Esoteric Wench
Professional Trickster
- Joined
- Dec 20, 2009
- Messages
- 945
- MBTI Type
- ENFP
- Enneagram
- 7w8
By "subduing my Te", I do not mean turning it off entirely. Like I said before (if you read my post all the way through), you can use Te as your dominant function and not be an asshole. If I didn't subdue my Te, I would just tell people exactly how they are wrong, whenever I felt like it, regardless of how much I was stepping over their feelings and/or regardless of how I may be ruining my chances of achieving my goals* by doing so.
Te does not have to exist without tact and respectfulness -- both of which, in my opinion, are not function related.
*e.g. by being so blunt with them about something they're doing wrong, that their chances of changing their ways and doing things the right way get significantly lower, entirely because of my behavior.
I really like this post. What [MENTION=4945]EJCC[/MENTION] said seems to be at the core of mature Te.
It's taken me a lot of life experience to figure out that sometimes when my Te is most right, I cause the most problems for the other person. I don't help them get to the "right" answer that my Te so clearly sees. Instead, I force them to entrench their position. Or, even worse, I cause them to misdirect their energies by causing them to get pissed off at me rather than focusing on ameliorating the problem at hand.
I don't always do it correctly, but with life experience I've gotten a lot better at tempering my Te with a little human compassion. Even if I think the other person is being an idiot, I remember that I also regularly display my own idiocy for others to behold. When I remember this, I "tone down" my Te statements to give the other person a face saving way out. (This is probably Te with a little Fi empathy used to tone it down.)
Or I use my Te to tone down my Te. In other words, I reason with myself that if I want to get to goals A, B, and C, I've got to get the other person to work with me which means toning down my Te and not pissing them off. This approach feels very logical and impersonal. (This seems like Te with a little Te logic used to tone it down.)