[INFP] Fi-Si loop solutions?

[greenbean]

I'm entirely a mess of a person lmao, but I read about F-Si loops in Heidi Priebe's "The comprehensive infp survival guide" (its a good read) and I think that might be the issue I've been struggling with the past few years. I let Si persuade Fi it's correct, and don't consider the bigger picture as a result. How have you gotten past this kind of loop?

 

[Ragù]

Can you describe more in detail what happens in Fi Si loop?

 

[Zeego]

My advice to solve this problem is to convince yourself that dom-tert loops don't exist. I know this sounds weird, but hear me out. A couple years ago I went through a major depression, and because I was a firm believer in the Ti-Ne-Si-Fe stack for INTPs at that time, I convinced myself I was going through a Ti-Si loop. Soon after this, I noticed my behavior was starting to match Ti-Si loop descriptions, even if my behavior didn't match those descriptions in previous times of stress in my life. My belief in dom-tert loops was subconsciously altering my behavior to match the theory.

However, as I was in the process of recovering I discovered this post by Reckful. I was skeptical of it at first, since it went against everything I believed about MBTI and cognitive functions at that point, but over time I realized that the only reason I held those beliefs was because they were constantly being pushed by members of the typology community, some of whom might not have even been aware of what they were doing. These people repeat these things again and again until they become part of the accepted MBTI theory, regardless of whether they had any real grounding to begin with. And so, I let go of the function stack that I had believed in for two years. It was a freeing experience, felt like I was being released from mental handcuffs.

After I stopped believing in dom-tert loops, I noticed that my behavior stopped conforming to the theory. I suppose one could just chalk that up to the recovery process, but I really do think that my belief in the theory had some amount of influence. Perception shapes reality.

 

[Fidelia]

If you see it as a Dom Tert loop, your aux function is generally thought to be the way out of it, in your case, Ne. For example, as an infj, I sometimes, (before knowing about typology) would experience stuck times when I would endlessly build a structure based on all the bits of info I'd gathered, then check it all and conclude I'd left something important out and scrap the whole thing and begin the lengthy process over again. For me, Fe was the function that would break that cycle.

To me it make sense that we have two introverted and two extroverted functions and that we need that balance or else things get wonky.

AJ Drenth has some great stuff on functions in his ebooks and on his Personality Junkie site. He talks a lot about how often we are tempted to develop our Tert function after the dominant one, when we need the aux function to balance us out instead of reinforce certain tendancies. He suggests that our choices of career and mate are often influenced negatively by our primary and Tert functions not having the balance of the aux function.