Multiple Personalities
John Ortberg wrote a fantastically titled book called Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them. What a great truth. It’s true about you, it’s true about me… and I find it fascinating! I have a — well, not quite obsession, but a deep interest in people. I love our human complexities and inner-workings.
This fascination draws me to books that delve into personality types, brain differences in genders, introverts / extroverts, and strengths based living. Lucky for me, I have a husband who has been such a good sport to let me give him versions of tests like the Strengths-Finder, Myers Briggs, and Enneagram. He tolerates my going on & on about some brain difference between genders that provides a clear explanation as to what lead to some recent disagreement between us. In fact, even he had to concede at one point that if more couples just understood some of those differences, more marriages would survive.
Understanding. That is the key word. All that information, much of which is very individual, subjective, and not a definite science, is not meant to be used to put people in boxes of behavior, but to lead to understanding. Understanding doesn’t excuse or make an apology for undesirable behavior, but it does provide a framework for why someone may have a tendency to behave or respond to the world the way they do.
I find it remarkable that on days when someone’s (or even my own) behavior leaves me scratching my head in wonder, I can read a book and discover there is a whole subset of people who would think and react the exact same way and it all still falls on the very WIDE range of “normal.”
These understandings help give me the eyes to see people who are different than me, as being purposefully created to be wired just as they are. Every personality type has it’s assets and obstacles, every strength has it’s weakness, and both genders can be wonderfully in balance or be carried away by hormones.
It’s delightfully eye-opening.
In fact, I’m a little unsure that I even know how to recognize abnormal now that my spectrum of normal has grown to be so broad.
…and I think that’s okay, because really I prefer not to see people as bizarre or odd, but simply as fellow humans.
Learning to understand others – it starts with me.
“Cassie” — A female; INFP; Enneagram 9; Phleg-San mix; with Strengthsfinder results of: Developer, Connectedness, Positivity, Includer, Empathy
(now you know me well)
😉
Starting with Me 
I agree with the conclusion. You are also, delightful! Love, Mom