PERSONALITY

NOT YOUR TYPE? THAT’S OK!

WRITERS: ROBERT H. BLANCHETTE, ED.S.; M.ED.

When you take a little time to understand how personality preferences operate and dictate our everyday behaviors, you can more readily appreciate differences between you and the people closest to you, such as partners, children, friends, and coworkers.

In most areas of life, when differences between yourself and another person bother you too much, you can avoid the other person in some way, or in some cases, even entirely extinguish the relationship. However, when that person is a family member or close friend or professional colleague, you have a lot to lose by walking away.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI®) and associated technology (derived from the theories of renowned psychiatrist C.G. Jung) offer an effective avenue to see differences as they actually are.

Instead of labeling a person and putting value judgments on his or her behavior, you can learn to see that person’s behavior as reflecting their individual “personality type,” and not something designed to offend you. By observing people’s behavior and actions through the colorful “lens” of personality type, many people even learn to see the differences in others in a humorous light. In this article, we will focus on how “type” affects couples and families.

Couples and personality type

The Myers-Briggs has many applications in terms of empowering and enhancing interpersonal dynamics. Independent counselors, as well as religious organizations, often use the MBTI instrument for premarital counseling. This allows a couple considering marriage to identify areas of difference that may cause conflict. The respect created by this awareness can go a long way in weathering married life.

In marital counseling, the use of type can create a neutral ground, a nonjudgmental language for discussing misunderstandings and irritations. Healthy change in a relationship can begin when there is respect for the reality that your partner may be viewing the world through a very different lens. Even when a relationship is ending in divorce, understanding the influence of type can lead to a much more amicable process and better understanding of what happened, as well as increasing the likelihood the next relationship will have a better outcome. Knowledge of type preferences can also help couples and families negotiate differences in approaches to lifestyle, intimacy and affection, division of chores, managing money, and other areas of potential conflict.

Families and personality type

Family lifestyle requires the harmonious melding of all members of the family. Understanding of MBTI type can lead the way. When family members understand type, they are less likely to assume they are right and others are wrong. This is true across many issues, including management of time, schoolwork, decision-making, family recreational activities and vacations, or rules of the household.

For example, parents sometimes assume a child who does not meet commitments is showing poor character; type can help frame how different types approach management of time. A parent who worries about her “anti-social” child can use type to see this need for solitude as simply introversion after a school day placed a lot of demands for the child to engage in extraversion. A perceiving child might require a little more patience and encouragement from their parent or teacher to complete a chore or homework.

When parents themselves differ in parenting styles, including discipline and sibling conflict, knowledge of type can show them how to compromise on a style that respects the different preferences of each parent — and just as importantly, the type of each child. Knowing the preferences of children may also be of assistance in dealing with school issues and what, at first, may appear to be a problem with your child’s teacher(s). Further investigation may reveal a significant difference between student learning and teaching styles that may be solved when the teacher is made aware of the impact of differences in type preferences.

And finally, type can be especially important in blended families where the type mix in each former family must be blended in a way that respects the preferences of all members of the new family.

Rain or shine, good is always there. I don’t wait for something bad to happen to do something good. That’s why I offer things like free coverage checkups and rewards for safe driving. I’m here to help you live the good life every single day.