Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

Who am I being or expressing?

Over the last 40 years I have taken the MBTI personality inventory three times (with at least 10 years between them) as a means of ascertaining any life experience effects. Generally, the results have been relatively consistent with some small regression within the expected variation. Having recently celebrated my 80th year I’ve found myself reflecting a little more than usual on my life to this point and what internal points of view have motivated my movements through my life up to now. As I reflect on these internal factors and how they have played out across the years I’ve been most interested in how accurate the MBTI has been in my own journey. Personally, I have always viewed the traits revealed in this personality inventory as a means of defining how the soul is being expressed into my life.

So, what is this MBTI of which I’m writing?

As per the Google search for the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator):

The MBTI is based on Carl Jung’s theory of psychological types, which was then developed into the assessment by Katharine Cook Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers in the 1940s. The test is designed to make Jung’s complex ideas more accessible by assessing a person’s preferences across four dichotomous domains: Extraversion/Introversion (energy), Sensing/Intuition (information intake), Thinking/Feeling (decision-making), and Judging/Perceiving (lifestyle). These preferences combine to form one of 16 possible personality types. Jung proposed that people experience the world through four principal functions: sensation, intuition, feeling, and thinking. 

Jung also believed that people have dominant ways of using these functions and that variations in behavior are due to differing preferences. Since the advent of this personality indicator there have been extensive studies that show good reliability in some areas to limited support in others.

In a reading of studies that have looked at my personal personality result (ENFP/INFP) most of the interpretations seem to support my own self-reported experiences (this of course may be biased). The difference between my E (extravert energy) versus my I (introvert energy) scores suggest no dominance in this area (known as an Ambivert) and indicates high adaptability. This rings pretty true for me in that I’m willing to lead if needed or called upon and have been told that I do a relatively good job at it but prefer to remain in a supportive mode and a solitary mode. The context of a situation often dictates what personality is expressed.

Typically, people who fall into this category find themselves highly intuitive (N), feeling oriented (F) and approaching life with flexibility, spontaneity, and openness to new information and opportunities (P perceiving).

We also tend to be highly critical of ourselves and feel as though we don’t belong (a feeling versus a fact), finding it difficult to explain our inner self to others. 

If you’re interested, you can find access to the MBTI at the following link:

 https://www.16personalities.com/personality-types

Posted on by The Book of Dreams blog

Situational nightmares vs. replicative trauma nightmares

I’ve written many blog postings about nightmares over the years (see a listing at the end of this article) and dedicated sections on both my website and a section in the book, Morpheus Speaks: The Encyclopedia of Dream Interpreting.

But I want to draw a distinction between nightmares that are born of the need for our health and well-being and those that are reenactments of trauma e.g., the kind many people identified as suffering from PTSD. How you treat them is significantly different.

Nightmares come from the unconscious psyche trying to gain your conscious attention usually because there are events and stressors going on around you or at a subconscious level that you are not paying attention to but can affect you negatively if you don’t act on them. Frequently this kind of nightmare will show up repeatedly until you finally act or until the danger has passed. This type of nightmare can often, though not always, be adequately dealt with by going back into the nightmare while not fully awake or enlivening them after one has awakened, gleaning their meaning and hidden message(s) and or changing the narrative and bringing them to a more satisfactory conclusion. This can be done either on one’s own by looking for the positive in the dream or looking for the environmental triggers that may bring them about. Often this can be done with a friend or even in a dream group.

Being continuously bathed in negative images from TV shows and the news media can often be triggers for recurring nightmares. Limiting one’s exposure to these triggers can prove cathartic and helpful in lessoning or eradicating most recurring nightmare sequences or reduce the number of nightmares over time.

However, those who have suffered extreme trauma e.g., having been physically attacked, raped, intimate partner violence, repeated psychological or physical abuse, experience of extreme events of death, near death, or causing the death of another, or extreme uncontrollable and recurring chaos can sometimes relive these traumas over and over again ad infinitum and require medical and therapeutic help to deal with reoccurring and unrelenting nightmares. These relived or replicative moments of trauma through almost nightly nightmare dreams are symptomatic of those suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress and require professional help in dealing with them. To continually relive them can become physically and psycho-emotionally debilitating and fall into the category of a disorder.

Website:

http://thedreamingwizard.com/nightmares_304.html

Blog postings:

Nightmares
Nightmares, Night Terrors, and fear in dreams
Walking the Dark Night
There be Dragons out there: Sailing into the imaginal
The attack of a nightmare often leads to awareness and an opportunity for healing
A drowning dream brings relief