The test and therapists

As always, my friend Lana fills my days with interesting blogs, and today was no exception. She recently took one of the millions of personality tests out there, and so I thought I would do the same.

This particular one was a 78 question Briggs-Myers test, (Humantrics) and I was curious to see if my "life-reset" had changed my score much.
______________________________
Your Type is
ENFP
Extraverted: 78 Intuitive: 62 Feeling: 31 Perceiving: 44

Qualitative analysis of your type formula

You are:

* very expressed extravert
* distinctively expressed intuitive personality
* moderately expressed feeling personality
* moderately expressed perceiving personality
______________________________

I can’t seem to find my old score, but it seems if anything I have moved up in percentages with my attributes, which is interesting.

Another thing that Lana mentioned was the value of therapy. She spoke definitely in support of it, but wondered how it was that a person could still be seeing the same therapist for several years. Can the therapist be that effective if several years haven’t resolved their issues?

The funny thing about this timing is that I have nearly finished a book on gay relationships by a gay therapist who definitely has written his book as a psychologist, and so I have been thinking a lot about this lately.

Lana and I have one thing in common, which is we struggle to find personal value in a therapist, mostly because we often feel like what they are telling us is common sense. It is frustrating, because we often want to berate ourselves for feeling smarter than the people we are going to see. It isn’t "good" to think such things, so we can leave more mad at us than at them, which is really counter-productive.

Since psychology became a passion starting at Harvard, I have often been exasperated by therapists. I was given several recommendations by friends after my dad passed away, and always left feeling like I had wasted my time.

Lana pointed out something my first psychology professor told me, that often times, what people need more than anything is a sounding board. Someone who will listen intently no matter what, because often friends who we would like to fill that void simply can’t.

Over the last few years I have come to the conclusion that most therapists do 2 things wrong: They forget this first rule, and they try and systemize.

Many therapists will forget that mostly they need us to listen to what we feel is the problem, and what we don’t need is for them to try and follow a predetermined map. Jokes and exhagerations have been made for a long time about psychologists instantly relating your problems back to childhood, etc.

Very few therapists are able to model their methods to their patients, and as such, it is hard to find one that is a fit. One that is incredible to a friend of mine, might be terrible to me and that wading through the "bad ones" is what keeps people like Lana and I from finding someone actually a good fit for us.

I have come to the conclusion that therapy is a great thing. I think that the long-term relationships you develop with your therapists can really get you over hurdles and help you with your personal development. We are always growing, and having someone there foster that growth can be a great thing. The trick is finding someone who has the right style for you, and who doesn’t allow the relationship to become one of dependence.

Of course, thus far, I have yet to find this match, so I look to my good friends to be that slap in the face when I am blind to my own self. :-)

Turtle in the Hailstorm

Rarely do I take psychological theory and apply it to life and philosophical inquiry, but every once in a while I will be surprised by something that has actual application and isn’t just jargonized filler.

One such instance was the explanation given by Harville Hendrix on the progression of relationship communication. I won’t go through the whole thing here, but one point in particular really made me stop and think. He says that all relationship struggles (friendship or romantic) will undoubtedly turn on person into the Hailstorm, and the other into a Turtle.

The turtle turns inward in a fight. They will withhold their emotions, hide, and avoid the fight if possible. They are the ones who will try and keep the fight outside of themselves, and as he said, will go to bed in the middle of a fight and sleep just fine.

The hailstorm is the opposite. Rather than hide their feelings they start expressing more of them. Sometimes this turns to anger, but often times can simply be an excess of the normal things they are already feeling.

He mentions that both of these tactics are based in an instinctual fear, and that people do this all the time without realizing it.

He says that there is a lot of variation with people. Some people will switch back and forth (sometimes even in the same fight) while others will more often than not fall into one or the other. With friends, I can see where sometimes I am the turtle, but looking over my relationships, I have ALWAYS been a hailstorm in troubled times, and without fail, their inner turtle appears.

It isn’t always fun to realize when you do something instinctually that is for all intents and purposes "the wrong thing to do." In my case, I would try and "wash away" whatever the problems my guy would have, either with logic or my own emotion. The problem of course being that all I did was scare them more, making them turtle more, all the while their turtling scared me more and made me work harder. Talk about a cyclical recipe for disaster.

To hear that this is a natural response doesn’t actually make me feel better, but it is nice that when I see it laid out that I can recognize myself in this and lead towards more growth as a person. Now the trick will be to figure out how to respond to this situation without falling into my own trap while helping them come out of theirs. :)

Manditory Mistakes?

I have been spending a lot of time thinking about mistakes lately. Looking back over the quarter+ century I have lived, I can look at many things in my life that I would consider a mistake. Things I wish I had done, but didn’t, people I let go that I shouldn’t, people I held onto for far too long, and of course those decisions that I made that I would probably undo.

Most people who know me, know that I am definitely at a "reset" point in my life. Having given up what I thought would be my career vehicle, moving to a new city and for all intensive purposes "starting from scratch" in nearly every way certainly gives me a place to look back upon what was done. I am not one to linger on regret, but there are those twinging moments you wonder what would things be life "if."

Many people say that you grow from your mistakes, and the best thing you can do when you make a mistake or have a "regret" is to look back and think why you would have done something different so that you can learn from it, and next time take that knowledge to make better decisions. Such a line of thinking if of course both correct and helpful. The question that comes up however, is: Do we have to make mistakes?

Now this question is not asking if we can be perfect. Of course everyone makes mistakes now and then. Instead the question looks at if you can truly know the world, and be a wise person who functions to the best of their abilities if you don’t make mistakes. Especially big ones.

Say for example you are interested in someone whom everyone knows is bad for you. But say you have never had a bad relationship. 6 months down the road are you going to be a "better" or at least more effective and well-rounded person if you ignore the advice of your friends and family?

Often times, it seems we have a built in mechanism that kicks in making us ignore advice, and sometimes even logic when making a new decision. Psychologists have long pointed out that our sub or unconscious mind thinks a lot faster than our conscious mind, and that when it makes it makes a decision, it goes for what is going to be best for us, not necessarily what is least painful. Like looking for relationships that we need to heal rather than the ones we want.

If our unconscious is trying to do this work for us, it makes sense why some of the best parenting advisors suggest teaching and advising, but allowing children (of whatever age) make the big mistakes on their own.

Does this mean the that mistakes are mandatory not only because of our imperfections, but also for our development as people? Should we look back at our mistakes not with a desire to make them different, but only as steps to learning. One wouldn’t consider themselves to have the knowledge from a college education without "spending" the time there. Perhaps our development in other areas must be "purchased" with the time loss or the pain that mistakes so often bring.