Anxious Living

How to Use Typology with Social Anxiety

September 25th, 2006 by Ryan Oelke

This is part 3 of a series of posts on typology and social anxiety. Part 1 explores the relationship between social anxiety and typology. Part 2 explores the particular connection between introversion and social anxiety. Part 3 will provide methods for exploring typology and applying it to the path of overcoming social anxiety.

In this post I offer a few steps to discovering your personality typology, along with engaging questions to help you reflect on the connection between your typology and your social anxiety. Please feel free to ask questions, seek clarification, and share your own opinions. In order to be concise I’ll have to leave some things unaddressed, but perhaps I can do an additional post.

Choosing a Typology

In general, a typology helps you to recongnize preferences and tendencies about your personality, how you go about your life in a general way. The first thing to consider is that there are many, many typologies, some potentially more helpful than others. In addition to that these typologies address different aspects of your personality, so you need not worry about finding the “best” or “right” one. What I recommend is to find one that is both:

1. Reliable and trustworthy.
2. Meaningful.

Those are the two qualities you are looking for. As for the first, reliable and trustworthy¹ with here means that the typology is based on a significant amount of thought and research. An unreliable typology would be one that someone just made up because it sounds good. You can find many examples of the latter in popular magazines, but these are often superficial and even biased. In terms of reliability and trustworthiness I recommend the MBTI, my personal favorite, which is particularly helpful for discovering if you have more introverted or extroverted qualities. The official MBTI website gives wonderful information about taking the MBTI, however you can also do so informally by reflecting on the reading about the typologies and coming to a decision yourself. However, with any typology if you take it informally I encourage you to be open and honest. It’s easy to skew your conclusions for numerous reasons. Formal tests help you to avoid this by asking you many questions (in the case of the MBTI you simply select a word from several pairs that appeal to you).

Being reliable and trustworthy is not the only thing that is important. Whether you find the typology itself OR the results helpful is actually MORE important. So, I encourage you to find a typology that you find meaningful and provides you insight.

Interpreting Typology
The results of a typology are only important to the degree that you find them insightful. A good typology does not say what is “good” or “bad”; as a matter of fact all personality tendencies in a given typology are equally wonderful! What’s important is reflect on your own unique qualities, to discover your strengths and possible challenges. What you do with that information is up to you. You have the final say on what is true or not true, not the typology. You can even disagree, which is also wonderful! Either way you learn about yourself:)

Questions for Reflection

1. What did you learn about yourself? Was it helpful? What are your typology’s particular strengths?
2. Which personality traits do you tend to cover up when you are social anxious? How do you feel when you do this?
3. Which of your personality traits do you think are strengths in dealing with your social anxiety, particularly in provoking situations?
4. Which of your personality traits do you think might lend to supporting your socially anxious behaviors and tendencies?
5. Which personality traits do you want work on showing more in social situations (letting them be more free)?

Continue on in this way simply reflecting on your typology and how its relationship with social anxiety.

1. It’s important to note that, to my knowledge, there is no typology that is founded completely on academic research and rigor. Many typologies have a strong connection to and basis on academic research, just not completely. However, this is no reason to not use typologies. In my opinion, with proper awareness and understanding typologies can be extremely insightful. Also, the nature of typology carries very little risk to cause harm to an individual than say, a depression assessment. Nonetheless, this is something to be aware of. [back]

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