Personality Survey

List, or number in order of importance, the three attributes you feel are the worst, the ones you avoid the most because they have no or few redeeming qualities to them. Also, circle or number in order the three least bad attributes or ones you see some redeeming quality in:

Exploitation (taking advantage)

Obligation (guilting)

Intolerance

Fake or Unkind

Rage

Provoking Pity

Complaining

Leeching

Fanaticism

Pride

Bartering (loving with strings attached)

Relentlessness (bothersome)

Competitiveness

Skepticism

Manipulation

Intrusiveness(nosey)

Plagiarism(uncreative)

Exclusion(cliquey)

Deceit

Ego inflation

Dogmatization (ideological thinking)

(Answers on conflictandconnection.com) 

Even without knowing the exact meaning I attribute to each word, it is unlikely that your results will be skewed. This is because it is usually not just a single word that triggers us, but everything that surrounds that idea.

Likely we can think of a person for each of the interpersonal tools and weapons that personifies it. We may also wonder which interpersonal tools and weapons we possibly personify in other people’s minds. It would be nice to personify all the interpersonal tools and none of the weapons… but that is very unlikely. Some interpersonal tools seem more important to us than others, because of our personality and past experience. Likewise, some interpersonal weapons seem worse to us than others, again because of our personality and past experience. This preference confines us, because it limits what we take notice of, narrows the scope of possible ways we see to act and the way we reflect on our actions. Realizing that this preference creates a bias in our lives, increases our perception and possible actions because now we know there is more to look for than we immediately see.

Whether we consciously think about it or not, we draw a line between what is positive and negative, and use that line to determine our actions. What seems maximally positive is ideal, and what seems maximally negative is taboo in our mind. For each thing in life, we have defined how it is used positively and how it is used negatively. For example, there is a line between being aggressive, and being assertive. If our past experience tells us that aggression is really dangerous, we are more likely to include more things than we should in our definition of what qualifies as aggression. This will lead to that definition encroaching on what we define as being assertive. This can happen to the point where almost all assertiveness is considered aggressive, even merely stating our opinion.

The goal of this portion of the book, is to find those interpersonal weapons which in our mind have a definition broader than it should be, and then establishing the line between it and the actual definition of the corresponding interpersonal tool. The definition of an interpersonal weapon can expand to the point that both what actually is a weapon, and what actually is a tool, all are considered weapons… and therefore taboo. The opposite also happens, when our definitions of interpersonal tools are so big that they encroach on the definition of the interpersonal weapon—this leads to both what is actually a tool and what actually is a weapon, falsely all being considered tools.

The overall goal is to be able to recognize the right tool for the job and using it. The first step to figuring out what tool is right for the job is realizing that all the tools are equally good or productive, because each has its situation where it is the only right one to use. Likewise, all of the interpersonal weapons are equally bad, because anything but the right tool for a job is the wrong one. Which tool we use shouldn’t be determined by which one we are familiar with, nor what using that tool might say about us to others. When our action is more based on what is might say about our identity than the nature of the action itself, we end up doing actions that are meaningless and counterproductive.

If there is an objective or universal nature of actions, then we should focus on figuring it out.

Reaching this objective or universal nature of actions is not something I claim to have done, but a journey I have found worth taking. The fact that not only can we decide on a top three worst and best, and also that likely quite a bit of thinking went into narrowing down those top threes, means that not only do we have a bias, but there is a lot of thinking supporting that bias. It was pandora’s box when I started to see how much bias there was in my perception, and how much there likely still is. Just noticing in what different contexts we say, “have to,” versus, “should,” versus “depends on,” shows we have definite priorities, and some of our high priorities are trivial and we aren’t really aware of we have them or how high in our priority lists they are.

This will be a short and somewhat haphazard synopsis of what happens when we try to avoid specific interpersonal weapons more than others. As you read the summaries for those you marked as the three worst interpersonal weapons, the consequences should seem relatable unless you have competing taboos that eliminate some of the consequences of some taboos. It is likely that you can find a recent conflict and many past conflicts that match up with the ones I describe. I have not outlined all the typical conflicts a certain strong taboo will produce, but merely enough examples to be able to see a trend of common sources of stress.

                Apart from the negative consequences for of the each of our strong taboos, there are some positive consequences, in part that is why we keep them. I added some positive consequences to the list of negative ones so the picture I draw for each seems relatable, but I will not try too hard to point them out, because I don’t want to give any extra rationale to hold on to them… also, the preface is already way too long, so I probably shouldn’t write more on it. If what I have written seems a harsh critique of each, it is supposed to be—if we want to be better, we have to admit what we were doing before could improve.

If each of the consequences I have outlined don’t seem equally ironic, that is probably my fault for not understanding each as intimately as the ones I have seen affect my life the most.

I put the narration of all the explanations of the consequences of which taboos are strongest in “we,” knowing that only a few will strongly apply to each person, and so it might sound odd to read, “we…” and have it not be true. You can just read the ones that pertain to you according to the interpersonal tools you circled as worst, or read all of them while keeping in mind that “we” might not apply to you, but might apply to someone you know which might be helpful.

I did find it important to use “we” instead of “some people” because we all have stress, and just because it comes from different sources or manifests in different ways, doesn’t mean we don’t all have it.  We all have different sources of stress, to each person it manifests in a different way, and we all use different methods to cope with it. This first part of the book deals with how to identify certain sources of stress, so that we can avoid causing more stress for ourselves. Later in the book I will explain understanding how it manifests and how best to cope when it does. All people have a few consistent sources of stress and a few consistent ways it manifests, that is normal, it is the coping mechanisms that can affect or ability to function to a clinical level. Just because we have relatively good coping mechanisms doesn’t mean that understanding the sources and ways stress manifests in our life won’t help a lot.

My book is called Conflict and Connection, and though it may seem odd to talk so much about ourselves as an individual instead of us as part of a relationship, all we can change is ourselves. The root of conflict is sensitivities; recognizing and fixing our own sensitivities helps us not get as easily upset, and also helps us understand how to recognize what other people are sensitive to.

In several different group situations I asked each person this question, and it lead to really meaningful discussions about the differences in how we see the world, and what we could do to not be so limited by our own bias. I really want a set or friends or a couple that is dating or married to both read the preface to the book which has all the results to the survey and highlighting which parts resonate with them and then comparing together what they highlighted and why. I would be willing to send 2 copies of my book if you message me. The survey is also on conflictandconnection.com or you can buy the book on amazon.com Conflict and Connection: Anatomy of Mind and Emotion.