Can a type be alienated from their leading function?

[Muddy]

I'm wondering if prolonged suppression and discouragement against someone's leading function by external elements such as family, institutions, life circumstances is capable of blocking someone from achieving goals set by the leading function, and perhaps can even go so far as to make a person to believe their leading function to be a weak function due to failure and disappointment regarding it?

For example, if a person grew up in a family full of his conflictors who would punish him harshly whenever he moves toward his leading function, could he eventually be "broken" into living a life alienated from anything regarding his base function and become depressed and feel empty inside as a result? Could people in this scenario mistype themselves because of this?

[Sol]

The main reasons why people mistype themselves are same when they mistype others: bad typing skills, ambiguous methods and wrong hypotheses like Reinin's dichotomies.
When people do what they don't like or don't do what they like - this does not change what information dominates in their consciousness on a time period like say a day.

[Olimpia]

I'm wondering if prolonged suppression and discouragement against someone's leading function by external elements such as family, institutions, life circumstances is capable of blocking someone from achieving goals set by the leading function, and perhaps can even go so far as to make a person to believe their leading function to be a weak function due to failure and disappointment regarding it?

For example, if a person grew up in a family full of his conflictors who would punish him harshly whenever he moves toward his leading function, could he eventually be "broken" into living a life alienated from anything regarding his base function and become depressed and feel empty inside as a result? Could people in this scenario mistype themselves because of this?

I can tell you a bit about my experience with feeling/having felt alienated due to my leading function (in combination with my Creative function).

 

I have got parents whose PoLR is .

My mother is ESE; her being my Supervisee made her a bit confused in regards to my , but she'd respect it for the most part. Mostly she encouraged me in my writing and creative endeavors, without going too deep. Listening to/reading my stories was not something she'd do that often; she would praise my verbosity ("I could never write like that"), but the content itself was largely foreign to her. Regardless, she would say I should write a book someday. She helped me the best at establishing and keeping contacts with other kids. Her being lead and SO/SX was very beneficial in this regard. Even so, I've never felt like I was completely heard. I also did not speak when I was a young child (before going to school), I even had to go to speech therapy, because I would not talk much. (In this light, it was ironic I would later show a talent in writing and languages.)

My LSE father was mostly not at home for work when I grew up. He seemed distant, though I could admire him from that distance. This was probably when my relationship with him was at its best – when it was not too close, and we only got together for some activities, like rollerblading or going to watch a movie. (No wonder my second Love Language is Quality Time.)

Eventually we moved into a house, and my father was regularly at home. In my teens, our interaction was the most tense. We fought every week about something, often about nothings. I had lost most of my closest friends around that time, so I was at my weakest and most vulnerable. Conflicting with him made it worse for me. He gave me the feeling there was something wrong with me, and I was weak. It took quite a toll on my self-esteem. I started to trust myself and my intuition less, and accumulated a lot of guilt, shame, and despair.

(Also, I had grown up with my LSI cousin as a kid, with whom I was rather close in the past, but we grew apart once we were occupied with middle school. Apart from that, as a female teen it became more odd to be "just" friends with boys; most Beta STs are male, so I ended up lacking Beta interactions. Btw, no matter what people like to say, Beta NFs are not that common.)

All of those factors lead me to become depressed and feel utterly empty inside, "broken" if you will. I became obsessed with "fixing" this "broken" part of me that was just not valued, nor "right". I became obsessed with reaching perfection. (This could be the way I moved to my E1 point in an unhealthy manner. And yes, your "growth" point can also have a negative influence on your life.) I almost became sort of robotic, lost all my feelings, my creativity, my intuition; I felt like I had lost my "brilliance". I ended up focusing on my Si Role a lot more.

In High School, I did fairly well, because most of my free-time I ended up studying. Even so, there were instances when people just could not understand me. It was frustrating to me how my EII English teacher could not really understand or value what I would write in assignments. Other teachers told me my writing was "too complicated and complex", difficult to comprehend. I should write more precisely, to the point, shorter. I suppose this is the only way my Ni had survived, but it had been degraded to a form where it was too difficult to grasp. All in all, I was very introverted around that time, my Ni felt like the only understanding friend in a dark room with no walls or ground. At the same time, I hated it...

Fast forward...
I still feel unvalued for my contributions in real life, on a regular basis. (It is not that bad, though I can feel it. Being around LSIs and certain ESIs in some classes makes me feel better about my contributions.) At the moment I am studying Film (theoretically) and Literature. Most of my lecturers/teachers are EII. Similar to the EII teacher in High School, they do not value what I have to say that much. (In elementary school I was the best student in my class, only straight-As on my resumes. My teacher was ESI. I believe this had quite an influence on how she perceived me and my contributions. Intertype relations do matter in school and work.)

At times I feel stuck. I could accomplish so much more, haven't I been worn down by my Conflictor father, life experiences, etc. I had to get over feeling worthless and hating myself. Now that I have gone through this for the most part, I am still apprehensive about a lot things, what I want to accomplish in life, etc. Besides the normal difficulty with "getting things moving" as someone with 1D .

So, I believe one can feel alienated due to their leading function, and perhaps to some degree from it.
Having said that, during this darker time I also discovered Typology, and I never doubted my strong .

tends to entertain a lot of self-reflection and introspection. Due to that circumstance, most ego types can tell rather easily they use (after knowing what it is about), as far as I know.
Not all people who claim to be ego truly are so. However in my experience, most people who are in fact ego have never seriously doubted it before.

[Jeremy8419]

I'm wondering if prolonged suppression and discouragement against someone's leading function by external elements such as family, institutions, life circumstances is capable of blocking someone from achieving goals set by the leading function, and perhaps can even go so far as to make a person to believe their leading function to be a weak function due to failure and disappointment regarding it?

For example, if a person grew up in a family full of his conflictors who would punish him harshly whenever he moves toward his leading function, could he eventually be "broken" into living a life alienated from anything regarding his base function and become depressed and feel empty inside as a result? Could people in this scenario mistype themselves because of this?

"make a person to believe their leading function to be a weak function"
Leading is the ability to follow norms while being orthogonal to norms. Utilization of such is the suppression of PoLR, which is inept compared to norms. Parents are often orthogonal to children from the child's perspective, because parents view the entirety of the child's life from a 3rd person objective standpoint, which seeks to work on the child's shortcomings while saying "don't take the easy way out and think yourself better than norms" (leading). It is not a "mistake." It is a correction by people who love you.

[Olimpia]

I enjoyed reading your story and I wanted to share something. Have you ever read Arnold Schwarzeneggers biography? At the end he shares his 10 key steps for success, and yes he gets laughed at a lot for his biography incase you wondered, but this is one of them:


"7. Don’t blame your parents

Arnold had a tough upbringing. His father had endured WWII and as a result was extremely strict, and regularly served out beatings as punishment. However, Arnold does not blame his father for this brutal upbringing as he believes it was the fault of the war, and even puts his success down to it. If his father was warmer would he have even left Austria?

Whatever your upbringing, your parents have probably done their best for you, but if they’ve left you with problems they’re now yours to solve. Instead of letting the problems get you down, turn the problems into motivation. Use them as fuel for success and rather than wasting time complaining, as complaining will not help the situation."

I don't make light of your situation at all, please understand that, and I was hesitant to post this, but I wanted to because I wanted to share that we can turn our problems into fuel for success, this way we can all keep improving and being the best we can be, each day is a positive realization and improvement. We work with the hand we are dealt and become what we want to be. I truly believe that if we have the potential to see it in ourselves, then the easy part is the realization of it, because we know what we can do and therefore we have to work at doing it and getting there! It's just a bit of self-realization that gets re-inforced the more we succeed, IMO.

Now enough of forum talk!

Thanks.

Yeah, it is good to remind myself that I can use my experiences for motivation, no matter how painful they were.
I know that it can be easy to stay in the Victim mindset, haha. I have realized that everything is not truly all my father's fault – it must be incredibly difficult to have a child that is your Conflictor. He did not "choose" his or my type, our intertype relation. It was not only challenging for me, but for him as well. He's learned quite his share on how to deal with people like me. I know of an IEI woman who has got an LSE child, and their relationship is similarly strained, but she tries her best to make it work, too.

No matter how much I used to complain (and still do) about my Conflictor father, I must say I believe that once you have learned to deal with your Conflictor, you can deal with any kind of person.

So yeah, complaining all the time certainly does not help. I do not complain as much as I used to anymore. (Actually, for quite a while I was very withdrawn and quiet about it, repressing my feelings and all.)
I just wanted to share what I've been going through. I do think I have mostly moved on.

Everyone has their problems, or issues, they had to deal with. What I have been growing through was certainly not the worst thing in the world.

I hope... I can turn my life around in a positive manner. I am mentally preparing myself, there are still setbacks, but I think I am mostly determined to get better...

[chemical]

One of the most famous Jungians talked about this and called it a case of distorted types. They say it is possible yes, but that with encouragement/some help often they can just go back to the more fitting type.

[Olimpia]

One of the most famous Jungians talked about this and called it a case of distorted types.

Could you go into detail on how those types are "distorted" exactly?
Is there any more info out there on that issue?

[lemontrees]

I don't feel like my base function is obtrusive to most people, however it's true that i haven't spent much time w/ Si-PoLR's. if anything, it can make me feel boring, or lazy. i often feel ineffectual, but i have thought about how it would be even harder to be IEI in the (often delta-dominated) environments I have been in.

[ConcreteButterfly]

Other people can influence your base function's development by providing or neglecting the dual-seeking function. If they provide it, the base function will develop much more quickly and easily. If they don't, much of your energy will go towards the role function instead of the base, limiting its development.

[Contra]

My father is my supervisee. I wouldn't say I've ever felt alienated from my base function. Instead, it was just clear we had differences and I needed to be quiet or talk about other things. I would say rather than being alienated from your own functions you are more likely to be alienated from those around you (family members or whatever) by virtue of your functions

[chemical]

Could you go into detail on how those types are "distorted" exactly?

Well, just that they developed "as if" their dominant function (in socionics lead) is something other than it naturally would have been were the circumstances right to encourage more natural development. It's very similar to the OP actually. Like, growing up in a setting where it seems natural/desirable to become a logic-base, even if that's not one's natural disposition.

[Persephone]

I like it how most mothers are ESEs and fathers LSEs