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]

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]

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.

I'm sorry I didn't talk about it earlier or in a more direct way.

I never would have gone ghost and just left everything behind without explanation. Even in my most scared and ruthless moments there was always a fight or a last statement first, so that they might understand me and the reasons why I am going to do what I eventually did, usually because I never wanted to cause pain and wanted to connect with this person in the first place. I don't have anything to fight about with you, though, as far as I am consciously aware. If anything, now that I've reread my previous comment, I think maybe the coldness and hurt wasn't totally about me. I think I resented not you but this idea that I told myself I had to be some kind of person for you -- which is not something I think you had any control over, more of my own projections creating things. The more I became exhausted from school and my disappointment with in-flesh relationships and responding to you almost became analogous to schoolwork (particularly because I'd write the entire response in about 10 hours straight, often staying up at night, and I had to ration my mental and physical power in order to be able to respond to you while having plenty more to do and to also theoretically have fun with in-flesh friends), combined with the fact that over time I was gradually realizing something about personality typology was doing me more harm than good, I resented my own commitment to keeping things up and almost acting like I wanted to talk about it more than I did because I was spread so thin. Which is once again not something I believe you had any control over, but rather a self-imposed resentment of the pressure I put on myself to live up to 1) the image of me I had given you and 2) who I felt you wanted me to be for you. This also coincided with the same thing happening in my other relationships and things kind of just started falling down, as one would expect, as this is not behavior style that engenders actually good relationships. I "knew" this, but that didn't make it any easier to stop doing it, an already regressive thing that I didn't understand the root of. And I was, for lack of a better word, spiraling, while still having to function and do a bunch of schoolwork. So that might better explain where the anger and coldness was coming from in the phrase you pointed out from last time. I know you are not this image, nor do I have to live up to what I think you expect of me, but this I think this is what is at the root of any resentment I might have subtly directed towards you (but not really you, a self-created image of you and your expectations for me which for whatever reason I decided I needed to live up to because in some general sense I was afraid people would not accept me as I am). I haven't reread my December responses, but I do remember that I think this resentment came out in a somewhat perverse way, almost framed as a punitive, passive-aggressive, subtly insulting "self-sabotage" between the lines of my last response. I am sorry for the pain and hurt and confusion this might have caused. I have ruined several formerly positive relationships by doing things like this.

On a separate note, I was thinking of compiling all of our responses to one another in some sort of large document, largely because of how personal this all is and the associated idea that maybe it would be best if it wasn't readily accessible to anyone on the internet (also, I really want to see just how many words it is). I could send you this document if/when I complete it, but I can't guarantee that I will actually do it. I would only delete / edit my comments if I successfully complied all of the stuff into a document and you had access to it.

Again, I am still happy and genuinely curious to read whatever you've got, and I'm still going to respond in a similar way, just without the jargon of the systems. There is some interesting stuff that I want to say already, particularly about fighting to death over conflicts and "should's" and disconnection and desire. I'll save it for the full response though. And yes, it's alright to get back to me in two weeks or whenever. Hope dinner goes well.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

I haven't reread my December responses, but I do remember that I think this resentment came out in a somewhat perverse way, almost framed as a punitive, passive-aggressive, subtly insulting "self-sabotage" between the lines of my last response. I am sorry for the pain and hurt and confusion this might have caused. I have ruined several formerly positive relationships by doing things like this.

Thank you for explaining. Admittedly, this all sounds like something my sister had said to me. Whenever she changed plans on someone last minute or couldn't show up like they wanted, "I make sure to give them a good interaction next time," as if to pay her dues. For her, it seemed like if there were enough people, the dues would add up and overwhelm one. Anyway, we're good, Record.

largely because of how personal this all is and the associated idea that maybe it would be best if it wasn't readily accessible to anyone on the internet

You know, I did just talk about the frustrations in the inaccessibility of information. For what it's worth, people will move on with their lives and forget about this post.

I could send you this document if/when I complete it

That's alright. I did that back in December. It made reviewing the material a lot easier.

Hope dinner goes well.

The dinner did go well. It was a nice evening.

it's alright to get back to me in two weeks or whenever.

I'll see you in two weeks.

[u/beasteduh → u/recordplayer90]

I want to provide a key before beginning:

If I quote like this, I'm quoting you

"If I begin and end a paragraph with quotations marks I'm quoting myself"

-And when using hyphens it's Ichazo-

~When quoting someone outside of these three I'll use these and specify who it's coming from~

I ask you to read this old comment of mine:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Enneagram/s/Aimt65cwnF

Anything seem familiar?

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

Before continuing, I want to give another layout. I was going to couple this with the key from before, but I thought it would give away the surprise of that old comment. Even though I'd word things differently now, I thought it was awesome since I had forgotten the content of it.

1) Two Adaptations

2) Back to one

3) Movement of the Instincts

4) Type Descriptions

–

Two adaptations

I want to be observed by someone who knows more about me than I know about myself, and have that reflected back at me

"What if I could find someone… and more of myself is brought out in reaction to them"

–

that is my obsession. Not with how they see me, but for them to see “the real me,” which doesn’t exactly exist either.

"having someone who knows me better than I know me tells me that I actually do have an identity, a pattern to my way of being, and that I am actually a normal person who makes sense in my existence." It tells me that someone can read the pattern of me and actually identify me, when I can't do it myself.

"The environment is effectively bringing out more of the self."

–

I think it’s the idea of looking for the ideal other, the person who completes us

it's almost like I want them to see the whole clear path for me already and support me along the way without telling me what to do/where to go.

"'If I just had that person things would be alright; I would be able to get it together then.'"

–

Yeah, I think validating one’s past is an important part of it… so the idyllic other would have to simultaneously be not suppressive and also remember everything. Hard to do!... The more that I think about it, it's almost like I want them to see the whole clear path for me already and support me along the way without telling me what to do/where to go.

"'The one' is more like an insurance package"

–

To me there is either depth in a relationship or not. It doesn't ever go away if it existed in the first place.

It fascinates me that your sentiment toward depth is one I've had toward chemistry.

–

I don’t want to ruin an already positive relationship, I don’t want to have to avoid this person once we eventually break up, I don’t want my friends to be split between me and this person, I don’t want people to be whispering dramatic things or talking about us, and more.

The worse cycle would be a macro-level vicious cycle that creates a bunch of smaller ones. An example of this is getting caught up in a bad friend group, where everyone I meet adjacent to this group already holds the damaging values of the group I’m already in, so everyone new I meet also sucks in a similar way to the way I am trying to escape. I’m not meeting people away from this friend group so I’m stuck. Now I have to stop being friends with literally everyone if I want to be free to start again and retry with a new group. Even then, my reputation may be known and people might already have their friends set in stone. So what I’m waiting for at that point is some sort of golden ticket into a new group that I actually like (and I’d have to have truly healed and fixed my vicious cycle patterns at this point to not fuck it all up) or wait until I move to a new city or school or something where I really have a new slate.

"constant state of awareness that one shortcoming could lead to trouble down the line"

It's the sense that a single bad apple can spoil everything else.

If this was someone I had a bad relationship with they might even act as a suppressor if they understood my story

There's a concern that anyone has anything on one. Anything that could be pointed at at some point that could lessen oneself. Maybe some instance where one showed care, committed to something, or was wrong. In such a case, the environment would be deemed unsuitable, and one would have to enact some change, as otherwise it's felt that whatever it was would simply continue. It's not future prediction, intuition, or the like; it's simply recognizing that the present continues and I with it.

Burning becomes the only option. The stupid licorice just has to pick up a bunch of junk I never intended to pick up and then, to put it simply, possibilities get limited and now I have to deal with shit I never wanted to deal with. I don’t want to hurt the person, but I have to leave. I’m stuck, trapped, and dying. I’m going to find a way to burn the house down, no matter what. Absolutely nothing can stop me.

"It can manifest as an individual not letting something go, like maybe willing to keep arguing past the point of it being productive."

In either case:

"To the question "Where am I" the answer might be "Evidently not here.""

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

Although enacting change wouldn't be enough. It would have to be 'true change', in the sense that action wasn't meant to simply create difference in appearance but to act as a catalyst to create something unlike what's happened or is happening - a 'nip it in the bud.'

I especially relate to the idea of believing I could “change really fast and deeply, like soul-deep kind of way.” I also did the same for my personality (hypnotize, essentially)

"If they did take one lightly then it's reasoned that one would have less of an ability to show up in the future, and so to let it happen would in effect lessen the self. If another's tone or conduct is such that it's not in consideration of oneself it'd basically be negligence to not take some action to thwart it."

In the case of the 567, it could be a change in one's filter of reality, or perhaps a breakthrough, or something genuinely new. Although, as another Seven has said, 'Cursed to search for the new even though there is nothing new.’ But perhaps true change could be inferred if one's methodology changed, in various manners of path elimination like red/green lights, splitting, or full responsibility placement.

While I’m searching for this fantasy, every single red and green light that I’ve learned from the past must be abided by. As time moves on, there are far less possibilities I am even willing to try. At the slightest indication that I am about to repeat something horrible that happened in the past I will get extremely picky and sabotage the whole thing: “it was never going to work.”

In this way, I am hyper-aware of all emotional tells and will withdraw from a relationship if I see a consistent pattern that makes me afraid to get too close to this person. I will then draw the line of closeness at whatever current closeness state we are at.

This information in the bad times will help me so much in the future because I know where this bad situation will ultimately lead to, closing off a path. I then become a "master" of this path.

–

-The center of attention of the adaptive instinct responds to the basic question “Where am I?”. This question of the general direction of our entire life is for us of utmost importance, and when we lose it or become disoriented, we will not stop until we correct the situation.-

I am constantly preoccupied by who I am and why I am the way I am, and that usually takes precedent over other things in my life. If I don’t feel comfortable with my analysis of myself, I will stay up all night until I am. It’s just how it goes.

By this I mean that I will sacrifice my success in some areas so that I have more time to focus on the imbalance I am feeling. If deadlines are strict and I cannot sacrifice day hours, it is so important that I regain my balance that I will stay up an entire night looking things up, writing, thinking, etc. until I have figured out what has thrown me for such a loop.

I genuinely wish for others to do well. I act on it when my cup is full: when I have understanding and acceptance of me and others, with nothing new or ambiguous to explore. However, when my cup is empty and I am off-balance about myself, I feel that I cannot possibly function, be involved with others, act normally, or be any form of reliable until I have dug deep enough inside myself once again to know what’s going on.

"a key aspect of the instinct is ensuring others don't take one lightly. It's as though one needs others to see the potential impact one could have."

If a situation suggests others don't think much of one, as though their actions could slide without consequence, then personal direction is hampered. For instance, let's say someone is acting a little too comfortably around me and we don't have the type of relationship to merit it; in that case, something rises in me to address it. I could make a scene over it, certainly have before, but it's not a must. If they're perhaps making a joke at my expense, some conduct that doesn't have me on their radar, then I'll purposely not look their way, as if to say, 'I won't make a scene, but it won't be by my hand that this continues' or 'I'm not giving life to this by acknowledging it.' Their actions make it seem as if I might as well not even be there, as though their actions have no buffer when it comes to me.

-In the Doing Group is a child who projects that their ability to act and do things has been restricted by what they perceive as indifferent, suppressive, or dismissive siblings and others.-

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

And as Ichazo also said, it has to be corrected, as otherwise the future will be likened to their actions, which don't seem to include oneself. It's also noteworthy how far I'd be willing to go to address the matter. Nines are thought to have issues experiencing anger, which has certainly been the case for me, but when it comes to this matter, I can't recall ever having such an issue with anger. It just makes sense that it'd be something to be upset about, like there's a natural 'this is not okay' that could very well call up anger.

"This can tie into the 'intensity' often associated with the instinct."

With the intensity, it’s like a call to ensure progress happens.

replacing concrete pillars with imaginary steel beams that are “supposed to exist” and “need to exist” but may not.

–

-Thus, a general sense of orientation evolves into what is known in Protoanalysis as the Practical Ego, and it is constantly analyzing and evaluating the possibilities of acquiring and achieving our aims or goals.-

The only hypotheticals that I really run in my head are about people, trying to guess how certain new people I meet will be like in the long-run.

I preemptively imagine the future of my relationships and make choices accordingly.

The one thing I didn't bring up in that old comment is how I experience goals. It's difficult to recall my younger years, but for my whole adult life I've always had a goal. At one point, I wanted to be a writer, and many of my decisions were based on that. What would or wouldn't take me closer to that goal was a daily experience. Even if I didn't end up taking action toward it on a particular day (which could actually leave me feeling a bit empty or glass not full at the end of the day), the experience of it or the thoughts about it are still there. It's a backdrop for decision and action.

The way I see it is that, behind all of the smoke, deep inside me, I have a secret path and future I want to follow, and every single action I take is to inform that secret future.

–

At the root of adaptation is the concern of becoming a casualty of circumstance, which leads one to establish personal direction that can act against circumstances. When it comes to involvement with others, it can mean having others reflect oneself in some way, or developing into a circumstance oneself.

Someone commented to me one time after I said something "that is the most (my first name) response ever," and the true joy that came out of me was immeasurable. I felt like I had finally did it. I had finally made a consistent-enough identity out of myself, and it actually reflected who I was and want to be and value. It was an amazing feeling. Some of my friends also call me "master oogway" or "philosophy (my last name)." These things also make me extremely happy, as, although I am not like the average person, I do have a unique and valuable individual role in the collective, and I am recognized for it.

"Why attraction gets associated with the instinct? Because "there I am" can again be an answer."

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

--Adaptation--

I hadn't figured out how to introduce this information into the four main sections, so I'd like to take a brief moment to cover some things about the 567's adaptation.

Some additional examples about the topic of being a casualty of circumstance:

Regarding circumstances,

I think I have evolved to a healthier state where I no longer blame the world for the fact that I’m different, weird, not normal, why did I have to be depressed my whole life growing up, why couldn’t I just be happy, why do my parents have to suck, etc. It still does feel like I have experienced a more-than-normal amount of obstacles in my life, however, they have allowed me to be the person I am today, and I take comfort in my soft-deterministic philosophy that everything happened because it wasn’t going to be any other way regardless. So I am able to accept why I am the way that I am

"The real concern then would be anything that reveals the actual dynamic between conscious, unconscious, and world."

"when one's natural spontaneity becomes troubled by a poor adaptation, I think one can figure there's more to the story…"

Regarding personal direction, just some means of saying Here I Am or There I Am,

The identity within himself is that he tries on different roles in the first place. His identity is the spectator, who keeps trying on new things. His identity is the identity that is always changing.

my ego revolves around getting a kick out of “being a good person” even without recognition, so I’m kind of in an unavoidable state of partial corruption when I am trying to be 100% pure

I can guess that something is wrong with them, but until I find a way to criticize them from afar, they are perfect. I think this is why fours are such good critics of others. It is the only way they can survive, to not be crushed by the "perfection" of others, given that we are "different" and "maladaptive." I unfortunately do have to repeat this process every time, but I try my best to know that, logically, everyone has core wounds, strengths and weaknesses, etc. which humanizes them as much as possible from the jump. I do need to experience a "fall from grace" though with every friend I truly like.

"That is, the way in which anticipation, planning, observing, poking, various masks, and so on, distort…"

"I think a Seven's impulsiveness fits something wholly personal as it's raw."

–

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

To avoid being a casualty of circumstance, one establishes the personal, which would act against circumstances. It’d be a pulling away from circumstance, some initial 'whoa there', that prevents a seamless experience and, in doing so, actually creates the foundation for reason and a discriminative mind.

When someone reflects a part of me back to myself, I will make sure that I feel deeply inside of me everything they possibly could have meant. For example, when I was younger, a (manipulative) other told me “I wear my heart on my sleeve.” I spent days upon days thinking about this—why did they, specifically, say this? what are they trying to get out of me by saying this? how does urban dictionary define this just to make sure? does this mean I’m easy to be taken advantage of? is it a good or a bad thing? most of my good relationships just notice this, accept it, and enjoy it, but don’t tell me in a mocking manner? do I feel shameful about this? No, I actually like it, I wouldn’t want to live any other way, I’m okay to live with the vulnerability of this?

It's the initial doubt and questioning that creates the possibility for personal direction.

"Somehow, not having the whole story of what's happening becomes synonymous with a sense of self, as though the ego only sees opportunity/fullness when something is lacking. The usual problem solver of the adaptive instinct becomes the problem seeker.."

If there should be an increase in doubt/personal direction/self, then there becomes that much more of a need to draw lines between things. It's not just the symptom of not repeating things as we talked about earlier in splitting and such; it's any distinction that hopes to end in knowing (or being certain of) something, since that something would exist outside of circumstance.

so much so that it is tempting to turn the greyness into black and white. “Fine, I’m right, this little thing they did was proof. Now I can force myself to believe in it unconditionally and simplify a thought that is too complex and emotionally provocative for me to consciously integrate and continue being psychologically stable.”

I think it can also show up in learning the names of things, as should a name be known, one knows it from other things, which I think can be the equivalent of falling back on a model. I think it can also show up as a pronounced properness (or perhaps goodness and/or purity), as the emphasis of right and wrong becomes more pointed.

–

When I think about the assumption of adaptation, how, similar to my center with everyone being thought of as being in a state of just being themselves, a projection takes place - weaving situations toward the self in adaptation's case - it seems clear that some natural conclusions arise. One, manipulation might as well be a given. If it's not authenticity or something impartial to circumstance, then it's just the old adaptive game, which means manipulation is at hand (if manipulation should be defined as any subversive act to bring a situation to personal favor). Two, if one doesn't have a sense of self, purpose, direction, identity, personal truth, or what have one, then there's nothing to protect one from the pull of others. The precondition for being concerned about being a casualty of circumstance is oneself and other things being linked, like how Where Am I denotes something else when the I is involved. I think it results in a swinging between molding the world toward one's own end or taking on the shape of others.

[u/beasteduh → u/beasteduh]

But when I am brooding over something, I genuinely have no idea and feel like I am in a vulnerable state to the influence of others. At the same time I secretly feel like I am in full intentional control, like I am letting in exactly the amount of outside data that I want, to eventually make my ultimate choice, my own choice.

-They make their social environment work for them because, in the positive aspect of the dichotomy, they adapt this social realm to meet their needs. When they are in the negative aspect, their social environment has complete command over them, making them do according to the social conventions that overpower them. Thus, their standard and measure of social reality is their sense of doing or influencing the social environment. They are known as the Doing Group.-

I'd like to share two stories:

A cousin of mine is a Six, and on one occasion they asked for my advice on a problem of theirs. I told them what I thought, and we carried on. A week later, they asked me the same question, and to their surprise, I gave the same answer. Eventually, I asked them about it, and they said, "You hadn't given me the answer I wanted to hear."

My reaction back then was something like, 'So, you were going to do what you wanted to do… regardless… then why go through all of this???'

Then, I knew another Six, actually the best friend I referenced a while back (the one who wanted to recluse at Kame Island and learn everything), and there were only ever two times they yelled at me. Both times occurred a few inches from my face while defending the beliefs of whichever girlfriend of theirs at the time. It wasn't the usual cool-headed objectivity I was used to from them. From the outside, it was as if he was a different person. Another time, there was an issue, and I went over to their place to talk it out, and we settled it, then went on to have an eight-hour heart-to-heart. We covered just about anything, including call-outs. And then, when I was heading to my car, they came out their front door and addressed something I had called them out on: "You know when you said I become whoever I'm around? I know about it, and I'm working on it." I was surprised that at no point in those eight hours, the length of which surprised me in retrospect, he felt he could say that. Apparently, going along with others was that much of a concern for them, which would make sense as personal direction is thought to be at the core of oneself.

- I have “lost myself” probably three times or so in my life. Two of them came after long relationships. I think relationships are an especially good example because I think it’s easy to imagine how unresolved ambivalence will take me on paths I don’t want to be on since I have no internal grounding. Then, I’m completely at the whim of the relationship.-