Personality Test, Smershonality Test

Seldom have I read an "introspective" and agreed more. I am an INTJ and usually I can spot BS from miles away. None of us can be categorized strictly by a test or tests. Then I must say, I think MS is difficult to diagnose and treat and having it is not dependent on our personality, IQ or psychosocial history.
After talking with people with MS it seems most of us spent years undiagnosed with it "all in our heads" (which it was, of course). Having an unpredictable disease often subtly affecting our muscles and ability to sense the universe within which we live and living with various degrees of invisible pain is difficult at best. When we are struck helpless and in bed with no explanation for incredible weakness is actually a horror. How does one explain these issues to a person we have begun to love without sounding like a certifiably insane person? How can we do that?
My own problem with MS began when I was 27 and beginning my academic career while sitting at a library table. Suddenly my eyes were looking at two different places at the same time. Shocked, I waited for it to "quit" as I closed one eye and "looked" and read with the other. The medical explanation was I was "tired" (true enough) and "not to worry". Within two months I couldn't walk in a straight line. Medical explanation "You've taken on too much and need to lighten your academic load." I called it BS.Academics were easy to me and my husband and I shared child caring and the house.
My husband and I decided to attack each deficit with a "counter" activity. I followed the beam of a flash light as he jerked it around on a dark wall every night for weeks. To increase my walking linearity I balanced and walked on the edge of sidewalks on the narrow strip of concrete and did that off and on eventually for years when my sense of balance was "off". Every time I lost a capacity my husband and I worked on developing an alternative.
And so it has gone for years as I carefully kept my physical strength up and remained very active in challenging sports like running and swimming.
Only in the last 10 years, from 70 to 80, have I not been notably successful at this...and that is due to having rheumatoid arthritis. It seems being clobbered with two autoimmune diseases set my internal resolve back. I have not recovered and am unsure how to deal with it yet. But, and this is a surety, I have had a wonderful living a human life trip and I'm not through yet!

As a psychologist, I generally bristle when people attack tests of personality. However your point directly distinguishes why test of personality so often fail. If they are used properly, they are integrated with interviews and other tests to describe the unique perspective and quality of the person taking the test. This is done with the collaboration of the person who has been tested.

Sadly, many contemporary psychologists do not have the time to perform this kind of testing. Insurance companies don’t pay for it, and people no longer value it. Instead, we are inundated by Facebook facsimiles of personality tests and Psuedo-tests like the Enneagram.

I am an INTJ, and I have MS. But that’s not all I am.

A test for your personality?How silly..Dont waste your time.Takes a whole lifetime and even then,who knows.Certainly not someone who makes up bullshit quizzes like that!!

I’m a clinical psychologist and can tell you there is no validity to the Enneagram test and have no idea why you would be required to take a test that is not used by any licensed clinician in the field. There are many valid personality tests, but this isn’t one of them. Whomever told you that you “needed” to take it is either a charlatan or a terrible clinician.

As I understand it, the Myers-Briggs shows "preferences" and only "preferences" -- it is not determinate of anything. It doesn't say: "this is who you 'are'" -- only that given a choice you will show a certain preference. I've taken the M-B several times over a span of years. The interesting thing is ... it's stable over time. I pretty much show the same preferences as I did some years ago.

Like all tools, these tests need to be used properly by skilled people who understand what they are doing. Not by people who want to categorize, box and label people.

My wife and I discovered the Enneagram about 17 years ago by attending a 2.5 day conference at a Roman Catholic retreat center. This was among friends and we didn't have an impression that it was going to solve problems, but just how people have different patterns of being, motivations, and anticipations. Later my wife developed MS at age 52. Her initial neurologist had an attitude of ho-hum. So, she went on-line and discovered a neurologist who was doing studies of MS. She got into one of his studies and her progress was very good and it became more or less stabilized to this day. She has had a therapist in most of her years and no one thought the Enneagram was an entanglement.