[MBTI General] Disparity

[placebo]

There are some times when the disparity between who I am and who I possibly could be, or who I want to be, seems so great and depressing that I wonder if I will ever lose this feeling or if it will stay with me for the rest of my life. Is it a matter of learning how to love oneself, or a perfectionistic quality?

Right now I feel this disparity pulling me two ways--down about myself, weakening me and discouraging me, and upwards, pushing me to be better than I am. It's a tough tug-of-war.

I'm unaware of how others might experience, or to what degree they experience it. I have an idea that NFs might feel it greatly, seeing that they are called the Idealists.

How can I become the person I want to be? And is it possible?

Share your thoughts? your solutions?

 

[kiddykat]

Remember the person you looked up to and admired when you were young? Whether it may a fictional character or someone who inspired you? Idols. . Keep them in mind. Whoever you envision your inspired self to be, be that person today!

Let the kid inside you live and at the same time, grow, without losing the essence of who you truly are, at heart. Remember where you came from. That's the best way I can phrase it. ;D

 

[colmena]

This is relevant, and I'm happy to talk it through.


An ideal exists in our present and comes from our past?

 

[Skyward]

I totally agree with Viv. Its great to have a goal, but its terrible to never feel that you can make it there. My goal is to be myself, and that's a daunting one already

ENFPs seem to have the best 'I'm me, screw your manipulations' attitude ( Captain Chick being a great example ) that Ive decided to grab until I found a true thing that I want to be.

The disparity thing is always tough to deal with, on one hand you have high hopes and ideals and on the other (Ni shadow function?) you feel that they are unattainable, like the climbers at Everest. It was tough shit but they pulled through.

A lot of improving one's self is just being happy with improvements, not completion. Perfection isn't a destination, its a hard-slogged journey that ruins LOTS of boots!

Reiterating Viv: Be yourself, find your roots and go back to them.

And exercising regularly is very nice A brisk walk a few times a week is lovely for clearing the mind and strengthening the body.

 

[Jack Flak]

Remember the person you looked up to and admired when you were young? Whether it may a fictional character or someone who inspired you? Idols. . Keep them in mind.

I do.

 

[Nonsensical]

I think it's an INFP thing, because i feel the exact same way. I always struggle to keep my center..you know, who i really am (if I really do know who I am ) and i always criticize myself and think that i should be better, smarter, stronger, and all these things, and it always keeps me on my toes, chasing all these different things that i think I should be more like..and the more i run, the more I get depressed about it..the more I realize that i am who I am. I guess we should learn to love ourselves until we can truly feel like we are what we want to be..

 

[placebo]

Remember the person you looked up to and admired when you were young? Whether it may a fictional character or someone who inspired you? Idols. . Keep them in mind. Whoever you envision your inspired self to be, be that person today!

Let the kid inside you live and at the same time, grow, without losing the essence of who you truly are, at heart. Remember where you came from. That's the best way I can phrase it. ;D

That's good advice. I've been told before how important it is to keep that child's sense of wonder. People who are depressed have lost that ability to be awed by everything in the world. I know it's not something I ever want to lose, but it doesn't come so easily anymore. I remember as I was becoming a teen I could feel myself losing it. I didn't question things so thoroughly in the same way--I began to assume to know things, like we do as we get older. In a very conscious way I didn't want to lose my child's mind, but it was just something that had to happen.

I don't really remember looking up to and admiring anyone when I was young, but nowadays I do. And it's true, it tends to help once you find the right people.

 

[placebo]

This is relevant, and I'm happy to talk it through.


An ideal exists in our present and comes from our past?

I don't know where ideals come from when I think about it... or as in wanting to be an ideal. What kind of ideas do you mean when you say it comes from our past.

 

[placebo]

I totally agree with Viv. Its great to have a goal, but its terrible to never feel that you can make it there. My goal is to be myself, and that's a daunting one already

ENFPs seem to have the best 'I'm me, screw your manipulations' attitude ( Captain Chick being a great example ) that Ive decided to grab until I found a true thing that I want to be.

The disparity thing is always tough to deal with, on one hand you have high hopes and ideals and on the other (Ni shadow function?) you feel that they are unattainable, like the climbers at Everest. It was tough shit but they pulled through.

A lot of improving one's self is just being happy with improvements, not completion. Perfection isn't a destination, its a hard-slogged journey that ruins LOTS of boots!

Reiterating Viv: Be yourself, find your roots and go back to them.

And exercising regularly is very nice A brisk walk a few times a week is lovely for clearing the mind and strengthening the body.

It does seem from the ENFPs I can think of that they do have that attitude, and it's one I generally share, but it seems as if they're more able to outwardly express it.

Also the thing is, I never really have a goal in mind--which might be part of the problem--because I don't have a clear view of where I'm trying to go.

I think it's an INFP thing, because i feel the exact same way. I always struggle to keep my center..you know, who i really am (if I really do know who I am ) and i always criticize myself and think that i should be better, smarter, stronger, and all these things, and it always keeps me on my toes, chasing all these different things that i think I should be more like..and the more i run, the more I get depressed about it..the more I realize that i am who I am. I guess we should learn to love ourselves until we can truly feel like we are what we want to be..

Haha it's true the more you think about it and go on about it, the worse it gets. It's funny that you say 'I guess we should learn to love ourselves until we can truly feel like we are what we want to be' but the possibility of it sounds somewhat uncertain and far away, and that's the kind of feeling that hangs around

 

[colmena]

I don't know where ideals come from when I think about it... or as in wanting to be an ideal. What kind of ideas do you mean when you say it comes from our past?

INFPs often have the acute awareness of virtuous human potential. They're so inclined towards and covetous of this eudaimonian ideal that they will suffer something of a developmental hypermetropia. The nobility of strengthening a moral compass is undermined by the aversion to instrumental values. They're blinded by the light.

So what is an ideal: Our past's positive projection? They ostensibly come from ourselves, or we wouldn't be able to discern one's ideals from another's. So there is a silver lining in an ideal's intrinsic projection. They are born of your mind, and from whatever it is that makes us who we are: from the balance of hormones bestowed upon us in the womb, to each new experience undergone.

So it is important to come to terms -- or even embrace -- the fact that our experiences will affect personality, and in turn, our ideals. It is paramount to not be disheartened by their temporal nature, but to consider them accumulative, growing, evolving, and organic; as are we. So discard the longsighted self-doubt, and begin to consider, and then assign yourself, the instrumental values required to reach each new ideal. This adaptive mindset should also help embracing environment, relationships, as well as the present moment.

 

[placebo]

INFPs often have the acute awareness of virtuous human potential. They're so inclined towards and covetous of this eudaimonian ideal that they will suffer developmental hypermetropia. The nobility of strengthening a moral compass is undermined by the aversion to instrumental values. They're blinded by the light.

So what is an ideal: Our past's positive projection? They ostensibly come from ourselves, or we wouldn't be able to discern one's ideals from another's. So there is a silver lining in an ideal's intrinsic projection. They are born of your mind, and from whatever it is that makes us who we are: from the balance of hormones bestowed upon us in the womb, to each new experience undergone.

So it is important to come to terms -- or even embrace -- the fact that our experiences will affect personality, and in turn, our ideals. It is paramount to not be disheartened by their temporal nature, but to consider them accumulative, growing, and organic; as are we. So discard the longsighted self-doubt, and begin to consider, and then assign yourself, the instrumental values required to reach each new ideal. This adaptive mindset should also help embracing environment, relationships, as well as the present moment.

That's a very beautiful way to put everything, and you're right I believe, about the importance of coming to terms or embracing it all in a sense.

It's interesting to me though how different the experience of this disparity I described between my existing 'real' self and my 'idealized' self is for other people. Everyone must experience it to some degree, small or greater, but why some people are more aware of it or less aware of it seems to be explained by what we are born with.

I've happened upon reading about Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Integration just now and it seems to describe perfectly all that I was initially questioning.

From Kazimierz Dabrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration

Four seminal quotes set the stage:

1). "Personality: A self-aware, self-chosen, self-affirmed, and self-determined unity of essential individual psychic qualities. Personality as defined here appears at the level of secondary integration" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 301).

2). "The propensity for changing one's internal environment and the ability to influence positively the external environment indicate the capacity of the individual to develop. Almost as a rule, these factors are related to increased mental excitability, depressions, dissatisfaction with oneself, feelings of inferiority and guilt, states of anxiety, inhibitions, and ambivalences - all symptoms which the psychiatrist tends to label psychoneurotic. Given a definition of mental health as the development of the personality, we can say that all individuals who present active development in the direction of a higher level of personality (including most psychoneurotic patients) are mentally healthy" (Dabrowski, 1964, p. 112).

3). "Intense psychoneurotic processes are especially characteristic of accelerated development in its course towards the formation of personality. According to our theory accelerated psychic development is actually impossible without transition through processes of nervousness and psychoneuroses, without external and internal conflicts, without maladjustment to actual conditions in order to achieve adjustment to a higher level of values (to what 'ought to be'), and without conflicts with lower level realities as a result of spontaneous or deliberate choice to strengthen the bond with reality of higher level" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 220).

4). "Psychoneuroses 'especially those of a higher level' provide an opportunity to 'take one's life in one's own hands'. They are expressive of a drive for psychic autonomy, especially moral autonomy, through transformation of a more or less primitively integrated structure. This is a process in which the individual himself becomes an active agent in his disintegration, and even breakdown. Thus the person finds a 'cure' for himself, not in the sense of a rehabilitation but rather in the sense of reaching a higher level than the one at which he was prior to disintegration. This occurs through a process of an education of oneself and of an inner psychic transformation. One of the main mechanisms of this process is a continual sense of looking into oneself as if from outside, followed by a conscious affirmation or negation of conditions and values in both the internal and external environments. Through the constant creation of himself, though the development of the inner psychic milieu and development of discriminating power with respect to both the inner and outer milieus - an individual goes through ever higher levels of 'neuroses' and at the same time through ever higher levels of universal development of his personality" (Dabrowski, 1972, p. 4).

...

Most people become socialized in their early family and school experiences. They largely accept the values and mores of society with little question and have no internal conflict in abiding by the basic tenents of society. In some cases, a person begins to notice and to imagine 'higher possibilities' in life. These disparities are driven by overexcitability -- an intense reaction to, and experience of the day-to-day stimuli of life. Eventually, one's perception of reality becomes differentiated into a hierarchy and all aspects of both external and internal life come to be evaluated on a vertical continuum of 'lower versus higher.' This experience often creates a series of deep and painful conflicts between lower, 'habitual' perceptions and reactions based on one's heredity and environment (socialization) and higher, volitional 'possibilities.' In the developing individual, these conflicts may lead to disintegrations and psychoneuroses, for Dabrowski, hallmarks of advanced growth. Eventually, through the processes of advanced development and positive disintegration, one is able to develop control over one's reactions and actions. Eventually, development culminates in the inhibition and extinction of lower levels of reality and behavior and their transcendence via the creation of a higher, autonomous and stable ideal self. The rote acceptance of social values yields to a critically examined and chosen hierarchy of values and aims that becomes a unique expression of the self -- becoming one's personality ideal.

This may sound awkward, but wow, what a dream to eventually 'transcend' into the ideal self.