# Is it possible for someone with Asperger's to have an MBTI type?



## Ellis Bell (Mar 16, 2012)

*Is there anything that may affect the way you answer the questions? For example, a stressful time, mental illness, medications, special life circumstances? Other useful information includes sex, age, and current state of mind.*

I’m female, 30s, officially diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome but incredibly high functioning. I’m a writer by profession. Recently an opportunity has come about to write patient education materials; believe it or not, it’s an art! I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer, but I took a very roundabout way to get here. A piece of advice I wish I could give to myself 10 years ago is to have patience—that my purpose would be something I’d grow into, not something that I’d know and act upon immediately.

I’m also in grad school part time; I’m only taking one class this semester, but it’s still a lot to process. I get really anxious because I never know if I’m doing things right or not! I have noticed that I have a tendency to think I understand what I’m expected to do, but then it turns out I don’t.

I will probably edit this a thousand times before I hit “publish.”

*2. What type(s) do you usually score as on tests?*

I took the test for fun and got ISTJ. I think the image I put across at work is ISTJ: hardworking, responsible, etc. But that’s just an image. I was reading about the author Daphne du Maurier; she felt that she had a persona, the wife and mother; and this other, masculine self that she kept hidden from the world (I wonder if Du Maurier read Jung?). There is a side of me that comes out at work, and then the side of me that my family gets to see (slightly derpy, absent-minded, quirky sense of humor), and then the side of me that I really only share with my journal. Everyone is like that I guess, acts from self preservation.

I’m not sure I can by typed in Myers Briggs, though. I’m skeptical, to be honest, that people can be fit into one of 16 types so neatly. What I like about AS is that it’s just one version of the numerous personality flaws that people have to deal with about themselves. We’re not unique, as much as we’d like to think we are.
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3. Click on this link: Flickr: Explore! Choose 2 photos and look at each for as long as you feel that you need. Copy and paste the photos here (or write the link like example: www[dot]flickr[dot]com/photos/jacoboson/8697480741/in/explore-2013-05-01), and write your impression of each of them.*

I don’t have 15 posts yet; I’ll come back to it when I do.

*4. You are on the clock to fix something, a friend of yours sits beside you and gives a lot of interesting ideas, none of them actually help or are related to your situation, but they are still something you find interesting. What is your reaction? What do you say? What do you do? What's your train of thought?*

I’ll listen to them. Even if I’m impatient to get on with my work, I’ll still listen because I frequently get sucked in regardless. Many times I’ll even consider the idea; I sometimes have a hard time seeing outside of myself, my own patterns of thinking, and so an alternative view is needed. I am not very good at standing up for what I need, though, so sometimes I get steamrolled. I need to be more assertive.

*5a. What are some of your most important values?*

It too me a while to come up with an answer to this, but I value independence and hard work, values that make a lot of sense to me as I apply them to my every day life.

*5b. Can they change? What would be the reason if they changed?*

My values are based on experience, so it would be hard for them to change.

*6. You are in a car with some other people, the people in the car are talking. Someone makes a claim that you see as immoral/rude/cruel. What is your inward reaction? What do you think? What do you say?*

What kinds of things are we talking about? If I heard it, I’d probably freeze, tune them out. I’m not good with anything that stinks of conflict, so I’d probably just retreat back again into myself and my own thoughts. Or if I have a strong opinion, I might write about it later in my journal, then forget about it. I don’t get really worked up over a lot unless it impacts me directly.

*7. a) What activities energizes you the most? Why?*

I get energized by reading something that makes me think, listening to music, writing in my journal, doing endless research, hiking, running. All those things are my passions; I wouldn't feel complete without them. I’ve found that it’s important to have physical exercise in order to keep me from staying in my head so much. Otherwise I think I’d go nuts (it also helps stave off stress). And I’ve started to pay more attention to what I eat, which has made me feel a lot better physically.

*7. b) What activities drains you the most? Why?*

Like a lot of people on the autism spectrum I’ve got those pesky ol’ sensory integration problems—I’m either affected intensely by stuff or not at all. What drains me is sitting at a table (eg in a restaurant) and listening to two conversations at once (as often happens when my coworkers all go out for lunch). I cannot split my attention like that. I also get drained by late afternoon meetings; I do my best work early in the morning, before everyone else gets to the office; later on I feel like I’ve been battered and fried.

*8. Do you believe you are introverted or extraverted? Why do you believe that? (Please be as detailed as possible)*

I believe I’m an introvert; I notice that since my diagnosis about 5 years ago, I’ve gotten much more introverted (probably due to all the introspection I’ve done in the meantime). I have always been very quiet; I don’t really approach other people unless they approach me, and in the past, I’ve hard a hard time making eye contact. I’ve learned that this is rude in social situations, so I’ve stopped—maybe done the opposite sometimes (this has gotten me in trouble; I’ve had men think I was interested in them romantically when I wasn’t). Overcorrection is something I do a lot—we are socially conditioned to do things a certain way, but nature says otherwise, so I overcompensate for my weaknesses. I believe the hardest part of AS for me is the reciprocal social skills part; I know when it’s appropriate to jump into a conversation when my input is needed, but I just freeze when it happens. It’s sort of like hitting a glass wall; I can see everything that’s going on around me, but the glass wall prevents me from really connecting with people. It’s hard to describe.
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9. Please describe yourself, what do you see as your greatest strengths and what do you see as your greatest weaknesses?
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I don’t know if this is a strength, but it’s my own peculiar skill. I have this ability to make the most random connections; the other day I was researching about blood types and suddenly I though about how they correlate with the four archetypes in hero fiction, with O representing the hero, A the sidekick, B the love interest, and AB the villain (impure blood representing corruptness in character. I am an AB blood type myself, and in an odd way I always sympathized with the villain in fiction; you are not one thing OR another but one thing AND another, which always makes you very conflicted. I wonder if that's connected to how I can manage to see all sides of an argument as valid?). I suppose if I ever said these kinds of things out loud, people would think I was nuts, but there you are.

My other skills lie in my work. Many, many people on the spectrum have trouble holding down jobs; I think the trick is to find something you’re good at and love and really hone that skill. That way you’re always marketable. But that goes for everyone. It is so important for us to have these passions, to have a rudder that steers us, for without them, we’d be adrift.

I am good at seeing themes and patterns in books and movies; I was an English literature major in college and maybe some of that training has continued. I’m a voracious reader and hungry for every scrap of information I can get my hands on, anything that can help me understand this twisted world we live in.

Weaknesses: well, I mentioned this above, but my social skills could use some work. I get these burnout periods, too; I’ll go to a party and simply feel the need to leave if the social/sensory stuff gets to be too much. I also don’t show a lot of emotion or let other people know what I’m thinking, which leads to a lot of misunderstanding. One person I work with asked me if I actually like people. I’m not comfortable with small talk; I once wrote in my journal that I hate it, but that’s not true. Rather, that’s just something people who aren’t good at something say to comfort themselves, deal with their weaknesses.

*10. Please describe yourself when you are feeling stressed. How do you act and why? Real life experiences are welcome.*

I am less clear in my thoughts. I usually think of myself as an incredibly logical, reasonable person (somewhat arrogant, though), but when I’m stressed I just want to call out sick, go home, and pull the covers up over my head. Or I watch lots of bad reality TV. It’s usually due to me thinking I can’t do something, and then I get worked up over that, so I don't do whatever needs to be done.

*11. What is your "soft spot" (the area that makes you upset if people mess with)?*

I get peeved at hearing about or seeing violence against women and children. It’s never happened to me personally, but it bothers me for some odd reason.

*12. What are most of the ideas/thoughts you get generally centered around (try to expand your answers as much as possible)?*

I had this dream, where I was in the lobby of the building in which my company is located. There are two elevators, and in my dream, I pushed the “up” button; the door opened to reveal two workmen refurbishing the inside of the elevator. After the door closed I pressed the button to call the other elevator car; the same elevator door opened to reveal the two workmen, but with the project more finished. And this happened a couple more times before the right elevator came. I put a lot of stock in my dreams because they can tell me a lot; for example, my everyday thoughts are a lot like this. I am fairly one-track in my thoughts, but every time I return to an idea, it’s more “complete” in my head, with the “right” elevator representing the “right” thing. It’s why I’m such a mental perfectionist, why I wait so long to tell people what I’m thinking—if I ever tell them.

Another way to describe it is that there is a constant beehive buzzing in my head. I get obsessed with certain topics like books and TV shows and can’t stop thinking about them, over and over. I’m reading this book right now called The Best of Everything, by Rona Jaffe, and it’s a novel about these young career women in 1950s New York City. The times have changed, but the same themes, patterns, stay the same, even 60 years on. Women still seek acceptance and love, while still trying to maintain their own independence.

Self growth, personal relationships, ways I think I can improve things at my job, are main topics. I’m detail-oriented; I worry about word choice and replace things like “recrudescence” with “recurrence,” because I figure that the foreign-language community who will be reading the work in translation won’t understand it. I also do data collection through outcomes data (surveys) and it’s very hard to explain to patients why we need them to fill them out. I think we forget to see things from the patients' perspective; people never want to be seen as numbers; they want to feel as though they’re being cared for. We’re thinking about the long-range plan; patients are wondering how filling out the form is going to affect their immediate care. One of the things I’m starting to find out through my work is that there’s a great difference between the bureaucratic state of healthcare in the US today and patients’ expectations from their providers. There’s got to be a way to reconcile these perspectives.

I have a tendency to “fill in the blanks,” invent stuff that sounds better. A lot of people do this, I find that I fantasize a lot; I make up conversations with people, revise old conversations, etc. It makes it hard to know what is true and what is not, which frustrates me on so many levels. I sometimes think that “memory” is not actually “memory.” It’s subject to distortion and our own biases; we see what we want to see, and look for evidence that supports that.

I was at a social event for work and having a conversation with a new coworker. All of a sudden I could see him withdraw from me; it wasn’t physical so much as emotional. I don’t know if I’m projecting or not, though; projecting my sense of being different, apart from, others, into that situation. What I think isn’t necessarily what is.

*13. What's your opinion of getting frequent feedback on what you do? (Someone pointing out what is good, what is bad, what and how to improve) Is there a limit to how often you want feedback? If so, what is the limit?*

I feel like I need feedback, in order to grow as a person. It has to be solicited, though. This is an attitude I have grown into over time; when I was younger I was very sensitive to criticism.

*14. Anything beyond what has been discussed that you would like to add?*

If you get to the end of this questionnaire intact, bless you; I’m afraid that it was mostly brain dump (some of it lifted directly from my journal). I’m a sucker for thought-provoking questionnaires, and I thought that this was a lot of fun to do, even if the line between personality theories and AS isn’t very clear (I’m sorry if this topic has been covered in other threads). I think a lot of people on the spectrum get interested in psychology because we want to understand why we are the way we are. Maybe I can’t be typed, but I’m hoping that this system might help me understand other people better.


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## Eddy Nigma (Sep 11, 2013)

You come off as an ISTJ, but when you're describing your thoughts, you are very intuitive. This is probably due to Asperger's, it gives you an eye for detail. I would peg you as a very detail-oriented INTJ with developed Fi. Here is what caught my eye reading your post :




Helianthus said:


> - My other skills lie in my work. Many, many people on the spectrum have trouble holding down jobs; I think the trick is to find something you’re good at and love and really hone that skill.
> 
> - It too me a while to come up with an answer to this, but I value independence and hard work, values that make a lot of sense to me as I apply them to my every day life
> 
> ...


Welcome to the forum


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## itchaskitch (Feb 8, 2013)

All the aspies I know are INFJ or INTJ. It's just a way of processing info, so you guys can definitely have a type


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## Ellis Bell (Mar 16, 2012)

Thanks for your input! Out of curiosity, why ISTJ?


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## Eddy Nigma (Sep 11, 2013)

Helianthus said:


> Thanks for your input! Out of curiosity, why ISTJ?


Your orientation for detail mostly, also this : "I sometimes have a hard time seeing outside of myself, my own patterns of thinking, and so an alternative view is needed" That's similar to many ISTJs' attitudes. But I typed you as an INTJ due to your thought patterns that remind me of Ni (My dominant as well), which you mentioned in the first paragraph under question 9. MBTI is best for describing cognitive functioning, not necessarily behavior since we tend to change our behavior depending on the circumstances. Overall your an INTJ from what I've read.


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## Ellis Bell (Mar 16, 2012)

Thanks again. I've heard the functions described as perspectives in cognition--that some behaviors do come out of it as a side effect, but that they're just a lens through which we see the world. How would Si vs Ni manifest in each of the types? Or, better yet, Te? I'm still learning about all of this; I find it fascinating!


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## Ellis Bell (Mar 16, 2012)

OK, so I have another question. I've been thinking about MBTI in relation to Asperger's again, specifically the cognitive functions as I learn about them. Do you think it's possible that a person's functions could be inverted? Or have the same strength as other functions in a person's stack? (eg, an ESFJ with strong Ti?).


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