Firstly, I’m wondering- I remember reading that counterphobic basically means sx variant dominant. Does this sit right with y’all? There are people who are sx dominant who don’t especially come across as counterphobic to me (it’s not that I’m disagreeing, I’m really just wondering if the more steadfast sx dominants
feel counterphobic, even if they don’t outwardly come across that way). eta: I see that skylights and highlander already answered this- but I'd still be interested in hearing other e6's opinions.
Secondly, now there’s a place where this won’t be a derail, here’s what I wrote in the other thread:
I don't know if I agree with this. It seems to me- at least where counterphobic 6 is concerned- that e6s block information they don't like about themselves by seeing the characteristics they don't want to own in other people instead. All people do this, but counterphobic 6s do this with an unparalleled panache. It's very unnerving to deal with an e6 who is on some self-righteous witch-hunt to call people out on things left and right; it's like they're trying to exorcise demons in other people- but the more they do it, the more they keep seeing even more demons all over the place (which will continue to be the case until they get rid of the demons in their own head). I very strongly associate this way of blocking information about oneself- paired with some compulsion to 'point it out' about others- as being e6.
And I’ll respond to the response again over here (a little differently, since I won’t be derailing in doing so):
Somewhere along their "crusade" it turns personal. This is where the CP6 goes off the rails. Best intentions turn awry and so forth. CP6 isn't normally going after someone because of self-righteousness. Quite the opposite. CP6's rarely feel better than anyone else. Which is why we are extremely egalitarian.
How it can look like self-righteousness (which it can) is in us "sticking up" for what we see as a breakdown of fairness. Meaning someone is cheating the system or inversely taking advantage of others. It doesn't matter to the CP6 whether this is purposeful or incidental fallout - until the CP6 investigates further. Then, if the CP6 realizes said person is doing this purposefully - they will zero in and try to oust that person of their credibility.
As I said in the other thread- I’m not trying to say this is always the case, this is more extreme/under stress behavior- but there is something that looks like self-righteousness to me. That convo started because someone said that e6 doesn’t ‘block information about themselves to protect their ego’, and I was questioning that.
It *seems* to me like ultimately it’s some kind of fear that the ‘bad guy’ is going to get away with something (help a sister out here, is that even kinda what’s going on?), and on the ‘more stressed’ end of things it’s as if a person starts to feel like some kind of self-contained judge and jury. That seems like self-righteousness to me, because I don’t understand how someone could feel confident impulsively casting stones at the ‘bad guys’ unless they feel morally superior- isn’t there some kind of ‘bad guy’ designation going on in their head and they’re automatically coming from a place of assuming ‘good guy’ for themselves? This is on the far stressed end, to be sure- but that’s true of all the e-types, egos only ever really turn to coping mechanisms (to ‘block information from themselves’) under duress. Under
truly egalitarian views though, I would think people wouldn’t feel such a need to cast stones (“let he who has not sinned cast the first stone…â€).
As the Jung saying goes: “Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.†I personally agree with this, and I think the more people get worked up about someone else’s behavior- the more likely it is an indication that we are somehow ‘blocking information from ourselves to protect our ego’. My whole point here is that I do see a certain tendency in e6 to ‘block information’ (no more or less ultimately than any other type)- and that is to grab a torch and chase after “someone else’s†demon. That’s how it looks from the outside, anyway: the bigger one’s own shadow (and the less willing one is to look directly at that), the more demons they'll see and chase after in
other people.
Skylights mentioned something about there not being a sense of self- which sounds vaguely familiar, like I think I read that before and it might explain some things. There’s so many things that could mean though.
I'm not even sure there's a question in this, I'm just trying to clarify my comments in that other thread.
In any case, for myself, I've been accused of not seeing myself as the cause before, and it's always because I see problems as being very systemic. I don't typically think in terms of fault, just in terms of poor systems and the underlying reasons systems aren't working as they should. In line with thinking systemically, I tend to explain why I did things in a situation, which apparently can come off as "making excuses". I'm also very aware of and upfront about admitting my flaws, I feel like, so I tend to get frustrated when someone who rarely admits their own flaws blames me for something, even for something that is my fault. It seems like an abuse of fair play.
I think the example at work I was talking about was an instance of reaction formation on the part of the cp 6. She spent hours at work yelling about how she would never cheat on her husband with another man, which was the rumor that was going around. Months later, we found out that she was essentially emotionally cheating, at least at first, and later physically. As theory goes, she would therefore be attempting to placate her own feelings of anxiety about cheating with her husband by "drowning it out" in her own mind, at least for as long as she could keep crusading against it. It would be in line with the cp 6 desire to quash anxiety, but in this case it's not from an imagined problem, but from a real one.
I think specifically what I was trying to describe is a little bit different. It sounds like you’re describing someone not willing to take responsibility for themselves being the source of some external conflict- “making excuses†to deflect blame off oneself in others’ eyes. And what I’m getting at is the condition of not being able to see oneself as the source of internal conflict. [I don’t know if that makes sense, but I’m sorta too hurried right now to explain.]