Talk:Download

Hmm...someone signed me up for assvitreeness training in middle (grade?) school...I was not invited back after bribing someone during an exercise.As someone who is more self-reliant than what some would consider healthy (and is too miserly to bribe), I always wondered if it would have made a difference--I'm not afraid to ask for what I need, but prefer not to owe to or rely on others.I must say, freely available knockoffs of the MBTI have helped a lot in accepting who I am. I was used to hearing people pathologize or otherwise denigrate behaviors I happened to exhibit--and perhaps the theory is flawed (or perhaps not)--but the fact remains that a large number of people, many of them successful and respected, share these traits and it is somewhat attributable to a unique perspective and way of interpreting the world. It has helped me recognize why I've always felt so different (the few others like me are similarly non-social so I've not seen any/many, people have trouble accepting women with intp traits, societal and institutional rules are made by those with opposite traits, etc.), and frankly most of the intp descriptions describe me far better than I could describe myself, with such nuance it's a bit disturbing (e.g. I mirror others' temperament, not cynically or deferentially but to feel them out, and not being just myself makes it even harder to feel at home outside of my own thoughts). Heck, it can even account for my behavior in the assvitreeness training--I hate illogical rules (as in, one person must keep assertively asking the other to do something while the other must refuse, until someone buckles), I refuse to either lead or be led unless I independently determine that's what I want, I like to find ways around the system, and feeling that knowing I could do something if I wanted to is as good as doing it.....that, and I found my solution hilarious, despite what the counselor and other students assuredly thought. (Besides, I got my partner to publicly complain about my insolence!)I suppose my point is learning that others' perspectives really are much different and that my own doubting nature makes me susceptible to entertaining their opinions of me helped partially correct some of the bad feelings I'd internalized about my behavior. I don't know that it's made me more confident, but I am happier. Also, ironically, the MBTI's label helped me better understand where my weaknesses are and gave me ways of mitigating them that are tailored to the way I think (which succeeded where self-help books and a therapist's efforts failed, though both of those avenues bore other fruit).Okay, that's more than enough of my self-involved tangent.