bird primary (snake system) + badger secondary (lion model)
This is a long one - it’s very cool and interesting, but get yourself set up with a cup of your favorite beverage. Also, this is the SortMe that the Ukrainian crisis responder sent in for those of you were interested. Ukraine doesn’t specifically come up, but you know. That’s pretty cool.
Tl;dr: I’m likely a stable Burnt Bird Primary with a whole bunch of models (Basically Burnt Bird Primary, and modeling everything else, possibly burnt Bird secondary/Lion or Snake Secondary with also a smattering of other models), would like to double-check against you to see if there’s anything I’m not seeing.
A LOT of models. Got it. We’ll sort you out.
Long version: Hi! I like the way you sort people! It’s great fun to think about people through this lens, but I’m having some trouble reflecting myself in this mirror. I’ve spent a while digging through the test (because the thing kept Hatstalling me). I think I’ve come to a Sorting, but a) I’m not certain and I like the way you point out things people aren’t seeing about themselves in their descriptions, so maybe I’ve missed something super obvious; b) folks in the community have said that Birds usually don’t stay Fallen, and I think I might be an example of that - which could be why it’s hard for the test to ping me correctly. Some of this text might read as argumentative (I tend to come off that way when involved or interested), but please be assured that the text is written in good faith.
I feel like I’m pretty good at picking out good vs bad faith criticism at this point. That’s been one nice thing about this whole exercise, actually.
Also, the length of this is horrible. It would’ve been proper to put in more effort and filter for more relevant things for the sake of readability, but I couldn’t do so very well (I kept feeling like I was giving you a skewed picture), so my apologies and feel free to cherry pick and/or stop whenever you’re done.
That is pretty Birdy. You mentioned that you like how I point out things people aren’t seeing about themselves, which isn’t going to happen if you edit for length and clarity. That’s a very Bird thought to have, and this SortMe (you’re not wrong, it’s the longest I’ve ever gotten, by a lot) is a very Bird route to take. This whole thing is a very Bird exercise.
(that thing about “it would have been proper to [do x]” though. That’s saying Badger to me for sure - or at least Badger environment or model. If “it would be proper” is coming from more of an etiquette place, then that’s Badger primary. It’s it’s a “I could have done a better job” thing, then that’s Badger secondary.)
You’ve noted in a post that Birds Fall when they are cut off from their ability to think. I found that post after I had the Fallen Bird hypothesis, and, well, it encapsulates everything I’m going to write very succinctly. This is basically the story of my life. Like many of the other writers, I have ADHD, and I was diagnosed fairly late in life (think 30-s). Many of us, it would seem, have Bird Secondaries to cope.
Okay, neurodivergent with Bird secondary model. You’re right, that is common.
For me, however, just inhabiting Bird primary was not an option, as the greatest challenge of all has been the sheer fact that I cannot trust my systems. My working memory simply does not work well enough to build a system and then leave it alone to do its job. I would LOVE to do this - but I just can’t. The moment I step out of the context I had been in, the system I built for it… Disintegrates. And it’s the worst feeling in the world when you REMEMBER that you have built an understanding, have had a model, and it WORKED - and then you go back, and there’s nothing there, like so much shifting sand. But life exists, and we all have to act, and inaction is as much of a choice as action, so what to do? My solution, it would seem, was to collect every single model under the sun.
This is a very interesting description of - what does seem to be an unusual type of Burnt Bird (Fallen Bird in the OG Sortinghatchats terminology.) I’m interested to see what my Bird primary readers have to say about this.
Example: as I write this, I’m looking at some notes for a D&D game. It’s been running for 10-ish years.
I love a really long running D&D game. (It also makes me think that you ~ or someone involved ~ is Badger. In this ask, there’s Badger energy coming from somewhere.)
I have multiple iterations of notes, and I would LOVE it all to be in an organized database. This newest iteration of an attempt to organize had me writing down the newest pre-rolled NPC names for the last session. I wrote them down in the wrong section, even though the database isn’t even 1/20th full yet. Then in the actual game, I couldn’t remember which section they were written down in, so I wasted time BOTH looking for them, AND making up new ones. And now I have to fix the database, and I’m just staring at it in frustration instead of fixing it. Would it have been easier to just make it up as I go along and rely on my players to remind me? Yeah, probably.
I was about to say. You carry a lot of information in your head at once when you DM. You’re responding to the group’s wants and energy, you’re keeping up the dramatic tension and not letting things get boringly easy or unfairly hard, you’re doing math in your head, you’ve got the rules and the lore, you’re running NPCs, you’re keeping track of turn order. If you’re playing on Roll20 you’re trying to make that finicky software do what you want and not delete the map. And you’ve got to do it very fast.
My point is, I have a pretty good memory, and I can’t remember all of it. Yes, absolutely lean on your players to remember lore and the NPC details that relate to them. Most players love it, and can even make explaining their *thing* to the table a roll-playing moment.
If anything, I think this fantasy of a beautiful, perfect DM database is more of a Badger secondary fantasy than a Bird secondary one. You’re not doing the Bird thing and building yourself a functional tool, because you’re… not. You’re doing the Badger thing of disliking shortcuts, having an ideal correct version of what your problem solving would look, if you had infinite time and ability. I get that. I get that completely. I get that feeling with my teaching, my writing, and when I DM.
And this is actually the way I usually do it: I take a deep breath, Show Up, and things fall into place as I run the game (I can’t properly access my memory outside of the situation).
That is also how I run games. That was not always how I ran games, I used to plan every little thing out in advance, adapt modules, all sorts of stuff. But I was always looking for the right page, the right note. It slowed down the game and stressed me out. These day, I trust myself, I trust that I know the game system, I trust that I know how to tell a story and I just go. I’m not here to diagnose, but I honestly don’t think it’s a memory thing so much as it’s a thing about how different brains work. I have students with memory issues, and there is no possible way they would be DMing games of Dungeons and Dragons without accommodations and support already in place.
But I WANT my pretty database, at least once in my life. :( It’s a fantasy of mine, that someday I’ll be able to get all of my work into a pretty, elegant system, that will be more than the sum of its parts, and that I will elegantly and competently have it at my fingertips, and that my mind will feel like it has the world at its beck and call because everything I need is right there even if I can’t remember it. But it’s a fantasy that I don’t think will ever come true.
That is a fantasy, yeah. And I want to call it a very… Bird Badger fantasy. The Bird primary fantasy is the fantasy of knowing everything, and feeling like you have the keys to the universe because of it. The Badger secondary fantasy is the fantasy of making all your work beautiful.
So I eventually learned via trial and error where I should just improvise and rely on others.
Improvise AND rely on others. So he implication here is that these are two things that… do not come easily to you? (Because you think you’re supposed to do them? Because you think you’re not supposed to do them?) Hm. I’m going to keep an eye on that because there is some sort of extreme self-sufficiency thing going on, and I yeah, I know it’s hard.
I do that most of the time, and have collected several types of adaptive systems, which makes it very hard to figure out my actual Secondary (“collecting” screams Bird, but… Uh… All the common Bird adaptations fail for me, executive function-wise
I honestly am not seeing Bird secondary for you. I could see you sort of thinking that you should be a Bird secondary, or that Bird secondary is the best way to be.
so I Charge like a Lion, and when I can’t Charge, I Adapt, and when I can’t Adapt, I Show Up. More on that below).
I really liked the structure of the quiz and questions, and I can tell that they should work - but they didn’t for me in a few notable cases. I think it’s because I can get behind the logic of all four Primaries and Secondaries, but I’m not sure I can parse my own internal logic cleanly, so I’d like to ask you what you’re seeing.
This is a problem I do notice Birds having with the test. Hypothetically, they could see themselves building any of the other primaries and secondaries. Some Birds even think that’s what the other primaries/secondaries are and are then confused by what “Bird” is supposed to mean.
I think a good way to structure this would be to go through some of the more telling questions, and juxtapose them with life vignettes that seem to me illustrative. Again, some of this might read as combative, but what I’m really looking for is to highlight how the discrepancies between the questions and my reality might be useful for a Sorting.
I like the test, I like it a lot. It is the best version of itself that it possibly could be. But it is a tool, and no test - no matter how good - is a substitute for doing the work of introspection and self analysis.
(See how my Badger secondary is showing :D )
I’ve tried to balance not being too autobiographical against not giving enough detail - it’s hard for me to write about myself even under a nickname. It’s a bit of a weird Snake/Lion Secondary puzzle: I identify a lot with “I don’t owe anyone the details of my life,” and I usually don’t feel secure when I lay things out in the open.
It’s perfectly fine and normal not to want to give out a lot of personal details over the internet. That - that’s fine. That’s just a human thing.
but I do feel strongest when I can just be, and I try to construct my environment so that I don’t have to think about presentation as much as possible. It overloads my executive functioning, but is this just ADHD Neutral Snake or Lion distaste for pretense? Hard to tell, especially because Charging is a more comfortable secondary instrument than Masking for executive function reasons.
That, my friend, is a description of a neurodivergent person, full stop. A couple things:
A lot of the terminology SHC uses means different things in other contexts. I don’t like it, and yes of course I want to come up with a clean, elegant, intuitive set of terminology that doesn’t mislead people, instead of this one which has a lot of clunky aspects. For example, “modeling” in the context of SHC does not mean the same thing as “modeling” in the context of psychology, and that’s confused people before. And when I talk about snake “masking” I’m talking about a drastically different thing than “masking” my autism.
Because yes, “masking” in the sense of “presenting as neurotypical” takes a lot of energy. It only really works as a short-term solution, not something you turn on and leave on. The more I see, the more I become positive that the neruodivergent endgame is not to make yourself match the world, but to build a world that matches you. You do that, and you basically have a super power.
But on to the examples. “Would you lie to an acquaintance to save their peace of mind? Would it make you feel grimy to do it?”No, I wouldn’t. But not for any moral reasons. Saving someone’s peace of mind is usually a stupid strategy in the long run. I can get not adding fuel to the fire if the situation is already bad, but in most cases? The faster we all know what’s up, the faster we can act (Lion? Get everything out in the open and GO?). Like, I can count on one hand the number of situations where lying to save someone’s peace of mind would be actually helpful to me. And I NEVER want to be in a situation like that, because it already means things have gone stupidly sideways or I am explicitly acting from a place of adversity. Tl;dr: if I’m neutral or positive to this person, I wouldn’t do it because it’s not helpful. If they’re my enemy, I wouldn’t do it to save their peace of mind, but my own.
This is an Idealist answer, for sure. And the scaffolding underneath it makes me say Bird. (I honestly feel the same way, but as a Lion primary I’d probably say something like “Every time I’ve pretended there isn’t a problem, it’s eventually blown up in my face, usually in a way that’s worse than if I’d just dealt with it.”)
And when it comes to defining morality… “useful” and “not-useful” is a classic moral dichotomy, so why not “effective” and “not-effective”?
I grew up in a fairly rough environment, and along the way I picked up a ton of Snake friends who Care for Their People. They have a very particular behavior: they will cheerfully train friends to deal with danger (whatever their definition of that) and just as cheerfully manipulate them to keep me away from that same danger as long as possible. I will just as cheerfully lie to them if I think I should be in said danger for whatever reason. None of this makes us love each other less. We’re each other’s people, and that’s just the way it is with Snakes: you accept they’ll be trying to look out for you sometimes regardless of your feelings (your wellbeing > your opinion) and you account for that. It actually feels very reassuring and secure that they usually don’t hold that accounting against me. They might say I’m an idiot when they find out, but it’s not going to damage our relationship in any way.
That is absolutely just the way Snakes Be.
I’d feel grimy lying to Lion friends, though, because lying to them would hurt them deeply, it’s like saying “I know you’re not strong enough to deal with it” and they usually take that badly. I’d probably do it in a life-or-death situation, but for anything less, I’d try to be truthful and kind. And nope, the two models - casually lying and being very careful about balancing truth and kindness - don’t seem like a contradiction, and neither seem immoral.
That is the way Lions Be. And there’s no contradiction here. Your system provides you with different ways of dealing with different people, what could possibly be wrong with that? You could describe this as modeling Snake and modeling Lion if you wanted to, but I’d just call this a robust system, maybe intellectualizing some Courtier Badger or Actor Bird.
“When you’re making a decision and you’re stuck, what should you do?”The first two answers - taking a breath with myself and my circle and figuring out what’s actually up - are, frustratingly, the same answer for me. Like, there is no discernible internal difference! Yes, I will take a breath. Yes, I will do it either alone, or with my “White House Support System” - i.e. all the people I have trust in that could help me come to an outcome I’d actually want in a particular situation.
The fact that (for you) there is no difference between those two option means that you’re an External primary. For me (Lion primary) they’re night and day.
“How I feel” about the situation is one factor among many that I will absolutely take into account, and I weight it highly (more on that in a later question). But it’s never JUST about how I feel. It’s about what IS and whether I can conceivably do anything - but also WITHOUT breaking some part of me that I consider important.
That’s SO BIRD. Even the phasing of “a part of me that I consider important” vs “a part of me that is important.” (which is what a Lion would say.
There’s lots of room for adaptation, but there’s also definitely places where I’ll find it preferable to see who breaks first, me or the situation.
That’s a secondary thing… and “finding out what breaks first, me or the situation” - that’s some classic YOU MOVE talk (Lion or Badger.)
There’s some elements of my internal system that are rigid enough that bending them would no longer make it workable, so I have to tough it out. And there are DEFINITELY counterintuitive situations where it’s much safer to escalate before the other party does. I see this last as my Lion Model/Secondary, not sure which. So more on that in Secondaries.
You’ve got a very designed Bird primary. It could be absolutely nothing else at this point. It’s possible it’s gotten a little rigid lately (you seem like you could be under a lot of stress at the moment.) But I wouldn’t stay Burnt - that’s what happens when you distrust your ability to think, which definitely isn’t happening. Exploded is a little more likely I guess… but I haven’t seen any evidence that you’ve broken your ability to take in information, and are processing too much or too little. So, a stressed Bird primary?
“Someone points out a flaw in your logic. Their argument makes sense, but there’s something about it that just bothers you. Do you change your ways because of what they said?”Allll riiight, I’ve gotten this one a bunch, and it stumps me. If I parsed the system correctly, “There’s something I don’t fully understand about this situation yet. I need to think about what they said, what I agreed with, and what felt wrong. Once I understand what’s going on, I should be able to make a decision I’m happy with” isn’t a Bird answer (or at least not a fully Bird answer?)
In this context, it’s a Bird answer.
(basically that question is asking if you feel comfortable using both Bird and Lion tools, which we already know you do.)
- the Bird answer is where you’d feel guilty about not agreeing with the truth.
That sentence should read “feel guilty about not agreeing with the truth, once you’ve worked out that it is the truth to your own satisfaction.” It’s not that Lions don’t care what the truth is, it’s that their truest truth is emotional, so they define ‘truth’ a little differently. In this hypothetical situation, I wouldn’t be researching the core issues, I’d be trying to figure out why it gave me a weird emotional ping. (and then I’d feel safe enough to let my Bird model take over, and start getting me more background info.)
But - how? I just don’t get it. How? For example, if someone’s thrown me off my logical game - which is super easy to do, because my working memory is shit, and half the time I’ve worked a problem to the bare bones and then still can’t remember even a little bit of the process afterwards - there’s still three factors to consider after they’ve “convinced me.”
I’ve already thought of that possibility and have discounted it, but have no access to my understanding right now.
There’s something wrong with their logic but I don’t have enough access to executive function to bring that into consciousness right now, but I have to act anyway.
They’re exploiting said lack of access for gain. Then there’s a very simple “if-then” tree:
If I think they’re adversarial: yes, I will stick to my guns on “a feeling,” because that feeling is either founded in past experience I can’t quite recall or in logic I can’t quite muster the power to bring to consciousness, but it doesn’t matter because they don’t have my best interests at heart anyway.
If they’re friendly: I will try to ask for their help in order to isolate the point of weakness and see if we can account for it in building a strategy. If we can’t, then it’ll depend entirely on the stakes and situation if I’ll change or not.
So you wrote this like board game instructions. This is a list that then turns into a flow chart. Bird primaries and their LISTS. Sure it can be hard to access ALL your long term memory in the moment, but that doesn’t make you less a bird. ^ ^This, all this, is what makes you a bird.
There’s definitely situations where I’ll trust the other party because they’ve earned my trust through experience. There’s also definitely situations where I’ll take my chances with the stuff I can’t fully process. I won’t feel guilty either way, although I may feel apprehensive that we’ve missed something.
Feeling apprehensive making snap decisions also makes you really Birdy.
“Does disagreeing with your closest friends about something important to you make you love them less?”
When I read this, I was considering Snake modeling Bird - because the answer “It matters what they do, not what they think” feels to me like the most Snake thing ever.
It’s not. That’s just like the philosophy of idk, John Paul Sartre, and it’s something I see a lot of Birds gravitate towards. Because, and I know this is going to sound crazy - for Snakes, much of the time it DOESN’T matter what they do.
(it translates to me as “as long as they won’t hurt me or mine, they can say whatever they want”), and also the most me? But apparently it’s not? (I can’t actually remember right now what this broke the tie towards).
And it’s just incomprehensible to me, because… People can THINK whatever they want about their own behavior and logic. It doesn’t mean they actually DO what they think or that their logic matches up with their model of it! I don’t know that many people with semi-accurate models of themselves, and even they usually have blind spots the size of New York. I don’t think I’m the exception here either! I have a bunch of people who say stupid things and horrible things, but won’t actually do those things. I know a bunch of people who know all the right words, but I know their actions will never match up. And that’s just A Thing in my models. Like intellectually disagreeing is A Factor, but not The Factor. It’s actually relatively lightly weighted, because for most people the stuff they think is a very small part of their actual system of behavior. I know from your posts that this discrepancy bothers many Birds. It doesn’t phase me, although it took some time to wrap my head around and weight properly. I don’t think very highly of hypocrites - I tend to think they’re not very competent, at least in the area they’re hypocritical about - but it makes me sad in the way you see someone being so incompetent it hurts rather than feel like a personal affront.
Yeah, discrepancy between words and actions does bother a lot of Birds, especially young birds (as it bothered you when you were younger :D) But that’s not what makes a bird. I’m fascinated reading this, it’s a fascinating philosophical essay. But on the topic of this personality system, there’s not much more for me to say. You’re a Bird. You’re as Bird as Bird can get. This is the most Bird thing I’ve ever read in my life.
This is also why I like Snakes - if it’s an act, at least they know what they’re doing. WISH people were like that)! I’ll always prefer a conscious “hypocrite” to an unconscious one - and really, it doesn’t even register as hypocrisy for me, they’re using methods they have to achieve their goals. I might want to smash their face in for it, but only for practical reasons, so that they stop using the tactic on me when I don’t want it.
I’d agree with that distinction. To be a true hypocrite, you must be doing what you’re doing unconsciously. Otherwise you’re just a liar, or a con artist.
The only kind of people that really make me see red are the people who insist that they have a well-examined system… And then actually don’t.
🐦 🐦 🐦 🐦 🐦 🐦 🐦 🐦
“What if you realized that absolutely everything you thought was true was wrong? The authorities you’d trusted, the beliefs you’d held, the wrongs you’d fought against?”THIS QUESTION. This question is supposed to be a tiebreaker between Constructed moralities and everything else, but (and I think I got it once as a Bird/Snake tiebreaker question, too?)… “I’d have to go sit by myself in a corner for a little bit, before I could figure out how to move forward. That would be awful.” Yes, it would be awful. It would mean that I’ve built my systems for discerning between truth and falsehood wrong. If I took the question at face value, it would mean I have to recount EVERYTHING. I have to review every single other decision I’ve made, and in the meantime live with the fact that my fallback tool - “I remember I calculated this even though I can’t prove it, so I’m trusting that calculation” - DOESN’T WORK AT ALL. Damn right, I’d need a minute. Yeah, it wouldn’t change much on principle. But it would still be an awful experience.
… you answered that way, and you’re still doubting your Bird?
“You’re at a crossroads in your life. You’ve made your pro-con lists. You’ve talked to people you respect. Choice A looks like the right choice. It’s the one everything is telling you is the right choice– your lists and your advisers tell you it’s the right choice, but it just feels wrong. So you choose Choice B.”Obviously there’s some shit I’ve noticed but can’t verbalize. I will definitely be wary about my choice - maybe I calculated wrong - but “I made my choice. Now I live with it. Life only moves in a forward direction” is definitely me, and I don’t feel a single twinge of guilt about it. It’s not a Lion thing, I think. It’s about the fact that my models fail so regularly that I’ve basically learned that yeah, you have to limp forward on a broken model anyway. What else are you going to do?
This is the absolute opposite of Exploded Bird. You have accepted, and made peace with the fact that you will never have all the information, your decision-making process will never be perfect, but you move forward anyway. Because yeah, the fantasy of the Perfect System is also a Bird fantasy.
Also, in reality, I chose choice A.
(because you’re a bird)
And in this case I do feel anxiety and a bit of guilt - basically I had a choice between a crisis response type career and a research career. Both play to my weaknesses in some ways. Opportunities to do both came up at the same time - and by “crisis response career opportunities” I mean that there was a large crisis in my community and it needed responders. Objectively, I am probably more valuable as researcher. There’s no shortage of responders, but I still can’t help but feel I could have delayed my research career in favor of crisis response, and it may have been the right, smart (invaluable experience one can’t get anywhere else!) and good thing to do (triage is a big and important heuristic of mine, and it takes A LOT to get me to ignore it, hence the guilt). But it might have closed off the career I’d been working towards for a decade prior, and I was afraid that my executive dysfunction would not step up enough even in crisis. The second risk alone I would probably have taken, as trying and failing isn’t a problem on its own. But throwing away everything I had worked for for a decade… I can never be certain that I’ll come back after being derailed, although I try, and I was unwilling to take that risk. So I chose, and “life only moves in a forward direction” is a good way to describe it.
***“Does your internal moral compass know something you don’t?”Again, a situation where two answers are really, pretty much the same thing to me.1. “Not in a weird way, but it might. The world is messy, and we know more than we know consciously. Even if trusting it sometimes leads me astray, it’s the most solid thing I have to go on.”2. “If it feels like that, then I’ll look into whatever it’s telling me and decide if I agree.”The first one is the one I’d jump to, but the second one is closest to what I’d actually do. Because I KNOW from experience that some of my reactions are calibrated for different circumstances. In many, many cases I’ll just go with “yep, there’s something I don’t know consciously, let’s go.” But there’s just as many cases where I’m like “oh yeah, I know what this reaction is being triggered by, and this is not the case here as far as I can see, so I need to make sure that reaction doesn’t interfere.” It is REALLY EXHAUSTING, and I prefer to calibrate right in the first place, but I have the option. Additionally, in most cases, I do trust my half-formed impulses more than I trust other people’s logic, because at least I’ve examined the mechanisms by which my half-formed impulses are created, which is more than I can say for most people, even if they do manage to fast-talk me in the moment. This last thing is why the Lion/Bird tiebreakers feel weird for me. If someone’s obviously throwing stuff at me too quickly to keep up and pressuring me to make a choice now, I’ll stick to my guns on principle, yes. People can and have fast-talked past my broken working memory. But… That’s an adaptation, not the core of the system. That’s a Lion Secondary Model, I guess.
I’m not seeing a Lion secondary model. I’m seeing someone who REALLY hates making snap decisions when they don’t have all the info, but sometimes they… have to. Also… I gotta call it out… you shouldn’t be calling yourself “broken.” You’re clearly extremely intelligent and extremely competent. And sure you haven’t reached this impossible-sounding ideal, but what you do do works for you.
“If I’ve decided to stand by the people I love, it’s a choice. I could make a different decision.” vs “At the end of the day, some things are right and some things are wrong. You don’t turn your back on the people you love.”
This question is… Argh. Yes, it’s absolutely a choice. However, for me that choice is “you don’t turn your back on the people you love.”
You’re a Bird…. who loves Snakes. And has a lot of Snakes in their life (which we knew.)
I have quite a bit of caretaker burnout from a number of circumstances, and I HATE it. But I stick it out, if badly. I’ve had caretaker situations where my instincts AND logic would both go “get the fuck out”, but I would say “this is the choice I have made, and I am sticking with it, at least unless I understand that I am doing more harm than helping, and then I would be a coward NOT to leave, and I don’t want to be”. This is my Badger model/imitation, I think?
I’m still trying to figure out your secondary. You’ve got some Badger secondary impulses / expectations coming from somewhere, and it’s making you feel not good enough (not a good enough DM, not a good enough caretaker.) It could be a bit of a burned-out Badger (and your secondary seems to be the one taking the damage here, rather than your primary.) Or it might be a Badger secondary model you’re wearing because of culture/someone else, and there’s something else underneath.
Also exemplified by the fact that one of my fantasies is living in a world where I can work on interesting things day in and day out with structure and patience, and it feels rewarding. Instead, even when I get to do this (sit and write a post this long, for instance), it always turns into an exhausting fight against my limits, and it’s never as pleasant as the fantasy. I’d love to be a Badger, just as I’d love to have a working Bird Secondary, but I just can’t. The best I can do is an imitation that fails more often than not.
We’ve got some intense burnt secondary language showing you here. I’m inclined to think that the Bird… is a model, is something you think you should be doing, and occasionally engage with in a stressful sort of way. As for your Badger, it’s absolutely something you’re doing, but it’s something you think you should be doing more. (Which is something I see more for a Badger secondary, vs a Badger secondary model.) As for a post like this… I’m not even a little surprised you’re exhausted. This post is long, and intense, and represents a lot of soul-searching. I don’t think there’s a single person in the world who could write something like this and then describe the experience as “pleasant.”
But that’s the thing. I DO show up. Time and time again I throw myself at these limits because… It’s what I want to do, and I just have to take it in stride that it’ll be hard for me.
This sounds like a primary issue, because good lord your primary is strong. You show up, you do the hard thing, because it’s in service of your primary, and your primary matters.
I also compensate for my executive function stuff with community - see aforementioned White House Support System. So even if my Badger Model isn’t particularly good, I still lean towards it being a model rather than performance. I can’t do “dutiful hard worker” as an act: more effort than I can muster long-term. But I can do “I will show up time after time and fix what I got wrong, even if I’ll be much slower than all the others and seem lazy and disinterested.”
It’s definitely not a performance. It also doesn’t seem ineffective! Again, you’ve just decided that it should be easier, and it should be better.
I’m the sort of person who will take an organizational community position (e.g. secretary) when there’s absolutely no one else, and half-ass the job - because it plays against all my weaknesses. But no one else is there, so I do it. I’ll never have three dozen books to my name. But maybe, if I limp along long enough, maybe I’ll have one.
There’s a lot of burned ‘I can’t do it’ language coming from your secondary. And half-assing a job that it sounds like you got pressed-ganged into, aren’t good at, and don’t like particularly much? That’s just a people thing.
“When you sit down and consider the terrifying lack of objective truth in our reality, how do you feel?”Bwahahaaha. Welcome to my world, get comfortable, this’ll be a while. In seriousness, I consider this often, and find the perspective comforting. It means that I’m not the only one stuck with this array of half-workable models. Good luck, everyone!
:)
“When you forgive someone who has wronged you or others, do you do it because you believe they’ve changed?”For me, there’s a very particular line between forgiveness and “letting people back in to do the same thing.”
What a lovely way to articulate that. Yes, forgive in the sense of ‘don’t carry around resentment and negative emotions with you.’ But don’t… forget. It’s all information. And don’t put yourself in that same vulnerable position again.
Vignette time: I’ve had a person I met and had an explosive intellectual acquaintanceship with, because we have the same executive dysfunctions and are both similarly defensive about them, although in different ways. “Explosive” means we argued several weeks in a row over the smallest things (which inevitably led to us pulling out all the encyclopedias for hours, because the arguments all came down to “if they’re right, WHAT ELSE did I get wrong?!”) before mutually realizing it’s not sustainable and kicking each other out of each other’s circle.
I hold no ill-will against that person, but I do think some of his models are worse than my own, and that he handles being wrong worse than I do (a lot of our interactions in the end were his loud “BUT YOU KNOW YOU’RE WRONG, RIGHT?” which is distasteful to me, as… Yes, probably? But I don’t think you’re more in the right, and that’s fine, so why all the fuss?) So there is no way in hell I am letting him drag me into that again if we intersect. If we ever do meet on neutral territory and he can’t handle himself, then I will calmly and cheerfully make him shut up by whatever means I find palatable. It sounds like “forgive, but not forget”, but if I ever see that he CAN handle himself, I’d be glad to talk again, he had some cool things to say. But until then, he gets treated as someone who is not in full control of his faculties, can’t handle intellectual debate, and if we meet again, I won’t let him turn it into a problem for me. And the point is: I like this person! The debates were fun until both or either of us lost control! But whether I like him or not has absolutely no bearing on the actions I’ll be taking.
This stance was completely unfathomable for said dude’s Badger Bird girlfriend, who’s been spending YEARS trying to get her boyfriend to get along with all her other friends. Her reaction to this was like “how can you say you like him and that you are prepared to hurt him in the same sentence? That can’t be a thing.” And for me that’s… Not even a question. Yes, I like him. No, I’m not angry. No, his logic being bad doesn’t stop me from liking him in principle. And yes, even though I like him, his problems are not going to be my problem.And at the same time - when doing the tie breaker between Bird and Snake, I would definitely feel guilty for abandoning people rather than morals. My models exist to be updated, I don’t feel guilty for abandoning them. People, on the other hand? My models are supposed to ensure I don’t have to abandon them. If I am forced to, then I failed in a very fundamental way.
This is fascinating. Because what you’ve effectively done is built a Loyalist system from the ground up. You’re a Bird, all the mechanisms and underpinnings are Bird, you feel like a Bird. But if you were a character in a movie, I would probably think you were either a Snake or a Badger.
So, to sum up the Primaries: almost certainly a Fallen Bird, with a healthy admiration for Snakes, Badgers and Lions, who has borrowed on all these strategies extensively. The only ones I really don’t like are the arrogant kind of Bird who thinks they have it all figured out, but really, really doesn’t. For those kinds of Birds I will cheerfully Charge, Mask or Bring My Friends to mess with them if they give me reason to. I kind of tend to want to even when I don’t have a reason, to be honest, even though it goes against my own morality - “don’t mess with people without a good reason (because you don’t want to clean up the mess such behavior can start in your community if people adopt that mode of behavior)” - but that’s the kind of thing that makes me really want to break my own rules.
We’ve got some Rule Utilitarianism going on, very nice.
I stand by what I said. You’re a Bird, you’re under a lot of pressure and sometimes the cracks show, but you’re certainly not Burnt/Fallen. You have a lot of Snakes in your life, who you love, and you’ve used your Bird to build a very Snake looking system. You treat the Sakes in your life the way Snakes want to be treated, and you treat the Lions in your life the way lions want to be treated, and it all works - not perfectly, because that’s not a real goal, but it works.
Now, let’s talk tactics, I mean Secondaries, although we’ve already touched on them some. Let’s start with the simple one: Charging. I generally find Charging to be a very safe tactic, because like 90% of the time people will step away. It’s fairly resource-heavy, but it’s easy, predictable and safe.
To provide a vignette: I had once been traveling in an unfamiliar city and got into a chat with a dude randomly. He offered to show me where I needed to go next and noted that I shouldn’t be worried; he wouldn’t do anything bad to me (this is considered polite in some cultures, as I present female). I looked him straight in the eye and said that if he’d tried to do anything bad to me, his corpse would soon be floating down that river below us. The moment I said that, I was fully prepared to escalate further: to scuttle all my plans at least for the trip - and possibly for months or years - if things did turn violent. However, it is my experience that most people who’d be willing to pick a fight against someone who won’t defend themselves will avoid fighting anyone who’s in the least bit ready - and anyone who just makes a bad joke will stop. Much as in many other cases, this was the case here: the dude looked at me and said “Somehow I believe that.” And we went back to having a pleasant chat. I never did find out whether he was seriously considering starting something or was just making a bad joke. And in this sort of situation, I don’t care. The moment someone sends out a feeler like that, I will charge. It’s the safest and smartest thing to do in 99 percent of these situations. If I identify the situation as one of the 99 percent, I will temporarily throw away all my other considerations. You want to start a thing? Do it, fucker. You have to be immediate and singleminded for it to work. And if the person backs down? I will back down just as easily, and consider it water under the bridge.
This is a really great example of why the Lion tactic of just (metaphorically) punching someone in the face with the Truth and Nothing But the Truth is extremely effective. People generally aren’t expecting it, and don’t know what to do with it. It’s a good way to get respect fast. And this is a Lion model - in that moment, you meant it, which is why it was so effective.
But there is some kind of mechanism underneath. It didn’t just happen, there was a voice underneath that said “This would be a good time to let the lion out.”
One important note about the “water under the bridge” I have no problem de-escalating and staying in that sort of situation. Some of my Snake [primary] folks will absolutely nurse a grudge and never turn their back on someone who threatened them even in jest. However, a situation of conflict remains comfortable for me. I don’t have a thing where if I threatened someone or they threatened me that it means it would be somehow un-true to my principles to interact with them. I’ll work with them as long as it’s a) feasible, b) we have a common goal. It just means that if we ever get into the sort of conflict I’ve already seen, I need to be prepared for it to be an actual conflict, “if someone says they’re coming to kill you - believe them”-style. Lion-style conflict doesn’t normally irk me the way Bird conflict does. I dislike unresolved Lion conflict, because it tends to screw up my alarm systems for a time - I keep coming back to it - but finished Lion conflict is easy.
Bird primary in fine form, of course. You clearly enjoy your Lion model, you like how sharp and direct and clean it is. Your bird secondary… something… is a lot, lot messier.
The reason I described this vignette in so much detail is because it LOOKS exactly like a Lion Charge. It’s one of the most intuitive tools at my disposal: it’s easy and it takes some effort not to use it. But is this because it’s me, or because it’s generally a very safe strategy when I take into account my strengths and limitations - certainly much safer than trying to keep up a persona in any kind of long run.
This is a very intellectualized Lion secondary, and while it’s possible that’s just what it is - a Lion secondary you’ve thought a lot about, because you think a lot about everything. But there’s so much burnt secondary language, and my feeling is that if you were actually a Lion secondary you would just… be that, and this whole submission would be a lot shorter.
(not that it’s too long, not at all! I’m enjoying the mystery very much!)
I do not have enough executive function to adapt in the long run, I have to change the environment to suit me, not the other way around. This means that a lot of the time I HAVE to charge, it’s the correct thing to do. That said, I can show bits and pieces of myself in a sort of… Snake? Badger? way? I have no problem being different things to different people, as long as I don’t have to outright lie about it. But it’s not an ethical aversion. Lies take too much effort, they’re impractical in the long run. In the short term? I don’t care.
Okay. This is the language of a burnt secondary again. “I do whatever I have to do, I don’t really care.” The way you talk about it makes it feel like a grind, stressful, not fun. So far the Lion secondary is the only one that’s made you feel powerful. But you also feel strongly that the Lion secondary is a choice? Burnt secondary, Lion secondary model maybe?
Except that’s not quite right, because you’ve also talked about how you change the way you interact with people depending on if you see them as a Snake or a Lion. So in that care… is there an Actor Bird going on, designed around People rather than the more common situations? LionFriend!Me vs SnakeFriend!Me? Intellectualized Courtier Badger? Snake?
Another vignette: a friend of mine was driving when we were going to hang out for the evening. She looks rather young at first sight, so some dude decided that he could harass us. By that I mean pass us at an intersection, follow us, cut in front of us, making us break to avoid an accident, and start saying we were breaking the rules back at the intersection and he’d call the police (we weren’t). I was livid. If I were alone, I would absolutely have Charged. But. My friend has seen me go from 0 to 100 aggressive charge before, and really does not like that aspect of me (she finds it unfathomable and a little scary). Also that would be ruining our evening. So I get out of the car and, looking halfway hysterical, say “dude, please, leave her alone, I must have distracted her - she’s taking me to a hospital, my mom’s in trouble, please, can we not do this right now.” This switched the dude from “two stupid girls on the road” to “oh, emergency, sorry”, and we were soon on our merry way. The unburnt adrenaline bothered me for a while, but otherwise it was a nice expedient solution which I feel mostly satisfaction at. I would’ve liked it more to Charge him, but he wasn’t worth wasting a very rare night out on.
I guess… I guess maybe you’re a Snake secondary who uses Lion as a favorite tactic? All this - especially running the numbers on who you were interacting with, considering multiple solutions on the fly, picking the one that had the outcome you wanted, sounds fairly Snake. But I’m not quite happy with that answer, because I’m very Badger and I’ve done similar things. I know that “almost-hysterical girl who is having a very bad day” is a presentation that’s very effective for a lot of people.
This isn’t the only case: when I can’t Charge because there’s more important things, I will Evade (and it’s only a semiconscious decision - I do this faster than I make up the tactic in my head), and wish I could’ve Charged. Both are comfortable and not morally colored: both are the Right Thing to do, even though one of them is notably easier.
Lion is easier, lion is more fun, Lion comes easiest to your hand. Maybe Lion is just your secondary, and you have a lot of models?
So Snake and Lion? But are they my Secondaries, or are they Models I’ve collected? Let’s lay it out. I love Bird preparedness in theory, and I definitely collect both People and Things, and also Methods. However, when working with Things alone, I nearly always make a mess of my collections when using them in practice unless I spend a stupid amount of effort - and often even then.
You think you should be a Bird, you think being a Bird sounds great on paper, but it just never seems to work for you. It actually seems to get you doing extra work, or doing work twice, and making yourself stressed.
It’s a great deal more comfortable to improvise, unless whatever I’m working with is too complex to improvise - and then I fall back to Showing Up. Making yourself into something that will handle whatever may come resonates with me quite a bit - so there’s also Badger. As far as I can tell, I have both Bookkeeper Badger and Courtier Badger as adaptations, even if my Courtier is much more comfortable. But Bookkeeper is… both Essential and kind of broken.
Okay. I’ve been thinking there’s Badger somewhere since the beginning, so let’s get into it. There’s a great deal of muck and stickiness surrounding the built secondaries when it comes to you, so I’m keeping that in mind.
The thing is, Bookkeeper Badger is one of my most important learning adaptations for dealing with executive dysfunction. Your brain isn’t letting you string two words together for language class? Your Snake can’t weave it’s coils? Show up. Just show up. You won’t string two words together, but you will try, and it will, over time, fall into place. I can do this for any learning process. It took me six years to start clearing top raids in an online game, but I did start, and went far further than people who had less difficulties, but gave up. I know it can be done.
It certainly can.
At the same time? I can’t seem to get this to work for social stuff. The easiest way to paralyze me is to fuck up my planning, and once that’s screwed, I can’t get out of it in Badger Mode, I need Lion for that. I am writing this as I am ignoring a simple organizational email for the 10th day in a row. I’m supposed to send it. I’m paralyzed and that entire sphere is paralyzed, because I Just Can’t. I can’t Show Up for this the same way I can for learning. For this, eventually I’ll do the Lion thing - that is, jump in and just break through.
This is 100% executive dysfunction stuff. (That might tie into ADHD stuff, they tend to slide together a lot.)
It’s interesting that you’ve identified the wall as a SOCIAL wall, because that’s suggesting there’s an emotional reason you can’t send this email. I don’t want to get armchair psychologist on you, that’s not ethical, but I will tell that with my own executive dysfunction stuff, that experience of punching though one of those “walls” DOES feel like just head-butting. But I also wouldn’t call that Lion. That’s just… I know my brain has put up a barrier in a place it doesn’t belong, and it’s going to SUCK and be emotionally draining, but I need to punch though it often enough that it stops being so strong. (And of course, dislaimer, experiences are not universal… and my my thing is autism, not adhd)
“When you spot a metaphorical obstacle in your path, what do you do?” And on the surface, yeah, a lot of the time the solution for me is Charge. But… There are also many areas of my life for which Charge has proven unsustainable. And the underlying principle, in the end, when choosing whether to Charge or Show up is “you have to understand your problems to have any hope of resolving them”: you have to choose the right method for the problem, which I still sometimes struggle with.Now, Courtier. Courtier is fairly easy for me, about as comfy as Lion. But it could also be Snake? Here’s the defining example: when I was a teenager, a lot of people in my social circles had Dark Badger groups going on, which were colloquially called “packs” (as in, wolf packs), with the sort of edgelord nasty Dark Badger dynamics you can imagine from that name. I… Sort of got a group going around me - not because I wanted one, but people did congregate around me with some ease. It was fairly natural for me to lead, and I could have easily made what I had into a typical pack. However, I took one look at the standard model I’d had before me - and decided I wouldn’t do that to my people. We were all teens, all of them were a year or two younger, and I didn’t want to make them dependent on me the way most pack leaders were doing. So I devised my own model. Whenever I made a goof - and there were many - I didn’t hide it. Instead, I’d sort of play it up - draw attention to it and encourage my people to find a better solution, and played up how good it was that we covered for each other’s weaknesses. And instead of keeping them in my entourage by hook or by crook, I specifically let them go and encouraged it when they were looking into stuff that I wasn’t involved in. It worked. I didn’t get a pack, I got friends - and I still have all those people as friends, if not all of them particularly close. I also didn’t see it as being inauthentic or manipulative. People were looking to me for guidance and I’d be a coward if I didn’t give it. It was the right thing to do.
This example is really, really Badger secondary. Obviously you’ve got Loyalist energy coming from your primary, but the thing about Badger secondaries is… they build communities (moreso than Lions, who are much, much more comfortable with followers.) Badger secondaries feel that they are stronger (and their power baser is stronger) when they’ve got a community full of authentic relationships, and authentic relationships are reciprocal.
The way you’re writing about this method of power-building and problem solving feels natural and easy. You’re also writing about an example from when you were pretty young. And like, a D&D campaign that’s been going for ten years? I think you’re a Badger secondary. I think that you’ve had your Badger secondary complicated for you by neurodivergence and executive dysfunction, and you’re working on reclaiming it. (And I think that’s what I’m seeing, but that also is my story.) And, I think your Lion might even be a way of reclaiming it. Lion and Badger both have that “YOU MOVE” energy that you are especially drawn to.
Subjectively I am very drawn to Snake Neutral. That’s basically my ideal state to be in, but the world is not ideal, so you pick up your tools and make the best of it. So Snake or Bird Secondary? Damned if I know.
“Subjectively, on paper, xyz is the best option.” I was talking to a Bird primary the other day who was all set to buy over-the-ear headphones, instead of earbuds. Even though they don’t like over-the-ear headphones, and perfer earbuds. Because over-the-ear headphones were the better option on paoer.
The Bird/Snake distinction is what happens when plans fall apart. If I have a safety net and it paid off, I’ll feel a rush - it worked (for this reason I have no problem with climbing as a sport and falling - I tied those ropes myself, of course I trust them)! If I have to use my safety net 10 times out of 10, though, I’ll be really annoyed (unless it’s a situation where that’s to be expected). If the safety net fails, though, I will comfortably switch to improvising - I do that a lot anyway, and I’m good with it. So I honestly have no idea which is the model!
I mean, you spelled it out right there. You prefer to go in with prepwork. Often the prepwork works, and it feels good when it works. But sometimes it doesn’t. And then you have no problem switching to your beloved Lion model, or your less beloved Snake model.
I mean, Snake/Lion and Snake/Bird both have Snake as a commonality, so maybe that, but, well, I honestly don’t know if it’s my Secondary or a really good model; whether I just like Bird, or whether it’s me, but broken.
The only thing, in this 5K peice of writing, that has sounded anything like specifically a Bird secondary is this: I definitely collect both People and Things, and also Methods. And in the context of everything? That could be a fun Bird model, or even a way of intellectualizing Courtier badger.
A quiz question that seems to be relevant here: “Is knowing things or knowing people more useful when solving problems?”
If there’s anything I learned from my Badger model it’s that people will have things covered, but things won’t have people covered. There’s too many Things in this world to master them all yourself! However! If you don’t have people - have things, and ESPECIALLY have things for stuff that directly impacts your survival. Example: know your medical stuff inside and out, the doctors have dozens of patients, you only have yourself. So… For critical things, I prefer things? For difficult things, I prefer people? For both, have both?
You’re clearly very practical, very intellectually curious, and like knowing things. But that’s not tied to a sorting. Again, you’ve pretty much laid it out for me. “It’s more useful to have people (Badger secondary) but it’s good to have a backup in case people aren’t there (Bird secondary model.)”
Tl;dr: for secondaries, I’m stuck between Bird and Snake. Maybe there was at one point a Bird at the base, but it’s rendered only partially functional by the executive function difficulties? Then my Snake, which is definitely my most comfortable model, compensates for my broken Bird. However, because it’s a Model, not a true Secondary, it can get overwhelmed: there’s a distinct limit to things I can improvise my way out of. So my Bird and Badger both pick up the slack when things get too complex to just waltz into. And then my Lion compensates for the deficit in my Badger and is also just plain comfy - and when I can’t Charge, I fall back to Snake again. Does that look similar to the read you’re getting? Or am I overcomplicating a much simpler thing: a Snake that likes Bird-style problem solving?
Let me tell you the read I’m getting.
You’re a Badger secondary with a Courtier mode that lets you create and keep multiple groups of incredibly loyal friends, and a Bookkeeper mode that’s allowed you to be extremely high functioning in multiple different fields. But, executive dysfunction disfunction and memory struggles have affected the way you see your secondary. You think it should be better, you think it should be perfect. And so when you shift into the Lion model that you really do enjoy, you have this sense that you’re… taking the easy way out or something? And I wish you didn’t have to think all that.
Lastly, you all mentioned in a few places that you have a hard time figuring out what’s the One Thing that Birds value. I’d like to make an offer: verisimilitude. Does everything fit together? And… At least from inside my head, this part of Bird Primary isn’t a choice.
I love it. The one part that’s consistent across all the different flavors of Bird primary.
Thank you for reading the novel, and I hope you had fun with the analysis!
I absolutely did
