#this is a self defense mechanism

[handsoffthefuckinshield]

okay. the collective empathy level has lowered significantly

[shigetaharua]

[stop-breaking-my-heart-telltale]

What can I say? They're my favorite.

[torukmaktoskxawng]

If Tsu'tey lived and met my OC:

Tsu'tey: Ah, another Suli, here to stomp around and make a mess of things.

Kayla: ... You seem nice.

Tsu'tey: You should go away.

Kayla: Nah, you'd miss me.

Tsu'tey:

[mbti-notes]

Anon wrote: Hello mbti-notes. Hope you are doing well and thank you for all your work as always. I am the INFJ from post 642303487006359552. Sorry for asking yet again; I just believe I’m wasting a lot of time trying to figure this out by myself and would appreciate if you have any ideas or pointers.

In the post I mentioned above you pinpointed how I struggled with unhealthy Ni, unreasonable expectations, and lack of patience / emotional intelligence. Your analysis was spot-on, and I come to relate to it increasingly as I go through life, but my progress on these issues has been slow when looking from bird-eye’s view. I think my understanding of them is rather detached / intellectualized and hindered by me being unable to rely on external advice or guidance effectively.

I probably “intellectualize” a lot generally as I rely a lot on external advice, self-help, researching, psychology, etc. to figure out my problems. I don’t know if this is inherently a bad thing—if I hadn’t found many of psychology’s ideas I definitely would hardly be in a good place. However, every time I do this, I feel guilty or afraid that I’m navel gazing, and uncertain whether I actually am. If I don’t do this, however, I feel intractably stuck. Most of the progress I’ve made relied on my own ‘pure’ judgment in some form, but when I continue to tap into it I start becoming delusional or something, and even more stuck. I will detail my problem now and how this happens when I try to work on it.

I have been trying to be more patient, more resilient, and gain awareness of the thought processes that lead to disappointment. On the way, I realized that one of my major problems was immense frustration whenever something ‘went wrong’. I think this is very related to Ti loop and Se grip. If something doesn’t ‘make sense’ to me or if I don’t know what it means for me���such as someone’s mean comments, negative intentions; what makes certain tasks or activities purposeful; whether I’m choosing a good direction in life—I don’t feel my life (presently) is ‘meaningful’ anymore, that my ‘good’ actions are meaningless things that I am ‘forced’ to do to be well-adjusted. I feel an urge to escape from the situation and move into nihilism, perhaps narrowing my point of attention to a very small point so that I don’t have to think about it all. I want to forget about all of the mess. My unrealistic expectations perhaps pile up when I do this.

For example it so happens that I have poor social skills that often leads people to reject me. Of course, it is unreasonable to expect anyone to like me. But when I tell myself ‘it’s okay if people don’t like me’, my frustrations become extreme; I become provoked, implacable. “Why should it be the case that even if people reject me, they think I’m a bad person just for having emotional issues, make gross assumptions about my behavior, etc. etc.” I often resort to thinking those people are ‘shallow’. And it doesn’t help that in reality, I’m getting increasing amounts of evidence that even decent people can be very shallow. I guess it’s not my business and my interpretation is what matters—my judgmentalness here shows my own struggles. And if I’m being honest I’m rather OK with the rejection per se. What bothers me immensely is that the rejection was based on things that indicated that they were first of all looking out for their own comfort rather than mine, that they blindsided my unrealistic expectations of them. I feel exposed for being so out of touch.

But I’ve attempted to be more in touch with reality often, more realistic, but it doesn’t work. All I can think of telling myself is, ‘you should know that people are shallow’, which doesn’t seem realistic at all; it’s just a blanket statement. Or I tell myself, I should go out for your own enjoyment, not necessarily for genuine connection with others. Or even better that I should be more adaptable, chill, focused on mutual enjoyment. I’ve often gone out with these intentions and ended up being totally lost on what to do, acting even more awkward probably creeping people out. This ties back to that things ‘stop making sense’. Like I don’t understand what’s happening around me; I’m here for enjoyment or I’m trying to be adaptable, what does that mean? How does it tie to what matters to me? Sometimes I figure out in the moment why something matters to me practically and act pretty well, but it requires a lot of mental work and tying together all the complex factors quickly, and it happens rarely (though more frequently as I’ve made some sort of progress). It requires thinking of everything at once. And I’m slow when it comes to things like this. It doesn’t help that I feel very angry when I realize that my ‘slowness’ is the thing that’s leading people to misunderstand and judge me. It feels unfair… and then same thing with this, I try to figure out my unrealistic expectation that the world should be fair and reasonable and defuse it, but now it’s double complicated with the original thing.

Similarly I often struggle with figuring out how to find more meaning and purpose in life. I have many meaningful goals, like helping out my family, making progress in my career, learning good things, solving my emotional problems, building a social support system, becoming a better person. I don’t actively feel hopeless as long as I don’t touch on my blindspots too much. But when I try to grow more it comes crumbling down. Like I’ll become disappointed that I think so much about external rewards when it comes to my career. It is pretty clear that I want to be validated for the work I do and it often motivates me, I wonder if a bit too much. But instead of addressing this directly, my mind commonly becomes a mess noticing; I go on internal monologues about how it’s so unfair that I’ve to lose social validation and be judged if I did more meaningful work, or that the industry I work in suffers so many issues, on and on and on until I’ve formed a full internal narrative about how the world sucks.

Anyway, I suspect a window into this issue comes when I try to work on it. I’ll try to make mental models of when my emotions get triggered, what are the ‘underlying issues’ (emotional intelligence, denial, etc.), but if I don’t actively resist by feeling sleepy and detached, I become very frustrated, intellectualize, start reading psychology or researching abstract things like ‘how to solve emotional problems’ lol. I suspect I actually do it right a lot of the time, except with immense self-doubt that interferes with learning. I’ll tell myself, why am I learning about emotions, I should be just doing what I need to do to grow. Also, very often I don’t know where to look or how to interpret what I read, making me more confused. And when I try to ‘handle it myself’, telling myself I myself know what’s best for me, I resort to just ‘powering through’ my frustration, which doesn’t work very well. Either way, my frustrations and underlying hopelessness pile up and I give into some sort of weird entertainment or falling asleep.

I think if I were able to think more clearly and prevent my messy mind I’d be far more efficient. Yet this thought itself triggers me! I become afraid, throughout history, people didn’t really have access to psychology and stuff, or to modern scientific / critical thinking courses, do I not have the resources to handle myself? Am I avoiding or evading my problems? Also, isn’t ‘intellectual development’ going to make my detachment worse? Isn’t Ti loop a problem? I have a lot of evidence now that I should just bite the bullet and work on the critical thinking related to properly sorting out my mind. To be fair I do often start doing this; I’d crack open a book, Google things, or think about my issues more systematically. The anxiety is usually quite extreme though and I don’t learn for long. Sometimes, when I get frustrated or upset I’ll do things that are obviously useless, like Google very very specific questions as if I'm talking to some human expert, lol.

Anyway, you can see how messy and divided my thoughts are here. I guess I would just appreciate some help clearing my confusion and making sense of what is happening to me. I suspect the main issue to prioritize is my pattern / habit of not being able to work through problems patiently. But I’ve thought so for a while and it’s not helped too much, so there's clearly something I'm missing. I’m afraid I'm wasting time digging on this when I could be living a more meaningful and fulfilling life. Sorry this got long, and thank you so much! I am always stunned by your knowledge and insight.

-----------------

In a nutshell: Almost all the thought patterns you've described are characteristic of Ni-Ti loop, with a few examples of Se grip sprinkled in. When tertiary loop exhibits such a prominent role in your psychology, it is a clear indication that there is a serious problem happening with dominant and auxiliary function development.

You've learned enough type theory to accurately identify some unhealthy thought patterns and try to apply a "fix", but you still don't have enough self-awareness to catch the majority of them, so it's easy for you to get swept away by them.

It's obvious you're trying your best to work though your issues, but your best isn't good enough sometimes. If it pains you to hear that, it means you are not in touch with reality. It is a reality for everyone that life cannot only be made up of successes.

The best way to build a strong and healthy sense of self is to realize your potential. The first key point you're missing is that potential isn't only realized through building yourself up for success; a significant portion of human potential lies dormant, waiting to be mined, in every single one of your mistakes and failures. If things don't work out for you, keep trying until you finally become smart/skilled enough to get it right. (This is the Ni component of the problem.)

You are essentially denying yourself very valuable opportunities to realize your potential because of trying to escape or deny the things you don't like about reality. To have "unrealistic expectations" means you always expect things to go perfectly for you. You basically walk around as though you are entitled to perfection from everyone and everything, as though you are owed everything your heart desires. This kind of unreasonably impatient attitude is toddler mentality. Is it not the epitome of egocentric thinking? Unfortunately, this leads you to suffer constantly from self-inflicted disappointments and frustrations.

If living life well were as simple and straightforward as your "unrealistic expectations" make you believe, then we would all be doing it, wouldn't we? You call others "shallow" when your own thinking barely skims the surface of how complicated human life really is. This kind of hypocrisy is characteristic of Ti loop, of a mind that is unable to detect its own errors.

One obvious sign of Ti misuse is the tendency to criticize others as a means to deflect disapproval of oneself. No, it is NOT a "fact" that the majority of people are shallow; this is a value judgment that you came to just because a few people didn't live up to your subjective expectations of them. One of the first lessons they teach you in critical thinking courses is how to tell the difference between facts and values.

Ti loop is insidious because it makes you overconfident that everything you believe is "fact" and thus unassailable. Invincibility feels nice, right? Unfortunately, it is actually just imperviousness to facts. As I explained in a previous post, tertiary loop is tempting and addicting because it allows you to reside in a mental space where you are never wrong. But that constitutes a denial of reality, which is precisely what makes one delusional in the long run.

Tertiary loop is an ego defense mechanism. People use defense mechanisms to avoid facing up to inconvenient, unpleasant, or uncomfortable truths. Instead of using Ti as it is meant to be used - to examine and vet one's own judgment transparently - looping INFJs use Ti to invent "truths" that are more convenient and comfortable to believe in.

Ti misuse in FJs often manifests as shifting around blame by telling cause-and-effect "stories" that patly explain the motivations behind undesirable behavior. Your story of choice uses "shallowness" as the main theme... which means you are the only special "deep" one in the world, yes? Another aspect of "unrealistic expectations" is walking around believing that everyone should be like you or else they are inferior.

Unfortunately, these stories ultimately bring you nothing but a false sense of power, a momentary ego boost. You really showed those people who rejected you by calling them "shallow", right? No, nothing was achieved and no problem was resolved. If anything, it made you less willing to open up and socialize, which only serves to hamper future Fe development. If one doesn't take tertiary loop seriously, one starts to spiral deeper into it, getting further and further away from healthy development.

The first step for ending tertiary loop is to admit that your way of thinking is wrong. If you can't do that, if you're too addicted to the mere feeling of being right, then you'll continue the slow descent into self-loathing. I can't tell you how many INFJs have said to me that therapy didn't work for them because they couldn't handle the therapist implying that their thinking was flawed. Some of them even knew they were wrong but still weren't willing to give up the comfort of faulty beliefs.

For someone who struggles so much internally, it's surprising that so little of what you wrote was devoted to feelings and emotions. It's actually not surprising, though, because defense mechanisms are used for the precise purpose of covering them up.

Underneath the thick web of Ti stories and rationalizations is a boiling cauldron full of negative feelings and emotions, right? Though you keep trying to intellectualize them away, they are still there. And the more you try to intellectualize them away, the hotter they boil. What's in the cauldron? Anxiety, loneliness, alienation, guilt, shame, sadness, anger, disgust, resentment, rage, hatred... what else?

What happens with Se grip is that those buried emotions get the better of you, so you lose control of yourself, and your mind behaves as though it doesn't belong to you. To improve your emotional intelligence requires you to finally take ownership of your emotions.

The second key point you're missing is that as long as you're unwilling to deal directly with your feelings and emotions, you'll need defense mechanisms, basically forced to do all manner of mental gymnastics to escape feeling bad. This is the origin of Ni-Ti loop. You're trying to get away from the reality of yourself and how you feel like a shameful social failure, so you have to invent stories and excuses to soothe yourself. And in the moments you are aware of the fakery, you feel even worse about yourself for being a fraud. (This is the Fe component of the problem.)

What's so wrong with allowing yourself to feel, especially when not allowing it leaves you worse off? Are you not human? It fucking hurts to get rejected, so cry about it. It fucking hurts to feel lonely, so cry about it. It fucking hurts to fall down, so cry about it. And once you're done crying, get on with life. Is that not preferable to getting totally lost in a mental maze of harmful and hateful stories?

Do you really want to be a more realistic person, since chronic loop indicates otherwise? Start by facing up to the reality of yourself and learn to accept what you see. Yes, people suck sometimes and the world sucks sometimes, but so do you, because you're a part of the world - stop pretending otherwise. You may not have the power to make the world suck less, but you absolutely have the power to make yourself suck less.

You can always change your part of the world through being a better member of it, through making better choices - this is the spirit of Fe. "Choosing" tertiary loop means choosing to believe that change isn't possible, that change isn't good, or that change is unnecessary. And where does that leave you, as Ni dominant who needs change to make meaningful progress in life?

All those negative thoughts, feelings, flaws, imperfections, and shortcomings are there to help you reach your full potential, because they direct your attention squarely to what's truly missing in your life. It is your job to listen carefully, focus all your attention on what matters most that is within your power to change, and fill your life with the right things... as opposed to dodging and evading, getting distracted by trivial things, and wasting time seeking out empty comforts. The sooner it dawns on you that the worst aspects of you are there to help you transform, the sooner you'll exit Ti loop. And the sooner you can finally chill out and socialize better.

[xxplastic-cubexx]

I do wish i could just scroll past pictures of magneto whenever they show up on my timeline and be normal about it but im afraid i do have to stop for at least five minutes to stare at him and after i attempt to scroll past i scroll back up and stare for another ten minutes

[daz4i]

sometimes i fear i am filled with too much rage but then i go online and see. people so dedicated to their anger it is practically their entire existence. are you not tired? do you not feel consumed by it? it's okay to let go. your passion can still be expressed through other feelings as well. flames of emotion do not always have to burn you to ashes. please rest a bit and let them just pleasantly warm you

[byanyan]

one thing: *goes wrong* byan: well. time to go pierce my nose again.

[dedicatedfollower467]

my new writing motto: "it's not hypocrisy if it's a deliberate stylistic choice"

[hyunpic]

wtf what kind of pussy power possession is happening here

[pivsketch]

doing research

did you know that a tree doesn't actually grow from the center outward? the center core is actually just inert wood, and the living wood part is just underneath the barks. also trees don't heal by replacing cells, they just cordon off damaged/infected areas and keep growing around it. waow. becoming an arborist just to draw "a cool tree" once or twice

[when-wax-wings-melt]

ohhh that's the thing that's the thing. that Sophie thinks of Fitz's anger as a mask the way Keefe uses humor but she can't accept that it might not be a mask, it might be an intrinsic part of him that comes with the package. there's Fitz and then there's his anger and you can't peel that fury away, you have to sit with it, with him, knowing that this is who he really is. it scares her. it scares all of them. to know him truly.

[nightmareentertainment]

stressed laughing. clearing out birthdays from my calender for people I don't wanna think about anymore

[rough-bruised-love]

Hi self-destructive tendencies. Long time no see. Welcome back!

[aashiquidreams]

After watching the Netflix show Baby Reindeer, I found myself wrestling with difficult emotions. It helped me recognize that the behavior portrayed in the show is termed trauma bonding. This realization shed light on my own experiences, particularly what happened to me in 2022/2023 with the person who sexually assaulted me during a first date. It’s worth noting that months before I went out with him, he seemed to constantly appear wherever I went in my neighborhood, leading me to question whether it was all just a coincidence. Looking back and considering what I’ve since learned about him, it’s clear that there may have been ulterior motives behind his presence. I’ve come to realize that I don’t believe in coincidences, especially after everything that happened.

Reflecting on the unsettling dynamics of my past encounters with him, one particular incident stands out vividly in my memory. After one of my attempts to break off contact with him, he unexpectedly appeared at my door three months later while delivering food. He knew there are only two restaurants that I order from. I wasn’t aware that he had started working at one of them, and seeing him brought back waves of fear and discomfort. Despite my shock at his sudden appearance, I found myself frozen, unable to react, pretending as if everything was normal. He started crying and asked me why I had ignored and blocked him, further intensifying my feelings of confusion and discomfort. His sudden appearance caught me completely off guard.

I never reported him to the police because I wasn’t sure if it was seen as harassment and sexual assault and was too ashamed because I froze during the assault. When I got myself tested after the assault, I even lied to the doctor about the reason for the test. I also never shared this experience with anyone, and when I tried to talk about it with one of my friends, his response was unsupportive. It made me feel invalidated and silenced, preventing me from opening up about the full extent of what had really happened. My other friend was often too busy and had a tendency to label her friends based on whether or not they were ‘drama-free.’ Feeling unsure of how she would react, I hesitated to confide in her as well. I also considered telling my mom since she knew I went on a date with him when it happened, but I held back. Her tendency to become verbally aggressive and use such information against me left me feeling unable to share the truth with her. During one of the breathwork sessions I did in March, I allowed myself to cry and grieve about the assault and all that happened around it. I felt like I grieved a part of me that died in that awful experience. However, despite this emotional release, I still couldn’t bring myself to talk about it when we were sharing afterwards. Perhaps it was because of shame and fear of being misunderstood. Writing about it here feels somewhat as a relief, and hopefully, in a way, it helps others with similar experiences.

After struggling with the emotional aftermath of the assault and struggling to find support from those around me, I found myself resorting to smoking weed every night before bed as a means to numb my emotions and ignore the reality of what had happened. Understanding this dynamic has provided valuable insight into my own journey. Quitting weed 111 days ago was a significant step for me, and the serendipitous discovery of this timing today fills me with surprise and affirmation, strengthening my resolve to quit and my decision to write about it. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve made, and perhaps I wouldn’t have come to this point of realization if I hadn’t. I can now work on forgiving myself and letting go of the self-blame, understanding that freezing during the assault was a common reaction to the overwhelming situation.

Whenever he contacted me, I acted like nothing had happened. It took me over a year and a lot of dark secrets of his that I had found out to break things off for good with him. Looking back, I realize in how much danger I actually was – his brother is arrested and is a first-degree murder suspect, and he himself is suffering from mental issues as a war veteran and has a case against him for rape and assault. When I froze during the assault, it may have saved my life. Things could have gotten so much worse had I resisted. As I continue on my journey of healing, I hold onto the hope that I will never have to cross paths with him or endure his presence again.

Reflecting on the complexities of trauma, upbringing, and conditioning, and their profound impact on our behavior, I am reminded of the interconnectedness of these past experiences. It’s through understanding and acknowledging these layers of past traumas and conditioning that we can begin to unravel their effects on our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. By looking into the root causes and patterns that have shaped our responses, we gain insight into the ways in which past experiences continue to influence our present lives. This process forms the foundation for healing and growth, empowering us to navigate challenges with resilience and compassion for ourselves and others.

[orxna]

Varric teaching Orana to shoot a bow and over the years her ending up going from Talented for an Amateur because she’s naturally pretty dexterous and good with her hands to by the time she’s 30 being a genuinely good shot but only shooting targets for sport is Very Funny Actually. Orana having surprise niche skills picked up from the Kirkwall crew is always one of my favorite things.

She can also pick some locks and know how to flex her wrists and ankles so that if she’s ever tied up she can get out of restraints more easily because Uncle Varric is gonna make sure that she Always Feels Safe.