eos_nyxia

It was a decent demonstration of something which comes to me effortlessly (the cognitive sorting and making-sense process), and also something I would not normally be assed to do (writing it out). Sorting it mentally takes me about as much time and effort as it takes to read it and make basic sense of it (let's just say a minute or so because I'm a fast read) and about 10ish to mark it up and explain what it means, but I don't inherently find this aspect of my own thinking that interesting, rewarding, or fun. It's just another tool like a wrench or a screwdriver. I'm not so enamoured with it that I think I AM the wrench... I get that. I think you need some sort of accountability process with yourself where you occasionally ask yourself not just if you are capable of introspecting correctly (both perceiving and interpreting), but if you have the emotional drive to be honest enough with yourself. (Although I suspect that with INTJ types, honesty with oneself is NOT an issue or relatively minimal!) I've spent a lot of time in non-native environments around non-native people, both being forced and choosing to adapt to them (but often not the other way around). I've also done a ton of shadow work and a lot of journaling across my lifetime, and have spent a lot of time and energy trying to even myself out. A good example is how weak my Se function is naturally is that I was very, very unathletic as a child (without having a visible disability or physical illness), have always contended with the intensity of sensory sensitivities, and I even physically developed slower than my peers. It was like my body decided to dump ALL of its stat points into "higher" traits like intelligence/ willpower/ wisdom and I was a glass cannon of a human being for a while until I could grind my other stats lol. I have very heavily compensated for this starting in my mid-to-late teens and now I would legitimately be considered very athletic, but I am heavily constrained by working with my intrinsic physical weaknesses and limits (e.g. hypermobility). I value this more because I worked very hard for it, and equally I get bored of things that come to me too easily if I'm just doing it for my own amusement and exploration (rather than to serving a higher purpose). I've got that appetite for novelty and I NEED genuine challenge or else I feel like a miserable shell of a person. Otherwise, I would probably still be closer my childhood self, having my """super deep thoughts""" but then walking into a door or wall because I stopped noticing it was there again, or tripping over literally nothing and rolling onto my ankle, ****just because****. The stack chart is very helpful, thanks! I'll be mulling over it and making sense of it over the next week or so. Hopefully I'll be much more literate at reading these stacks by then.

Interesting, I wonder how common it is for thinking-types who had the feminine social conditioning. I suspect that it is very common and a matter of degrees, and generally not if we are affected but how much. I imagine that the more traumatic your environment was and the more you're just... different from your peers (especially others of your assigned gender), the more you have to socially compensate in order to survive growing up. (And INTJ women are by definition gender unconventional.) Definitely not natural for me either, and it still isn't. More than anything, I find it very difficult to get the hypervigilance (or alternatively, the impressions left by hypervigilance) out of what I generally consider to be positive, desirable qualities otherwise (being emotionally attuned to people, your environment, etc). (Like if everyone had these traits and used them conscientiously, the world would be a much better place for everyone.)

@LoneWonderer Very efficient, though I don't think I could digest this well. It's not just about a specific food intolerance, but really complex combination of foods that don't necessarily mesh well together. I envy you people with your guts of steel.

Actually, I have a question for everyone (or anyone). To what degree do you think your close/ formative relationships have affected your type/ function? For example, I'm quite sure my dad would have typed as an INTP type, and I'm also pretty sure that I picked up a lot of his personality traits, though many are probably inborn characteristics as well (as much as you could determine such a thing to be true). Would I still have a similar type if I had a completely different father? Maybe, but maybe less so? My husband originally typed as INTJ (and occasionally INFJ later), and as I wrote my above post, I realized that I had taken on a number of his constructive personality traits and he's taken on some of mine too. All and all, not a bad exchange. Both INTJs are INFJs as generalized personality types are great, by the way! (I just like them on a personal level.)

I relate to this strongly as well, but it's probably not a native personality function for me, but rather the result of compensating for what would otherwise be a massive social deficit, except that I started at very young age because I'm naturally super socially self-conscious. No child wants to be bullied. I feel like I easily get the energy or vibe of people remotely (not that it's not subject to my own biases and dirty, partial lens, at times), but in person is much easier. It's also just... different. My least favourite scenario is talking to strangers and acquaintances over the phone. The worst of both worlds... literal torture. What is it about seeing what someone looks like that helps you in photos vs. in person? For me, it's always the expression in the eyes (or lack thereof), and the body language, including the choice of posing (or again, lackthereof).

@Joshe This chart is a good example of why I find I find the functions confusing, haha. Because you really have to strongly prefer one mode over the other, right? I still have my native personality fluency, but genuinely they have changed quite a bit, and genuinely my preferences have both become much more broad and also adaptable (minus the introversion bit, arguably I've gotten "worse" as an adult). If I had been typed in my teens and 20s, I would definitely skew more toward native INTP/Ti-Ne characteristics without a doubt, but as of now (based on one of the charts you posted): This probably requires some explanation (or like, a whole ass legend)... yellow = #1 priority blue = #2 priority (in terms of how much I tend to value one thing over another, or absolute value preference) an equal sign = I value both equally (in an absolute value sense), likewise: > or < to denote preference The arrow means I prioritize doing one thing first, and then the other thing second, usually for a very specific reason. For example, for point 4, I consider it absolutely essential to do both, and I consider it to be the best and most balanced cognitive-centered approach. Cast your net as wide as you can within a legible time period in a way that you can manage to the best of your ability, otherwise you are working with a much more narrow range of experiences or data.... on purpose. And that is never a good thing, to have an overly narrow view of yourself and the world. Now you now have to defend your model or take the time and energy to keep adjusting your working models of the world. It's just not very efficient. The only other superior option IMO is to have intuition that is so honed and precise that you can use that instead of manually going through certain psychological processes over and over (as if you were running a program), which puts constraints on what can be done with a given amount of time and energy. I'll just call it bottlenecking. A good example of this in a more simple way: a child is naturally highly gifted at math and they have their own process of working out problems, so they can "intuitively" do multiple steps instantly or (or near instantly). They can then choose to write down all the steps manually or not. Writing down the steps did not help that child work out the answer. If they had written it down, it would have been much more effort for them because they are roleplaying a process which is not native to them. (Source: my husband, but also myself.) You can develop these types of qualities with focus and intention though, it's not just for "the gifted". Likewise, with 8), shouldn't I be focusing on models first and then definitions later? Seems like a waste of time otherwise. And with 17), I've mostly curbed the childhood tendency to daydream and build castles in my head. If I do it, it's very much on purpose.

@Joshe @LordFall @Natasha Tori Maru Thanks for the suggestions and insights everyone! You've given me a lot to mull over.

I'm mostly familiar with the 4 letter label and am only very generally familiar with the functions. There is a lot I don't know much about and I haven't exactly learned much just from observing people talk about their stacks, which is how I tend to learn the quickest. (It reads like a foreign language TBH.) Maybe it is worth learning more though.

Does anyone else tend to score as a different type depending on what phase of life they're in? (by this, I mean goals and priorities, the type people I'm around, and how often I want or need to be around people) Classically I've scored as INTP, but I've also gotten INFJ, INFP, and INTJ occasionally as well. I've even consistently gotten ENTP/J during the most social phases of my life, which may be evidence of nothing else other than having been a social chameleon IRL. I'm not sure what to make of it, and I've never put in the time to learn about the whole stacking business, so the whole Te/Ni/ Se/ Fi tends to read like mainstream astrology to me lol. I've noticed that one pattern tends to dominate though over the years though: I'm most often about 90%+ introversion, minimum 70-80% intuition, 40-60% feeling OR thinking (going either way depending on my priorities), and almost perfectly split on perception and judgement (going slightly either way). Has anyone else noticed a distinct pattern of their own?

What's stopping you from facing your regret now and making the most of your time and energy (even if it's imperfect in execution)?

Is that actually true? The only people I've heard who are super pissed off about that ad (as opposed to that jeans/genes one...) are professional female athletes because they feel like being oversexualized as athletes means that they aren't taken seriously for what they can do physically. I heard about this from Gracie Kramer because I follow some gymnasts. Not that this is what it's supposedly about, but from a personal perspective, I wouldn't see why Gracie would have anything to envy in Sydney Sweeney lol.

The world's oldest hobby, ever since we had the language for it.

Yep. My dad developed glaucoma-related blindness within the last 10 years and I do some caretaking, and my mom is also developing more health problems as well, though she is extremely active. My mom in particular has always been super blunt about death and things relating to death, and I'm the executor of their will, so I hear about it all a decent amount.

They say there's a first time for everything. Half a week ago at the rec centre where I do my indoor swims, at the ripe age of almost-38, I saw my first white person playing Mahjong. For reference, it's this game: My first thought was that it was nice of those older Chinese people to include him. (Assuming that he doesn't speak Chinese or at least not very well, and also assuming that random groups of older Cantonese people aren't that inclusive to people who don't speak their language. EXIBIHIT A: The number of times I've heard similar demographic talking shit about other non-Chinese regulars in the steam room, literally right after talking to those people too.)

I automatically notice things about people and my environment all the time, even when I'm trying to mind my own business. A lot of amusing things, and even things I've never seen before. There's a lot I don't remember simply because I never bother to write it down these days, but what if I had all of these bite-sized vignettes to look back on later?

Interesting questions! For what it is worth, I tend to look at these type of ideas within the context of the history of ideas first. I was raised with the intimate exposure to two philosophical traditions: Chinese and Continental (aka. "Western") philosophy. The idea of the moral necessity/ imperative to "express yourself" wholly and freely comes from the Romantic tradition, which itself was a response to the Enlightenment. The latter shifted the locus of control from God and destiny to the individual (and by extension the concept of individual responsibility) and the revitalization of "Reason" as a primary virtue. Individualism. I do this, I am that. I, I, I, etc. In the Daoist tradition, it is also about returning to what is true and pure (in the way that an uncultivated being is, like a very young child or an animal) but you don't need to turn that energy outward at all. You really often don't need to act. You don't need to push for people to see or hear you, in fact, you ought not to push and force at all, because that is in direct resistance to the Way (the natural flow of nature, life, the universe, etc). Daoism is also about inner transmutation and self refining to "perfection", but not through the psychoemotionally constipated notions of "effort" Westerns tend to have. Actually, now that I think about it, this type of beingness tends to be coded is very "feminine" here. In the Chinese tradition, this is both the yin and the yang, but whole and in balance. I was going to say that I don't believe this either, but it depends what you think the self is made up of. Do you have anything in you that aligns with the belief in a "soul", or some essential aspect that survives death? To me, what people generally call a "personality" is mostly a social costume. If they have no sense of anything else beyond that, well, that is why they are trapped within it and must suffer with it, because it always eventually becomes a burden in some way if you can't shed it. Why is there a gap there at all? Do you think it has to be there? (I do experience this same gap myself too, at times.) Philosophically, I follow both in my own way, but I wholeheartedly hold the perspective that the Daoist way is "more true". I go through phases of "expressing myself" in the way you described above mainly to relieve pent up energy, but there ideally would not be an "inner" and "outer" self at all due to the congruence principle you mentioned and also generally having all of your aspects integrated rather than segregated in some fashion from each other. Ideally, you would have just enough "structure" (or "mind") to move through this world smoothly and with purpose, and no extra deadweight at all. Wherever I am at now inevitably effects all of my relationships, but often not in a positive way.

This forum has had an issue with people weaponizing spiral dynamics for years. I don't think it's very constructive for anyone involved.

Fair enough. I've found the radiant dialogue system endlessly entertaining, but the game didn't exactly age well. Actually looking back, I'm not sure how I managed to play so much of it without breaking immersion.

This is a very chaotic combo for a green smoothie; I don't think I would be able to stomach this texturally. What does this even taste like?

For Oblivion, the janky, buggy quality is part of the charm.

My partner blasts this soundtrack sometimes to deter potential robbers, I'm not sure if it works, but I hope we never have to find out!

Remembering that day is like opening a surreal time capsule. I was turning 13 soon, had just started at a new high school, and had met my new best friend for that year. I was in homeroom when I first heard about it, and that was ALL people could talk about. None of it seemed real. There was a sense of a very clear delineation between the world before and after, similar to COVID in that way.

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If this is all there is, then it's all I have to work with.

A guy being able to have his pick of women doesn't make him a quality guy. Unless you're referring to something else.