Everyone has good days and bad days; every type enjoys successes and suffers through failures. Yet we each react to those same successes and failures differently, depending on our cognition. The things we value most, and the things we focus on most, determine how we subconsciously interpret everything that happens to us. While our Type Specialization reflects what we most desire out of life, every cognitive type also has a Type Angst, a reaction to our deepest fears, worries, and insecurities.
Of course, anyone can be afraid of anything. And anyone, of any type, can suffer from any weakness. In fact, it’s much easier to gain the unique weaknesses of other types than it is to gain their unique strengths! When we attempt to adopt the strengths of another type before mastering our own, usually all we end up with is the weaknesses of both and the strengths of neither. Yet each cognitive type has one deepest, most fundamental worry, resulting from their unique order of cognition steps.
As an ENTP Swashbuckler, your central fear, beneath all others, is that you are not good. That you are not reliable, not dependable or responsible, that you explore too far and color too much outside the lines, and therefore that you are not a good or worthwhile person in the end. Again, anyone can have this fear. But for Swashbucklers, this worry is at the root of them all.
With ENTPs’ weakest cognition step being Action via Sensing, Swashbucklers naturally fear that their actions, and their understanding of the resulting consequences, are especially lacking. Specifically, they worry that their actions lack all-important usefulness (T), in an experiential way (S). You fear that for all your good intentions, your actions will still fall flat, cause damage, or simply go wrong. That your actions won’t be of use in real life experience. This unconscious worry that your actions are not ST enough results in the fear that you are unreliable, irresponsible, or even dirty, and therefore not a good person worthy of being loved or even liked.
This is almost certainly false, but that doesn’t make the fear any less persistent.
Since these worries come from our cognition, we might not even realize that not everyone has them, just as we sometimes forget that not everyone has our same Type Specialization. And since these fears come from our cognition, they’ve been with each of us for as long as we’ve been thinking. They can be overcome, entirely, but only by understanding how they work. Yet when each of us is young, we inadvertently react to every scare or disappointment through the lens of our own type’s central fear. The things that leave the deepest scars are the ones that hit us right in this most vulnerable place.
But since our minds therefore associate these fears with the earliest experiences of childhood, we ironically tend to run to these fears as if they were a place of safety. Childhood usually feels warm, safe, and right in our minds, even if in reality it was nothing of the sort. So when life gets hard, when disappointment strikes, whenever we feel insecure, overwhelmed, or uncomfortable at all, our minds naturally and inadvertently rush back to these deeply ingrained childhood fears. The coping behaviors that result are our unique Type Angsts.
As a Swashbuckler, whenever you feel or experience anything stressful or negative in any way, your mind tries to rush back to the supposed safety of childhood. This causes a surge of your central fear that your actions are unreliable or outright bad, and so you as a person are worthless and bad. As a result, you then feel the tempting pull to indulge in ENTP Megamind Complex.
Megamind Complex is the surrender to being bad, even and especially when you aren’t really bad in the first place. In a healthy effort to accept themselves, Swashbucklers can end up accepting false, negative images of themselves as part of the package. Some do this with flair, embracing all their forbidden color in the face of anyone who dares to criticize them, while others quietly try to keep their heads down and avoid embarrassing themselves. This quieter Megamind Complex robs others of the unique light, beauty, and color that the Swashbuckler can shine out with, while the louder, more Megamind-ish approach keeps everyone at arm’s length.
There is nothing wrong with a Swashbuckler who embraces their color and style; that’s their Type Specialization! But when ENTPs feel tempted to succumb to the lie that their unique flair makes them irresponsible or bad, then Megamind Complex can cause them to push others away in quiet or loud ways. Megamind Complex causes Swashbucklers to sabotage their own treasured specialization, with defiance or shame limiting the possibilities of who they can be, instead of leaving them free to observe and explore themselves.
Particularly unhealthy ENTPs end up embracing genuine badness by no longer caring about the damage their actions cause. An ENTP who no longer cares about the effects that their mistakes have on others is no longer well-intentioned, and no longer reaching for everything they can become. This never helps the ENTP feel any better about themselves for more than a moment, and then they feel only more unreliable and bad after the high of defiance passes. An unhealthy ENTP’s entire reason for being becomes denial of any and all observation of their true character, in direct opposition to their Type Specialization. This ultimate contradiction, desperately fighting against one’s own deepest, most treasured desire, is miserable to say the least.
Yet even healthy Swashbucklers tend to indulge in Megamind Complex when things get hard. As a natural and unintentional way of guarding themselves, a Swashbuckler may declare that no one’s really good or reliable anyway, or that those who are must be mindless saps. These unintentional slips into ENTP’s Type Angst are nothing to beat yourself up about; after all, they’re unintentional. Beating yourself up may make you feel safer from the accusations of others, but in truth it will usually make you feel even more irresponsible and bad, making the cycle worse.
All types can be tempted to declare that they or their loved ones are already everything they’d like to be, even if it means ignoring glaring truths or putting others down. Our Type Angsts tempt us to feel entitled, like we deserve to already be at our goal, rather than being willing to learn and grow patiently, gaining successes for real. This sense of entitlement is a harmful twisting of the good desire to be special. In reality, everyone can be equally special in ways that are different from one another, allowing all to be unique in unique, diverse ways.
As you surround yourself with the loving support of people who care, as you seek out others who try to understand you and accept you, you can grow less and less vulnerable to the self-sabotage of Megamind Complex. Look to your Type Specialization, be a Swashbuckler with a vengeance, and your mind will retreat less and less into the fears and scars that result in your Type Angst. And even when no one else is around, perhaps the best, most effective, and most fulfilling way to gradually eliminate your Type Angst for good, is to get in touch with your Paradoxitype.
Recent Comments