More ammo on the 6 vs. 9 debate…
I was talking this morning to a 9 I know about what happens when we both feel overwhelmed. His answer was unequivocal – “I find some way to calm myself down. Like if a bunch of stuff comes up at work, I go take a walk.” I’ve noticed that about my other 9 friends as well – they will mentally check out of a situation or say “Sorry to end this chat, I feel stressed, I need to take a walk.” They just vanish and physically remove themselves from the source of frustration and stress – they take a walk, take a nap, take a bath, read a book, do something that allows them to procrastinate and ignore the situation in the 9ish magical thinking hope that if they refuse to deal with it, it will go away sooner or later.
This is… not me, as a 6. What happened to me this morning is pretty much “normal” for when I get stressed. I was starting to feel anxious about stuff piling up at work, because this is my big “push” week at work (where I have to put together a magazine – format it, collect the ads, check all the expiration dates, insert PDFs, and send it to the press via an online server for pickup next week). It seems like when I get in this stress mode, additional things become “problems.” Manuscripts coming into my inbox seem like additional stressors for me to think about; and I think, honestly, it’s because of the 6ish “present orientation to time.” Like, we focus on what’s right in front of us and we are linear thinkers, so we can’t multi-task at all. We want a clear way ahead, to plan mentally for what we’re going to do… and then stuff bombards us, and divides our attention, and we don’t know where we’re supposed to “look,” or what to do first. And it billows into this hazy chaotic mess inside our mind, where all we know is that we feel PRESSURED. THERE IS TOO MUCH TO DO.
As super-ego types, we can't just check out and not do it, because we feel obligated to attend to anything people put in front of us. (This person is waiting for an answer from me, this person expects me to do that other thing, and these are the twelve obligations that I have this week!) If we procrastinate, we feel guilt because we are letting someone down. Super-ego types get derailed by what other people put in front of them -- we have an idea of what our day is going to be like and then get sidetracked because we feel obligated to do what others hand off to us. Often, that stalls us out, because we feel overwhelmed – everything and everyone is demanding our attention and we don't know which thing to do first! There’s this list of things to do, and this person is asking me to do these other things, and the e-mails in my inbox are annoying me now because MORE people want something from me, and then I check social messages and get bombarded… and then the 6 breaks down and complains about it to a coworker, or their mom, or someone else or has a meltdown.
I do not “take a walk.” I escalate and over-react as a 6.
This morning, I started complaining about feeling overwhelmed and that escalated into me complaining about how every damn thing is costing me a lot of money right now (why does everything have to auto-renewal in December? -- sp stress!). So the stress builds on itself and grows into "reactive anxiety."
Then I kick into competency (handling the problem and resolving it), which is my strategy for de-stressing – I write down everything that needs done and start doing it systematically, starting with either what’s most important or what will take the least amount of time. Having it down on paper allows me to see what needs done, instead of trying to decide inside my mind, where my super-ego has twelve things jostling for position. It also allows me to see that – well, it’s not as bad as I thought, so my meltdown was for no reason. I got this. I can make decisions, cross things off the list, start to see progress, and that feeling of being overwhelmed by demands goes away.
Only then do I calm down; when I have HANDLED it.
Something to think about, when considering 6.
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