I've been having some amusement today with free online personality tests.
My idea was to try to examine what is my personality and what is cptsd so I could tell which behaviours need most attention.
It hasn't worked really, i think because cptsd is a big part of my personality and can't be separated.
But it was still interesting.
Wondered if anyone else has tried using these quizzes?
I don't think they are in any way harmful, its a bit like horoscopes really, makes you think but isn't really true, maybe.
Did you take the Myers-Briggs personality test?
The way that I understand personality is that it is a combination of how we come into the world and how we have been conditioned (nature and nurture). I work with the Enneagram model, which is similar. It helps me tease out my conditioned self from my true self. I have found it to be a useful part of my recovery process.
I have taken Myers-Briggs
My work face scored:
E- extrovert
F- feeling
S- sensing
P- perceiving
Thanks for the replies,
It feels like it could be useful somehow.
My memory is so bad I can't remember what I came out as, something like infps I think, on another one I came out as the same as Einstein, I will take that thanks!
To tease apart cptsd and the underlying personality would help a lot, I'd like to ditch the traumatised behaviour without losing whatever personality I have left.
I will look at the enneagram model too, worth pursuing.
I'm also looking at the sigma personality type as that sounds a bit like me. Not sure if that's just made up yet and it seems trendy and aspirational, which isn't me.
Deep blue, its interesting you measured your work face, I hadn't thought of doing myself now and how I remember my old self, that might help me a lot, thanks.
The appeal here is also that its a form of self assessment that doesn't involve self blame like my own attempts at evaluation, its structured for anyone.
Thanks again.
I used to search out all of these I could find. Usually the results weren't wholly surprising, but insights can help no matter where one finds them. Granted that sometimes one's mood is so dark as to not want or care about any of it; you just want the pain to end.
I suppose I found the enneagram pretty appealing, and mine seems to have fluctuated as I've gotten older. Initially I was 4 (individualist) but now gravitate slightly towards 5, which is the observer/loner sort. Hardly surprising, given my lifelong reticence around people, a basic mistrust. The question is how would I have developed if the abuse hadn't intervened and dominated my first 20 years+?
Myers-Briggs brings me in as a solid Introverted/iNtuitive/Feeling/Perceptive sort. Interestingly, feelings are something I've always found difficult to access or identify, as if they became hidden under years of abuse and repression; something which has been a factor in my therapy. Perceptive seems to fit in with hyper-sensitivity, whereas intuitive tends to follow having endured growing up around religious/spiritual abusers/hypocrites, and I seem to be good at rooting out phonies nowadays.
As noted, these can prove useful points from which to try and rebuild lives that matter. Maybe in these sorts of ways we'll find enough spark to keep going.
I LOVE personality tests. It's a part-time addiction, partially because I have a weird affinity for filling out forms and partially because I love the idea of taking a quick quiz and getting some major insight about myself. Not that it usually works that way but....it's still fun!
I'm interested in what you have to say about how cptsd might come out in these personality tests. As California mentioned, current personality science suggests that personality is a combination of nature and nurture, so it's probably difficult to tease out where any particular trait comes from. But I imagine there are certain traits that are common among those of us who have c-PTSD, in the end, since it's such an impactful part of who we are and how we behave.
One that occurs to me immediately is neuroticism, one the the Big Five personality traits. I've always scored very high on this trait. For me, it comes out as being extremely observant, particular, and "just-so" about how I act around different people. Given that one of the key features of c-PTSD is being almost painfully attuned and deferential to the emotional state of others, I wonder if high scores on neuroticism is common.
I also noticed that I was very close to woodsgnome on the Myers-Briggs; just one letter away. I'm INFJ. It'd be interested to see how everyone else on the forum falls on this scale.
Wow,
Enneagram counter phobic 6, that is pretty near the mark.
Full of anxiety and potentially aggressive.
Well well.
I've gotten a lot of help from personality tests on growing and being aware of myself. The thing is that many people think it's a bad idea because like horoscopes, it thinks it claims to predict a person 100%. No. No. No. It's just a guideline. More like possible areas to look on a map instead of the exact area.
I recommend you check out Personality Hacker and Personality Junkie as the best two sites for it. The pairs of E/I, N/S, T/F, and P/J are very rough guidelines on yourself, and more of a pop psychology thing. The more in-depth and precise ways of discovering yourself are the more complicated cognitive functions of MBTI.
The thing is with the pop psychology version is that it acts like you're either one side or the other. The thing with cognitive functions is that it recognizes you have all of these sides on yourself, but one is stronger than the other. The way to grow than is to be able to develop your weaker sides and reach the opposite sides of the spectrum.
It can take a lot of work, but it's been one of the most rewarding things I've tried.
I've gotten nearly INTP on all tests I've found. How someone obsessed with logic managed to find and be comfortable with this forum is a wonder, seeing how feely it all is. I can tell nearly all of you are err. . . more at home with emotions than I tend to be. But I came here to know my opposite after all, so it's a pleasure. Also a type 5. Interesting.
To w.g, yes, personality can change over time. It's less than your original personality, but another side of you can grow. In enneagram, there's such a thing as wings, which is the number next to your own main type. It's a supporting side of your main type. So you're probably a 4w5 as people who grow older tend to develop their wings more, or so they say.
Does anyone want to make a poll on this here? Just wondering.
I'm interested that others have explored this stuff already, I just started yesterday and thought I'd discovered a new piece of the puzzle.
I've invented a wheel, you guys are on bicycles.
I came out as a 5w6 but my score for 5 and 6 were nearly the same anyway.
I'm not sure logic affinity hampers emotion or empathy, I have a science/IT/law background but am a big bundle of nerve endings too...... I've learnt to be comfortable with being highly emotionally reactive, science is easier and more natural to me though.
Its hard to hold to being logic driven when these days my memory is gone, my IQ has probably halved and instead I have stress hormones and anger, more hulk than Spock.
I would be super curious to see the results of a poll, DR.
Warning : Sorry if I got a little too detailed. I'm a bit of an expert in this topic you can ask any questions about if you can see. I get kinda passionate and I got ahead of myself. :disappear:
Rainagan,, thinking and feeling in mbti aren't the same as logic and emotion. I was trying to say it in simpler terms, but it caused a misunderstanding.
It describes what we're good at and enjoy making decisions with more. It doesn't point to as much at the amount of motivation we have for an area of my life. Just like how someone would desparately want to get thinner, but would be bad at disciplining themselves to make healthy decisions or trying to enjoy the process.
When types get stressed, we become an unhealthy version of our opposite. We gain the need to pursue motivations we're worse at since we're stuck in a situation that requires it, but have bad ideas on how to go about it.
Since I'm an INTP, my weakest cognitive function is feeling decisions in interpersonal decisions, or Fe. My opposite, an ESFJ, would have the motivations to make healthy warm relationships through deep social awareness, kindness, and trust. But whenever I get stressed, I get desperate for healthy relationships.
I often end up with too much a fear of rejection, a lack of social awareness, and insecurities about belonging. I empathize with people, though I don't always know how to show it or show it well.
This is why I'm in OOTS, because it's the most direct way of healing towards my own problem areas. And errr. . . I'm a lot more shy on acting as warm and emotionally open in real life than here, and there's a lot more social cues that are indirectly said in real life. :fallingbricks:
Another example would be INFPs would be thinking in interpersonal decisions, or Te. At their most stressed, they often have a need to follow certain "logical" rules of a group (ex. A religion, a corporation, a school, etc.) even if they're harmful to them, or put too much emphasis on the productivity and efficiency of this need in the exclusion of other things they need more in life.
Science isn't the same as thinking in mbti either, but that's info for another day.
I'm curious too Resca, but I'm a little too shy for now. Maybe later. :disappear:
Just wanted to point out to people here that enneagram has a much deeper perspective on how types work differently on different levels of mental health. From amazing people fully realizing their lives to people who are victims of their mind to the point of insanity.
Lots of this perspective comes from Don Richard Riso's book called Personality Types — where he talks about each enneagram type at the Levels of Health. I've read it and I've seen what I have trouble with in the lower levels, and what I can strive for the higher levels.
There are also ideas called integration and disintregation, where one type becomes like a healthy or an unhealthy version of another type. They also tend to have more advice listed for this in enneagram than mbti.
Wow
I like that others have delved deeply into this, DR, you have really looked into this stuff.
Looks much more complicated than I realised, bit off putting really, I would have preferred it to be more accessible.
I don't have the head space to get amongst it all.
But I'm glad I looked into it.
I did the enneagram now, and to me.. that didn't resonate at all.
I've done the 16personality test quite a few times. I keep forgetting what I end up as, but I know it's differed before. But I always end up as an introvert. I re-did it now and my results are: infp-t
One caveat to the personality tests that I think worth mentioning is the tendency to consider the findings as if they're a permanent label. They do show tendencies; starting points more than destiny.
Most of the descriptions include positive/negative aspects of each category. Therein lies the rub--I remember nodding in agreement to the 'good' stuff, but freaking out at what was suggested along the downside. In other words, my inner critic had a field day encouraging my self-hate.
In a similar vein, these are reminiscent of what Pete Walker suggests in his 4f descriptions (fight/flight/freeze/fawn) regarding cptsd types. There tends to be a predominant pattern (mine is freeze) that might seem obvious, but some aspects of all 4 bleed into each other at times. Nonetheless, it seems wise to learn what the dominant factors are and go from there. As Walker also points out, recovering from cptsd can be a lifelong project.
You're right, w.g. Personality tests aren't horoscopes after all, and the best users of them just use it as a guide.
I haven't really mentioned my strong use of personality typing before since I dropped it already. It wasn't that it wasn't useful. It was more that I've gained the full understanding of myself I could have gotten from it, and so I put more of an effort to understand myself as an individual.
These tests measure tendencies of major motivations, how we make decisions, and what information we're more attracted to learn about. But it doesn't talk about how all those are maifested in specfic interests/hobbies, childhood backgrounds, relationships with different people, career, cultural influence, personal/political/religious beliefs, generation, mental disorders, disabilities and so much more.
I found a sense of belonging in finding people similar to me, but I found I wanted to fit in with them too much. Follow stereotypes. But I wanted to grow from that and develop things I didn't have a natural tendency for. In the end, even those within a type who share similarities are widely different in some way or another.
It's true Rainagan. The most intense personality typing is complicated because people are (http://are) complicated. While I respect your choice whether to explore it further or not, it was a worthy guideline that allowed me to view myself in its complexity. It was a field that respected how complex we are, whether how surprising it is in how we're the same and how we differ.
Here's a personality quirk.
I've always had an enquiring mind but never felt the need to become expert in anything, its always been 80/20 with me, if I understand 80% of a thing my curiosity is satisfied and something else attracts my attention.
Maybe that's what has happened with personality types, I have the gist of it now, full understanding would require a lot more effort.
In work I would push for at least 100% knowledge, I would also improve things and push for new approaches etc., for myself a working knowledge is enough somehow.
I need a reason to go the extra distance and its not something I have within.
Just thought I'd over share that......
I'm glad you made your own decision. :)