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 at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox 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 will 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 complimentary continuum so once not better or worse it's just they're different once structured ones 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 and 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 judge or 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 a CT can be very useful at helping people manage their stress and become more psychologically flexible now a CT 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 a CT 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 the stress increases people gravitate toward their preferred temperament dimensions so for example me I am structured and 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 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 give me a wide berth then they go okay you know it's Friday it's laundry day we get this but also awareness that 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 the 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 in uniquenesses and celebrate them instead of thinking of them as downsides if you will so temperament now the Jaypee dementia and 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 products people who are more judging tend to plan ahead and thrive on order so we like to have we'd 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 judge her 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 know whether it makes sense or not that is how I'm wired and the person who is 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 their 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 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 it it was a list of activities that people had to do to progress from phase 1 to phase 2 and then another list for phase 2 to phase 3 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 Percy 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 talked about or 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 gonna 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 gonna 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 what 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 make their day more predictable and if they're a 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 plans spontaneous days you're scratching your head going what for me and this works for for a lot of people who have you know spontaneous and structured people in the same relationship the structured person needs to plan but there's a certain amount of wiggle room you know 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 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 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 are gonna 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 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 pass 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 ah 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 to process at each step and that's okay encourage judges 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 it 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 um 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 gonna be sick you don't know when they're gonna have a bellyache 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 gonna work on my dissertation while 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 gonna 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 receivers 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 there just like the cars 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 we're one sort of freezes the other one is freed up we're the perceiver may not get some things done the judger can bring them kind of back down to the ground 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 judges can kind of bring you back in but we need both we can't exist without having a little bit of balance receivers handle the new situations well while judgers 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 and they can't plan for what's gonna 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 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 stepping I'm just 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're they haven't worked on their treatment plan they 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 happened in life judgers our time and deadlines 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 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 blood lines are kind of a suggestion we want to get it done around the 21st so you might want to know what might want to talk with perceivers about okay this needs to be done we'll still say around the twenty first 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 in 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 and 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 dues 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 gonna 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 and the perceiver won't feel impact because they'll be able to do 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 gotta 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've got to figure out where it's gonna 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 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 UM 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 judge 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 judge or 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 ok let's break the project down into four parts I'll have this part done this week or this month and this part done and this timeframe it's still not putting the person on a really tight timeframe 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 or just being ignored judges can hack up receivers time schedule by asking for something important to be done early now if you do it too often the spontaneous person and 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 5 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 gonna be like oh why did you tell me to get here this early if it wasn't starting and if the show wasn't starting until 5:00 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 recoveries 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 you know go back going back to dialectical behavior therapy 101 these things can help because what's the judger gets out of that adrenaline dump because the schedules 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 The Situation's too structured you know they need to speak up and say let's do something fun and 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 and 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 to 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 happened 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 cost 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 you know 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 but 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 gonna do I'm gonna read about this for a week or two weeks or I'm going to read these three books and then I'm gonna 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 gonna 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 you know 11 months to figure out what we're gonna 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 of them 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 that 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 judge 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 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 may get 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 gonna 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 past so if you were trying to choose what present to get for someone trying to do research and figuring out what they like and deciding between your top ten things or whatever it was and being 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 was this what's that the more structure people are going to go got a list of ten 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 gonna watch 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 you know 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 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 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 binging on Netflix that's not the same for my family you know nobody else they all 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 so the other ones ones 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 it's 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 the stress increases people become more entrenched in their preferences in their temperament so if spontaneous spontaneity totally overwhelms the judger you know 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 overwhelm admission 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 um so work 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 planned for the audit um 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 gonna 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 judges 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 may might not make use of things that happen that way in recovery people plan this is what I'm gonna do okay for my social support I'm gonna 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 you know Carl Rogers himself if he were still alive was coming to speak and you know 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 the pull of 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 helpful behaviors judges generally have a very thorough relapse prevention plan but needs 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 in 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 rainstorms 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 if and having 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 judges 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 were really structured and we find that boring we find it absolutely totally awesome and we're totally 10th 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 a 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 5 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 ok 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 5 times a day or something and they can write it down sort of on the fly each person is often a combination of Sun 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 coworkers 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 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 Keirsey have them go online and take the cure see or give them a worksheet that has the characteristics and have them identify the characteristics that most sound like them and you're going to find that they're on both sides of the 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 judge or you see 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 gonna be great together and they're gonna you know go great if you've got to really structured people might not butt heads as much might miss some opportunities but might not bust heads as much if you've got different to 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 and just you know pretty much do mean anything okay so are there questions comments can you see how this might be helpful in treatment planning Oh you 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 at support at all CEUs 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 informations 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 if you enjoy this podcast please like and subscribe either in your podcast player or on YouTube you can attend and participate in our live webinars with doctor Snipes by subscribing at all CEUs comm slash counselor toolbox this episode has been brought to you in part by all CEUs com providing 24/7 multimedia continuing education and pre certification training to counselors therapists and nurses since 2006 use coupon code 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