Judging and Perceiving Understanding Temperament in Relationships and Recovery

This episode was pre recorded as part of a live continuing education webinar on demand. CEUs are still available for this presentation through all CEUs register@allceus.com counselortoolbox you I'd like to welcome you today to Relationships and Recovery. Understanding the Temperament Connection Today we're talking about judging and perceiving. We are going to review really quickly, for those of you who haven't been here for the prior three presentations, what temperament is and why it's important to know temperament in order to improve your communication with people, enhance relationships and reduce stress. This time we're going to explore in depth the judging or perceiving dimension, and this is what I loosely refer to as the time management dimension. We'll identify potential conflicts between people who have one temperament versus the other and examine potential ways to help people on opposite ends of the spectrum collaborate. So temperament is a relatively stable set of traits referring to your preferred environments. That was the extrovert versus introvert learning and problem solving styles and methods. And that's more of your sensing versus intuitive way of conceptualizing and approaching the world. Again, sensing versus intuitive dimension more than some of the others, your philosophical approach to the world. And that's what we discussed last time in Thinking versus Feeling or sort of laws versus ethics, if you will. And today we're going to talk about time management. But it's important to remember that temperament occurs along a complementary continuum. So one's not better or worse. It's just they're different. One's structured, one's spontaneous, and you can be at polar opposite ends or you can be somewhere in the middle. Most people are somewhere in between each point. They'll have a few characteristics of one, but more characteristics of the other. Just like when we're making a diagnosis for depression or any other disorder, there's going to be a list of symptoms or a list of characteristics, and people will have different characteristics and still be considered, you know, judging or perceiving. So we don't want to just lump them all into one and say, okay, if you're a judger, this environment is best for you. Because just like the same treatment for depression doesn't work for two people, necessarily, the same interventions that we would put towards someone with this temperament may not work for two different people. So we want to definitely individualize treatment. Still, when identifying preferences, a Likert scale is used. So when you're thinking about time management and structure, do you like to plan things out or just come up with things spontaneously? You would ask these questions on a Likert scale. One being no, I don't like that at all. Five being I love it. And three, being somewhere in the middle. Like, you know, it doesn't really matter to me. And generally, well, I won't go into LIKERT scales. But what we want to understand is that some people will be a 1 or a 5 on some of these things, but others may be a 3 where it doesn't. They can fly by the seat of their pants or they can be really structured, and neither. What neither thing causes them much more stress. ACT can be very useful at helping people manage their stress and become more psychologically flexible. Now, act, if you'll recall, is acceptance and commitment therapy. Because what we're doing is, we're looking at, if you think about the matrix, and there are a lot of videos on the ACT Matrix on YouTube, so you can go there and look at it. We want to help people choose behaviors and choose environments and choose things that are going to help move them towards their ultimate goal of being happy and healthy and relaxed and all that stuff. So we want to help them understand what things in their environment will help them move towards it versus move away from it. As stress increases, people gravitate toward their preferred temperament dimensions. So, for example, me, I am structured when things get stressful. I tend to be more stressed out if there's not as much structure, and I know that. So I know that when things get stressful, when there's a lot of things going on that I need to have a plan and my family respects, to the best of their ability, they respect that plan. Additional stress and vulnerabilities can be prevented through awareness of your personal preferences. So like I said, I know when I get stressed, I need structure. My family knows that. So they gave me a wide berth and they go, okay, it's Friday. It's laundry day. We get this. But also awareness of the preferences of those around you so you're not butting heads, and knowledge of how to create an environment supportive of individual preferences. So how do you compromise? If you have someone who is really structured and somebody who's really spontaneous, how did those two people meet in the middle? So neither one feels stressed out all the time. This person who's more spontaneous might feel bored, and the person who is really structured might feel really stressed out that they can't plan. You know, it's just, I can't do this fly by the seat of my pants thing. So we'll talk about how to merge those two and try to help each person respect the other person's. Individual differences and uniquenesses and celebrate them instead of thinking of them as downsides, if you will. So temperament. Now, the JP dimension, the judging and perceiving dimension is really not very complicated compared to some of the others. But we're going to talk about how that might impact recovery and relationships and work product. People who are more judging tend to plan ahead and thrive on order. So we, we like to have. We like to know not only what we're doing for the day, but probably what we're doing for the week. I will make schedules. People who are more perceiving adapt as they go and thrive on spontaneity. So for a judger, for example, if you call someone up, you know, I'm extreme. I'm kind of on the polar end of judging. If you called me up on a Friday and said, hey, you know, there's a concert tonight, let's go, no thanks, I got other stuff to do now. It's laundry. But that was what I had scheduled. And not adhering to my schedule is something that's stressful to me now, whether it makes sense or not, that is how I'm wired. And the person who's the perceiver really likes. They thrive on new stuff. It's like, what can I get into? What's going on right now? What can I do that's new and different? So they don't want to be hemmed in by being too scheduled. Potential problems in relationships you can have, like I said earlier, the perceiver, the person who's more spontaneous might find themselves getting bored or feeling really hemmed in if they have to plan everything. If they only have certain windows that they're able to do stuff. In recovery, the judger plans ahead and thrives on order. So they know that they're going to this group counseling or this meeting, or they're doing this for their recovery or this activity today and they're doing this tomorrow. They love treatment plans. You know, it's structured, it's there, you know, you've got time parameters. Wonderful. The person who's more perceiving may feel a little bit hemmed in if it's too strict. If everything is written out like you have to do this today and this tomorrow. People who are perceiving do better with a to do list for the week. When I worked in iop, one of the things we had was a prescription, for lack of a better word. That's what they called it when I was in third grade. So that's what we continued to call was a list of activities that people had to do to progress from phase one to phase two, and then another list for phase two to phase three and so forth until they graduated from iop. But it gave them a general idea of all the things that needed to be accomplished. So if they had a lot of energy one week, they could take advantage of it and do multiple things and kind of push through some of the activities. And then if they had another week that they were really struggling some way, that was fine. And they could not do much of anything as far as homework assignments that week. The person who's judging prefers to work steadily so they know what they've got to get accomplished in the next month in order to move to phase two. And they're just going to plug and chug and get it through, get it done. Unfortunately, in recovery, you know, the judger may have bad days. So what happens when that person has a bad day and they don't have the energy to get that task accomplished? Then they start getting stressed because I'm supposed to get this done today and I can't get it done today because I've got the flu or because my kids got the flu or something else came up. So people who tend to be really strict on the judging or really polar on the judging have difficulty adapting when something happens and they've got to drop back and punt in treatment. Some of the things we talk about are having multiple plans. And the same thing is true with work. People who are judging like work environments that are predictable. I love predictable work environments. I really felt good and I learned a lot of skills and I felt positive when I was able to work at the suicide intervention hotline. But the fact that you could go an entire shift with having no calls or you might have three people on the phone at the same time, you just never knew what the day was going to be like, was really, really stressful for me because I couldn't plan for it. So I knew, and I know that that's not a type of environment that I like to work in. Sales can be kind of all over the place. You don't know what kind of people you're going to deal with. Whereas, you know, something more structured, working at a, as a cashier, you know, you know exactly what you're doing pretty much every single day. So talking with people about how their work environment is, what they find rewarding about it, and what they find stressful about it, you might be able to identify some characteristics of their environment that may not fit exactly with their temperament. And you could Talk about ways to make it more. If you're working with someone who's a judger, ways to make their day more predictable. And if they're perceiver and they are starting to get bored because it's the same thing day after day. You might talk about things that they can do to make it a little bit more enjoyable or exciting. Maybe they could talk with their boss about, is there some sort of additional project I can look at doing? So what are the interventions? And this is one of my favorite plan spontaneous days. Now you're scratching your head going, what for me? And this works for a lot of people who have spontaneous and structured people in the same relationship. The structured person needs to plan, but there's a certain amount of wiggle room. I don't have to know what's going on every minute of every single day. So we plan spontaneous days where I know on Saturdays we're going to just have a family day. And I don't know what that's going to entail, but I know I'm spending the day with the family and we'll figure out what to do from there. It could be go to the zoo, it could be drive to Knoxville, who knows? And for me, that's really spontaneous, but it allows the people in my life who are much less structured to wake up and go, hey, I feel like doing xyz. And. And I am already of the mindset of, okay, you know, today is sort of unplanned. So planning the spontaneous days allows for people to compromise a little bit. Try to make your work environment as conducive to your temperament as possible. So if you work in an environment where you have the ability to change some of what's going on, that can be helpful in treatment. You know, in individual counseling, you pretty much know what you're seeing. You can look at your schedule ahead of time. You know what six clients you're going to see that day. If you like to have a little bit of variety, maybe one day a week you can have a walk in clinic or you can choose to do something else. If you're in a facility sort of environment, you. You might alter what you're doing, where one day you do paperwork, but other days you're able to facilitate group. And groups are never static. There's always something that can be interesting or exciting to do in group, and it allows you to free up some of that creativity. Encourage the perceiver to create, to do lists for chores, work goals, and treatment plans because they're looking all over the place and they are. Anything that comes past them that seems exciting, they might seize on, which is great, you know, it allows them to experience a lot of different things. But they also might forget to do the stuff that they got to do, the structured stuff like pay the bills and wash their clothes. If you remember, if you're a perceiver and you remember back to college, there might have been weeks where you were just so busy having fun and doing the next thing that came along and you got up Monday morning and you're like, I guess I need to smell the clothes that are on my floor and figure out which is cleaner than the rest. So making sure you have to do lists, this is true in recovery as well. And when I say recovery, it doesn't matter if it's anxiety, depression, addiction, bipolar disorder, anything where you're trying to be happier and healthier. We need to make sure that we get basic things done, like eliminating vulnerabilities, making sure you're eating and eating relatively healthy, making sure you're getting enough sunlight, making sure you're getting enough sleep. Some of those basic things might need to go on that to do list treatment plans. When we create those, the perceiver may want something that's more of a prescription, more of a free flowing, you have to get this done in the next month in order to progress. Whereas the judger may want something that's more step by step and may want a process at each step, and that's okay. Encourage judgers not to get so caught up in planning that they miss opportunities to live if they are focused on, I need to go to a meeting, I need to do this, I need to go to group counseling, I need to get this activity done and something really awesome comes along, they might miss it. So making sure that whenever opportunities come along, they stop and reflect and go, when would this opportunity, even though it's not planned, would this help me get closer to my goal of being happy and healthy and having a supportive social environment and all that stuff? And sometimes they'll find that the answer is yes. So heck, why not just live on the wild side and do something unplanned? And I'm really not trying to be sarcastic when I say that, but for me to do something that's not planned, I just feel like I've gone crazy. It's just like, wow. And you know, I'm not totally unique in that aspect where I like to have structure. And it's important for the judger, especially if they've got. Think about when you had kids, especially young kids, you don't plan much. If you have a child that goes to bed at, you know, seven o' clock every night, you might be able to plan on that. But when you have small children, you don't know when they're going to be sick. You don't know when they're going to have a belly ache. You don't know when they're going to, you know, fill in the blank. So there's not so much planning that goes into it. When I was working on my dissertation or I thought I was going to work on my dissertation, well, my son slept after he was born, which, you know, great because I had blocks of time set out for when he was napping. I was going to work on my dissertation. He didn't sleep the first three and a half months of his little life. He just didn't sleep much. So, you know, that kind of threw my schedule out of whack and that was sort of my baptism by fire, if you will, of not being quite so structured and learning how to cope with it. That's the other thing we need to teach both perceivers and judgers. When, when things are not feeling comfortable or as comfortable as you would like, they're either not as structured or you're starting to get bored. How do you tolerate that? How do you tolerate the distress of boredom? Or how do you tolerate the distress of not having perfect control over everything? Perceivers are good to have on your team when things don't go as planned because they can punt. So if you're going to group counseling or therapy or out to dinner with your mother, whatever it is, and the car breaks down, the judger might like not be able to think of any other options. They're just like, the car's broken down, now what do I do? The perceiver may think, okay, let's pull it over to the side of the road, call a cab, Uber, whatever, we'll go to dinner and then we'll call a tow truck later, that would come automatically to that person. So they work well in tandem because where one sort of freezes, the other one is freed up. Where the perceiver may not get some things done, the judger can bring them kind of back down to grounding and go, okay, we still need to get these three things accomplished today. Again, if you're working in a clinical environment, think about either helping patients get treatment plan goals accomplished or helping staff get their notes and documentation and stuff accomplished. Some of the things that have to be done on a pretty regular basis, they're not as fun. So if you're one of those people who is more on the perceiving or just tends to put off things they don't want to do, Judgers can kind of bring you back in, but we need both. We can't exist without having a little bit of balance. Perceivers handle new situations well while judges need to plan for the stress. So if you know that something stressful is coming up, maybe you've got an audit coming up or maybe your clients, they tend to be more structured and they know they're getting ready to go to the in laws for a week, for Christmas or Thanksgiving or something. They can't plan for what's going to happen there. So it's really kind of stressing them out. How do you deal with it? How do you prepare ahead of time to sort of build up your energy reserves? How can you take care of yourself so you're best able and you're best prepared to handle this new situation. Judgers tend to be self disciplined and purposeful. We plan things out, we do them methodically. It's just like step A, step A, step B, step C. A lot of times judgers will get things done early, plan ahead and work steadily. So there's your treatment plan again. But if something happens like maybe your client is in recovery and they're doing their treatment plan and they're working along and then all of a sudden they get a bad case of pancreatitis and they end up in the hospital for a week. Now they're set back, they're not with their cohort, they haven't worked on their treatment plan. They may feel kind of out of control because it's like, well, I'm off schedule. Okay, so how do we deal with this and helping people learn to work through the hiccups that kind of happen in life. Judgers are time and deadline oriented. So if you have on the treatment plan that they need to have it finished by Tuesday the 21st, and it is Tuesday the 21st and it's not done, then there's going to be a marked increase in stress. Talking with clients ahead of time and saying, you know, if you know you're not going to get this done in time, let's talk about revising the treatment plan. It's not that big of a deal. When you're working with a perceiver, it may be a little bit different because they may almost never get things done on time because deadlines are kind of a suggestion. We want to get it done around the 21st. So you might want to, might Want to talk with perceivers about, okay, this needs to be done. We'll still say around the 21st, however, how can you prioritize it so you know you're going to be making progress so you can get it done around the 21st of this month, not next month. A lot of times perceivers get things done at the last minute depending on a spurt of energy. They are historically procrastinators because again, new fun stuff is always coming by. So helping them stay focused and not expect that they're going to have that last minute burst of energy to get whatever it is done. If you've worked with clients who are on probation and parole, you might have experienced this where they're getting ready to get off probation or go before the judge to get off probation. They still haven't done any of their community service, they still haven't completed this task or that task. And you're looking at what needs to be done versus when they're supposed to go before the judge and you know it can't be accomplished. So as clinicians, we need to help people who are much more spontaneous make sure that they get the must dos done in a timely fashion and figure out how to get motivated to do that because it's not necessarily fun. So how can you make it more fun? Or how can you reward yourself if you do a task that you may not want to do, like writing notes or doing community service or whatever the case is, how can you reward yourself with something spontaneous? So if I do this, then I can spend the rest of the afternoon doing whatever I want? Okay, you know, that might be an alternative. So in relationships, the judger is going to work steadily on tasks. The perceiver, you know, they'll get it done, they'll, they'll get to it when they've got a burst of energy. But there's a football game on right now, or there's this to do or there's that to do or. And the judger sees tasks piling up and starts to get stressed because they're not being kind of filtered away on a steady pace. The perceiver still sees the tasks piling up, but they're like, you know, there's plenty of time to get them done. Helping both people communicate about, okay, what's our timeline here? If you start a home improvement project, what is your timeline that you're looking at? The judger may have a definite date of when this needs to be finished. The perceiver needs to understand that and needs to communicate with the judger that, yeah, I'm not making steady progress, but I know it still has to be done by the 21st, and I will get it done. As long as the perceiver kind of follows through with that, then they will start to understand each other so the judger won't get frustrated and start building up resentments. When they see time is passing and no movements being made, the perceiver won't feel henpecked because they'll be able to do it in their kind of time thing. Judges may need to be aware that sometimes deadlines don't get met when you're juggling multiple balls. Most adults that we work with have multiple balls. They've got work, they've got recovery, happiness, wellness, whatever it is. And they've got family and they've got. They've also got personal, personal time to do fun stuff. So there's multiple balls going in the air. And sometimes something's going to take priority, like they might get called up by their boss and go, you've got mandatory overtime. Or they might feel like they're struggling in recovery, so they need to spend more time in group or in counseling that week. So something's got to give. There's got to be a balance. Wherever there's more energy needed, it needs to be diverted from somewhere and just understanding that there's only a certain amount of energy. And so you got to figure out where it's going to come from. Some things that I suggest when we talk about time management are doing, making a list of things that need to be done. And generally that list is pretty exhaustive, going through and circling the things that. That absolutely have to be done this week. Paying the bills, doing laundry, anything that absolutely has to be done. And then the next list is the things that I would like to get done. And then the third list is if I get to them. So there may be, you know, sometimes these first two lists are so long that things like going to the gym might move over to the. If I get to it, but that's okay. The judger is still able to structure and see, okay, this is how my time has to be allotted. And it may not be the same from week to week if there's a lot of stuff going on. But it helps the judger visualize and conceptualize. Perceivers need to remember that at a certain point things need to be done because you can't always count on that spurt of energy. So if there's a lot of arguments between couples because the perceiver, the spontaneous one, puts things off and then doesn't get them done in a timely fashion, which, you know, we've got to define what that is, then the perceiver may need to compromise a little bit and start saying, okay, let's break the project down into four parts. I'll have this part done this week or this month and this part done in this time frame. It's still not putting the person on a really tight time frame, so they've got a little bit of wiggle room. But it helps the other person who's more structured see some progress and not feel like their wants and needs and all that kind of stuff are just being ignored. Judgers can hack a receiver's time schedule by asking for something important to be done early. Now, if you do it too often, the spontaneous person, the perceiver, catches on and they're just like, well, you know, if he tells me to be there at 3 o', clock, I know I've got, you know, until at least five. But if there's something really big like going to your friend's wedding or court or something like that, telling somebody to be there 30 minutes earlier than they really have to be can be helpful. That's one thing that we need to learn about the people in our life. If they typically habitually just run late, they don't plan time really well. How much of a buffer do they need? And again, you know, you've got to be relatively realistic because if they get there and they stand around waiting, then they're going to be like, why did you tell me to get here this early if it wasn't starting, if the show Wasn't starting until 5? If things start to get oppressively structured for the perceiver, he or she needs to speak up and say, you know, I'm getting really bored, or we need to do something fun. A lot of times in relationships and in recovery, I hear people say, you know, life's just not fun. Recovery is not fun. It's just task after task after task after must do after, go to sleep, wake up and do it again. And so we need to start thinking, what is it that, what does fun look like for you and how can you work it in? Yes, there are things that have to be done, but what can you do in order to get that spontaneity, in order to get that aha that you're really looking for? Judgers need tools to handle stress when things don't go as planned. So distress tolerance skills, going back to dialectical behavior therapy 101, these things can help because once the judger gets out of that adrenaline dump because the schedule's been messed up and you know, it's just freakishly stressful. Letting them, you know, get control of their urges, their bodily reactions and their thoughts helps and then they can make very valid decisions based on what's available. But it's that initial reaction to structure getting disrupted. Perceivers need to schedule in spontaneity. If the situation is too structured, you know, they need to speak up and say, let's do something fun on Friday. You know, let's not plan what it's going to be. Let's just plan that Friday evening is going to be a fun evening. Judgers define and work within limits. Perceivers always want more information. I've told you before, I used to write grants a lot and I would know that the grant had to be done by X date. I'd want to have it done a week before. That way all the proofreaders and everybody could go through it, we could make sure it made sense and it was the strongest case that we could make. You know, I had my structure there and I would work steadily within it. But at a certain point I would have to stop doing research and start writing, you know, or I wouldn't make my deadline. The perceiver would always want to keep looking for more information. And what the person who got this grant last year, what did they do? And what about the ones who didn't get the grants? What did they put in there that maybe turned off the reviewers? And there's just, they're constantly asking questions, they're curious and they have a thirst for information but they don't know when to turn it off and go, okay, I've gotten as much as I can in the time I have now I need to start working. The same thing is true with, with recovery. Perceivers may want to find out more what are all the potential causes of depression? And there's a rabbit hole you can go down there because there are a lot of different things that can cause depressive symptoms. The perceiver can get so caught up reading about all these different things and self diagnosing that they never actually start making steps towards feeling happy and addressing their own depression. Because they're still trying to figure out which of the 27 things they identified could be going wrong. When the judger may have said, okay, I'm going to do, I'm going to read about this for a week or two weeks or I'm going to read these three books and then I'm going to make a plan, I will start doing something to Start addressing my depression, and then I might learn some more and start doing something else. But the judger defines these limits and says, okay, at a certain point, I've got to take action. The perceiver needs a little, little kick to say, what are you going to do with this information? In the case of relationships, the judger is going to say, you know, we're going on vacation in December, So we've got 11 months to figure out what we're going to do and how much money to save. The perceiver may start looking at how many different types of vacations there are that they can possibly go to with the amount of money they think they're going to have saved, but may not actually start making the plans, may not get the dogs boarded, may not actually make the reservations, may not do all these other things because they're waiting till the last minute just in case something better comes along. So you can see where this might be a case of tension between this particular couple. The same thing is true. Let's go with kids for a second. Judgers, you know, and, you know, a lot of times we take on a structured judging role as parents, we define and work within limits. This stuff needs to be finished today or this week. This, here's your chore list. Children, by their very nature, I mean, children can be very structured, don't get me wrong. So temperamentally, we're not talking about. I'm not saying that all children are perceiving, but children are curious. Perceiving children, the spontaneous children are going to want to know more. They're the ones that are going to ask a lot of questions and hypothesize and do all this kind of stuff. And as a parent, you might be going, you know, I'm really happy that you are so curious, but we need to make a decision here about what movie we're going to or what we want to eat for dinner. You know, with kids, it's usually a pretty simple decision in recovery, working on treatment plans, perceivers, you know, if you're trying to address problems sleeping, you know, and helping the person sleep better, the judger is going to figure out, you know, okay, these are potential problems. These are my problems. This is how I'm going to address it. The perceiver is going to say, these are potential problems, but I wonder what else could be causing it. And they're more experimental, so we need to encourage them again to start taking action. And the same thing is true at work. You know, like the example I gave with the grant, at a certain point, you need to quit doing research and start working on the task at hand. Judges make it hemmed in by their own limits. So we want to encourage them to be open to new information within that time frame. So my little box is there. We like our box. You know, it's structured. We know what we plan to do and the way we've always done it, you know, if it ain't broke, we don't necessarily need to fix it. So what has always worked in the past, this is where we're going to start. And then if we have time, we may learn some more things. Perceivers may have difficulty getting started, so we need to encourage them to set a deadline. They're not about the box. They're about looking at all the different things outside the box and what's new and how can we do this differently than anybody's done it before because it's spontaneous and exciting. But even if they are, you know, following rules, they may get so caught up in all the possibilities that they don't get get started presents. Choosing presents for someone. And, you know, Christmas just passed. So if you were trying to choose what present to get for someone, trying to do research and figuring out what they'd like and deciding between your top 10 things or whatever it was and figuring out whatever it is that is going to make that other person happy. Perceivers can spend a lot of time on that because they're looking for more information about what's best, what's best rated, what's most durable, what's this? What's that? The more structured people are going to go. Got a list of 10 things. I think they'd like this one best. We're just going to order it and move on. Judgers may think that perceivers are too unpredictable. You know, how can you wake up on a Wednesday morning and decide, you know what? I think I'm going to take a personal day from work and go to the beach. You're going to what? The perceiver, the spontaneous person, sees that, you know, being too rigid makes that person feel stuck. Now, judgers like structure. We don't feel like we're stuck. We don't feel like we're being rigid. But we can see how other people can perceive that we are a little bit rigid. Perceivers need to have a little bit of spontaneity and they can say, if I do this every single day, day in and day out, eventually I'm going to get bored and resentful and all this other stuff. So. So taking a personal, personal day and doing something Fun helps me achieve my happiness goals. It doesn't necessarily have to be the same for both people. Staycations is a perfect example. I'm not a big traveler, you know, I like routine. I like my own bathroom. I like to know what's going on. So for a vacation, I'm perfectly happy staying at home, hanging out with my kids and bingeing on Netflix. That's not the same for my family. You know, nobody else. They all like to go on excursions and do do things and do stuff. So understanding that we have different ideas of what vacations look like and what's fun and we can compromise, you know, encourage each person to embrace, but respect the strengths of the other one's temperament, we're not going to change. This is kind of how we were made. So we need to learn how to work kind of within it. I used to live in Florida, and in Florida we have two seasons, summer and sometimes winter, but spring and fall kind of fell out and winter is usually pretty short now. I could get angry about that or I could embrace the fact that I had a longer growing season. When I moved to Tennessee, one of the reasons that I looked for a job and houses here and things like that was because there's four seasons and I can grow apples. And yeah, there are days where it is frigidly cold, but I am embracing the fact that there are four seasons here. So I'm appreciating the strengths of the different situation. I can't change Tennessee's weather, just like I couldn't change Florida's. But I adapted to it and I said, okay, you know, on the days it's frigidly cold, I'm going to dress in four layers. So that helped me adjust to different things. Remember that as stress increases, people become more entrenched in their preferences, in their temperament. So if spontaneity totally overwhelms the judger, you know, they. They like their structure, they like their schedules. They have everything in their Google calendar with alarms every, you know, so often throughout the day when they get stressed, they're going to kind of need that a little bit more or they're going to start to feel overwhelmed. So helping them figure out how to deal with that overwhelmedness, because sometimes things just happen. So distress tolerance skills, super important. Emotion regulation skills, super important to help them have the reserves to deal with stress when it comes their way. Planning and getting organized, like super organized can overwhelm the perceiver. They're just like, I'll get to it as soon as I can. They don't want to be hemmed in on a particular date and time because that's just too stressful to have to be, have to meet that deadline. So when you work with people like that, understanding how they respond and being a little bit more flexible with the person who's the perceiver. My old boss was very much a perceiver. You know, he was very spontaneous. And we'd be going along getting ready for an audit. All of a sudden a cool grant would come by and he'd walk into my office and he'd be like, we're gonna write this. And I'm looking at the stuff, getting prepared for the audit going, but, but, but I have a plan for the audit. But I learned to adjust and know that there was always going to be a drop back in punt. So I always had a plan A, B and C because you never know what's gonna happen. Encourage judgers that you work with clients or children or whatever, if they like structure, encourage them to have a plan B and a plan C. So if something goes wrong, what are you going to do? If they are in recovery, have them write it. Well, even if they're not, have them write plan B and plan C down somewhere so they know that if something happens, these are my two options that I can fall back on if the car breaks down. A lot of people with anxiety like to have written down their plan B's and C's so they don't have to think when they're in sort of a mini crisis. If you're working with a perceiver, just knowing that they need a little bit more flexibility and encourage them to schedule in spontaneous time so they know that these two nights a week that they are going to be free from family responsibilities or whatever else it is so they can go do whatever it is that makes their world exciting. Judgers are excellent planners, but may not appreciate or make use of things that aren't planned or expected. So you know, great thing drops in your lap and you already have everything else planned out. So we'll go back to the grant, for example, you know, preparing for the audit and all of a sudden this grant comes along. It could be a great influx of money for the agency, but left my own devices. I might not work on it because I'd want to make sure that we passed the audit. So you know, I might not make use of things that happen that way. In recovery. People plan. This is what I'm going to do, okay, for my social support, I'm going to go to a Meeting or I'm going to go to group counseling and then I'm going to be in bed by 8:30 so I can get a good night's sleep before I have to be at the gym in the morning. But then something comes along and there's like this excellent speaker and Carl Rogers himself, if he were still alive, was coming to speak. And they may not make use of going to that if that wasn't in their schedule. So we want to make sure that they stop and think before they automatically dismiss stuff that's not on the schedule. Perceivers are great at handling unplanned events, but may not make effective choices among the possibilities. So every cool thing that comes along, they're like, yeah, I'll do that, I'll do that too, I'll do that too. And then all of a sudden they've got six things that they're supposed to get done and they can't prioritize. So perceivers need work on prioritizing in order to help them make decisions and eventually finish tasks in recovery. Failure to make decisions is a quick road to relapse. So if you're stuck looking at all the possibilities and you're being triggered and you want to use, or you want to self harm or you want to crawl back into bed and pull, pull the covers over your head, whatever it is that your urges and behaviors want you to do, failure to make a decision on how to address the stressors may lead to falling back into less helpful behaviors. Judges generally have a very thorough relapse prevention plan, but need skills to handle unplanned events in addiction. For example, if your sponsor relapses, then what do you do? Your sponsor is supposed to be your guide and your model. So all of a sudden your guide dropped off, what are you supposed to do? Having backup sponsors, having a good home group, having social supports that are strong, those are all very helpful backups in relationships. Perceivers need to be given deadlines to make decisions and can present possibilities like these are all the different options that I came up with to the person who's more structured. And then together they'll make the final decision. For example, vacations. But they're getting together and it gives the perceiver a chance to get out there and explore the possibilities. And the judger doesn't have to do that because you know, that's not necessarily something we want to do. But it allows them both to work within their comfort zones. Perceivers are excellent brainstormers. If you're working on a grant or you're working on a project or anything, sometimes it's good to have them because they just come up with these thoughts outside the box thoughts, and you're like, oh, never would have thought of that. So definitely it's worth the effort to rein them in a little bit and have them on your team. Judging and perceiving refers to how people manage their time and arrange their daily lives. As with all temperament dimensions, most people are somewhere in the middle, which means they can be more adaptable. They're, you know, twos, threes, and fours on everything. They're not ones and fives. Like, I have to have it this way or I cannot stand it if it's this way. So they're more flexible. Judgers are very dependable and structured, but can seem boring and rigid to people who are more spontaneous. And again, it's not that we are as judgers, we're really structured and we find that boring. We find it absolutely totally awesome and we're totally content. But we also understand that perceivers need a little bit more action than that. Perceivers are very creative and adaptable, but may have a harder time at behavior change because they resist structure. So if you have to do something every single time, if you have to remember to get up and write in your food diary before you eat, if you have to remember, it's a little bit harder for perceivers. So when you're looking at interventions, you've also got to look at what's this person going to be likely to do if you start setting up someone who's a perceiver, who doesn't like to be super structured, and they've got to write in their journal five times a day, you're just automatically setting that person up for potential failure. So you want to ask them, is this something that you would feel comfortable doing? If not, what can we do differently? Sometimes it's as easy as saying, okay, like an anger journal, keep it with you. If you get angry, make a little note in your journal and then you can elaborate on it at the end of the day. That way they don't feel like they've got to set aside 15 minutes five times a day or something, and they can write it down sort of on the fly. Each person is often a combination of some judging and some perceiving. So knowing your own preferences can help you reduce your own vulnerabilities to stress. Knowing the preferences of your friends, family and co workers can help you understand more about how to interact in harmony with them. So if they're not as structured, you can Know that you need to give a little bit and have a little bit of wiggle room in your plans. If they're more structured, then you may know that you need to allow them to plan. You don't necessarily need to plan for them, but they like things like deadlines. They like, you know, very concrete goals and objectives. So you can write treatment plans, you can write goals and objectives or whatever in a way that's more conducive to their temperament. Remember that, you know, not everybody has the same judging characteristics. So talk with your clients and give them the curesi. Have them go online and take the curesier. Give them a worksheet that has the characteristics, have them identify the characteristics that most sound like them, and you're going to find that they're on both sides of the aisle. And then you can talk about, okay, how can we make this work for you in treatment, in your relationships, and at work? Because people spend a whole lot of time going to work at work and coming home from work. So if work is a place of extreme stress, guess what? They're going to be under a lot more stress. So how can we help them make that time period less stressful or less draining to them so they can achieve happiness and health and have some energy at the end of the day? Quick assessment, so you know, you're talking to somebody, you're trying to figure out, are you a judger, are you a perceiver? And ask yourself or, you know, think about with them, do you. Or they need to plan most things, which stresses you or them out more, spontaneity or routine? You know, if you've got two spontaneous people, then they're probably going to be great together and they're going to, you know, go great. If you've got two really structured people, might not butt heads as much, might miss some opportunities, but might not buzz heads as much. If you've got different two opposite people, just knowing that so you can plan for it and do you make decisions easily and, you know, work within time limits or always wonder what other information is out there? What are you missing? This can kind of help you get an idea when you're working with people about how to approach them, when you're setting goals, making plans, and just, you know, pretty much doing anything. Okay, so are there questions, comments? Can you see how this might be helpful in treatment planning? Sam? Okay, well, thankfully I made it to the end of my presentation before I started coughing. If you don't have any comments or questions, which it doesn't seem like you really have a lot right now. That's cool. And just feel free to email me@supportlce.com if you think of anything and I would be happy to respond to that. If you ask questions that I don't necessarily know the answer to, I may have to add it as an addendum in the classroom and so it'll be under additional information when you go in to take your class or when you log into the classroom. Once I find the information, I appreciate the well wishes. It's actually just allergies. I just, you know, after an hour of running my mouth tend to get a little bit of a dry throat. But we're all good. I appreciate everybody being here today. Have an amazing weekend and I will see you on Tuesday day. If you enjoy this podcast, please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube. 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