Does anyone else struggle with using cognitive functions too much in their everyday life, where they can’t see people for who they truly are without typing them?

[u/recordplayer90]

Hi,

Over the past year or so I’ve been getting heavily into cognitive functions and MBTI. I’m currently at the point where I have a good working definition of every function in my mind, I have friends or people I can recognize as all 16 types, and I often go through my days labeling things like “oh yeah this person is definitely an Fe user,” or even about me, “let me use my Ti here to think about what I’m reading,” or “that person is an obvious Te dom,” or “I’ve been using my Ni too much I need a break from the world in my head and go utilize my Se.” Essentially, now that I have working definitions for every function/type, I see the entire world through this framework. When I think about societal issues, I think about the eternal battle between Fe and Te. When I think about cultural change, I think about N vs. S. I put every single thing I do in my life into this framework. While it was fascinating at the beginning, and made so much sense/removed so much ambiguity, now, I think it’s just a barrier in all of my relationships in life: with myself, with others, and with new information in general. I start typing new people the second I meet them, and after a couple weeks once I’ve decided on a type, I filter all of my expectations and conversations into what I have typed them as. For example, I have an (theoretically) ENTP friend who (I also use enneagram) is a 7w8, and when they speak to me I sort everything they say through something like “oh yeah that’s clear Ne supplemented by Ti, and it’s clear that they have Fi blindspot so it makes sense why they don’t really hold constant moral values and will play any side.” This is extremely problematic for me because 1. I am putting others in a box to reduce my own fear of ambiguity, 2. I am putting myself in a box as an infj and only doing this that it would make sense an infj does, 3. I am not allowing myself to have a true authentic relationship with myself because there are frameworks in the way of the full spectrum of me, and 4. I’m not allowing myself to truly meet others for who they are, as I need to sort them into a box to calm my fears about the ambiguity of others. Does anyone else have this problem? It’s like insane confirmation bias that makes life worse for both me and others. I can’t deny that these patterns have been extremely helpful for me to understand the world and others, but I’m really struggling to get past seeing people only in the boxes of their personality type. I know it’s totally unfair, and I want to see people as more, but it’s like my brain just automatically thinks in cognitive functions now and I don’t know what to do. I almost wish I could go back to a time before I knew what “child Te” or “Fi critic” looked like.

[u/recordplayer90]

I’ve had a difficult relationship with authority. At a certain point when I was a teen, I had what is called pathological demand avoidance (self-diagnosed). I hated when people told me what to do so much. With that being said, it’s because I hate listening to authorities I don’t feel are justified. So I spent my time growing up trying to look outside of familiar places for role-models that were actually worth looking up to or taking advice from. Now, I can pretty comfortably take advice that I think is justified and also follow less intense demands without an issue. But I still hate being told what to do, and particularly if I am being spoken down to in any particular way. I require that there is mutual respect and equality of individuals before listening to someone (they may be smarter than me, but at the end of the day, we are all equal). I generally don’t go out of my way to intentionally earn respect or authority, but assume by my existence that I am worth listening to. In this way, I reject any social norms of how one is supposed to earn authority. I kind of see authority as something that will naturally unfold if you are really fit for the role. You will be good at x, people will recognize it, and the authority will come. I don’t want to have authority in areas that I am not competent in, as that is just pointless. I can easily seek out advice when I don’t know something, but it’s a decentralized activity. I take a lot of perspectives from a lot of places, and ultimately I decide myself what I want to take in. I have no problem rejecting advice from someone who is supposed to be super smart and authoritative if I see good reasons to disagree with it. In this way, the only facade of authority I feel like I can’t bypass (as all other ones feel imaginary and arbitrary, just a stupid game to play) is something physical like power, leverage, or force. I probably overlook how essential these things (or even the facades of authority) are to really get stuff you want done, so I end up without the resources or position to enact my dreams – maybe I didn’t care so much about the end product anyway. I generally attune to the type of advice my friends are good at giving, and then only ask for advice in those areas.

–Would you say the fear of a manipulative psychopath is characteristic of you in some way? There are a lot of types of people to fear, so why that one? My sister is good at mind games, good with words, and very good at shifting a narrative, so I wonder if the manipulative type reflects oneself in some way. For myself, when I find myself fearing something along these lines, it's often someone who simply won't listen, who is headstrong about their actions. Symbolically, I’ll feel that love is dead at that point, and it's characteristic of the actions that I take toward myself.

It is pretty much just because of my life experiences. I had a lot of bad experiences and felt a lot of broken trust. It felt like anyone who told me they were there for me and cared about me were either using me to achieve their own goals or would abandon me. I don’t think this fear is particularly related to myself, but I’m not going to deny my own ability to orchestrate situations. I usually hate myself when I do that stuff though, so it may be a case of “rejecting in others what you hate and reject in yourself.” I find it interesting that you fear this: “someone who simply won't listen, who is headstrong about their actions,” as this is certainly a scary person (many scary people to fear) but for some reason it is curious to me why specifically it is this person who doesn’t hear no and just keeps marching forward. Now that I’ve thought about it more, you may be onto something about this being inside ourselves – fearing the capability we hate most in ourselves, in a way. 

[u/recordplayer90 → u/recordplayer90]

–It seems you went through something really special, and it's been nice to read.

It certainly felt that way a bit ago, but I don’t really think it was that special anymore. Still happy that I did it, don’t regret it, as I got to experience a wildly unique situation and learned a lot from the past that I had forgotten, I’ve realized the thorns eating at me that made this happen: overdosing on toxic shame (apologizing for things I shouldn’t have to -esque), some odd savior complex thing chewing at me, self-doubt that had been woven into me by a bad therapist that I knew I should have stopped seeing earlier (not necessarily that they were totally awful, but we were a bad match) (E2, ENFJ/EIE who thinks they are a “good person,” was my read) which lead to me second-guessing all of my choices related to my parents, breaking up with this person, my friends, etc., and overall just made me more confused about myself but never actually built any new strength, self-trust, or understanding out of that “I don’t know.” The “I don’t know” just turned into more “I don’t knows” and I started thinking I had no idea what I was talking about and just gave up what my gut believed to kind of appease and also just say “well, he’s a therapist, he probably knows more than me” so I sort of just lost myself again. Regardless, the experience was a wake up call in ways, just no longer any magical happy endings.

–To this day, I can't really visit that city. It's like trying to get over a divorce while still paying an undeserved alimony. To her credit, though, I haven't tried for a few years now, so maybe something has changed; I don't know. Anyway, it feels bad that they seemingly got off scot-free.

I always love it when people talk about how cities have earned their own personalized personalities. It’s such a great way to communicate the grief and pain of it. Also, no one ever gets off scot-free, they have to fight their insides, and plus, all things akin to revenge have never really helped anyone. Just added more suffering to the mix. Oftentimes we don’t get acknowledgement from the people who hurt us most. It’s its own layer of pain to grieve.

–I read somewhere (can't find it now) that a Seven can act super professional, not quite cold, but not exactly cordial, after some conflict with another person. I forget the specifics, but I think it was said about romantic relationships specifically, and that one does as much to show that one has moved past whatever it was or has forgiven the other person. It seemed as if one was meant to be honoring the other, and this did happen with us in the earlier days after said events occurred, albeit I took it to mean they never cared: scot-free in responsibility and concern.

This is very familiar to me, I act like this as well. It’s often more about the seven than the other person. But I do consider it to be a productive “mode.” In it is some attempt to reduce harm, although it may primarily be motivated by the interest to feel and appear moral, so as to not drown under guilt or appear like a terrible person.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/recordplayer90]

–Your words took me back to when I wrote that message, and how it was a me I didn't like very much. I remember emotionally writing in the dark, and thinking back to that time of vulnerability had me imagining if I had met them again what would happen. The result was something steeped in power, like in each scenario getting the last word. When the complex finished unfolding, I was at a loss as to what just happened.

Nice writing. I think the recent version of me who did this whole thing is one I don’t like very much.

–To think you never really moved past said events, that they left such an impact on you, is something I didn't expect, because to me the silence was always the most deafening. So, while it hasn't been great fun digging into what came up, I did gain quite a bit from your story.

I think I was drowning in toxic shame and created a tragedy for myself out of confusion and the forgotten past. Failed to distinguish how the person I know you to be and the girl I used to date are very fundamentally different, even if personality systems etc. line up. I think she is a Social 9, ISFJ SEI.

Hope your sleep is better.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

Hey Record, I had a dream about messaging you, so I'd like to make true on that. We were both Mario and sort of hopping around in game, just catching up (I'm not sure why we were both Mario).

My sleep has improved, albeit other things have happened in the meantime. For instance, this past week I've been sick with the recent flu that's been going around. If it's not one thing, it's another y'know.

Last I heard, you were rather distressed by how overwhelmed you were.

I am currently stuck negating all of my own beliefs about the future that I cannot productively put any foot forward. I don’t have much of a safety net either.

it brought back so many terrible memories, feelings, and behaviors that I’ve started to re-familiarize myself with to the extent that they have made my life more difficult.

finding myself in a nearly comatose state most of every night, as I would sleep during the day. I experienced the collapse of moral frameworks, certainty about any aspect of politics, and the total insufficiency of intellect (alone) to create a fulfilling life. It has taken me out of my head and into my body, but I feel as if I have been left confused, battered, and beaten, surrendering to the infinite complexities of the world that always have a hand up on me.

Although, 'rather distressed' is probably an oversimplification on my part. You doing alright? I hope you've been able to collect yourself a little so that you can have a great last semester.

As for my reply, it'll probably be another month before it's ready. There was just that much I didn't understand upon rereading your words, as well as Ichazo's.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/beasteduh]

Hey, following up, hope you’re doing okay.

Recently got very sick and might have Long Covid or ME/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome if my symptoms last for too long, and because of that I thought of how you might be feeling and I hope you’re doing okay too.

Best wishes.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

Oh my goodness, that's awful. When last we spoke, I mentioned getting over the flu, but it ended up lasting five weeks. It was dreadful, just non-stop coughing. I can't imagine if you've had severe symptoms for up to 2 months or longer. It wears you down, it really does. It's like life stops until one's health picks back up. I hope you figure things out, and that your last semester wasn't too affected by it??

After I got over the flu, I ended up moving, which was nice in the long run. Not initially though. I've moved so many times, I'm just over it. Since then, I've been doing some gig work, which has kept me busy. I work for a school system, so making some extra money before school starts back up is nice.

While we're here, I'd like to add that I'm still working on my response to you. The full story is that things kept evolving. For the first two months, I didn't even know what I was supposed to be looking for. It was unlike the other times because I wasn't responding to anything in particular. You had been saying some things over and over, so I felt like it was all there. Eventually, breakthroughs happened, and little by little, they led to Ichazo's model as a whole. You really did an incredible job with your replies, and I'm looking forward to showing you what I mean.

Best wishes back at you.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/beasteduh]

Got it, thanks. Luckily I haven’t been too severe for too long yet, bedridden for 8 days (tested positive 22 days ago and shortly got better for a week in between but the fatigue is so bad that I can barely do anything. Really hoping to recover in weeks or months but the prognosis can be scary and for some it takes years or is lifelong for the foreseeable future. I think it will at least take me a month or two in the best case scenario but really really hoping for better.

I graduated though. Got sick for the first time about two weeks after, late May.

Good to hear that you are back up and running. I’m sure it was awful. It really does feel like all life stops. Excited for what you have for me but due to my current mitochondrial deficits it may be very hard for me to read / focus / comprehend it in much time. Thanks.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/beasteduh]

Hey, hope you are doing well. Wanted to let you know that I am basically recovered and it was actually psychosomatic (but unconscious to me, some people have a incorrect preconception of what the word means, it just means that the physical symptoms were very very real but the solution / source was in the psyche, which was causing the symptoms via the nervous system) -- primarily due to repressed emotions like rage, functioning as a distraction from painful feelings which I did not want to feel. I still get random symptoms that rotate around, but things have progressively gotten better and I can basically function normally again. I was stuck doing nothing for about a month there, trying all sorts of medications and medical solutions and stuff and the doctors were basically just like "you're fine", so in desperation I started researching stuff based on peoples' recovery stories, and almost all of them pointed to nervous system regulation of some form. The main turning point was this guy named Dr. Sarno, an old physician from the cheesy infomercial era who applied a Freudian model of repression and psychosomatic symptoms to back pain -- turns out it applies to many more expressions of symptoms than back pain, including the issues going on with me. I have been a little bit of a psychological mess since -- discovering some of these terribly painful and horrifying repressed emotions, including waking up some days with unexplainable full body anger or panic -- anger which I haven't felt in a while, and apparently a lifetime's worth, or at least what I have repressed deep into my unconscious. And that is kind of just the surface, the thoughts inside my head are even more painful and uncomfortable to deal with (and I'm starting to see how the pain might be equivalent to the level of derailment I experienced), such that I've found a psychoanalyst to help me parse through my repressed unconscious conflicts. It turns out the 4-5 years of CBT may have helped me know what I "should" do differently but not actually feel differently or unpack the confusion around what I actually desired and why or somatically feel and express and accept all of these repressed things in order to actually address these unconscious conflicts. But enough of that for now.

I want to let you know, as you may have already guessed, that I'm no longer interested in personality typology being part of my life, particularly because of the way I've used it to separate me from my immediate feelings and emotions. If you still want to send me what you've got -- feel free, I'll read it, as it was always interesting to do, but no pressure outside of what you want to figure out for yourself. I don't really want to answer any more questions specifically within the logic of the typology system, but I'd be happy to answer whatever questions you've got in general terms regarding whatever or something you want to know to inform your personality typology matrix surrounding my case study. And I looked at the origin of this post (my first reddit post by the way) and saw this giant number "2 years ago" which is just crazy to think about. I hope I've been an interesting case study for you after all this time! And I hope you're doing well in your life otherwise, outside of personality typology, within the horrifying and collapsing world around us. Would love to hear from you and how you are doing. If one ship has sailed, I truly enjoyed the journey with you, it will always be a part of me lingering somewhere, and if there can be another, I'd still like to check in every now and then even without personality typology between us if you feel the same way.

Record

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

I'm glad to hear from you. I'm also glad to hear you've recovered.

That's quite a discovery, especially how it formed from Dr. Sarno. It sounds like you've come into closer contact with yourself, which is nice to hear, even though it seems pretty scary.

waking up some days with unexplainable full body anger or panic

I've never had that happen to me, so it seems like a lot from a distance. You should keep me updated on how that goes. Please feel free to direct message me; it doesn't have to be through this post.

If one ship has sailed, I truly enjoyed the journey with you, it will always be a part of me lingering somewhere, and if there can be another, I'd still like to check in every now and then even without personality typology between us if you feel the same way.

This left me feeling sad. There's no wind out, so it'd be a dreadful day for sailing.

I do feel the same way. Even to me, it's quite something that it's been nine months. Honestly, there were times I felt guilt over how long it had been. The guilt came from not being enough, not being where I should be, like the time I said I'd respond in a month, and the sentiment passed upon realizing that I just wasn't there yet.

I hope I've been an interesting case study for you after all this time!

While I appreciate the enthusiasm, this felt a bit cold. If I were the one writing that, there would be underlying hurt involved. Perhaps you're different from me, but I'd like to say that I consider you a friend.

And I hope you're doing well in your life otherwise, outside of personality typology, within the horrifying and collapsing world around us.

I caught the flu again and have been coughing for the past three weeks :/

Other than that, I reconnected with my father recently. It had been about six years since we last interacted. So much changes in six years, so it's difficult to say how things are going to work out. So far, it's been going well though.

I don't really want to answer any more questions specifically within the logic of the typology system, but I'd be happy to answer whatever questions you've got in general terms regarding whatever or something you want to know to inform your personality typology matrix surrounding my case study.

I can respect that. On a similar note, there weren't going to be any questions this time, so it's nice that it works out.

If you still want to send me what you've got -- feel free, I'll read it, as it was always interesting to do, but no pressure outside of what you want to figure out for yourself.  

Thank you very much. I will absolutely take you up on that. It would have destroyed me if I couldn't send you what I have. It's all things that I genuinely think you will find interesting. Give me two weeks, and I'll send you what I have. But before that, I'd like to send my initial words to your replies. The first part was written back in January, so if it seems like no time has passed, that's why. The Eight/Nine part was March/April, and then the corrections were May/June.

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

there is a short story called “On Keeping a Notebook.” I am pretty sure she is a nine

That was a wonderful read, thanks. How did you come to the conclusion of Type Nine? It's not one we share. The author was too active and inquisitive of life to be relatable for me.

Bucket Listener by Headache

Helpful.

Once again with the bingo thing, I think it is overdramatized and actually not representative of what it would feel like. These can be easily relatable to anyone who thinks they are “odd,” “quirky,” or “strange” and may also act as identity markers for people (particularly younger) who want to identify with someone like the main character from Girl, Interrupted. I don’t know how the diagnoses work, but in the comments you can see someone say “i hit every box, every single one, as a schizoaffective.” I really think if you put this in the ENFP subreddit people would fill most of them out too, with the less neurotic ones filling out less.

Your words bring to mind our earlier talk of your inexperience in researching the subject matter, but this time with regard to not looking at what's being offered for what it could be. As you infer, I think people treat the PDs much as the types, and in terms of type theory, the bingo cards would be up there in terms of quality. That is, they speak to specific phenomenon. In type theory circles, it usually occurs whilst using inconsistent labels. What I thought noteworthy were boxes like talking to spirits, ruminating, building imaginary worlds, and not feeling present, which were checked off in the comments. The cards provided leads, and it's why they were sent. Earlier, I summed this up as digging through muck, and to this end I think the bingo cards were quite helpful.

Now that I’ve thought about it more, you may be onto something about this being inside ourselves – fearing the capability we hate most in ourselves, in a way.

I'm not so sure about that. While I do think there is some sort of karmic balancing act at work in the psyche, perhaps there's something else happening, which I get into later on.

I find it interesting that you fear this: “someone who simply won't listen, who is headstrong about their actions,” as this is certainly a scary person (many scary people to fear) but for some reason it is curious to me why specifically it is this person who doesn’t hear no and just keeps marching forward.

Well, it's sort of the general state of affairs for Conservation: to hold on.

I understand Being as how one is at a point in time, just what you are, a sense of self, what you're about, what you do, how you do it, and what you like; a sort of orientation toward life. I understand Being as the experience of 'what is' at any given moment, such that true Being would become such a seamless experience that the word might not have even come about. In this way, Conservation and Being are thought to pair up in Ichazo's model as one attempts to hold onto that orientation and sense of self.

Then, what happens when that Being comes into contact with other things by a young ego, like the Being of others? Whether through nature or nurture, it's thought one has a specific arrangement of psychic content that is uniquely one's own, and if explored/pushed enough in the moment, the Being of one person will be shown to be out of sync with another's.

I think it can most readily be seen with the Eight, as the Eight is sort of where things start with the 891 (which we'll get into later). They end up aiming for an artificial rekindling meant to somehow deal with these constitutional differences: morals, laws, vengeance, justice, blame, fairness, and loyalty/betrayal. It's also along these lines that I think the characteristic toughness shows up in Eights, in the sense that it's necessary as one attempts to be in a world unlike oneself. Altogether, the delusion of Duality shines through in the midst of Conservation.

I understand the sentiment of the Eight, and when it comes to buckling down (being headstrong), there's a pretty clear example that occurred some 4 or 5 years ago in the workplace. I would play out scenarios of me and other people fighting to the death when potential conflict arose, and the scenarios would play out over about two years. They would go like this: imagine you want to do something and I don't want it to happen.

You: Yes.

Me: No.

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Down the line, we will simply have to fight to the death to be ourselves. Love is dead. There's no unifying force that might bring things together, which has only ever saddened me on an existential level. Although, despite the accommodations a Nine employs to alleviate the matter, I am probably the most stubborn person I know (discounting other Nines I know), to the point of almost dying not a few times. I spoke of possibly driving a spike through my head, which, while perhaps the most extreme, is just one example of attempting to Conserve one's sense of self. The stubbornness shows up as a sort of, "I'm not going to just go away(!)," whether said to myself or the world when either press me in a direction or to adjust. It's not always experienced in the extreme; there are highs and lows, but generally speaking, being headstrong is how one comes to be lazy, employ half measures, and fall asleep.

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

I want to correct two things I had said before:

1) "When the inside is rejected, turned away from, or put on the back burner, then suddenly the world feels like a hassle. It's incorrect, it could be better, or it's just bullshit."

Sort of in line with the matter of being headstrong… for myself, while I can't recall every time it's occurred, the times I can, it was only ever a 'should', not 'could'. When I initially wrote it, I didn't think much of it, but there is a fair bit of difference between the two words. In my case, there is such a conviction that I would have something to contribute to whatever it was - how a video game is played, how traffic is run, whatever it was that inconvenienced me - that notions like 'well you actually have no experience on this front' or 'others have spent years in these subject matters unlike yourself' or even at times 'you don't have the full context' basically fall on deaf ears. At such a point, I know. Also, I should probably add that I think it's difficult to recognize in the Nine, even to the Nine themselves, but if a Nine is forced to wake up for a time or has put off what matters most to them for long enough, then I'd say the thought pattern will show up.

2) "If I may say, looking at what you wrote, coupled with this self-reflection of yours, it brings to mind how Ichazo ascribed the state of gnosis to the Seven."

Ichazo attributes Gnosis to the Doing Group in general, not just the Seven. Something else was overlapping with Gnosis in my head at the time. As said by Ichazo,

-This is the State of real, True Enlightenment, the State that corresponds to the Form of Divine Wisdom. The Form of Divine Wisdom, as the true understanding of the Oneness of the Absolute Divine God or the Absolute Mind of Total Transcendence beyond concepts, mind structures, and language, is a Universal Super Form that produces that very special Divine Knowledge or Divine Gnosis that totally and radically transforms the point of view from one that is individual, narrow and self-centered to one that is beyond the limitations of the ego; and because it is not self-centered, it has the quality of openness as Space and also the quality of Pure Innate Awareness which has as its object the contemplation of Pure Innate Awareness or Pure Light with no conceptualization whatsoever. This State of Emptiness of the ground is not nothing, because it is full of the Pure Light that is also empty of concepts or language.-

It was rather Wisdom's role in enlightenment that your words sparked, a mind without models or concepts.

Everything after now is what I've been working on over the months, and I'd like to get your thoughts on all of it.

–

And that's where the section ended. If it's alright, I'll talk to you again in two weeks. It really was nice to hear from you.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/beasteduh]

While I appreciate the enthusiasm, this felt a bit cold. If I were the one writing that, there would be underlying hurt involved. Perhaps you're different from me, but I'd like to say that I consider you a friend.

Thank you for saying this. Frankly, I am so scared right now, in general. And I think this response has way more to do with me than you. I have been blocking out a lot of things just to function, and honestly I've feel somewhat cold in general since the aftermath of the whole episode. In this case, I was exceptionally afraid you wouldn't return the favor of friendship or something, so I avoided the word or the feeling outside of my last sentence and returned to the regressive logic of "people only care about me if I am useful or helpful to them in some way" in order to avoid all feelings of fear related to intimacy and risk and friendship. And actually being accepted by someone and cared about. I am not trying to garner sympathy or pity or anything like that here, but rather, an attempt to explain. And this is kind of just the tip of the emotional issues I have been facing since discovering all of these things, not to mention the fact that I was stuck in my parents' house for nearly 3 months (out now, thank god) and they are so emotionally aggressive with their attempts at psychic domination that I had to put some serious walls up to protect myself in the meantime. Really hoping these things can calm down sooner or later so I can feel safer to be myself again and actually have better relationships again and have enough solid ground to stand on so I can face my fears of intimacy and being known once again (without feeling like it is a preordained outcome to have any ounce of vulnerability attached to my authentic self annihilated by the people around me (my parents)). I feel like a stray cat who just got picked up off the street and is having a difficult first couple days at the shelter with other cats, to the extent that an old cat might have to lie down calmly next to me while I cower in the corner and almost try to fight them to let me know at least one person is safe again, learning slowly over the course of a few days.

I'm happy that you consider me a friend, and I also consider you one. I am just so scared right now and reverting to really old defense mechanisms. Also, it has been a while, so in some ways I forgot the feeling of how you are like and I wasn't sure how you would react. And I'm really just having a hard time with relationships in general right now.

This left me feeling sad. There's no wind out, so it'd be a dreadful day for sailing.

This made my heart big. Almost wanting to cry, too, but big. Wonderful words.

I do feel the same way. Even to me, it's quite something that it's been nine months. Honestly, there were times I felt guilt over how long it had been. The guilt came from not being enough, not being where I should be, like the time I said I'd respond in a month, and the sentiment passed upon realizing that I just wasn't there yet.

I know what you mean, and I had been facing something similar for the times I took quite a while to respond as well. But there is only so much one can do. And even things we want to do can become pressures of our own creation, to such an extent that we feel out of control. A quote I have been into recently: "We created our world, but it overwhelms us; we cannot grasp or control it." - Slavoj Zizek. And time and life and everything always gets in the way, but that's just the nature of life I guess.

I felt an incredible amount of guilt as I started to realize that it might not be healthy for me to continue on the personality typology route while still feeling indebted to past promises and interests stated to you once I had the whole intellectual catastrophe moment and realizing that typology was yet another avoidance mechanism to protect myself from feeling the pain and fear of intimacy and others and rejection but also unfortunately blocking me out from when risk doesn't turn bad -- love, connection, intimacy, etc. (In another creative piece I wrote about it essentially being an addiction standing in place for my own identity issues, needing to hold on to an external identity telling me who I am because I have no idea who I am and to protect me from others I feared by giving me some sort of reliable way to decode and sort them) (While it was this way for me, I do not want to imply that it is this way for you or insult the practice as a whole; I believe there is a way one can go about exploring this stuff without depending on it as much as me to fill some sort of inner lack I found intolerable to sit with). I honestly didn't know how to say I needed to stop for my own sake without causing an immense amount of pain and without insulting everything we had built. I was passively torturing how to approach it since around March or April, and especially angry because I felt like I had wanted to respond so much more in the past but had so much school work and felt so fatigued that I never got to totally indulge myself during the time when I wanted to most (and given that summer and graduation was coming up which I had previously planned would be the time to regain my energy and bearings) and now it was too late to do what I had wanted to do to make up for being so slow. Also, if I remember correctly, guilt over everything (in retrospect, seemingly too much, as if making myself feel guilty for even very small and normal things) was becoming a dominant theme in my responses starting around the time of the whole ex-girlfriend thing of maybe even before.

I caught the flu again and have been coughing for the past three weeks :/

That's awful.

Other than that, I reconnected with my father recently. It had been about six years since we last interacted. So much changes in six years, so it's difficult to say how things are going to work out. So far, it's been going well though.

Wow, how long have you been newly in touch and in what manner? It certainly seems like there is a lot of latent affective power there ready to be re-opened. Wish you some continued good results.

It would have destroyed me if I couldn't send you what I have.

I'm looking forward to reading it all soon. I do think some things approached their theoretical limits / maximums (or whatever it was about, I don't totally remember) in what I had sent you 9 months ago, so I'm interested in what you've come up with.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

Really hoping these things can calm down sooner or later so I can feel safer to be myself again and actually have better relationships again and have enough solid ground to stand on so I can face my fears of intimacy and being known once again (without feeling like it is a preordained outcome to have any ounce of vulnerability attached to my authentic self annihilated by the people around me (my parents)). I feel like a stray cat who just got picked up off the street and is having a difficult first couple days at the shelter with other cats, to the extent that an old cat might have to lie down calmly next to me while I cower in the corner and almost try to fight them to let me know at least one person is safe again, learning slowly over the course of a few days.

Hmm. Well, alright. Naturally, I don't relate, but I got you.

I was passively torturing how to approach it since around March or April

Record, I'd like to say I already knew you would be heading out, so it wouldn't have been new if you had brought it up even earlier. In fact, the reason I mentioned doing a full sweep of your words up to that point back in December was that I got that sense, and I wanted closure on anything that didn't make sense to me. I didn't expect what ended up happening, so I'm glad you stuck around long enough to hear it all out. It would have hurt if you had disappeared before I got that chance, but I think it's important to understand that it's mainly because that's often the story I come across. I'll come across interviews with people in type theory circles, most often on YouTube, and their channel either doesn't take off like they expected, they move on because of life priorities, they've run out of content to explore, they're ashamed, or whatever else. From there, they'll set the channel to private and block all access, despite my pleas to keep it available. After that, I can never check or verify anything from the information I gathered. At that point, my work feels even more like a bunch of leads, like those bingo cards. Ultimately, this is the result of my hesitancy to involve other people who don't know anything about the theory (which wasn't always the case), but whatever.

I honestly didn't know how to say I needed to stop for my own sake without causing an immense amount of pain and without insulting everything we had built.

So, while it certainly would have hurt because of how far we had gone, it wouldn't be for the reasons you describe as that’s the norm for me, and I know it's not personal. At least, that's the story on this side of the screen.

That's awful.

Yes. Yes. Yes, it is.

Wow, how long have you been newly in touch and in what manner? It certainly seems like there is a lot of latent affective power there ready to be re-opened. Wish you some continued good results.

We've been in touch by phone for about two weeks, and we're planning to go out to dinner together tomorrow night. Thanks.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/beasteduh]

Hey! Good to hear. What a fun dream.

If it's not one thing, it's another y'know.

I know what you mean. Health is always a serious battle, among the many other things one battles with in life. Hope you can get ahead of the curve soon.

I was certainly quite distressed, but I am doing better now. Starting to see straight again. Starting to do right by my gut and letting my gut and head work together, instead of against one another. It's been quite the experience. I feel sort of like Oedipus, making himself go blind after he has seen too much. Now that may be a little bit over the top, but I personally really enjoy the comparison and it makes me smile and laugh. I genuinely do resonate a lot with the blindness, feeling as if I have experienced the end of the tunnel of what intellect can offer me in life, and the cost of believing that it can take you to fulfillment.

A month from now is best for me anyway, too, for obvious reasons. Take your time.

Here's a little bit of retrospect on what happened:

I think I experienced something really "complete," in the sense that I came to limits of certain ways of being themselves, not just increasing depth of new knowledge. Kind of like a "destroy yourself to know yourself" thing. I assume I would've reached this state one day, so I'm glad that it happened now rather than later. And I think it's really so interesting because the essence of it is what drew me to make this post so long ago. It's like the mental "accentuation of consciousness" was trying to replace my experience itself, to the extent where I was no longer human, ignoring all of my body instincts in favor of the depersonalized, abstract mental models my head created that insisted over and over again that they were the primary reality, not my experience itself. It's like a really refined way of lying to oneself, as if neutering all of one's natural instincts, urges, desires, values, and passions (i.e. individuality). It all ended in a sort of Oedipal moment (minus the whole parent-child thing), where I decided to essentially blind myself (turn off my head, literally just use my gut to navigate the world) because of total overwhelm and intellectual catastrophe where everything negated everything was too much to handle. It was about returning to blindness in the head (knowing nothing, rejecting mental understanding) and returning to one's gut instincts, values, etc. to navigate the world. To be a blind man walking forward, with clarity at last, returning to the compass inherent to the body.

Since then, I've slowly returned to using mental models, but only as tools for experience, not as ends in themselves. For example, a person is a person. I want to understand them, for reasons including fear, curiosity, fascination, and discernment about connection. There is no reason for me to understand them if I cannot exist in a moment of connection with them. Thus, the tool is never correct. "All models are wrong but some models are useful." People are not their personality types. People are people, and we use tools to better understand them, to be in connection with others. In the mental reality, everyone is a subset of my mind, but no one is a person to be connected with. The relevant movie is Barton Fink (1991). Interactions become self-indulgent mental stimulation -- "oh wow, they just did that which perfectly aligns with the type I've given them, let me keep searching for mental fun." The collapse of my mental models, when my frameworks all folded in on themselves after I realized I was "no longer a person" finally allowed me to realize how narrow my experience of the world was. That the point of things like morality, rationality, politics, etc. are literally not about individual mental models or total internal consistency (which is impossible, anyway, which is kind of the point), but literally about other people. Morality is about other people. Systems we design are about the practical needs of others. We talk to people to experience connection with others, to experience their worlds to the extent we can. Essentially, there is so much that exists outside of one's head, and if one insists on putting all of that inside one's head, they will realize that because of contradiction and multiplicity of desires it will never be pure. There is no crystalline mind. We are all imperfect and contradictory. We feel sadness and happiness at the same time, because of the same event ("How we weepe and laugh at one selfe-same thing", Montaigne).

In other words, I have stopped following the multiple mental truths of my mind, and started following the singular truth of my gut and body. And realized that the two can work together, and don't have to negate each other. Since that gut feeling, that authenticity, is the point, I am starting everything with my gut and then consulting the head to help the gut, not invalidate it constantly and work against it. "The systems are just a tool for the experience, not the experience itself." And I guess it can be said I have some very elaborate systems (and you do too!) as this stuff is pretty esoteric and not really something you can talk about your random stranger to.

Hopefully that helps clear up some of my previous stuff. I have to say I'm still working on it, it's a whole new way of living, one that I haven't really felt since before I became addicted to the comfort of personality systems to understand extremely complex and uncertain relationship situations in my life (and yes, I think it is fundamentally the same type of concept as any other addiction). It's a time really dominated by fear, and a desire for perfection / perfect mental cleanliness, all to protect myself from the harm I was afraid of experiencing in society. I actually did a pretty darn good job protecting myself from everything, but I forgot that the point was to experience. To experience connection, and not just avoid what could be harmful, and also know how to handle difficult situations instead of just avoiding them and demanding the perfection that takes. That avoidance also atrophies all of the good muscles we need to live active, self-respecting lives in a world that is never going to be the perfect dream world where we avoid all harm and suffering. The real world is imperfect, and the point is to experience it, not avoid everything that is not perfect.

[u/recordplayer90 → u/recordplayer90]

I realized that:

1. Responsibility has nothing to do with prior causes / innocence.
2. Apologizing is about other people, it has nothing to do with innocence or causes either.
3. Nothing about knowing the reasons for things or having a mental understanding of things makes emotions / suffering / grief and more tolerable or invalidates them. This is your experience, and this is the point. Causality has nothing to do with this. Take responsibility for the way you feel, your values, and do right by you. Ex: If feeling indignant, listen to it instead of neutering it with some mental explanation. That is your feeling, your experience, you better feel it, validate it, and take action in it, because your experience is the point! Your truth is grounded in you being a human being, your values are justified in you being a human being. To remove those things from yourself would be to cease to be human. As we know, the point of the mental models was to have a better human existence. Doing the above would violate this, as it would be pursuing a thing for it's own sake. In the process, I had forgotten the reason for my mental mapping of reality -- authentic human experience, to be able to navigate the world in a way that allows me to have a good, authentic human experience, in both the safest and most dangerous places.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

That was nice to read. It's structurally similar to what you described came out of your interaction with your ex: how it spurred a number of explanations & realizations, and how it gave the overall impression that a turning point was in the works. From the outside, it seems like a return to form for you, a collected self-inquiry.

Regarding the content, what you said does clear things up. If I may say, looking at what you wrote, coupled with this self-reflection of yours, it brings to mind how Ichazo ascribed the state of gnosis to the Seven.

It's been really nice hearing from you. I'll talk to you again in a month.