07/29/2020
Today, I think I want to talk about changes.
But wait. I talk about changes most of the time, don’t I?
Yes, yes I do. But I haven’t really even scratched the surface of all of the changes I’ve experienced.
One that I haven’t covered, more for lack of any real way of understanding it properly than anything else, is that my Myer Briggs test results have changed since the stroke.
I had taken one before all of this for my job. My boss felt that it gave her a good insight into what kind of employee I would be, and I don’t disagree with that. Though Myer Briggs has fallen in popularity since then, the description fit me pretty well at the time. I came in as an ISFP, making me perfectly suited for the Senior Care Industry. According to psychologyjunkie.com (yep, I totally picked that site because of the name):
“The ISFP – 6.6% of the National Sample
Sensitive but pragmatic – ISFPs are passionately loyal to the values that are important to them. They have a free-spirited, inquisitive approach to life and tend to enjoy traveling, creating, and spending time in nature. These types want to make a hands-on difference in the lives of others and are over-represented in health-care and emergency service industries as a result.”
More recently, I decided to take the test again, curious to see what had changed about me since the stroke. I found out some things had:
“The ENFP – 8.2% of the National Sample
Compassionate and charismatic – ENFPs see life as full of possibilities and potential. They quickly make connections between events and information and make decisions based on the patterns they see. These types readily give support and reassurance to others and have a flexible, spontaneous approach to life.”
This is honestly fascinating to me.
From this test result, it appears that about half of my personality has changed. I don’t know what I was expecting to find out, but it wasn’t this. Both of these personality types describe me pretty well in either part of my life.
I just didn’t know it was truly possible to come out of something like this with an actual, measurable change in my personality.
Well, I mean, I did, but I didn’t really get it until this point.
I do know that I am actually a bit happier now. Though, to be honest, the newly extroverted part of me is a bit upset with this whole pandemic issue, as I can’t see the people I want to see anymore with any regularity. That’s tough. But I do still get to go out and meet people semi-regularly through my therapies. I have a whole new group of friends now, and while we are one heck of a motley crew, I really enjoy their company. It’s pretty funny, though, being friends with a whole group of people who also have memory issues. I’m relatively sure I met one of my friends for the first time about every week for a month. We’ve got it all figured out now, though. We both made it into each other's long term memory, so now we’re good.
I had a friend like that when I was in rehabilitation, too. We were referred to each other to try to get to know the other, as we both had similar brain injury effects. I met him, and we talked for a bit. Then we decided to talk again, and we did. I, strangely, don’t remember if I remembered him, I think I did. He, on the other hand, was meeting me again for the first time every time for a while. After several such meetings, we both finally stuck into our long term memory, at least for a little while. I still recall him fondly, even though I haven’t seen him in over two years, when I saw him in a Zoom meeting for a support group. He’d lost me again, and said he was sorry, but he didn’t remember me. I told him that was ok, because I remembered him. Then it hit me that it really was ok. Even if I couldn’t remember any of my friends from Rehabilitation when I didn’t see them, I could remember them when I saw their faces. It was a huge light bulb moment for me. I can’t say for sure that was when I realized that my personality might have changed, but I think it likely was.
I used to be very hard on myself. Some of my therapists would tell you that I still am. I get chastised every once and a while for it. But, before the stroke, I was more of a perfectionist. A messy one, because I was always disorganized, but I was one of those who would erase an entire page and start over because of making an error in one sentence.
That’s not how I operate anymore.
Perfection is a bit of a myth, you know? Yes, there are some people who can make perfect things right off, but for most of us, perfection takes time. It takes more than one try. It takes actual work. Wishing it didn’t won’t make it so. This is such a huge lesson to learn.
I’ve been hesitating to do this, but I really want to give credit to a person who’s philosophy has had a huge effect on my entire recovery.
About a year before I had the hemorrhage, I went to a large convention for my job with a Midwest based senior care company. They had a speaker there who really made me change how I thought about everything. Her name is Cy Wakeman, if you get a chance to look her up, please do. You might find what she says helpful. Her entire approach to leadership and workplace harmony, to be honest, is what she calls “reality-based leadership.” We could honestly all use a bit of reality based thinking.
Her main point is that while it’s nice to dream, and feels good to blame certain circumstances or lack thereof for our problems, that is not reality based. And where do we live? In reality. There’s nowhere else for us to be. So, you look at your situation, figure out what the realities you are dealing with are, and start using the realities instead of wishing for better circumstances. Essentially, while ideal circumstances are nice, no one has those. We all have actual reality to work within, and that’s it. Can we dream? Of course! Dreaming can give us some ideas on how to deal with things within our reality. That’s the key, though.
We can also dream that we find a pegasus and fly to the south pole to meet Marilyn Monroe and James Dean for a picnic with penguins. But trying to manifest that would be tricky. Kidding, it would be ridiculous! That’s what you’re doing when you keep finding yourself thinking “it would be so much better if there were more people who wanted to be hired by us,” or, in my most recent example “it would be so much easier if I hadn’t had the stroke.” Instead, I kept reminding myself “you did have the stroke, though. That’s your reality, and this is what you have to do to improve.” Then
I set my sights and did it.
I remember having this approach to using my walker instead of a wheelchair, when I switched from a walker to a large quad cane, and when I switched from a large quad to a small quad.
I had this approach when I decided I needed to stop wishing I could drive and just focus on getting to the point where I thought I could walk somewhere without losing my way.
I was most recently reminded that I had this approach when someone told me I might be able to get a job with a certification I hope to work on soon. I mentioned it to one of my therapists, and told her that I didn’t know what to do, as I had pretty much accepted that I was done working and that Rehab was my life now. She simply told me “Well, this is the goal of coming to Rehab, though, to get you back to where you want to be.”
She was right.
Accepting reality can sometimes be a little tricky, because that’s the thing about reality; it changes over time. We find that out over and over again through life. When we’re born, our reality is that someone does everything for us. Over time, it changes to we do some of the things ourselves, more and more, until we do all of the things ourselves. Sometimes, we’re doing all of the things and something breaks, and we have to accept that reality. Sometimes the thing that breaks is ourselves, which brings another huge reality change. And of course, sometimes we recover from that thing breaking, and get another reality.
I think if there was one thing I hope to get people to see, it’s just that: Living in reality is the very essence of being flexible, of being someone capable of navigating change with grace. This doesn’t mean you won’t have bad days. It does mean you’ll be able to look at the bad day and realize that it’s just a day. It’s not forever.
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