Does an ISTP Deserve Connection + IxTx Finding My Personality Type - 0366

(upbeat music) - Hi, welcome back to the Personality Hacker podcast. My name is Joel Mark Witt. - And I'm Antonia Dodge. At the end of every episode of one of these podcasts, we always say you the listener have not had a microphone. So come over to Personality Hacker and leave a comment or ask a question. And let's get a discussion started. Actually, that's what you say every episode Joel. - One, you know what else I say is, bring your story, your personal stories to the table. - That's true, you do invite people to bring personal stories. And most of the time that's actually what the comments are, their personal stories or observations or an individual contributing with their insights into what they heard in the podcast. But sometimes we get questions. In fact, we frequently get questions and the challenge is that it's hard to answer them all. And so what we thought we would do today is maybe hit a few of the questions that we have recently received over the last few months that we thought would be beneficial to a broader audience. So in this particular episode, we're going to dedicate the entire episode to answering some of those questions. And we'll see how many we can get through. - All right, so how we're gonna do this today is we're going to reference a question from below a podcast. I'm gonna go ahead and give you the title of the podcast, podcast numbers. If you wanna go back and research and listen to that to have context for the question, feel free to do that. And then also some of these questions we might truncate, summarize, and get the gist of what they're asking 'cause some of these were quite longs with that for brevity's sake. So the first one that we wanna tackle today is from podcast number 330, the binary nature of the three year old inferior cognitive function. This is from Julia, who is an ISTP. So Julia writes, "Excellent podcast and a great way to look at the three year old. I can definitely see this in my inferior harmony function. I would be interested in ways to build and learn to use harmony. The issue I have is that in addition to creating connections being a skill, it is also a need. I am very much stuck feeling like since it is something I suck at, it is something I don't deserve until I figure out how to get better at it. So how do I do that?" - And just for clarification, whenever Julia is saying harmony, she's referencing the nickname for extraverted feeling. The cognitive function of extraverted feeling, which is the inferior function for ISTPs. And first I want to give some sympathy for the situation, because as a fellow T.P. woman, it is a challenge to have extraverted feeling or harmony as a weakness or as something that is more of a challenge. And I would say that this isn't just particular to people who have extraverted feeling or harmony as their three year old or inferior function. This is anybody who has an extraverted function as their inferior function. I think this is one of the big challenges that introverts face is that they're going to have an extraverted function as their inferior, which means that there's going to be something that is really obvious that the world expects of us, or excuse me, expects of them, I'm not an introvert, but expects of them that is going to be missing. Now, one of the challenges that extraverts experience, as when they have an introverted inferior, a three year old function, is that we're better at hiding our faults. The thing that we're not great at, it's a lot easier to trick the world into believing, especially at first glance, that you're showing up with everything you need. So our challenge is getting over the image management that we create where we hide the thing we're terrible at and hope that nobody notices. So we have to face that part of ourselves. I think introverts experience the challenge of having it really be really obvious to them when they have something that is a moral blind spot because the world requests these parts of us so often. And so as an ISTP, extraverted feeling, particularly as a woman, extraverted feeling is one of those functions that it's just assumed you're going to show up with. And you're going to get training in it and you're going to be good at it. And if you're not, it feels like a choice you made. It feels deliberate. Not like something that is a part of your, you know, your native wiring. The second thing I want to mention is this idea of deservingness. I think woven into the comment was this idea that this basic human need of connection, I don't deserve it until I'm better at extraverted feeling. And extraverted feeling can be seen as relationship building and relationship management. But it's not the only way that we connect. In fact, we've mentioned, I think in other podcasts, but definitely in other programs we've created, that we build connection through all of our extraverted functions. It's not just through extraverted feeling. That's more of the relationship management piece where you're vibing with another person. And you are doing so through almost like energetic vibe. And I've noticed people who have this function as a strength are better at checking in with the people they're in relationships with and keeping the flywheel of the relationship going a little bit better. But that doesn't mean that extraverted feeling or harmony has a monopoly on connection or relationship building. It's something that it's focused on. And because it's a flow state, particularly if it's your driver or dominant function, you're going to be very aware of it. And you're going to be better at managing more and with more sophistication. You're going to be better at basically when it comes to relationships, plate spinning. You're going to do a lot of spinning plates. And the more of a weakness it is or the closer it becomes to a blind spot, the harder it's going to be to keep those relationship plate spinning. But you also have a lot less need. And so when it goes down the stack as like a tertiary 10 year old or inferior three year old function, you usually don't need as many connections in order to feel sated as somebody who might have it as a driver or dominant function. And I want to reiterate what you said. Extraverted feeling, fe or harmony doesn't have the lock on relationships or connection between humans. It is interested in it. And it understands it inherently. Like this is the currency it floats in. But it is not the only province of human connection. There are other ways to connect with humans outside of just the harmony or extroverted feeling process. Right. And so the way that I've come to see this is that if you're going to look at it through the lens of cognitive functions, I mean, obviously everything I say I talk about here is also something that can be experienced outside of this lens. But pretending that everything is seen through the lens of functions, the way that I have sort of parsed this out is that we build connection with our extroverted functions and we build intimacy with our introverted functions, meaning that we show people who we are with the way that we create self-intimacy, which is what we're looking at when we go inside. And then we build connection with the way that we experience ourselves and the things we're paying attention to in the outside world, where other people exist in this outside world. What's nice is that no matter what personality type you are, you have one introverted and one extroverted function that's available to you as a strength. Even if one of those two as your auxiliary or copilot function needs more development or could use more development. But most of the time, we still have, even if we've been ignoring it to some extent, we've talked about the phenomena of other people talking us out of being into that function that happens sometimes too. But even in those cases, we still use that auxiliary or copilot function because it's rewarding to us. We like using it when it available to us. So for an ISTP, the extroverted function that you could use, Julia, to help create connection with other people is your auxiliary or copilot function of extroverted sensing. Now that might not feel like a particularly connection building function. But in some ways, it might be one of the best because extroverted sensing experiences things in real time by engaging with other people. Now, in the current context of this podcast, we are dealing with some limitations and our ability to hang out with other people. We are dealing with a global pandemic right now. But fingers crossed, this is not for the rest of our lives. And the other piece of it is that usually we're able to connect with others to some extent, even if we're not able to spend all of our time with masses of amounts of people and creating all these relationships. But with extroverted sensing, it's basically building connection through activity, through doing things together, through experiencing quality time. And my recommendation is to look for people who are already interested in the same kinds of activities that you are, meaning that are you into as an ISTP, are you into any specific kind of sport? Or are you interested in getting out in nature? Or are you interested in some particular-- I mean, it doesn't even have to be athletics. What do you enjoy doing while being in your body? And that's a whole host and range of things. And oftentimes, those can include just experiencing things in the same room together. It's about sharing a moment and being present with the other individual. It might not be something that's entirely sort of touchy-feely. It might not be-- overly emotional, and it might not be something where you're particularly vulnerable in that moment, right? You're not building vulnerability. But the first on-road to relationships is connection before you get to intimacy and vulnerability. So spending time simply in the presence of another person and just enjoying being with them is a big part of what extroverted sensing can bring to an ISTP when they're trying to create connection. Of course, as that happens, you're not going to be able to get out of your introverted functions. So you're going to be bringing the gifts that introverted thinking or accuracy and introverted intuition or perspectives allows you to bring, right? Like you're going to be bringing those to every context or situation. And so a part of that, by being in the presence of another person with extroverted sensing and doing activities with them, you're going to get more insight into how they operate and work and you're going to get more insight into yourself as well. And so as you're gaining insight into yourself, right, like observing yourself in these situations where you're spending time with another person and observing them, then you're now in a space where you can create more intimacy, sharing your views and your perspectives on things, sharing your truth using introverted thinking, figuring out who you can trust to, you know, share the things that might be controversial with others, but are simply things that you want to, you know, to express as you get more connection with an individual simply through spending time with them, you'll get a gauge for whether this is a person you can trust with those kinds of pieces of information. And then once you start sharing how you think about things and sharing your perspectives, then now when the other person, you know, validates the trust you're putting in them by sharing those pieces of information, now you have the ability to create that intimacy. An extroverted feeling shows up then at that point. You start vibing with the other person. You start connecting your heart to that individual. You start feeling them more and more and they become sort of mapped to who you are to some extent and you and you build that extroverted feeling or harmony relationship with them. Now you want to be the person who keeps the flywheel of the relationship spending. You want to be checking in with them. And I think that that's, I think that that's the best way to look at it. You see it as I need to build this and until I'm good at extroverted feeling or harmony, I don't deserve to have friends. It's more like use your native wiring, the things that you're good at to first establish those relationships and connections and make sure you have some intimacy there before you feel all the responsibility of extroverted feeling. As an STP, action is your friend. Action is really the key here. We have this image of connection and relationship with other people of like maybe going out for drinks with a friend and sitting down and talking about our feelings and what's going on in our lives. And that could be something you're interested in as an STP. And also these action things that Antonio is talking about going and maybe doing something with someone in the midst of action. There might be moments where you share yourself, but you're not probably going to set up a setting where you sit down and share all these feelings all the time. That probably would wear you out. That will emerge from the actions you take. I think that's really the key here what you're talking about, Antonio. And another key piece of this too, I think another access point is shared humor, absurdities, these types of experiences. So the actions don't necessarily have to be like going on a hike or water skiing actions. They could also be laughing together. In other words, you're doing something though. You're not just sitting there and having conversation about your feelings and your relationship all the time. You're doing other things that relationship conversations can emerge from. And I think that humor idea is always helpful for STPs because I think humor for TPs in general, anyone that uses introverted thinking, I think humor is a really important part of the connection dynamic between two people. Yeah. And to go back to this idea of deservedness just as a moment, because I think that that's probably a part of this might be limiting belief. Now I think in another comment, if I remember correctly, if it was your name that I was associated with a comment on another podcast, I think you're in like a new terrain. You're in like a new city. You're in a new job. You're surrounded by new people. And that's bad timing, right? Like in that sense, it's just poor timing when it comes to the context we find, we all find ourselves in. That said, there is also an element of limiting belief that might be undercutting all of this, which is I don't deserve it. And if you were to liken it to another personality type, I mean, just as an ENTP, if I felt like I had to have all of my introverted sensing or memory life together in order to deserve a sense of rootedness in a sense of home, I would never be able to have a sense of rootedness or home because I'm never going to get my introverted sensing shit together on that level. Like, it's just never going to happen. Yeah. Like, I'm going to do the best I can. And I'm going to do everything within my power to establish routines. And I'm going to try to establish rituals. And I'm going to try to have a sense of rootedness and home and tradition. And I'm going to try to feel like I've got a connection to my past and to who I am and the things that made me. And I'm going to do everything I can to understand the essential qualities of who I am based on the unchanging nature of who I've been my whole life, but it's so hard for me to get there. And if I thought I don't get a have a sense of self, I don't get a have a sense of rootedness, I don't get a have a sense of home, I don't get all the gifts that come from introverted sensing until I get really good at this. Man, that would be so demoralizing. I'd be so depressed to think that I needed to, you know, validate all of those gifts by becoming good at something I'm just not naturally good at. So don't let that piece undermine your progress. Don't or your ability to relate to others. And yes, as a fellow thinker woman, particularly as a fellow T.P., I will say it is hard to find the kinds of relationships you're looking for because the other person has to be able to hold space for something that is unusual to find in a woman, which is like an element of radical honesty, an element of logic that overrides elements, you know, certain kinds of tact or certain kinds of emotional protection. Like we think that truth is more important than protecting other people emotionally. That's just how we see things. And it takes a certain kind of person to understand that that's not a feeling. We're not broken for that. But part of learning type is being able to communicate those things about yourself. So you can set expectations early. So in a relationship where you're getting to know somebody and you might in a previous incarnation of yourself withhold things that you suspect about how you operate because you've seen yourself do them, but you don't have language around it. And so you just kind of cross your fingers and hope when those moments come, they don't drop you. One of the nice things about type is it gives you language. So as you're building a connection with somebody, as Joel mentioned, all those opportunities when you're doing an activity together and relationship conversations or like sharing who you are emerges, one of the things you can do is pull on the language of type. Go, yeah, I'm wired differently than most people like me. I'm wired to do this in this and this and quite honestly, it's made it hard to build friendships because not everybody can hold space for the kinds of thoughts that I give. And then when you say that, people almost always, if they know what they're working with, if they know that what they're dealing with, can make a choice at that moment, you know, I think I'd like to do that for you. And they'll say something like, well, I would hold space for your truth. Now because they've said that, it's almost like they've committed to the act. Now they are bought in to not being offended when you say something or being offended at the first sign of you showing, you know, more of a favor of truth over emotion. And I think that that's a big piece of it. Sometimes just setting expectations is the thing the other person really needed to know what was coming. I've noticed that when I can communicate those elements about myself, suddenly it's not so shocking. And suddenly it's like, this is how I'm learning I'm wired. And it's something that's caused some pain for me. And also I think it's a part of my greatest gifts. And then the other person can understand that they have language for it now. Now when it shows up, they don't go, oh, that person was deliberately, deliberately hurt full. They can trace it back to the piece of information you gave them about you, which is that you have a tendency to say things that surprise people, shock them, maybe jolt them for a moment. And then instead of reacting, they now have, they have the tools or at least they have information on their side to be able to go, is this one of those moments? And then remembering that they said that they were going to hold space for that, they've now bought into holding space for it. And you're so much more likely to have a good relationship after that or at least survive those moments, right? Those moments when somebody bounced and never called you back, you're a lot more likely to survive through those. And particularly if the access point was through shared experiences through that extroverted sensing or sensation. So as a meta comment here, because you listening might not be an ISTP like Julia, if you attempt to work directly on your inferior three-year-old function and grow that and make that sophisticated moment, it's probably going to be a very frustrating process for you. And our recommendation tip. is the co-pilot or auxiliary function has a lot of capability of making up for some of the inferior or three-year-old quote-unquote deficiencies or challenges you might have. And it has been our experience in coaching and working with people and doing this for many years that the biggest leverage point for you is to get into that co-pilot process and it helps cover some of the deficiencies or challenges of the inferior or three-year-old. Now there are ways, if you want to zoom in again to inferior harmony or extroverted feeling, there are ways you could actually use your dominant function of introverted thinking to solve some of the challenges that you might face there. We know a friend of ours, a mentor of friend of ours who's an INTP, who has used his introverted thinking, his accuracy process, to measure and metracize the emotions of people around him through various techniques that he uses as an example. He's not necessarily trying to grow his harmony process or his extroverted feeling, but he is using his dominant and auxiliary functions in order to pattern and understand what might be going on for people in his life. So for example, he asks his wife, if she's having some emotional experience, he asks her for data around that. Where are you feeling? She gives him a category or an emotion and then he asks from one to ten how severe is that emotion you're feeling. This gives him an access point in order to be able to manage someone else's emotion which doesn't come naturally to him. So there are things you can do, but it's not really growing that harmony process directly, you're never going to necessarily be world class at it. You're never going to be brilliant at this process because it's your inferior, but there are things you can do to help augment or make up for some of those challenges. Yeah. Well, and of course what the inferior three-year-old function integration is key. So integrating is supposed to try to get like Joel just mentioned world class. And you can get good at components of it, but if you feel like you have to master it before you deserve the basic human needs that come along or are more likely to follow that function. Yeah. Man, you're going to go without, right? And there's no reason to do that. Like all of us are wired with a deficiency and it doesn't mean that we're less deserving of the basic human needs. Right. So make sure that you don't have limiting beliefs haunting you around all of this no matter what personality type you are. Thank you, Julia, for the question. The next one comes from podcast number three, 64. Personality's are flexible, not static. A person wrote in anonymously is an I-X-T-X. So they know they're an introvert and they know they're a thinker, but they don't know sensor intuitive. They don't know judge or receiver and it's really the it's kind of a two part question here around finding their type trying to understand how do I discover my type. Under the podcast, they write given what you discuss in this episode that the functions can manifest in many different ways and add to that change over time. How is it at all possible to find one's type, especially as almost everyone on the internet talking about type has a different opinion about it. And then the second part further down in the question, you often talk about people avoiding to use the auxiliary or co-pilot function because it is the opposite attitude of the driver. When trying to find my type, how do I know of a function I don't particularly like using is further down the stack or in fact is my auxiliary or co-pilot. So obviously you listening have had the experience of going online and having a lot of conflicting information and stuff written about personality type, a lot of theories, there's YouTube videos and blogs and articles and websites. And it does seem like there might be conflicting information out there. In fact, there is conflicting information out there about discovering your best fit type as a person. Yeah, and it can be difficult. In fact, I think somebody recently mentioned like can we put our stamp of approval on other people's information because the individual who said that's not the person who asked the question but somebody else, you know, like yet another person who wrote in said sometimes it's hard to find good quality information online. So can you tell us who some of your favorite people are so I know that they're approved and the challenge with that is so there are a lot of people who are pretty solid at what they do and who I pay attention to. And then there's a bunch of people who are really solid at what they do that I don't pay attention to and then there's people who are what I would say is not somebody I'd put a stamp of approval on that I kind of pay attention to. And then a bunch of people I don't pay attention to who probably I wouldn't put a stamp of approval so unfortunately I can't start putting a stamp of approval on things because there's a bunch of people out there who I don't know of or they exist but I'm unaware of them who are probably really solid and I don't want to indicate that I'm not you know putting a stamp of approval on a bunch of people who I don't even know exist. So it's kind of an easier it's easier for me to just kind of be ambiguous about it. So I think that's the key to this. The different takes aren't necessarily wrong now you can you can tell people who have done a substantial amount of research and thinking on it and you can tell or at least I feel like I can tell people who are almost creating blog posts of their learning experience like they're learning and they're understanding who they are through a series of increased information and self awareness. And the information they're putting out is their journey of learning more and of course I mean on some level that's going to be everybody who's creating content we're all learning more as we go. But if a person is mostly talking about maybe their type and is mostly talking about their self discovery journey and what's going on for them. Their information may not be as calibrated particularly early on in their process because this is all still relatively new to them and it's not uncommon in the early days for people to have mistyped themselves in fact quite common. So there are some people who create content that talk about being a certain personality type and they may or may not be that type and so when they discuss functions and talk about qualities and characteristics of these functions. They may be super imposing their native wiring on top of these functions that are the native wiring of a different type and that's all part of the journey for them. But they may not be people you want to follow in order to help say discover what your type is. So you again you can kind of feel a difference between people who are sort of in their self discovery process versus people who have done a lot of research on it and a lot of thought about it. Now the people who have done a lot of research and thought they may not all agree 100% on these terms and exactly the qualities and characteristics they bring forth but they tend to be closer in their understandings because they're going back to say the source material and a lot of the things that may not 100% gel is oftentimes because they're extrapolating a bit on patterns that they've observed. But the people who do a lot of research in it almost all of them the primary source material is young's book psychological types chapter 10 that goes through all of the cognitive functions oftentimes they are using you know the seminal works like gifts differing and those kinds of you know books and works. They are going back to 80s 90s when the old guard were creating a lot of information they're familiar with you know my low which is an online database of a lot of Myers-Briggs information and a lot of you know studies that have been done. And information that sometimes people who are still learning what's going on are don't even know exist and and sometimes they're trying to reinvent the will not knowing that there's a bunch of information out there we just had this conversation with Dr. Darion Arty on one of our podcasts that we regularly get questions about like you know what about type in an ADD or ADHD it's like well there's actually a lot of study that's gone into that and you can go find those source materials on the library database my low. And other places like that so if you're if you're looking for reliable sources pretending of course that all of all of this is true and that there's reliability woven into you know some of the others. Then my recommendation is to stay with people who try to be faithful to some of that source material who recognize that they're standing on the soldiers the shoulders of giant at the soldiers standing on the shoulders of giants and there's no need to reinvent some of these wills. wheels. There's no need to keep reviewing through it because a lot of this has been established, or at least there's works to reference. So that's my recommendation is to stay with them. There is some stamp of approval that we, I just realized that we do create, and that is the people that we invite on our podcast, assume they have a stamp of approval from us. And we've invited quite a few content creators on here, quite a few people whose works that we really stand by. And again, like I said, we recently had Dr. Dario Narion. I recommend his works very much. We've had people like Susan Stormon from Psychology Junkie. And her, I mean, I think her stuff is fantastic. We recently had AJ Drenth and his partner on a talk, and we like personality junkie quite a bit. So like if we work with somebody, assume that we like their stuff. Okay, all of that said to answer the actual question, which is. - Asterix aside. - Yeah. If personality elements like cognitive functions are flexible and not static, how could you possibly ever know what type you are? And the answer is when we talked about personalities being flexible, not static, we weren't talking about your personality type changes over time. We were saying that your cognitive function stack, which is your native wiring, which in our opinion doesn't change, that's something that you're given, and it's something you carry with you throughout your life, those functions themselves can be slightly different from people of the same type. They can be slightly different based on the choices we've made and the areas of those functions that we've chosen to focus upon. And at a certain point, we can say, I'd like to maybe widen my range here. I'd like to explore other elements of the same function, and then we can take in more territory, we can see a broader picture. So I have ENTP preferences. I have had ENTP preferences my entire life. I lead with extroverted intuition or exploration, and I supplement it with introverted thinking or accuracy. But if you saw me as a younger person, my introverted thinking or accuracy would only be showing up in an in-noxious way. It would be me calling out what I thought was wrong with other people. It would be me saying things I saw were problems. You wouldn't see me carefully think through ideas and concepts, asking more sophisticated questions, trying to be really reasonable, trying to really think through things in a critical way. It would be me pointing out everything I thought was wrong with the outside world. And because these functions have some flexibility to them, then the me that was the earlier younger incarnation of Antonio and the current incarnation of Antonio look very different. And so it appears as if my personality was-- I mean, it almost might look like I'm an unrecognizable person, but I'm still keeping all of my preferences. When I was younger, extroverted intuition was more used playfully in relationship to other people. Now my extroverted intuition is used more in sophisticated systems pattern recognition. It's the same function, but it's just being applied to different applications. And so because of that, again, I might look quite different than I did when I was younger. My relationship to my extroverted feeling before it was a lot of people pleasing. Now it's trying to get people's needs met. My introverted sensing was very much about staying with comfort zones and being afraid to leave contexts that I was very tied to, sort of emotionally and psychologically tied to. Now my introverted sensing is more focused on creating foundations for the work that I want to build in my lifetime. So again, all these functions are the same. They've just shown up differently based on my relationship to them and my desire to grow them or my desire to experience them in broader territory ways. So that's what we mean by their flexible. So if you're looking at type and you're looking at the essential qualities of these functions because I think one of the biggest challenges people have here is that no function exists in a silo. Like the qualities and characteristics of any function when they're bulleted out and there are plenty of materials that will give you a bullet list of these functions. Again, psychological types, chapter 10, Young's work. Gifts differing in recent times, Dario's magic diamonds. We have a book, we talk about it all the time, we talk about these functions and some of their primary characteristics, but no function is going to exist in a vacuum. It's always going to be colored by the functions that surround it. Extroverted intuition looks different for me as an ENTP than it looks for you, as an ENF-peachal. And so that is going to flavor them. But there are essential qualities and characteristics that most of the seminal works will not argue with each other on. They will be in alignment with each other. They will have these abstraction descriptions, abstract descriptions of bullet points. They will have those. If you look at magic diamonds, what's nice is Dario talks about them in terms of holistic versus analytic. So you get a little bit more idea or nuance around what it can look like if it's being used in a laser focus way versus more of a diffused energy way, but it's still the same functions with the same characteristics. So where do you find that bullet list? The works I just mentioned. How do you know which ones you're using? Well, I think this has to be sort of a center of a Venn diagram moment. What are the functions you think that you're using? What have been your life experiences? If you were using this function, how would it have been colored by your life experiences? I'm an ENTP that was raised in a very intense fundamental religion that very much colored how my function showed up. And then when I left my intense fundamentalist religion, my function showed up very differently because they had a whole different experience of freedom. So then they showed up in a way that expressed the freedom. Whereas earlier, they showed up in a way that expressed a more contained or controlled environment. So what are your life experiences? What are the things that you've gone through? And how would that have influenced some of these functions? And only you know that. And your function set will be at the center of that. Now, sometimes we overcomplicate all of this. Like the thing I just mentioned is, if you have a strong awareness of these functions and you're still confused, sometimes it's because a little bit of digging into our history and our environment and the ecosystems we raised in is the important thing. But on the flip side, sometimes we just make it too difficult. Sometimes for some reason we overcomplicate the entire thing. And so I also caution you against thinking that you have to go this far down the rabbit's hole. Oftentimes it's just a matter of going, what makes the most sense, right? Like, how am I showing up? If you're an IT, that means you're one of four types, an ISTP, an ISTJ, an INTP, and an INTJ. So are you leading with thinking, like INTPs and ISTPs? Or are you leading with perceiving, like an ISTJ and an INTJ? These are two very different components. One of the ways you might be able to create a distinction here is what we talk about. We talk about our proprietary model called the firm model. When I say proprietary, it means just something we developed. So the firm model talks about IPs wanting to be right. All right, there's a right-ness fixation because they feel like the outside world doesn't always validate their subjective experience, even if that's logic. So do you tend to go that direction? Or do you identify more with the invulnerability fixation that IJs have? Involnerability meaning that once somebody does something to you, it gets trapped inside, and I've got to process this, and it's incredibly painful. And so you have a tendency to be avoidant. Is your behavior more the kind of an IP, which fights for your rights, right? And loudly does it until it maybe one day realizes that not everybody wants to get in that fight with you? Or is your fixation more likely to hide from the world? And feel quite vulnerable and exposed to it and be really sensitive in a way that is surprising to others. So these are some of the things that you can also pull on. But don't make this too complicated. And just go with the thing that you think probably is happening and sit with it for a while. Four different types sit with each type for a while. Maybe go through, like I mentioned, your history and your family history, and what would it have looked like if with your personal history, it would have been aligned with this type. Sit with that for a while. How does that feel? What does that look like? And just go through all four of them. And of course, at the end of the day, we have a, I mean, this is just not to IXTX, the person who wrote in, but this is just like a statement to everybody. Personality hacker offers consultations where you can hire one of our consultants, somebody who came through a provider training, became a seasoned profiler, and is now really good at what they're doing. And you can hire one of those consultants to help guide you through the process of finding your best fit type. So at the end of the day, if you're frustrated enough, you just pay for it and just make it happen. That said, if you still want to go through your own journey, and there is a lot of value to that, number one, don't overcomplicate it. But if it does seem complex, find sources that you believe are reliable, stick with them because-- That's a predictable lens. Find people who are sticking with the seminal works, all kind of agreeing on the giants of the early days and be patient with the process. And then understand what these terms mean. When we say flexible, we don't mean changeable. We're saying that they're flavorable. That's really what we mean. And those are things that are going to, become more and more obvious as you go through that review. - I also want to make a quick note about this idea in your question that the reason we avoid our copilot or auxiliary is because we don't like to use that function a lot. And I think that there might be a little bit of a reticence to use it for many people. And we might do a little bit of a overselling the idea that you're avoiding that to go to your 10 year old or tertiary. We might over sell it a little bit just to illustrate how much we tend to skip past it in favor of going to our 10 year old tertiary often to help us first. But it doesn't mean that that's something that we absolutely hate or avoid at all costs. Our auxiliary or copilot is something that we will use often in our lives. And we have a natural talent for it. It's just something we may tend to skip in favor of staying in the same attitude as our driver or dominant function as well as our 10 year old or tertiary function. So I just want to make that clarification that it's not something that we are like resistant toward. There might be moments where resistant toward it. When I was growing as an ENFP personality, I had growing my introverted feeling, it's something I've used all my life. But when I had to consciously focus on it, sometimes I'd have some resistance to that because it was hard work. But it was still something I liked and I approached and I wanted to grow and work on. It's just I wanted to make sure I didn't skip it and favor my 10 year old or tertiary of extroverted thinking instead. - Yeah, I think it's important. And maybe that's one of the reasons why I really wanted to pick this question so that our general audience could hear us say this specifically is we're not saying you don't like your auxiliary or copilot. We're not saying that you have like you just mentioned Joel, you're avoiding it at all costs. We have a tendency to not put as much time into developing it as we do our dominant or driver function because it's in the opposite attitude and because it's inconvenient for us. Like when our dominant or driver function requires growth, it feels good, it's fun to do. When our copilot or auxiliary requires growth, it's harder and it requires work. And so since our driver, which is also a talent we have, is so effortless, sometimes it's like, well, why isn't this effortless? This is also something I'm talented at. I have a natural talent for it. Why isn't this effortless as my driver is? And so that's one of the reasons why we are reluctant to get into it when it requires more from us, when it has greater demands on us because it isn't something that we're as naturally given to do deep work with. And because that 10 year old or tertiary is so convenient to run to, think of it like a dynamic of a family. You don't avoid, like if you've got two partners and two children, you don't avoid your partner. Like it's not like you don't like who you're partnered with. You like who you're partnered with. But if your 10 year old kid shows up and goes, like, oh, I think mom's right, you're gonna be like, yeah, right, I'm right. And there's going to be like an immature part of us that's looking for support no matter where we get it from. I wouldn't say that I would say the opposite. Well, considering that our daughter's an enuffee, it does tend to be that I get ganged up on. So you say the thing in our house is, that's right. I grew with dad. I think dad's right. But that said, it's not like I don't like Joel. It's not like I'm not partnered with a person I like. It's that to go through the reconciliation and be able to get into that space and really have a mature adult conversation requires extra effort when there's a conflict of interest. There's going to be conflicts of interest between your driver and your co-pilot. When there's a conflict of interest, it's hard to do the mature thing all the time by going, okay, but I need to create a reconciliation here. So I need to really get into this part of me. I need to understand it on a deeper level. Oh, look, there are things I don't understand about it. There are elements I have to grow in my awareness, take in more territory, do hard things. Like that's when we become reluctant. But as far as use, I would say we love using our co-pilot auxiliary when we're just using it. When it doesn't require more of us, we love using it. You as an ENFP Joel, like your entire teenage years, you develop, I mean, you pursued art after art after art. All of that was part of your expression of your introverted feeling or authenticity process. That's absolutely right. And I would say I didn't have a full palette of using that function. And as I got older, more mature, and then learned about type and really focused on growing it, this goes back to that first part of the question. Do things grow change or do you talk about flexibility? Well, there are aspects you can grow of that co-pilot auxiliary function. And that's where that, it looks almost like it's changing, but it's just becoming more of what it already was. Yeah, like when you were younger, it was self-expression, it was art, it was creating movies and having quiet moments with yourself in photo. What did they call it? Dark room. Yeah, the dark room when you were developing photos and having probably moments of emo. But the work you've done as an adult in introverted feeling is like really getting into your intense, like the intense and motivations for doing things and seeing the dark parts of who you are. And so I would say the same thing with me as somebody who uses introverted thinking or accuracy. It's a lot more dark parts than you. Yeah. There were dark parts in me I had dark comed in terms with. But the things that just sparked my introverted thinking, I've always pursued that when I was younger. I love different forms of science and I've always enjoyed debate and sharpening the solve of my information and going down all these rabbit trails of data. But it wasn't until I had to contend with radical, radical honesty and recognize that I was lying to myself about things. Oh, that's when it got hard and that's when I was avoidant. So I think it's important to not just speak to the person who asked the question, I'm glad they did because it gives us an opportunity to talk about this directly. It's not that we necessarily avoid all of those elements. It's that we don't like when it requires more of us because that usually means that we have to make different choices in life. And that's when we go, oh. Now I have to make the other choices and come to terms with things. - Yeah. - What's my 10 year old adirtier I gotta say about this? And that's the seduction. - Maybe they'll let me off the hook. - Yeah, they'll support me, right? Right, 10 year old and the tertiary is like, yeah, that's right. So that's more the dynamic we're talking about. If something is deeply unpleasant for you and you push it away and you don't like using it or developing it and it's anathema to you, yeah, you're probably talking about something that is not your auxiliary co-pilot. It's probably further down in your stack. It's probably something that you don't really enjoy because you have to really struggle using it. We don't struggle using auxiliary co-pilot. And so I would say that any function that falls under that category is probably something that I would not use as my top two contenders. - Thanks for the question. I think this is something we should look at doing in the future more often, taking questions from people, responding to some comments. I have a vision of starting back up like a secondary podcast even where we address just questions in that like a short form podcast on its own. - Yeah, well, we recently sent out a survey so that people could give us podcast topics which we got quite a few. If you filled out that survey, you the listener filled out that survey and we don't get to it right away, it's because we got a lot of them. So we're gonna be going through those podcast topics and addressing some of them. But in that survey, we also asked what questions would you like us to address? And I think that that might be a little easier. Like an entire podcast topic is flaying something out for an hour, answering a question could be, I mean, if it was-- - 10 minutes or so, right? - If it was done by somebody less of her boss. It's entirely possible that it could be answered in 10 minutes. - We'll put a timer on you. - Maybe not 30 minutes per question. That said, there was a lot of questions that came through and I think that it might be something to play around with this idea of answering some of those questions and future podcasts. So yeah, I think this was good. I'm glad that we took the opportunity to do it. - So what do you think? You've been listening along. You haven't had a microphone. You've been hearing us answer some questions from people who have listened to the podcast underneath those episodes. Was your turn to come over underneath this episode and make your voice heard? Come over to personalityhacker.com. You can ask a question, leave a comment or more importantly, share your story about what comes up for you. What is your experience in some of these things we're talking about today? And I think the community would really benefit from your voice being heard. - And if you enjoyed this podcast, you can subscribe to us on iTunes and various Android platforms. If you leave a rating review for us on iTunes, that helps us out a lot. We have a book, as mentioned earlier. It's called Personality Hacker. You can find it in all major book retailers and if you leave us a rating review on Amazon or good reads that also helps us out a lot. And of course, we support the podcast through our business personality hacker, which publishes and produces personal growth products through the lens of personality type. So go check out that catalog of programs and see if there is one that's right for you. My name is Joe Mark Witt. And I'm Antonia Dodge. And we'll talk with you on the next Personality Hacker Podcast. [BLANK_AUDIO]