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10:01pm June 24, 2014

karalianne:

youneedacat:

insanecatgentleman:

My work had us to go this enneagram workshop, and it was really hard emotionally.  (I left a bit early.  Also I needed food.)

(The enneagram is a personality test.)

It just seems like…a lot of people have had really awful experiences being pigeonholed, misunderstood, and labeled?  And having a bunch of stereotypes applied to yourself, while a room full of people laughs, could be very uncomfortable?  It’s like…uhh…we have histories?  This wasn’t taken into account at all.

I also feel like these personality systems don’t take neurological difference into account either.  Enneagram type 5 is like a stereotypical autistic person, and I feel like my personality includes that, but is also a lot more.  I also hate how the “unhealthy” types have mental illness symptoms, but as a “healthy” version of your type you don’t have any.  What am I supposed to make of that, as someone with chronic mental illness?  

(I don’t buy the whole system, but it was hard to hear it presented as the absolute truth.  I don’t like theories presented as the truth.  —I can just hear someone saying, “Hurr hurt, total type 5!”  The enneagram is like, whatever you say, it can be used as evidence to perpetuate itself, and I just found that creepy.  Like when I told the facilitator I didn’t think I was a 6, she said that 6s never think they’re 6s.  Yeah, probably because we don’t want to be identified with our anxiety, because PEOPLE ARE NOT THEIR ANXIETY.)

I really believe that we aren’t any emotion.  We’re the plane of awareness that holds everything we experience.  To me that’s a much more helpful concept than the enneagram. 

If asked for feedback, I’ll be honest, but I don’t know if I have the Sanity Watchers points to volunteer anything.

Oh geez enneagrams.

I’ve met people who swear by MBTI and Enneagram and stuff and are just waiting to pigeonhole me into a box in one of those so they can ‘understand me better’, and the more I say these are not valid ways of doing this, the more they insist that tells them which one I am, and etc.

I’m a 4 with a strong 5 wing, which probably describes my Inattentive ADHD and autistic cousinhood pretty well.

But I understand that it’s just pop psychology. I approach these things with the thought that they might be fun, not that they’re true. Sometimes I learn something about myself in the process of answering the questions, but that’s more because of the process than the results.

I haven’t liked the MBTI since I realized that my letters change ALL THE TIME (except the I, I’m an introvert through and through). So it’s not really my personality type, it’s a description of how I’m dealing with stuff at the time I take the test.

I always got 4w5 or 5w4, but I never felt like either one gave me any insight into myself.  Same with ISFP.