Can your personality type impact your mental health?
I know, that sounds like a bit of a question to answer… after all, I am not clinically trained, but you know I am going to have my opinion on it, don’t you?
First things first, do you actually know what sort of personality type you are?
There are loads of different ways you can find out. Myers Briggs, DISC and many many more. My favourite is 16 personalities which is based on Myers Briggs. So that is what I am going to talk about today. I will cover DISC later, promise.
So for those of you who haven’t guessed already, I am an ENFP. This basically means I am a loud, emotional disorganised idea chaser! I am in good company too. Think Robin Williams and Salvador Dali, and you’re not too far off the mark! But does that pre-dispose me to mental illness? Let’s have a little deeper look at what the letters all mean.
Extravert
When I took the test, I am about 80% extraverted. No shy and quiet thing here...Is that really surprising? I am a big picture kinda gal too - so I have vision and am super creative. But that also means I am really not good at detail. I am also really good at building relationships with people and cracking at coming up with new ideas.
Intuitive
I go with my gut, big time. I am over 85% intuitive. This means I have one eye on what’s happening inside my head, and the other on what is going off around me. I am always questioning. That questioning forms a big part of my world. Yes, I was probably that annoying kid that asked WHY all the time!
Feeling
You don’t really need me to explain this, do you? I was 94% feeling. That’s a lot, but what does that mean? It means I am caring, compassionate and bloody love everyone. But this comes with a serious downside, it means I care too much. I can get burnt out easily, without even noticing!
Prospecting
This is perhaps my most favourite and worst part of my personality! It means that I am basically able to cope with whatever life throws at me, I can cope with challenges, I also have all the ideas! But it also means that I am an absolute nightmare when it comes to concentrating. Distracted? Me? You bet I am!
If you put this all together I have some cracking strengths. I am like the energiser bunny on acid. I love talking to people and sharing ideas. Did I mention talking? I am really observant and curious. All of these traits have served me well in my career path so far, but like everything, they come with a downside. That is that I am incredibly prone to getting stressed, overthinking and being emotional. Oh, and I find it difficult to focus and hate admin tasks!
So does that mean I am more prone to having mental health issues?
In some respects, I would say yes.
My very first experience of psychometric testing was when I started my IT career back in 1999. On that first test, which was based on Myers Briggs, talked about how I would be stressed if I wasn’t working in a way that suited me. Ironically, it was stress, well burnout, that finally caused me to leave my job.
As someone who is not good at repetitive tasks, or admin, then it could easily cause me issues if that was the bulk of my work. Also being such an emotional person, caring about everything I do, being asked to cut corners, or not care about something would equally start to stress me out! I am not blaming my previous job for my mental health. My issues started long before I moved to Manchester, however, some aspects of the job I was doing could have added to the pressure.
What is interesting about all this, is that I’ve recently been looking into my personality type more with my friend Obehi of Aurora Wellness. The more I understand what makes me tick, the more I can work with it.
I know I am going to always have to psych myself up to do my admin, that will not change, but I now have ways of managing it so that I can do it and not totally lose the plot! But I also know I am creative at heart, my strengths (we’ll talk about these another time too) also feed into what makes me tick as a person.
Are you an ENFP too? I’d love to hear more about what you think about how your personality affects your mental health. I can’t be the only one that is fascinated surely?
