Tertiary Temptation - your experience?

[sleepless]

Tertiary Temptation is how we tend to fall back on the Tertiary function during stress (or whenever), thus losing the connection with our Dominant, which IMO isn't a very good idea. The Tertiary then often behaves in childish ways, as it has a very limited perspective, not at all like the Dominant's holistic view. It seems to me that the Tertiary should only work as a servant to the Dominant/Auxiliary, as a tool, not as something that inferes with the Dominant with its own childish agendas.

People of all types - how does this work for you? If you have any idea? What happens for example when an INP falls back on Si? I have thought about how my own Ti interferes and makes me lose perspective. Some observations on what it does:

- It is how I get caught up in analyzing for its own sake
- It is how I get stuck in an argument about who is "right" and "wrong"
- It tries to understand my Ni vision, and incapable of doing so rejects it as being "illogical" or "not making sense"
- It is how I judge other people


So, what has mean little Tertiary done to you? What is it doing right now? Share the pain.

[Jack Flak]

My function order is Ti-Ne-Ti-Si, so I have something to fall back on. No worries.

[substitute]

My tertiary is Fe. It tempts me to use guilt trips and emotional manipulation to make people do what I want and it rejects Ne's assessment of its aims as not fitting in with the bigger picture and Ti's assessment of them being unethical. It says "but this is how you FEEL!" and snaps at anything that tries to tell me I shouldn't act on that feeling, saying it's trying to invalidate me. It plays on my old fears and frustrations of people (my family especially) laughing at me when I cried, and accuses people/things of being mean and bullying me if they say I'm wrong.

BUT I've been working hard on it and between my last two professional individual function tests (about a year apart) it leapt up from a score of 23/100 to 65. Might have gone up further now, I don't know, that last test was about 8 months ago. And I've been using it more positively, in general. I've been learning to recognize when it's tempting me to spoilt kid behaviour and to consciously veto it.

[entropie]

yeah Fe and entp is really a bad combination and it creates a lot of problems.

I have come to use it creatively on weekends

[Delphyne]

With my tertiary Si I get stuck on details and insist that these details are important. It also hinders me to see situations in a new light and jump into an experience without preconceptions. Si lets me hold on to old beliefs.

[Jennifer]

I tend to pull back from external engagement, disappear, and try to keep all the practical issues of my life stable so as not to capsize anything.

It's also tempting to not take in new information based on engagement with the world but just to base all my thinking (and continued speculations) on what I already think things to be... not wanting to challenge my assumptions, not wanting to uproot my world.

(Si, I think, is a function that seeks tangible/palpable stability. Traditionally, you will see it play out that way as a primary function as well.)

[edcoaching]

That would be Te or Ti for me, depending on which theorist you're following. I can get almost inappropriately objective, especially compared with my normal style. For example, i was in charge of a leadership meeting. One ENTP cornered me, convinced she'd been slighted, left out of committees she'd desired.

I was stressed to the max, listened to here without one iota of emotional reaction and was able to objectively say that since in the course of 3 months, with multiple reminders, she hadn't informed me of her committee picks, it was her fault, not mine. I couldn't have cared less whether she resigned on the spot, which actually would have put us in a bind. I've done similar things with my own kids whereas when not stressed i'm overly empathetic.

Se is much more dangerous territory for me...but also a source of complete relaxation since it turns off Introverted Intuition and gives me a rest.

[Evan]

Thinking of the tertiary function as something to fall back on during stress seems to miss the picture completely.

All people use all four functions ALL THE TIME. Maybe even multiple times per second (certainly perceiving functions are used multiple times a second.)

An Ni user who only falls back on Ti during stress is going to have ridiculously inconsistent visions. They're gonna make basically no sense at all. Thinking AND Feeling (and sensing) must be used at all times to check Intuition. Intuition itself comes up with lots of ideas, yeah, but they need to be pruned so that you're left with visions that are consistent with values and logic (and sensory data).

I personally use Ti to refine my visions much more than I use Fe, although both are used all the time.

I don't know where the use under stress idea came from, but I just think it's completely wrong.

[sleepless]

All people use all four functions ALL THE TIME. Maybe even multiple times per second (certainly perceiving functions are used multiple times a second.)

I don't know about this. Is this how you experience it, or is it just an idea? I definitely don't experience it like this, rather I think I can identify all the functions being used at a time, if I'm so inclined. If all are always being used, then that must be in very very subtle ways that we cannot observe ourselves, and that would make it useless to talk about functions. Still most people (in this thread for example) seem to understand themselves as being ruled by not more than one or two functions at the same time.

An Ni user who only falls back on Ti during stress is going to have ridiculously inconsistent visions. They're gonna make basically no sense at all. Thinking AND Feeling (and sensing) must be used at all times to check Intuition. Intuition itself comes up with lots of ideas, yeah, but they need to be pruned so that you're left with visions that are consistent with values and logic (and sensory data).

Could you give an example? My visions are very consistent, whether my Ti tries to make "sense" of them or not. Suppose that I *know* that in the future I will do this and this, because that is what my Ni sees. Then Ti can interfere all it wants to, try to analyze it, derive it from some underlying logics, but it won't be able to, as Ni doesn't play in the field of words and logic. I see what I see, and I only rely on Ti as a way of promoting my visions or ideas in front of others, using clear reasoning to make my point.

[Thursday]

under stress, i recall reading, was the 4th function and in indignation-not support

the tertiary is when there is a lack of info
its like an ace up the sleeve