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Effects of Type Consciousness

s0532

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Apr 29, 2007
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43
MBTI Type
INTP
What kinds of effects have learning about MBTI and identifying with a type had on you?

I've been thinking lately that I believe I behave more INTP now than I did when I was younger. Could be due to many reasons, lots of transitions in the past few years, but I would say the simplest explanation is probably type awareness.

Seems like a good idea to take stock, every now and then, of how type consciousness might impact one's behavior.
 

MacGuffin

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xkcd
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I act more INTP now, because I feel more secure in embracing it. Before I'd suppress it to do the "right" or "practical" thing. When often such things were neither right or practical... at least for me.

The problem is if you embrace type as an excuse. This is often seen in immature INTPs: "I am INTP. I am a robot. I need not human emotion."
 

digesthisickness

✿ڿڰۣஇღ♥ wut ♥ღஇڿڰۣ✿
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
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3,248
MBTI Type
ENTP
What kinds of effects have learning about MBTI and identifying with a type had on you?

pure fucking embarrassment. to this day, i've only come across one self-proclaimed ENTP that doesn't rub me wrong.

i've decided the rest of them just typed themselves wrong.
 

nottaprettygal

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May 1, 2007
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1,641
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INTj
What kinds of effects have learning about MBTI and identifying with a type had on you?

My type identification has actually had less of an affect on me recently. I don't feel the need to conform to the descriptions of my type. Also, I don't feel very similar to a lot of other INTJs. I think I'm becoming more well-rounded.

And if I use my type as an excuse, I'm well aware of it and probably can't think of an actual reason to excuse my actions.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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My type identification has actually had less of an effect on me recently. I don't feel the need to conform to the descriptions of my type. Also, I don't feel very similar to a lot of other INTJs. I think I'm becoming more well-rounded.

Good for you. That's a good place to be. You don't seem as stiff as some I've met, to be honest -- you're a little more accessible. I think it's good, and as for me, I like it.

I think I've been embracing my Ti more (usually I had focused on Ne in the past) and I have found myself in conflicts I did not plan on, and even rather indifferent sometimes to the strife whereas the other person was a little more upset about things. (I remember thinking recently during one such event, "Hmm, they seem really pissed right now. Oh well, this has to get said." And inwardly, I was, like, shrugging.) That's *very* different for me.

However, I do note a tendency to "rethink" something I will say or do just because it's not "INTP" enough. Sometimes it's good, if I was going to shy away from doing something just because it might have caused conflict. However, sometimes it is bad if I don't allow myself the flexibility to respond in a more personal or emotional way, just because I "need to be neutral and objective" as an INTP. I need to somehow use knowledge of myself without letting it confine/limit me.

There's no real roadmap here. So it's "figure it out as you go."
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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My type identification has actually had less of an affect on me recently. I don't feel the need to conform to the descriptions of my type. Also, I don't feel very similar to a lot of other INTJs. I think I'm becoming more well-rounded.
This is close to how I think about it. I don't find it particularly liberating, but more casually interesting. It's more like seeing a stick drawing of myself. Trying to be more like the sketch would require I lose something of myself. I don't see a reason to accept the descriptions verbatim.
 

rivercrow

shoshaku jushaku
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
1,555
MBTI Type
type
In the last few months I've had some epiphanies regarding type. For expample, I realized overly extraverting my thinking is stressful. However, I've been in project management/incident response team lead positions for so long, when I get near a computer situation I start Te-ing like crazy. I don't care for it and I drive everyone nuts too. Computer environments are a trigger. Bundle that with an emphasis on sensing skills of details, details, details--bleh.

Another thing I realized was that as an Enneagram 5w4 sx, I have a very strong paranoid streak. It's a useful thing for someone in information security--but it's also got a standing wave effect.

Last year, I realized I was making a living from my weaker preferences and I'd blinded myself to my innate strengths. Type awareness has made my marriage enjoyable, helped me learn to communicate with my spouse, and made me understand that my core values are just as valuable as my principles.

All that culminated in me choosing to radically alter my career goals. I'm losing weight, my skin's cleared up, my hair isn't falling out, and I'm noticeably happier and more relaxed.

Heh. Too bad I can't bottle this. :dry:
 

PuddleRiver

It's always something...
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I was actually more INTP (or INTJ) as a kid. It was about survival in my house. I had to shut off the emotions (although always had to deal with them later, never a pleasant thing) think things through logically, sans emotion, and always had to try to stay one step ahead. I couldn't afford to think emotionally. Making decisions that way would be used against me. It made me very careful, but was not who I really am.

The moral of the story being that finding out my type didn't change anything at all. I just found out that I have a type, and that it fitted me to a tee.
 

Maverick

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Apr 29, 2007
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880
MBTI Type
ENTJ
To be well rounded you need to explore other functions that the ones you usually prefer. So, for me, my type is more an indication of what I should avoid doing than what I should embrace. It can be difficult because the functions of your type are what you feel the most secure with.
 

Geoff

Lallygag Moderator
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
5,584
MBTI Type
INXP
For me it has impacted in a series of stages.

Before I was aware of MBTI, I couldn't understand why trying to submit to society, in terms of rules and regulations, towing the line, caused me such inner pain. I therefore concluded there was something a little wrong with me, or that was I so different as to be problematic.

When I was taken through MBTI testing, and it was concluded I was XNTP, with a very expressed "P", suddenly I had someone telling me it was OK to be me. That was a profound relief, I went from feeling abnormal, to differently normal, which for me was a critical difference.

At first, after then, it encouraged me to over express my preferences and subdue even further my least preferential functions. I don't think this was healthy - as MacG put it earlier in the thread it was the "me robot" tendencies. I think the biggest impact was probably time, but I came to realise there was a novelty and challenge in using those functions most alien to me, once I had reached comfort with my preference ones. This, I suppose, is about becoming well rounded as a human being, and in my mid-30's allows me to adobt a number of modes and functions, according to situation and surroundings. In this, MBTI has helped me find a way, in nothing more complicated than a recognition that my experiences are something envisaged by others, and nothing to be afraid of.

In short, I have an awful lot more self confidence in my own worth and skills than I would have done had MBTI not been introduced to me. The downside is the way I see others (and occasionally me, although I try and subdue it) exhibit typism against type opposits (particularly the intuitive/sensor difference).

-Geoff
 

bluebell

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Apr 30, 2007
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I only recently found out about MBTI and my type (ie earlier this year). I got obsessed with reading INTP descriptions for a weekend, stumbled across INTPc and joined. Before that, I'd been fighting to be someone different, pushing myself to be more extrovert, hating myself for procrastinating and jumping between tasks, trying to be more emo, frustrated at my social cluelessness etc.

After a week or so of reading INTPc posts and seeing how others had accepted themselves, this chronic anger that I'd had for ages just evaporated away, and hasn't come back. I was fighting myself, which I've stopped.

I've become more aware of how I think and I'm better at 'fessing up at work to how my mind *really* works. And I'm more comfortable with myself.

I did have a month or so where I went through the "I'm INTP. I don't need people or emotions" phase. I think I needed to do that to be able to accept who I really am underneath the outer mask. Now I'm going through a phase of noticing my strengths and weaknesses. I'm still working on my weaknesses but with a lot more compassion towards myself. And I'm trying to notice what my real strengths are and to try to let them shine more. At work when I notice myself jump randomly between tasks I just let myself do it and trust that I'll get things done in my own special way. I'm also now more accepting of my inner geek. ;)
 

Xander

Lex Parsimoniae
Joined
Apr 24, 2007
Messages
4,463
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
9w8
Type awareness seems to have passed me by. I was told I was an INTP. It has never really affected me however as I was an INTP at the time. I had nothing to strive for and no goals to achieve in regard to being an INTP, I was already there!

The thing which has affected me most is the insight to see other's type in action and the strengths and weaknesses of their type as opposed to mine. It's made me strive to emulate and then absorb features of other types (I'm thinking the chaotic way in which I did this may hold some clues to my "variable" personality ;) ).

I guess that now after finding a place of INTPs and spending a year or two in their company has made me more comfortable with my original preferences. I've begun to move back towards the strengths which I have naturally and I'm trying to trust what was there originally. The sticking point at the moment seems to be based more on the degrees of adjustment (ie I can be like a metronome) more so than the long term relative strength of a function. I think I flexed too much and now the elastic is loosing it's strength.. :(

Anyhow, to surmise... at first there was no effect on me until I learned more about what types other people were and fitted the whole INTP thing into context. Then I started to go like an ink blot and I'm finding myself attempting to draw back some of that over extension. As people like to say "it's a process" (aren't they clever!!).
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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To be well rounded you need to explore other functions that the ones you usually prefer. So, for me, my type is more an indication of what I should avoid doing than what I should embrace. It can be difficult because the functions of your type are what you feel the most secure with.
What I find difficult to determine is which aspects of security are the result of environment and which are 'natural' tendencies. For example, I was raised in an entire family of strong INF's and that is very familiar to me as well. Within the context of my family it's rather clear that I am the most objective and detached when approaching a problem, but my communication and much of myself is shaped by the culture of my family. Even though I'm the youngest, my mother usually chooses me for various legal responsibilities regarding decisions about her health and property if she is incapacitated. My brother and sister are both really intelligent, but give in to their emotions in a different way than I do. I tend to solve emotional problems by minimizing the emotional content, whereas they tend to solve the problems by increasing the positive emotions and reassurances. Also, they had more childhood scars, so their needs in terms of confidence building were placed ahead of mine because I always had more inner strength. I'm okay with that. I was always careful, even in elementary school, to never brag or talk too much about my ability or success, but focused on placing my needs in the context of the entire family. That's part of the objectivity I'm talking about.

It is precisely because of my initial conditioning that I am both strongly INF and yet play a different role in relationship to INFs. It's difficult to explain, but when it comes to the T-F business it 'really' does feel as though they work in parallel, in two concurrent streams and one is not dominant in my mind. In a certain way, knowledge of MBTI is confusing to my self-concept. I am more certain of who I am when not placed in a specific category.
 

Randomnity

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ISTP
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Oddly, finding out I was INTP never prompted me to do the "I am INTP. I am a robot. I need not human emotion." thing. I'm pretty sure that's because I did that all on my own throughout my teenage years, before I'd even heard of MBTI.

I have noticed that my P seems stronger now (insert lame joke about increasing my Pness size if you wish) than it was when I learned my type last summer, and I'm less critical of my lazy tendencies, for better or worse I'm not sure. Though I'm not entirely sure if my P is actually stronger, or if I'm just realizing my natural tendencies and acting on them now instead of dashing around madly trying to get organized (and always failing).

My I/E tendencies have always fluctuated too much depending on my mood to evaluate changes, and my N and T are pretty much the same, I think.

It's hard to separate the effects of type consciousness from the effects of just living and learning in a year, though. I've changed a fair bit in that time, independent of type.

EDIT: Oh, and I think knowing types, mine and others', has helped me a bit with my people skills, because now instead of getting irritated with people for being too bubbly (a la ENFP) or too rigid (INTJ) or too sensitive (INFP) I can try to analyse their reactions in an objective way...which oddly enough I think keeps me from being detached from the people themselves, because I'm less frustrated with them. And I can also try to adjust the way I talk/act with people based on my predictions of how they'll react.
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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Oddly, finding out I was INTP never prompted me to do the "I am INTP. I am a robot. I need not human emotion." thing. I'm pretty sure that's because I did that all on my own throughout my teenage years, before I'd even heard of MBTI.
To the great dismay of those who especially desire to be a robot, there is no getting around the fact they their brains contain an amygdala which is part of the limbic system and plays an important role in emotions. "The amygdala encodes an emotional message, if one is present, whenever a memory is tagged for long-term storage. "the two structures in the brain mainly responsible for long-term remembering are located in the 'emotional system'." ... "The frontal lobe is the executive control center of the brain, monitoring higher-order thinking, directing problem solving, and regulating the excesses of the emotional system." David Sousa.

If a person actually has no emotions it is because the organ that is their brain is not fully functioning. If a person has no control of their emotions, the same is true.
 

MacGuffin

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xkcd
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To the great dismay of those who especially desire to be a robot, there is no getting around the fact they their brains contain an amygdala which is part of the limbic system and plays an important role in emotions. "The amygdala encodes an emotional message, if one is present, whenever a memory is tagged for long-term storage. "the two structures in the brain mainly responsible for long-term remembering are located in the 'emotional system'." ... "The frontal lobe is the executive control center of the brain, monitoring higher-order thinking, directing problem solving, and regulating the excesses of the emotional system." David Sousa.

If a person actually has no emotions it is because the organ that is their brain is not fully functioning. If a person has no control of their emotions, the same is true.
Emotions can be frightening for the NT. Usually they do not have good control over them, so when they come to the surface... look out!

So the NT tries to suppress them to regain control. Doesn't work in the long run.

I was pretty robotic and not very engaged with other people as a teen aged kid (the Ti years). I did not enjoy those years at all.
 

SolitaryWalker

Tenured roisterer
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Apr 23, 2007
Messages
3,504
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INTP
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so/sx
I definitely have an easier time making sense of human behavior now... and many of my views for the necessity of a radically bohemian lifestyle and independent thought have been reaffirmed...
 
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