Quick Shadow post about my Johari’s Window exercise.

[flamingsword]

Ways people described me that I would not describe myself:
• brave, complex, dependable, energetic, observant, organised, reflective, responsive
• inflexible, insecure, cynical, distant, imperceptive, chaotic

Ways those make me feel:

Honored, humbled, insecure (lol), sad that as much as I try to connect that I still read as distant, and like the fraud police are going to arrest me for deceit in getting people to think I am organized and dependable.

Comments

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Johari’s Window exercise <<

I had to look that up. It seems like an oddly intimate thing to be recommended for work, though perhaps more useful for therapy. But also a good way to cause tons of trouble between people, and because of that, not necessarily accurate as people may edit their actual perceptions to avoid conflict -- or conversely to attack someone.

>> sad that as much as I try to connect that I still read as distant, <<

That sucks. For people it doesn't come to naturally, connection can be difficult or impossible to achieve

>> and like the fraud police are going to arrest me for deceit in getting people to think I am organized and dependable.<<

Imposter syndrome is common in a society that simultaneously makes high demands of people and then stalks them waiting to attack over mistakes. :/

However, these two items break down into separate aspects:

1) How people perceive you, which is what the exercise is meant to test. This relies somewhat on actions, but largely on comparisons. If a person thinks of themselves as organized or dependable, then they probably think the same of others whose rate of that is the same as or above their own, while those whose rate is less will be seen as not. If a person does not think those things of themselves, then anyone with a higher rate will likely be seen as such.

2) What your actual actions are, which is a falsifiable concept that can be proven or disproven with facts. So for instance, an organized person typically has tools like an appointment calendar and places to sort things, will rarely lose stuff, and can easily sort a pile of objects into categories. A dependable person simply does what they say most or all the time. If you have 10 appointments or promises and you meet all 10, then your dependability rate is 100% for that test pool.

If you look for concrete evidence of traits and find it, then other people's observations are likely accurate and your disagreement probably comes from imposter syndrome. The problems there are just internal stress because your perceptions don't match reality closely. Sometimes, even if you can't change your beliefs, you can use logic to get around them, like paying attention to your rate of organization and dependability to make sure those are at levels you consider sufficient whether you can feel it emotionally or not.

But if you don't find much evidence, then other people's perceptions may be based on something other than factual actions, which is a lot more prone to causing interpersonal problems when their beliefs cause them to expect things that don't happen.

Ideally, perceptions and reality should be fairly close. This is often not the case, and the exercise is good at illuminating that, or at least revealing areas for further investigation. Sometimes you can change your beliefs, other times your habits, difficult though these may be; but influencing other people's beliefs is often an exercise in futility.

Thanks for mentioning the exercise. It's new to me, and interesting.

[silk_dragon_zen]

[quote]

Ways people described me that I would not describe myself:
• brave, complex, dependable, energetic, observant, organised, reflective, responsive
• inflexible, insecure, cynical, distant, imperceptive, chaotic

[close quote]

For what it's worth, compared with other people you do seem to possess all of the positive traits listed, but we haven't seen evidence of the negative ones. You haven't ever been either inflexible, insecure, nor distant with us. And if anything we think of you as highly perceptive. If you're cynical or chaotic, it hasn't been around us nor — to any of our recollection — in any group text or voice chats. So we're as baffled as you about those particular descriptors.

— Dor

[flamingsword]

I wish I could take more ownership of that, but I don’t tend to interact in your spaces on high pain days when I am my worst self. I do thank you for backing up the positive qualities though, as it tells me that the friends who took that quiz were being sincere and trying to assess me honestly, which is helpful.