World Socionics: Aleesha's Guide to Self-Typing

This article aims to address the most common difficulties that people have while trying to type themselves, and strategies they can use to overcome them.

The Formula

The formula for figuring out your own type is very simple:

Learn about yourself
Learn about Socionics
Compare your knowledge between the two.

Failure to properly identify the TIM is usually related to inadquate knowledge of Socionics or to making the process more complicated than it needs to be.

Understanding yourself

It is imperative that you are able to understand and describe yourself on your own before you attempt to do so with a typology. You can develop self-knowledge and Socionics knowledge concurrently but you must be wary of trying to interpret your thoughts and behaviour according to Socionics when you don't have a decent understanding of at least one of those things.

If you're really struggling, the problem might be that you're only seeing what you're looking for (i.e. evidence to squash you into a particular type) and in the process missing some important information. In this case it is best to totally separate the processes of developing self-knowledge and Socionics knowledge.

If you need ideas about how to learn more effectively about yourself, you could try something from this non-exhaustive list:

Cultivate a practice of mindfulness
Meditation
Journalling
Reviewing your social media, emails, text messages etc. for themes
Make a list of your favourite things and why you like them
Talk to someone about it in a relaxed way

If you're not sure where to start or what would be relevant, you can just start with things you find fun to think about.

Understanding Socionics

Generally speaking the more you know the easier it should be, but it's also easy to get caught up in trying to figure out which obscure, poorly-described dichotomy you belong to and such thinking is counter-productive. If you need to resort to more complex theory to justify your self-typing then it's not a strong typing. All you need to justify your typing are the functions, IM elements, intertype relations, and quadras. If you're struggling, bring your focus back to those key things.

It's also important to emphasise that we are talking about Socionics knowledge. Not Enneagram, not MBTI, not any other typology under the sun. In fact, it's best that you forget you had even heard of those typologies, let alone your types in them, while you figure out your Socionics type. Seriously, don't even think about them. If you try to figure out your Socionics type in the context of other typologies, you will take much longer to find your type and it will be weaker and less confident.

Methods

The end goal is not simply to come up with a 3-letter acronym to describe yourself, but to be able to make a clear argument about your type based on all of the functions and IMEs (don't worry about Reinin dichotomies, please). There are many methods you can use to get there, of varying usefulness. Here are a few:

Personality tests

It is better to figure out your type through study and reflection, partly because this is how you learn about Socionics anyway and partly because there are many problems with personality tests. Many of them are poorly-designed to begin with, and even when they're not there can be issues with response bias or poor insight. Perhaps they can be used to get a sense of direction but you should certainly not stop with them.

Consult a professional or experienced Socionist

If you're finding the learning curve to be steep it may be worth your while to ask someone experienced to type you. This can be very valuable, but it is important that you aim to understand their analysis or you still won't feel confident about your type.

Look for the obvious

There are two main ways about this: identify aspects of yourself that are unusual compared to the general population, or identify parts of your life experience that elicit a strong emotional response. This is a particularly good way of identifying the leading, vulnerable, and mobilising functions.
Specific things you might look for include:

Special talents
Things that you can't get the hang of no matter how hard you try
Things that everybody else seems impressed by
Compliments you get consistently
Criticisms that really get to you
Tough situations you cope with better than a lot of other people
Situations you have a really hard time coping with
Activities that make you feel really relaxed, happy, or fulfilled
Activities that make you really bored or frustrated

Find one thing to be certain about and work from there

This is a good strategy for type-hoppers and for people whose understanding of Socionics outstrips their self-understanding. Instead of trying to put all the pieces together at once, narrow your focus and aim for 1 IME at a time. Don't move on until you're really sure! It is ideal to identify the exact function, for example "leading S" or "vulnerable E", but it is sufficient to just get as far as "4D S"/"1D E", or "strong, valued S"/"weak, subdued E" (so long as you're really sure about it!) and figure out the rest with other information.

It is easiest to do this with the 4D functions (leading, demonstrative) and 1D functions (vulnerable, suggestive) because they tend to stick out the most (see the previous section). If you're confused or uncertain you can go by your emotional response. 4D functions elicit feelings of competence and ease, they will frequently be associated with positive experiences. 1D functions elicit feelings of frustration, resentment, and boredom (among other things).

Specific Problems

People often end up trying to decide between different (usually 2) types. These are the more common situations and their solutions:

Kindred: Identify quadra values, vulnerable function, mobilising vs. demonstrative functions.
Quasi-identical: Identify quadra values, vulnerable vs. suggestive functions.
Extinguishment: You've probably come from MBTI. Forget MBTI.
Mirror: Ideally you should never be in this situation, but if you are you want to focus on mobilising vs. suggestive functions. It's easy to get stuck deciding between mirrors indefinitely, so if you can't figure it out easily then start from scratch. It will save you a lot of time.
Activators: Identify creative vs. suggestive functions.
Type-hopping: You probably have impaired insight for some reason (see: Special cases). It is best to start from scratch and find one IME to be certain about before proceeding.

In general you don't want to compare strong functions with strong functions. Whichever types you're comparing, pick an IME to compare that is strong for one and weak for the other.

Special cases

In some cases there are factors at play that impair insight or introduce ambiguity, and these deserve their own treatment.

Type-related challenges

Our type itself can make it more difficult for us to see certain kinds of information, and there are a few predictable challenges we can talk about. The remedy to all of them is largely time and study, but perhaps listing them here can help give you a head-start. These lists are non-exhaustive:

Type-related gaps in understanding Socionics:

These can best be discovered by trying to explain Socionics to a third party.

Typically people have the hardest time describing things that are related to their weakest function, including in trying to straightforwardly explain them. You must be careful not to confuse an incomplete understanding with a type-related gap, but if there is an IME you struggle to describe adequately for no good reason then it may be one of your weaker functions, especially your 1D (vulnerable or suggestive) functions. Another way this might show up is if your understanding is fine but you struggle to come up with examples on the spot compared with everything else.
People with low I often struggle with giving summarised or general information and may give information that is too detailed or not detailed enough. They may also have more difficulty describing their own personality as a result.
People with low S may resist giving more than general information.

Type-related obstacles to insight:

People are likely to over- or underestimate their proficiency with their weak functions and may not recognise that they're actually weak.
Logical types may have more difficulty understanding their emotions.
People with 1D-L may struggle to seeing patterns in their thoughts and behaviours, especially E1s. They may see themselves and extremely variable and "hard to type".
Sensors are more likely to distrust their own insights, especially Socials.
Rational ethical types (ESE, EIE, ESI, EII) may feel like they need some kind of external framework to make sense of themselves.
People with low, valued I may be overly credulous about praise and criticism.

Health-related challenges

It comes up from time to time that someone will feel uneasy about their self-typing due to some physical symptom that is at least partly due to illness or disability. This is usually things like people with severe fatigue wondering if they can still be extratims, clumsy people wondering if they can still be sensors, etc.

In general these kinds of issues aren't very significant in the context of Socionics. You don't need to tick every box, just more on one side than the other. If we take clumsy Sensors for example; clumsiness might be seen as a sign of low S/F, but it's not definitive unless are are other signs of low S/F and also signs of high I/T.

It's generally not worth your consideration, because you'll either find it's an anomaly that doesn't count or just one point in a long list.

Mental health and trauma-related challenges

People with mental health issues have a harder time figuring out their type, especially if they have trauma. They are more likely to type-hop and have protracted states of uncertainty even after developing a good understanding of Socionics. Even outside the context of personality typologies, people with mental illnesses often report having trouble figuring out what is really them and what is their illness. Additionally, having low confidence will making it more difficult to see the difference between your weak and strong functions.
If you're in this category and you're struggling to figure out your type, it's probably best to a method that is more targeted. It will be especially important to separate the processes of understanding yourself and Socionics.

What to do when you're struggling

Stop, breathe, clear your head. Take a break if you're frustrated. Remember to keep it simple.
If you're been struggling for a while, especially if you're stuck between different types, start over from scratch. Your old understanding obviously wasn't helping you. Look for information about yourself, your thoughts and behaviour in different situations, and take it at face value. Interpretation will come, don't force it; you'll find the pattern as you go. Be curious and patient rather than look for specific answers in desperation to answer a question.

Wednesday, 6 March 2019

Aleesha's Guide to Self-Typing