Hiyaaa! How does auxiliary Fi and tertiary Te work together in ENFPs? Since Fi is known to be connected with sensitivity and high empathy (and emotion-based decisions?) while Te can be harsh, blunt, and is more rational in judgment? Especially if the Te is well developed
Both Fi and Te are responsible for different parts of life, and the stereotypes mostly refer to an overindulgence at the cost of the other function.
ENFPs use Fi to evaluate their Ne explorations by drawing conclusions on the basis of how they feel about the experience. Te comes into play to ensure Fi is conscious of practical limitations and other people. So a developed Te use for ENFP means they are likely to be more consistent and reliable, since they grow to be more aware of their own (practical) impact.
A developed Te would also help an ENFP to make decisions that are more conscious of long-term implications. As Te is focused on generalised cause-and-effect relationships, ENFP can use it to see what their decisions will mean in the long term.
The only reason why Te use can come across as blunt and insensitive is if it is unchecked by Fi. As it fundamentally dismisses any nuance, it is bound to be inconsiderate of context, and therefore prescribe one-size-fits-all solutions. But by serving Fi, it simply broadens its perspective. The whole thing works differently for ENFP than for ExTJ, though.
If you start to reason from Fi (FP), you’re only looking for Te to find a way to live more congruently with the rest of us while you protect your freedom.
If you start to reason from Te (TJ), you’re only looking for Fi to find a way to make pragmatic goal-oriented decisions that are mindful of human limitations.
Hi mbti notes, can someone with an fi aux value prestige and achievement without being in a loop? What's the difference between valuing achievement for its own sake and being driven to prove oneself by inferiority complex (Te loop)? My type is ENFP if it helps. Thanks
One is a positive motivation that contributes something genuinely good to life; the other is a negative motivation, using the wrong methods of compensating for something missing in life. A negative motivation sets up the wrong intention behind your actions, which leads you in the wrong direction, away from growth. It's not always easy to tell the difference. Sometimes, you have to wait for some results to come in and re-evaluate.
To understand the difference, you have to understand the difference between a need and a desire. Like all people, you need healthy self-esteem. It's a legitimate human need. When you grow up in an environment that does not encourage you to have healthy self-esteem or even actively destroys your self-esteem, you don't learn the appropriate ways of fulfilling the need for healthy self-esteem. This makes it difficult to develop healthy Fi because you've come to believe there's something inherently wrong with you. Nobody likes feeling that way, so how you go about "fixing" the problem is the crux of the matter.
You could acknowledge that you need healthy self-esteem and find an appropriate and constructive way of fulfilling the need, through developing healthy Fi self-acceptance and self-validation and developing healthy Te for getting your life in better order. This involves living life on your own terms, doing whatever is necessary for nurturing your emotional well-being. Or, you could chase after external validation through Te loop in an endless cycle of ups and downs, getting addicted to the "feel good" moments of "success", and trying your darnedest to evade the negative effects of self-harm. The healthy path of intelligently fulfilling psychological needs positions you well for growing as a person and pursing goals for the right reasons. The unhealthy path of chasing superficial desires slowly buries you in regret because the self-harm accumulates and eventually catches up with you in the form of immense pain.
Which is more important to you: 1) Putting in a lifetime of hard work to build your sense of self up properly from the ground up so that you can honestly call yourself a person of integrity? Or 2) Clinging to the definitions of "success" that were dictated to you by those who invalidated you, in an effort to finally win the validation from them that you felt robbed of? If you are capable of brutal self-honesty, you know the answer and whether you are trying to deny the truth of your intentions. The purpose of type development is to become more aware of how maladaptive thinking works, so that you create an opportunity to choose differently.
Hey! Hope u doing well! I wasthinking, how can one be more self-confident?I am very insecure/uncertain/erratic in my life, with myself and in interacting with people. I can't trust myself or what I pass on to others. I'm an ENFP and I'm very attracted to confidence, although I'm not confident at all. on the contrary, I always take too much account of what people think, especially when I ask for advice. Well, I would also like to know which types would be more inclined towards "natural" self-conf
The insecurity you describe is a sign of low self-esteem and should be addressed by developing auxiliary Fi’s unconditional self-acceptance. When you can’t accept who you are, you allow others to dictate who you are. Self-esteem is different from self-confidence. Confidence is more related to your abilities and skills; they should be built up properly through learning, study, and practice, which is related to Te development. These topics have come up before, so search the tags and consult the Type Dev Guide.
Hello there, I'm a 22 year old enfp, I have been developing my Fi lately which has been underdeveloped for too long and I'm thankfully making leaps and bounds although it has been a small amount of time, I feel everything is falling into place, I'm forever grateful to you for this blog, you're a great person, but I have a question, can I develop Te simultaneously with FI ? or would that backfire badly ? Sorry if the question is a repeated one
1) Fi and Te are oppositional functions. Therefore, explain how you plan to develop both at the same time when using one will often prevent you from using the other. What aspects of development are you referring to exactly?
In reality, trying to do both at the same time tends to backfire because, when you don't even have enough self-awareness to use your auxiliary function properly, you certainly won't have enough for the tertiary (which is buried deeper in the mind).
Explain to me, in step-by-step detail, what you believe "developing Te" entails and how you plan to do it. If I can't be sure that you really understand what Te is and how to use it, I won't be able to verify whether you're doing it the right way.
2) If, as you've said, Fi has gone undeveloped for too long, it is quite likely that you also suffer from Te loop issues. It is called tertiary temptation for a reason. People often don't realize they are misusing the tertiary function, because it feels good, and they lack the self-awareness to realize the negative aspects of doing so.
IMO, while you're trying to develop the auxiliary function, tertiary "development", at most, should be about growing your awareness of unhealthy tertiary loop patterns and making the conscious choice to break them, in order to make way for healthy auxiliary growth.
3) Do you understand that one major ENFP development pitfall is the ability to convince yourself that the rules don't/shouldn't apply to you? When it comes to personal growth, wanting to rush and use cheats/shortcuts is a very common way ENFPs sabotage themselves. I can't say whether this is true for you, but for your own good, perhaps you need to reflect on whether your question is a manifestation of this bad habit.
Hi. ENFP here. I often start all my projects or even studies with as much enthusiasm as possible, I'll research everything, talk to people about it, plan everything, but then it vanishes after a few months. Then i either avoid doing the task or, simply do it in a very average way just to get it over with. Is there a way i could just not lose my enthusiasm with everything?
Commitment in ENFPs comes from 1) a deep sense of caring, passion, and integrity = Fi development, and 2) a very determined and responsible attitude that does not give up until the objective is properly reached = Te development. Taking self-sabotaging shortcuts is a sign of immature Te/Te loop. See the Type Dev Guide.
How to deal with bitterness without letting it harm us? sometimes I'm afraid to let myself go: for the lack of hope, the hardness of life, disappointments, other's people bitterness. However, I find it interesting to get out of the naivety of trusting others. Is my bitterness just a reality check? I don't know how to dose the right amount of bitterness. As an ENFP, do you think that having a certain malice (not always expecting the best of others and the world) is harmful to Fi's development?
You’re asking the wrong question. Bitterness isn’t the main problem; bitterness is merely a symptom of the underlying problem. Why is it that you need to go into situations with preconceived notions or a bunch of expectations about how things should go? Do you realize that you may be sabotaging yourself with your own expectations?
When you first enter a situation or meet a person, you don’t have any useful information yet. When you don’t have enough information, why formulate judgments about how things should go? On what basis do you expect the “best” or expect the “worst”? On the basis of your hopes for gain? On the basis of your past disappointments? Either way, you are trapped in your own subjectivity (Fi overindulgence), which means no objective information is getting through. Your expectations and judgments, whether positive or negative, will inevitably be proven wrong if they were ill-informed at the start. Don’t try to fill in all the colors of a situation before you’ve even had a chance to look at what colors are already there, otherwise, you’ll be creating your own distorted image of reality.
What’s the purpose of setting up so many expectations? What do you gain from it (i.e. the reason that you keep doing it)? What do you lose from it (i.e. the reason that you should stop doing it)? If you can’t answer these two questions, you won’t get enough insight into yourself to resolve the problem. And third question: What do you think would happen if you went about your life without so many judgments and expectations?
If you already have a lot of experience with someone and they’ve proven, over and over again, that they are incapable of having a healthy relationship with you, then that is a different story. Then you have to make a difficult decision about whether you still want to invest more of your time and energy into the relationship. Or if you’ve been on a path for a long time and it hasn’t been working out for you at all, then you have to ask yourself whether it’s the right path to be on. Nobody can make these decisions for you, since it’s up to you to decide the best use of your time and energy. However, the decisions should consider all the facts, rather than rely solely on hopes or expectations.
Thanks for a great blog! Your words have helped me a lot, but there is one thing I am struggling to understand, so hope you can clarify. You often mention the importance of developing functions IN ORDER (e.g. as an INFP, I should develop Fi first, then Ne, Si and finally Te),and this makes sense in theory. In self-improvement terms, I have always tried to take the best approach for a situation and go outside my comfort zone to consciously work on skills and functions etc. (1 of ?).
[con’t: However, your advice implies a longer-term focus, and that working on a specific function is a good idea. If I understand, Te will NEVER feel as natural as Fi - like writing with your wrong hand could look nice however well it’s developed. My question is how do you know which function (of the 4 in your stack) you should currently be developing? How do you evaluate your strengths, and determine when the ‘next function’ needs development, and when would this change? You have also mentioned the negative impacts of developing functions in the WRONG ORDER. My upbringing, (and male environmental pressures) led me to suppress Fi growing up. Now I’m 32, I am reasonably balanced between my use of Fi and Te, but don’t think either of them are especially healthy in isolation. In contrast my Ne-Si feels unbalanced, and I consciously work on slowing my head down, and to stop skimming over details etc. So, on one level I feel like I should work on Si to bridge the gap to Te. However my Fi feels weaker than it should be, and while I can use Te in a positive way, I still feel like I should be more ‘effective’ in life. Sorry it was long, but theory without examples is hard for me. I am really interested in understanding more about developing functions IN ORDER, and the impact of developing in the WRONG ORDER, and how to undo damage, and where best to focus on for self-improvement. Thanks!!]
I commend your willingness to learn, because an open mind and a good attitude is half the battle. It seems you want something like step-by-step instructions, which is a reasonable request and common from Te types, but it can’t really be granted because it doesn’t fit with the reality of how the mind works. The mind is complicated and hard to understand, that’s why we’re often reduced to using metaphors or analogies.
When you read the guides, I make a point of saying that cognitive functions aren’t skills. They aren’t something that you can improve from 1 to 10 like learning piano. This analogy doesn’t properly represent the real-life process of type development. For example, if you equate Te with “organization skill”, then you are likely to believe that if you just learn how to organize better and practice it, then Te will be “well-developed”. No. This analogy does not account for the intention behind your desire to use and develop the function. Why is it that some INFPs are good at organizing, some even run corporations and manage large groups of people, but they still frequently experience Te grip?
You can work hard at developing Te as a “skill” all you want, and you’ll probably get better at doing your daily tasks and keeping everything running smoothly, that’s true - this is not a “bad” thing to do. However, ask yourself what really motivates your desire to build up Te in this way? If your desire stems from wanting to realize your positive potential and become a better person, i.e., self-love, then great. But if your desire actually stems from barely conscious feelings of inadequacy, self-abasement, shame, helplessness, or other negative emotions, then you probably haven’t realized that you’re in Te grip, despite whatever appearance you give off of having your life together.
Functions are tools for making sense of the world and making good decisions in life. How well you use these cognitive tools is not just a matter of skill (skill does help in small ways), it’s also a matter of whether you can properly DECODE what they’re telling you to do. Let’s say that Te is “telling you” to change careers because the career that you really want is not going to lead to great success and wealth. Should you listen? No amount of “organizing skill” is going to answer this question for you, right?
Think of it this way: All of your functions are speaking to you, so your job, like being “president”, is to know the right time to listen to the right function. What this implies is that developing your functions is not about particular skills, rather, it’s about how much self-awareness you possess when making choices. Let’s say Te tells you that: you suck when you’re not rich and famous, you need to sacrifice your integrity to make it, you have to grind yourself down to nothing to achieve the symbols of success, etc. Even if you satisfy these Te demands, are you going to end up as a person that you’ll be proud of? You listened to that Te, you got your shit together, you worked hard as Te told you to do, but would you call that “well-developed” Te or Te grip?
Why is self-development hard? Because you are filled with inner conflicts and you don’t know how to resolve them when you don’t have enough awareness of who you really are, what kind of person you should strive to be, what your deepest needs and concerns are, what kinds of desires are legitimate, what kind of life constitutes a “good” life. People are not objective and rational when they make decisions because the mind is a morass of conflicting information. We are all very easily influenced and led astray by unconscious activity, of which there are three common forms: 1) cognitive biases, usually faulty schemas or heuristics that mislead you about the reality of how the world works, 2) unresolved emotions, such as fear, shame, guilt, anger, pride, jealousy, etc, that twist and distort your perception and judgment, and 3) ego defense mechanisms that photoshop your self-image and blur your self-perception in order to escape the threat of low self-esteem (i.e. lying to yourself).
That’s why I emphasize self-awareness as the goal of function development. When you are unaware of your intention, or the why, behind developing a function, you are very likely to misuse that function because it’s not really under your control but actually controlled by your unconscious impulses. Can you see through the ways in which your functions give voice to your unconscious activity? Using the above example, can you see through those things that Te is saying? Can you understand that Te is speaking in that way to you because of shame or low self-esteem, not because it has “the right answer” about how you should live your life? In other words, when your mind is transparent to you, you will know when to listen to a function or not because you understand what it’s really trying to say to you.
WRT function order, generally speaking, you can’t use a function well until the functions before it have been developed well. To understand this concept, use a swimming analogy. The better you are at swimming, the deeper the water you can handle. If you can’t even handle the shallow side, you shouldn’t even think about venturing into the deep end. If you try to go deeper before you are ready, you’ll end up flailing wildly at best and drowning at worst. This is because the unconscious mind is layered and riddled with defense mechanisms, so you have to work your way through those layers gradually as you slowly increase self-awareness. If you try to develop a lower function before you have the necessary baseline level of self-awareness, you’ll just end up misusing that function because you aren’t yet capable of decoding its true message. Why? The lower the function in your stack, the more distorted that “voice” sounds to you because of its much closer proximity to your unconscious activity, especially your defense mechanisms and unresolved emotional issues.
The function order makes it seem like there is a linear path to take but it’s not so simple because there are two different issues: 1) How much knowledge you have about how to use a function well: This is important because you need something by which to measure your progress, and this is already explained in the Type Development Guide. 2) Whether you can use a function well in every circumstance: Life can be going very well for you circumstance-wise, in which case, your unconscious activity would be fairly quiet and your functions would naturally operate optimally. However, as soon as things don’t go well, you are likely to misuse all of your functions in a desperate attempt to cope with the stress. A function being higher in your stack means that you are less likely to misuse it simply because you are more experienced with it. But it doesn’t matter how “skilled” you are in using your functions if you are still misusing them the moment you get too stressed. For example, you could become great at organizing things (Te as “skill”) and yet, every time you’re stressed, you totally go overboard and get super controlling about everything -> you immediately get taken over by your unconscious unresolved emotions like fear and shame. This tells you that the most important overarching process of type development is learning from the mistakes you make and using that knowledge to boost self-awareness so that you can do better next time.
People often believe that they are more skilled than they are because their ego defense mechanisms prime them to think that way in order to preserve self-esteem. To address your unconscious activity requires radical self-honesty and not many people are ready for that. You have to possess a certain amount of genuine self-esteem to face up to all of your flaws and mistakes and learn from them. This can be especially hard for Fs because they are more sensitive to shame about feeling less than or incompetent. Long term type development involves a lot of growing pains because there is lots of fear and defensiveness to overcome. It’s not fun or pleasant to always be reflecting on the consequences of your actions and confronting all of the things you do wrong or badly. Not many people can face those pains and fears bravely, which is why they opt out. It’s hard to see through the growing pains to understand what enormous gains you can achieve by coming out the other side.
