This Ambiguous Life: Logical Empath

So, I’m a teensy weensy obsessed with personality tests such as Strengthsfinder, the Enneagram, and the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator. Long story short, I’m fascinated by what makes people tick.

Long story long, while I understand that humans are complex, adaptable, and prone to the types of self-deception that ultimately make the results of personality tests flawed, I enjoy them immensely. Taken with a grain of salt, these tools help me understand myself and other people a little bit more than I otherwise would without them.

By the way, for those keeping score, my top 5 strengths are:

Ideation

Input

Learner

Individualization

Connectedness

My enneagram result is a 4w5.

My Myers-Briggs result has historically varied slightly over the years from INFP to ENFP.

What I’ve always wondered, though, is how our health, our moods, and our current life situation influences these types of tests. For example, if I’m sick, or feeling anxious/depressed/overwhelmed, or I’m, say, living in a post-pandemic world where after nearly 3 years of a lot of social isolation, I am just beginning to dip my toe into the pool of community connections once again, I would think my personality test results would be a little different than they would be if I were healthy, energized, and gracefully gliding across the surface of the water of community connections like a nearly-perfectly thrown skipping stone.

Do the results of these tests vary? Yes. I think so. Does that mean these tests are silly nonsense pseudoscience? Maybe. Do I care? No. Not if if helps me better understand myself and my fellow humans.

All this is to say, last night, I had an opportunity to test out my hypothesis that the results of personality tests do indeed change, depending on things such as health, mood, and living situation.

I won’t go into too much detail in an effort to only air my own dirty laundry and not my entire family’s. I mean, come on. It’s 2022. Modern American women are no longer necessarily in charge of their laundering their entire family’s actual dirty clothes, so it should follow that we are also not responsible for airing the entire family’s metaphorical dirty laundry. If the people in my family want to go into detail with you about their part in the argument we had last night, that’s their business. In a Rashomonesque fashion, I can only share details of my side of the story. I get to control when and how I share my dirty undies. I mean laundry. OK. This mixed metaphor is getting weird and creepy. Let’s move on.

So, last night, my family got into a fight. It was honestly pretty mellow by my standards. No name calling. Only one teen (Kat) flipping off one elder (me) and really it was done mostly in jest. Nothing like the family fights I experienced as a teen, with my dad yelling at my mom and me, calling us stupid, calling me a commie, me flipping Dad off completely serious and unjestlike, calling him an asshole and mom turning, silently, walking down the hallway to her bedroom and shutting the door, shutting us crazy confrontational people out and avoiding conflict at all costs. Being involuntarily committed to the psych ward after having a “nervous breakdown” after finding out your first husband—not my dad, who, sure, he could be an asshole sometimes, but at least he wasn’t a cheater, too—was having an affair, and receiving electroshock therapy on two separate occasions in the mid-1960s might do that to you. Turn you into a conflict-avoidant person. That was my mom, for sure. I don’t agree with conflict-avoidance at all cost, but I understand.

So, now I’m 52. I’ve learned a thing or two since I was a confrontational teen. I’ve learned that there is a difference between being confrontational and being assertive. I’ve learned that avoiding conflict at all cost is a normal coping mechanism for someone who feels powerless and unheard. I’ve learned that yelling and name-calling is also a normal coping mechanism for pe who feel like their grasp of power is slipping and they are beginning to feel unheard. I’ve learned that with so many things, the middle way is the best. At least that’s how it is for me. Embrace conflict, clear the air, talk about feelings, unearth the depths of misunderstanding, but do it all as calmly, as rationally, as empathetically as possible.

So my 16-year-old Kat (Gen Z,) and my 66-year-old mother-in-law (Boomer,) were getting into a disagreement last night about generational differences and our society’s history of corporal punishment. There were some phrases being thoughtlessly thrown around such as, “back in my day” and “well nowadays that’s called abuse.” My 41-year-old husband Will (Millennial,) put in his two cents, which I interpreted as, “Hey, guys, it’s been a long day and I’m trying to watch this comedy show to lighten up a bit, and you’re being confrontational is harshing my mellow so could you cut it out and get back to doing the dishes and getting ready for bed?”

I could see the look in Kat’s eye. She’s got her daddy’s blue eyes, but she’s inherited my emotive stare. She looked like what I imagined I looked like when I was 16, looking back and forth at my mom and dad, thinking, “Two more years! Just two more fucking years and I can get out of here and get away from these stupid people and live the way I want to live.”

It’s funny, because I don’t want Kat to think such things about me, but I completely understand that she does. I try not to take it personally. I know some day she will realize, just like I did, that my parents loved me and raised me to the best of their flawed, sometimes stupid, sometimes brilliant abilities.

But in that moment, when I saw it in Kat’s eyes that she was on the verge of saying something she might regret to her dad, who she adores but who also exasperates her, I, being a 52-year-old GenXer, and therefore in the middle of all these other generations, stepped in and said, “Can I share my thoughts.”

We had, what I think, was a good family discussion about generational differences, disagreements, respect, speaking your truth with empathy and calm rationality.

The air cleared. No one shouted. A few feelings were hurt, but nothing irreparable. Grandma said, “I love you all,” and went to bed. Kat went back to doing the dishes and later came out to the living room to say she thought she should apologize to grandma. I said, “Yes. That’s probably good idea. But I’ve gotta say, I’m also proud of you for being confrontational. Probably because I was also confrontational at your age. It’s developmentally appropriate. Being confrontational can be good, but it can also make life hard for you. Some day you’ll learn how to confront people who disagree with you without sounding like you’re attacking them. You’re already much more evolved than I was at your age. It’s hard to get along with older generations. Every generation thinks the older generations are stupid because in many ways we are. We grew up in a different time than you, and our world wasn’t as open as your world is now. But we also have a lot more experience living than you to, and with experience comes wisdom, which is good, too.”

Kat’s eyes softened. Her mouth twitched slightly. Was that the beginning of a smile? Some semblance of understanding? I’d like to think so. But what Kat said was this:

“Can I go back to doing the dishes now?”

“Yes!” Will, and I said, in unison.

Will unpaused his comedy show.

I took the Myers-Briggs test for probably the tenth time.

It was the perfect opportunity to test my hypothesis. I was feeling healthy. I was in a stable mood. My family had bravely faced conflict head on and managed to avoid getting into a wreck. Let’s see if the results of my test change when I’m in this state of mind.

In the past when I’ve taken the test, I was always going through something. Sick. Grumpy. Not in a good place in my life. Each of those times, I always scored either an ENFP or an INFP. Here are some blurbs about those results: