First of all, no, I don't relate to the descriptions of Fi-doms as having been sickly-sweet children who could never ever assert their own needs. I've definitely met Fi-doms like that, but I was just sort of a willful, stubborn child.
Yeah, on the earlier childhood descriptions, no way. I was adventurous and friendly but vocal about problems and had a hateful reaction to being told what to do. When I got into school, I was sensitive to heightened social consequences for screaming--my parents were pretty gentle and independent introverts, and when I had authorities with more of a push to their personalities who didn't care give me orders for the first time (You're not supposed to climb the trees. Get into line when the whistle blows. Taking the biggest piece of pizza? Tsk.), it was first of all a whole new physical sensation that chilled me. So, I'd freeze into line on the outside, but inside my head, I remember still putting them on a blacklist and erecting an avoidant wall between us. Maybe some incompatibility problems I had with teachers back then were because I had decided to shut down the relationship and it showed. Maybe this, maybe that.
My first tendency was actually to argue with the kids who made fun of me (we're talking when I was like 6). There were also times in my very early childhood that I was very serious and detached as well--I remember in preschool, some kid kept kicking me in the shins, and it didn't occur to me that I should be bothered by this. I was OK, she was OK. So, you could easily say that I was "gentle" and "unassertive" when I was very young. It would be most accurate to say that I used different strategies in different places, however.
I got hosed a lot for ignoring directions. Knew exactly what I was doing. Passive-aggressive, stunned if someone got upset because I wasn't HURTING anybody, riiiiight? Or if I was at home and being pushed to do something, I'd just tell the person to get out of my face and point at the door. baaaabies...
I apologize retroactively to any reading teachers, school employees and babysitters. Children like that drain my sympathy, too.
When I got to middle school, though...oh man. I got made fun of so bad in the 3rd grade that I totally withdrew (actually, I was told to "ignore" it, which I read as "withdraw and pretend it's not happening"). I became somewhat paranoid after the 3rd grade and became hypersensitive to the slightest remark, which I was sure expressed the speaker's disdain for me. I stopped interacting and taking part in class and stopped keeping friends. This became such a facet of my personality that my teachers thought I was autistic and were always telling me to "be more assertive".
If someone had tried to take my lunch money, I would have frozen up and just done what they asked. That stupid 5 wing! And this became my way of interacting with the outside world for about the next 15 years.
Ugh, I reacted to a lot of threats that way through all my school years and don't know what I was thinking. As in, probably nothing. This is like the type 5 of Naranjo, a writer whose 5 profile as a whole I mesh with way, way more than his 3, even typing as 5w4 once for a while after initially studying it. This experience is a very base startle reaction that I think has to do with being way up in one's own head all the time. Metaphorically, it's a long way down. When someone is pushed out of a tower, they're probably not going to choose how they react when they hit the ground, even if they believe in keeping a stiff upper lip. It's falling into the easiest and lowest-order reflexive action because I wasn't prepared with anything more sane. The ironic thing is that 5's are said to retreat inside
to prepare for the outer world.
The ironic thing about others telling you to be more [personal quality that will strengthen you against others' picking] is that it's just another emotional blow, at least to my kind of Fi. It's invasive. I know what I need to become, thank you. I was even more of a perfectionist as a kid, so guaranteed the problem was already weighing on me a ton! No, I'm not upset because I'm resisting you, but because you broke the back of a very strained camel.
These two paragraph are what I felt called out by in avoidant and bendable descriptions, as well as the fact that telling yourself not to cry in an angry inner drill sergeant voice doesn't work very well. I was very depressed once.
I can also relate to my family telling me I'm not averse to confrontation--they thought it was weird that people said I wasn't "assertive enough". So, again, it's just two different coping methods for two different circumstances.
Yes, it's the different coping methods part that is a bother. I get to feeling like if I take more than one shape like that between environments, only one of the coping methods must be genuine and accuse myself of faking the other. Often I'll choose the skittish public method as the one that must be truth just because it's harder to be out there. It's the test, while the rest is playtime or something. But where did that initial assumption that drives this grief come from, that there can only be one accurate persona and that all elements of the others are automatically assigned to trash without further consideration? Getting someone else's similar experience helps validate other possibilities that are more unifying. This was important to read.
Now I could be hard on myself, as you are. Part of my problem was my 8-fix, which saw my outer persona as a form of weakness...so there'd be a lot of self-reproach. Then I'd feel like a total wimp, and have more self-esteem issues (LOL, did not live up to Fantasy Self?). I'd be the first to agree that it's what happens when you are in a position of discomfort that determines your real character--I had very disappointing experiences in my 20s and just about wrote myself off at one point.
There we go. That is just what's going on for me right now, although I am still quite 469 (see above.......). Cannot go into it further without plagiarizing your quote. Strength and weakness, where vulnerability lies between the two, no sympathy for self at all. Trying myself to be the parent that didn't harden me up? We're getting weird here. It's cool to see someone who valued stuff like that grow into it authentically. It's hopeful.
But you know what? Life happened to me. It basically forced me out of my Withdrawn Shell, and I honestly can't tell it was ever there. I mean, I'm still the silent loner who doesn't interact much in a group, but I've become very public about telling people off. You kind of lose the capacity to care, after a certain amount of life experience, I think.
That's right. Life for me is just starting. As put in my last post, that's the dynamism I was denying in my rant. Fast or slow at getting out into life, who I'll become with more experiences will be just as "me" as anything else. Excuse me while I write that memo down and staple it facedown over my eyes. The past is not more real than the future.
In your case, you've got a 9-fix that values equilibrium, and a 6-fix that is aware of ramifications with others, and that's just part of who you are. These are different strategies you can use to cope with life, but you're not beholden to them. And guess what else? If you read Jung's work, there's really nothing about Fi being the "gentle" function, or that it makes you more "accomodating" or even more "hypersensitive" than others. That's all stuff that's become amplified and passed around in internet lore.
I'm thinking now that those traits aren't part and parcel of any function, but related to mental health and lack of life experience.
Actually, the function is more about maintaining inward emotional states, which often are not visible to others. Users tend to be perceived as cold, unemotional, and inaccessible, but are often more open around their nearest and dearest.
Yes. More than once I've been shocked to hear how outsiders saw me that way before they got inside. Are you kidding? You don't know what you're missing.
They come to their own conclusions regarding right and wrong and can be outspoken around these values. Of course, they can value harmony, but this generally revolves around being in solidarity with oneself rather than being nicey-nice (though this will depend on other factors in the personality, obviously). Outbursts are not unusual.
...and it might take them time to let
everyone see that part of them, but that doesn't lessen them or make them less of who they are. I get this. And maaaaybe my definition of nicey-nice is necessarily vast. Earlier I was disappointed in myself for listening to a bore at a party last night and not telling them they were deluded. Satisfaction is the devil, huh? LOL.
Anyway, there's not much about this type that necessitates that its users be nice and accommodating and what have you. As Feelers, there's a sense of awareness, or connection to the Universal that sometimes puts the user in the other person's shoes. Obviously, it's not easy to be hard-hearted when this is your dominant perspective. However, when this perverted gets perverted...Fi can be about War as much as Peace.
...and knows it.
Thanks once more for sharing that much. It made a difference.
