Psycho Babble

OK, every now and then I like to take these tests. Well I like taking all of them. But this one intrigued me. I stole this one from Write Wing Blog. Thanks Dawn! Find out your Deadly sins ranking! Oh and let me see!

I stole this off of Bitchatude, because I love these things! If you would like to take the test, post your answers in the comments, or to your own blog. If you take the test and post to your own blog, leave me a comment letting me know, so I can read your results. Thanks Bitchatude for another fun quiz!

Personal DNA Your True Self Revealed

My results below.

You are an Advocating Curator.
About You
You are a Curator

You are straightforward and real, down-to-earth, and have a healthy respect for order and stability. These attributes, complemented by your desire to be surrounded by things of beauty, make you a CURATOR.

You don’t feel the need to try everything new that comes along – you know what you like and what you want.

You are a no-nonsense person, not someone who falls for pretensions.

Being strongly grounded in the here-and-now, you are practical and realistic about yourself and your life.

You find comfort and calmness in your habits and routines.

Although others might not know this about you, you strongly appreciate aesthetic qualities, noticing whether something is well-designed and stylish.

You have a refined sense of taste, and you want your environments to reflect your preferred style.

There are times when you feel insecure and vulnerable, even though you know deep down that you are a good person.

You aren’t narcissistic – you allow yourself to be realistic about your positive and negative qualities.

You’re well-attuned to your emotional state, and not afraid to use your feelings to guide you. You tend to be cooperative, rarely contradicting others, and always considerate of their feelings.

You much prefer to have time to plan for things, feeling better with a schedule than with keeping plans up in the air until the last minute. Your decisions are well thought out, and you’re not the least bit impulsive.

You have a strong sense of style and value your personal presentation - friends may even seek your style advice from time to time.

You tend to believe that things happen for a reason, and that not everything is under our control.

If you want to be different:

It wouldn’t hurt to indulge your imagination and creativity sometimes. These are skills like any other, and develop with practice, so try to carve out some time for them in your life.

Try to quiet your inner feelings of doubt – you will be more successful if you can overcome these worries and focus on your many strengths, such as your responsible and honest nature.

How You Relate to Others
You are Advocating

Being social, empathic, and understanding makes you ADVOCATING.

Some people find being around others exhausting—but not you! You are energized by spending time with friends, and you are good at meeting new people.

The world outside your window energizes you, and you can’t help but be involved in it.

One of the reasons you enjoy conversation as much as you do is that you often learn about yourself while talking things out with a friend; you realize things about your own beliefs while discussing them with others.

One thing that makes you a people person is your insight into what others are thinking and feeling. This ability allows you to be happy for others, and to commiserate when something has gone wrong for them.

You are highly compassionate, and being conscious of how things affect those close to you leaves you cautious about trusting others too hastily.

Despite these reservations, you are open-minded when it comes to your worldview; you don’t look to impose your ways on others.

Your sensitivity towards others’ plights contributes to an understanding—both intellectual and emotional—of many different perspectives.

As someone who understands the complexities of the world around you, you are reluctant to pass judgments.

If you want to be different:

While it’s important to think about others, don’t forget to take some time for yourself, and occassionally to put yourself first.

Take some time to spend with a few close friends; although it’s difficult to find people to trust, it’s worth the effort.

When you have great ideas, it can be hard to relinquish control, but it can also feel good to take the pressure off and enjoy someone else leading the way.

Your Personality Chart
»Glossary of Traits

This chart shows thirteen personality traits. Each bar indicates the percentage of test takers who entered a lower value for that trait than you did. For example, if Confidence is at 80, that means that 80% of people entered lower values for confidence questions than you did. Based on a sample of 30,000 users.

Confidence
LowHigh 12
Openness
LowHigh 4
Extroversion
LowHigh 76
Empathy
LowHigh 90
Trust in others
LowHigh 44
Agency
LowHigh 24
Masculinity
LowHigh 16
Femininity
LowHigh 100
Spontaneity
LowHigh 2
Attention to style
LowHigh 96
Authoritarianism
LowHigh 2
Earthy/Imaginative
ImaginativeEarthy 82
Aesthetic/Functional
FunctionalAesthetic 100

personal DNA Map
Below are several personalDNA maps that uniquely represent your personality. Mouse over any part of the box or strip to learn more about the traits that the colors represent.

Don’t forget to let me know if you post to your blog. Or post your results in my comments.

Or just another bored housewife. Far from bored, I could read blogs all damn day and never get bored! But maybe venturing out, and seeing what is going on in the world once in a while isn’t such a bad idea.

Today I accompany my husband, who is touring an emergency support shelter for women and children dealing with domestic violence. He is touring with the director as part of his job, and how it pertains I’m not completely clear on. Besides, I wouldn’t state publicly anymore to begin with for the obvious reasons. My capacity will be as a potential volunteer. In what form? I’m not really sure yet. Call it dipping my toes in the pond to check the temperature.

For those who have read this blog since before October of 2005, you are aware of my own personal experience with domestic violence. Almost immediately after coming out of my own abusive relationship, I began volunteering and working at the local shelter where I lived. I was the house manager, lived on the premises, and would check the many women and children into the shelter, often in the middle of the night.

I would like to say this experience was completely rewarding. But that really wasn’t the reality. To begin with, I was far too screwed up and in need of some intensive therapy myself to be all that successful aiding the many women who came through the shelter. I am sure I helped some, but the cost on a personal level was too great at the time. My experience? Far too new and raw in my own life, to be of any great help. This was back in the mid 80’s. It was short-lived. I remained as a house manager there for no more than six months, and left burnt out, feeling used and just as screwed up as when I went in to help.

So here I am some twenty years later, playing with the idea of maybe, possibly, seeing what I can do to volunteer my services for an organization that I know is needed in all communities. Commitment is not or has not been my forte in life, to say the least. So much so, that for several years I hesitated to commit to anything. More out of fear of letting someone down, than anything. Yes, my “follow through” is on the weak side as well.

If I were to step outside myself and look objectively, the one area I feel a passion to want to reach out and help would be domestic violence. These women and children need help and a safe place to land. The downside and reality is that many women who will use a shelter as a revolving door, to get through the initial crisis. You will see them enter it, and stay long enough to ride out the crisis and then head back to their abuser. Sometimes several times and over many years.

While working for the shelter, this would disillusion me, as I would give my heart and soul and give up many hours of sleep to just listen to them talk their way through their crisis. Spending hours in a courthouse helping them write up and procure a restraining order. Baby-sit their children so they could pound the pavement looking for a job. Then I would find out they were actually off with their abuser celebrating the honeymoon phase of their domestic violence cycle!  And; I took it personally. Mistake number one. OK, maybe not number one, there were so many mistakes I made while acting in the capacity of “house manager.” My heart was in the right place, but I didn’t have the necessary tools intellectually or psychologically to fill this job effectively. Let alone the objectivity necessary to aid without enabling. What I can say is I learned a substantial amount about the cycles of abuse and the needed objectivity to be an effective aid to these women.

So I’m going on this tour, hopefully much wiser and with more objectivity than I had in the 80’s. With a sense of just how blessed I have been in my life, and with a desire, albeit a cautious desire, to maybe give something to my community. One of the things I have learned since the mid eighties, is how to consistently and consciously strive for a balance in life. The area most lacking in my balance is what I do for others. Keeping an eye on balance, I see where I can easily donate a few hours a week without taking away from my children or my husband.

Yes, it’s a baby step out of my front door and the ease of my comfort zone. But then all new endeavors start with a baby step, right?

What we/ I have learned over all that Kevin and I went through has far too many details for me to ever be able to list. So if I seem to hop around, forgive me. I’ll try and start at the beginning. As our pasts have their share of similarities, what he had learned about honesty, openness and commitment, was no different than what I went through well before we became engaged. As I was seeing a therapist, I was analyzing my past behaviors and working towards a reckoning of the past. I think once he told me he had seen a therapist, after his mother had passed away, I assumed he had done the necessary work of self-analyzing. Obviously I was wrong.

My point is we were not all that different. My transgressions against my second husband were numerous. By saying this, I am not relinquishing his responsibility in the demise of a marriage that in my mind never was. Those are his to live with, deal with, or not. I only have control over my actions, my transgressions and myself. They were many and ugly. I had to look at all of them and come to terms with who I was. This was painful to say the least, when you take into account that as a young woman my mind’s eye was that I was only going to marry once, and for life. Obviously, that naive innocence was shattered well before I met husband number two, the X.

To sum up what I’m saying is “I did the work.” And made a conscious effort to approach my relationship with Kevin with honesty, openness, loyalty and faithfulness. The difference between Kevin and I was he did not do the work until after our ordeal. We were very much made of the same cloth prior to our relationship, and he continued in his unhealthy cycles into well after our wedding.

We did enter into marriage counseling during the first year of marriage, and in retrospect I don’t think it was very helpful. In other words that $160.00 an hour therapist was as useless as tits on a boy dog!  What did happen in counseling was more of my injured raging, reliving each transgression against me, playing the martyr. A role I once had despised my X for doing with me. We stuck with it for a while, although I think the amount of money spent on the useless therapist, could have been better spent on a nice vacation to the tropics.

What it did serve to do is to get us talking. And talking and talking. He came to understand the total devastation he had put me through with his lies, and his cycle that was eerily parallel in all his relationships with women. We started praying together every morning, asking for God’s peace and wisdom. Between the two of us, we had four failed marriages, which are not good odds for the future. I think we figured we could use a little divine guidance.

The next lesson I learned is one many may not agree with me on, but I believe with every fiber of my being. Whether you believe in God or a higher power is irrelevant. (Although I think a spiritual belief system is more than a great help in this life.) I call it, as I know many others do, a law of nature. Simply put, what goes around come around. I did not suffer through anything that I didn’t have coming to me. What I experienced with Kevin helped me to see the harm I did to others with my behavior. Specifically? The adultery.

There IS no excuse for it. The pain and devastation this betrayal causes has far reaching ripple effects. There is NO. JUSTIFICATION. FOR. ADULTERY. My suggestion that I wasn’t out to break up the marriages of the men I had been seeing was bullshit. I had done very real damage to these marriages, inflicted pain, even if we were never caught per se, I helped put up a wall between another man and his wife. No one has the right to do that, under any circumstances! The damage to my children, to their children, in the sense that time spent with me, should have been spent with their families.

Took a personality test I found on Industry Whore’s blog. Unfortunately I see some truth in the results. LOL Being a little bit self absorbed at times, I really enjoy these little tests. See how you score, and then tell me!

Extraversion |||||||||||||||| 66%
Stability |||||| 30%
Orderliness |||||||||||| 43%
Accommodation |||||||||||||||| 63%
Interdependence |||||||||||| 50%
Intellectual |||||||||| 36%
Mystical |||||||||||| 50%
Artistic |||||||||||| 43%
Religious |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Hedonism |||||||||||||||| 70%
Materialism |||||||||||| 43%
Narcissism |||||||||||| 43%
Adventurousness |||||||||| 36%
Work ethic |||||||||||| 50%
Self absorbed |||||||||||| 43%
Conflict seeking |||||||||||| 43%
Need to dominate |||||||||||||||| 63%

Romantic |||||||||||||||||||| 90%
Avoidant |||||| 23%
Anti-authority |||||| 30%
Wealth |||| 16%
Dependency |||||||||||||||| 63%
Change averse |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Cautiousness |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Individuality |||||||||| 36%
Sexuality |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Peter pan complex |||||||||||||||| 70%
Physical security |||||||||||||||||||| 83%
Physical Fitness |||||||||||||| 57%
Histrionic |||||||||||||| 56%
Paranoia |||||||||||||||| 63%
Vanity |||||||||||||||| 63%
Hypersensitivity |||||||||||||||||| 76%
Female cliche ||||||||||||||||

Stability results were low which suggests you are very worrying, insecure, emotional, and anxious.

Orderliness results were moderately low which suggests you are, at times, overly flexible, improvised, and fun seeking at the expense of reliability, work ethic, and long term accomplishment.

Extraversion results were moderately high which suggests you are, at times, overly talkative, outgoing, sociable and interacting at the expense of developing your own individual interests and internally based identity.

trait snapshot:

open, tough, irritable, worrying, does not like to be alone, craves attention, low self control, emotionally sensitive, interacting, sad, very social, aggressive, prefer organized to unpredictable, dependent, social chameleon, suspicious, values the heart over the mind, likes large parties, outgoing, likes to make fun, likes to fit in, mildly phobic, vain, makes friends easily, enjoys leadership, clingy, rash

Keep in mind, your results are dependent on the accurate truth of your responses. The more you take this test and get the same result, the more likely that is your type. Finally, your scores and type, over the long term, will change as you do.

Ok, I shouldn’t be here right now, typing a new post. I should be out finishing my last minute shopping for the Christmas celebration with my family and parental units this Saturday. (And I will! I must! I’m running out of time!) My back went out yesterday, and none of my planned activities were completed, except for running rugrats to and fro. So I have twice the amount of errands to complete before the parental units arrive!

While perusing the junk folder of my email, I ran across one that wasn’t promising me an erection, or a bigger erection, or various bimbos wanting to show me their twat on a LIVE Cam corder. This one caught my attention with the words “wife swap.” Laughing, I assumed it was along the lines of the camcorder bimbo’s, but was surprised to see the network ABC attached to it. And here it is:


Greetings,

My name is Danielle, and...as my email signature reveals...I work as a
casting producer on ABC’s “Wife Swap.” We cast on a rolling basis, and are
always looking for families interested in appearing on the show.

I’ve attached an application.  If you or anyone you know is interested,
please complete it and e-mail it back to me ASAP.  One vital detail:
Families who appear on the show receive $20,000.  Additionally, there is a
$1000 finder’s award for referrals who end up on the show.  So, if you’re
referring someone, make sure they mention your referral on their
application.

Thanks!


Admittedly, the $20,000 sparked my interest for a few minutes. Having never watched this show, and believing MOST reality
TV to be just a slightly more sophisticated version of a Jerry Springer summer special, I didn’t entertain the thought for
long. $20,000 for a week, maybe two? Not a bad take really. I spent more time thinking about how I would spend it. The pool
could sure use a heating system, and my landscaping has been neglected over the last two years. Or I could be really
responsible, and pay on our car loans. Yes, that would be quite the contribution to my family.

When I mentioned it to the hubby and he laughed like I was telling a great joke, I knew it wasn’t a possibility. Besides,
it would be more then my sacrifice. As it would mean allowing a television crew and a strange woman into MY home, to manage
MY kids, MY house, and ultimately MY husband. Have I mentioned how jealous I can be? And what if my children wanted to keep
the new mommy? If this other woman bakes cookies, I’m out. What if my husband were attracted to the new wife, and she him.
Just thinking about it, had the green demon inside me rushing to the surface. Eyeing the husband suspiciously, I asked how
he thought he would handle a strange woman cooking for him, cleaning his house, making his lunch. And....what other activities
would this evil bitch try and take over? He laughed nervously, seeing the green demon toying with him. Then putting on his best
dictatorial growl, said we are not going to do it. Period.
Fair enough. I didn’t like where my mind was going with it anyway. This other woman would probably only show me up, on all that
I don’t do. I doubt she blogs hours of her day away, as I do. Or lets dishes sit in her sink until mid afternoon. She probably wears
full make-up, and doesn’t run around in baggy sweats half the time either. No, it would not do any good, to bring some perky soccer-mom into my home, upsetting the delicate balance I’ve created.

But, it did dawn on me, that there may be less insecure wives who are NOT jealous, who would love to have the opportunity to bring in a chunk of change for her family. Who wouldn’t mind having her home life turned upside down, whose kids and husband
would have no problem with a network exploiting their private lives for ratings. To these women I say, send me an email.
I have the application for the show, and I will fill it out for you, and send it in. Any takers? Anyone?

I will say, there is a reason for my selfless generosity. The other alternative, or opportunity, to make a chunk of change
is if I can find a family/wife willing to go on the show, they will give me $1000.00. And if you’re chosen, you get $20,000! Yes,
it’s a win/win situation here! So if you’re willing to be exploited on Network television, all for the entertainment of the
rest of us, send me an email, and lets see if we can get you on National television! With the understanding, that I have no
way of knowing for sure if this is real, or some sort of scam/prank/stalker. My email is in the upper right hand corner, check
with the hubby, and drop me a few lines.

On that note, I need to start my errands now. Hope everyone is having a pleasurable hump-day!
Mwah!
3T

UPDATE: If you are in an abusive relationship, and need or want to talk to someone, please call The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 or 1-800-799-SAFE. The necessary help is available, please don’t wait.

Damn! In some ways this “little project” I set before me is more difficult then I thought it would be. Trying to “relive” something that happened 21 years ago, presents a few different problems. One of the things I became aware of, is that I am not that 19 to 21 yr old girl anymore. Not even close. The changes in who I am, versus who she was are extremely evident. Another dilemma? How to write it? Trying to step back into the shoes of that girl and write as if I am her, is uncomfortable. Not in the sense of this being anything more then a scar from the past. It goes against my pride? (For lack of a better word coming to me)

This also made me very aware of the stigma that comes from being a “battered wife” or partner. Reminding me again, why many women keep quiet. If they are already aware, that yes, I am in an abusive relationship, they are embarrassed. Feel ashamed, and deep down believe it’s their fault. These are the feelings I am grappling with, as I have tried for the last three days to “recreate” this story from the point of view of the young woman that I was. These are the feelings that each one has to battle and get beyond, as she may struggle to get out of it. What makes it that much harder is, her self esteem is in the toilet.

Getting out of it, seems to the average person like a single minded obvious solution. “Just leave him!” “Get out now!” So simple and straightforward right? No, it’s not. The problems the thought of life without her abuser presents seem nothing short of unthinkable and overwhelming to her. He has convinced her that she cannot survive without him. That she will drown in the real world without him. A lot of the times, he ties up all finances, and property, that if she walks out that door, she walks out with not much more then a pot to piss in. With children at her side, looking to her to not only provide them with a roof over their heads, and their basic needs being met, but to the standard in which they had life in the two parent home. She feels she is cheating them, being selfish. He (the abuser) has made sure she feels this way.

Couple all of these factors with the abuser has made it clear, if she leaves, he will hunt her down and kill her. Or has threatened to harm her children, or take them, and she will never see them again. The obvious solution of “Just leave.” becomes an insurmountable mountain to her, that keeps her trapped in her mind, in these circumstances. With no where to turn. These are just a few of the problems that if we as a society want to help end the abuse, we need to help her see a solution she cannot see. We need to take this person and educate her not only to the fact that yes, she is in harms way, but there are avenues she can take to get out, be safe, and make a way in this world for herself and her children.

A battered wife or partner has become helpless and childlike, by the time getting out is her only option. She has been locked away in the abusers world, and may have no clue how to go about freeing herself from it. Her pride, embarrassment, lack of job skills, or education may all present road blocks to just leaving. All of these problems have to be addressed by us as a society, with some avenues and solutions made available to her, if ending the cycle is going to occur.

Emergency Support Shelters work tirelessly at trying to address all of these problems. Also providing counseling options, individually and in group settings. One of the shelters I stayed at, had an onsite child psychologist who worked with kids from abusive homes, where in a lot of cases, the children were also being abused. Providing legal aid to these women, to get the necessary Protection Orders, aid in help for filing for Temporary Custody, so that at the very least her children are protected from the abuser legally.

These are just part of the mountain, that as an abused partner, she must climb. In her mental and emotional state, most of the time, she cannot climb it by herself.  When she leaves, she needs not only guidance in those first few weeks, but someone there, literally holding her hand thru the most basic of tasks. The abuser has killed the adult in her, and she has to emotionally start over, and work at growing past it, to become the adult she is.

I realize this may not always be the case, but at the two shelters I stayed at, this was the majority of women who came thru there. They are literally starting over in every sense of the word. Financially, emotionally, mentally. She has to “grow up” all over again. This takes patience and understanding from all of us as a community. She is a victim in every sense of the word. Dealing with this problem, and working on the front lines with these women, that in some cases may seem like they are not helping themselves, takes GREAT patience and understanding. By the time they may come to be at a shelter, family may have already turned their backs on them. Frustrated time after time, seeing them return to the same violence after trying to help them get out.

Always I would recommend a shelter for a woman trying to get out! If she needs any aid what so ever financially, or with education, here is her first step. Shelters are set up and equipped to address the many problems that she will face as she works to start over. Legal aid, counseling resources, avenues that may lend themselves to her getting an education, so she can become self supporting. They address all of the issues with her. One step at a time.

This list comes from Help Guide and discusses signs and symptoms of verbal and nonverbal abuse of a spouse or intimate partner.