(In case you didn’t see my edits to the first post, I decided to split these by type so they’re more digestable. Also, though I happened to do 1 first, I won’t necessarily do them ‘in order’.)

justification

Naranjo explained this explicitly but folded it under part of reaction formation, however I think it’s distinct enough to be discussed on its own – BHE also discussed this in a podcast episode without assigning it a name.

What happens is, the 1 has strong ideas and preferences about how things ‘should’ be and how they want their life to go in a regular, orderly manner – starting from the part of the reptile brain that is to do with regularity & sense of order, and then building on it further with their search for “the best way to do things” and the experience-based judgements of their implicit mind.

Much of the goal behind this is autonomy – Like the child that gets trusted with more decisions because they are so mature & responsible & don’t give others reason to scold them.

But what if someone comes along & tells you to do things differently anyway?

You argue that your way is right, whether that means its more efficient, more rational, more moral, more responsible etc. and so by extension theirs is wrong.

In this, the rational mind may well be employed to great effect (many 1s are doctors, engineers, philosophers etc.) but sort of in the way that philosophy was employed in the middle ages: Any paths of reasoning that could contradict “what is right” (in the case of the medieval philosophers, church doctrine) weren’t going to be pursued.

So if you have an 1 who prefers to get up early, they might espouse beliefs in the advantages of getting up early & how this is the most disciplined & virtuous way to do this, whereas if another 1 is a night owl they will embark on a mission to make workplaces more friedly to people with different circadian rythms, and neither might connect it to their own preference -

Instead they will completely frame it in impersonal terms of competency and/or superego – this way is most efficient, this way is correct, this way is what’s right. Or: That thing is objectively wrong & disgusting and anyone who doesn’t see that is a sick fuck. You’re not nitpicking, you care that it’s done right.

When others get the impression that you’re just trying to boss them & force your way on them, you don’t see where it’s coming from – it’s not about your way, you think, it’s about “what’s right”… so you figure it must be because they’re debauched or something.

Useful Question:

If you strongly feel that something is right: Is it truly the best method, or is it maybe just the way that you personally prefer it?

Note also that realizing you simply prefer it doesn’t mean you have to give up or self-flagellate for being selfish or failing to be impartial.

In some situations you might have an easier time getting your partner to agree to consider your needs & preferences if you say it personally bothers you rather than argue about the objectively correct way to load a dishwasher.

It’s ok to have wants, preferences & be subjective in some areas. Obvsly if you’re doing surgery you should totally follow the protocol as perfectly as possible, but ‘correct’ clothes or hairstyle is much harder to define.

You can prefer something even if it’s not “Objectively The Best”. It just ‘feels’ less ‘defensible’ because as a competency type you have a neutrality bias. And of course once you allow that it becomes natural to let others have different preferences.

Meanwhile, if you strongly feel something is wrong: Why is it wrong? Get that head center online. Now if you’re not used to it, this can be uncomfortable: 1s have a high need for closure and hence dislike ambiguity – they tend to want a clear answer, now. When you’re used to relying on the implicit mind whose output feels very solid, real and obvious, going into the abstractions of the mental center can feel airy & ungrounded – you might be worried that you might come up with an excuse or talk yourself into thinking some terrible thing is actually ok. But your implicit mind can mislead you as much as abstract theory might.

You might find that forbidding a lot of what’s universally agreed to be awful can easily be justified in terms of logical reasons. Look at the 6s – you can use your head center and still be morals-oriented. Be more willing to consider logical counterarguments even for things that trigger repulsion in you – just considering them without per se accepting them. Even if you still disagree, knowing how the other side thinks can help you persuade them.

reaction formation

But what if there is a desire that cannot be justified in this way, perhaps because it clashes with the 1s stated values, principles and beliefs? You can’t easily give up on the principles if those feel integral to who you are, why you do everything you do & why you should get anything at all.

So, the incongruent impulse is transformed into its opposite.

To consider why it has to be like this, it might be illustrative to tell you about a discussion I read on here once of various 8s (whose default tendency is to act on most impulses in an unmodified form) on how to overcome problems with impulsivity. Just trying to hold in the impulse through sheer will often doesn’t work because the next thing will just set them off, there is a quick connection between stimulus & response, thinking their way out of it like a head type might won’t cut it, but what does work a lot better is to point the ‘kinetic energy’ somewhere else, such as by exercising.

The gut types take in the world on a viscerally felt, kinesthetic level (Rohr, a 1 himself, referred to it as ‘full body blows’) & this leads to building up immediate reactions to it. So ‘redirecting’ the impulse, or rather forming an immediate counter-reaction to it, is more natural than just extinguishing it.

The purpose of the reaction is not only to “defend” against acting the ‘unacceptable’ impulse, but to “defend” your conscious self from the distress and incongrence of even recognizing the impulse, that is, to push it out of consciousness. Like saying some prayers to make the “dirty thoughts” go away.

If you read the experiences of 1s (or even 1 fixers) you see that the impulses already arrive in consciousness in this ‘civilized’ form: Not ‘this annoys me’ but ‘this is not good enough!’

The physically felt swell of what might otherwise be irritation comes in as frustration about how the thing was done wrong & how it could all be perfect if only the co-workers bothered to be a little more dilligent.

This is part of why experiencing an actual unmodified impulse can feel so threatening or shameful.

First they would be experienced as unwanted, ego-dystonic, incongruent with the self.

A rabit horndog is not who you are… and certainly not who you want to be.

There is not so much previous experience of thinking ‘I kinda want to do violence to this jerk’, or of having a horny thought… and then not acting on it for a variety of reasons.

So you might fear that if you loosened up you would actually be violent or sexually inappropriate. (which isn’t helped if the only time you cut loose if when you got so much pent up frustration you can’t hold it in anymore, so you overcompensate like a person going on a binge after an overly restrictive diet.)

What this may concretely look like is being extra polite to someone who lowkey irritates you (disowning the “bad”/”unresonable” feeling), or condemning something that you actually find tempting on some level –

Tom Condon described the case of a type 1 friend who liked to collect rocks. One time they came across a cool-looking amethyst geode in a shop window and the friend’s eyes lit up, but then he saw the hefty price tag and at once he started ranting about how ppl these days waste so much money on frivollous impulse buys. (his desire for the rock had conflicted with his value of being thrifty, so a reaction against it was formed.)

Condon then said something like ‘You really want that rock, huh?’

In this case the friend had the self-awareness to admit it, but with some immature 1s (or ppl with strong 1 components), they can get weirdly obsessed with the thing they’re condemning & the lives of people who are doing it. ‘Oh this fetish porn is so horrible!’ ...why do you know so much about it, mate?

(part of it is also that by confronting the “bad” and rejecting it, the sensation of your boundaries holding firm against the outside, you feel your existence, so when you are having self-doubt…

It’s the frustration thing of using “not that!” as orientation.)

This is how you get ppl complaining about people taking breaks, gender non-conformity, childfree couples, divorce, more empathetic rather than strict parenting etc. because how dare those ppl not give up the desires you renouced?

Ppl complaining about divorce have the unhappiest marriages, ppl complaining about the “selfishness” of the childfree are some of the most emotionally distant parents and so on.

Maybe you remember that horrible “marriage requires a mute button” article a while back whre that woman tried to sell you on the idea that every responsible adult must accept that marriage is constantly being irritated at your spouse. (with zero self-awareness of how she described constantly nitpicking, criticizing & failing to show empathy for the husband, & refusing to communicate her wants/needs)

When ppl responded to it saying they actually like their spouses or pointing out that divorce is a thing, she accused them of being naive because A Mature Person(TM) is supposed to make it work and accept that marriage isn’t a cakewalk, damnit.

Reading it you might wonder “why is she torturing herself?” but probably the value of “making a marriage work through realism” is very important to her.

Useful Question: Could it be that this thing bothers you because you kinda want it but think you’re not allowed to have it?

Now for the love of sanity, don’t go torturing yourself by thinking you must secretly want everything that grosses you out. This question is mostly useful to ask when you find yourself disproportionally fixating on something. Being outraged about child labor is probably just because child labor is outrageous, but if it’s a minor lifetime choice thing that won’t kill anyone, it might be worth considering.

suppression

The next ‘layer’ of defense, if incongruous desire or anger does leak out in its ‘raw’ form, is to tamp it down asap & deliberately suppress it.

You try not to be angry or desireous.

As gut types experience feelings mostly through body sensations so suppressing them also means counteracting the bodily impulse that comes with them – this is sometimes described as feeling like the rising heat of anger gets stopped at your neck & jaw, like a cork on a champagne bottle, or the relaxing sensation of pleasure is stopped by tightening & straightening the spine & pelvis.

So there can be actual physical tension held in those areas.

This also feeds into the self-judgement, because a suppressed reaction still happened and you still feel it, even if you put a stop to it.

In that sense 1s might be uniquely cursed among the competency types. You’d physically feel the anger or desire & the need to stop it. So someone might beat themselves up for even thinking of getting angry.

Another thing to note is that while this might seem at first like a relatively voluntary/ semi-conscious action, but when some 1s try to deliberately express their feelings more, they sometimes find the habit to clamp it down has become quite automatic.

- an extreme case of this might be ppl raised in very conservative towns who were told to suppress all sexual desire until marriage, but then when they’re finally married they’re too tense to have enjoyable relations.

Unhealthy 1s can get quite dour & joyless cause pleasure is suspect & suppressed.

- though healthier 1s will be able to relax & express feelings when appropiate, but still be able to restrain themselves where this is useful, like if you’re a surgeon or an emergency responder & need to keep your cool & keep doing the task. In that setting “defending” against getting irritated or otherwise emotional is arguably a good thing, at least for the duration of the important work, it allows 1s to be level-headed professionals.

Useful Question: Being patient, disciplined & restrained is often very useful, but are you counterbalancing this with some outlets? (dance, time in nature, and regular vacations seem to be some popular ones with well-adjusted type 1s)

Reparation & undoing

This is sort of a cousin of reaction formation in that it also involves “making up” for a “bad” thought/deep by doing something “good”, but the difference is that in this case, the horses have already left the barn, rather than preventing an incongruent thought or action these are about coping with the aftermath after it has already occurred.

The above constellation (particularly on the less aware/mature side) can easily produce a lot of guilt that then needs to be ‘defended’ against lest it set off the fear of condemnation.

Undoing is to take an opposite action immediately afterwards, which in the person’s mind makes it so the “bad” thought or deed never happened.

For example you thought about blowing up at someone and then acted extra nice to them because you felt bad about it, or you actually did blow up at your spouse but then buy them some flowers to “make it okay”.

In the case of reparation, the bad deed is not quite considered ‘erased’, it still ‘counts’ and there are still feelings of guilt and accountablity, but you made up for it. You’re a changed man.

This is like those people telling you about the wicked life they used to live before they came to jesus, but now they are completely different.

Sometimes making amends or focussing on doing a better job next time is, of course, a constructive way to deal with mistakes. (and 1s for their part also forgive more easily if they see someone’s willing to make amends, have consequences, show they learned something etc.)

There are two ways this can become problematic in less aware individuals, however.

First, when it becomes a compulsion to constantly make up for perceived ‘guilt’.

Cracked and ate a chocolate muffin? Now you must do 20 extra minutes of exercise!

There was an interesting anecdote on a podcast about an 1 woman who got involved with a more ‘wild’ guy, and then immediately chopped off her hair to something more austere looking, like she’d strayed too much to the wild side & needed to correct it.

The guy took it as mixed signals.

The Second is when the person considers their deed ‘made up for’, but others don’t. The wife doesn’t forgive you despite the flowers, because you can’t really erase what happened or the concerns she has with you.

Or the preacher guy who ‘came to Jesus’ expects to be forgiven by everyone now because he “repented and made amends”, “overcome his struggle with temptation” & that was “his old life”.

Another way this may look is someone considering that their spouse & kids shouldn’t bring up past grievances anymore because they apologized and promised to change.

others might well find it hypocritical when someone who has clearly messed up at some point in his life starts talking to you about the Best Way To Do Things and how you should be following their sage advice. They won’t just act as if the past actions never happened.

There is, of course, a strong incentive to believe in an espouse the redemption narative when it feels like the only other alternative is that you are an Irredeemable Bad Person(TM) forever. Trying harder to strive for the perfect world that ought to have been is one’s saving grace – if that doesn’t count, then what does?

So as understandable it is that others might call bull/hypocrisy, there is also a lot of pain behind this which, alas, often only causes the counterproductive patterns to become more rigid.

Someone’s response being “try harder!” (for all that it can be the 1s greatest strength in other contexts) can also make it harder to recognize situations where it would be better to walk away or stop trying to do the impossible.

Useful Question:

On the one hand: Will anything good come out of continuing to be harsh on yourself? Maybe you can forgive and/or accept yourself without feeling like you need to constantly work on “redemption” or “betterment” – especially if the cause of your feeling guilty is just being an imperfect fallible human.

On the other hand, especially if your actions impacted another: Does your idea of what would constitute restituition align with the wronged party?