Podcast - Episode 0343 - Dealing with Trauma in Your Auxiliary Copilot Cognitive Function

18 comments

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  • Liz
  • September 3, 2020 at 2:54 pm

  I really appreciated this episode for laying out so clearly observations that I’ve had running around muddled in my mind. I’m a female ENTP with ISTJ and ISFJ parents, who also grew up primarily with ESFJ, ISFP, and ISTJ friends. In most of my professional life, I’ve worked primarily with NFJs and NFPs.

  As a child I came to distrust my Ti co-pilot because if I said something too incisive or curious, it was seen as offensive, obtuse, or purposely mean-spirited. Indeed, sometimes it was purposely mean-spirited, because I would become so frustrated about having no visible “safe” way to express a thought or observation to another person. I still lash out at the people closest to me at times, using Ti in a cruel way, because I just want an outlet for observation and analysis. I get tired of feeling like I have to walk on a desert of everyone else’s eggshells that always take precedence over my need for honest expression. Dramatic, yes, but it’s really how it can feel.

  I generally funneled Ti into achievement related to academics. I became a perfectionist in school, and used Ti in analysis for cultural, literary, and linguistics-related classes that I took. I wrote pretty good papers and gave pretty good presentations. But across all that time, I never felt safe using Ti skills in interpersonal relationships or really any context beyond an assignment for a class.

  Dissatisfied with my social path in academia, I turned to nonprofit and advocacy type work, using my Ti skills in the areas of education and program development/coordination. Again, this function helped me to do some parts of my job very well; however, I remained terrified about being honest with co-workers about any problems, or about challenging any hierarchies or groupthink situations in organizations.

  Everywhere I go, I have the fear that unleashing Ti in non-structured environments (like, outside the context of a term paper) would lead people to see me as a bad person, who is purposely negative, and who nitpicks about things that don’t matter, instead of “getting stuff done” or sucking it up and fitting in with the group.

  My “solution” (semi-conscious, usually poorly thought out) has been to flit from place to place, job to job, seeking an imaginary autonomy or space where I will finally be able to let Ti free. But this has left me feeling more and more isolated, and more and more reliant upon tertiary Fe. At this point, I really don’t know how to interact with people in a way where I feel I can authentically share my thoughts. It’s terrible to feel this way—frozen, and ever-reliant upon well-work masks.

  As much as I want it to be, using Ti in a healthy way is never going to be a frictionless affair. I have to just take the leap. But indeed, until I listened to this episode, I didn’t consciously associate trauma and freeze response due to social fear with my inability to use Ti in ways outside of achievement or perfectionism.

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  • Jonathan Hardin
  • August 27, 2020 at 8:31 pm

  Ways I’m thankful for Se.
  I love being right here right now and not full of worry.
  I love being comfortable and confident in my own body.
  I love my resilient nature.
  I love that I have a quick learning process.
  I love seeing the quickest solution to any problem I love seeing the quickest solution to any problem
  I love bypassing possibilities to get an answer.

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  • Bill Maynor
  • August 30, 2020 at 4:26 pm

  INTJ – male

  I believe that when I was younger my Te was probably overvalued by an unhealthy mother (ESTP) and unhealthy stepfather (EN_P). They depended on me to take care of a lot of adult tasks for the family when I was in my teenage years. As I matured, I realized that I had been living with the notion that I was a developed adult at a young age when in reality my copilot was not fully developed at all. It was strong, but in only a few areas.

  I do recognize though that terrible feeling of having Te disregarded. It really hurts when its criticized by people who don’t have Te as a dominant function.

  Currently, the thing that gives me the most trouble is my inferior function (Se). I have a very hard time being present in the moment and in my body. I struggle with being in groups, public speaking, work meetings, etc. Also really struggle to recognize and correct physical and health problems.

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  • Jennifer
  • August 27, 2020 at 5:56 pm

  Loved this episode! I had actually been coming to a similar conclusion recently about myself through work I’ve been doing in therapy, although I hadn’t connected it to typology.

  As an INFJ who’s been studying typology for almost ten years, I thought I had Fe pretty well developed for awhile. But I was still just using it to put on a social mask and get other people’s approval, rather than actually make the kinds of connections and relationships that I actually needed. It got to the point where even with my partner and my closest friends, I still felt lonely and unseen because I was hiding myself behind the Fe mask so much.

  There was definitely a lot of wounding to my Fe throughout my life; in fact, every time I think I’ve gotten to the bottom of it, there’s yet another layer. It was so damaged at one point that it wasn’t until my twenties that I even knew I had natural abilities in relating and connecting with others. However, once I discovered that it was a skill, I jumped too quickly to using it for achievement, but it was fake achievement by other people’s standard of success rather than my own. I also learned how to use it to help other people’s healing, but not to heal myself. Ironically, when I didn’t know I had any Fe skills, I actually made more genuine relationships and expressed myself more authentically (although definitely also more unconsciously).

  I really appreciated the part of the podcast that related function development to the HAT model. It’s pretty clear to me now that I need to figure out how to develop Fe in terms of my own healing, and that after that I’ll be able to use it more for genuine achievement. I’d definitely be interested to learn more about how the functions can be developed at the different HAT levels in a future podcast!

• 

  • E
  • August 29, 2020 at 12:41 am

  As a female INTJ who was raised by Ti-Fe and Fe-Ti parents and who worked for more Ti-Fe/Fe-Tis than Te-Fi/Fi-Tes, this episode was exactly what I needed to hear. INTJ women usually have a harder road to travel than INTJ men and Antonia’s description of Fe-derailment of INTJ’s Te ordered, empirical, planned, methods-driven mode of being spoke to me. Dozens upon dozens of instances of that happening in my past flooded my brain. I’m certain I’ll have a list of more than a hundred within days.

  Derailments by overturning my plans behind my back, by foot dragging, by belittlement tinged with bigotry and sexism (especially in business-centric contexts, especially by men but also by women who feel intimidated).

  I have often wondered why I feel such a strong affinity towards Te decision making yet, with every passing decade, I become more ALLERGIC to it. More triggered into anxiety by my own business planning documents as I write them. More avoidant of my goals despite being so incredible laser-focused goal driven with the same goals driving me for decades. Decades.

  This concept of trauma around our aux was such an eye opener and now it makes sense why Aux development is a lifelong process for most people and a contradictory struggle for some.

  This info also helped me understand why I am entirely INTJish yet feel doubtful at times about my type and why in my youth and early-mid 20s I rejected and hated the INTJ type so much and instead insisted I was ENTP or INTP. I now understand why this happened. I certainly didn’t have the confusing life of Antonia’s INTJ friend but so much about my NiTe nature was threatening to my parents, and doubly so in a female body. NiTe was something they didn’t approve of and it rubbed them the wrong way. I experienced inconsistent messaging, undermining, and derailment after derailment to the point that Te style behavior/decision making became a strange nemesis within me, a natural way of DOING things in the world that brought me problem after problem and disappointment after disappointment. Realizing now that I need to find female INTJ role models.

  Would greatly appreciate more future discussions on trauma and wounding associated with function growth and, perhaps, how it fits in with the shadow functions too, especially regarding the relationship between the 2nd and 6th functions.

  Thanks for a great podcast. Off to listen to the HAT model and to revisit every Te podcast you two have recorded in the past.