At the annual ADEC (Association of Death Education and Counseling) conference, I spoke with Dr. Lisa Prossor-Dodds about Myers Briggs personality types and the different way people grieve.

Lisa describes her research as being very exciting, because as she gets deeper into it, she’s starting to see patterns emerge from the data. She says it’s almost at a point where names can be assigned to the different grief types that are emerging.

There are 4 grief types that have clearly emerged from the data. Lisa discusses these in more detail in the video below.

Here are some key takeaways from the video:

• Everyone grieves differently, but some people grieve similar to how they live. For example, if you live as an extravert, there are going to be some aspects of your grieving process that are extraverted.
• There are things about each individual’s personality that indicate how a person may handle grief.
• There are many people who don’t go through the same kinds of emotional responses that we generally associate with grief. People who tend to be more analytical or practical in their personality type are going to be less emotional when dealing with grief, and that’s OK.
• This is important for families to understand, because not even in the family do you have the same personality types.
• Lisa recommends visiting www.lisaprosserdodds.com to learn more about your personality type and why you respond to grief the way you do.

For more video interviews, please see the Open To Hope YouTube channel.