Last night I had some time to work on my next essay for school and my topic was “Thinking Like an Artist”. Hmmmm 🤔.. that sounds familiar. 😉 I basically expanded on my last post which was all about how our brains are trained to think a certain way as we go through school and get indoctrinated with common thought processes. I proposed that we lose some of our natural potential artistic tendencies in favor of those more “useful” skills but that they are not really lost, just buried.

One of the examples I provided in my essay to highlight the different ways people think was a story about a relatively new aquatintence who I have trouble communicating with. Well, we get by, but it seems a struggle for me and I conclude (for the sake of the essay and frankly my sanity) that it’s just that we are on such different wavelengths that I can’t understand him. This led me down a pathway researching why a person might truly have difficulty understanding another person and I ended up googling it.

I stumbled upon a site which talked about people with Type A personalities and their natural tendencies. The subject of personality typing is really intriguing to me so I spent some time reading through the list. What we are all searching for when we go down these rabbit holes is somewhat selfish. We want to find a personal connection that we can relate to. I’m no exception. I was interested to see how many of those qualities I have. As it turns out, not a lot. Not right now anyway.

There were about 10 things on the list and I only fit one or two, but thinking about all of them it seems there was a long period in my life where I had a lot of those qualities. Does this mean I used to be Type A but I’ve changed. Is that possible? 🤔 It must be. I used to arrive early to every appointment. I used to get obsessive about having an empty inbox, no unread messages and everything categorized and files in logical folders. I was particular about how things on the house were organized and displayed and typos in my writing that is posted online would drive me crazy. Frankly, I’m just not as bothered by any of that anymore.

I’m much more relaxed about details and arrive places either right on time or even sometimes a few minutes late. And don’t even ask me how many emails I have unread in my personal email – I actually don’t know because I turned that badge off on my phone app. Scratch that, I just looked and it’s currently at 6689!! 😱 This is what happens when you let things go unnoticed (and also my f-ing junk mail out of control). The point is, it doesn’t bother me.

So I’m not type A anymore, but that begs the question — what type am I now? Again, I’m interested to know. Using this classification there are actually now 4 defined types, ABC and D. Of course this was all probably developed by some Type A people because there are the ones who demand order and control. People with type A personality characteristics are ambitious, organized, and eager to help other people. They originally defined themselves and then labeled anyone not like them as type “B”. How selfish!

Now, however, B has been split into 3 types with major characteristics as follows:

Those with a type B personality have the ability to be relaxed and tolerate change very easily. C-personalities are true introverts who are extremely hard workers. Those with a type D personality are natural pessimists and are often living with a lot of stress.

Interestingly enough, the origin of this personality typing, A and B back in the 1950s, was for medical diagnostic purposes. Science was trying to find a correlation between types and the likelihood of developing certain diseases. According to the article I read, no correlation was found so that was abandoned and what we were left with is just some useful info that might help us understand our fellow humans.

Digging a little deeper, it seems I have some qualities of all 4 types and how I behave seems to shift and change based on the situation. This leads me to conclude that this typing is less useful in understanding other people than people give it credit for. That being said, I do suppose there is a dominant type we all belong too which is determined by which category we “fit” with the most or perhaps which ones don’t quite fit.

If I had to pick one, I would say I’m now probably type B. My unread email alone disqualifies me from being type A. 😜 I also used to be more of an introvert and a harder worker and those qualities have also softened over time so not likely to be tagged as type C. I’ve never really been pessimistic so that rules out type D for me (though I can totally see my sister as this type so I definitely see a case for that type for her).

However, Even if I am self classified as type B, it doesn’t change the fact that in some situations I am high anxiety, stressed, or introverted. That makes the general typing not as useful. I’m clearly on the fence about this.. swinging back and forth between desiring to have the Universe be organized and not wanting to be labeled, open to the possibility that things change. Maybe that means I’m halfway in-between Type A and B? We need a new system .. and I’m type AB.

But I’m not type AB either, I’m type O+ (at least according to the Red Cross 😂). What’s a girl to do??! The answer lies in acceptance in the flaws of our understanding of ourselves. For me it also means abandoning Thinking about the aforementioned system and returning to my more preferred typing, which is actually Myers-Briggs. There is more legitimacy in this classification as I have consistently come up as INTJ every time I have taken the test, with the first one being at age 23.

This has been useful for me to understand myself deeper and I tend to agree with each of the four elements. I guess that means I’m ok with being put in that corner, but whatever you do.. please, please don’t call me “Baby”. 😊

Returning to my original objective, which is to understand other people better, or figure out why there is sometimes a communication gap, it’s probably less about typing and more about just getting to know them. As for my confusing aquatintence, it’s going to be an ongoing test to see if I can bridge that gap. An experiment in human interaction, if you will.

We’ll see how the next conversation goes, which will likely be at residency in December. For now, however, I’m abandoning thinking about all this nonsense so I can back to reading all those unread emails. 😱 Or not.. ha!

Forever O Positive,
~Miss SugarCookie

(I temporarily turned badges back on to legitimize my email issue – it’s damn serious!)