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 ISFJ Knight, your central fear, beneath all others, is that you are too crude, too animal, too influenced by your raw chemistry and baser instincts. While you may adore the purity you see in others, the touch of divinity and heavenly light in those who seem to be not entirely of this earth, you fear that you could never be more than mud and blood. Again, anyone can have this fear. But for Knights, this worry is at the root of them all.
With ISFJs’ weakest cognition step being Observation via iNtuition, Knights naturally fear that their understanding of the character of people and their motives is especially lacking. Specifically, they worry that their observations miss the conceptual nature (N) of the all-important meaning of people (F). You fear that your judgments of others are too simple, too cut-and-dry, and too hasty, and that therefore you fail you see the conceptual meaning in others. This unconscious worry that your understanding of people is not NF enough ends up causing you to misjudge your own conceptual meaning and significance. Seeing a warped perspective of your own faults without being able to see your own meaning results in the fear that you have no profound meaning as a person. That all you can hope to do is keep your darker side reined in and do your job, then pass quietly into the night so that other, more meaningful people can live happier lives.
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 Knight, 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 you are a crude, meaningless machine. As a result, you then feel the tempting pull to indulge in ISFJ Westen Reluctance.
Westen Reluctance is the desire to keep your head down and do as you’re told, even when you know you shouldn’t. Worried that you lack wisdom, you are likely to try to silence your own better judgment when it goes against those in authority over you, for fear that your meaningless impulses will hurt others if you don’t. Yet even when no actual person is giving you commands, culture and the world itself stand as the ultimate and constant authority figures. Since you desperately want to protect the good in the world, and should, you are more than willing to fight for and live by the expectations of your culture. But when the dictates of authority or cultural expectations stand in violation of universal principles, Westen Reluctance tempts you to ignore the precious truths you know to be right.
Since you struggle with character judgments, it is all too easy for you to assume that authority figures and the culture in general must be well-intentioned, well-informed, and couldn’t possibly have dangerous blind spots. It’s easiest for you to accept that the world is the way it is for good reasons, and that those you look to as leaders have good reasons for the choices they make. Yet unless a Knight is willing to take a stand and acknowledge when things are not right, unless a Knight is willing to fight the unpopular fight, the losing fight, the fight against everything they want to serve in order to uphold the universal principles that supersede all other authorities, they may find themselves in the service of trends that oppose all the principles that make life matter. Westen Reluctance causes Knights to sabotage their own treasured specialization, hurting the world instead of standing up and protecting it.
Particularly unhealthy ISFJs try to justify this betrayal by implying that no one is ever truly heroic or more than mundane, that principles don’t actually apply in reality, and that therefore they can pursue agendas that let the world rot. When this self-justification inevitably fails to quiet their conscience, they end up expending tireless effort seeking out new ways to defy meaningful principles in an effort to clinch their loyalty to their destructive worldview. None of this ever helps the ISFJ feel any better about themselves for more than a moment, and then they feel only more meaningless and savage after the high of vindication passes. An unhealthy ISFJ’s entire reason for being becomes tearing down everything good in the world as it is, 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 Knights tend to indulge in Westen Reluctance when things get hard. As a natural and unintentional way of guarding themselves, a Knight may turn a blind eye to hurtful aspects of their culture or bad intentions in those they look up to, as if ignoring the danger will keep it from doing damage. These unintentional slips into ISFJ’s Type Angst are nothing to beat yourself up about; after all, they’re unintentional. But as you’re willing to stand frankly in opposition to those you look up to when they act or advise against everlasting principles, as you’re willing to place your loyalty in principles themselves, you’ll find yourself in service of a far greater authority than imperfect human cultures. As you stand for principles and apply them, even when it’s hard or causes you to be hated, you become ever more able to safeguard everything and everyone who needs you.
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 Westen Reluctance. Look to your Type Specialization, be a Knight 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.
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