The Hidden Disease of Personality Assumptions!

In this episode of Beyond Personality Types, host Olivier Caudron and typology expert Dr. Linda Berens unpack the "Be Like Me Syndrome"—our unconscious tendency to expect others to think and act just like us. Discover how awareness of individual differences elevates your use of personality frameworks beyond MBTI results, helping you become a more compassionate, effective type practitioner. Linda shares personal stories, practical advice, and the dangers of stereotyping, making this an essential listen for anyone passionate about self-awareness and authentic growth through personality typology. Perfect for coaches, team leaders, and anyone eager to move beyond personality assumptions!

Linda Berens [00:00:00]:
Types are fascinating patterns that are best discovered holistically.

Olivier Caudron [00:00:08]:
Welcome to Beyond Personality Types, the original interest strengths podcast. Every week we provide you with the better ways to use and talk about personality theories. I am your host, Olivier Codron, a self discovery facilitator. With me is Doctor Linda Behrends, internationally renowned for her innovative typology approach. Come with us beyond the indicator results to rethink what you know about personality types. Have you ever caught yourself expecting others to think, act and react just like you do, only to feel frustrated when they don't? Hello, and thank you for tuning in. In this episode of Beyond Personality Types, we dive into what Doctor Linda Behrends calls the Be like me syndrome a universal human tendency that can sneak into our type work relationships and even our professional practice. Whether you're a seasoned practitioner or an enthusiastic learner, today's conversation will challenge you to recognize unconscious biases, deepen your client work and better honor the beautiful complexity of individual differences Get ready to expand your self awareness enhance your understanding of typology frameworks and walk away with practical insights to help you support others more compassionately and effectively.

Olivier Caudron [00:02:04]:
Let's discover how overcoming the Be Like Me Syndrome can lead us beyond personality types. We are billions of humans on Earth and most, if not all of us, suffer from a very special disease. It passes from generation to generation. It is not easy to eradicate it. When preparing this episode, I bumped into Erik Erikson's quote. The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others. It can be a clue to better understanding this sickness we suffer from. Linda, please explain to us what this condition is about.

Linda Berens [00:02:53]:
Well, I have to give a little history first as I tend to do in my older years.

Olivier Caudron [00:02:58]:
Sounds good.

Linda Berens [00:02:59]:
Yeah. Because in the beginning of my career, It was also the beginning of the association for psychological type. One of my colleagues and I, we had just gotten our master's degree. We had also gotten our PhDs and she was looking for what to do. She wanted to change her career or whatever. We talked about working together. Her name was doctor Sukupa. As we were doing this, she came up with this phrase that people have BLM syndrome, be like me.

Linda Berens [00:03:32]:
That just took off the whole idea, and we were using the acronym then, which we don't use now because of some other very important things that it stands for. It is still the foundational understanding we have of one of the reasons that just learning about your own personality patterns and recognizing that other peoples have different patterns that we can get out of this syndrome. It's like we go around expecting people to be like us even in everyday things. I remember I was talking to a counselor when I was in my master's program. At the time, it was the beginning of the women's movement. I was experiencing some complaints about my husband. She said, it's like the dishwasher syndrome. Some people have the way that they load the dishwasher, and then they expect other people to load the dishwasher in the same way.

Linda Berens [00:04:30]:
And when they don't, they wanna redo it because that doesn't feel right to the person. And so I started using that thought myself about the dishwasher, and then Sue came up with this phrase, and it just really, really struck home. I do wanna say that we've been married fifty five years or fifty six or something like that. So that was not the end of the marriage.

Olivier Caudron [00:04:55]:
Are you still the one loading the dishwasher?

Linda Berens [00:05:00]:
Or Oh oh, no. No. He does the dishwasher. Not my job because I'm the woman. It's just the job that needs to be done, and he fills in. I don't add it because he has a system. I'm respectful of that system. Same personality type, just differences.

Olivier Caudron [00:05:18]:
Yeah. That was my question. Because both of you have the same, preferences. How do you explain that you have those differences?

Linda Berens [00:05:29]:
Well, there are so many other ways that he's not like me other than the obvious gender differences and there's gender role that comes from enculturation. For one thing, he was a math major, and then he he became a software developer. That wasn't a term. It was a computer programmer. Mhmm. And then he was in the aerospace field for ages, air defense systems, and became ultimately a senior scientist. There are a lot of things that has to do a lot with the flexibility of the brain and different talents. He has a talent for thinking that way.

Linda Berens [00:06:07]:
I don't. So we can't say that all people with INTP preferences have a talent for math. I was good in math, only algebra though. And I thought I would major in it, but it was too hard when I got to college. It just didn't work. I met him early on, so he had to help me through the way they taught algebra as opposed to the way I learned algebra. It's just the way his mind works. He's more analytical than I am, a little more systematic than I am.

Linda Berens [00:06:36]:
If we look at type development, just with the eight functions, he's developed because of work, he had a lot of tasks that had to be done. So he had to develop more and engage extroverted thinking more than I did. He is more organized than I am. I saw this systematizing stuff that sort of is integrally related to the work he did, and maybe it has to do with his purpose on the planet.

Olivier Caudron [00:07:07]:
How did being aware of the be like me syndrome help you in your life?

Linda Berens [00:07:15]:
I would say that the notion of individual differences is such a part of me that when I'm having difficulty with someone, I tend to shift my perspective more quickly. I start to notice cues or catch myself saying, oh, I think I'm expecting other people to be like me. It's in my awareness because it's so foundational to the work we do and so easy to remember.

Olivier Caudron [00:07:42]:
Even though someone is aware of the be like me syndrome and aware that he or she is suffering of it. How could that person develop the awareness and accept to get out of the be like me syndrome?

Linda Berens [00:07:59]:
Well, part of that is learning about others, recognizing that not everybody's like me, just like recognizing that my husband has a skill to load the dishwasher and do the books, all of the taxes and gathering all of that data. It's a lot easier for him than it is for me. I just noticed that there are differences. And when we have a framework of typology, if it had a different pattern and I knew about that pattern, it would be easier for me to catch myself. But isn't just about learning your own type Mhmm. You get out of this disease. By learning that there are other ways to do things that may be more successful, more applicable, more appropriate than the way you would do them. No, that's actually coming from my own perspective of wanting to have things be effective and efficient.

Linda Berens [00:08:56]:
Whereas somebody else might not have that same perspective. But I know about that because I learned about individual differences. Once you know that that there are differences and then you have names for those differences, it's easier to be forgiving. It's easier to be patient. It's easier to say, oh, yeah. We ought to take that into account. That's actually why I think the study of personality type or exposing people to any of the typology lenses is not helpful if you only focus on the individual. They need to know that there are differences.

Linda Berens [00:09:35]:
That's why we call the books understanding yourself and others. It is really valuable to know about ourselves and to use that to help get our needs met, to understand why one job is easier than another, all kinds of find stressors, all kinds of things that are helpful just with self knowledge. But we have to also for it to be more powerful than getting out of me like me syndrome, we have to have that awareness that there are differences in some of what those differences are so that we can recognize them. And then even a little bit more, there are these points of conflict that come up. If you know about these differences and how they seem to be at odds, if you have a name for it, it's easier to make meaning of it and to understand how someone else might be making meaning of something.

Olivier Caudron [00:10:30]:
A name?

Linda Berens [00:10:31]:
We have names like theorist, stabilizer, improviser, catalyst. We have names like in charge, chart the course, get things going behind the scenes. This gets me down on another topic around the names, but it it's about if we know about our preferences, if I know that it's INTP, I actually know very little. Having a name is a two edged sword because names are nouns. If we name something, we can misidentify. The worst part is that a name can become a limiting label, And that's why we say we have preferences for, not I am a. Mhmm. Is there anything where I am is actually always applicable? I am a woman.

Linda Berens [00:11:23]:
So I go to the doctor. The doctor knows certain things about me. But if I have the body of a woman and the soul of a man, then some of those things may not apply. Naming something can be useful and it can be dangerous, maybe as bad as the disease itself, I suppose.

Olivier Caudron [00:11:41]:
Which one of the four essential motivators is the most susceptible to have the be like me syndrome?

Linda Berens [00:11:50]:
We all have it. That's a question of development and experiences. You might have this be like me syndrome in one context because you don't know much about the diversity. You might not have it in another context because you're aware of those differences. For example, we've become very aware of male, female, and culturation differences. Right? Sometimes you'll hear people say, oh, well, that's because he's a man. On the other hand, it's a recognition that there are these differences. We can recognize that, oh, there's that difference.

Linda Berens [00:12:23]:
So there's a whole range of differences that we would recognize as difference. In those situations, we recognize the differences. We may not exhibit the symptoms of be like me. Other situations, especially if we don't know about the differences, we will exhibit them. There's another developmental piece that happens. Let's say, growing up, I think about my daughter, mother of four kids. She instills in them that people are different and that it's okay. I have a suspicion that she would have done that even if she didn't know about type from the age of nine.

Linda Berens [00:12:58]:
Once people learn about different perspectives and they learn to take those perspectives, they're less prone to the disease.

Olivier Caudron [00:13:06]:
What are the different forms of the disease? I haven't

Linda Berens [00:13:09]:
thought about that. I suppose it could be on a scale of mild to severe. It could be more situational. If I take the psychologist's perspective. So if somebody's coming for therapy and I instantly see this going on, it might be that I can identify a stressor in the client that's triggering it, which may not be a disease symptom. It may be just so much her own needs not getting met or his own needs not getting met, that there's no space for taking any perspective in a particular situation.

Olivier Caudron [00:13:45]:
Yes. That makes sense. Lately, the millennials are criticized by the baby boomers. They are really, oh, why are they acting that way? And the generation x will tend to be between the two of them to manage. My observation is each generation is suffering of the attitude of the next one. It's the be like me syndrome in each generation.

Linda Berens [00:14:20]:
Yep. I'm not a baby boomer. I'm on the cusp between baby boomers and what came before, which I think we're called old timers. An example, which is a really hard example for me is I grew up my career grew up in the age of copyrights and trademarks and intellectual property. That doesn't hold much water anymore. I am just trademarking something, the essential motivators, for example, because it's being used in a program by another company. They were the ones that say, get it trademarked. I kind of like, I don't know.

Linda Berens [00:14:52]:
It's gonna be used. And, and so I've had to shift my own perspective to try to understand, and I'm far from understanding why it's really okay for information to be spread by people who aren't experts, partly a generation thing, partly the theorist. Well, yeah. Sure. I don't mind if you're gonna spread the word. That's great. But be sure you're knowledgeable because it does harm if you're not.

Olivier Caudron [00:15:17]:
Mhmm.

Linda Berens [00:15:18]:
So in a way, I think that's actually not a bad thing. And at the same time, it's hard to understand. So for me, I wanna understand what's the value of people putting themselves out there as if they're experts when they haven't studied with the experts. Jung studied with the experts. My mantra is do no harm. That's when I really get scared is when something is doing harm and it does harm when people don't explain the like me syndrome. When people don't look at the different patterns and they describe them, but they don't describe them in an unbiased way and they don't give equal weight to each one. So these sets of principles, they're very important because otherwise it can do harm.

Linda Berens [00:16:00]:
It does harm in a couple of ways. One way is to not really have done a thorough look at what each pattern is like to say, oh, well, you're doing that just because you're a theorist.

Olivier Caudron [00:16:12]:
Yeah.

Linda Berens [00:16:12]:
Or you're doing that because you're a stick in the mud, or you're doing that because of whatever label they wanna get from it. The other piece of harm is that people may not have enough information to have a clear picture of who they are at their core. So they go around taking on an identity that doesn't match themselves, and then they never measure up in their minds. There are some things around this, be like me. Even somebody who has known about it for a long time struggles with. Because when do I have the right to expect people to be like me?

Olivier Caudron [00:16:45]:
Once the harm has been made, but then you realize that you were led by the be like me syndrome, how do you fix that?

Linda Berens [00:16:55]:
Self awareness is one of those. I don't know how many times I say in the course of a week, either to myself or to someone else I'm talking about, oh, I guess that's a theorist perspective. And so you catch yourself. Now the downside of that is that might be what's needed. What usually comes into my awareness is that this isn't needed for more discussions and integration of the different perspectives is needed.

Olivier Caudron [00:17:23]:
Does it mean that once the harm is done, it's a question of putting our pride aside and going back to the person and talk with her or with him?

Linda Berens [00:17:36]:
Especially if there's an interaction that went wrong. I was thinking in business, one of the things that can be done about it is to say, who on this team can represent this perspective? If we don't have that diversity on a team, it's needed even if it's not the main kind of work being done. Awareness of multiple perspectives is one of the things that people can do. The other thing is to not make assumptions because somebody has a particular pattern. Don't assume they're going to do that. They may be more enlightened than you are.

Olivier Caudron [00:18:16]:
Mhmm.

Linda Berens [00:18:17]:
Or you have other experiences, so we just can't make that assumption. This is why I do the work. There are a fair number of people who come into our certification training who aren't necessarily looking to use the work as a certified practitioner. They're on this journey to learn as much as they can about themselves and haven't been satisfied with the fit of what they were told or what had come up before. And I would say a lot of those people perhaps haven't been comfortable in their own skin in the beginning, so it took quite a bit of understanding of how things are in a positive way. The other thing that I'm getting to is the stereotyping. I think it's very important that we understand our own biases. So when we as practitioners or enthusiasts share a pattern, we're not sharing the negative side, that we're sharing the positive, equally positive.

Linda Berens [00:19:13]:
I will catch myself talking about a negative, especially if I'm doing a presentation or a self discovery session where I'm presenting the four patterns to people. And I give a negative example after I've already presented two patterns, Then I go back and I say, and this would show like this and this and these other patterns. And then I have to make sure that for the fourth pattern, I do the same thing. Mhmm. So the work is internal about understanding your own biases. It's also having biases are part of the be like me syndrome because you want other people to have the same biases or it's unconscious and inadvertent.

Olivier Caudron [00:19:58]:
Thus, the necessity of raising the self awareness.

Linda Berens [00:20:03]:
Yeah. Well and I just remembering of the time when I was doing a presentation and this woman said, you don't like SPs, do you? And I had to say, you know, I had some bad experiences. Thank you for bringing that up. And that really made me more aware, which is why in all of our assignments and the courses, you have to talk about your biases and recognize your biases. I hadn't recognized that. And part of the source of that was my bias. The other part was the bias in the descriptions that I built my knowledge on someone else's bias. It's just the bias police.

Olivier Caudron [00:20:41]:
Then that can be the be like me or be like I want you to be. Yes. Okay. Let's take a moment to highlight some takeaways from this episode on the disease we all share. The be like me syndrome. The tendency to unconsciously expect others to think, act and perceive the world just as we do. Linda reminded us that breaking free from this mindset is truly at the heart of what it means to be a skillful type practitioner. Understanding ourselves is key but real growth happens when we develop the openness to recognize and respect the vast differences in those around us.

Olivier Caudron [00:21:34]:
Simply knowing your own type isn't enough. It's about expanding your awareness to appreciate the diversity of thought, motivation and behavior that exists even among people who share your four letter quote. As Linda shared through her personal stories, awareness of differences brings patience, greater compassion and more effective collaboration both professionally and personally. Remember that names serve as helpful starting points but they must not box us or others in. The danger lies in using type knowledge to stereotype or to reinforce the be like me mindset. Something we must continually check ourselves for especially when we're guiding others. The journey is ongoing. It's about catching your biases, asking yourself whose perspective hasn't been heard and creating space for authentic self expression and growth.

Olivier Caudron [00:22:44]:
Whether you're guiding clients, working with teams or exploring your own development, keep this essential lesson in mind. True mastery in personality type is about embracing complexity seeking understanding and striving for unbiased inclusive perspectives. That's how you will really help people move beyond type and beyond the be like me syndrome. Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you enjoyed this discussion we'd really appreciate it if you could leave a rating and review to help others find the show. Remember to subscribe if you don't want to miss next week's episode. You can also follow us on Facebook and Instagram at beyond personality types. Thanks again for tuning in.

Olivier Caudron [00:23:49]:
We are Olivier Caudron and Linda Berens. Stay curious and eager to learn until we meet again in our next episode.