I find it difficult to recognise when I’m feeling stressed out, and this can lead to all sorts of problems, as you can imagine. Irritability, the inability to concentrate, my mind going into overdrive. A whole host of troublesome feelings followed by actions I can regret at leisure. In contrast, I know when I’m feeling dangerously stressed out when I’m on my bike. My hands begin to hurt from gripping the handlebars too tightly, my shoulders and neck become sore from poor posture.
I’m in the grip.
These signs register with me very quickly, and I adjust my position on the bike, and start adjust the way I’m thinking and feeling, too. Off my bike it’s a different matter altogether. Things start to get out of hand pretty quickly.
One of the ways I find very useful in understanding myself, recognising the way I ‘work’, is through a system called the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Essentially, based on a questionnaire, it identifies a series of four ‘preferences’, beginning with an extraversion or introversion preference. These ways of being identify where we get our energy from. For example, extraversion (which like the intraversion type) differs somewhat from the everyday definition of the term, means ‘outward turning’. Introversion in this scheme means ‘inward turning’. People who tend towards extraversion draw their energy from action. Essentially, people with this preference tend to act, then reflect, and then act further. Inaction, for someone with is preference tends to mean their motivation tends to decline. In contrast, people who tend towards the introversion preference draw their energy from reflection. In a nutshell, people with this preference tend to reflect, then act, then reflect once more. To rekindle their energy people with this preference need time alone.
There are a further six types that identify other elements of one’s personality. I don’t have the time, patince, or expertise to explain these here. However, I have found that, having identified all these areas for myself, I have been able to understand myself (and others) a whole lot better.
You can take the test here: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes2.asp
To explore what your type means for you visit: http://www.personalitypage.com/
I am indebted to my good friend Maurice for opening my eyes to MBTI and sharing these online resources. Any inaccuracies in my description of MBTI are down to me alone. All the more reason to take the test yourself and find out more about this really useful tool.
What I have discovered recently – thanks to my friend - is that there is also an analysis of how these different personality types react under stress. The phrase that is used is : ‘in the grip’. I have been reading about what happens to me when I am ‘in the grip’. Negativity, over – controlling, coldness, short-tempered, withdrawn, depressed, inefficient and scattered thinking. It’s so true it’s, well, spooky. But there are remedies; in my case they are also spookily accurate. Talking things through with someone uninvolved, spending time alone, reflecting on my spiritual (in the broadest sense of the word) values and meanings, joining a support group (that is sooo me!) Taking a break, finding time to nurture myself (this often means spending time staring vacantly into space – a practice I highly recommend).
Having these kinds of behaviour patterns identified for me in the ontext of better understanding of what sort of things work well – and not so well – for me, is opening my eyes to new strategies of how to look after myself better.
I think that’s a good thing.
The Dirty Hand
My hand is dirty.
I must cut it off.
To wash it is pointless.
The water is putrid.
The soap is bad.
It won’t lather.
The hand is dirty.
It’s been dirty for years.
I used to keep it
out of sight,
in my pants pocket.
No one suspected a thing.
People came up to me,
Wanting to shake hands.
I would refuse
and the hidden hand,
like a dark slug,
would leave its imprint
on my thigh.
And then I realized
it was the same
if I used it or not.
Disgust was the same.
Ah! How many nights
in the depths of the house
I washed that hand,
scrubbed it, polished it,
dreamed it would turn
to diamond or crystal
or even, at last,
into a plain white hand,
the clean hand of a man,
that you could shake,
or kiss, or hold
in one of those moments
when two people confess
without saying a word…
Only to have
the incurable hand,
lethargic and crablike,
open its dirty fingers.
And the dirt was vile.
It was not mud or soot
or the caked filth
of an old scab
or the sweat
of a laborer’s shirt.
It was a sad dirt
made of sickness
and human anguish.
It was not black;
black is pure.
It was dull,
a dull grayish dirt.
It is impossible
to live with this
gross hand that lies
on the table.
Quick! Cut it off!
Chop it to pieces
and throw it
into the ocean.
With time, with hope
and its machinations,
another hand will come,
pure, transparent as glass,
and fasten itself to my arm.
Mark Strand (1934 – )
