Define "Healthy"

[Desert Financial]

Have you heard the term "healthy" thrown around in the psychology community, self-help communities, and even typology communities?

In my experience, I've seen it used even in the most authoritative contexts. For example, the most prominent enneagram sites denote a range of health levels for each of the 9 enneatypes.

However, only a small fraction of instances where this term is used does anyone attempt to establish the groundwork for what "healthy" actually means.

What does "healthy" mean to you? Do you think the term is abused or misused? Could the definition be refined to more accurately describe "health"?

[squark]

Have you heard the term "healthy" thrown around in the psychology community, self-help communities, and even typology communities?

In my experience, I've seen it used even in the most authoritative contexts. For example, the most prominent enneagram sites denote a range of health levels for each of the 9 enneatypes.

However, only a small fraction of instances where this term is used does anyone attempt to establish the groundwork for what "healthy" actually means.

What does "healthy" mean to you? Do you think the term is abused or misused? Could the definition be refined to more accurately describe "health"?

Lol, in enneagram it's pretty obvious what it means imo, especially if you've actually been at those lower levels of health and climbed out of that pit. You have things like suicide, despair, sadism, etc down in the unhealthy levels for various types, and if you can't tell that these things are unhealthy. . . well, you might just have a problem lol.

Basically, less healthy means more mental, social and emotional problems. Going all the way down to psychotic breaks, suicide, murder etc. More healthy means better coping skills, better ability to handle social issues, fewer emotional problems, fewer psychological issues, greater happiness and energy, so on and so forth.

[xerx]

healthy = high-functioning; capable of achieving objectives; comfortable in own skin; confident in being yourself

[Chae]

It's a covert way of saying: "normal". Which I pretty much hate. What is not normal receives social stigma, which creates a vicious cycle. When someone is "healthy", they are not out of the ordinary way of life, something entirely positive, which is an unrealistic standard. The struggle to achieve that makes it worse, can't we just be? Nobody can define what a sound and healthy life is, every case differs. It is hard to put people in a mold like that. What I also observed is putting the label on someone you just don't like Many, many double standards come with that.

[Chae]

healthy = high-functioning; capable of achieving objectives; comfortable in own skin; confident in being yourself

That's only the 3's supposed benchmark^

[powerrainbowcrystal]

Healthy = The social worker personally likes you in an incredibly subjective way and will let you leave the group home and be free again.
Unhealthy = The social worker personally dislikes you in an incredibly subjective way and will not let you leave, and they will pretend that their very subjective and personal analysis of you is 'objective' whilst using faux-professional sounding jargon.

Many boys from Starr that were released too early ended up stabbing people very soon after they got out. But they got glowing recommendations from the IDIOTIC AND RETARDED AND DEAR GOD I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE STANDING UP TO THESE SOCIAL WORKERS - staff. Of course it isn't their fault that many of these young men still decided to commit crime on their own, but it just goes to show you they had no idea what they were talking about.

There's no such thing as it, its an illusion. I'm sure there are scientific Te reasons of brains at different levels of functionality/development - but it's not going to be some vague psychobabble term. I'd rather clinical terms be used than to separate people in categories like that just to give authority figures another excuse to feel superior over people that they already do. (In middle class therapy offices there should be an 'eject the-rape-ist button' that the patient can hold at all times. If at any reason he feels the therapist is being too condescending or patronizing, he can press the button and send the therapist flying off out of his seat and make him hit his head on the wall.)

"Healthy" is just an Illuminati code phrase that you are functional enough to contribute to society and participate in it without causing too much of a ruckus (That whole saying the one that stands out the most gets hammered down the most etc) But this isn't really a sign of health as it is of being some conformist easily-controlled douchebag, and it lets society off the hook too easily when in truth, there is a lot of problems society has that it needs to correct itself on instead of blame easy scapegoats. Then you act like this model citizen, you fool a bunch of people- they release you, and you end up going on a mass killing spree. It was said of columbine shooter Eric Harris that he was a highly bright individual who is likely to succeed in life. LEL.

You could maybe say healthy is just being a good person and not hurting others or yourself- but what does that mean really? It gets complicated. It's just a cringe-worthy useless dichotomy that I wish we would stop using. Obviously- if somebody cuts up women into pieces and eats their ears they are a very sick and unhealthy individual no matter what kind of narcissistic thing they are telling themselves. I'm more concerned about stopping these type of people and keeping loved ones safe than I am giving them a label.

[at sirac son of sirac]

Without over simplifying the issue, a psychologist, counsellor, therapist's job is to have you in such a condition that you can reasonably function (or cope) in society. This suggests that people are unwell, but also society is a literal jungle requiring a set of survival skills and coping methods.

I mean, most people now have some job where they sit at a computer for 8 hours a day, surrounded by people who they've no input in choosing. Unless you can develop a certain set of abilities, that is not going to be easy.

I suppose socionics would say we cope with our strong functions, the Te type will pass the day making things more efficient, the Fe type will manage emotional energy, but really, everyone is bored and just trying to have their own version of fun.

If you can learn to handle the weird environment of society, then you can learn how and when to express yourself sufficiently.

[Desert Financial]

Lol, in enneagram it's pretty obvious what it means imo, especially if you've actually been at those lower levels of health and climbed out of that pit. You have things like suicide, despair, sadism, etc down in the unhealthy levels for various types, and if you can't tell that these things are unhealthy. . . well, you might just have a problem lol.

Basically, less healthy means more mental, social and emotional problems. Going all the way down to psychotic breaks, suicide, murder etc. More healthy means better coping skills, better ability to handle social issues, fewer emotional problems, fewer psychological issues, greater happiness and energy, so on and so forth.

Most people agree that the bold characteristics are destructive, but what's the root cause or trait that determines whether an individual exhibits the bold traits more than the underlined traits? Looking at it from another angle, what determines whether an individual exhibits the underlined characteristics more than the bold characteristics?

Is it possible for a healthy person to commit suicide, murder, or experience despair?

EDIT: Furthermore, despite the fact that various schools of thought use the same term, are there differences in how each school recognizes the root of the issue?

[Adam Strange]

Most people agree that the bold characteristics are destructive, but what's the root cause or trait that determines whether an individual exhibits the bold traits more than the underlined traits? Looking at it from another angle, what determines whether an individual exhibits the underlined characteristics more than the bold characteristics?

@Keranos, the primary determinant for exhibiting the bolded traits is being an LII.


Lol. Joke.

Actually, the bolded traits might be associated with the amount of subjective stress a person experiences in relation to their ability to cope with that stress. The ability to cope with stress can be a function of resources, early teaching, age, support systems, etc.

Personally, as I've gotten older, I've seen how stress, especially that which occurs in early childhood, affects a person's subsequent life. I'm seeing many, many examples of early (and current) stress causing premature aging in the people I personally know. On a national scale, you can find strong correlations between drug abuse and early death, with loss of meaningful work. My father once told me that people live until the money runs out, and I think you can generalize that to say that people are born healthy with a certain amount of innate strength, and these internal resources get used up as life deals them one blow after another. Money, resources, and a human support network can defend against a lot of the damage, but every insult leaves its mark.

Particular stressors include unstable childhoods, parents who don't love you or who lack any kind of parenting skills, inadequate food supplies or shelter, unstable living conditions, and loss of siblings or parents or mates or friends or jobs.
Any of these things can cause a person to strike out at others or themselves as an expression of anger and desire for attention.
I found when raising my son that he innately felt that doing bad things and thus getting my attention was preferable to being ignored. He would have preferred to get my attention by being good, but that didn't always work. (My bad.) What this looks like to the people around someone who is stressed and who doesn't know where to turn for help is bad behavior.

Screaming, throwing things, engaging in behavior that is dangerous to one's self and to others, is a way for a child to ask for help. In children, this is manageable. In adults, sometimes not so much.

[squark]

Most people agree that the bold characteristics are destructive, but what's the root cause or trait that determines whether an individual exhibits the bold traits more than the underlined traits? Looking at it from another angle, what determines whether an individual exhibits the underlined characteristics more than the bold characteristics?

Is it possible for a healthy person to commit suicide, murder, or experience despair?

EDIT: Furthermore, despite the fact that various schools of thought use the same term, are there differences in how each school recognizes the root of the issue?

I think Adam Strange is right in that it may come down to having enough resources to deal with the external stresses on you. It's when the coping methods you've developed to deal with life fail you, they're not enough. You develop new coping methods, find a way to reduce the external stress, or some of both in order to change this and become healthy again. And people all have different limits, and their limits are often in different areas. In other words, what is easy for you to handle can be difficult for someone else, especially if they have additional stressors in their lives.

When you're having the hardest time, you also quickly learn the limits of those around you. You learn which people not to tell your problems to, because they can't handle even hearing about them, and you learn who has strength you never expected. The line between health and unhealth for each person is their breaking point, the point where they cannot reasonably handle anything else. And it can be kind of like building a muscle, some people are just naturally stronger than others, but if they are never put to the test, never exercise that muscle, it can atrophy, so sometimes hardship itself builds strength. But, again like a muscle if you try to do too much when you're already weak and sore from using it, you won't have enough resources to operate with the same strength. It requires rest to rebuild.

That's how I see the challenges and difficulties of life anyway - that they are building me into a stronger person. There have been times when my strength failed me, when I was weak and needed support, and those are the times I needed to rest and rebuild. And I see other people as being similar, sometimes they need to test their strength and become stronger, and sometimes they just need someone to help take some of the burden off of them so they can rest. Everyone will fail at some point, sometimes what comes at them overwhelms and is too much for them. . .

Anyway, it's why the health levels are imo the most important part of the enneagram, because knowing where you have failed in the past, the ways you've handled or not handled things and why, and then being given steps to take, how to take action and rebuild and develop strategies to recognize what your tendencies are and prevent the collapse into darkness so to speak is really valuable. Basically it gives you tools to manage your mental/emotional health so that you don't become overcome by the various challenges in life and can stay on top of them.

[Desert Financial]

@Keranos, the primary determinant for exhibiting the bolded traits is being an LII.


Lol. Joke.

Actually, the bolded traits might be associated with the amount of subjective stress a person experiences in relation to their ability to cope with that stress. The ability to cope with stress can be a function of resources, early teaching, age, support systems, etc.

Personally, as I've gotten older, I've seen how stress, especially that which occurs in early childhood, affects a person's subsequent life. I'm seeing many, many examples of early (and current) stress causing premature aging in the people I personally know. On a national scale, you can find strong correlations between drug abuse and early death, with loss of meaningful work. My father once told me that people live until the money runs out, and I think you can generalize that to say that people are born healthy with a certain amount of innate strength, and these internal resources get used up as life deals them one blow after another. Money, resources, and a human support network can defend against a lot of the damage, but every insult leaves its mark.

Particular stressors include unstable childhoods, parents who don't love you or who lack any kind of parenting skills, inadequate food supplies or shelter, unstable living conditions, and loss of siblings or parents or mates or friends or jobs.
Any of these things can cause a person to strike out at others or themselves as an expression of anger and desire for attention.
I found when raising my son that he innately felt that doing bad things and thus getting my attention was preferable to being ignored. He would have preferred to get my attention by being good, but that didn't always work. (My bad.) What this looks like to the people around someone who is stressed and who doesn't know where to turn for help is bad behavior.

Screaming, throwing things, engaging in behavior that is dangerous to one's self and to others, is a way for a child to ask for help. In children, this is manageable. In adults, sometimes not so much.

Good response.

So, to paraphrase, you are saying that health levels are determined by the amount of psychological resources a person has. The more abundant the person is in their psychological resources, the healthier they are. The fewer resources they have, the more unhealthy they are.

Stress depletes psychological resources. Support networks, benefactors, and other things add psychological resources.

There's a threshold where "manageable stress" ends and "unmanageable stress" begins. Once the threshold is crossed, stressors become overwhelming to the point that the level of health takes a significant hit. So, I think you're referring to unmanageable stress in terms of what really depletes psychological resources.

I agree that people start out with a healthy amount of resources and then time incurs loss. Your analysis dovetails with enneagram explanations in that way.

On that note, it becomes clearer how several pieces of this "health level" puzzle fit together. According to the enneagram, the healthier an individual is, the greater mobility they have in moving from one point to another. The unhealthier they are, the more they demonstrate the extremes of their type. For instance, when an enneagram 8 becomes unhealthy, their baseline tendency to position themselves in such a way that makes them "invulnerable" starts to ramp up and look like an isolated, retreating 5. But in becoming more healthy, they become more self-revealing like a 2. Additionally, given the fact that enneatypes basically arise from early life stressors, those stressors seem to submerge the individual in the mire of ego fixations. Ego fixations weigh down the "core" self on their own, which causes stress, but they also tend to guide a person in a fruitless direction to overcome them, compounding stress and reiterating the fixation. On the other hand, the more a person adheres to a method that dispels the ego fixation, the less mired down they are in those trappings, and the less stress they experience from trying to resolve the ego fixation.

[at sirac son of sirac]

Yeah. Lots of coping methods are learned at an early age. If your childhood doesn't teach you some basic coping methods, such as for instance, even something like how to interact with others, then immediately you're going to get pummeled when you step out into the world, already draining whatever resources you had to begin with, before all the other stuff in life happens.

Edit: A real problem with enneagram and enneagram health levels in my opinion, is that it, well it tries to explain what you are like when you are in an unhealthy state, but it does not really give solutions to whatever is causing you to be in that unhealthy state, apart from such generic advice as, 'don't be suspicious', which is really like telling some to 'smile, it might never happen'. Which is not a constructive or useful way to deal with whatever it is that's caused the lack of health to occur in the first place.

[Desert Financial]

I think Adam Strange is right in that it may come down to having enough resources to deal with the external stresses on you. It's when the coping methods you've developed to deal with life fail you, they're not enough. You develop new coping methods, find a way to reduce the external stress, or some of both in order to change this and become healthy again. And people all have different limits, and their limits are often in different areas. In other words, what is easy for you to handle can be difficult for someone else, especially if they have additional stressors in their lives.

When you're having the hardest time, you also quickly learn the limits of those around you. You learn which people not to tell your problems to, because they can't handle even hearing about them, and you learn who has strength you never expected. The line between health and unhealth for each person is their breaking point, the point where they cannot reasonably handle anything else. And it can be kind of like building a muscle, some people are just naturally stronger than others, but if they are never put to the test, never exercise that muscle, it can atrophy, so sometimes hardship itself builds strength. But, again like a muscle if you try to do too much when you're already weak and sore from using it, you won't have enough resources to operate with the same strength. It requires rest to rebuild.

That's how I see the challenges and difficulties of life anyway - that they are building me into a stronger person. There have been times when my strength failed me, when I was weak and needed support, and those are the times I needed to rest and rebuild. And I see other people as being similar, sometimes they need to test their strength and become stronger, and sometimes they just need someone to help take some of the burden off of them so they can rest. Everyone will fail at some point, sometimes what comes at them overwhelms and is too much for them. . .

Anyway, it's why the health levels are imo the most important part of the enneagram, because knowing where you have failed in the past, the ways you've handled or not handled things and why, and then being given steps to take, how to take action and rebuild and develop strategies to recognize what your tendencies are and prevent the collapse into darkness so to speak is really valuable. Basically it gives you tools to manage your mental/emotional health so that you don't become overcome by the various challenges in life and can stay on top of them.

Yes, I agree. Stress and eustress influence health levels in different ways; the former is negative and the latter is negative.

[Adam Strange]

....... On that note, it becomes clearer how several pieces of this "health level" puzzle fit together. According to the enneagram, the healthier an individual is, the greater mobility they have in moving from one point to another. The unhealthier they are, the more they demonstrate the extremes of their type. For instance, when an enneagram 8 becomes unhealthy, their baseline tendency to position themselves in such a way that makes them "invulnerable" starts to ramp up and look like an isolated, retreating 5. But in becoming more healthy, they become more self-revealing like a 2. Additionally, given the fact that enneatypes basically arise from early life stressors, those stressors seem to submerge the individual in the mire of ego fixations. Ego fixations weigh down the "core" self on their own, which causes stress, but they also tend to guide a person in a fruitless direction to overcome them, compounding stress and reiterating the fixation. On the other hand, the more a person adheres to a method that dispels the ego fixation, the less mired down they are in those trappings, and the less stress they experience from trying to resolve the ego fixation.

@Keranos, what do you mean by "ego fixations"?

*EDIT* Nevermind, I found it.

[Desert Financial]

It's a covert way of saying: "normal". Which I pretty much hate. What is not normal receives social stigma, which creates a vicious cycle. When someone is "healthy", they are not out of the ordinary way of life, something entirely positive, which is an unrealistic standard. The struggle to achieve that makes it worse, can't we just be? Nobody can define what a sound and healthy life is, every case differs. It is hard to put people in a mold like that. What I also observed is putting the label on someone you just don't like Many, many double standards come with that.

Healthy = The social worker personally likes you in an incredibly subjective way and will let you leave the group home and be free again.
Unhealthy = The social worker personally dislikes you in an incredibly subjective way and will not let you leave, and they will pretend that their very subjective and personal analysis of you is 'objective' whilst using faux-professional sounding jargon.

Many boys from Starr that were released too early ended up stabbing people very soon after they got out. But they got glowing recommendations from the IDIOTIC AND RETARDED AND DEAR GOD I WILL SPEND MY ENTIRE LIFE STANDING UP TO THESE SOCIAL WORKERS - staff. Of course it isn't their fault that many of these young men still decided to commit crime on their own, but it just goes to show you they had no idea what they were talking about.

There's no such thing as it, its an illusion. I'm sure there are scientific Te reasons of brains at different levels of functionality/development - but it's not going to be some vague psychobabble term. I'd rather clinical terms be used than to separate people in categories like that just to give authority figures another excuse to feel superior over people that they already do. (In middle class therapy offices there should be an 'eject the-rape-ist button' that the patient can hold at all times. If at any reason he feels the therapist is being too condescending or patronizing, he can press the button and send the therapist flying off out of his seat and make him hit his head on the wall.)

"Healthy" is just an Illuminati code phrase that you are functional enough to contribute to society and participate in it without causing too much of a ruckus (That whole saying the one that stands out the most gets hammered down the most etc) But this isn't really a sign of health as it is of being some conformist easily-controlled douchebag, and it lets society off the hook too easily when in truth, there is a lot of problems society has that it needs to correct itself on instead of blame easy scapegoats. Then you act like this model citizen, you fool a bunch of people- they release you, and you end up going on a mass killing spree. It was said of columbine shooter Eric Harris that he was a highly bright individual who is likely to succeed in life. LEL.

You could maybe say healthy is just being a good person and not hurting others or yourself- but what does that mean really? It gets complicated. It's just a cringe-worthy useless dichotomy that I wish we would stop using. Obviously- if somebody cuts up women into pieces and eats their ears they are a very sick and unhealthy individual no matter what kind of narcissistic thing they are telling themselves. I'm more concerned about stopping these type of people and keeping loved ones safe than I am giving them a label.

Sometimes when I hear people claim someone is unhealthy, it practically amounts to a catch-all for whatever the speaker doesn't personally like.

In fields that deal heavily with clinical psychology, the term can sometimes logically entail that whatever is "healthy" is "normal", "typical", or "functional." These traits just constitute someone's personal expectations and are only serve prescriptions that fall within the scope of those expectations.

So, I think it's important to concisely define what is meant by "healthy" to dispel the qualitative stuff and avoid pursuing normalcy for its own sake.

The task of becoming healthy paradoxically becomes unhealthy when taken to an extreme. If we use unworkable definitions, the task incurs a lot of stress and becomes an unmanageable fixation.

Not to undercut what's already been said about stress levels and psychological resources. That model looks pretty solid and applicable in most situations.

[Adam Strange]

In my opinion, becoming "unhealthy" is a result of experiencing stress beyond one's ability to deal with it, and it results in behavior (which is really a plea for help, but can appear to be very destructive) that most people recognize as not normal or productive. Most people avoid someone in this condition, because when that person loses the ability to take care of themselves, they certainly can't take care of anyone else. Furthermore, they will require support (external resources) to return to normal. Once a person arrives at that point beyond coping, they need to find resources or teachers or a support network that can either shield them from the stress or show them how to deal with it.
Getting away from the stress can help, but it doesn't do anything to help them deal with it the next time they are exposed to it.

[Sol]

seems it's taken from Enneagram

[Adam Strange]

I've always liked this text from Donnie Darko, and I think it applies here.


"When the Manipulated awaken from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often haunted by the experience in their dreams.

Many of them will not remember.

Those who do remember the Journey are often overcome with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their Dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the Artifact itself, all that remains from the lost world."

-Roberta Ann Sparrow, 1944

[Raver]

IMO, I consider health to be an internal aspect rather than external. Being healthy is being close to your highest potential and being unhealthy is being close to your lowest potential.

It is like a spectrum of sorts and there is a lot of grey area in between. In the end, we all have an optimal aspect of our health just like we have a deleterious aspect of it.

The vast majority of us are in between in the grey area. Also, it is important to note that being well adjusted in society is no measure of mental health. Being healthy is internal and affects your optimal intelligence, happiness and how you deal with others.

Activities like exercise, meditation, sleep and healthy eating improve our health levels, not only physically, but mentally as well. As the body and mind are linked. Also our physical appearance does not always display physical health.

[Exodus]

I don't think healthy is quite the right word. How personality manifests positively or negatively has more to do with maturity and spiritual development, or you could say character.

[ouronis]

I tend to be more towards the feeling it's whatever makes you more pliable and world-fitting in the eyes of whoever's judging you. Not that it's necessarily malicious, just a byproduct of the challenges of bringing your own experience into alignment with other people.

[hatchback176]

I know MBTI INTJs and Socionics ILI's to be the most independent so it's funny to see LII's struggle to be independent by just becoming confused. It's not like LII's have an immense amount of empathy or compassion and just want to see everyone helping each other. It's always an attack on the ESFJ social order as a lone skeptic. We get it already. The average person is centered around the mean IQ, doesn't learn from written materials very well, and has to be given hands-on training with which to mimic or copy another person's behaviors. We have a bunch of Mirror Neurons constantly simulating other people's beliefs, intentions, and goals. When average people fail to simulate another person they get marked as unsimulatable and activate vigilance, observation, and monitoring circuits because any sense of peace you would have with common sense, shared vision, or shared understanding just got thrown out the window by non-conforming behavior. LII's then compound the issue by turning average people into "normies". Now it's the ability to share a common set of behaviors that's the problem...then they simply go down a checklist of routines and negate every single one. No more routines, everything has to be an observation of a set of events that can be referenced as a process now. The fact that procedural memory and motor routines are an absolute building block for the rest of the brain need never be mentioned. We will only talk about our behavior from a 3rd-person perspective.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heideg...resent-at-hand


We see the apotheosis of the LII mindset in the never-ending list of exploit tactics. The freedom to kill or mutilate anyone and anything within the virtual space of the imagination.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_security

[Aramas]

Have you heard the term "healthy" thrown around in the psychology community, self-help communities, and even typology communities?

In my experience, I've seen it used even in the most authoritative contexts. For example, the most prominent enneagram sites denote a range of health levels for each of the 9 enneatypes.

However, only a small fraction of instances where this term is used does anyone attempt to establish the groundwork for what "healthy" actually means.

What does "healthy" mean to you? Do you think the term is abused or misused? Could the definition be refined to more accurately describe "health"?

There is no such thing as healthy. It's complete bullshit. Yes, even when Enneagram writers use it.

[Bertrand]

i think the best way to define health is in reference to the aims of the person in question. we can say unhealth, at the very least, is when your own aims are frustrated by your thoughts and behavior. in other words, when judged in light of their own aims whatever they may be, being self defeating is a sign of unhealth, because its a basic lack of function. in the end, inasmuch as people are unable to meet their own reasonable goals they may be said to be something less than perfectly healthy. health in the sense of being "fully functioning" then is a good starting point because it means that whatever the possibilities and capabilities a person possesses health is the ability to realize and actualize those things. lack of health in some sense then is not "living up to your potential." in a certain sense we are all less than perfectly healthy, it is then just a matter of degree. thus there is no clear cut off where we can say person x is healthy or person y is healthy, rather health is a spectrum shaped by the person itself. you might even say a person is their possibilities, and their health is the relative level of success they have at being the best version of themself. "normal" is pathological in the sense that normal as a mean level of success is relatively low, the median probably even less. and "normal" is judged as an objective center mainly along lines of the mode in society, which is to say normal is the relatively low level of function you'd pegged "health" to what you'd get most often if you picked a random person ("he's just your average guy"). true health is probably quite rare, which in turn makes a degree of pathology normal in virtue of it being ubiquitous, which is why people say "health" is bullshit

[Aramas]

i think the best way to define health is in reference to the aims of the person in question. we can say unhealth, at the very least, is when your own aims are frustrated by your thoughts and behavior. in other words, when judged in light of their own aims whatever they may be, being self defeating is a sign of unhealth, because its a basic lack of function. in the end, inasmuch as people are unable to meet their own reasonable goals they may be said to be something less than perfectly healthy. health in the sense of being "fully functioning" then is a good starting point because it means that whatever the possibilities and capabilities a person possesses health is the ability to realize and actualize those things. lack of health in some sense then is not "living up to your potential." in a certain sense we are all less than perfectly healthy, it is then just a matter of degree. thus there is no clear cut off where we can say person x is healthy or person y is healthy, rather health is a spectrum shaped by the person itself. you might even say a person is their possibilities, and their health is the relative level of success they have at being the best version of themself. "normal" is pathological in the sense that normal as a mean level of success is relatively low, the median probably even less. and "normal" is judged as an objective center mainly along lines of the mode in society, which is to say normal is the relatively low level of function you'd pegged "health" to what you'd get most often if you picked a random person ("he's just your average guy"). true health is probably quite rare, which in turn makes a degree of pathology normal in virtue of it being ubiquitous, which is why people say "health" is bullshit

Tl;dr: Health is self-actualization. You're welcome.

[Desert Financial]

There is no such thing as healthy. It's complete bullshit. Yes, even when Enneagram writers use it.

Support your argument.

[Bertrand]

mental health is a real thing and people do good work in the service of it, dunno why you gotta throw the baby out with the bathwater just because health can't be reduced to a simple one dimensional metric

admittedly we're over medicated and prescription drugs are hand waved as the answer to everything, I would submit that in of itself is a mental health issue on the level of society at large, a form of mass hysteria. it just so happens that drugs are probably not the appropriate therapy. drugs are big business its true, and the gatekeeping done by the government often does more for the benefit of fatcats than the people its supposed to serve. but that's not because mental health is in principle a scam, its just because like every other noble endeavor people have managed to transform it into a scam, just like most religion and now education and God knows what else. anyway the ethical shortcomings of how mental health is handled in the contemporary world are sort of collateral to the question at hand... the question is how do you define "healthy" and it sounds to me like you're essentially scared to define it because you see doing so as an inherent power play entailing a nugget of irreducible evil inherent to the deed. in which case I would just say: ti polr the evil is within you and projected onto the world

the problem is Fi creative tends to reserve for itself the right to make these kind of judgements and finds it empowering to do so, so of course they see Ti rules that codify for all of society as 1) a usurpation of their authority, and 2) an inherent power play. but its fundamentally a lack of creativity on the part of Fi. creative Fi needs to be moving things forward not goalkeeping as a form of deficiency motivation, that is just a form of greed and fear. In other words, as Ti hardens certain ethical concepts, creative Fi should naturally move on and develop better ones, not fight to remain in the stone age. its hypocritical anyway because I guarantee you Fi creative types are the first one to act out notions of health/unhealth directed at others, so they say all this stuff like it can't be done and then go about privately doing it with everyone they encounter. its like if your method is so good, feel free the share. this idea that everyone can do that is unrealistic, which leaves only you in a privileged position in order to do it for others, which is fine, but be up front about wanting to maintain your privileged position instead of simply projecting that desire onto everyone else (and absolving yourself of it on the ground its universal), its like you put the blame everywhere except where it absolutely surely belongs when you talk of abuse of power. if you could do that then maybe people would be ready to listen; until then its like empty un self-aware hypocrisy.. you might call it "unhealthy" inasmuch as it undermines your credibility upon which these sorts of assertions rely

[Pookie]

Not harmful for others to be around. Not tormenting yourself or sabotaging your own life.

Cut all the fat out and it boils down to that.

[Aramas]

mental health is a real thing and people do good work in the service of it, dunno why you gotta throw the baby out with the bathwater just because health can't be reduced to a simple one dimensional metric

admittedly we're over medicated and prescription drugs are hand waved as the answer to everything, I would submit that in of itself is a mental health issue on the level of society at large, a form of mass hysteria. it just so happens that drugs are probably not the appropriate therapy. drugs are big business its true, and the gatekeeping done by the government often does more for the benefit of fatcats than the people its supposed to serve. but that's not because mental health is in principle a scam, its just because like every other noble endeavor people have managed to transform it into a scam, just like most religion and now education and God knows what else. anyway the ethical shortcomings of how mental health is handled in the contemporary world are sort of collateral to the question at hand... the question is how do you define "healthy" and it sounds to me like you're essentially scared to define it because you see doing so as an inherent power play entailing a nugget of irreducible evil inherent to the deed. in which case I would just say: ti polr the evil is within you and projected onto the world

the problem is Fi creative tends to reserve for itself the right to make these kind of judgements and finds it empowering to do so, so of course they see Ti rules that codify for all of society as 1) a usurpation of their authority, and 2) an inherent power play. but its fundamentally a lack of creativity on the part of Fi. creative Fi needs to be moving things forward not goalkeeping as a form of deficiency motivation, that is just a form of greed and fear. In other words, as Ti hardens certain ethical concepts, creative Fi should naturally move on and develop better ones, not fight to remain in the stone age. its hypocritical anyway because I guarantee you Fi creative types are the first one to act out notions of health/unhealth directed at others, so they say all this stuff like it can't be done and then go about privately doing it with everyone they encounter. its like if your method is so good, feel free the share. this idea that everyone can do that is unrealistic, which leaves only you in a privileged position in order to do it for others, which is fine, but be up front about wanting to maintain your privileged position instead of simply projecting that desire onto everyone else (and absolving yourself of it on the ground its universal), its like you put the blame everywhere except where it absolutely surely belongs when you talk of abuse of power. if you could do that then maybe people would be ready to listen; until then its like empty un self-aware hypocrisy.. you might call it "unhealthy" inasmuch as it undermines your credibility upon which these sorts of assertions rely

You seem to like attributing everything you disagree with in my posts to Ti PoLR. Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they disagree because of some personal weakness they have. I think you do that kind of thing to dismiss an argument you don't like without having to actually respond to the argument by itself. In other words, what you're doing is nothing but ad hominem blathering.

That said: Thomas Szasz, Jeffrey Masson, and David Healy.

[Bertrand]

You seem to like attributing everything you disagree with in my posts to Ti PoLR.

yes

I think you do that kind of thing to dismiss an argument you don't like without having to actually respond to the argument by itself.

I thought I responded quite nicely! if there's an idea you'd specifically like me to address head on please restate it for me, in as concise terms as is possible

Just because someone doesn't agree with you doesn't mean they disagree because of some personal weakness they have

true, but I think that's whats going on here. its not a personal weakness if you categorically deny any criticism on the basis of it as if it were off limits. it actually becomes an unassailable strength if that were the case

In other words, what you're doing is nothing but ad hominem blathering.

ad hominem doesn't mean what you apparently think it means

That said: Thomas Szasz, Jeffrey Masson, and David Healy.

yeah and the world is flat