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Old 04-28-2012, 11:28 AM   #1
forty-two
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The Gospel is for Christians, too :).
 
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Default Personality and ceding authority to parenting 'gurus'

Why some people "take things too far" when others "use common sense", "take what's good and leave the rest".

Everyone sees the world through the lens of their own personality. We can learn how others see the world and use that to better understand and communicate with them, but we can't ever truly see the world through their eyes - we can only approximate it, not experience it.

And so all parenting gurus write through the lens of their own personality, and we read them through the lens of ours. Some we resonate with, others we see some and some , and others leave us , depending on how well our personalities mesh (leaving aside content - we can really *get* something that we *loathe*, and can be entirely at something we think is probably good, if only we could make heads or tails of it ). We are capable of seeing subtleties, making fine distinctions, with our top functions, but our less differentiated functions are not capable of seeing as much nuance, acting with as great a range or flexibility. Our dominant function is a deluxe Swiss army knife; our inferior function is a hammer - everything's a nail .

And so an approach that works great for a dominant Ni (INxJ) might not make any sense whatsoever for a dominant Se (ESxP), and vice versa. Even if both are doing the same basic thing - AP or GBD, say - they will probably look at it differently and do different things, or do the same thing for different reasons. Which is great .

The problem comes in when we read/listen to a guru who advocates a vision or method that is entirely opposite to our personality and general approach to life, and instead of tossing her to the side as not applicable, for some reason we think her approach is The One True Way, and so turn ourselves inside out in an effort to apply it. Since we don't really *get* it, we can't tailor it to our own situations, we don't see the subtle variations in what people more suited to this approach do, all we can do is blindly follow and hope it works out as promised .

Of course this feels completely unnatural and wrong. And so people will often give up after a few days or weeks of this, chalk it up to temporary insanity, and go back to what feels more natural.

But sometimes people have very strong pressure, whether internal or external, to conform to this very unnatural approach to life. The vision or approach or guru is Right, by definition, and so if it feels unnatural and wrong, it must be because of *me*, because of defects in *me*. And so they persist in following an approach that they don't get, ignoring all the warning signs, desperately determined to become someone they're not because they believe they have to .

There's no way that ends well . Especially with inherently bad approaches, but even with otherwise good approaches used by someone who doesn't get them yet feels they *must* use them no matter what.

And it doesn't just happen with Christian punitive gurus . I've seen the same train wreck in unschooling circles, in classical hs'ing circles, in AP circles. While it's the worst in abusive dynamics, when one side *is* deliberately pushing it's way as the One True Way, and brooks no disagreement, it can happen accidentally when a self-confident person of one type influences a low-confidence person of a rather different type.

So it's something to be aware of even here on GCM - sometimes I see the beginnings of it in people who latch onto a given way of implementing GBD as the only way, and are determined to apply it even though they explicitly say they don't get it. And are encouraged by well-meaning GCMers to press on, trust the process, it'll all make sense eventually. There's a difference in the initial awkwardness stage of something new and going against oneself - I think we need to be watchful for that line being crossed, both in ourselves and others .
__________________
~ forty-two ~
Possessor of The Answer to Everything and Solver of (Somebody Else's) Problems

INTJ: introverted iNtuition with extraverted Thinking
DYT 4/2: connecting intellectually and emotionally
Enneagram 5w4: a need to perceive and to feel special


Wife to my pastor dh (INTP) since 2003

Mother to:
dd13, 'R'
dd10.5, 'A'
ds8, 'J'
and two in heaven: miscarried 10/29/04 and 01/01/05

Blog: Lutherama

What we want is just one thing, not the thing.

Last edited by forty-two; 04-28-2012 at 11:37 AM.
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