Anxiety disorder treatments are often seen as a way to reduce symptoms — but emerging research suggests they may do something far more profound: they can actually change your personality. For decades, many people assumed that personality was fixed after early adulthood. Yet a large-scale meta-analysis published on PubMed, titled “A Systematic Review of Personality Trait Change Through Intervention,” examined dozens of studies and found compelling evidence that psychotherapy can shift core personality traits in measurable ways. If you’ve ever wondered whether therapy can do more than just ease your symptoms, the answer — backed by science — appears to be yes.
This article breaks down exactly how psychotherapy influences the Big Five personality traits, which traits are most likely to change, how large those changes tend to be, and what types of therapy produce the strongest results. Whether you’re considering therapy for the first time or are already in treatment, understanding this research could reshape how you think about your own potential for growth.
Once again, personality researcher and author of Villain Encyclopedia, Tokiwa (@etokiwa999), will provide the explanation.
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目次
- 1 What Is Psychotherapy — and Can It Really Change Personality?
- 2 How Anxiety Disorder Treatments and Psychotherapy Change the Big Five Personality Traits
- 2.1 Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): The Biggest and Most Consistent Change
- 2.2 Extraversion: Modest but Meaningful Gains in Social Engagement
- 2.3 Conscientiousness: Improved Self-Discipline as a Side Effect of Treatment
- 2.4 Agreeableness: Deepening Empathy and Interpersonal Harmony
- 2.5 Openness to Experience: The Most Variable Outcome
- 3 How Long Does Personality Change Take — and Does It Last?
- 4 Actionable Advice: How to Make the Most of Psychotherapy for Personality Growth
- 5 Frequently Asked Questions
- 5.1 Can psychotherapy really change personality, or does it just reduce symptoms?
- 5.2 Which anxiety disorder treatments are most effective for changing personality traits?
- 5.3 How long does it take for psychotherapy to change personality traits?
- 5.4 Is it possible to change personality as an adult, or is it fixed after a certain age?
- 5.5 Do all 5 Big Five personality traits change equally through therapy?
- 5.6 Are personality changes from psychotherapy permanent?
- 5.7 What is the connection between neuroticism reduction and anxiety disorder treatment outcomes?
- 6 Summary: Psychotherapy as a Path to Becoming a More Resilient Person
What Is Psychotherapy — and Can It Really Change Personality?
Defining Psychotherapy and Its Core Goals
Psychotherapy is a structured, collaborative treatment approach in which a trained therapist helps a client explore thoughts, emotions, and behaviors in order to promote psychological well-being. Unlike medication, which acts on the brain’s chemistry directly, psychotherapy works by changing how a person thinks, feels, and responds to the world around them. This distinction is important — because it means psychotherapy operates at the level of patterns, habits, and deeply held beliefs, which are also the building blocks of personality.
The goals of psychotherapy tend to include:
- Symptom relief — reducing distress from anxiety, depression, or trauma
- Improved adaptability — helping clients respond more flexibly to life’s challenges
- Deeper self-understanding — gaining insight into one’s own patterns and motivations
- Better relationships — developing healthier ways of connecting with others
What makes psychotherapy particularly interesting from a personality science perspective is that achieving these goals requires sustained changes in how a person thinks and behaves — which, over time, can register as genuine shifts in personality traits. In other words, the process of becoming mentally healthier may be inseparable from the process of becoming a somewhat different person.
Major Types of Psychotherapy
There is no single form of psychotherapy. Different approaches are grounded in different theories about why people struggle and how change happens. The most widely studied and practiced types include:
- Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) — focuses on identifying and restructuring unhelpful thought patterns
- Psychodynamic therapy — explores unconscious processes and early life experiences
- Person-centered therapy — emphasizes unconditional acceptance and the client’s own capacity for growth
- Gestalt therapy — focuses on present-moment awareness and emotional experience
- Family therapy — addresses relationship dynamics within family systems
- Group therapy — uses shared experience and peer support as therapeutic tools
Despite their differences in technique and theory, these approaches share a common thread: they all aim to help clients develop more adaptive, flexible ways of engaging with themselves and the world. Research suggests that this shared goal may be a key reason why multiple types of therapy show similar capacity to produce personality change — it is not just the specific technique that matters, but the deeper process of guided self-reflection and behavioral experimentation.
What Are Personality Traits?
Personality traits are consistent patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving that characterize an individual across different situations and over time. They are relatively stable — but the key word is “relatively.” Traits are not completely fixed like eye color. They are shaped by the ongoing interaction between genetics and lived experience, meaning they can shift, especially when a person undergoes significant psychological change.
The most widely accepted model in personality psychology is the Big Five, which organizes personality into 5 broad dimensions:
- Openness to Experience — curiosity, imagination, and appreciation for novelty
- Conscientiousness — organization, self-discipline, and goal-directedness
- Extraversion — sociability, assertiveness, and positive emotionality
- Agreeableness — empathy, cooperation, and trust in others
- Neuroticism — tendency toward negative emotions, anxiety, and emotional instability
These 5 traits predict a wide range of life outcomes — from career success and relationship quality to physical health and longevity. Understanding how psychotherapy can shift them is therefore not a purely academic question. It has real implications for how we approach mental health treatment.
How Anxiety Disorder Treatments and Psychotherapy Change the Big Five Personality Traits
Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): The Biggest and Most Consistent Change
Of all 5 personality dimensions, neuroticism shows the largest and most consistent reduction following psychotherapy — making emotional stability the primary personality-level outcome of treatment. Neuroticism is defined as the tendency to experience negative emotions such as anxiety, sadness, irritability, and emotional reactivity. People who score high in neuroticism tend to feel stressed more easily, recover more slowly from setbacks, and are significantly more likely to develop anxiety and mood disorders.
The meta-analysis found striking effect sizes for changes in neuroticism (reported as emotional stability gains):
- Pre-to-post change score: d = 0.57 — a medium-to-large effect by conventional standards
- Effect size in true experimental designs: d = 0.69 — suggesting the change is not simply due to the passage of time
Both cognitive behavioral therapy and psychodynamic therapy appear particularly effective at producing these changes. The mechanisms likely include:
- Challenging and reframing catastrophic or distorted thinking
- Developing insight into the emotional roots of reactivity
- Building concrete coping and emotion-regulation skills
From a practical standpoint, this is highly significant. A reduction in neuroticism means that a person not only feels less anxious or depressed day-to-day — they also become fundamentally more resilient as a person. The treatment effect goes beyond symptom relief into genuine personality change.
Extraversion: Modest but Meaningful Gains in Social Engagement
Psychotherapy also tends to produce moderate increases in extraversion, helping clients become more socially engaged, assertive, and energized by their interactions with others. Extraversion is the personality trait most closely linked to positive emotionality — people higher in extraversion generally experience more joy, enthusiasm, and social confidence. For individuals with anxiety disorders, social avoidance often suppresses extraverted behavior, making extraversion gains a particularly meaningful indicator of recovery.
Changes reported across studies include:
- Greater willingness to initiate social interactions
- Improved ability to express oneself openly
- Increased participation in activities previously avoided
However, it is important to note that the effect on extraversion is generally smaller than that on neuroticism, and individual differences are significant. Not everyone who undergoes therapy will become more extraverted — and that is not necessarily the goal. Rather, therapy may help clients access their existing social capacity by removing the fear and avoidance that were suppressing it. Factors that appear to contribute to extraversion gains include improved self-confidence, stronger communication skills, and a deeper understanding of one’s own social needs.
Conscientiousness: Improved Self-Discipline as a Side Effect of Treatment
Conscientiousness — the trait associated with self-discipline, organization, and goal-directedness — also tends to increase following psychotherapy, though the effect is generally smaller than for neuroticism or extraversion. This makes intuitive sense: when a person is no longer overwhelmed by anxiety or emotional instability, their capacity to focus, plan, and follow through naturally improves.
Reported changes include:
- Greater ability to set and pursue meaningful goals
- Stronger self-regulation and impulse control
- Increased sense of personal responsibility
The pathways through which therapy may increase conscientiousness include:
- Self-efficacy gains — believing you are capable of following through builds motivation
- Goal-setting skills — many therapy modalities explicitly teach structured planning
- Reduced procrastination — as anxiety decreases, the avoidance behavior that underlies procrastination also tends to decrease
Research suggests that further studies are needed to fully map the relationship between specific therapy techniques and conscientiousness gains. Nevertheless, the preliminary evidence indicates that evidence-based therapy can support meaningful improvements in this practically important trait.
Agreeableness: Deepening Empathy and Interpersonal Harmony
Psychotherapy may also produce modest increases in agreeableness — the trait that encompasses empathy, cooperation, and trust — particularly through therapies that focus on interpersonal relationships and communication. Agreeableness is strongly shaped by social experience, which means it is responsive to the kind of interpersonal learning that takes place in therapy.
Changes that have been observed include:
- Greater understanding of other people’s perspectives
- More cooperative and prosocial behavior in relationships
- Reduced interpersonal conflict and improved relational harmony
Contributing factors likely include enhanced empathy skills, improved communication strategies, and deeper insight into relationship dynamics gained through therapy. Like conscientiousness, agreeableness gains tend to be secondary to the primary neuroticism reduction — but they represent a meaningful expansion of the treatment’s benefits beyond the individual into their relationships and social world. Researchers note that more controlled studies are needed to establish the strength of these effects across different therapeutic approaches.
Openness to Experience: The Most Variable Outcome
Of the 5 Big Five traits, openness to experience shows the least consistent change following psychotherapy — with some studies reporting gains and others showing minimal effects. Openness reflects intellectual curiosity, aesthetic sensitivity, imagination, and a preference for novelty and variety. It is considered one of the most strongly heritable personality traits, which may partly explain why it is harder to shift through therapeutic intervention.
Some studies have reported positive changes including:
- Greater willingness to explore new experiences and perspectives
- Increased creative expression and imaginative thinking
- More cognitive flexibility in approaching problems
Therapy-related factors that might support openness gains include encouraging self-exploration, introducing new frameworks for understanding experience, and creating a safe environment for creative or unconventional thinking. However, the overall picture from the meta-analytic literature is mixed. It appears that openness may change more as a byproduct of significant personal transformation rather than as a direct target of therapy. For now, individuals and therapists are better served by focusing on neuroticism reduction and skill-building, treating any openness gains as a welcome bonus rather than a predictable outcome.
How Long Does Personality Change Take — and Does It Last?
One of the most practically important questions about psychotherapy-driven personality change is the timeline: how long does it take, and how durable are the effects? The meta-analytic research offers some reassuring answers on both counts.
In terms of timing, studies suggest that measurable shifts in personality traits — particularly neuroticism — can begin to appear within a few months of starting therapy. This is notably faster than the natural rate of personality change that occurs through life experience alone, which tends to unfold over years or even decades. Psychotherapy, in effect, appears to accelerate a process that would otherwise happen very slowly or not at all.
Key findings on the duration and stability of personality change include:
- Changes in neuroticism tend to be relatively durable, persisting at follow-up assessments conducted months after therapy ends
- The degree of change correlates with treatment length — longer courses of therapy tend to produce larger and more stable personality shifts
- Active practice matters — clients who continue applying the skills and insights gained in therapy tend to maintain their gains better than those who do not
It is worth noting that personality change through therapy is not the same as simply “feeling better temporarily.” The evidence suggests that the underlying trait — the person’s characteristic way of experiencing and responding to the world — actually shifts. This is why personality change therapy represents a meaningful advance over purely symptom-focused treatment models. That said, ongoing self-reflection and the continued practice of adaptive behaviors appear to be important for consolidating and sustaining these gains over the long term.
Actionable Advice: How to Make the Most of Psychotherapy for Personality Growth
Understanding that psychotherapy can produce genuine personality change raises an important follow-up question: what can you do to maximize those effects? Research on psychotherapy outcomes points to several practical strategies.
1. Choose Evidence-Based Therapy Matched to Your Specific Needs
Why it works: Different therapy types show different strengths. Cognitive behavioral therapy tends to produce strong neuroticism reductions quickly, making it a natural first-line option for anxiety and mood disorders. Psychodynamic therapy may produce broader personality changes over a longer timeframe by addressing root causes rather than surface symptoms.
How to practice it: Before starting therapy, research the available options and discuss with a qualified mental health professional which approach best fits your presenting concerns, personality, and goals. Don’t assume all therapy is equivalent — the match between client and modality matters.
2. Actively Engage Between Sessions
Why it works: Personality change does not happen only in the therapist’s office. The insights and skills developed during sessions need to be practiced in real-life situations in order to become stable new patterns. Research consistently shows that homework completion and between-session practice are among the strongest predictors of positive psychotherapy outcomes.
How to practice it: Keep a journal to track your thoughts, emotions, and behavioral patterns outside of sessions. Complete any exercises or assignments your therapist suggests. Deliberately seek out situations that allow you to practice new ways of responding — even when it feels uncomfortable.
3. Commit to a Sufficient Course of Treatment
Why it works: The research suggests that longer treatment durations are associated with larger and more durable personality trait changes. Dropping out prematurely — a common pattern, especially among people with high neuroticism — can limit how much change actually occurs and how well it is maintained.
How to practice it: Discuss realistic treatment duration expectations with your therapist early on. If you feel the urge to quit when things feel hard or slow, recognize that this is a normal part of the process rather than a sign that therapy isn’t working. Research suggests that many clients improve most significantly in the middle and later phases of treatment.
4. Use Personality Assessments to Track Your Progress
Why it works: Subjective feelings of improvement can be unreliable indicators of actual personality change. Using validated Big Five personality assessments at the beginning of therapy and at regular intervals gives you objective data on which dimensions are shifting and at what rate.
How to practice it: Take a reliable Big Five assessment before starting therapy to establish a baseline. Retake it every 3 to 6 months. Pay particular attention to your neuroticism score — a consistent downward trend is one of the clearest markers that therapy is producing meaningful personality-level change, not just temporary symptom relief.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can psychotherapy really change personality, or does it just reduce symptoms?
Research suggests it can do both. A large-scale meta-analysis found that psychotherapy produces measurable changes in Big Five personality traits — not just temporary symptom reduction. The strongest effects are seen in neuroticism (emotional stability), with effect sizes of approximately d = 0.57 to 0.69 in controlled studies. This means that effective therapy tends to make people genuinely more emotionally resilient, not simply less symptomatic in the short term.
Which anxiety disorder treatments are most effective for changing personality traits?
Studies indicate that both cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) and psychodynamic therapy tend to produce significant reductions in neuroticism. CBT typically works faster, targeting distorted thinking patterns directly, while psychodynamic approaches may produce broader personality changes by addressing deeper emotional roots. The most important factor appears to be the quality of the therapeutic relationship and the client’s active engagement — both are stronger predictors of outcome than any single technique.
How long does it take for psychotherapy to change personality traits?
Research suggests that measurable shifts in personality — particularly reductions in neuroticism — can begin to appear within a few months of consistent therapy. However, more substantial and durable changes tend to require longer treatment courses. Studies generally find that personality-level changes are detectable at follow-up assessments conducted months after therapy ends, suggesting the effects are not merely temporary mood improvements.
Is it possible to change personality as an adult, or is it fixed after a certain age?
Personality traits can and do change across the adult lifespan, and psychotherapy appears to accelerate this process significantly. While some traits tend to naturally stabilize with age, the research on personality change therapy indicates that deliberate, structured intervention can produce meaningful shifts even in middle-aged and older adults. High neuroticism in particular appears amenable to change through evidence-based psychotherapy regardless of the client’s age.
Do all 5 Big Five personality traits change equally through therapy?
No — the evidence is clear that different traits show different degrees of change. Neuroticism (or its positive pole, emotional stability) changes the most consistently and by the largest magnitude. Extraversion and agreeableness show moderate, meaningful changes. Conscientiousness tends to improve as a secondary effect of reduced anxiety. Openness to experience shows the most variable results, with some studies finding gains and others finding minimal change.
Are personality changes from psychotherapy permanent?
Studies indicate that personality changes from psychotherapy tend to be relatively durable rather than purely temporary. However, maintaining these gains over the long term appears to require continued practice of the adaptive behaviors and coping strategies learned in therapy. People who actively integrate their therapeutic insights into daily life tend to show more stable improvements than those who stop applying what they learned after treatment ends.
What is the connection between neuroticism reduction and anxiety disorder treatment outcomes?
Neuroticism is one of the strongest personality-level risk factors for anxiety and mood disorders. Reducing neuroticism through psychotherapy therefore represents a double benefit: it directly treats the anxiety symptoms while simultaneously addressing the underlying personality vulnerability that makes a person prone to anxiety in the first place. This is why neuroticism reduction is considered one of the most important psychotherapy outcomes in the research literature on emotional stability treatment.
Summary: Psychotherapy as a Path to Becoming a More Resilient Person
The science is increasingly clear: anxiety disorder treatments — particularly evidence-based psychotherapies like CBT and psychodynamic therapy — have the potential to do far more than reduce symptoms. They can produce genuine, measurable, and relatively lasting changes in personality. The most consistent finding is a significant reduction in neuroticism, with effect sizes large enough to represent a real shift in how a person experiences and copes with the world. Smaller but meaningful gains in extraversion, conscientiousness, and agreeableness round out a picture of psychotherapy as a catalyst for broader personal growth, not just a clinical tool for symptom management.
If you’ve been wondering whether your core personality can actually change — the answer research gives us is a cautious but meaningful yes. The key ingredients appear to be choosing the right type of therapy, engaging actively both in and outside of sessions, and committing to a sufficient course of treatment. To get a clearer sense of where your own personality currently stands across all 5 dimensions — and to have a baseline for tracking your growth through therapy — explore your Big Five profile and see which traits your experiences may already be reshaping.