How Schizoid Loners Come Out Of Their Shell

If you are a Loner, you are stuck on the Weakness compass point with too much detachment. You pull back into a shell, much like a hermit crab.

As a recovering Schizoid Loner, you move past the pattern’s rigidity by touching others, literally. You risk reaching out and touching another human being, in an appropriate context, like a pat on the shoulder of your son; a brush on the cheek of your spouse. 

Pat on the Shoulder

Neurons, millions of them, fire in response to this kind of physical contact, providing an emotional connection that strengthens your bond with others. But the recovering Loner perseveres, in spite of initial discomfort. By learning to breathe and relax, you offer more smiles that let people know you care about them. When they smile back, you feel the enjoyment God intended in creating you.

Jesus understood the importance of sensual contact with others. He fully enjoyed the experience of the woman anointing his feet with expensive oil. He even took the disciples to task for criticizing the expense. 

Jesus' Feet Anointed With Oil

So, too, by moving into the Strength and Love compass points, the redeemed Loner finds creative ways to bless others with newfound expressions of love and appreciation. You learn to bask in the warm glow of a compliment, and feel the pleasure of participating more at work and in family life. 

Schizoid Loner Self Compass Growth

Once this process is underway, you bring the virtue of objectivity to human interaction. If a discussion grows overly impassioned, recovering Loners can offer a perspective on the situation unseen by people more emotionally driven. You don’t take things personally, so your feedback is honest. By moving into the Assertion compass point, you challenge unfairness toward yourself or others.  

As you exercise your full Self Compass, all the benefits of objectivity emerge:

Redeemed Loner—virtue of objectivity. 

• Lives and lets live.
• Can be fair-minded and impartial.
• Separates facts from feelings.
• Responds to emergencies with calm detachment.
• Not burdened by other people’s expectations.
• Doesn’t need to impress anyone.
• Inner-directed.

Understanding that your primary satisfaction comes from inner-direction, you add to this the emotional payoffs of reaching out to others. 

For more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS:

Charting Your Personality in Christ 

How Spirituality Grows Couples' Love

If you’ve ever grown a potted plant, you know that after a certain passage of time the roots become pot bound: they take up so much room that there is no room left for soil in the pot. Now the survival of the plant is in jeopardy, since it cannot live by root alone, but needs vital sustenance from the nutrients in soil. 

The solution? Repotting. You get a larger pot, though not too large. You mix a fresh batch of topsoil with a touch of fertilizer. You cut back tangled roots. You ease the plant from the outgrown pot into the newly prepared one, firmly tamping the soil around it. Then you sit back and watch it sprout a new season of leaves and branches as it celebrates life.

  

Spirituality works in this way to stimulate 

growth within couple’s love.

There can come a time when you take each other for granted, all too easily slipping into patterns that manipulate each other for ego gratification. You don’t know exactly why the relationship loses its vitality, or why what used to enchant you now irks you.

What to do? 

• Some couples mistake a spiritual problem for an external one, and decide to move to a new house, buy a new car, or go on a trip. But changing the outer environment proves insufficient. They find they once the outer changes are made, the boredom with each other remains.
• Other couples simply assume that the attraction found in dating must naturally diminish over time, what with the acquisition of home and family life, jobs, and the daily grind. They slip into routines and preoccupations that help cover up the loss of communion.
• Some individuals opt for the more radical solution of an affair and heartrending dissolution of the partnership.

What I want to suggest, though, is that a love relationship can grow over the years through the transforming renewal of spirituality. 

When you reach out to God, you are drawing upon a rejuvenating dynamic that has much the same effect as transplanting a root-bound plant. This is like adding fresh soil and a dash of fertilizer to the seasons of couple’s life. 

You can pray something like, “God, help me grow in my personality and behavior in such way as enriches my relationship with this person I love. Please remove any rigid attitudes that are detrimental, and develop in me that which graces my life with humble strength and assertive caring. Thank you for helping us work through our blockages and re-invigorate our love.”

Embarrassment need not prevent praying out loud for each other. I’d like to suggest that doing so lets your spouse feel your loving concern. It empowers a couple to transform inner frustrations into verbal supplications for help and blessing.

Couple Praying Together

Let’s say you are thoroughly fed up with a boss at work; that you’ve been unconsciously grumpy with your spouse as a side effect. Now the night comes when the two of you are lying in bed, one watching television while the other is reading.

“I feel kind of powerless seeing you go through this pain,” says your spouse. “I can’t seem to help you. I’m wondering if I might pray for some kind of spiritual help in your work situation, and also between us.”

You feel a flash of self-consciousness. You’re not used to praying out loud. Yet what can it hurt? “Okay,” you say.

Your partner scoots nearer to you and lays a hand on your chest: “Dear God, please help this job situation find a new solution. Please bless and guide our couple’s life. Help us grow closer than ever through this. Thank you.”

The two of you lie there in stillness. Your breathing has deepened. Your chest feels lighter. A peace comes that has eluded you for several months. Without really thinking about it, you are surrendering to the beauty of having a pot transplant, just when you needed it most.

Thank God for those who pray about their couple’s love. And thank God for ingenious answers to those prayers, for nourishing individual roots with fresh potting soil, for creating an ever-expanding spaciousness for couple’s growth in intimacy.

For more, read:

STAYING IN LOVE: Dr. Dan & Siggy's Guide to Couples' Love

Staying in Love

The Self Compass: Hope for Personality Disorders

There is a curious paradox rooted in personality patterns. Each of them possesses a particular virtue unique to that pattern. 

Yet it is only accessible by embracing your whole Self Compass. If you have been stuck on the Assertion compass point in the Rule-breaker pattern, for example, it is only by embracing the caring of the Love compass point that you reap the virtue of creativity inherent in the Rule-breaker pattern.

This is because true creativity requires caring for others. Without it, creativity deteriorates into manipulative ploys to deceive. But once Rule-breakers reach for the Love compass point, energy used for deception shifts to creative enhancement of others' lives as well as sincere self-expression.

As rigid patterns fall away, in their stead comes the harvest of your labor: Compass Virtues. Virtues that can now sprout forth as fruits of the Holy Spirit (Gal 5:22). Why? Because you are surrendering your patterns to the Lord. 

Here are the Compass Virtues charted on the Self Compass:

Compass Virtues

• The Dependent Pleaser and Histrionic Storyteller patterns yield to the Love compass point virtues of charity and good cheer. 
• The Paranoid Arguer and Antisocial Rule-breaker patterns give way to the Assertion compass point virtues of courage and creativity. 
• The Avoidant Worrier and Schizoid Loner patterns transform into the Weakness compass point virtues of empathy and objectivity. 
• And the Narcissistic Boaster and Compulsive Controller patterns find wholeness in the Strength compass point virtues of autonomy and discipline.

The rhythmic and self-correcting polarities of Love, Assertion, Weakness and Strength, combined with a deep reliance on Christ, support your transformation from the inside out.

Notice how a person’s trust in God anchors the center of the Self Compass. Most of the time, serenity replaces the fear produced by personality patterns when you “trust in the Lord with all your heart” (Prov 3:5).

Jesus encourages us in this hope for personality transformation when he says, "You will know them by their fruits" (Matthew 7:16).

For more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS: 

CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST

How To Counter the Non-Stop Talker

The Storyteller patterned person wants your total attention as long as you’re willing to give it.  

Non-stop Talking

How do you interrupt a steady stream of non-stop talking? By practicing some polite conversation stoppers.

1. A touch on the arm, and, “Paula, I’m feeling overloaded right now. You’re giving me so many details that I lose track of what you’re really saying.”
2. “I’m glad you had a good time at the party, Ryan. I need to get back to work.” Stand up and walk away, with a polite “See you later.”
3. Agree that something is indeed exciting, then ask, “Would you be interested in hearing something I have to say?”

Watch for a phrase or topic that triggers something you want to talk about and then step in to forcefully change the subject. You’re not being rude, just shifting the person’s monologue into a dialogue.

When you consistently give into the onslaught of storytelling, inner resentment can make you miserable, helping neither you nor the person caught in the histrionic Storyteller pattern.

If someone with the Storyteller pattern negatively impacts your life:

1. Use caring assertion to say when you’ve had enough. 
2. Make sure you get time alone to recover. 
3. If they seek help, refer them to this book: The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ.
4. Suggest prayer and pastoral counseling. 
5. If you’re willing to support them in their growth, discuss how that might work.

Here is Carmen dealing with her boyfriend Boone’s Storyteller pattern. They have met after work and Boone is in full swing:

“So anyway, I just had the best time at the gym. They just redecorated the whole place. I don’t know if you’ve been recently but I was so surprised to see the new carpeting and they’ve totally repainted the men’s locker room. Say, did I tell you I had lunch with Ernesto? I met him in the men’s locker room, see, and we discovered that we both really like to play pool. There’s this cool place he knows about that I’ve never been to, but I’d love to take you sometime. How about tonight? Want to try it out? I can teach you the basic strokes. It’d be fun, huh, Carmen? Anyway, I found out how to…” 

Head Spinning

Her head spinning, Carmen touches Boone on his arm and waits until he stops talking and gives her eye contact.

“Boone.” She smiles as she sighs. “I got overwhelmed with all that you just told me. I think I took in that the gym’s been redecorated, but I lost you after that.” 

Carmen takes his hand. “Can you tell me just one short thing you really want to get across to me and leave it at that?”

Boone looks down. “I know I get too excited sometimes. It’s just that…” He bites his lip. “Okay. Here goes. One thing. Would you like to play pool with me tonight?”

Carmen grins and hugs him. "I'd love to!"

For more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS:

CHARTING YOUR PERSONALITY IN CHRIST

Jesus Handled Controlling People: How Can You?

It is a hard, clear blue sky this afternoon in Judea when Jesus speaks. The crowds come. And come, from villages all around. They press in. Pushing closer, to hear his words. His disciples with him, Jesus preaches, his voice penetrating the desert air, reaching the hearts open to his word.

But someone interrupts him, to say that his family has arrived. They wish to speak with him, but are unable to get through the densely packed crowds to his side.

What is Jesus’ response? He says his family are those all about him, not limited by birth. Jesus refuses to let his family presume upon him and his mission (Matthew 12:46-50).

Jesus Preaching

What Is The Controlling Personality Pattern?

Jesus uses the Assertion compass point to withstand the Controlling Pattern. The Self Compass shows how the Controller pattern exaggerates a sense of competence. Without humility from the Weakness compass point, Controllers consider any opinion of theirs as the right opinion. Other people benefit when told how to think and act. It's only being helpful. 

Unknowingly, Controllers labor under the heavy burden of perfectionism, sometimes called the “tyranny of the shoulds.” Even though it’s impossible to achieve perfection, they're always striving to do so.  This curse of perfectionism yields bitter fruit. It isolates the person and torments others. Without caring from the Love compass point, the Controller pattern drives out joy, replacing it with a certain dictatorial grimness. It keeps Controllers from nurturing, forgiving, or having much fun. 

Compulsive Controller Personality Disorder

“They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear," Jesus says, "and lay them on the shoulders of others; but they themselves are unwilling to lift a finger to move them” (Matthew 23:4).

How It Feels To Be Around Controlling People

Someone living with the Controller pattern can feel this way:

• My spouse has the answers.
• My job is to obey all my spouse’s correctives because I’m incompetent. At times, I feel downright stupid.
• I want to act like a child, blow my stack. Pout.
• Which brings on the imperious censure even more full throttle.
• I feel demeaned. Deflated.
• I am an adult, yet constantly judged for my driving capability, for my grammar, for the way I give our child a bath, fill a dishwasher, make a bed.
• Somewhere there is fury.
• Certainly shame. 

Person Feeling Judged

Ways to Counter The Controlling Pattern

1. At home, calmly speak about how you feel, making full use of your Self Compass tools of caring assertion and humble confidence: 

"I feel like I can't do anything right these days. That doesn't feel good. It feels kind of grim to be around you. Not much fun."

2. Suggest ways that would work for you: 

"It would help me if you can you go more easy with your comments, maybe throw in a few compliments here and there?"

3. At work, use diplomatic assertion with a compulsive perfectionist boss:

"Yes, for sure I'm as keen as you are for me to turn in a topnotch Year End report. In order to do that, however, I will still need to turn it in tomorrow as we had previously agreed, rather than today as you're asking."

For more, read:

THE SELF COMPASS:

Charting Your Personality in Christ

It's Hard to Relate to A Marshmallow: The Dependent Personality Disorder

Most of us realize the difficulties relating to someone who is aggressive or bossy. We're often less aware of the difficulties of relating to someone stuck in the Dependent Pleaser Personality Disorder, especially in a couples relationship.

Being married to a Pleaser can feel like you're relate to a marshmallow. You keep trying to get the person's real point of view and take a stand on something but end up with nothing but impenetrable, yet sticky, sweetness.  

It's Hard to Relate to A Marshmallow

Utilizing the power of a whole Self Compass helps counter the marshmallow effects of the Pleaser pattern. Here's how.

HOW THE SELF COMPASS TRANSFORMS THE PLEASER PATTERN 

Janice is married to Greg, who is learning how to counter the effects of her Pleaser pattern. She is motivated to change, and has agreed that Greg can address this with her tactfully.

Greg is with Janice as she ends a phone conversation with their grown son, David: “Of course, dear. I’d be glad to baby-sit for you. You both need a break when you’re looking after two little children.”

Janice hangs up the phone and turns to Greg. “I hope you don’t mind, dear, but I just agreed to baby-sit next weekend for David and Sharon. David said they really need a break.”

Greg looks at her, concerned. “Guess you didn’t remember that we have plans for a get-away next weekend.” (Notice how Greg keeps his cool, explains the problem, and lets Janice feel the tension.)

Janice’s hand goes to her mouth. “Oh, that’s right. Oh, I’m so sorry. I forgot. I heard the stress in David’s voice and I just couldn’t say no.”

“Okay. What about calling him back and telling him what you just told me? You could baby-sit the following weekend.”

Janice leans forward. “Oh my, I just don’t know. I hate to disappoint them. They’re having a hard time of it lately. I worry that their marriage won’t stand the stress. Could we change our plans for the following weekend?”

Greg frowns. “Whoa. This doesn’t feel good to me. You’re placing our relationship a definite second here because of your need to please David. That hurts.” (Greg uses Assertion to express his feelings).

Janice winces. “I’m so sorry, Greg.”

Greg stops himself from reassuring her that it’s okay. “I agree that David and Sharon need a break. But they don’t even know about our plans.” Greg looks at her and says softly, “It’s your choice, Janice.” (Greg uses the Strength compass point to keep from rescuing her and the Love compass point to reach out to her.)

Janice tears up and reaches for a tissue. “I need to think and pray about this for a little while,” she murmurs. She heads to the bedroom. Ten minutes later she emerges, a look of relief in her eyes.

Janice smiles as she sits down by Greg. “I just called David and told him about our plans. I’m going to baby-sit the following weekend so you and I can have our date.” She puts her arms around him. “Thanks for your honesty, honey.”

The Self Compass

HOW GREG AND JANICE USE THE WHOLE SELF COMPASS 

1. Greg expresses his feelings with caring assertion and holds with his point of view even though he knows that it will be uncomfortable for Janice to hear. 
2. He does not take over for Janice. 
3. He gives her the opportunity to take responsibility for her actions. 
4. Greg's holding the tension allows Janice to assert herself.

1. Janice diplomatically stands up for her marriage in her relationship with her son. 
2. Janice gives her son new information and offers an alternative. 
3. She demonstrates that she shares Greg's priority of placing their marriage first. 
4. No longer manipulating her family by being overly sweet, Janice is becoming her own kind yet assertive self.

 For more, read: 

THE SELF COMPASS: 

Charting Your Personality in Christ

Do You Talk Too Much? The Self Compass Explains Why

“I tell you, Mario, my life with women...” Alex grins ruefully. “They come and they go. I just never know…”

Alex’s smile fades, then his eyes light up. “Anyway, have you met the new trainer at the gym? Carla? She’s stunning. Really knows her stuff, too.” He leans closer to Mario, making sure of eye contact. “I’ll introduce you. You’ll love her. Say, did you hear that Harold got into it with his manager and left his new job…”         

For the person stuck in the Histrionic Storyteller personality pattern, life is an endless saga of emotional ups and downs. Feelings govern you. Everything is either absolutely marvelous or entirely catastrophic. Whatever you feel at the moment is how you behave. It’s like the base thumping from a car radio at full volume. It reverberates in everyone’s ears within hearing distance.  

 

Emotional Ups and Downs

The Storyteller pattern brings unconscious, yet predictable thoughts to your daily interactions. Your self-talk sounds like this:

• I am only important if other people are showing interest in me.
• I only have worth to the degree that I emotionally impact others.
• I am significant in proportion to how many people know and like me.

This mindset creates a compelling urge to capture and keep people’s attention, even if this requires shocking remarks, reciting one’s latest woes, walking off in a huff, or sharing a juicy morsel of gossip.

Need To Keep In The Spotlight

When you’re not in the spotlight, as a defense against feeling insignificant, you scan conversations at a superficial level until it triggers something related to you. Then bingo. You dive right in. This is called selective listening. You don’t take in what people are sharing about themselves or their interests. You might say that people are needed accessories for your agenda of self-promotion.

Challenge The Histrionic Storyteller Pattern by Transforming Thoughts to:

• I am a worthwhile person with strengths and weaknesses, and I choose to accept myself.
• I can express myself to others with color and enthusiasm, but I will take the time and exercise the skill to really hear what they are saying to me.
• I can communicate better without exaggeration and emotional displays than with them.

Growth into Your Real Self in Christ:

Histrionic Personality Disorder

Advancing beyond the Storyteller pattern requires the willingness to move into the Weakness compass point. Not easy, to admit the need for less self-absorption, more sensitivity to other’s feelings. Yet if you pray for God to grant you more humility, He will. “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, so that he may exalt you in due time” (1 Pet 6:5).

In the New Testament the apostle Peter initially displayed the Storyteller pattern in his relationship with Jesus. Peter often acted impetuously. He jumped into the Sea of Galilee to walk on water. He talked so much at Jesus’ transfiguration, it was hard for the Father to get a word in edgewise (Mt 17:5). He cut off the ear of the high priest’s servant when Jesus was arrested.

But in the wake of his baptism in the Holy Spirit, Peter acquired a more balanced use of his Love, Weakness, and Strength compass points. Eventually, Peter became the rock of assertive caring and humble strength, actualizing his true personality as Christ had foretold.

You might try a prayer like this from your Weakness compass point: 

“Dear Lord, I know I take things too personally and that I talk too much. Forgive me for stealing the glory that belongs to you. I humbly ask you to help me outgrow my Storyteller ways. Calm my inner anxieties and give me a sound mind. Help me to relax and become more sensitive to you and others. Thank you. Amen."

For more, read: The Self Compass: Charting Your Personality in Christ