A difficult brain is not a difficult personality

We tend to describe someone whose thinking is hard to follow as difficult, as if it were something they were choosing. But sometimes what gets called a difficult personality is really a complex way of thinking.

That complexity can take many forms. Having one dominant mode with little influence from the others. Having all four modes competing for attention at once. Having a rational mode and an intuitive one pulling in opposite directions - breaking an idea apart and building it back up again, sometimes in the same conversation.

From the outside, these patterns are easy to misread. Someone can seem stubborn when their mind is unusually fixed on one way of processing a problem. Inconsistent when different parts of their thinking keep pulling them toward different conclusions. Overcomplicated when they can see too many dimensions of something to give you a simple answer.

I have a difficult brain. So do many of the people I'm closest to, at work and at home. And I've come to love difficult brains.

Most of the world hasn't yet, because people still tend to interpret complex thinking as difficult behaviour. We judge the person before we understand what their mind is doing.

That's one of the reasons cognitive awareness matters. It doesn't make difficult brains less difficult. It gives us a better explanation for what we're seeing - in other people and in ourselves.

If you're curious about the way your own mind is put together, you can explore it through my free Modes assessment.

Gregor