. Substance of things to say. So everybody follow me on Instagram. It is at self made personality, and I will be forever grateful. And then, if you are interested in seeing some of the, the services I offer, taking my personality test, That would be my website. So that is ww dot personality compass.com and there you’ll find the free personality test will be super obvious on the homepage. And, I do one-on-one therapy. I do, I do sort of these single session like

Shannon: personality coaching planning calls to kind of

Shannon: help people get a road. For how they might nudge their traits.

Shannon: And this is really, this is really apt for what we’ve been talking about, but, I have recently launched a program particularly for, particularly to help women with the traits that tend to like afflict women. so people pleasing perfectionism,overwhelm because, you know. I think it’s like this double-edged sword where those traits have gotten women to their, you know, maybe their mid-career point in a really like, you know, fast trajectory and now we’re burnt out and we’re tired, you know, we’re

Shannon: sort of reconsidering. I have a group program for that.

Caitlin: Awesome. Wow. You have like, yeah, that’s such unique but also such valuable. Offerings. I could see people would like get so much benefit out of that. Particularly. Yeah, like the, wow. I’m just like, oh, I wanna do that. My people pleasing and things like that. But just as a side note, your website is awesome. I was looking through it and it’s like really clear and like the user experience is fantastic and you can really get a sense of your personality and who you are.

Caitlin: So yeah,

Shannon: good.

Caitlin: that’s really good. It is nice to see for sure. but before we go into the my fun rapid fire questions, is there anything that you wanna say or like anything that’s come up as we’ve been talking that you’re like, oh, I really wish Caitlin would’ve asked me about this or anything at all? Yeah,

Shannon: no, I think, I think we really covered most of it. I think like the nugget of wisdom, you know, if listeners take away one thing,

Shannon: I always say, you know, let your, your dreams and your values dictate the personality traits that you intentionally cultivate or develop, rather than the other way around.

Shannon: Right? Like starting with the personality that you, you have when you took a test at 18 and just kind of, That’s putting myself in a box.

Caitlin: Oh, that’s such a beautiful take, a beautiful thing as well that you can. It can be really values aligned and strengths based and like how you wanna be in the walls. It’s not like just wow. Oh, that’ll be a great, guess quote for our Instagram. So, so thank you for making that for me to pick something.

Caitlin: now this is, this is probably showing my personality a bit. I like, I love fun and silly and all of that. but tell me, Shannon, what is your favorite film?

Shannon: My favorite film, this will date me, but my favorite film is probably Clueless. I saw it came

Shannon: out when I was in

Caitlin: yes.

Shannon: I’m kind of obsessed. I’ve been obsessed for, well, anytime I drive and I stop at a stop sign, but there’s like no traffic and I go through it kind of fast, I say to myself, what? I totally paused. and just like I, I feel like, yeah, that’s all I’ll say about that. Also, her

Shannon: Yeah, you can continue. I feel like often with these fire questions, we like talk like so much because it’s always, You need to justify why Clueless is my favorite movie.

Caitlin: But it’s, it’s so good. And I feel like 90, well maybe it’s moved on now a little bit to like early two thousands, but there was a period of time there. I’m not sure if it was the same in the States where like that kind of fashion was like really in, and I was loving seeing like all like the clueless inspired things in the, in the shops.

Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Caitlin: It was a lot of fun.what about like a concert that you’ll never forget?

Shannon: Okay, let me think about this. so my, no, my favorite musician or my favorite performer is Fiona Apple. And my husband surprised me with tickets and it was like, a really small venue and it. It was really awesome, and I just remember going and being like, now I can die. Like I’ve done. I’ve

Caitlin: Mm.

Shannon: hated, I’ve seen my favorite, my favorite artist.

Caitlin: Wow. I, oh, is your video. This is it.

Shannon: that,

Caitlin: But how beautiful that,

Shannon: from here.

Caitlin: I’m saying beautiful a lot, this episode for some reason, but I love those moments, particularly with, I feel like it’s music or live music that I personally have had those experiences that it’s like, wow, this is just like the most incredible thing. I think Brene Brown talks a little bit about that, like those moments, shared moments of joy or something like that.

Shannon: Liz? Yeah, I think about like, so my husband’s favorite band is Blur. it’s banned from the UK and,

Caitlin: favorite.

Shannon: you love, you love Blur. Oh. So I’ve seen Blur twice and they are so good. That was, I was gonna say blur. When we saw Blur when they, the first time they reunited. With like the Magic Whip record. And so we saw them at Madison Square Garden in New York City

Shannon: and as we were leaving and we were walking down like just the stairs to get out of the building, everybody started singing tender. And it was like magic.

Caitlin: I guess we bumps.

Shannon: It was that shared experience.

Caitlin: Yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh. Oh, it makes me wanna cry. I love, oh,

Caitlin: I love them so much. Mm-hmm. That’s so cool. Yeah, they’re, special. I saw them at, not as special as that, but like in Coachella in 2014.

Caitlin: Yeah.

Caitlin: Which was very fun. Yeah. I was like up the front, like going crazy and I remember there was like someone next to me who was like, oh, like there, and they like didn’t know them.

Caitlin: I think they were,

Caitlin: I feel like they headlined though. And I was just like, oh my gosh. Like how can you not know how Claire is? But anyway, but I guess that’s the beautiful thing about like big music festivals like that.

Shannon: Mm-hmm.

Caitlin: now I digress. What was my next question? I totally, my mind blanked on that.

Caitlin: what’s like an absurd fact about you or a quirky fact about you? Something that you love or something that you do that’s like very you.

Shannon: well. I don’t know. See this, maybe it’s like this is really meta for this one, but like I think that I’m an interesting person and I have lots of stuff to say. I always have something to say, but whenever people are like, what’s your fun fact? I’m like, I don’t know. um,but I guess I’ll say like. kind of related to Clueless as my favorite movie.

Shannon: I actually have a PowerPoint slide. A PowerPoint with every article of clothing that I have in it, and I put to like, can put together outfits and stuff in there,

Caitlin: Wow, that’s,

Shannon: that’s pretty absurd.

Caitlin: I’m so, but like very nerdy, but.

Shannon: But like for fashion.

Caitlin: Yeah, they were fashion, but also very useful though. That’s so useful.

Shannon: It

Shannon: actually

Caitlin: know how there’s that?

Shannon: saving money. It’s good for

Shannon: saving money because you, like, I don’t, I no longer buy just random stuff. I’m like, oh, does

Shannon: this coordinate with the things that I have? And that has been really cool.

Caitlin: Yeah, that’s so. Cool. And I also feel like, you know how there statistic, like, I dunno if there’s a sign, you know, scientific, someone’s like made up a statistic about how like you, only 90% of the time you wear 10% of your wardrobe. And so I feel like with you, you would probably wear like most of your wardrobe all the time because you’ve got it there.

Shannon: Right, exactly.

Shannon: Everything

Caitlin: another like little course idea or something like that.

Shannon: Actually, to be fair, like I, got that from a course that I took.

Caitlin: Ah, okay. There you go. I was like, this feels like it could be really valuable information, but thank you so much for coming on. I’ve loved our conversation and I love, love, love even more that you love blur as well. And I feel very, it was really nice, a moment there. So thank you for coming on there.

Caitlin: Show.

Shannon: Of course. Yeah, this was really great. It was a really, I agree, a really fun conversation.

Shannon: Covered it all.

Caitlin: Thank you. Beautiful. Thank you so much.

Shannon: Yeah, my pleasure.

Caitlin: All right. That’s the end of another episode. Thank you so much for tuning into Healers with Hustles. If you’ve enjoyed today’s episode, will you do me a tiny favor and subscribe to the show? Just tap the subscribe button on your favorite podcast platform, and you’ll be the first to know as soon as the new episode drops.

Caitlin: Thanks so much for listening. Okay, for now.