When self-knowledge becomes self-containment

Tel recently suggested that I wasn’t a particularly typical Pisces. There was rather a lot of Aries in there, apparently. She also pointed out that I’m quite happy to wade into controversial subjects in a way she isn’t.

It shook me more than I would have expected.

Written down, that probably sounds like rather a lot of weight to put on a conversation about star signs. But it wasn’t really the astrology. It was someone who knows me well describing me in a way that didn’t sit comfortably with the account I had of myself.

I thought I knew how these bits fitted together.

To be fair, I’m probably more wilful or stubborn than any Pisces has a right to claim. Which word you choose may depend on whether you’re trying to get me to do something. I know that about myself. I also know I can be direct, that I have opinions and that I’m not necessarily going to leave a difficult subject alone.

So why had her comment caught me so off guard?

She hadn’t discovered something I didn’t know. She had put a different interpretation on things I did know, and suddenly my own interpretation didn’t feel quite so settled.

I’m a Pisces. My Myers-Briggs type is ISFP. I recognise myself in my very Green DISC profile. I’ve also been quite comfortable saying that I’m not a Completer Finisher.

Had I become a little too comfortable?

How much of “knowing who I am” is genuine self-knowledge, and how much is a story I’ve become invested in keeping true?

The comfort of a recognisable self

I’m not suggesting that these systems are interchangeable, or that they deserve equal weight. This isn’t an attempt to settle the merits of personality assessments and astrology in the same afternoon. What interests me is what I do with the descriptions.

There is something reassuring about finding language for things you’ve noticed but haven’t quite been able to explain. A collection of preferences begins to make sense. Something you’ve been treating as a failing becomes something you can work with.

I recognise myself in ISFP: my need for personal space, the importance I place on my values and the fact that I would generally rather people got along. I don’t particularly enjoy conflict. I can spend quite enough time thinking about a conversation without adding an argument to it.

But I can dislike conflict and still think a difficult subject needs discussing. Sometimes caring about the person is precisely why I’m not prepared to leave something alone.

The Myers-Briggs Company itself distinguishes preferences from skills and abilities. The four letters aren’t intended to describe everything a person is capable of doing.

Yet I can see how easily I slip from “this is what I tend to prefer” into “this is who I am”.

The second sounds rather more final.

Apparently, I’m a doormat

Of course, I’m not the only person interpreting my labels.

I remember being in a room where my very Green DISC profile earned me the description “doormat” from some of the more Red and Blue people there.

That is quite a journey from a colour to something you wipe your feet on.

I can laugh about it, but we had stopped simply recognising different approaches. My approach was being judged through someone else’s idea of what strength looked like.

“Doormat” says something about whether I can stand up for myself. It doesn’t leave much room for the possibility that I’ve listened, considered my position and decided this particular thing isn’t worth an argument.

It makes me wonder how often we use these frameworks to understand one another, and how often we use them to confirm that our own way of doing things is the sensible one.

If I value getting my point across quickly and firmly, I might read someone else’s hesitation as weakness. If I value giving people time to think, I might read that same firmness as impatience. We could both be noticing something real without either of us having the whole story.

That applies to my own less accommodating moments, too.

I can call myself determined while someone else calls me stubborn. Neither of us gets to settle the matter just by choosing the word. Sometimes I’m holding a boundary. Sometimes I may simply be digging my heels in. Knowing the difference is probably more useful than deciding which personality type gets the credit.

And I could attach an equally unflattering label to the people who called me a doormat. Then we’d have a room full of people feeling increasingly certain about one another.

I’m more interested in what happens after we leave the room.

Do I absorb the judgement and start questioning whether being considerate is a weakness? Do I become more confrontational to prove that I’m not a doormat?

I don’t have to become less considerate to demonstrate that I have a backbone. Equally, a preference for cooperation doesn’t mean I never need to look at my boundaries.

There was a conversation to be had there. The label made it rather easy not to have it.

The person who apparently doesn’t finish things

Sometimes I don’t need anybody else to supply the limiting description.

“I’m not a Completer Finisher” is a good example.

From memory, my Belbin result was Plant/Implementer. In Belbin’s framework, the Plant brings creative ideas and solutions, while the Implementer turns ideas into practical work. The Completer Finisher is particularly concerned with detail, errors and getting the finished work right. These are contributions within a team, not a division between people who finish things and people who don’t.

Somewhere between the assessment and my account of myself, the capital letters seem to have disappeared. Not being a Completer Finisher starts sounding remarkably similar to not being someone who completes or finishes.

Which is awkward, because I do.

When I worked on the Y2K project, I identified system dates that might cause problems and wrote scripts to test them. When testing revealed an issue, the developers put a fix into the code. I then reran the scripts to check the fixes before signing off.

Being told it had been fixed wasn’t the same as checking that it had.

I’ve also been editor of The Lamp and Owl, Birkbeck’s student magazine, and worked as an editor for various clients. There is quite a lot between having some words on a page and having something ready for people to read. Editing means paying attention to that difference.

These aren’t just examples of ideas I had. They’re work I’ve actually done, including the checking and refining that my shorthand seems to suggest belong to somebody else.

Apparently, the label has been getting rather more credit than the evidence.

That doesn’t prove the assessment was wrong, or that I secretly belong in a different category. Doing something doesn’t tell me how naturally it comes, how much energy it takes or whether I’d choose to spend all my time doing it.

But it does make “I’m not someone who finishes things” look rather questionable.

I was perfectly capable of checking whether a fix worked. Yet this description of myself seems to have survived without much testing at all.

If every unfinished project confirms it, but testing, signing off and editing things for publication somehow don’t count against it, what would actually change my mind?

Perhaps I’d learn more by looking at the work that stalls.

Have I decided what finished looks like? Has the idea grown into something much larger than I intended? Have I put too many things in progress at once?

Is it even something I should be finishing?

Those questions might lead somewhere. “I’m not a finisher” saves me having to ask them.

I started that conversation with Tel frustrated that we had great ideas without putting them into action. Even that deserves a second look.

Was I describing what actually happens, or expressing my frustration with the things that hadn’t happened yet?

Do the contradictions need resolving?

I’m idealistic and pragmatic. I’m introverted and capable of getting a conversation moving. I care about sensitivity and can still be direct. I like exploring possibilities, but there comes a point when I want us to stop discussing the possibilities and actually do something.

I’ve known all of this for some time. It shouldn’t have required a conversation about Pisces and Aries to make me consider whether these things could coexist.

And yet.

Perhaps I’ve confused authenticity with behaving consistently enough that nobody is surprised.

If I’m considerate, I should always accommodate. If I’m introverted, I shouldn’t be the one getting things moving. If I’m creative, someone else must surely be responsible for the practical bits.

Written out like that, I can see the problem.

The same concern for someone might lead me to listen quietly on one occasion and have a difficult conversation on another. Taking an idea seriously might mean giving it room to develop, then making decisions that close some of the possibilities down.

There may be more consistency underneath those actions than is immediately obvious.

I don’t necessarily become less myself when the situation asks something different of me.

This is not a plan to become everything

There is another trap here, though.

I don’t want questioning my labels to become a new obligation to prove that I have no limits. I’m not trying to become someone who can do everything.

That sounds exhausting.

There are things I can do that take more out of me than others. There are things I’m happy to do occasionally but wouldn’t want to build my everyday life around. There are also things I simply don’t want to do.

Knowing that matters.

If I need quiet after spending time with people, I don’t have to treat it as a belief I should challenge. If I work better with one thing in front of me, that is useful when I’m organising my day. Being able to manage a difficult situation doesn’t mean I need to keep volunteering for one.

I want to understand what helps me function well, not spend my life demonstrating that I can function badly under almost any conditions.

For me, the distinction is between noticing a preference and turning it into a prohibition.

“This takes more out of me” gives me something to consider.

“This isn’t something people like me do” might stop me considering it at all.

I may still decide not to do it. But I’d rather that was a decision I’d made than a conclusion I’d inherited from four letters, a colour or a remembered assessment.

Leaving room to find something out

I still recognise myself in ISFP. I still have affection for being a Pisces. I haven’t arrived at a new, improved description that accounts for everything.

That would rather miss the point.

What I keep coming back to is how unsettled I felt when Tel described me differently. I can explain now why her account doesn’t have to contradict mine. That isn’t quite the same as understanding why I needed mine to feel so settled in the first place.

A framework should give us language for recognising ourselves, not rules for remaining recognisable.

I’d like to be more careful about that in both directions. To leave room for someone else to be more than my interpretation of them, and to let the less familiar parts of myself count without immediately explaining them away.

I can finish something without treating it as an exception. I can speak firmly without deciding I’ve briefly become another person.

And I can let Tel’s observation stay with me without rushing to make it fit.

The danger isn’t necessarily that the labels are wrong. It’s that we start treating them as borders.

I’d like knowing myself to leave room for finding something out.