How different personalities respond to stress
I’ve heard a lot in the last few weeks about how many of us are experiencing our shadow side in this period of lockdown. If you’re not familiar with the concept of shadow side, it’s the unconscious and therefore less developed side of our personality. It’s the more out of character behaviour that emerges when we’re under stress and feeling fatigued. Sound familiar at the moment?!
The term shadow side was made popular by Carl Jung whose work is the foundation of the Myers Briggs personality profile. I’m trained as a Myers Briggs practitioner and I’ve seen it help many people understand themselves better, in particular the way they communicate, make decisions and relate to others.
Myers Briggs is also a fantastic tool to help us understand how we respond to stress. We’re all different and what might be stressful for some people (e.g. working on our own at home) may be energising and motivating for someone else. If you're familiar with Myers Briggs this illustration from The Myers Briggs Company might help you recognise some of the stress triggers for your type:
We all tend to feel energised and happy when we are using our four Myers Briggs preferences, because that is our natural personality type. For example if you’re an ESFJ your natural and preferred way of behaving is to use your:
Extroversion - you get your energy from being with people, talking, taking action.
Sensing - you’re a practical realist and focus on your past experience and the present reality.
Feeling - you’re guided by your values, emphatic and very aware of the impact of your decisions on others.
Judgement - you prefer life to feel organised and have some structure and you prefer things not to be left open-ended.
However, when we experience ongoing stress it drains our energy and we loose confidence in the way we normally behave and solve problems. Initially we tend to just try harder and press into our natural personality type. So an ESFJ may become increasingly insistent on achieving harmony, help people who don’t want to be helped and lose sight of the facts needed to support their judgments. As we continue to loose connection to our natural, comfortable personality we tend to adopt a completely different approach and flip into the very opposite of our usual personality preference. When this happens we’re said to be ‘in the grip’ of the most inexperienced and negative side of our personality.
So an ESFJ experiences the exaggerated and immature characteristics of an INTP and they might isolate themselves, become negative and cynical, impatient and critical of others. (Unlike the mature well developed qualities of a natural INTP).
I know I’m currently experiencing a lot of the less well developed shadow aspects of my personality right now and so are many people I’m speaking to. It’s not surprising given the unusual nature of the current situation we’re facing. But what can we do about it?
Be kind to yourself and others. This is a time of unprecedented stress and very few of us are likely to be at our best. Let’s show ourselves and those we’re living and working with some grace. We’re all going to get things wrong, say things with more emotion than we meant and forget things. Let’s all cut each other some COVID-19 slack.
Get really good at apologising. Repeatedly. It follows on from the point above, but when we’re not at our best we just need to be aware that it impacts everyone around us.
Be honest about how you’re doing. Whether it’s home or work life it really helps when we communicate honestly. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, anxious or stressed then tell someone. It’s amazing how much grace we can have for each other when we understand what’s really going on under the surface and behind the scenes. Your line manager might not know you’re looking after elderly sick parents, whilst homeschooling and helping to run the local Foodbank. Your husband/wife/housemate might not know that you’re feeling particularly overwhelmed today.
If you know a little about your personality type, whether it’s Myers Briggs or something else like Enneagram, why not take time to remind yourself of both your strengths and some of the shadow areas that you might want to watch out for in this season.
If you’re interested in discovering your Myers Briggs type or exploring in more depth what happens to your personality type when you’re stressed drop me an email at zdcoaching@icloud.com. There are some great Myers Briggs resources looking at how your stress personality is triggered, how you can handle your stress reactions and how others can support you when you feel stressed.
Zoe