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This week: The Architect Edited by: Shannon  
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Welcome to the Short Stories Newsletter. I am Shannon and I'm your editor this week. |
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Managers love words like "teamwork", "team player", "team building", and "teammate", yet they love labeling people and separating us into manageable categories.
Soren Aabye Kierkegaard
| A nineteenth-century Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic, and religious author widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. 1 |
Last week my employer embarked on a new team-building exercise for which every employee was "encouraged" to take a personality test. All sixteen personality types were written on the board and each teammate was asked to sign his or her name next to their "type" (label) after completing the test.
So far, I'm the only "Architect" in my department.
"It can be lonely at the top. As one of the rarest personality types – and one of the most capable – Architects (INTJs) know this all too well. Rational and quick-witted, Architects may struggle to find people who can keep up with their nonstop analysis of everything around them.
"To these personalities, most team-building techniques and group meetings are a waste of time."
Management concocts pep talks ("Go team!" is currently written on the greaseboard in our breakroom) and team-building exercises on a relatively regular basis. A few months ago the CFO printed an "inspirational quote", laminated it, and taped it to the outside of a cabinet door in our breakroom. It read: "The more I work the luckier I get." Every time I walked in it smacked me in the face (or at least that's what it felt like). It irritated me. I thought, That's basically what it said over the gates of Auschwitz! Arbeit Macht Frei: Work sets you free. What a crock! After a few weeks I moved the "inspirational quote" to the inside of the cabinet door. No one noticed, so a few weeks after that I moved it to the trash.
Good riddance!
"This personality type comes with a strong independent streak. Architects don’t mind acting alone, perhaps because they don’t like waiting around for others to catch up with them. They also generally feel comfortable making decisions without asking for anyone else’s input. At times, this lone-wolf behavior can come across as insensitive, as it fails to take into consideration other people’s thoughts, desires, and plans."
Hmm. It's making more sense. I work hard each and every day and bend over backward to do a thorough job, but I resent being told to work harder, even in such a general way (e.g. a posted quote in the breakroom). What is this, middle school? I'm forty-nine years old, for God's sake. I've been a nurse for sixteen years. I know what I'm doing, and I do it well.
Last week one of my coworkers had a meltdown an hour into her shift. She was sobbing uncontrollably and completely incapable of doing her job. While another coworker ("The Consul", or ESFJ personality type: "extraordinarily caring, social and popular people, always eager to help") put her arm around the crying woman in an attempt to console her, my gaze bounced from one to the other as I stood a few feet away and hurled questions in a fervent barrage. "What's wrong? What happened? Do you need to go home? Do you need us to take your patients? Can someone please send out a group text to get someone in here to take Jess's place!"
"When sensitive or emotional situations arise, Architects may feel out of their depth. Even with their closest friends, these personalities may struggle to offer comfort – or receive it. Architects are used to feeling knowledgeable and capable, and this sudden cluelessness can be disorienting for them."
Architects you may know:
 Emily Bronte
Friedrich Nietzsche
Elon Musk
Isaac Newton
John F. Kennedy
Nikola Tesla
Charles Darwin
Sylvia Plath
While I don't necessarily accept the label of "Architect" I do acknowledge many of the traits ring true. We can't all be the same, can we? If we were all driven by our emotions I'd still be standing in the breakroom in the middle of a hug-o-rama and the patients would be caring for themselves. 
Are you struggling with a less-than-realistic character for your work in progress? Do you need some tips, tricks, and traits to flesh out your protagonist? Perhaps you'd simply like to know your personality type? Check out 16personalities.com and take the test, then cruise on over to learn more about the sixteen different personality types. You might just find your next hero or heroine hiding within its pages.
Thank you for reading.
P.S. Everyone who shares their thoughts about this week's topic will receive an exclusive trinket. I will retire this month's limited-edition trinket at 11:59 p.m. WDC time on July 11, 2017, when my next short stories newsletter goes live.
Notes:
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard
2. All quoted material (in red) from https://www.16personalities.com/intj-personality |
I hope you enjoy this week's featured selections. I occasionally feature static items by members who are no longer with us; some have passed away, while others simply aren't active members. Their absence doesn't render their work any less relevant, and if it fits the week's topic I will include it.
Thank you, and have a great week!
| |  | Jake (18+)
A boy suspects that there's something very wrong with his friend.
#1186197 by Mike R.  |
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Have an opinion on what you've read here today? Then send the Editor feedback! Find an item that you think would be perfect for showcasing here? Submit it for consideration in the newsletter!
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The following is in response to "A History of Madness" :
Princess Megan Snow Rose  writes: Electric shock treatment is cruel and at my job, 2 people were on it. It helped the one person but she reverted back to her old ways. Sad. The other woman was so much better then her condition declined. She would take teddy bears with her everywhere. I read families years ago locked their mentally challenged up like you mentioned. I know a few families who refuse to acknowledge their mentally challenged relatives and put them in a home and forget about them. I enjoyed this newsletter. You did some good research and working with the mentally ill isn't easy but for some of them, staff is all they have to care about them. That's where I come in. Thank you for writing this.
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sindbad  writes: Hi Shannon
This is a informative and a eye opener for me. I am familiar with all the practices you have mentioned here. The facts and figures you have mentioned and the electric shock therapy has been an eye opener for me. I do follow and feel affected with the side effects and peoples apathy for patients suffering from mental illness. This topic has more speculative and an inherent fear attached to it and is addressed as a taboo in today's society. I believe the best cure for mental illness is yoga, meditation and a close touch with mother nature. If we try to categorize mental illness as a disease and try some short term methods like drugs, shock therapy or operation. This will bring severe side effects to patients and bring a long term suffering as well.
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Azrael Tseng writes: Fascinating read, especially the part about people subjecting themselves to ECT to receive a grand-map seizure and cure their depression! My 2-year old son has epileptic seizures 1-2 times a month on average whenever he gets a fever, and it's always such a trauma to watch him go through it. Therefore I can't imagine why anyone would want to subject themselves to something like that.
I wrote a horror short story inspired by Doctor Henry Cotton from New Jersey State Lunatic Asylum a short while back "Invalid Item" . It's pure fiction, of course, and written to deliver shock value and entertainment rather than to educate about mental illness. Some readers were pretty upset with me for that story, thinking that it stigmatised mental illness.
Thank you for sharing such good information on this topic.
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Prosperous Snow celebrating  writes: I always enjoy reading this newsletter because I either learn something, or find an idea for a story and/or poem. This week I learned a new phrase "Utica Cribs", I'm not sure how I will use it yet. I'll have to brain storm this for a couple of days before I decide the approach.
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dragonwoman  writes: I have written several stories about dementia and Alzheimer's and at least one on mental illness, all fiction. Yes, I definitely scour the internet for information on many topics I have chosen to write about to get details right and find out more if I know very little. The one closest to my heart is called: I Remember Love.
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BIG BAD WOLF is Howling  writes: Try being some who has a mental condition, for even in today's world, there are still those who poke cruel humor at those with such conditions.
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Elycia Lee ☮  writes: Let me assure you that I'm not here for the trinket, although getting one would be really nice.  Your newsletter came so timely. I've just been pickpocketed on Sunday night and I suspect I'm undergoing some trauma. It opens up a discussion on mental illness, psychiatrist and all that. I have to admit that it is an area of fascination to me. I am surprised at how I, as a victim, reacted the way I did to a simple pickpocketing incident, having nightmares, talking in my sleep, having a little bit shortness of breath. I am both traumatised and fascinated that I got to walk into a police station but that is a story for another day. I wrote about a character before and I struggled because I didn't know how to place her with the psychiatrist. What do they do to a 6-year-old who witnessed an accident that killed her parents, forgot about the incident but is clearly traumatised by the incident? I couldn't answer that question. I didn't know how to look for the answer. I look at your newsletter and I am fascinated by the amount of thought and research put into it as well as your own experience. I didn't know that you used to work in the hospital. I really enjoyed reading the newsletter. I enjoyed the video. It's a great newsletter and I learnt a lot even though I didn't understand some of the jargons (that's what Google is for.) I am aghast that people electrocute themselves to get cured of depression.  Does it help them from suicide? The area of psychology is so vast. I reckon, sometimes, there's no one true answer to any questions related to this field.  Thanks for sharing your lovely, lovely newsletter. I absolutely loved it.
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Quick-Quill  writes: Here is my 'Dialogue only' story that was published. Its about dementia.
Thank you for this NL. Another "Keeper" for me. In reading I found nuggets I can use.
In my book I researched Tuberculosis treatments in the late 1940's. I found it very interesting.
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Elizabeth writes: Thanks for sharing this information! I've always been incredibly fascinated by historical medicine and psychiatry. Did you see that listverse recently shared a post about psychiatry in the 19th century? http://listverse.com/2017/05/17/top-10-crazy-facts-about-psychiatry-in-the-19th-...
As someone who has chronic illnesses, along with depression, anxiety, and seasonal affective disorder, I often try to include such things in my writing. I've also tried to depict these things in an historical context as well.
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LinnAnn -Book writer  writes: This was a very disturbing newsletter. I am much too sensitive for it. It was well done, I did not watch the video and I think my lap top is too old.
I also read some of the comments from others. How sick does someone have to be to pay to pokie the ill with sticks and laugh. I shook my head.
thanks for the work you put into this
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GaelicQueen  writes: Once again you have awed me with your research prowess. I didn't know Hemmingway went through ECT. We look back on older medical practices and think how barbaric the treatments were. What will our descendants think of our medical advancements two hundred or more years from now?
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Tiggy  writes: Great newsletter, Shannon! Very informative, and a little disturbing to think what used to be acceptable. I have written a few stories about mental illness but only from my own experience; I've never done any research into this kind of treatment and I'm not sure I would want to write about it! But I learned a lot from this newsletter. Thanks!
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Jeff  writes: I really struggle with the idea of medical advancements and experimental treatments. On the one hand, I know science is imperfect and every step paves the way to greater understanding and progress. On the other hand, boy have we really subjected people to some awful treatments and ideas in the past. It always makes me wonder if ten, twenty, a hundred years in the future, if we'll look back on some of the really awful procedures we have now and wonder how we ever thought that was the most effective way to treat someone. Will chemotherapy seem silly years from now if there's a better cancer treatment that has fewer side effects? Will cracking someone's chest open to operate on their internal organs seem barbaric if we one day create nano-robots that can less invasively repair organ trauma?
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Whata SpoonStealer  writes: Oh the mental health industry in America has always appalled me and fascinated me at the same time. Call it kooky, but there's a reason former mental asylums are haunted: talk about unresolved issues!
My grandmother was institutionalized for depession for thirteen years in the fifties and sixties. She was diagnosed schizophrenic. After the first set of ECT, she became catatonic for many years. She really just needed some medication and counseling, I mean in today's world I think she would have fared much better. Instead, the treatments helped but only in the way that an amnesiac cannot remember their traumas origin. Rather like the chicken and the egg, that one.
I look forward to your newsletters, my dear! Always fascinating. I'd love to know if you've had any spooky or spiritual encounters in your line of work? If so, maybe you'll consider writing a newsletter or article on the subject some time 
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~ Aqua ~ writes: Wow, this was definitely a different kind of newsletter I usually read but it was quite informative and I liked it. Your newsletter actually gave me an idea of writing something similar in the topic for another of my projects on WDC. Thank you for that!
Also, I have to agree with you. Once I read an article about the punishments and mental disorders and their so called 'treatments' in the past and it left me shocked for those ill people were not treated as persons at all!
Even though there had been progress in our society and our methods have changed, yet the mentally challenged people are being treated badly and confined space within spaces instead of being treated normally. It's sad, you hear students bullying special children, people leaving their old parents or relatives who are mentally ill in low standard institutions where they never turn back to see how they are doing.
A very good topic to write on.
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Dragon is hiding writes: I learned about mental illnesses and the brain when I was in introductory psychology.... and it didn't go well with me, so I try to keep my distance from it, especially when it gets to going into the brain!
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eyestar~* writes: Wow! This is fascinating and well researched. I have read articles on this topic and it is horrifying.... more so when more modern mistreatments are done. I didn't know about Hemingway. Wow!
I do not write about these issues but can see where some of these tortures could make for good horror fiction. Thanks for enlightening with a bit of history and current thought on mental illness.
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Hannah ♫♥♫ writes: Great newsletter, and great research! While I have not written on the subject of mental illness, I have thought about doing so. My grand daughter who lived with us for six years had severe ADHD. It was a struggle for her and for us raising her. While many people have empathy for physically challenged children with those with lower IQs, most people did not care to except that her mental condition was directly connected to her behavior. The parents encouraged their kids to shun her. We still have a long way to go in the mental health field and in educating the public.
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Future Mrs. Boo  writes: Sadly, I think in some cultures mental illness is still taboo. I know some family members who believe depression is caused by loneliness and if one gets themselves out there, they will be cured. It's so frustrating. I think society still had a bit of a way to go.
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jree03 writes: I Loved it. It was very interesting to read about.
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Mara ♣ McBain  writes: I had a friend that wrote a story about an asylum and some of the stories she shared were horrific! Intriguing topic!
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ruwth  writes: Wow, Shannon! You draw me to your Newsletters with an offer of a trinket. You draw me back for a second look -- and more -- with what you have written! Well done!
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Short Stories: June 14, 2017 Issue [#8298]
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