uumlau
Happy Dancer
- Joined
- Feb 9, 2010
- Messages
- 5,517
- MBTI Type
- INTJ
- Enneagram
- 953
- Instinctual Variant
- sp/so
Everyone lies to themselves. It's a standard coping mechanism and is actually useful for tucking stuff away until we have time to deal with it. If something is really wrong, however, lying to oneself becomes highly problematic. The same problems will arise over and over again and nothing seems to work, because our lies to ourselves lead us to "fix" the wrong problems.
What are specific mechanisms that people use to lie to themselves? I've outlined a couple elsewhere, but it's in a private blog that not everyone can access, and this needs to be a more general discussion with more people involved.
The two mechanisms I've outlined map to INFJ and ESTJ, more or less, but I think the typological tendencies aren't that specific. I suspect they really map to Ni and Si.
The Ni mechanism: Ni will elide the truth. Ni is always looking at things from different perspectives. Usually, this is an Occam's Razor approach: the simplest explanation is usually the best, so Ni changes perspectives until it finds the one that explains everything in the simplest terms. But sometimes instead of simplest, Ni looks for the "easiest to deal with" perspective, and then settles on that. As a perspective, it automatically admits certain kinds of information and excludes others. There is a huge amount of cognitive bias in this case that is difficult to unravel, because Ni (in this negative case) will tend to not consider the possibility that unpleasant truths might be true.
In Si mechanism is surprisingly more stark, in my experience. Si types tend to rewrite their memories. If something "should be true", then it is, never mind that it is completely 100% false. This can be quite formidable to deal with, because Si types have such wonderful memory for detail, they can tell elaborate stories and all the facts check out, except for the one or two important ones that can't be verified, and those two are completely different from, for example, your own memories of the same events. But because the Si type has all those other details, they sound a LOT more credible. Another problem here is that when an Si type does this, the memory is often literally rewritten. The possibility that they misremembered it is never considered: after all their memory is excellent. So the Si type truly believes the false memory, and hence believes the lies they make to themselves.
Those are the only mechanisms I've taken time to outline. I'm sure there are plenty of others, and that's what I'd like to explore. I'm sure there are an entire set of "lying to yourself" patterns encased in Enneagram types. I also suspect there might be addition patterns of lying to oneself based on Ti and Fi. My current hypothesis is that the extroverted functions (Te/Fe/Ne/Se) aren't involved in this, as lying to oneself is an entirely subjective process - to the point that actually having to deal with extroverted factors could foil the lie.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Oh, and a word to the wise: I don't want this in any way to turn into a bashing session of various types. I'm looking for introspection, here, not accusations or rants.
Thanks!
What are specific mechanisms that people use to lie to themselves? I've outlined a couple elsewhere, but it's in a private blog that not everyone can access, and this needs to be a more general discussion with more people involved.
The two mechanisms I've outlined map to INFJ and ESTJ, more or less, but I think the typological tendencies aren't that specific. I suspect they really map to Ni and Si.
The Ni mechanism: Ni will elide the truth. Ni is always looking at things from different perspectives. Usually, this is an Occam's Razor approach: the simplest explanation is usually the best, so Ni changes perspectives until it finds the one that explains everything in the simplest terms. But sometimes instead of simplest, Ni looks for the "easiest to deal with" perspective, and then settles on that. As a perspective, it automatically admits certain kinds of information and excludes others. There is a huge amount of cognitive bias in this case that is difficult to unravel, because Ni (in this negative case) will tend to not consider the possibility that unpleasant truths might be true.
In Si mechanism is surprisingly more stark, in my experience. Si types tend to rewrite their memories. If something "should be true", then it is, never mind that it is completely 100% false. This can be quite formidable to deal with, because Si types have such wonderful memory for detail, they can tell elaborate stories and all the facts check out, except for the one or two important ones that can't be verified, and those two are completely different from, for example, your own memories of the same events. But because the Si type has all those other details, they sound a LOT more credible. Another problem here is that when an Si type does this, the memory is often literally rewritten. The possibility that they misremembered it is never considered: after all their memory is excellent. So the Si type truly believes the false memory, and hence believes the lies they make to themselves.
Those are the only mechanisms I've taken time to outline. I'm sure there are plenty of others, and that's what I'd like to explore. I'm sure there are an entire set of "lying to yourself" patterns encased in Enneagram types. I also suspect there might be addition patterns of lying to oneself based on Ti and Fi. My current hypothesis is that the extroverted functions (Te/Fe/Ne/Se) aren't involved in this, as lying to oneself is an entirely subjective process - to the point that actually having to deal with extroverted factors could foil the lie.
Anyone have any thoughts?
Oh, and a word to the wise: I don't want this in any way to turn into a bashing session of various types. I'm looking for introspection, here, not accusations or rants.
Thanks!