Levels of health

Every type has a range, from its freest and most open expression down to its most defensive and constricted one. The type itself doesn't change across that range — the core motivation is the same at both ends — but how much that motivation drives the person, and how much room there is around it for anything else, changes a great deal.

At its best, a type's core strategy is a strength, used lightly and by choice. Under strain, the same strategy tightens into something closer to a compulsion — the person has less choice about it, even though the behaviour can look similar on the surface.

The three bands: at its best, a type's strategy is one tool among many, picked up and put down as useful. Typical, day-to-day, it's the tool reached for automatically, more often than any other. Under strain, it's the only tool left — used harder, with less awareness, and with less of the person's other capacities available to balance it.

A range of health isn't a ladder someone climbs once and stays on. It's closer to weather — a place a person tends to sit, that can shift for a week, a season, or a life stage, in either direction. The idea comes from Don Riso, who with Russ Hudson developed it into nine fine-grained levels that track a type's shift step by step. This site uses a plain three-band version — healthy, typical, under strain — without their branded framework.

Much self-mistyping comes from reading a description written at one point on the range and comparing it to yourself at a different point. Someone functioning well, with self-awareness and room to breathe, can read a description that emphasizes a type's constricted traits, think "that's not me at all," and rule themselves out.

The reverse happens too: someone going through a hard stretch can read a description of their type at its best and feel like an impostor. In both directions, "I don't act like a stereotypical [type]" is often a question about where on the range you're reading, not about whether it's the right type. This is also why look-alikes happen: a type at one end of its range can resemble a different type at the other end of theirs.

Most people also move within their own range over an ordinary week. A rough night's sleep, a stressful deadline, a good conversation can shift where someone sits for an afternoon. That's normal variation within one type, not evidence of a different one.

Most people would rather see themselves at their best than at their worst, so the "at its best" description of almost any type can feel flattering and plausible. Read both ends of a type's range.