An Aspie's Perspective on Personality Types

As someone who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome I have a little trouble in understanding the subtle facial cues and body language that many people display. This has caused me a lot of confusion through the years. I have a little trouble with new jokes I haven't heard before because you have to be kind of in on it.

One of my many obsessions is human interaction and the reasons behind why people do things. This observational part of me has helped me to navigate the usually difficult task of responding to certain people. One of the most useful things that I have learned about is personality types as described by Carl Jung and advanced through Myers-Briggs.

Simply put, they devised a system to determine what sort of personality characteristic you have. It could be one of sixteen types. For me this was a god send because now I could apply a little structure to the sea of uncontainable personalities that at first seemed impossible for me to traverse originally.

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator or MBTI helped me to consider a person's personality in a logical way. For someone with AS, this is huge because it is difficult for us to consider another person's mind process without putting in mental overtime. Now this colorless bland mess of personalities all around us could now be categorized and dealt with from a solid point of reference. Myers-Briggs to me is a map that I can reference to determine where my North and South is.

I know this is a little sanitized in regards to the human connection but for me and my lack of understanding of how Neurotypicals "wing it", this has allowed me to have a better sense of where I stand in relation to the rest of the population.

I have learned a few things since messing around with this system. I have learned why some of my relationships were so difficult. I used to blame it on me not doing something right or on her not understanding me enough. I found out that some personalities just don't mesh as well as others. In my last relationship, we were complete opposites, personality wise. We like the same things but you can't build a lasting relationship on the fact that you both like eighties music.

I also learned why I connected with some friends and not others. I now know why my moments of solitude are so important to me. I also know why I want to save the world. My MBTI type is INFP.

An INFP is an Introvert iNtuitive Feeler Perceptive. The name of this type is an Idealist. Idealist types are only about 2% of the population. Introverts rarely put a lot of stock in what people think of them. I like to look at the larger picture of things. INFPs are usually pretty good writers as well.

If you would like to find out what your personality type is, I created a four question multiple choice widget which is a very simplistic version of the usual larger test to figure out your type. You are welcomed to check it out and see what MBTI is all about. Personality Widget