Overcoming Negative Emotions #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m really struggling and honestly, even though it’s past 10PM, I haven’t even completely decided on a topic for my letter O post in the #AtoZChallenge. I did a quick Google search for personal growth topics and the only one with an O I found, didn’t even have an O as its main first letter. It was “Overcoming fear and anxiety”. Then I realized that “obstacle” starts with an O so if we’re rebranding it as “Overcoming obstacles to mental health”, the main word does start with an O. Let’s go!

The topic of overcoming negative emotions and moods that are obstacles to mental health, ties in with many other general self-help topics. After all, many things that help people overcome mild to moderate symptoms of anxiety and depression, also help people feel better overall. These things include:


  • Mindfulness: being aware of your thoughts, feelings and actions without judgment.

  • Gratitude: focusing on the things you do have rather than the things you don’t.

  • Physical activity, including something as simple as a walk, but also running and other more intense exercise.

  • Healthy and balanced eating habits (yes, that includes the occasional treat!).

  • Making sure you get enough proper quality sleep.

  • Spiritual or religious practices, such as prayer, spells or meditation.

  • Contributing to your community.

  • Distracting yourself by engaging in a hobby, such as reading or crafts.

More specific practices that could help according to some are sitting with feelings, putting your problems into perspective by thinking that it could be worse, and forcing yourself to smile. Yes, I seriously got these from a handout in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT), a therapy approach applied to an increasing number of mental health issues. You’d be right if you thought I don’t think highly of these ideas. That is, I either focused on the wrong aspect of the teaching and the bigger picture was different, or these people are indeed horribly invalidating.

One thing that I did get from DBT that might make a tiny little bit of sense, is opposite acting (hey, another O). This means that you do the opposite of the immediate impulse your feelings and thoughts trigger. For example, if you are feeling depressed and your impulse is to lie in bed and isolate, DBT instructs you to actually go out and meet people. This is probably where the forcing yourself to smile comes in. Facing your fears is also a way of acting opposite to the emotion and this is, when done gradually, actually effective in treating mild to moderate anxiety.

Narcissism, Narcissistic Personality Disorder and “Narcissistic Abuse” #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter N post in the #AtoZChallenge. Today, I want to talk about narcissism and narcissistic personality disorder. I’ll also talk about the controversial topic of “narcissistic abuse”.

When looking up the definition of narcissism, several different descriptions come up, but an overarching theme is an extreme sense of self-importance. In psychoanalysis, narcissism is thought to be due to a person’s inability to distinguish themself from external objects. This is thought to occur naturally in infants but may also arise as a result of a mental disorder.

Narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, excessive need for admiration and a reduced capacity for empathy. Symptoms include:


  • A grandiose sense of self-importance.

  • Preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success, power, beauty or ideal love.

  • Belief that they are special or unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, specific people/institutions, usually those with high status.

  • Requiring excessive admiration.

  • A sense of entitlement, such as expecting especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with their expectations.

  • Being interpersonally exploitative.

  • Lack of empathy: unwillingness and inability to identify with the feelings of others.

  • Often being envious of others or believing others are envious of them.

  • An arrogant, haughty attitude.


There is also an alternative model of describing personality disorders, which lists NPD as having two main criteria: grandiosity and attention-seeking.

There are two main subtypes of NPD: malignant and vulnerable. The malignant type is how most people see a classic narcissist, whereas those with the vulnerable type display more negative affect and shame.

As I look over the criteria of NPD, I can somewhat see why some people have called me “a little narcissistic”. I, after all, do see myself as unique and feel that I can only be understood by a handful of people. Unlike actual narcissists though, I don’t think of myself as “better” than others and, as a result, the people who will understand me are most certainly not high-status people.

Now on to “narcissistic abuse”. This is a term used to describe abuse, mostly psychological, perpetrated by people with NPD. However, it is more commonly used for any long-standing pattern of psychological abuse. As such, many people have come to call their toxic parents, partners or other abusers “narcs” even when these people don’t have a formal diagnosis of NPD. I’m not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, it’s stigmatizing a mental disorder and also providing excuses for abusers (after all, they can’t help being a “narc”). On the other hand, well, it’s a major thing in abuse survivor circles and I need support regardless of what my abusers are or are not being identified as. I lean towards not believing in “narcissistic abuse” as its own thing.

Myers-Briggs: The 16 Personality Types #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. How are we halfway through the month already? Time certainly flies! For my letter M post in the #AtoZChallenge, I’d like to talk about the Myers-Briggs personality types or MBTI.

MBTI, for clarity’s sake, stands for Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and it is a specific test to determine your personality type according to Myers and Briggs. It is not the same as tests you’ll find online like at 16Personalities.com. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, I’d like to talk about the origins of the Myers-Briggs personality types.

The MBTI was first developed during World War II by Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers. The creators drew inspiration from Carl Jung’s 1921 book Psychological Types.

The MBTI in its original form is a dichotomous system in which you are either one or the other on four different dimensions: introversion/extraversion, sensing/intuition, feeling/thinking and judging/perceiving. This then creates a four-letter acronym for your score, such as INFJ (introverted, intuiting, feeling, judging).

The first time I took an MBTI-based online test back in 2004 or 2005, all questions were either/or and there was no sliding scale.

Like with most topics I’ve covered so far in this challenge, the MBTI has little scientific basis, especially because it is a dichotomous system. Back in college, I learned that, when doing the MBTI several times with a month or so inbetween, people could easily switch types. This makes sense, since, although I usually (but not always!) score as introverted and intuiting, I have scored as INTJ, INFJ and INFP.

There is a theory about each personality type using four out of eight cognitive functions. The cognitive functions are extraverted feeling, extraverted thinking, introverted feeling, introverted thinking, extraverted intuition, extraverted sensing, introverted intuition and introverted sensing. The theory claims that, though everyone uses all eight functions, four of them are the main ones and these create a stack that determines your type. For example, the stack for INFJ is introverted intuition, extraverted feeling, introverted thinking and extraverted sensing. The INFP type, though in the dichotomous Myers-Briggs system it differs only on one aspect from the INFJ, is said to be comprised of the four other functions. Proponents of cognitive functions believe these make the MBTI more reliable. However, it confuses me, because I for one don’t fall neatly into one of the different stacks. And of course it doesn’t account for confirmation bias, ie. the fact that people get the result they want.

So what is my type, you might ask? I mentioned 16Personalities before and that’s the test most people will direct you to if you want a quick answer. For a cognitive functions test, try the Mistype.Investigator. And just for a little chuckle, I saw a meme once that claimed everyone wants to be an INFJ except for INFJs. That probably indicates I’m an INTJ.

Love Languages and Relationship Development #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today for my letter L post in the #AtoZChallenge, I want to write about love languages.

First of all, what are love languages? Love languages, in general, are the ways we primmarily prefer to receive or give affection.

That being said, the concept that there are different love languages was first populated by Gary Chapman in his 1992 book The Five Love Languages. The five love languages, according to Chapman, are:


  • Physical touch, such as hugging, kissing and holding hands.

  • Gifts: expressing love through giving meaningful gifts that symbolize the relationship. For example, my spouse giving me a stuffed teddy bear holding a heart.

  • Quality time spent together. For example, my partner and I often go to Apeldoorn together.

  • Words of affirmation: compliments or other verbal expressions of appreciation. I think cute nicknames are a part of this too.

  • Acts of service, such as my spouse having put together my Ikea cabinet.

Of course, as you can see above, people in a healthy relationship share all love languages, but Chapman believed each of us has a primary and secondary love language.

Chapman believes that people often naturally express their love in the same love language they would like to receive love in. For example, if one person usually takes other people on outings, their primary love language might be quality time and this then is the way they’d like their partner to show them love. For instance, in this case the person would really like their partner to spend quality time with them.

Then, if the partner’s main love language is physical touch, they will more easily start hugging the other person rather than spending quality time with them. This may lead to awkward situations or even conflict, because maybe the other person doesn’t like to be touched. As such, it is important, according to Chapman, to know your partner’s love language and learn to express your love in that language when interacting with them.

So are the five love languages backed up by science? The short answer is “No”. First of all, there are more ways to express love than just these five. Secondly, though there is some research that shows people lean more towards certain love languages, it isn’t true that people have just one primary (and one secondary) love language. In fact, as you can see above, my spouse and I use all five and more.

Keirsey and Others on Temperaments #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I had it in mind to discuss David Keirsey’s temperament sorter for my letter K post for a while, but when I discussed him with my spouse, my spouse pointed out all sorts of things about Keirsey that make him a rather dubious person. Then again, there’s hardly any topic in this challenge that I haven’t been critical of. So Keirsey it shall be for my title, but I’ll talk about temperaments more broadly.

The first person to describe temperaments was Hippocrates in ancient Greece. He believed that health is based on a balance between the four major bodily fluids and that each person has a dominant personality type based on which fluid is more present. These types are sanguine, choleric, phlegmatic and melancholic. I looked them up and am definitely a melancholic type.

This idea, though it was used in medicine and psychology for many centuries, was eventually rejected in the mid-1800s. That being said, in anthroposophy and Waldorf/Steiner-based schools, variations are still used.

This brings me to Keirsey. David Keirsey (1921-2013) revised the ancient temperaments and connected them to the Myers-Briggs personality types, which I’ll get to in a few days. He first published his Keirsey Temperament Sorter in his book Please Understand Me (1978). The four Keirsey temperaments are the Artisan, the Guardian, the Idealist and the Rational. I honestly think these names are more positive than the classical ones. At least, I’d rather be called an Idealist than melancholic. That being said, according to Keirsey, the Idealists are not primarily melancholic but hyperesthetic (overly sensitive). Oh, I guess Keirsey didn’t solely think positively of the types.

There’s more controversy associated with Keirsey. At one point, he claimed that ADD/ADHD is a hoax and that children with this diagnosis should not be medicated but instead treated through “logical consequences”. I can understand the idea of not medicating children for a disorder that at this point is still solely diagnosed based on behavior, but I do not agree that the disorder is a hoax.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (April 12, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare today. It’s just past 4:30PM as I start writing my post, so I’m going to interrupt my writing for dinner. If you’d like a cup of coffee, you’re free to join me at 7PM, by which time I’ll probably have finished this post. Let’s have a drink and let’s catch up.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been sunny most of the week and we haven’t had rain in forever. Today, the temperature climbed to 22°C. This is my favorite type of weather, but I do realize that this high temps in April probably mean 40°C in July.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you I once again managed to get in quite a lot of steps. On Monday, a staff and I went to the nearby lake, which I’d visited a few times with another staff before. While there, I did manage to take a few photos. My staff thought it’d be cool to take a photo of me at the bridge, but none of the photos she took were good enough. Here are a few photos that did turn out okay.



If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I’ve been taking some more photographs. On Sunday, I took some sunset shots. I really want to learn how to capture just the sunset rather than the buildings and trees too.


On Monday, I let my staff take my phone to the yard to snap a picture of an air balloon. I love how Be My Eyes describes the second photo with the bird on it.


If we were having coffee, next I’d tell you that I went out for lunch twice this week. On Wednesday, a staff and I went to Deventer to eat out at a restaurant staffed by people with developmental disabilities called Brownies ‘n’ Downies. There, I got the chicken burger with fries.

On Thursday, my mother-in-law came by for a visit. We drove to a pancake place a few towns away that has a play area for children too. Even though there weren’t many people in the restaurant, it was quite an overloading experience.

If we were having coffee, next I’d share that I’ve been hyperfixating on the idea of doing more cooking. I’ve been looking at smoothie recipes too, but I can’t seem to find cacao powder that isn’t super expensive anywhere in a brick-and-mortar supermarket.

If we were having coffee, I’d tell you that, this week, I’ve unfortunately still been struggling with temp workers being assigned to me. (Of course, my staff will say they’re “regular” temp workers.) Today, the support coordinator assigned me one of the temp workers for the entire morning under the guise of fewer switches. Well, it isn’t like he does this fewer switches thing when my trusted staff are available. IN the afternoon, the other temp worker had to have her one orientation moment with me. We went for a walk and then tried to play a game of dice, but she didn’t understand. The support coordinator told me that, if a staff doesn’t understand an activity, I can choose another activity which does suit them and another staff will explain the activity to them later. This frustrates me to no end.

If we were having coffee, I’d end on a positive note and share that, thankfully, the Center for Consultation and Expertise received our request to get involved. I’m now waiting for the behavior specialist to receive a call planning an orientation meeting. I really do hope I’ll be invited to that meeting.

Jung’s Theory of Personality #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone and welcome to my letter J post in the #AtoZChallenge. On Monday, I discussed Freud, so it follows almost naturally that I’d be talking about Jung as well.

Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961), like Freud, postulated that the human psyche consists of both an unconscious and a conscious part. He, however, believed that the unconscious consists of two parts: the personal unconscious (which is similar to Freud’s unconscious) and the collective unconscious, which includes archetypes universal to all humans.

The personal unconscious includes all of an individual’s acquired information that influences a person’s behavior but that has been forgotten or repressed. For clarity’s sake, it is not always negative. I think of this as the fact that positive triggers (also known as glimmers) are a thing too.

Jung says that the personal unconscious includes “complexes”, that is, associated collections of information that influence a person’s behavior.

The collective unconscious is mainly expressed in art, religion and other symbolic representations. It also shows up in dreams. The collective unconscious is universal. This is apparent from the fact that, as Jung observed in his interactions with psychotic patients in a mental hospital, there are certain underlying themes common to their dreams. According to Jung, the archetypes present in the collective unconscious, are the same for everyone across cultures and time periods. These archetypes, for example, include the Mother, the Hero, the Child, the Trickster, etc. I can’t help but notice how some of these are traditionally gendered.

Jung also believed people have a dominant attitude towards life: introversion or extraversion. They also have a dominant function, be it feeling, thinking, intuition or sensing. As such, Jung believed there are eight different personality types. As I’ve shared a few times, current thinking says that most people are not one type, but exist somewhere along a continuum.

Introversion: How to Know If You’re an Introvert #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Today in my contribution to the #AtoZChallenge, I want to talk about introversion. This, like being a highly sensitive person, is another trait that’s often described in a positive, special-sounding way by those who identify with it and as a negative trait by those who don’t. Of course, as with most traits, introversion vs. extraversion is a continuum with most people not being at either extreme.

So what is introversion? The concept was originally brought into the public’s awareness by Carl Jung. According to Jung, introverts’ main source of energy comes from within rather than from the external world. For example, introverts get energized when alone and get overloaded when having to interact in a group.

It is not, as such, the same as shyness or social anxiety. Introverts, after all, do not necessarily fear interacting with others; it simply drains their energy.

Introversion is also not the same as loneliness. In fact, introverts need considerable time alone in order to recharge. I think many introverts actually feel more alone when surrounded by a large group of people than when they’re spending time in solitude.

Like I said, most people are neither explicitly introverted nor explicitly extraverted. For example, I for one get overstimulated in a group, but also don’t do well when alone for a long time. Like I said when discussing the Enneagram, my instinctual variant is one-to-one. That being said, preferring one-to-one interactions over group chatter is also a sign of introversion.

In other respects, I’m not really an introvert. This, once again, however relates to the positive traits of being an introvert. For example, introverts prefer to have one or two truly close friends rather than a large circle of acquaintances. While this is true for me, it’s not like I form deep connections easily.

Most societies in the developed world tend to value their more extraverted members. In this sense, it is understandable that introverts want to know how to deal with the world around them, a world that doesn’t primarily cater to them. For this reason, as with HSPs, there are many self-help books focused on introverts. There is also some overlap between being an introvert and being a highly sensitive person.

Highly Sensitive People (HSP) #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m once again incredibly late writing my post for the #AtoZChallenge. Today, the reason is the fact that I’ve been hyperfocusing on other things. Anyway, I still have some time, so let’s get into today’s post. Today, I want to write about the concept of the highly sensitive person (HSP).

The concept of the highly sensitive person as something specific was first introduced by psychologist Elaine N. Aron in the mid-1990s. Her book, The Highly Sensitive Person and its companions about highly sensitive people at work and in love and about highly sensitive children, are still quite popular. I read The Highly Sensitive Person when I was about 20 and, though I related to a lot of traits of being an HSP, it felt somehow off too.

What are the traits of highly sensitive people? At first, I thought the concept referred just to being sensorially and emotionally more sensitive than others. It’s been nearly 20 years since I read Aron’s book but now that I look over the current ideas for these traits, I can see what felt “off” about them: they are highly desirable traits, but not ones I possess. These traits include:


  • Being deeply empathetic and caring (on an emotional level).

  • Cherishing reflection.

  • Taking things personally a lot and/or having a hard time handling negative feedback.

  • Being detail-oriented: you notice little things that others miss.

  • Being deliberate and slow to make decisions.

  • Being “in your head” a lot.


Oh well, I relate to about half this list, but I did this deliberately (the list is more extensive) and it’s actually the less desirable traits I relate to.

There are many people who claim that being an HSP is just a positive way of looking at being autistic. Looking at the lists of traits I find online, I can see how a high-masking, low support needs autistic person could relate to some traits (heck, even I do and I’m not high-masking or low support needs). Then again, even Aron at first estimated up to as many as 20% of the population would be highly sensitive. In other words, everyone is a little HSP. And for clarity’s sake, I do not believe everyone is a little autistic. Quite frankly, I don’t believe that many actually autistic people have most of the traits of being an HSP. Yes, there’s some overlap and my father actually used a newspaper article about one of Aron’s books to shame me about self-identifying as autistic, but autism remains a disability. Being highly sensitive is not.

Grief: Dealing With Loss (Of Any Kind) #AtoZChallenge

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’ve been struggling a lot lately again and, as a result, today am particularly late writing my #AtoZChallenge contribution. Today’s letter is G and I want to talk about grief.

Grief can refer to a person’s reaction to losing a loved one to death. That’s the most heard of definition anyway. Grief for a loved one who has passed away can last very long and, in fact, isn’t considered abnormal for the first year. If a person still experiences significantly distressing symptoms of grief more than a year after their loved one has passed, they may be diagnosable with prolonged grief disorder (also known as complicated grief).

Grief, of course, can also refer to the distressing symptoms experienced after losing a beloved pet. It doesn’t matter in this respect that the pet isn’t human; grief can still be experienced very deeply. I mention this because, like I said on Saturday, my spouse and I lost our cat Barry that day.

Grief, however, can also relate to distressing symptoms experienced after a loss that isn’t due to death. For example, heartbreak is in a way grief too. So are the distressing symptoms I experienced when losing my sight and, later on, many acquired skills due to autistic burnout.

Most people will be familiar with the five stages of grief described by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. These stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In reality though, many people will not necessarily experience these stages in order and they may fall back due to stress. Still, many of the symptoms associated with the earlier stages in this model, made it into the criteria for prolonged grief disorder. Symptoms of prolonged grief include:


  • Identity disruption (eg. feeling as though a part of oneself has died).

  • Marked sense of disbelief about the death.

  • Avoidance of reminders that the person is dead.

  • Intense emotional pain (eg. anger, bitterness, sorrow) related to the death.

  • Difficulty reintegrating, such as problems engaging with friends, pursuing interests or planning for the future.

  • Emotional numbness (absence or marked reduction of emotional experience).

  • Feeling that life is meaningless.

  • Intense loneliness: feeling alone or detached from others.

Of course, people can experience many of these symptoms without having lost a loved one to death. Emotional numbness and avoidance of triggers, after all, are also symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. Many other symptoms occur in people who were traumatized in some way too. As an example, I relate to all symptoms when the aspect of bereavement is removed, and not just since Barry was put down. I don’t know whether that makes sense, but oh well.