#Vs. the other side of my personality that suffers from neuroticism

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

finished turn A gundam and sad about it. Because it was good and i didnt want it to end. Crazy how Lily Borjano ended up being the best character ? I decided i'm going to lean even more into that side of my personality now (Fearless, Self-Assured, Unmoveably Optimistic But in a subtle & dignified manner)

[parrotvoid]

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator: Useful or pseudo-science?

I’m a huge fan of the MBTI system.  It’s opened the door to deep self-reflection, given me a community of interesting, like-minded people, is a useful heuristic for understanding the people around me, and sparked a passion for personality and cognitive science (which has gone much past MBTI).  

The MBTI system is based off of the cognitive function theories of renown psychologist Carl Jung, and was founded by a mother-daughter team, Katherine Myers and Isabell Briggs, in 1962.  The system works by creating four dimensions of personality with each dimension having two categories representing a different set of behavioral patterns.  This propagates as: Extrovert ( E ) vs Introvert ( I ), intuitive ( N ) vs Sensor ( S ), Feeler ( F ) vs Thinker ( T ), and Judger ( J ) vs Perceiver ( P ). These dimensions can be further broken down into specific cognitive functions, but just to keep things simple for this post here is a basic visualization:

The combination of these eight letters creates 16 personality types which have their own associated behavioral patterns that emerge out of the interplay between the combination of the dominant four letters.  A very basic form of this can be visualized in the below picture:  

Of course, everyone is unique, but on a population level each MBTI type is associated with specific strengths and weaknesses, career interests, temperaments, and compatibilities.  Your MBTI type is often determined by taking a test asking questions about your typical behaviors and preferences.  Each question is targeted to specific cognitive functions, so by the end of the test your answers should cluster around a specific personality type.  

Despite the claims of MBTI not being scientific, businesses have used the MBTI instrument for decades and there is a wealth of studies on the effectiveness of the MBTI instrument in scientific journals studying business and organizational psychology. This doesn’t mean the system is perfect (we’ll be getting into that in a minute) and controversies rise when organizations misuse or overemphasize an employee’s MBTI type when making promotion, hiring, and firing decisions.  It can also be severely misused when people use their MBTI type as a stand-in for their identity or as an excuse for bad behavior. Discovering your MBTI type should be used as a descriptive tool to guide self-reflection and personal growth.  

Because many of these tests are self-administered, their accuracy is highly dependent on having an accurate self-perception and honestly answering the questions.  A huge concern in any personality assessment being performed for work, school, or being viewed by others is that the test taker may answer the questions the way they think they SHOULD or WANT to answer them instead of how they really act and feel.  I’ve seen plenty of people get screwy results because they answered the questions based on what they wanted to be like, instead of how they actually are.  I’ve seen highly extroverted, party animals answer that they would “rather spend a Friday night reading a book instead of going out”, even though they spend every actual Friday night out with their friends.  Mistyped individuals, especially ones who over-identify with their mistyped personality type, can create a lot of confusion within the MBTI community and cause a lot of statistical problems when trying to analyze the validity of MBTI.  One solution is to have professionally proctored tests outside of the work setting, but these are often expensive and rare.

Issues like the ones discussed above are why I totally understand the reason MBTI has received so much criticism from the psychology community and has even been called pseudo-science.  Mainstream psychology prefers the OCEAN (aka Big 5) personality metric to the MBTI.  OCEAN stands for the traits it characterizes: Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.  The OCEAN model still suffers from the issues of bias and dishonesty during test taking, however it does address some issues better than the traditional MBTI model.  Let’s list these out below:

1.  MBTI categorizes personality into 16 distinct types. The modern scientific study of personality has determined that personality lies on a continuum with most people falling in the middle.  This means that someone who’s slight introverted will have more in common with a slightly extroverted person than a very introverted person.  The OCEAN model plots people on a continuous scale to more accurately address this issue.  To be fair to MBTI, the modern versions of the test give you a percentage on your specific traits, in the same way that OCEAN does.  

2. OCEAN’s measured personality dimensions (Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism) were chosen through a data driven method analyzing clusters of commonly associated behavioral patterns, while MBTI’s personality dimensions were determined from psycho-analytic theory.  My issue with this criticism is that there’s not necessarily anything more scientific or special about using a machine to draw patterns vs a human brain to draw patterns.  Patterns are patterns, and I actually think a comparison of dimensions in MBTI and OCEAN actually shows the power of the human brain.  The human created MBTI dimensions fairly neatly overlap the dimensions of the data science derived OCEAN model:  E vs I = high vs low Extroversion, N vs S = high vs low Openness, F vs T = high vs low Agreeableness, J vs T = high vs low Conscientiousness, and the final factor Neuroticism has been recently incorporated into MBTI as “turbulence”.  Essentially, knowing a person’s OCEAN score tells you their MBTI type and the same goes for the other way around.

3.  The final and most valid criticism of MBTI is that personality can change over time.  Most models of the MBTI state that your type remains fixed after adolescence, although the more complex MBTI models allow for growth and development in the lower functions.  On the other hand, the OCEAN model often expects and predicts change throughout a person’s life.  However, it should be noted that there is strong evidence to suggest that people have a genetically determined base personality type which they default to and develop off of. What this means is that someone with naturally low Extroversion (let’s say scoring 5% on E) may develop into an Extrovert (scoring 60% on E) but chances are low that they would ever become highly extroverted (> 85% E).  

So, is MBTI a perfect tool for describing the rich and complex variables of human personality?  Obviously not.  But is MBTI pseudo-science garbage no more accurate than astrology?  I think that’s taking it too far.  MBTI may not pass the muster of science, but as long as it isn’t rigidly adhered to it is accurate enough for business and people looking for some extra guidance in their life and relationships.  Overall, MBTI is a fun tool to help you reflect on yourself and learn a little about other people. MBTI is not science so once it stops being useful to you, learn to put it aside. 

Below are some videos that I think give good arguments from both sides of the issue:

[pilawforhire-archived]

[[[ edit: Thank you, everyone, who has been so kind and wonderful as to answer the questions with your thoughts. These are posts that have been shared in response, and I’m linking these in case anyone wants to read them. By someidioticurl, ask-heartstealer-law, trafalgar-bleedingheart-law. Thank you.

Hi guys, so I’m requesting a little help here. I’ve been trying to get a better understanding of Law’s character, and unfortunately, the more I think about things, the more I feel confused and uncertain.

Thus, I would like to reach out to other Law muses, with some questions and headcanons that you might have considered in your portrayal. (Ps you don’t have to indulge me, of course. But if you want to, please go ahead, thank you.)

Of course, this extends to just about anyone who wants to humour me and wouldn’t mind telling me what you think! And speaking of humour, this is all about it!

Without further ado, my biggest question, or the question I started out with earlier, was:

What is Law’s sense of humour? What are your HCs regarding that?

(some more related questions below the read more)

Tagging: @ask-heartstealer-law @trafalgar-bleedingheart-law @eviscxration @nobedsidemanners @locum-magneticum (sorry guys, ps just overlook this if you’d like, it’s time-consuming and I kinda doubt anyone would want to read it tbh..)

***NOTE: THIS IS LONG, and mostly for my own future self-reference, but I’m not sure if anyone might find reading about it useful. ***NOTE: You don’t have to read all this! You can just comment/reblog/etc with what you think in general on the topic of humour. I appreciate any and all thoughts on the matter. This is just for anyone who wants to read up more on the types of humour, if it may help in understanding your character.

***QUESTIONS >> You don’t have to read the bottom notes. Here are some questions I had, instead, if you may feel like you want to answer them. Again, mostly for my future reference, but maybe it might help someone...*

What are situations that amuse him?

How does he show it? (Smile vs laugh till he cries-- if he would ever do that vs hide his amusement)

Is he able to laugh at himself/life (when things go wrong or when he self-reflects)?

Does he seek or avoid confrontation? (He doesn’t seem like someone who would go picking fights, yet his cocky behaviour pre TS seems to me like he enjoys rubbing people the wrong way)

What is his self-esteem/self-confidence/self-worth levels? Does he hate himself, and how long does he dwell on it before moving on?

Does he understand most jokes?

Does he use humour to cope?

Does he keep silent if something rubs him the wrong way? (His shock at his own outward declaration of hating bread seems to infer that he usually doesn’t vocalise his concerns or when he doesn’t like things. And yet, in Dressrosa, he was complaining a lot, but that’s because he was under a lot of stress, exhaustion, and the circumstances meant he probably couldn’t care to hold things in anymore.)

Does he worry about what people think of him? (He seems to value his reputation, and likes that people think of him as cruel/sadistic though I believe those are limited to rumours)

He's always cool-headed and calm, but is he overly sensitive? (It seems like he is? Although he doesn’t show it.)

What does he think of himself? Does he hate himself? (He would seem to harbour guilt of his failure to protect Corazon and his family; to have failed as an older brother, have low self-worth.)

Does he find amusement in others’ misfortune? (I don’t see it. Like he’s humble, and I don’t think he laughs at others’ disabilities or misery, and yet he isn’t beyond messing up his enemies in a cruel way. SO! What are his limits? Where does he draw the line in his ‘cruelty’?)

Does he meditate?

What does he do when stressed?

What does he do when things get hopeless?

My brief thoughts:

Initially, I thought he wouldn’t be someone who could laugh at his own misery/life, but I think it would sound like something he could use to cope with past trauma. He’s not the self-defeating kind, at least, not outwardly?

The only display of humour from him (that my idiot memory remembers) is at Zou when he comments that a display of clone jutsu would be cool, and maybe in SA when he was amused by Luffy’s outrageous nature towards the CD. Also perhaps he is somewhat amused when he messes with enemies using his Ope Ope, switching personalities, body parts, taking their hearts..

Anyway, as I’ve read up (briefly), there are 4 main classifications of humour, and I think everyone has a percentage of each type to a certain degree.

Humour styles according to wiki, summed up roughly, credit to here

Affiliative, self-enhancing, aggressive, self-defeating

Affiliative:

used to enhance one’s r/s with others in a positive manner; used in self-accepting way

used to charm and amuse others, ease tension

spontaneous jokes, witty banter, enjoys laughing with others

individuals with high levels of this more likely to initiate friendships/increase group cohesiveness and promote creativity in group settings

associated with increased levels of self-esteem, well-being, emotional stability, social intimacy

individuals who use this tend to have higher levels of extraversion and openness to experience

telling jokes about things everyone might find funny

to bring people together, fellowship, happiness

Examples:

I don’t often joke with my friends

Jerry Seinfeld

Self-enhancing:

good natured attitude towards life; the ability to laugh at yourself, circumstances, idiosyncrasies of life in constructive, non-detrimental manner

used to enhance self in a positive manner; coping or emotion regulating humour

to look on the bright side of a bad situation, find silver lining

decreases levels of depression and anxiety

individuals more likely to exhibit extraversion and openness to experience

Examples:

If I’m feeling upset or unhappy I try to think of something funny about the situation to make myself feel better.

Even when by myself, I’m often amused by the absurdities of life.

Aggressive:

detrimental towards others

use of sarcasm, put-downs, teasing, criticism, ridicule at expense of others

individuals don’t care about the impact on others

examples are prejudices like racism and sexism

seems playful fun but the underlying intent may be to harm or belittle

related to high levels of neuroticism, lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness

individuals more highly aggressive and hostile; used by bullies

Examples:

When telling jokes or saying funny things, I am not usually concerned about how people take it.

If you think people are laughing at you, they probably are.

Self-defeating:

potentially detrimental humour towards the self; gain approval from others

laughter at own expense; “poor me”

pleasing others by being butt of joke

sometimes seen as form of denial; humour used as defense mechanism for hiding negative feelings of self

individuals frequently using this style show increased depressive symptoms

higher levels of neuroticism, lower levels of agreeableness and conscientiousness

associated with low self esteem, well being, intimacy

Examples:

I often try to make people like or accept me more by saying something about my weaknesses or blunders or faults.

I cover up problems and unhappiness by joking around, so closest friends don’t know how I feel

Further reading:

What do different personality types think about how people understand or misunderstand their sense of humour?

Analysts (INTP/INTJ) most likely to feel their humour is misunderstood. They are good at problem solving and generating ideas but may not translate well into humour. Visionary, highly intelligent personality types may engage in humour they understand but fail to make it relatable. Extraverted analysts, however, less likely to feel their sense of humour is misunderstood, as they have higher confidence in their abilities and are more outgoing.

Diplomats (INFP-T/INFJ-T) likely to feel others misunderstood their sense of humour. Though their personalities centre on relations with others, specifically tolerance and harmony, they are also most likely to take things personally and suffer insecurity. Desire to create harmony + overly sensitive nature = recipe for feeling misunderstood

Sentinels: Prefer traits like loyalty and trustworthiness to spontaneity or playfulness. Observant and Judging, values clarity, facts, observable things, as opposed to imaginative and unexpected. Sense of humour consists of tried and true, straightforward approach vs unpredictable humour.

Note to self: Read up more on personality types, since I know nothing of the matter other than the brief general basics.

20 types and forms of humour:

Which forms do you think Law enjoys?

I would think, dark/morbid, deadpan/dry, mordant? But those are the forms I think he would show. The kinds of humour he would enjoy, I’m still thinking about.

Other links to types of humour

Well. Thanks if you got that far. ]]]]]

[ourhealthyfoodblog-blog]

New Post has been published on Healthy Food and Remedies

New Post has been published on http://healthyfoodandremedies.com/2017/04/27/dark-side-loneliness/

The Dark Side of Loneliness

Many people, especially codependents, are haunted by inner loneliness. Twenty percent (60 million) of Americans report that loneliness is the source of their suffering. In fact, our emotional reaction to rejection emanates from the area of our brain (the dorsal anterior cingulated) that also responds to physical pain (Cacioppo and Patrick, 2008).

Loneliness vs. Aloneness

Loneliness is associated with living alone, which surveys indicate has steadily risen to 27 percent in 2013 and to 50 percent and higher in parts of Florida, West Virginia, and especially California. However, solitude and being alone only describe a physical condition. We don’t always feel lonely when we’re alone. Individual needs for connection vary. Some people choose to live solo and are happier doing so. They don’t suffer the same sense of abandonment caused by the unwanted loss of a partner through a breakup, divorce, or death. They may also have greater inherited insensitivity to social disconnection, according to recent research.

Loneliness in Relationships

Although loneliness is greater among people living alone, it can be felt while in a relationship or group. This is because it’s the quality, not the quantity, of social interactions that determines whether we feel connected. As the number of work hours and household television sets has increased, family dinners have declined. Today, although the quantity of interactions has increased, due to the proliferation of cell phones, screen time is replacing face time. People spend more time on their digital devices than in face-to-face conversations, contributing to more loneliness (Cacioppo, 2012).

A UCLA study showed that social skills are declining as a result. There’s a 40 percent decline in empathy among college students due to new technology, and 12-year-olds are socially behaving like 8-year-olds. Recently, Pew Research Center found that 82 percent of adults felt that the way they used their phones in social settings hurt the conversation.

Codependency and Lack of Intimacy

The absence of someone nurturing to listen, care, and affirm our existence makes us feel isolated or emotionally abandoned. Although intimate connections are the remedy, characteristically, codependent relationships lack intimacy. Codependents have difficulty with intimacy due to shame and poor communication skills. Often they partner with someone addicted, abusive, or just emotionally unavailable (and they may be, as well.)

Whether alone or in a relationship, codependents may be unable to identify the source of their unhappiness. They may feel depressed, sad, or bored, yet not know that they’re lonely. Others know, but find it difficult to effectively ask for their needs. Their relationship dynamics and loneliness may seem familiar, like the emotional dysfunction in their childhood. We want and need emotional closeness from our partner and friends, but when an intimate, emotional bond is lacking, we experience disconnection and emptiness. (For more on emptiness and healing, see Chapter 4, “There’s a Hole in My Bucket” in Conquering Shame and Codependency.)

Years ago, I believed that more shared activities would create that missing connection, not realizing it was something less tangible — real intimacy, which was absent in my relationship. (See “Your Intimacy Index.”) Instead, like most codependents, I experienced “pseudo-intimacy,” which can take the form of a romantic “fantasy bond,” shared activities, intense sexuality, or a relationship where only one partner is vulnerable, while the other acts as advisor, confidant, provider, or emotional caretaker.

The undercurrent of loneliness and fear of loneliness stem from chronic lack of connectedness and loneliness in childhood. While some children are neglected or abused, the majority grow up in families where parents don’t have the time or sufficient emotional resources to honor their children’s feelings and needs. Children feel ignored, unloved, shamed, or alone. Some feel like an outsider, that “No one gets me,” even though their family otherwise appears to be normal. To cope, they withdraw, accommodate, rebel, or take up addictions, and mask and, eventually, deny what they feel inside.

Loneliness and Shame

Meanwhile, the growing sense of separation from themselves and lack of authentic connection with a parent(s) can breed inner loneliness and feelings of unworthiness. “The awareness of human separation, without reunion by love — is a source of shame. It is at the same time the source of guilt and anxiety.” (Fromm, E., The Art of Loving, p. 9) As adults, codependents can get caught in a self-defeating cycle of loneliness, shame, and depression. Repeated break-ups and abandoning relationships can foster a worsening cycle of abandonment. (See “Breaking the Cycle of Abandonment.”)

The greater our loneliness, the less we seek to engage with others, while our anxiety around authentic connection grows. Studies show than prolonged loneliness breeds low self-esteem, introversion, pessimism, disagreeableness, anger, shyness, anxiety, lessened social skills, and neuroticism. We imagine negative evaluations from others, called shame anxiety. This leads to anxious, negative, and self-protective behaviors, to which other people respond negatively, fulfilling our imagined outcome.

The shame associated with loneliness is directed not only against ourselves. Loneliness carries a stigma, so we don’t admit we’re lonely. It is also experienced from others with gender differences. Lonely men are perceived more negatively than women, and more negatively by women, even though more women than men report feeling lonely (Lau, 1992).

Health Risks

The strong association between loneliness and depression is well documented. Loneliness also triggers serious health risks, affecting our endocrine, immune, and cardiovascular systems, and accelerating death. According to a recent study, the lonely have increased risk for cancer, neurodegenerative disease, and viral infections.

Perceived loneliness triggers a flight-or-fight stress response. Stress hormones and inflammation rise, and exercise and restorative sleep decrease. Norepinephrine surges, shutting down immune functions and ramping up production of white blood cells that cause inflammation. Meanwhile, it makes us less sensitive to cortisol that protects us from inflammation.

In commenting on the research, neuroscientist Turhan Canli points out that loneliness one year affects our genetic inflammatory response the following year, confirming the self-reinforcing, negative, emotional spiral discussed above: “Loneliness predicted biological changes, and biological changes predicted changes in loneliness” (Chen, 2015).

Coping with Loneliness

We may not feel like talking to someone, even though it would help. Now we have the data to explain why biological, even genetic changes make loneliness hard to overcome. For many of us, when we’re lonely, we tend to isolate even more. We may turn to addictive behavior instead of seeking social connection. There is a high correlation between obesity and loneliness.

We really have to fight our natural instinct to withdraw. Try admitting to a friend or neighbor that you’re lonely. To motivate socializing with other people, commit to a class, meet-up, CoDA or other 12-step meeting. Exercise with a buddy. Volunteer or support a friend in need can to take your mind off of yourself and lift your spirits.

As with all feelings, loneliness is worsened by resistance and self-judgment. We fear experiencing more pain if we allow our heart to open. Often, the reverse is true. Allowing feelings to flow can not only release them, but also the energy expended in suppressing them. Our emotional state shifts, so that we feel invigorated, peaceful, tired, or content in our aloneness. For more suggestions, read “Coping with Loneliness” in Codependency for Dummies.

© DarleneLancer 2015

References

Cacioppo, J.T. & Cacioppo, S. (2012). The Phenotype of Loneliness. European Journal of Developmental Psychology, 2012 Jul 1; 9(4): 446–452.

Cacioppo, J.T. & Patrick, W. Loneliness: Human Nature and the Need for Social Connection. The Wall Street Journal, Nov. 28, 2008.

Chen, A. Loneliness May Warp Our Genes, And Our Immune Systems. NPR, Your Health, November 29, 2015.

Lau, S., & Gruen, G. E. (1992). The social stigma of loneliness: Effect of target person’s and perceiver’s sex. Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 182-189.

Turkle, S. Stop Googling. Let’s Talk. The New York Times, Sept. 26, 2015.