One of my favorite hobbies is studying personality types. I love the work of Isabel Briggs Myers. She was not a psychologist, but her work, "presents, in understandable language, the ideas about personality type from famous Swiss psychologist, Carl Gustav Jung, as they apply to normal everyday people with normal everyday problems" (Gifts Differing pg xi). I also love that she was a christian, passionate about the differing parts of the Body of Christ.
As I was reading Isabel's book, Gifts Differing, I highlighted what popped out to me, as I do with almost every book I read, and wanted to share a few things, since I have yet to find someone in my sphere as passionate and interested in this as I am (introverts love talking about subjects they are interested in).
Chapter 17, Obstacles to Type Development, is a powerful reminder and encouragement to allow people to live authentically, out from under our thumb and expectations. She shares how, "less-frequent types find their infrequency an obstacle to their development." My husband and I are both "less-frequent types" according to MBTI personality system. This knowledge connected a lot of dots, and made sense of much of our experiences growing up. Feelings of rejections, inferiority, isolation, lack of connection etc all made sense since we were always massively out numbered. This chapter began to stir me, even more, about my future kids and how recognizing who God created them to be is vitally important to their development.
In, Gifts Differing, Isabel continues to share how a lack of acceptance at home is another obstacle to a child's development. "If parents understand and accept their child's type, the children have a spot of firm ground to stand on and a place in which to be themselves. But if children suspect that their parents want them to be different- to go against their own type- then the children lose hope." (pg182). The lack of opportunity presents another obstacle, "Unknowingly parents frequently refuse their children the conditions necessary for good type development; the young introverts who get no peace or privacy, the extravert shut off from people and activity, the intuitives tied to routine matters of fact, the sensing child required to learn everything through words with nothing to see or handle, the young thinkers who are never given a reason or permitted an argument, the feelings types in a family where nobody cares for harmony, the judging types for who all decisions are handed down by excessively decisive parents, and the young perceptives who are never allowed to run and find out" (pg183).
Chapter 19 goes on to, Individual's Road to Excellence, "preferences are inborn, but just as parent's frequently try to make a left-handed child right-handed, they may try to convert a sensing child to intuition, or a thinking child to feeling, to conform to the parent's inborn preference. Unless stoutly resisted, such pressure can be a serious hindrance to the development of a person's rightful gifts" (pg193).
The more I study personalities the more I'm totally convinced that the world needs this! More individuals need to be empowered with this knowledge to help bring peace and wisdom to their communities and circles of influence. I know I would have thrived in public school if my teachers and authority figures knew and cared about such things. I always struggled because I was an introvert. It was so hard for me to take tests and learn in a classroom of 20-30 kids. I couldn't sleep at night and spent the majority of my childhood filled with anxiety and stress, visiting counselors and seeing a few doctors. My parent's even tried to get my schools to allow me to take tests in the library or somewhere more quiet but we got nothing but eye-rolls, because they had no clue about introverted people. Really? All this over a personality trait? As an adult my heart breaks for the little girl I used to be, nobody understood her. :-(
Throughout my childhood teachers would put me in after school tutoring, remedial classes, tried to hold me back a few times. My family did not know about homeschooling. The public school system is a crowded, loud, obnoxious place for some personality types and it's almost impossible for us to thrive. Once I stated taking online college classes I thrived and I enjoyed learning tremendously. I discovered that I learn well on my own and I'm
extremely self-motivated and don't need someone standing over my shoulder. It makes me sad knowing I could have been an excellent student with amazing grades, had the school, my parents and myself known about personalities and our God given brain functions.
Thankfully, I can already see God turning my ashes into beauty, through my passion to help others learn about personality type, and through my future kids who will be blessed with the wisdom God's allowed me and hubby to learn on our journey.
How many people are trying to get others to conform to their own inborn preference? We don't understand each other because many of us don't realize there are many ways of being, even God knows this and shares it with us in scripture. The Holy Spirit doesn't give everyone the same gift, why? Because God knows their is value in differences. We are all assigned a different part/function in the body of Christ, why? Because it takes a whole, healthy body to do the work God desires, not just a foot or a hand. Personality types go right along with this idea. It's who we are. We are not clones or robots. God created us with such beautiful details and these details matter.The study of personality is the best way to grow as a society, a family, a church, a friend, a parent, a spouse. When we learn to give people room to be who God created them to be, we all thrive.
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