What is DOPEamine?
DOPEamine is a podcast, youtube channel, and school dedicated to mental health empowerment using Carl Jung's Personality Archetypes, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, Enneagram and other psychoanalytical models to aid your search to define your sense of normal and navigate the world on your terms.
PODCAST
Why the name?
An obvious play on words, the chemical dopamine is something our brain needs as a measure of positive experiences. I've had some challenges with getting the adequate amount of dopamine in my life due to ADHD, Cyclothymia, and being an INTP. The stories that I tell on the podcast share some of these struggles.
Thinking about it as DOPEamine reminds me that there is a joy to be found in more places than we're likely looking and to understand who we are through the lens of archetypes allows us to look for joy in unexpected places, often right in front of us.
What is the vision?
To encourage mental health empowerment for those experience challenges with everyday neurosis or high-functioning mental health challenges.
While the work we do with Myers-Briggs archetypes for coaching and support it is not a replacement for therapy. We use it as a tool to know how your mind inputs, processes, and outputs experiences, sensations, information, and emotions...and where it might get stuck.
Why does your Personality Type matter?
Honoring your personality type rewards your mind with energy in the form of dopamine (among other chemicals) and those other lovely chemicals our brain needs in order to know that we're on the right track. Even in the areas which we may struggle with, there are still opportunities to give some attention and reap some rewards.
For instance, introverts still need some extroverted time, feelers need to consider logical connections, and the not-so externally organized humans may need to slow down and prepare from time to time.
Knowing your type helps you see more specifically how and how much you need to pay attention to these various aspects of yourself then determine where to go in terms of coaching, classes, or experiences.
So the podcast, youtube channel, Patreon, e-mail list, and our school are all in-service of teaching and helping people feel empowered through personality development to give the energy and power back to you.
You can read more about Myers-Briggs Personality Profiling in our FAQ.
DOPEAMINE School
Your host, C.Note a.k.a. Christian Rivera, is a Digital Producer from Philadelphia with 20 years of experience creating digital media for TV and film with brands such as Netflix, Hulu, Disney Animation, Sony Imageworks, and Focus Features.
Through DOPEamine, we're working to support mental health empowerment, creative expression, and calibration using psychological archetypes. We're hard at work improving the media presence of these important topics to help the world grow one tweet, podcast, youtube video, and idea at a time.
We tackle topics like depression, creativity, self-esteem, empathy, love, bipolar disorder, ADHD, HSP, PTSD, C-PTSD, Myers-Briggs, the Enneagram, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, Spiral Dynamics...along with personal stories of navigating life, relationships, parenting, business, careers, health and more.
Our school is dedicated to actionable support and advice regarding a number of these topics. I suggest you explore our catalog to see what fits your context and needs.
I've seen and heard the same challenges from many INTPs across the world who feel they've been misrepresented, misunderstood, and ignored. As a result, we become distant, quiet, and sometimes end up only showing a side of ourselves that continues to be stereotyped in television and movies as the dorky, emotionless nerd.
This not a set destiny for the INTP.
I say we because I am an INTP who has been through many of the INTP struggles. I know firsthand that we are capable of connection, love, expression, and joy. Many INTPs who achieve often teach, earn respect for their great mind and encourage a new perspective on reality itself.
Cosmic Calibration is a program designed to help INTPs nurture the natural ability we have to open up expanding ideas, become more playful, fixate less on being correct and more on helping others calibrate by sharing thoughts and lending their skills to others by harnessing a sense of bravery to move forward and thrive!
The work being done on DOPEamine is in support of the mental health empowerment community along with everyday humans just trying to do the best we can.
Your support keeps that cause going to continue research, sharing ideas, stories, videos, podcasts, and programs.
Support from members like you is critical for our growth. Join other members in sharing ideas and exclusive content! Thank you!
What is personality profiling?
Have you ever felt a sense that there are other people out there like you?
...or a feeling that some people don't quite think the same way you do?
...or that you can't do what some others do no matter how hard you try?
...or that some things that are obvious to you aren't quite so obvious to others?
Personality Profiling is a glimpse into why that is. Specifically, Myers-Briggs personality profiling. You know, the four-letter code you've probably heard of at work or some Facebook group. Chances are you've identified with at least one of the 16 types:
INTP, ENTP, ESTP, ISTP, ESFP, ENFP, INFP, ISFP, ESFJ, ISFJ, ESTJ, ISTJ, ENFJ, INFJ, ENTJ, INTJ
If not, take our test at the top of the page.
What is Myers-Briggs?
Myers-Briggs is a system created by Isabel Myers and Katherine Briggs as an expansion on the work of famed psychologist Carl Jung. Myers and Briggs took the archetypes created by Carl Jung, focused on learning styles and decision-making styles, and adapted them for use in workplace hiring in a time when the workforce needed more women to take the place of men who were drafted into the military.
With the time period being what it was and women not working much, there wasn't much room to hire on the merits of experience, so this system was used to hire based on personality.
The system has continued to be used in workplace hiring and calibration of business growth but as time moves on the implications for personal development have been growing to be used in coaching, marketing, and exploring interpersonal dynamics.
How does DOPEamine use Myers-Briggs?
One of the key visions for DOPEamine is to talk about using Myers-Briggs for day to day calibration to check in with your mental state, environment, relationships, career, and self-care to see if you're accurately nurturing who you actually are.
This means, in a nutshell, that your Myers-Briggs personality type is a way of defining what "normal" is for you. And defining your sense of normal is a big step towards quelling everyday challenges like comparison, self-criticism, and every-day forms of anxiety.
This means using this tool as a means to help you calibrate to your version of normal instead of society's version of normal.
In a scientific sense, it's establishing a "control" for who you are to get a better sense of when something is not quite right.
what does it mean to have a type?
Think of your best-fit type as the way of learning and making decisions that your mind rubber-bands back to. We can learn skills around other kinds of thinking and behavior as we adjust to our environment (which is totally normal) but pushing too far can create psychological challenges and unhealthy levels of stress. It's kind of like trying to push down a beach ball in a pool...it'll pop back up no matter how much force you apply.
That means if you're struggling with daily challenges, repeated failures and not knowing which way is normal then a profiling session is a vital tool to know your best-fit type and figure out your control point to know when something is off. Not just a gut feeling but to know for sure what's up.
Who needs to know their type?
This mission supports how DOPEamine can contribute to the mental health community as anyone at DOPEamine is not currently a trained therapist nor are we attempting to be a replacement for therapy. In fact, this tool is best served for anyone with a high-functioning mental illness that involves setting boundaries in your daily life. Otherwise, therapy may be a better option for now and there's no shame in that.
what's involved in a profiling session?
This is not quite like taking a Facebook test to find out what kind of potato you are. These sessions are about 45-90 minutes on average and consist of answering questions from a real person over a zoom, skype call or in-person about you, your life, and what it means to be you to determine how you recharge, how you make decisions, how you learn and how you prefer to show up to the world.
Can't I just take an online test?
Most tests are only 80% accurate on a good day because there are unconscious elements of our type that only a trained profiler would be able to spot. Simply put, we're not always as self-aware as we think and therefore an online test relies a bit too much on you fully knowing yourself, which is a rare feat.
Working one-on-one with a trained profiler creates a feeling of trust and certainty that we're being thorough and give you confidence that we'll be able to support you by seeing aspects of yourself you may have known or suspect but didn't have a way to express it.
We want to get it right, make it a safe space, and allow you to rest your shoulders when we're done.
Why are you doing This?
The common feeling after a profiling session is one of relief, a sense of knowing yourself, the reasons you do things, but also suddenly a curiosity about other people in your life. Because everything we do is all about relationships. It's only natural that we'd want to know about our family, friends, co-workers, and employees next.
Supporting people feels wonderful and the sense of relief, joy, and curiosity someone gets at the end of a profiling session is amazing to experience.
how do I book a session?
Since I've had plenty of time to get my feet wet with training, events, and personal interactions, I'm ready to offer an opportunity for you to schedule a profiling session to figure out your best-fit type.
This is information that you'll know about yourself for the rest of your life. Your type does not change, which is why it's important to work with someone who knows their stuff, will make sure you're comfortable, will offer some guidance, and sees this as a major passion to help people feel connected to themselves, their lives, and ultimately, feel empowered.
Isn't knowing your personality type like putting yourself into a box?
Truth is, we put ourselves into boxes all the time. Often arbitrary boxes. And create stereotypes around those ideas like gender, race, height, size, etc. So, why not learn about a box that is actually helpful and based on experiential data?
One of the things I love about personality psychology is the opportunity created to squash generic and often hateful stereotypes. We can begin to look at people for who they are and not whom we perceive them to be.
It quite simply makes the unknown, known, which allows for greater understanding, greater opportunities for connection, and far less hate in the world...because we tend to hate what we fear, and we fear what we don't understand.
Also, we're not as simple as the stereotypes of each type make it sound. We're all complex humans with complex ideas, loves, wants, and needs. While there are commonalities of the human experiences and 16 general archetypes of brain wiring, there are still 7+ billion different personalities with different cultures, experiences, upbringings, and perspectives that need to all be seen and respected for who they are.
Personality Archetypes are simply a way of understanding your control point for when you're asked by life, your environment, and the people around you to go too far away from what God, Allah, Buddha, The Universe, whatever, has given you.
This has all gotta be wrong because I know I'm an ambivert. What's with that?
In a sense you're right, but also not. Let me explain.
Ambiversion is defined as being both introverted and extroverted. The fun thing is that the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Carl Jung's work accounts for that because there is an introverted and extraverted side to everyone. The difference is that while you need both, you need one much more. That's why I use the term "best-fit" type because that pull towards one will be stronger than the other.
For example, I'm very much an introverted person but even for me, I feel the pull to go out after a few days and explore. Some extraverts absolutely can't slow down but need to in order to take a breath and regroup.
If you pay attention to the ebb and flow of people you'll see this play out over and over again. Someone spends too much time inside and needs to get out, or someone is out too often and needs to slow down.
That's not quite "ambiversion" but more of a lesson in how to flow with our brain's need to input, process, and output.
Why is it that sometimes I'm a "J" and other times I'm a "P" if there is only one type?
"J" and "P" stand for Judger and Perceiver, which references how we prefer to show up to the world. Judger references a preference for bringing your decision-making process to the outside world, which often means being prepared. Perceivers' preference is to learn in the outside world, which often means being more relaxed and ready to absorb like a sponge.
So what happens when a Judger spends time alone? They do the opposite, they spend time being more relaxed, playing, and learning on their own.
What happens when a Perceiver spends time alone? They do the opposite, they spend time organizing, preparing, and processing...deciding on their own.
Pay attention to the word "preference" as this means being a "J" or "P" is your natural preference, not a permanent state, though the preference itself, the pull to one side or the other, is permanent.