LazyAmbition

Kai. She/Her&They/Them/Their.21. “Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings -- always darker, emptier and simpler.”― Nietzsche

[ero-hime]

How can you honestly claim to be a feminist if you say derogatory things about female sex workers and trans women???

[ero-hime]

Four people unfollowed me after I posted this lmao, if you don’t think that trans women and sex workers deserve respect and acceptance please follow suit

[cabalbrothers-blog]

i cannot believe i only have a couple hundred pages of trk left to read.

[cabalbrothers-blog]

Hey, I saw you post on FYRA's partner search and I was wondering if you were still looking for a partner? I will admit I am fairly new to rp but I have enjoyed the ones I have done in the past. So if the position is still open I would gladly fill it. Also I am a 20 year old Female.

Hello! So, this is a little awkward since you’re on anon? Could you message me again on either your roleplay blog or your personal, maybe? It’s just that I don’t know anything about you. Neither whether our writing styles might work well together or not,  nor what kind of characters you like to write, etc. etc.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m still looking for long term writing partners. However, I did specify in my post that I’d like to see a writing sample so that I, in turn, can show you my writing style as well. That way, we can both decide if it could work out.

[cabalbrothers-blog]

@incognitopi Yo, what are you trying to say with the Edward reference? Aren’t they this kid with no filter and massive tinkering skills?

[discolor3d]

[weirdfella]

Type 9: Down the Rabbit Hole by Recede (9w8)

(source)

Everyone is sensitive in their early development to one of the Holy Ideas, and this sensitivity is what leads people to develop their ego around that idea. In order to understand type 9 as a whole, then, one must recognize that the type is centered around this dynamic: sensitivity to and loss of contact with Holy Love, repression of the pain and anger caused by this loss, and the adoption of attitudes and behaviors resembling Holy Love, which the 9 hopes will fill the void, in a sense. The type can also be understood as a set of layers within the psyche, including repressed anger and an inner resistance to being deeply affected, of which the 9 may not be aware. It is important to see that the 9 is not simply the surface attitude and behaviors, that there are deeper attitudes the 9 wishes to repress, and that these attitudes have a significant impact even if the 9 is not consciously aware of them. Self-awareness is essential to growth. The only question is this: how far down the rabbit hole do you wish to go?

I.                    The Rabbit Hole

Illusion of Harmony At the surface layer, 9’s are looking for peace, harmony, wisdom, and happiness. They want to see value and goodness in all things and people, choosing to acknowledge their positive qualities over their negative ones. Consequentially, 9’s tend to treat everyone with respect and are pleasant, agreeable, and accommodating. Because they are looking to recreate Holy Love, they may adopt philosophies around the concept of love, harmony, and noninterference (“live and let live”). But when they do this at the surface level, they are not necessarily experiencing true harmony. In reality, there is a deep inner resistance or blocking within them that prevents them from being fully present and affected. 9’s have essentially created the illusion of harmony–it is not the same as Holy Love.

Acedia and Inner Deadening of Feelings On a deeper level, 9’s are far more apathetic than they may seem. They have put up walls which prevent them from being deeply affected, and have adopted an attitude of acedia (also known as accidia): having little concern for one’s own position in life.

Dorothy Sayers in her commentaries to Dante’s Purgatory writes that accidia “is insidious, and assumes such Protean shapes that it is rather difficult to define.” It is not merely idleness of mind, but “that whole poisoning of the will which, beginning with indifference and an attitude of ‘I couldn’t care less’, extends to the deliberate refusal of joy and culminates in morbid introspection and despair. One form of it which appeals very strongly to some modern minds is that acquiescence in evil and error which readily disguises itself as ‘Tolerance’; another is that refusal to be moved by the contemplation of the good and beautiful which is known as ‘Disillusionment’, and sometimes as ‘knowledge of the world’.” (Naranjo)

9’s do not want to be affected–to experience unpleasantness, stress, and pain. They avoid these things by mentally checking out, by not being fully present to their own lives. The attitude of “I don’t care” can be a powerful one, allowing them to give up when things get stressful and difficult without feeling the loss of what they have given up on. They may lack strong preferences and opinions, preferring to see all sides of things, but really this is a manifestation of acedia. It is easier to not choose a side because the middle path is sure to avoid offending or devaluing anyone who has differing views. Acedia causes 9’s to take the path of least resistance, or to ignore and block out stress so they will not be disturbed. They may put off dealing with things if it will cause them stress, and they distract themselves with nonessential things. Type 9 is considered the least intense of all the enneagram types because their primary defense mechanism involves disengaging themselves and removing their attention from sources of pain or stress, and this may give them a calm and easygoing demeanor. But to the extent that they block out pain, they may also unknowingly become numb to positive emotions. Because of this, 9’s may be prone to bouts of anhedonia: reduced capacity for pleasure. The emotional numbing here may also be viewed as a defense mechanism to protect the ideal self-image of being peaceful by repressing their “dark side”, as is explained in the next two paragraphs. Anger/Frustration: “Nothing is worthwhile” Hidden deep within the subconscious is a well of anger and frustration at being cut off from Holy Love. If love is not real, then nothing is worthwhile. Nothing feels truly meaningful or significant. 9’s are incredibly frustrated that they have been going along with life merely “pretending” to care. They have not really invested themselves in life and seem unable to feel deeply moved. They may not have been able to find anything that makes life feel truly worthwhile, yet they keep on living with the hope that someday things will be better. Someday they will wake up and everything will be magical and filled with the peace, love, and harmony they have wished for. If hope is what drives 9’s, then it makes sense that their dark side which they try to repress is disillusionment. Deep down 9’s may have a side that is quite cynical and dark, rejecting the value of all things and rejecting hope because nothing ever changes. But 9’s do not want to see this side of themselves because its existence is in direct opposition to the self-image they’ve cultivated of being peaceful, caring, and seeing the good in all things. 9’s fear this side of themselves, perhaps more than anything else. They fear being loveless–that they can neither give nor receive love.

Loss of Holy Love: “Love is not real” The source of emptiness and disillusionment, hidden very deep within the psyche, is the loss of Holy Love. At some point in childhood, 9’s developed the belief that love is conditional. If they do things others like, they will receive love and approval. Love, then, is simply the consequence of surface behaviors or characteristics deemed worthy or acceptable by others. Some 9’s may even have felt that their parents’ love didn’t mean anything because it was simply the natural consequence of their parent/child relationship. If love is conditional, then what about it is truly meaningful? This isn’t the kind of love 9’s had longed for. If that’s all that love is, a simple action-reaction formula, then 9’s feel the kind of love they idealized must not be real. Holy Love Within the deepest part of the 9 lies the capacity for Holy Love. 9’s are so sensitive to this concept that it has formed the basis of their ego. They may have felt that Holy Love was lost, but they were not able to accept this and so they built these layers around it. The surface layer is actually a reflection of this innermost part of them, and they have shaped and cultivated it in an attempt to reconnect with Holy Love. Holy Love is perhaps best described by Almaas:

Holy Love is not the feeling of love, nor the essential aspect of love. Holy Love is a quality of existence that makes that existence lovable. Its loveliness and lovableness is what generates in our hearts sentiments of love, appreciation, value, enjoyment, pleasure, and so on. So we are talking about the quality of lovableness of reality when it is seen without distortion, rather than through the filter of the ego. In other words, Holy Love is the fact that objective reality has an intrinsic quality of being wonderful and pleasing—it is intrinsically lovable. This is Holy Love— whatever it is that makes it lovely, enjoyable, lovable, whatever it is about it that we can’t help but appreciate. When reality is fully perceived, one cannot help but enjoy and appreciate it. One cannot but respond with awe when the Holy Truth is fully apprehended, and one cannot but be full of wonder when Holy Perfection is realized. One cannot but melt in appreciative sweetness when beholding Holy Love. Holy Love brings you the experience of love, but it is not the love itself; it is something much more comprehensive. It is a quality of reality as a whole and is very difficult to fully define. We could say that Holy Love is the intrinsic quality of the reality of Being that is non-conceptual positivity. It is pure and unalloyed blissfulness. It is the value-saturated quality of truth. It is pure goodness, the Good of Plato.

While 9’s may be able to understand the concept of Holy Love and try to incorporate it into their views, they lack the energy to truly stay in touch with it. This is because their energy is going toward blocking out unpleasantness. Growth for the 9, therefore, involves getting past this habit of tuning out the unpleasant and becoming grounded and open to experiencing the fullness of life.

II. Levels of Health

Average 9’s are working to maintain their sense of inner peace, but in unbalanced ways. Instead of being grounded and present, they are busy tuning out aspects of their lives they find boring, stressful, or unpleasant. Average 9’s are able to meet the demands of life and of others, but they tend to do the bare minimum of what is required if it’s unpleasant to them. They will be just present enough to get the task done, while the rest of their focus is off in some imaginary land as they daydream. 9’s at average levels find it easy to identify with others’ viewpoints–sometimes easier than developing and sticking with their own views. They may have some areas in which they have strong views and beliefs that may be unmovable, but for the most part they are rather flexible because they can see the merit in all sides and views, and because their attitude of acedia allows them to easily let go of their own personal stance and desires. This does not mean 9’s will necessarily go along with what others think and want. 9’s may not always know what they want, but they do know what they don’t want, and they can be quite stubborn in their avoidance of those things. The 9’s security point is type 3, meaning that they may at times exhibit some characteristics of average 3’s. Average 9’s at their security point may become image conscious and competitive. They want to achieve and receive affirmation, and may even secretly desire to be in the spotlight. 9’s normally do not like to stand out or show off, but they may do so when they feel more comfortable and secure. The 9’s stress or disintegration point is type 6. Average and unhealthy 9’s will begin behaving in ways resembling a 6 at the corresponding level of health. They become anxious, doubting, reactive, and insecure. As their stress builds they may at times become paralyzed by their anxiety, putting off things that need to be done because they will upset them too much. Disintegrating 9’s may complain, exhibit passive-aggressive behavior, and occasionally explode in angry outbursts. Unhealthy 9’s numb themselves to the point of being barely functional. They try to block out their stress and problems by dissociating from them, and as a result they may be especially prone to depersonalization and anhedonia. They may feel strangely disconnected from their surroundings, as if in a dream. Problems in their lives that seemed overwhelming before now seem distant and unreal, as 9’s have dissociated from them. This of course makes them less able to find the energy and motivation to deal with their problems. But putting them off and ignoring them only makes their problems grow, and they find themselves having to repress more and more anxiety. As their anxiety grows, so too do their feelings of helplessness and dependency. Yet others who try to help them find it incredibly frustrating and difficult to get through to them. Unhealthy 9’s have closed themselves off to anything that will upset them or stress them out. They feel they simply can’t handle the pressures of life anymore. As they deteriorate further, 9’s may become completely dissociated from their lives, reduced to a hazy and disoriented existence. They may appear lost, confused, and incredibly numb and affectless. 9’s at this point have a lot of problems in their lives and have retreated into a tiny corner of their existence. Whatever peace they cling to is very fragile, and they may occasionally erupt in angry, destructive outbursts. Paranoia and delusions may also be present in unhealthy, disintegrating 9’s. Severely unhealthy 9’s, like any type, are capable of committing heinous acts with little concern for the consequences of their actions. They may be so numb and so dissociated from themselves and what they have done that they are simply not able to realize the severity of their actions or to take responsibility. 9’s with an 8 wing may follow their impulses as they arise without considering the consequences, and 9’s with a 1 wing may rigidly follow rules and orders without seeing the damage they are causing. Healthy 9’s, more than any other type, embody peace, harmony, and serenity. They are deeply receptive and accepting, but also realistically so. They are self-assured and independent, empowered and capable of enduring any hardship without giving in to the wish to fall asleep to their lives. Healthy 9’s are incredibly grounded and peaceful. They are self-possessed and in touch with their vitality. They are fully present to all their experiences and no longer wish to avoid pain and stress. As a consequence, they are now able to experience the fullness of themselves, their lives, and their emotions. They are very gentle and harmonious, but no longer feel the need to idealize others. They are able to see others realistically, and thus are more present and connected than ever before.

III. Reflection

If type 9 could be summed up in one line, it could perhaps be called “the type that keeps moving toward the light even when they’ve already given up on the inside.” 9’s move toward peace, harmony, and happiness, even when ironically they have taken an attitude of acedia or indolence, of not caring and not wanting to be affected. Somehow, peace and love have been warped into “I don’t mind,” and pain and stress are avoided at all costs. The original ideal may have been peace, harmony, and happiness, but they have shifted their focus so much into avoidance of the opposite that they are not able to reach those things. Even if they could find happiness, they may have internally withdrawn themselves so much from the unpleasantness they had to get through that they can no longer be present to happiness when they finally reach it. Fortunately for 9’s, that same inner resistance that keeps them from being fully present and experiencing the happiness they long for can also keep them from being affected by that loss. Like every type, 9’s become prisoners to their own ego defenses.

[weirdfella]

ESFP: A Jungian Cognitive Function Analysis By SimulatedWorld

ESFP, or Extroverted Sensing Feeling Perceiver, is a label borrowed from MBTI nomenclature and now applied to the Jungian Cognitive Function set {Se, Fi, Te, Ni}.

Dominant: Extroverted Sensation (Se)

“I’m the kind of person that feels most at home when I can get involved in a lot of different things, in a really hands-on way that connects me to lots of new people and situations and opportunities to explore. I tend to make a lot of friends wherever I go; somehow, people always seem to appreciate my charisma and my natural talents in lots of different areas. If I can get my hands on it and make a real impact or observable difference, it’s probably something I’ll be good at. I have to be engaged with my surroundings nearly all of the time–I think it’s really important to be aware of what’s going on around you, because something unexpected could happen at any time, and often that something will demand an immediate response. I don’t tend to spend a lot of time on calculated preparation, but nonetheless I feel prepared to deal with anything because I’m so naturally adaptable and ready to respond to anything and everything as it happens. I think it’s important not to take life too seriously or let anything slow you down–if I stop actively engaging the world around me, I’ll lose my drive and enthusiasm, and I really dislike getting bored or running out of projects to work on. Some people need to learn to relax and just take life one day at a time–to pay attention to what’s really happening, instead of trying to read too much into things. If you don’t have real people and real connections to involve yourself in, how can you really live life to the fullest?”

Let’s begin by dispelling some stereotypes, by explaining what ESFPs are not: ESFPs are not mindless party-mongers. While they are known for their vaunted people skills and personal charm, their psychological motivations run deeper than most type profiles and common renderings of the SeFi function hierarchy give them credit for. As Se dominants, ESFPs are extremely aware of the value of first impressions. Since their dominant attitude encourages emphasis on the immediate sensory impact of the physical world surrounding them, they’re generally aware more than most of the inherent assumptions and interpretations the human mind tends to make based on the first sensory impression it’s exposed to in any given situation. Continually vigilant of these impressions and the way they impact people and interpersonal interactions, ESFPs tend to place high value on presentation and style.

As with all extroverted functions, dominant Se depends upon objective, externally derived information (frequently involving other people) to orient its perceptions according to the collective perceptions of others. Who exactly those others are will depend on the particular ESFP and his idea of what groups of people are worth making an impression upon. It’s worth noting that the common stereotype that ESFPs are always “trendy” is somewhat misleading: while this idea would imply that all ESFPs always keep up with the collective trends of popular culture at large, many do not. The only constant for dominant Se is a concerted effort to keep up with whatever will produce the most memorable and effective sensory impact: it just so happens that, in many cases, popular culture serves as a useful way to accomplish this goal in reference to large groups of people. But it’s also important to realize that many ESFPs do not pay attention to or value popular culture in general, at least not for its own sake–their perceptual standards simply reference those of whatever groups of people they happen to consider interesting or worthwhile. One ESFP may find another ESFP’s approach utterly boring and ineffective, based on differences in the perceptual preferences of their respective social and personal groups.

Even though ESFPs are often stereotyped as “performers”, dominant Se may lead to all sorts of different “performances” even well outside the commonly expected manifestations of that practice or idea. Everything depends on the audience and what it wants to see, hear, or feel: Se is the soul of the audience, its perceptual expectations and responses, and our responses to them. ESFPs tend to see the world as a continually unfolding set of constant opportunities to take action and create observable change. They look around, they see an opportunity, and they act as soon as that opportunity presents itself. If nothing else, ESFPs know how to play to a crowd, adjusting their appearances and perceptual approaches to whatever it is that that crowd expects.

It’s difficult to overstate how important continual action is to the ESFP’s psychological needs. They frequently reference body language–especially eye contact–as a vital benchmark upon which honesty and integrity are won and lost. The ESFP must be interacting with her physical environments as often as possible, because she must collect as many different variants of new sensory information as she can find. Remarkable hands-on resourcefulness gives rise early on to boredom and routine’s life-long branding as hated enemies of dominant Se’s overwhelming desire for constant and consistent new experience. To restate a cliché (which is actually true to a certain extent), no one lives in moment–truly in the moment–more than an Se dominant. In Se’s philosophy, the more we distract ourselves with imaginary second-guessing and time-consuming hypothetical analysis, the more we hinder our ability to direct our full attention to the imminent reality of the present moment. And if we’re not paying attention to the reality of the present moment, we’re surely missing whatever new information should be granting us the cues and hints that will lead us to stumble upon our next move–ESFPs rarely prefer to stay in any one place for too long.

Auxiliary: Introverted Feeling (Fi)

“The image is one thing and the human being is another. It’s very hard to live up to an image–I’ll put it that way.”

–Elvis Presley, ESFP

As with all EP types, auxiliary Ji (in this case Fi) imbues the ESFP’s character with a sense of personal purpose and integrity, with a conscientious concern for the well-being of others, and a sense of purpose and identity amidst the chaos of constant change and exploration. Most at home in the heat of the moment, young ESFPs may have difficulty slowing down and soul-searching long enough to show any meaningful degree of self-reflection or evaluation. When they do, they almost invariably describe a sense of heartfelt empathy with the needs and feelings of others. Development of Fi allows the ESFP’s natural ability to adjust to the expectations of his audiences to be uplifted and stabilized by a personalized vision and unique understanding of the universal needs of all living creatures, spanning the physical, spiritual, and emotional. ESFPs who command Fi will know where they’re coming from, where they’re going, and why–the personalized ethical, spiritual, and aesthetic vision granted by the auxiliary function will remind dominant Se of the real purpose of its endless search for new experiences: personal growth and development.

It’s easy to see how many ESFPs become involved in creative pursuits–and that’s not limited to just the arts. Any method by which they can involve themselves directly in the creation of something that reflects the reality around them, and interacts with and affects their perceptions and the perceptions of others, will likely be viewed in a positive light. The key is finding a personalized representation (Fi) of real events occurring in real life, affecting real people in tangible ways (Se). In art, ESFPs find both an immediately stimulating sensory impression and a hint of the weightier and more important personal values by which they will eventually learn to navigate their own sense of virtue and self-evaluation. Fi should ideally lead ESFPs to hold themselves up to the light of the truth, to keep themselves grounded by an unerring sense of private moral rectitude and widespread good will toward life in general: ESFPs will tend to treat most people as good friends until given an explicit reason not to, and it’s difficult for most to resist their upbeat attitudes and straightforward, earnest openness.

If developed poorly, it can be difficult for the ESFP to harness Fi in a genuinely empathetic way. He may neglect concern for the emotional and spiritual needs of others in favor of ensuring that he fills his own quota for new experiential input: more than one ESFP has justified his constant (and potentially excessive) need for high stimulation as a simple expression of his individuality, insisting that others respect his right to behave as he pleases or risk threatening his self-experience. This can and does cause a variety of arguments with the ESFP’s close friends and family: Where does my right to individual freedom end, and my obligation to the needs of others begin? While it is true that ESFPs must continue engaging themselves with new experiences in order to feel fulfilled, too much emphasis on dominant Se with not enough on auxiliary Fi can result in crude, directionless hedonism. With so much new information of so many different varieties constantly entering the cognitive sphere, ESFPs (much like all EP types) must be cognizant of taking time out to analyze their experiences in depth (via Fi) in order to grant coherent meaning or value to any of them. Left to its own devices, dominant Se will explore to the ends of the Earth, but never retain the importance of the many life lessons it happens upon in the process.

When balanced properly, Fi should provide the ESFP with a sense of personal vision and deeper understanding of her mission and purpose in life. Although her externalized creations often seek to represent physical reality in her own subjective terms, they never quite match the internalized sense of aesthetic and spiritual perfection that Fi leads her to continue seeking throughout her entire life. The more Fi is able to provide subjective ideals for Se to translate into tangible representations of the ESFP’s identity, the more it will strike him that he must reflect and further and refine his own sense of self, his own idea of value and hierarchy of priorities. Fi provides, above all, a personalized counterweight to Se’s constant attention to the outward expectations of whoever the ESFP may find himself “performing” for nearly every day of his life.

Tertiary: Extroverted Thinking (Te)

Much like in their ENFP cousins, tertiary Te will ideally enter the cognitive picture to take on the role of adding externalized order and structure to the oft-disjointed and hectic world of the active ESFP. When balanced in order (assuming Se and Fi are differentiated and performing optimally), Te should strike the healthy ESFP as a somewhat difficult but necessary mindset to be able to access when the time comes for decisive direction, for the setting aside of personal sentiments in favor of the completion of a grander and more important goal. Contrary to popular stereotypes, tertiary Te actually assists in granting ESFPs their status as one of the most empirically-oriented types. Since Se and Te are the function attitudes most focused on direct action, the combination of the two can show outsiders a surprisingly aggressive driving force in the process of goal-setting and completion: while Se demands directly observable action, Te insists on consistent and predictable measures of progress and development. When Te is integrated effectively, the ESFP will not hesitate to take whatever action he needs to get the project back on schedule, nose to the grindstone. His desire for continual navigation of new challenges never subsides; however, proper development of the tertiary function will grant a sense of urgency and attention to objective detail that may seem to utterly contradict his usual disregard for formal rules and regulations.

Unfortunately, premature reliance on Te to the exclusion of the natural auxiliary Fi will result in some peculiar problems for the young ESFP. Already heavily focused on the objective expectations of others in terms of perceptual impact, the SeTe loop ESFP may become overly stressed and unable to genuinely relax. Because his only way of taking a “break” from the constant high stimulation of Se is to indulge in the constant high-priority organizing and correcting of Te, he may forget almost entirely to spend time reconsidering any of his decisions. The more Se demands immediate action and stimulation, the less patience Te maintains for anything deemed off topic or not imminently useful. Torn between the sensory expectations of those he finds interesting and the procedural expectations of those he finds knowledgeable and effective, the ESFP lacking Fi may become so lost in aggressive pursuit of his desires that he loses sight of why he really desires them in the first place.

Unable to satisfy all of the objective expectations he sees coming at him from all angles, the ESFP may wear himself out working too hard to ensure that everyone likes him, or considers his contributions worthwhile. If threatened or convinced that he is being ignored or undervalued, the ESFP in Te mode may even occasionally become territorially aggressive, insistent that every detail of every one of his preferred methods be followed to the letter–or else. The healthy presence of auxiliary Fi seems to be the primary mitigating factor in drawing the fine line between healthy and unhealthy Te use in the ESFP. Given time for the more important functions to develop first, tertiary Te should serve as a helpful reminder that some form of externalized structure must be had at some point, and that some attention must eventually be paid to the knowledge of people who know the subject in question.

As Te grows and develops into an important and regularly consulted part of the ESFP’s cognition, her tendency to lose herself entirely in the immediately pleasurable sensations of reality will be tempered by a focus on dutiful consistency and objective reliability. Her personal ethics will come to balance themselves against the impending sense of immediacy that something measurable and empirically valid be done–drawn to the sensory stimulant properties of the object, the ESFP will learn to apply to his desire for exploration to measurable completion of legitimate, working objectives. He will find that he can apply his abilities to impact others toward useful and meaningful career goals, that his natural talents are valuable for many reasons beyond their inherent accessibility and sensory enjoyment. As much as Se would love to learn everything purely through hands-on experimentation, Te provides a vital balancing focus on the established methodology and evaluative standards of authoritative knowledge.

Inferior: Introverted iNtuition (Ni)

The peculiar effects of Ni as an inferior function provide one of (in my opinion) the more fascinating parts of the ESFP’s cognition. Directly at odds with dominant Se’s broad focus on the vast quantity of different sensory information immediately available around us, inferior Ni seems to flood the ESFP’s cognition with all manner of esoteric (and often incoherent) symbols of unstated and covert interpretations. First encounters with this poorly developed inferior attitude can be unsettling at best: forced to reconsider the true meaning of everything they’ve always seen as most obviously important, ESFPs in the grip of inferior Ni may feel everything they know is slipping out from under them. The unconscious world of subjective perceptual significance threatens the sense of empirical observability by which dominant Se defines its primary worldview.

In terms of practical manifestations, inferior Ni tends to lend itself to bizarre and unfounded suspicions of others, even close friends and family. Since all possible perceptual angles are now on the table, dominant Se must stay aware and responsive to its surroundings, even if that means taking on and connecting with the most outlandish or improbable suggestions and possibilities regarding the intentions and motivations of the people around him. It’s not entirely uncommon to see unfounded accusations, perceptions of disloyalty, delusions of grand significance, and occasionally even conspiracy theories (see Glenn Beck) pour out from the stressed ESFP as he becomes increasingly convinced he possesses some sort of supernatural insight, one which renders the directly observable and quantitative evidence upon which he normally relies entirely obsolete. As inferior Ni takes over, the ESFP will feel compelled to peer into every nook and cranny for something he’s missed–some secret interpretive value that will change the way he sees everything around him. Unfortunately, this is typically done in such a juvenile and unrefined manner that it tends to result in assumptions that are implausible at best (and paranoid at worst.)

Like all inferior functions, inferior Ni is most commonly forced out by situations in which the dominant function finds itself unable to handle the problem or complete the task at hand. It tends to surface when ESFPs lose faith in their ability to adapt to and handle their surroundings using their instinctive understanding of physical reality and literal surface impressions. Naturally distrustful of unspoken (and thus unobservable) information, they may become convinced that the only solution involves some sort of nefarious plot to obscure the truth or the real significance from themselves or their loved ones. Convinced that the truth can’t be empirically observed but simultaneously painfully aware of his own inability to process information outside an empirically observable context, the ESFP may be forced to confront outlandish, cynical, and even totally unsubstantiated hunches or “gut feelings” about the true reality of the events unfolding around him. Determined to uncover the secret meaning that has been deliberately withheld from him (which is almost invariably perceived as a personal attack), the ESFP struggling with inferior Ni may seize onto strange and improbable accusations and implications, convinced that he must ignore the world of physical reality in which he most naturally thrives in order to see any genuine significance in it.

On the other hand, inferior Ni may be gradually developed and applied positively as the ESFP matures. While most internal reflection will be handled by Fi, occasionally the self-awareness of subjective perceptual expectations provided by inferior Ni will help grant the ESFP a more balanced impression of the world and a more reasoned organizational hierarchy of his priorities. It should help to produce the realization that sometimes there actually is some value in withholding judgment, in reconsidering the reliability of surface impressions, and even in looking for meaning that isn’t even directly suggested by the concrete information available. Development of inferior Ni (in conjunction with the higher functions) should lead ESFPs toward more fulfilling lives, replete with the excited energy of continual active exploration, but offset and harmonized by the occasional ability to trust gut feelings about the intangibles in life with which we cannot directly interact. As this balance improves and gains consistency, the ESFP will bring himself both the capability to build and maintain the high volume of personal contact and activity upon which he thrives, and the wisdom to know when to back off and reconsider–the difference this can make will be subtle, but powerful and influential for years to come.

(source)

[weirdfella]

ISFP: A Jungian Cognitive Function Analysis By SimulatedWorld

ISFP, or Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiver, is a label borrowed from MBTI nomenclature and now applied to the Jungian Cognitive Function set {Fi, Se, Ni, Te}.

Dominant: Introverted Feeling (Fi)

“I think it’s important not to overthink things. I guess I know generally how I feel about things, but I often don’t really consciously think about it until a situation comes up, and then I just respond in whatever way feels right at the time. I don’t think you can really prepare for the most important moments in life because you never really know what things are going to be like until you get there and feel for yourself how it affects you, emotionally and physically. I’m usually pretty good at figuring out how other people feel, too–just from watching them and thinking about how I’d feel if I were in their shoes. It’s really important to treat people in a caring and understanding way–I know that’s how I’d want them to treat me. More than anything, I guess, I just want to be who I am and not try to overanalyze or define things more heavily than I need to. Just feel it out, do what seems moral and feels right to you in that moment and you’ll know what to do when the time comes.”

ISFPs, more than just about any other type, need to feel that they have the freedom to spread out and be themselves, to do whatever it takes to find the kind of life and the kind of friends and the kind of job and the kind of hobbies that really feel like “home” and make them feel balanced and at peace with themselves and their values. While they are equally as focused on personal values and an individualistic sense of morality as INFPs, the major difference in the application of dominant Fi is that ISFPs do not analyze and reanalyze their values through hypothetical or theoretical extensions of their imaginations. Unless they are directly contributing to solving a real moral dilemma that affects them or a friend or loved one personally, they see little value in hashing and rehashing all the different possible applications of their values when there is so much immediately available information to deal with in the real world of tangible sensations and emotions.

For this reason, among others, ISFPs epitomize the sort of “go with the flow and let your heart be your guide” sort of mentality that’s often attributed to P types; however, unlike the EP types, who react to their environments in a way that’s designed to appeal to the demands and expectations of their perceptual surroundings, ISFPs begin by consulting their subjective internal values and then support and assist their private judgments with the information immediately surrounding them. What makes this process unique is that ISFPs don’t necessarily know how a given idea or moral concept will affect their sense of ethics until a realistically tangible scenario arises in which they can react in the way that feels most natural. It just doesn’t strike them as a worthwhile investment of time to worry about things that don’t directly impact the immediacy of the situation in front of them. While INFPs may know substantially in advance how all sorts of different situations would impact their ideals and the resultant emotional evaluations, ISFPs often can’t assign any real meaning to a theoretical ideal until they’re right in the middle of an actual situation that makes it real for them. When asked, “How would you feel if xyz happened?”, often the ISFP answer is, “I don’t know–it’s never happened and it’s not happening now. So who cares?”

Introverted feeling for ISFPs often prompts the assimilation and support of various ethical causes and crusades, ranging from basic, everyday human kindness to grand-sweeping visions for idealistic change and promotion of universal harmony (especially as tertiary Ni develops and grants the ISFP a deeper range of interpretive possibilities for the application of his values toward global alignment with what he sees as “the greater good.”) These ideals represent more than just optimistic hopes and daydreams; they serve as a window into the ISFP’s uniquely personal vision for a better world tomorrow than we have today. The development of this vision can take an ISFP the better part of his life to mold into something coherent enough that it can be explained or shared concretely with others–but ISFPs spend the better part of their lives filling themselves with real experiences precisely so that they will understand themselves and their relationship to the world fully and completely enough to share this vision in a way that combines the fire of their passions with raw, genuine empathy for the needs and feelings that unite humanity on a universal level.

You can find these developing visions in the artistic works ISFPs tend to spend substantial amounts of time perfecting–often credited as “artists”, ISFPs may display this affinity for aesthetic quality through music, graphic design, acting, fashion, arts and crafts, woodwork or other concrete artistic creations–but they need not show it through traditional artistic outlets, and it’s important to realize that while many ISFPs are involved in artistic pursuits, many are not. Some may go their entire lives without ever finding the right medium to express exactly what they feel inside, but rest assured they’re always searching. Some may find it through something as simple as feeding the homeless, adopting stray animals, or mentoring young children–anything that makes them feel as if they’ve had some sort of positive, tangible impact on another person’s life. ISFPs almost always practice what they preach–if they advocate something, you can bet they’re out there doing it themselves.

Auxiliary: Extroverted Sensation (Se)

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending with the wind.”

–Bruce Lee, ISFP

Alert and ready to react on a split second’s notice, auxiliary Se serves as Fi’s liaison to the exciting world of sensations and sensory responses. It’s the combination of Se’s natural command of visual/auditory appeal and Fi’s sense of aesthetic value and significance that grants ISFPs their oft-stereotyped position as purveyors of all things artistic and expressive. While this reputation may be somewhat exaggerated, it is true that ISFPs often feel a need to express and display their personal identities through visually engaging media–their homes and personal dress are often a little offbeat and uniquely decorated, aimed at creating a sense of calmness and tranquility that connects us to our spiritual and emotional needs while avoiding social expectations and pretense. ISFPs need things to be real, and they need to show their convictions, tastes, and preferences through real demonstrations of the sensory properties thereof. As with all SP types, it’s important to remember that actions speak louder than words: Se puts the ISFP in touch with the sensory expectations of his surroundings and the natural audiences those surroundings create. This lends itself not only to their vaunted sense of improvisational spontaneity, but also a clear idea of what “plays” and what doesn’t–some ISFPs even make it their business to be keenly aware of what trends and fashions in visual and aesthetic design are currently making the greatest impact on the greatest number of people, and to make a conscious effort to stay ahead of the curve. (Some even become what you might call “hipsters”–effortlessly grasping the essence of “cool” but quietly comfortable with the status it conveys, and silently amused at the failed attempts of others to imitate it.)

Unlike ESPs, who often fill their time with exciting and physically thrilling activities largely for the immediate excitement involved in losing themselves in their sensory reactions, ISFPs engage in similar surface behaviors for a somewhat different purpose: they need these sorts of experiences not only because they appreciate the face value of sensory impression for its own sake, but more importantly because putting themselves into unfamiliar situations forces them to define their own values and identities through the means they choose to find their way out. ISFPs often feel they must prove that they have what it takes to find their way out of dangerous situations as a means of confirming the value and moral worth of their own character to themselves.

ISFPs have a reputation for dropping everything and leaving to embark on some sort of journey or expedition with little to no preparation and no apparent reason for doing so beyond a momentary whim. Variety is the spice of life, and if they do the same thing for too long, ISFPs may feel trapped and locked in to one course of action–they need to change their surroundings every so often just to make sure they aren’t losing touch with what’s really important to them by becoming too entrenched in one approach or one way of living life. While this may confuse other types (except EPs, who do the same things purely to stave off boredom, as is a constant concern for them), ISFPs have more reason for doing this than simple enjoyment of the experience itself. Since they often see little to no value in hypothetical self-analysis, they may find it difficult to get in touch with their true selves until they’ve forced themselves into difficult or unexpected situations that require immediate and instinctive responses. People show their true colors most completely when a crisis arises, and as dominant Fi types, it’s of the utmost importance to discover and nurture their individual identities: what better way for Fi to accomplish this than to involve oneself directly in real life, and see how we respond? Paradoxically for a type often characterized as so calm and serene, it’s often during moments of acute crisis that ISFPs find the experiences that come to define the overall meaning of their lives.

On the other hand, Se may result in some negative tendencies for the ISFP who applies it in excess. When an ISFP sees a situation she perceives as patently wrong or immoral, she may throw herself headlong into the fray with little regard for the long-term implications of this behavior. While her resourcefulness and tactile adaptability are valuable gifts, it is possible for her to misjudge or overestimate her own on-the-spot problem solving ability and to actually make problems worse by getting involved in situations where her presence exacerbates the problem and then fails to introduce any genuinely useful solution. As long as Fi feels it is sticking up for what’s right, Se may misrepresent the ISFP’s generally good intentions through arrogant displays of physical bravado, or excessively grand gestures of love, or some bizarre combination of the two. I’ve known male ISFPs who, due to upbringing in an environment unfriendly to their fundamentally sensitive nature, have grown to overcompensate for this perceived “weakness” by exaggerating their Se in order to show their friends and families that they can be “manly” too–they may hit on every woman in a 20 mile radius, start fights at the drop of a hat, or constantly feel pressure to “perform” and impress their “audiences” at every juncture.

While Se does tend to lend itself to a certain flair for performance and its impact on an audience, constantly living in this mode of interaction is an approach better left to Se dominants–when an Se auxiliary type attempts it, he may wear himself too thin and block out the more important internal identity that defines his sense of self. While development of Se is certainly a useful and necessary component of the ISFP’s total cognitive balance, forcing too much of it too quickly will almost invariably result in a feeling of squelched identity. “Who am I really?”, Fi may rightly ask. It’s vital for the young ISFP to remember that, while it’s healthy to experiment with new sorts of situations and approaches to life, he needs to spend more time reflecting on the significance of these events to himself, in order to carve out their part in his total self-understanding and sense of internal balance.

Tertiary: Introverted iNtuition (Ni)

As time and maturity set in, ISFPs often begin to feel that something is missing in their perspectives. They know how to judge right from wrong, and they know how to respond instinctively and make an impact on others, but they may still feel as though something is missing–something they can’t quite identify or articulate. It’s tertiary Ni that fills this gap–by adding a sense of intuitive depth to their range of cognitive options, ISFPs can begin to see beyond the immediacy of the moment consider the implications of their values and actions on a grander scale.

I have one ISFP friend who, seemingly on a whim, left home to hike the entire ~2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail on a personal mission to prove to himself that he could endure the challenges involved. This is classic ISFP behavior: when he returned, my social group could scarcely believe he was the same person. Where before he had been angry, impulsive, and dissatisfied with his life, now he radiated a sense of calmness, of comfortable acceptance of his own identity–a master of his own destiny. When asked what had changed, he simply replied that after hiking 2,200 miles and staring death in the face on numerous occasions, living purely off the land and finding his own way to his own end, the ordinary challenges of everyday life just didn’t really seem significant in the grand scheme of things anymore.

What my friend had done was developed his tertiary Ni: no longer content to consider only the immediate implications of the interaction between his values and his present surroundings, he had become able to reconsider the assumptions his mindset would naturally make regarding the overall significance of everything surrounding him. He had developed an entirely new level of perspective and the effect was obvious and inspirational to everyone around him.

When ISFPs apply Ni is a less productive way, typically by neglecting Se development and slipping into an FiNi loop, the result is generally a combination of bitter cynicism toward the intentions of everyone around them, and feelings of hopeless isolation and detachment from the real and concrete experiences by which they discover their sense of meaning and purpose. Burdened with too much Ni too soon, the ISFP may decide to simply “drop out” of life in general–convinced that nothing will ever grant him the sense of personal fulfillment he desires because nothing is truly significant in a global sense, he may resign himself to cynical commentary on the hopelessness of it all. “Why even bother? Nothing is ever going to change. Nothing I do is ever going to make any serious difference to anybody–so what’s the point? Why should I even bother? I already know what’s going to happen, and it’s not anything I want to be a part of–so I quit.”

The solution generally involves learning to get wrapped up in the excitement of the moment, in finding some activity that not only brings the ISFP closer to her idealized sense of internal harmony, but that will remind her that things can always change on a moment’s notice, and we should always be ready to respond and adapt our approach to the external world in kind. When a proficient Ni combines with this properly developed Se, it grants the ISFP a newfound sense of the long-term significance of her actions: rather than indulge in self-pity and doubt the value in anything she does, as FiNi would encourage on its own, a balanced handle on Ni will create the realization that every day of her life, the ISFP has a chance to change the world for the better. Even the smallest act of kindness, compassion, or personal expression can impact someone’s life–or even many people’s lives–on a much grander scale than we may ever directly know.

Inferior: Extroverted Thinking (Te)

Rounding out the weaker end of the ISFP cognitive hierarchy, we come to Te. Directly at odds with Fi’s sense of individual freedom, undeveloped Te threatens everything the ISFP considers central to the core of his values: personal ethics, freedom to change or remove external structure abruptly, and ability to express oneself freely and redefine (or completely ignore) convention. In short, when the ISFP has not yet integrated Te, it seems to put a damper on everything he considers important about himself and his way of life.

It’s not uncommon to see young ISFPs, especially, using the concept of Te itself as a general scapegoat for all that’s wrong with the world. This happens most frequently when something is getting in the way of their sense of spontaneity and they start to feel trapped or locked into one particular methodology or way of seeing things. Many ISFPs would do well to remember that the purpose of this attitude is efficiency and organization, not necessarily the personal attack or deliberate blow to their identities that they may often perceive it as. When an external source of Te threatens her own subconscious identification with it, the ISFP would generally prefer do anything she can to escape the situation rather than resorting to full-on confrontation. Unless they (or their loved ones) have been deeply and deliberately attacked or injured, ISFPs rarely hold grudges for long periods of time; however, when they are irritated, we can expect occasional small measures of minor revenge, ranging from not showing up for obligations (“You don’t care about my contributions? Fine, have fun doing the work without me!”) to passive-aggressive needling at the suggestion that she be forced to do anything against her will that doesn’t feel like the right course of action at the moment.

When inferior Te explodes, it tends to result in the ISFP temporarily indulging in all the behaviors he normally hates and thus works hard to keep locked away in his subconscious. As with INFPs, this often surfaces in the midst of creative projects that the ISFP finds important, and it happens most often when creative partners are not deemed to be holding up their weight in terms of contribution to the project, or are trying to steer the creative flow in a direction that strikes Fi as clearly “wrong”, or not in the spirit or essence of the feeling or mood he’s trying to convey. Here is where we find the nitpicking perfectionist hiding inside the otherwise easy-going, friendly observer: strike at something too close to her heart, and you may quickly find an unexpected blowup when the normally quiet and compassionate ISFP is forced to assume a decision-making leadership role that, truth be told, she’d prefer would never have to occur because people should know how to conduct themselves in a reasonable and compassionate way.

“I don’t want to be the bad guy, but if you keep pushing me I’m going to have to set things straight.” Well aware of the uses of Se in terms of aggression and intimidation, most ISFPs tend to hide that side of themselves away except in situations where they believe it’s necessary to protect their internal selves from similarly aggressive behavior from others. Nonetheless, when a situation becomes seriously threatening, if something is just too obscenely wrong or cruel or indecent to allow, Se’s anger may trigger an even worse response from the far less comfortable Te. When the situation has gotten so bad that he’s no longer content to respond to it through his normal instinctive sensory reaction, he must actually stop to deliberately plan and strategize an effective response for rearranging resources (mostly human resources, since that is what he prefers to work with) according to some external law or measurable standard that may stomp all over whatever others feel as individuals is important to the situation at hand. If you force Te out of an ISFP, it typically means you’ve done something he finds so unacceptable that he has to disrupt his natural flow of harmonious action and reaction in order to get something extremely threatening under control–and that’s really not something he wants to do often.

Since this response is something he normally despises in others, seeing it from himself creates feelings of hypocrisy and the resultant guilt tends to generate a very negative association with any sort of Te usage at all. It takes a long time and a lot of experience for the ISFP to learn to communicate his grievances calmly and productively enough to lead a group effectively while balancing the competing goals of respecting everyone’s individuality and simultaneously generating measurable results. Sometimes the two goals conflict and a decision has to be made–the generally idealistic and amiable ISFP may have serious difficulty putting his foot down on anything or standing up for his own viewpoint, even when others are actually taking advantage of his natural kindness and patience. Since they know they tend to be unable to control themselves when this sort of situation arises, they do their best to simply avoid confrontations until they’ve learned to develop a sort of detached diplomacy, by which they can comfortably voice their concerns–and even criticisms–without sounding too harsh for their own standards or letting their feelings boil over and exaggerate the criticisms being offered.

Eventually Fi, Se, Ni and Te should balance out into a very calm and understanding individual who knows how to apply just the right touch of administrative control without stepping on anyone’s toes or allowing any disputes to turn from productive exchanges of ideas into hostile personal attacks. As he learns that sometimes personal feelings have to be sacrificed–or at least delayed temporarily–for the sake of moving forward with more widespread goals, his worldview will naturally right itself and come to broaden its understanding of harmonious, fair and balanced decision-making. Armed with a healthy sense of skepticism and concern for practicality, the well-balanced ISFP will find his goals and ideals aligning more closely with the immediacy of physical reality than he ever thought possible.

(source)

[cabalbrothers-blog]

@h-exe

[weirdfella]

ISFJ: A Jungian Cognitive Function Analysis By SimulatedWorld

ISFJ, or Introverted Sensing Feeling Judger, is a label borrowed from MBTI nomenclature and now applied to the Jungian Cognitive Function set {Si, Fe, Ti, Ne}.

Dominant: Introverted Sensation (Si)

“It seems so obvious that it’s kind of silly I even have to say it, but things just always seem to go more smoothly when you know exactly what you’re doing. There’s really nothing quite like having your own private map for how to do things–the more I study and work on the areas I’m interested in, the more I develop this ability to connect my experiences to everything else I’ve done, and the process just builds and builds. I don’t even mean for it to happen that way–I guess I just know what kinds of things I like, and I know what makes me comfortable and what doesn’t, and I know that the more I plan my life around setting myself up to work in areas I know I’m confident in, the more I’m going to succeed and the more in-depth information I’m going to have about the skills I specialize most in. I think one of my greatest strengths is that I know what I’m good at, and, perhaps even more importantly, I know what I’m not good at, and I have the good sense to know when to avoid the latter. I don’t understand why people insist on haphazardly jumping into things they don’t have any idea how to handle properly. What’s the point? If you don’t know what you’re doing, aren’t you just bound to fail?”

ISFJ is one of the most poorly understood types in the entire Jungian Cognitive Function canon. The fact that they’re often misunderstood and inaccurately stereotyped as groveling doormats who live to serve others and let people walk all over them serves only as a testament to the true extent of their humility in terms of how private they keep their true selves and their real passions and interests.

While they do prefer to conduct the bulk of their interactions with the external world through auxiliary Fe (which I’ll get to in the next section), that is not at all the primary focus of an ISFJ’s cognitive hierarchy or preferred lifestyle. To understand the significance of Si, we need to touch for a moment on the overall nature of introverted perception (Pi) in general, and to compare and contrast it with the extroverted perception attitudes by which most people who have written about ISFJs have gathered their information and totally missed the point of what these people and their dominant attitudes are really all about.

There’s a scene in the film Across the Universe where two characters argue over the dinner table about the nature of experience and identity. While one of them, a young P type, argues that, “Who you are determines what you do”, the older character (presumably a J type) insists on exactly the opposite: “What you do determines who you are.” This latter attitude is a great way to introduce oneself to the philosophy central to Si: we build our identities on the experiences we’ve internalized. This is fundamentally why Si dominants go to such great lengths to control their experiential intake: they’re not turning down unfamiliar experiences just to annoy their ExxP friends; they simply understand that the comfort in perceptual familiarity is such a powerful force in their own lives that they have to be extremely careful not to fill themselves up with too many experiences that might not end up being healthy or productive for them in the long run.

They know themselves well enough to realize that, above all, their natural tendency to seek out very specific kinds of informational and experiential input depends directly on the kinds of input they’ve become accustomed to through their prior life experiences. Like their Ni dominant cousins, Si dominants are most concerned with how their individual cognitive tendencies associate meaning with various kinds of signs and information; however, since they assign this meaning based on direct association with highly detailed sensory information imprinted on their consciousness from previous associations, they know that if they start spending a lot of time involving themselves in a certain kind of experience, the fact that it becomes familiar and slowly works its way into their experiential comfort zone means they may start to like it. And then they may never stop doing it.

While Pe dominants are constantly on the search for all sorts of new information and new experiences of as many different kinds as they can get their hands on, there’s not as much of a threat of becoming attached to any one specific sort of experience or information. They’ll just tire of it and look for something new the next day anyway, but not so for Pi dominants: since they have to focus their attention fully and completely on whatever kind of information they’re seeking out, they can’t just shut off this focus and switch to a different kind of input on a whim. Once they allow themselves to become immersed in the absorption of an experience, they know they won’t stop until they’ve built a completely internalized map of every detail of every piece of meaning this experience has for them. Their choices of experiences literally create their identities–so how can they not be constantly wary of what sorts of experiences they let in?

ISFJs are, above all, highly cognizant of their own impressionable nature. They like to figure out what areas interest them, and then maximize the absorption of all sorts of information, data, skill sets, and experiences related to “mapping” as much of that terrain as humanly possible. I’ve known ISFJs who sit up all night on Wikipedia reading about their favorite subjects. Note that they don’t prefer hopping around to as many different unrelated articles as they can find–they have a focus, a taste for certain particular flavors of input, and they want to know everything they can about those specific areas. If you’ve ever watched Antiques Road Show, well over half of the expert analysts who appear on that show are likely ISxJ types. They didn’t necessarily set out to become experts in their fields–they just found that they so enjoyed internalizing sensory information related to, say, World War II-era Confederate rifles, or Kandinsky paintings from the 1920s, that after focusing their lives on these fascinating pursuits for so long, they eventually found that they’d become certifiable experts. Given enough time to learn, absorb, and practice all the established information, methodology, and techniques in a given area, Si dominants will outperform virtually everyone in terms of consistency and thorough attention to detail.

Auxiliary: Extroverted Feeling (Fe)

“Govern a family as you would cook a small fish–very gently.”

–Chinese proverb

Once we move past the dominant and start to focus on the auxiliary, we start to see where the general misunderstandings and assumptions about the ISFJ type originate. Given only knowledge of their public faces, it’s relatively easy to assume ISFJs have no internal lives and exist as sort of less effective versions of ESFJs, using Fe as a public interaction method but not commanding it as fluently as their ESFJ brethren.

This is, of course, due to the fact that Fe is only a secondary concern for ISFJs–an important part of their lives but ultimately subservient to their personal quests for experiences associated with the familiar sensations they find most pleasing. In order to form meaningful connections with others and establish any sort of communal framework, it’s vital that ISFJs master the objectively verifiable language and methodology of externalized Feeling judgment. As Fe develops, ISFJs will develop important interpersonal skills, along with consistent attention to the needs of their friends, family, and other individuals to whom their connective obligations suggest they share mutual responsibility. This is where the commonly understood impressions of ISFJs as loyal and conscientious group supporters come from: and indeed, when Fe is strongly in place, this awareness will absolutely form a vital component of their total selves. They will work tirelessly to promote the best interests of their loved ones, developing fluency not only with practical day to day maintenance tasks, but with any skill which may contribute to the well-being of others that their culturally supported networks of interpersonal obligations suggest is their responsibility.

All the while, the healthy ISFJ manages to balance this network of familial responsibility against her own personal desire to continue her quest for absorption of ever more information and experiences related to the sorts of sensory input that, over time, come to define her comfort zone. Indeed, Si and Fe should ideally become intertwined and mutually beneficial to each other, as the experiences associated with organizing, encouraging, assisting, and bonding with loved ones help to grant more definite and outwardly observable shape and meaning to her internal mass of undifferentiated experiential input. Fe is vital to the formation of interpersonal networks upon which her fundamental need for consistency and routine (based on a desire for new information to relate concretely to that which has been internalized and understood before) can depend. It grants her not only a means of communicating and defining the significance of her relationships to others, but an ability to depend upon others and show them that she herself can be depended upon as well.

If Fe goes undeveloped and leaves SiTi to handle the majority of cognition, the ISFJ is prone to feelings of terror that his trusted support network will fall out from under him at any given moment. Trusting others to handle important tasks becomes an uneasy endeavor at best. Since the feeling of trust and security upon which Si depends so heavily is never connected in any meaningful way to the bonds and relationships defined by interaction with others, the SiTi loop ISFJ feels that no one but himself can ever be depended upon to bring him the sort of consistently reliable experience his dominant function necessitates that he have access to. Without a way to describe or objectively designate his feelings for others or theirs for him, no sense of faith in upholding mutual responsibilities can form–he must do everything for himself, or risk total ruination through the failure of other less reliable individuals to uphold their agreements and obligations. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself–or risk facing the unknown, totally unprepared–which, of course, represents Si’s worst fear of all.

Tertiary: Introverted Thinking (Ti)

As ISFJs find themselves so singularly focused on developing their internal maps of experiential impressions and defining their directions in life based on the kinds of experiences these maps point them toward, at some point in life it follows that they should begin to ask the question: What if the map is wrong?

Dealing with this possibility is, to Si, unfamiliar (and therefore frightening) enough that most ISFJs defer almost exclusively to Fe in determining the answer: If my impression of how something is has somehow misled me or given me wrong information, surely I can count on the people to whom I hold cultural and familial bonds to remind me that I’ve lost touch with what our community finds most important. Surely, by listening to the ethical consensus of those to whom I feel closest, I can discover and rectify the problem when my own desires conflict with the institutional customs and values by which my relationships to others are given objective meaning and definition. Unfortunately, however, the savvy ISFJ will invariably notice situations in which neither Si nor Fe seems to offer any reasonable solution. Despite Si’s inherent preference for that which has come to define its comfort zone (“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!”), at some point the ISFJ will be forced to evaluate situations in which her community’s collectivized ethical norms will strike some part of her being as somehow fundamentally flawed, even if these norms are consistent with the kind of experience she has built into Si’s vast internal database as the familiar and consistent standard she has come to trust.

When this happens, the involvement of tertiary Ti enters the picture primarily to serve as a sort of corrective force in the event that something has been written onto the map that may come into conflict with the ISFJ’s own innate sense of logical reasoning. “This is what I’ve always done, and it’s what everyone I find important says I should be doing, and yet something about it simply doesn’t make sense.” This can be doubly disconcerting as it represents not only a break from the unconditional trust the ISFJ normally places in her own self-referential experience, but also a deliberate separation from the outward judgments upon which her relationships to others are most directly verified through external reinforcement. The introduction of Ti into the mix seems to poke holes in the very fabric of everything by which the ISFJ has come to define her own existence–and yet she still can’t ignore it. It’s only through this vital corrective process, however, that the ISFJ is able to rewrite segments of her own sensory maps to align more closely with a sense of universal fairness and consistency in principle which extends beyond that which her own limited personal experiences with the evaluative standards of her communities have the context or precedent to grasp or define completely.

When applied negatively in a poorly developed state, Ti may cause counterproductive changes as its insistence on “just knowing” that something is (or is not) inherently fair or reasonable can reinforce all of Si’s worst tendencies in terms of subjective self-reference as the ideal solution to any and all problems or disagreements. Convinced beyond all doubt that only he has the true depth of experience to understand the problem in realistic terms, the SiTi loop ISFJ may reject any and all outside opinions regardless of the status or relationship implied by the characteristics of the person offering them. “Listen, my wife doesn’t know what’s best for our children–I’m the one who’s been there looking after them from day one!” Neglecting Fe’s vital external input can leave the ISFJ lacking any sort of meaningful outside standard against which to weigh his own subjective evaluations of the overall value of any given idea, practice, or methodology.

On the other hand, once Fe has been granted the necessary growth and development time, Ti may step in to assist it with the evaluation process and remind the ISFJ that yes, it is possible for our family and friends to be wrong, and sometimes we need to have the courage to stand up for our own beliefs when faced with decisions that will directly impact our own lives and personal needs. More importantly, Ti allows the aforementioned sort of retroactive “map correction” process by which internalized sensory experience can be questioned, devalued, and ultimately overwritten with more effective and consistent ideals. For the ISFJ, Ti is there primarily to serve as a reminder that his own experiences and impressions do not always equate directly with the mostly universally just or reasonable approach, and that, somewhat paradoxically, sometimes the only person who can make this distinction to the necessary degree is himself.

Inferior: Extroverted iNtuition (Ne)

Last but not least, the Achilles’ Heel: many of the typical complaints others have about SJs (and especially ISJs) can be traced to manifestations of inferior Ne. On a surface level, Ne opposes everything Si holds dear and considers vital to maintaining a healthy outlook: while Si would encourage us to find exactly what we’re looking for on our internal maps before setting out to find it, Ne takes a somewhat different approach: that the most interesting things in life are usually surprises.

It should be relatively obvious by now that Si doesn’t like surprises. It wants complete information and it wants time to sort through every piece of the information given and compare it to the sense of static, internal consistencies by which everything in its worldview is granted stable meaning and significance. Until you can relate a given piece of information to something you already know, until you can show where it would fall on the map you already have, Si not only has no use for it, but is actually threatened by its imposing presence among the already-sorted information by which its identity and worldview are defined. Inferior Ne seems to throw a wrench into that identity itself: By encouraging the ISFJ to ignore what he knows and instead let loose and actually enjoy a constant influx of new and unfamiliar ideas from as many different unconnected sources as possible, Ne seems to attack everything the Si mindset holds as important or meaningful. Rather than carefully compare each nugget of data to every other piece of data we already hold, each new piece of information seems to suggest even more connections to even further-reaching outwardly defined patterns that continue to change the meaning and threaten stable interpretation the more we indulge them.

It’s almost as if Ne would suggest that the more we know, the more we don’t know; the more we discover, the more we find out is potentially wrong with the map we’re reading now. Rather than contribute to a more complete understanding, inferior Ne frightens the ISFJ by telling him that the more he learns, the more he will be forced to deal with the unknown without a plan of action or the opportunity to educate himself on the possible responses. The result is often a form of stalled burn-out, trapped between the desire for knowledge/preparedness and the inevitable realization that the more knowledge he gains in his preferred areas, the more he will have to acknowledge new relationships and connections between that knowledge and other as-of-yet unknown areas. The resultant realization that he will never possess a complete map strikes the ISFJ as a terrifying reality: there will always be uncertainty and there will always be things he has to adapt to without preparation time.

In practice, inferior Ne often manifests itself in the form of outlandish insecurities and fears resulting from the inability to distinguish between the relative probabilities of the occurrence of various events: as the ISFJ becomes more and more stressed, he is forced to confront an uncontrollable flood of increasingly strange and unrealistic possibilities for the future–what if my spouse dies of a heart attack? What if my office is engulfed by a giant fireball? What if aliens enslave Earth and kidnap my children and I never see them again? What if the unrelenting flow of constant future possibilities totally ruins my confidence in any sort of stable or consistent lifestyle–what if I can never count on anything to stay the same again?

Of course, like all inferior functions, Ne can eventually be harnessed for positive use–but it takes a long time and a lot of personal development. When a very well-balanced ISFJ is able to stop viewing Ne as a disturbing threat to his sense of security and perceptive stability, it should actually assist and support dominant Si’s desire for more information by granting him new paths and avenues by which to obtain more information of the specific types and categories which he finds so pleasing. He will continue to seek out information and experiences that seem related to that which he’s already mapped–that doesn’t change–but what does change is his ability to recognize the relationships between seemingly “unrelated” areas of knowledge. He may not even consciously realize he’s doing it, but this expanded awareness of the interconnectedness of all knowledge will make the ISFJ feel more comfortable learning and adapting to new contexts than he ever thought possible. Areas in which he has relatively little experience will suddenly seem much more familiar (and therefore less daunting) than they ever have before–he will unconsciously find something in the new area that relates back to something he already knows; by making the unfamiliar seem familiar, he will “limit” his perceptual intake (and thus remain in his comfort zone) while expanding it into all sorts of new directions. He will unwittingly teach himself to improvise through the simple realization that, when we are able to see some form of abstract relationship between any combination of ideas we can imagine, everything seems related in some way or another, and thus all new information can be traced back to that with which he is already well-versed and comfortable.

Exploration in the name of expanding one’s comfort zone, so that one never has to leave it–whether or not the self-actualized ISFJ realizes this is what he’s doing, it makes his experiences that much more complete, and his life that much more well-rounded and fulfilling.

(source)

[weirdfella]

ESTJ: A Jungian Cognitive Function Analysis By SimulatedWorld

ESTJ, or Extroverted Sensing Thinking Judger, is a label borrowed from MBTI nomenclature and now applied to the Jungian Cognitive Function set {Te, Si, Ne, Fi}.

Dominant: Extroverted Thinking (Te)

“More than anything I want to be seen as a competent leader, a strong organizer capable of taking charge and getting results. I think there are good reasons for the commonly accepted and proven methods of getting things done: they work! People come to me when they need help setting up their plans or moving their projects forward because they know I’m consistently dependable, and they trust me to take on the important responsibilities because they know I’ll work as hard as I can to make sure things are done right. I will take full responsibility if something I’m in charge of doesn’t go well, so I need to work with people I can count on to meet expectations and respect schedules and deadlines. Sometimes others see me as too much of a stickler for rules and structure, but I’m not sure they realize how important it is to have a concrete plan of action and a central focus for everything you do. I don’t like to waste time or energy and it bothers me when people don’t bother with the research and preparation to make sure they’re using the most effective methods. Work ethic is something I place a lot of importance on–it’s important to do your fair share, and to be self-sufficient enough that you can stand up on your own and support your own needs. If you ever want to feel like you’ve accomplished anything in life, shouldn’t you work hard to ensure that you’re doing things the right way?”

ESTJs at their best are driven, focused, and productive–and those are the qualities by which they typically define their identities and self-images. As Te dominants, they have little patience for inefficiency, and they trust in the collective knowledge of whichever external groups they see as knowledgeable and worthwhile authorities. They are singularly aware that for any given job or task, there exists a most effective methodology, and they will bend over backwards to make sure they know what it is and that the project gets moving in the right direction. While others may complain about or disregard formal rules systems or regulations, ESTJs will generally stick up for them. There’s a reason for the right method, a logic to the system and the way the different steps in a process interconnect. ESTJs, in most cases, seem to naturally understand this kind of causality on a deeper level than most other people do.

Nonetheless, ESTJs are often misunderstood and misrepresented in the media as tyrannical control freaks, overbearing bosses, or blind traditionalists. Since they are typically aggressive and confident in the pursuit of their goals, and since concern for the emotional states of others is not generally the first thing they look for when assessing a situation, it’s easy to mistake their desire for progress and success as selfish insistence on absolute self-authority. But while ESTJs do insist on a clearly defined chain of command and organizational structure, it’s not generally because they have any overwhelming desire to make the lives of others miserable–it’s because they understand the significance of the consequences of the absence of recognizable logical structure and continuity of process. They may often find themselves the only organizationally competent member of an entire team. Because they value planning and tangible progress to such a high degree, ESTJs often feel personally responsible for the success or failure of any given job or initiative. If they haven’t done everything they can to ensure the best result, they will be unable to live with themselves if the effort falls through. They may often see others as so unable to handle the administrative relationships they grasp so naturally that they fear the entire project will collapse around them (negatively impacting everyone involved) if they don’t put forth their best efforts to keep things afloat.

Naturally, this can (and does) cause friction with a variety of other types. It’s hard to browse any typology forum without hearing a disgruntled xNxP complain about his overbearing ESTJ father, boss, or public leader. What most people (especially disgruntled NPs) don’t realize about ESTJs, though, is that they are the people who keep life running smoothly when everything is falling apart and no one else knows what to do. While they may sometimes become frustrated or angry with people they perceive as ineffectual or insubordinate, they’re often surprisingly calm and confident in the face of crisis (assuming it’s a crisis they’ve anticipated and prepared for.) Te as a dominant function is most satisfied when a situation arises where all of its knowledge and preparation apply directly to achieving the best solution, where they’re able to prove their skills and competence directly by producing measurable results for their tireless efforts. When logical and empirical evaluations are standardized according to a universal rubric, no one can argue with the real-life results of hard work, preparation, and execution. The ability to maintain focus on these all-important goals leads almost invariably to a sense of pride in self-sufficiency that nearly all xxTJ types share–ESTJs loathe depending on others for resources, and they build a lot of their self-images on their ability to look out for themselves and provide concrete direction for their own lives as well as the lives of those around them.

A common ESTJ misconception is that they care only about the end result and not about the people involved in the process. This is generally much less true than it may seem on the surface: often, especially in the context of groups where the ESTJ is personally connected to the people she’s working with, the impending possibility of failure (and its associated negative impact on the group) may very well be the entire reason she feels compelled to lend direction and efficient leadership to the situation in the first place. The ESTJ is not out to annoy others–she simply recognizes their logical mistakes and infrastructure inefficiencies to a much higher degree than they do, and she can’t stand by and watch while others (especially those important to her on a personal basis) waste their time and effort on a system or process that’s bound to fail due to simple, common sense planning errors. If she sees something that could be improved or brought up to “industry standards”, the ESTJ may have great difficulty restraining her natural desire to correct it. While she may not always do so in the manner most palatable to those around her, her commitment to achievement (and to helping those around her achieve) is undeniable.

Auxiliary: Introverted Sensation (Si)

As an auxiliary function, Si is responsible for providing a balancing effect between the external logic and facts of Te’s world (where ESTJs feel most at home) and the private perceptual associations they come to develop as they build more skills and experiences. Si is primarily related to connections of information with personalized meaning and expectations–as the ESTJ learns and develops, he discovers gradually that not everything in life can be fully explained or understood using standardized measurements and fact-based assessments. While the very concept of subjectivity is, in itself, annoying and inconvenient for Te–ESTJs love being able to decisively and objectively prove the value of their ideas and methodologies–the influence of Si introduces them to a deeper world of internal sensory information processing, where only extensive collections of deeply personalized experiences can produce the level of competence and thorough understanding they desire most.

Earlier in life, ESTJs may find it difficult to place any genuine value on anything that cannot be clearly marked, measured, and evaluated according to an objective hierarchy. Dominant Te reasons that all worthwhile knowledge is collected, stored, and represented by the outwardly observable laws and logical relationships between externally verifiable processes and concepts–the beauty of which rests in the fact that no one individual’s experience or opinion can taint the collective objectivity of knowledge as a general body. The role of Si begins to integrate into the ESTJ’s cognition as he discovers that not everything he needs to know can be found in books or learned through study of the methods of others–he will learn that certain parts of life can only be understood by directly experiencing them for oneself, by discovering significance through internalization of actual sensory experience and association of perceptual expectations created therein.

In practice, this tends to lead to a gradual shift from overconfidence in the absolute correctness of logical authorities toward an emphasis on individual understanding and a more open-minded attitude toward the possibility that the subjective perceptions of others (and indeed, of themselves) may hold as much validity as the objective rules by which ESTJs structure their lives. One cannot truly grasp the subtleties of life’s experiences without many years of hard-fought trial and error, and there is room for interpretive difference even within the confines of a well-defined schedule or working method. As they build more skills and collect more information from various areas, ESTJs will learn to develop their own interpretive paradigms–and they may be surprised to discover that their own experiences don’t always align perfectly with the standards that their prized objective expectations might suggest.

It’s worth noting that, as a perceptive function, Si makes no evaluation or judgment upon the sensory information it internalizes and ultimately builds into the ESTJ’s comfort zone and sense of perceptual continuity. Like their ISTJ cousins but to a lesser extent, ESTJs must be careful to avoid situations in which too many negative or unrealistic associations may be generated between their private, experiential reactions and the measurable realities of the world around them. They are generally careful to stay within contexts where they know what they’re doing, lest their subjective hunches generate too large a schism between their problem-solving abilities and the objective expectations of the people on whom they depend for personal interaction and structural boundaries. Left to its own devices, Si can lead ESTJs down potentially destructive roads–as creatures of habit who need to keep things under control in order to feel comfortable, they must take care to avoid letting themselves become too comfortable with uncontrollable situations.

As Si grows stronger and generates stronger cognitive balance, the ESTJ will develop her own perceptual set, and the more sensory information she internalizes relating to her areas of interest, the more she will “normalize” new sensations by adjusting her perceptions of them to the expectations her individual experiences have come to generate. Interestingly, though ESTJs are often seen as naturally detail-oriented, it’s actually the development of auxiliary Si that facilitates this attention to detail more than anything else–Te on its own may very well overlook important details in favor of expediency and progress. Introduction of Si into the system will grant the ESTJ a mental “map” of information, a sort of “sixth sense” in terms of what “feels right” and what doesn’t. That which matches expectations built on prior successes and failures will, ideally, match up with that which external laws and obligations suggest is fair and accurate. Nonetheless, the well-balanced ESTJ is capable of discerning the difference between the two, and of using her own experiential knowledge to correct the error when the outer world’s expectations conflict with it.

Tertiary: Extroverted iNtuition (Ne)

As life carries on, ESTJs will inevitably be confronted with a side of their personalities that doesn’t seem to fit within the structural expectations of their preferred cognitive attitudes. Tertiary Ne enters the picture as an agent of creative exploration–but also as an element of unpredictability and potentially chaotic influence. It’s responsible for several different adjustments that may confuse and possibly even alienate others, at least until the ESTJ learns to understand this part of himself thoroughly enough to incorporate it into his cognitive approach in a healthy and productive way.

While dominant Te’s chief desire is to be judged as a competent arbitrator in line with the categorical expectations of those considered knowledgeable, Ne contributes to the extroverted side of the ESTJ personality by adding an accompanying desire to be perceived as unique and creative. The accompanying tendency to throw caution to the wind and think outside the box may alarm or frighten close associates and even the ESTJ himself–ignoring accepted evaluative norms and forging into the unknown solely in search of novel or unexpected results is virtually antithetical to the way most ESTJs tend to handle themselves and define their place in the world. They may rightly wonder, as Ne develops, where this sudden desire to tear down established expectations and wander into something different is coming from, and they may fear that it threatens all that they’ve worked so hard their entire lives to establish. Nonetheless, the introduction of Ne should provide a useful alternative perspective when situations invariably arise where the tried and true methods that have proven successful in the past cease, for whatever reason, to continue living up to expectations.

Most ESTJs seem to funnel tertiary Ne into some sort of creative outlet, which may or may not ever relate concretely to their career goals. Since they so often choose careers primarily on the basis that they will provide stable and consistent financial support, they find themselves unable to inject much personal individuality into their everyday working lives, and thus one common solution is to join some sort of creative endeavor where they can feel free to let Ne roam and explore without having to worry whether their inner creative spirit conflicts with any contractual obligations. Other ESTJs express their Ne by surrounding themselves with friends and associates involved in creative fields–often such people can provide them with feedback on their own work, and help them feel inspired to continue working toward new frontiers when others in their professional lives seem to lack interest or inspiration.

If auxiliary Si is poorly developed, granting Ne a stronger role in the ESTJ’s cognition than she is naturally comfortable with, the “TeNe loop” ESTJ may find herself in an impossible situation: torn between preserving the old guard and promoting the new wave of the future, her conflicting desires to be seen as both rationally level-headed and wildly revolutionary may circumvent legitimate progress, ultimately resulting in high stress and burnout. She may find that even though her approach is working, it’s become too dull and uninteresting to continue with–and then, intent on finding something new, may branch out too far and experiment with too many new possibilities with no real direction, sabotaging herself as she loses focus and indulges ever further into mindless experimentation for nothing but its own sake. She may struggle with the fear that everything she’s learned will become useless, that she may wake up one day and discover that she herself has become obsolete overnight. Lost in the expansive world of change for change’s sake, TeNe has the potential to make the ESTJ into a slave to the expectations of others. Uncertain of what will bring her personal satisfaction and stuck with the exhausting task of constantly satisfying conflicting expectations from vastly different worlds, she may find herself feeling utterly dissatisfied, yet clueless as to how to progress.

When integrated correctly, tertiary Ne should provide an additional balancing influence by reminding the ESTJ that change can be a good thing, that new direction is sometimes the very thing that will ultimately result in the greatest amount of progress and the best results. Strong and confident ESTJs will often manage to work their intuitive tendencies into their careers: by introducing Ne into their cognitive approaches but still allowing it to remain subservient to Te and Si, the well-rounded ESTJ will work to promote optimal efficiency, while still maintaining the ability to change or rework areas which no longer seem to produce the consistent results which create the satisfaction she’s become used to. Life will, ideally, remain fundamentally predictable and controlled, but open to occasional change and reinvention when necessary.

Inferior: Introverted Feeling (Fi)

As the weakest and least controllable force in the ESTJ’s cognitive hierarchy, inferior Fi can present a number of issues which create substantial difficulty for most ESTJs throughout the majority of their lives. Since they spend the majority of their time dealing with impersonal and objective evaluations on a large-scale, and since these evaluations tend to apply to large numbers of people in many different contexts, taking time to sit down and reflect on their own private ethical values may strike ESTJs as an inefficient use of time, at best–or a hypocritical and illogical mistake, at worst. Often naturally distrustful of the very concept of introverted judgment, ESTJs may find themselves grappling with the ethical implications of their working lives, struggling to balance their organizational talents against their personal feelings about the greater value and inherent worth of the work they involve themselves in.

In their weaker moments, ESTJs in the grip of inferior Fi may become uncharacteristically offended when others don’t see or immediately accept the value in their preferred methodologies. As they often feel genuinely responsible for the well-being of those around them, they may take it quite personally when they feel that their advice–their primary contribution to the improvement of their surroundings–is being ignored or rejected. They may struggle with feelings of hypocrisy or personal inadequacy when their emotions tell them to react negatively to this sort of perceived rejection, conflicting with their stronger and more conscious Thinking objectives. Since they normally expect others to be able to set aside their personal feelings in favor of accomplishing more important goals, the sudden inability to do this themselves may strike them as a form of weakness of which they must absolve themselves at all costs. They may not only feel guilty, but also guilty about feeling guilty in the first place. (This last part is especially true of male ESTJs, who often consider it their responsibility to maintain a dispassionately logical outlook at all times.)

Some ESTJs may even be so painfully aware of their own natural difficulties in this area that they overcompensate (whether consciously or not) by pushing specific moral agendas to the point of exaggerated emphasis on seemingly random or insignificant ethical dilemmas or problems with society at large. In these situations it’s not uncommon to see them applying Fi in service of Te’s awareness of its own talents–feeling legitimately distressed by the ethical problems with a given situation, but much less confident in their ability to express these feelings than in their known areas of strength, they may take up projects or causes in service of their private moral values, but under the guise of simple improvements to efficiency of process. ESTJs rarely expect thanks or appreciation for performing what Fi sees as their moral duty. Somewhat counterintuitively, the driving unconscious force behind Fi (“I must be a Good Person and I must contribute to Good Causes”) may have much more to do with the ESTJ’s motivations in many situations than his characteristically impersonal demeanor suggests. Usually, ESTJs are not entirely unaware of their own tendency toward bluntness and direct criticism, but are confused and uncertain as to how to express their private feelings more openly or connect emotionally with others. The resultant confusion can create a variety of difficulties in terms of structuring and maintaining interpersonal relationships (though ESTJs are typically reliable and devoted enough friends and family members that loved ones can forgive or simply overlook their shortcomings in this area.)

With time and experience, inferior Fi should ultimately lead to a more well-rounded personality as the unconscious side of the TeFi duality blends more smoothly with the conscious side, leading to a more complete personality capable of balancing the importance of scheduled progress against the private moral tenets of the internal self. This is often a long and arduous process, however–to ESTJs, it may often seem like halting the development of their projects to deal with every little emotional or moral quandary of every individual involved would be so time-consuming and inefficient as to prevent any real results from ever being created, or any useful goals from ever reaching completion. As he becomes more in touch with his own emotional needs and personal values, however, the ESTJ will naturally develop more empathy for the similar needs of those surrounding him. As he learns to keep an eye (even if only in the back of his mind) on his own humanistic moral responsibilities, he treads ever closer to completing the all-important project that is his own personal growth–and he’ll feel all the more satisfied when he gets there.

(source)

[lazyyogi]

What exactly is wrong with being attached to a family member or spouse?

1. Attachment does not equal love. Sometimes we confuse the two so much we think that attachment alone is proof of love. Then love becomes more of an assumed thing rather than a visceral experience from the heart. 

2. Attachment limits that person’s freedom. Have you ever had a family member or spouse that is attached to you and calls it love? Perhaps you may already know the things people do to try to control each other in the name of love and attachment. 

“You must love in such a way that the person you love feels free.” ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

Attachment is the opposite of giving freedom to others. 

3. Attachment is delusional. Impermanence is a fact of life. So what does that make attachment? Attachment is not only the opposite of giving freedom to others but also giving freedom to life. 

However, will life heed you? Will life care whether or not you are attached to something before taking it away? 

Therefore attachment means being out of harmony with life’s natural changes. 

4. Lack of or absence of attachment does not mean being uncaring, uninterested, or numb. It means making peace with what is. When someone we love dies, we do not spend the rest of our life in grief if we want to live sanely. We learn to let go and accept, even while we keep that love and sadness in our hearts. 

To be unattached means to let go and accept life on a moment to moment basis. You take nothing for granted. You do not assume that what is here today will be here tomorrow. And so you can be more grateful, more loving, and more present. 

Our society has very silly and thoughtless values. One of them is attachment, believing attachment is important. It’s not. 

“All your seriousness is about sandcastles. And you yourself will leave them one day, trampling them down, and you will not look back.” ~ Osho

Namaste :)

[infjadvice]

I liked this so I thought I’d share.

[biosigh]

Entry 235: How I see the Intuitive functions

[mbtiobsessed]

Is it possible for a high-Si user not to necessarily value traditions or really respect authority, or are those just stereotypes?

Short answer: it depends.

Long answer:

Si users value past events that mean something to them. They ultimately associate memories with feelings/emotions and if something has affected them in an extremely positive/negative way they will remember it. If a tradition (for example, spending christmas at their parent’s house) has been a constant all their life and they have a lot of positive emotions associated with the tradition, then they will not want that to change and will want to continue the tradition. 

However, given enough time, they may also see the benefits of change eventually. Ne is lower in their stack, so they need time before they are able to accept the change (of course, it also depends on how healthy their functions are). 

Same thing for authority. It’s not really that they respect all authority. They simply believe that the chain of command and all that is something that is clearly working since it’s been used all these years and therefore it only makes sense to continue doing so. If they look at an authority figure or system from the outside (ie. they’ve never dealt with them) they may be able to objectively determine whether the authority figure or system is worth respect or not. But, if they’ve been living all their life a certain way (for example: school) then they will most likely respect all authority in that system (ie. teachers) by default because they’ve had past experiences with them that has made them learn that it’s the teacher who knows best, etc. 

Idk, I hope I articulated myself properly.

[funkymbtifiction]

Another element of Si – attaching a negative response to a negative event that impacted you body badly in some way. For example, you drink chocolate milk as a child and then throw it up an hour later for whatever reason. Your mind and body associates chocolate milk with feeling sick, and you can never drink chocolate milk again, because your Si informs you that if you do so, YOU WILL FEEL SICK. You might even feel sick at the mere thought of drinking chocolate milk.

“Tradition” hints at that which Si values, for whatever reason. Two Si-doms can grow up in the same house and not care about any of the same things, because Si is entirely individualistic and based on the person using it. It is a perspective, a way of seeing reality, of choosing what is important to it. It’s not simply “growing up with“ something, but specifically tying personalized meaning to this or that. In other words, two Si-doms can grow up watching Star Wars. One might enjoy it, but be excited about reviving the franchise, or find the changes made to the originals interesting on the remastered disks because it gives a new perspective and additions to the familiar story (Ne). This Si did not attach emotional value to the series, so “change” to the original is exciting rather than frustrating.

The other Si might associate watching Star Wars with their dad, and that being their ‘special time’ together, so Si entwines and infuses the films with personal meaning, which makes that Si more resistant to changes to the originals, because the flow of positive memories and associations for Star Wars is rudely interrupted by changes to the source material. This Si expects it to be a certain way, and it is not, so Si pushes angrily away from it and shuts down seeing the positive elements to the changes, because Si values the sensory impressions and feelings associated with the original films and the emotional connection they bring to mind, of spending happy hours with Si’s dad.

Regarding authority, it is not merely ‘respecting’ authority so much as understanding how authority works and having a healthy concern for the negative and unforeseen consequences of defying authority (inferior Ne). However, Si is not automatically submissive to authority, particularly the authority it is most familiar with. Si-children can be quite rebellious against their parents, for example, because while they ‘get’ authority, they are still individualistic and want their own way. Si might outright buck authority and throw tradition back in another’s face, with no interest in it whatsoever, because Si neither values that tradition or respects that authority.

You can be Si and not be sentimental, or entirely past-oriented, or respecting of authority, or interested in tradition. Si is the lens with which you view reality. It builds expectations that the world either meets (and makes you happy) or fails (and upsets Si, which flat out rejects whatever doesn’t match). Si has preset notions of what life should be like, how it should be.

Si is also good at shaping its environment to give itself comfort. It moves into a room and shifts the chair under the window, adds a pretty coverlet, chooses soft colors, finds a scent to put in a sachet. These things make Si comfortable. Si is walking through a store and touching what you like, to see if it pleases your fingers as well as your eyes, because if it doesn’t, you don’t want it. It is knowing when a taste is different from what you’ve had before. It is desiring your sensory preferences met.

[pigepresident]

As request by anon, from my tag - #inferior functions

Inferior Ne (ISxJs)

Healthy - The ISxJ will readily accept that there are other options than what they are used to. They’ll listen to the opinions of others, and though they’ll generally go the way they ultimately think is best, they will hear other ideas. They may be likely to brainstorm with a group, so that they can hear everyone else’s ideas in addition to their own.

Unhealthy - The ISxJ will refuse to learn what they do not already know, or have not already been introduced to. They don’t want to hear about other ideas – The ritual they’ve been using is working fine (Even if it’s not). They may, actually, take other ideas, but they’ll cite them as their own. They will likely refuse to accept that others can remember events better than they can, and may go as far as to gaslight someone because of it (“He ate the cookie.” “He did NOT.” [He did.]).

Inferior Ni (ESxPs)

Healthy - The ESxP will think about the future. Though their primary sense will be set on the present, a lot of their decisions will have far reaching consequences that they are well aware of and have considered. Though it’s likely not obvious to people outside of them, they more than likely have a long term plan – it just involves some wiggle room. They’re probably the type to say “Well, I want to take a road trip and end up in California. This is the day I want to get there and I’m going to take this general route,” but not plan out where they’ll stay nightly.

Unhealthy - The ESxP will be caught in the present. They won’t think about the future, or they won’t care. They probably won’t regard the fact that their actions have consequences, and may not think about the meaning of what they do on a day to basis. Another possibility could be that they get very anxious thinking about the future, and continue making bad choices, or none at all.

Inferior Se (INxJs)

Healthy - The INxJ readily receives information from the world around them, and it feeds their dominant Ni. They take leaps of faith when they need to, but are generally reasonable in their decisions and can explain why they made them.

Unhealthy - The INxJ may not have any idea how they’re getting their information, leading all of their decisions to seem unfounded. They may either repeatedly make terrible, impulsive decisions without any thought about it, and then leave people in the dust, or they may constantly be too scared to do anything.

Inferior Si (ENxPs)

Healthy - The ENxP follows nostalgic patterns. They may love to see movies that remind them of their childhood, or to go to candy stores with penny candy, like when they were kids. They likely will be a little bit less than neat and orderly, but they’ll generally have a system to remember where things are.

Unhealthy - The ENxP continuously follows routes to things that are no longer possible. They can’t find anything, and have no idea where they put their things. They daydream about what was, and aren’t really aware that they’re doing it. They continuously wish that they could be back to where they were before, even if it’s completely impossible.

Inferior Fe (IxTPs)

Healthy - The IxTP will recognize that they don’t have a natural inclination towards picking up the emotions of others, and will find ways around it. They’ll likely joke about it so that they don’t seem quite as awkward, and ask questions to make sure they’re not upsetting people. They readily grasp that others have emotions that they may or may not understand, and they work to better that skill and make sure that they can be sensitive to the needs of others.

Unhealthy - The IxTP will either not have any drive to develop their ability to pick up the emotions of others, or will not care, even if they can pick up the emotions of others. People’s feelings are negligible to them – They’d prefer it if they simply didn’t have to deal with them at all. They likely prioritize the logical outcome over the wellbeing of all others, whether or not they recognize that the wellbeing of others may be at stake. They also may notice that they’re hurting people, and not care. They may pick on people’s insecurities for fun, or continue the way that they’re acting when they realize it’s upsetting people.

Inferior Fi (ExTJs)

Healthy - The ExTJ has a moral system that they follow to be a good person. They’re aware of their emotions, and are able to tend to them in a way that hurts neither themselves nor others.

Unhealthy -  The ExTJ has a moral system that’s riddled with terrible, terrible things. They’re led by what their emotions want them to do, and frequently take things out on people around them. When people call them on it, they act as if they’ve been attacked.

Inferior Te (IxFPs)

Healthy - The IxFP has an organizational system for the world around them that helps them be more efficient. They may follow something of a pattern to help them, but likely don’t spend as much time developing it. These people likely have a well-labeled area to help them do stuff without really needing to think about their method all the time.

Unhealthy - The IxFP either has no organizational system or is consistently panicking because they feel lost. They can’t become efficient by any means, and it upsets them. They may struggle to create a way to wrap their minds around the world in a way that can allow them to move smoothly and well.

Inferior Ti (ExFJs)

Healthy - The ExFJ has a consistent logic to their work. They consider whether or not what they’re doing makes sense. If they decide to have a lemonade stand, they think about the logistics of it – Probably not the type to not realize that to make lemonade, you need sugar, and you need to have proportions. Alternatively, they’ll be aware that they don’t have the logical mind to put parts of it together, and they’ll pull someone else in to do that.

Unhealthy - The ExFJ either will try to over-rationalize everything, or will not be able to rationalize anything. Their ability to analyze things and really understand them is nil. Even if they are really getting in and analyzing it, they analyze it to the point where nothing makes sense. They’ll make a lemonade stand, and spend all the time thinking about the prices that make sense for the amount of cups they have, what people will pay, and the amount they want to make, and never buy any lemons.

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Accurate Typing: The Inferior Function

If you have narrowed down your dominant function to one or two possibilities, you can then examine the inferior function for confirmation of your type. 

The inferior function is the opposite of your dominant function and a natural part of your personality, but your access to its knowledge might be limited depending on your level of psychological development. Due to long term habitual reliance on the dominant function, your view of the world through the inferior function can appear distorted. For less mature people, engaging with the inferior function is often a negative experience.

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Enneagram 3

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Accurate Typing: The Dominant Function

If MBTI quizzes are giving you inconclusive results or you have read some profiles and they all seem like they could fit you, then you need to dig a little deeper and understand cognitive functions. If you can determine your dominant function, then you can narrow down the possibilities to only two types. You cannot be more than one type because each type utilizes a unique order of cognitive functions.

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