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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about what it means to “make peace” with our personality type.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Tertiary Si (used by INPs) can struggle with fatalism sometimes.
- Don’t give yourself too much permission to be a certain way.
- Whenever we learn something powerful, there is a fine line to walk that keeps us from overvaluing or undervaluing the system.
- Don’t let your type’s weaknesses get you down, and don’t let them become your excuse to misbehave.
- Your type isn’t who you are, and it doesn’t define you.
- Your type is a tool that will help you understand yourself a bit better.
- Have one degree of separation from your type.
- It isn’t the only thing that makes you who you are.
- Sometimes the things we aren’t good at aren’t interesting to us anyway.
- Seeing limitations in the system is overvaluing it.
- We all have limitations. It’s the cost of specialization.
- You can’t be as good with your inferior function as you are with your dominant. That’s a fact.
- Typology is useful for showing why you may have your struggles.
- INTPs inferior function is Extraverted Feeling, which is about social engagement.
- This can feel like the worst inferior function of all, but INTPs can still have close relationships with people.
- Most ITPs are happy to lead with Introverted Thinking because clear thinking is a big priority for them.
- ITPs may not feel extrinsically rewarded by the world for their clear thinking, but they are intrinsically rewarded for it.
- “The map is not the territory.”
- It’s a map to yourself, but it isn’t who you are.
- We are always putting our best foot forward because of social media, so it can be depressing when we realize assimilation isn’t as easy as we hoped.
- The cost of specialization vs. generalization
- There is a difference in how different cultures experience mental health.
- Here in the USA, we are heavy-handed with mental health diagnostics.
- Everyone is a narcissist or autistic.
- People today believe they are supposed to be all things to all people.
- Nobody wants to have anything wrong with them.
- A steady diet of superhero movies makes us feel inferior if we don’t excel at everything.
- Media is pandering to women today.
- It’s like a woman can only be empowered if she is surrounded by idiots.
- Women aren’t allowed to have flaws and weaknesses.
- It is insulting to believe women should identify with the superhuman characters the media is selling us.
- Our characters become better over time as we work through our flaws.
- None of us start out amazing.
- “If we aren’t perfect, we are bad examples of our demographic.”
- “If you have weaknesses, we’re going to diagnose you with a mental disorder.”
- The people who foster these ideas are in the same situation we are.
- They are afraid of being seen as flawed.
- The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
- “Effective people don’t focus on their weaknesses as much as they focus on their strengths.”
- We tend to put 80% focus on the things we don’t do well and 20% on the things we do well.
- We need to reverse those. Focus on your strengths.
- If an INTP gets good at calling truth, they may get called on it, but some people will respect the truth.
- The policemen of society are FJs.
- Extraverted Feeling are masters of unspoken social contracts.
- They are the stewards of culture.
- Extraverted Feeling (Fe) is the polarity of Introverted Thinking, so most FJs like Accuracy when it is done well.
- What Fe doesn’t like is cruelty without nobility.
- Truth is necessary to create a connection, which Fe likes.
- A little cruelty can be a kindness.
- Introverted Thinking without Extraverted Feeling can be monstrous.
- We are part of an ecosystem.
- No one can be everything to everyone.
- Sometimes we will make mistakes. Accept those parts of who you are.
- Become world-class at the things you do well.
- Gifts Differing by Isabel Briggs Myers
- Type Patriotism – your type is the best
- It’s healthy to have some type patriotism.
- Get to a place where you are happy to be yourself
- Show up with your strengths, and people will forgive your weaknesses.
- If you are in an environment where you are punished for not being perfect, get out.
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9 comments
Antonio: Thank you for speaking up about how women are pandered to in the media and movies, etc. I agree with you. This pandering bothers me, and it’s not helpful to women in my opinion.
This podcast was very helpful, thank you! As an INTP, It took me a long time to truly accept my type, mainly due to the constant accuracy checks we do… But, I’m I psychology student and an Jungian professor told me that was an introverted thinker, and also my colleagues told me that one of my greatest strenghts is the clarity to analyze a proposition, so combined with the several different tests I took, I finally accepted that I’m an INTP.
I wasn’t depressed when I finally got to this conclusion, actually I felt very proud of being that type though I felt somewhat like I wasn’t smart enough to be an INTP cause famous people with I share my type with are like bloody brilliant scientists and stuff like that…
Another thing is that, the stereotypes of INTPs usually don’t apply to myself, I do like some nerd stuff, but I’m also a cheerleader, and this podcast helped me understand that, sure, that’s perfectly possible and nothing there’s nothing wrong with that… But it also has pointed that I’m might be spending too much energy in my inferior function too…
Anyway, thanks a lot guys for the amazing work you do!
Thank you for this podcast. It is really what I wanted and needed to hear.
I hid away after researching my type of a ENFP. I felt down and that I couldn’t achieve much being this type. The podcast has given me another perspective.
I totally agree with you about mental illness and personality disorders. There are a lot of stuff out there that can’t be covered by typology, but must be used other type of “map” (as Joel says) in order to understand them. Personality disorders as are described help us navigate into this kind of world and see patterns of abusive behaviors that we would otherwise not see. When you say:
“Therefore, I think it is important to not write off the fact that people are finding the strength to talk about this. Are some people over-pathologizing personality flaws via armchair analysis? Almost certainly. But I suspect these are drops in the bucket when compared to the enormity of very real issues surrounding mental wellness.” …
Oh my god i couldn’t agree more. I mean as a survivor of two abusive relationships..without this type of information could never find the strength and sense of logic in order to explain this to other people. I would just feel like i’m crazy. This information, exactly as mbti is, in other fields, gives us a lot of sense and validation of our intuition that we may have on people that take advantage of us, in a really subtle manipulative way but we would never understand to described in worlds if these psychological terms and explanations weren’t available. Especially i see this with young girls that accept to be in an emotional abusive relationship only because the guy seems to be mysterious and fascinating ,causing them a lot of suffering being in that relationship. And these girls may be the same that call themselves feminists ,talking about empowering women and then they fall into emotionally abusive behaviors by their narcissistic partners. This is real stuff, not just a psychological term.. at least if you experience it and then you dig into the knowledge ,you know it’s the truest thing ever. Mental illness and personality disorders are directly connected to the way our parents showed us love. It’s a really deep concept indeed if you have the will to investigate..
I agree with Antonia’s comment about the media portrayal of women being rather crappy at the moment. There does seem to be an over-emphasis on “Look how tough and awesome she is” instead of taking the time to develop a complex character. This is an issue in my mind because the charcuterie then stop reflecting real people who have real flaws. I like my characters more fleshed out. A female character can empower women and still have a complex personality. I just think creators amp the “girl power” up to 11 at the expense of everything else.
It also irks me when people throw around actual diagnoses casually because they’re not qualified mental health professionals. This is a dangerous trend as throwing words like narcissist, sociopath, PTSD, anxiety disorder, OCD etc. around casually gives a misunderstanding as to what those conditions actually are. This can have negative impacts for things like treatment. A friend once adamantly told her doctor “I can’t have OCD, I’m not obsessed with cleaning. My house is messy.” The doctor explained the actual condition to her, and she valued his expertise—but it’s very possible some people might not.
As far as the subject of the topic goes, I’ve never really had any resistance to being an ENFP. I at first thought there was no way I could be an extrovert. I also considered myself a J type at first (INFJ) as my mom (ESFJ) has been hugely influential and her extremely high J presence has rubbed off on me over the years. So, I don’t typically act like a stereotypical Perceiver (neither does my ISTP dad interestingly enough). Further understanding the system lead me to believe I’m an ENFP not an INFJ. I like ENFPs though, so I wasn’t too resistant to being one.
My Enneagram type, however, I also had resistance too like Antonia. I’m a 6. Like is apparently typical for 6s, it took me forever to decide on my type. What sold me on me being a 6 was Beatrice Chestnut’s description of the sp 6, which shone a light one a lot of my unconscious behavior on my interactions with others. It just clicked.
Before that, I had resistance to thinking I was a 6 because I felt rather crappy about it. I dislike the idea of relying on big systems or ideologies, which 6s are often described as attracted too. I also doubted whether having Generalized Anxiety Disorder made it that I couldn’t be a 6 as my relationship with anxiety is a bit different.
I’m told your enneagram type is supposed to call you out and make you feel a bit uncomfortable.
6s tend to correlate more with SJs in people’s minds. I’m very clearly not an SJ type, so there was push back from that. Not that I’d have problems with being an SJ, just typing me as one seems extraordinarily difficult to justify.
That said, it just goes to show you can’t rely on descriptions alone as they can be too generalized. I probably seem quite similar to a 9 now, more than I do a 6, but the core fear of 9 isn’t there. My dad is a more drastic case, he rarely ever looks like a 6 as he’s extremely well developed. His demeanor and calmness is very much reminiscent of type 9.
As far as Enneagram, I also thought being a 7 sounded more fun. But, no, 7 doesn’t really fit if I think about it.