Why I've been leaning more So for my second recently yet am still rather sketchy about it is: I could absolutely say that I keep my Sp needs filled in so that I can leave them behind for Sx ones, because without the Sp, prefer it or not, one is in physical danger and you can't fulfill
anything if you're incapacitated or dead. I'm also sensitive to the possibility of danger because anxiety, which is in a realm outside of type.
But beyond the very basics of what it takes to keep out of objective danger just for today really, most markings of self pres I take on aren't really even because I care about them - it's because I'm attuned to it being something very important to
other people, not just to themselves but something they judge each other on. It may be shitty but I really fear it's true that many people are inclined to trust and support and yes, love others more who are materially in their own "league" of self-preservation resources. I'm annoyingly sensitive to pressure to own what other people own, and there's a conflict there with actually wanting very little and a private inclination toward physically paring down life to extremes. Status gets under my skin, and a pull to be at least as secure and comfortable as my peers - because even if I don't actually want all the physical pieces of that, being settled in the social dimension of it would just be so comfortable. Oh and here's more social worrying right here: nervousness that people I admire might read this paragraph and lose respect for me!
(Serious. I'm not as negative as anything here might make me out to be, and don't want to be so. This is just the topic of instinctual variants alone...this typing is the hardest for me for a reason! The whole instinct realm in general just isn't where most of my strengths lie.)
The above could have to do with my parents both being strong, obvious Sp-heavy people if not doms, so that was the type of stuff they wanted most from their kids and that would make them proud - and so it became urgent to me not for the reasons it was for them, but as a way of showing them that there wasn't something wrong with me.
My physical upkeep skills are also really split between the parts of it that are visible and the private parts of it that other people won't notice - in the former realm I'm on top of things and skilled, but in the latter realm there's a lot of stuff I don't want or have, don't do, or don't know how to do...and secretly don't care much or am averse to thinking about it until someone else takes a peek inside. Some of it I honestly resent, especially stuff around taking care of the body - and can get angry about them and push my limits out of spite. Even some of the visible things, I've only learned to set boundaries on them because they reached a critical burnout point or because I saw other people emphasizing them and realized that it contributed to their respectability via respecting themselves - examples being protecting one's time and energy, and standing up for oneself. Since I was young I've gotten down on myself about what seemed like a deficient self-protection instinct where I didn't even have certain unconscious reflexes that other people didn't seem to have to think about or put an effort into learning about. But on a third hard, syn-flow and contra-flow are concepts that exist, and there is no question which is the easier fit...ugh.
So it's like, which do I really build to free myself for Sx? A basis of self-preservation? Or is it really, honestly, a basis of not feeling like a social outcast? That's not something I'm asking you to answer, just the leading question for me in the instinctual realm, that only I can answer. On a more surface level, I also am needled by what seems to be big differences between just my sort of voice and how I behave and relate in group situations compared to those who are solidly Soc-last. I find them admirable, really, because I feel very different from how they've revealed that they experience it all.