Some Thoughts on Relationships and Socionics

The last 9 months have been very good for me. My life has been steadily getting better and better, and I think I understand enough about why the changes have been taking place to maintain them indefinitely. I'm referring to all sorts of changes relating to nutrition, exercise, sleep, hormones, and neurotransmitters, and also to relationships, social life, work, life strategy, and inner development.

Along the way, I have begun to think about socionics again at times. The first time was when I was pursuing a girl who seemed responsive and interested, but the interaction seemed chronically unstable and off-kilter. After a few frustrating weeks of this, I had the thought, "I wonder what socionics could say about this?" I'll admit that making a good guess at identifying her type (a LIE with a high degree of interpersonal sensitivity) brought some clarity and helped explain the imbalances in the interaction.

Since then I've occasionally (but not automatically) referred to socionics when thinking about other relationships. Experiences with other girls, however, have not exactly fit the socionics model. For instance, I had a fulfilling short-term relationship with an EIE ("quasi-identity"). Luckily, I no longer take socionics very seriously and do not let it influence my romantic choices before the fact. If I did, I might limit myself and fail to obtain experience that conflicts with the socionics model. I think I did this in the past.

Interestingly — as with any idea system — the people who engage in developing socionics are precisely those who take it very seriously... This introduces biases and ideological "overshoot" that the less interested may notice, but rarely take seriously enough to do anything about. Within socionics, as soon as people start to strongly doubt the model, they usually leave the community or become less active and just complain about the discrepancies in the background. Naturally, this is a more or less universal characteristic of schools of thought.

I now believe — as a kind of personal rule — that any relationship can or should be pursued if there is passionate interest. 100% interest and sincerity seems to be a much better predicter of having a really positive experience than socionic factors. However, this assumes that you have the maturity and wisdom to not overstep the natural bounds of the relationship and to not force it to be something that it cannot.

Some people (a lot of men) experience strong romantic interest on a daily or weekly basis. They have to find different rules and formulas for deciding how to pursue relationships and may not relate well to my ideas.

Another observation I've had is that a person may go through stages where they become more or less receptive to different kinds of interaction. For instance, when I am in a "socialite" stage focused mostly on my external social life — going out, meeting people, and doing things with others — the whole type thing can be more or less irrelevant. However, if I enter a more work-focused stage with a lot of focused solitary activity, my need for closer and more "high-quality" relationships increases.

I'm suggesting that in some circumstances a person can be perfectly happy without any dual relations or even any close tet-a-tet relationships. As a person's activities become more focused and idiosyncratic, the need for focused and idiosyncratic relationships seems to rise as well.

In the hunter-gatherer societies that produced modern homo sapiens, people experienced much tighter group relationships and less individualized tet-a-tet relationships. The idea of finding "soul mates" in such circumstances becomes largely irrelevant. I believe that a failure to understand or even think about the relationship structure of primitive societies has led to many of the erroneous ideas contained in socionics. As some readers may know, Augusta Augustinavichute believed humans were a pair-forming species and examined their relationships in a modern (actually, Soviet command economy) context only.

I've had the chance to mingle in a lot of different groups of late. Certainly, different groups have their different "feel," and socionic quadras is one way to look at it. However, some of us are used to feeling like outsiders in virtually every group we find ourselves. Thus, using comfort level as a way to identify quadras may lead to never finding one's own quadra because every group is uncomfortable — just to different degrees. For such people, the idea of quadras and their defining role in establishing the culture of a group can be pretty much irrelevant.

In a "socialite" period of life, you may flit from group to group with ease, but few of the groups are particularly well-established or display any set rules and "quadra flavor." As your life becomes more work-focused, you will probably find yourself spending time in more well-established groups. Obviously, the longer a group has existed and the more fixed its membership, the more rigid the culture of the group will be. I think there's much value in belonging to such a group(s) at some point in life.

I often return to the concept of "highly sensitive people" and observe how these people systematically do not fit into socionic type and relation models. They might as well be a different ype, and can be divided into extraverts (roughly 1/4 of HSPs) and introverts (roughly 3/4). Most are intuitive types, but there are also some introverted sensers among them.

I really strongly doubt that an HSP IEI's ideal match will be any kind of SLE, though many aspects of the relationship may be comfortable and convenient. But an HSP is subject to some kinds of feelings and experiences (states of sensitivity, solitude, loneliness, restriction of sensory stimulation, etc.) to a much greater degree than non-HSPs, and will need to find others who can relate to this "deeper" level. If an HSP lacks a deeper sensitivity-based connection with his partner, he may experience loneliness and even alienation.

I find that HSPs tend to have a mixture of intuitive and sensing qualities and often logical and ethical qualities that perhaps make it less important to have a partner who is at the opposite end of these axes (particularly intuition/sensing).

I'm not sure these axes are even a good way to think about relationship compatibility anymore. One of the reasons they enjoy popularity it because they give people them something to think about before the relationship has occurred. It can actually be akin to voyeurism. By thinking about your compatibility or incompatibility (or that of other people) with someone before a relationship has actually begun, you can 1) fantasize about a relationship that does not yet exist, 2) fantasize about other people's relationship (this is more of a female thing), and 3) justify your own inaction in pursuing someone you are attracted to.



I have a lot more to say on the subject of relationships and well-being, but it is all unrelated to socionics, so I will just abruptly end this post here.

Lifestyle, Routines, and Creative Output

I've been writing now for 12 years, ever since I was 24 years old (before that I kept journals). Much or most of the writing has been done in bursts of up to several thousand words on a nearly daily basis for weeks at a time. Sometimes I've gone weeks and months without writing anything "productive" at all.

During my better periods the writing has gone into some larger project such as a website or a future book. During less productive periods I'll still continue to write, but in the form of essays or pieces that almost no one will read. It seems that during such periods I lack the will and purposefulness to work on large-scale endeavors and simply continue to write because thoughts and impressions build up in my mind.

Lately I've been building up a lot of momentum in life and seem to have begun a new highly productive phase where I'm working on projects that are going somewhere. It feels great to have overcome the doldrums and doubts of the past few years.

What's different this time around is that my lifestyle and routines are entirely self-crafted. I live alone and have no committed relationship that would require making compromises. It appears I've managed — finally — to find that odd combination of factors that keeps me in good spirits and allows for sustained high creative output. As I've mentioned in past posts, my particular formula includes nutrition, exercise, walking, and a variety of shared activities and often intense socializing.

Due to my high sensitivity, I also prefer to protect myself from sensory and information overload by limiting Internet access, shunning media entertainment, and spending large amounts of time alone. I find I (and probably other highly sensitive people) don't do very well in standard conditions, but flourish in special conditions.

Since my current lifestyle fills my needs well and is almost entirely immune to the most common types of external shakeups (relationship turmoil, job changes, addictive behaviors, etc.), I see no reason why I shouldn't be able to continue living this way for another 1, 5, 10, or 50 years. Indeed, there is a new sense of permanence that I haven't experienced for a long time, if ever.

Then I come across this book, Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. The book contains descriptions of the daily routines of over 150 well-known creative individuals who lived in during the past 400 years.

The typical creative person spends 2-4 hours a day engaging in the most important — and demanding — aspect of the creative process: writing, composing, drafting, or creating original work. This is usually done in complete isolation with no distractions. There are exceptions, but they are few. The creative work is usually done first thing in the day, before errands and socializing. If the creative person has a regular job, it is almost always something that doesn't tax the mind, leaving the person free to think their own thoughts.

Productive creative people also usually "self-medicate" in order to keep their mind in shape for their work. Tools used include: alcohol, nicotine, caffein, amphetamines, and sleeping pills. Other mechanisms include: exercise, meditation, long walks, and sex. I apparently am in a minority with my rejection of addictive substances, but I too do a number of things to influence my hormones and neurotransmitters in a particular way: I engage in near-daily varied exercise, I strip down and take sunbaths during the colder part of the year, and I swear by my fermented cod-liver oil with butter oil.

Another universal among productive creative people is that all of them have a lifestyle that satisfies their needs for communication and socializing on a daily basis. I've come to see this as perhaps the most crucial element of personal productivity. While socializing needs vary from person to person, there were almost no creative people who didn't need a hefty dose of interpersonal communication every single day.

Typically, to sustain creative output people need both someone to bounce ideas off of and share impressions with a regular basis (usually daily or on most days) and unstructured or unpredictable socializing (generally daily). This mirrors what I discovered from long-distance hiking: a good day includes conversation with a friend, a number of interactions with strangers or acquaintances, and at least some group interaction. It can all total up to as little as two hours. Productive artists have found ways to get these three components of communication in a high-quality form on a daily or near-daily basis.

For some more introverted types, it seems that some of this meaningful interaction can be had online. That definitely doesn't work for me or for most other people.

Recharged from an evening of socializing, boozing, card-playing, or whatever she finds relaxing, the productive artist goes to bed and wakes up the next day to continue the thing that their life revolves around — their creative work. They see it as their primary activity and move everything out of the way in order to engage in it.

It seems that creativity, like willpower, is a limited resource. In order to be highly creative in one part of life, one needs to automate other areas. This could mean taking a maid or a cook (yep, I've done that) or putting in the effort to learn those skills oneself and turn them into routines (I've done that, too). It could mean paying the bills through work that one doesn't have to think about much (my favorite was packing Pepsi-cola) or by doing work that is closely related to one's primary creative work.

Doing creative work requires a lot of planning and coordination of complex components, whether parts in a symphony, characters and plot in a novel, or elements of a building design. After straining his brain's executive functions for several hours, the artist may wish to let them rest for the remainder of the day. Having to plan, manage, coordinate, and execute logistics in one's everyday life almost always uses up energy that might have been spent on one's creative product. Developing near-fixed daily routines (i.e. planning once and then just following that plan) and outsourcing management are typical ways that artists maintain their productivity.

While there are a few basic commonalities in the lives of all productive artists, each has found a lifestyle formula that is well-suited to her personality and physical constitution. What works in one's youth may not work in one's maturity. In any case, the would-be artist must come to know himself and have the courage to craft a life that works for him.

Living Well — Catalog of Sources

I've realized recently that my study of psychology (including socionics), physiology, nutrition, etc. is all based on an interest in living well. By "living well" I am talking not about standard of living or material success, but achieving as high a degree of happiness and contentment as is possible.

Different facets of good living have interested me at different times. Perhaps due to upbringing, my interest in mental and interpersonal aspects initially far outstripped my awareness of influences from the body and nutrition. Now these last two have become very important, and I am slowly becoming something of an expert on them and have had a fair bit of success implementing my knowledge of them in my day-to-day life.

Here is a kind of catalog of good and very good books I have read recently that may be of interest to readers. Following each book I assign it a category in parenthesis and give a very short summary. I heartily recommend all these books.

Rick's "Living Well" Catalog

(last update Aug. 9, 2013)

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom (psychology, lifestyle) — proven contributors to happiness according to scientific research, plus some philosophy

The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions (general psychology) — the seven basic emotional systems, their origins and operations

The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal (lifestyle) — what to do to get your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual engines running properly

The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do To Get More of It (general psychology) — facts and studies that illuminate how our minds work and how we are able to concentrate and focus our will

The Highly Sensitive Person (psychology) — people who are prone to overarousal, the challenges they face, and the individualistic lifestyles they lead

The First 20 Hours: How to Learn Anything . . . Fast! (skill acquisition) — the principles and practice of skill acquisition with a number of practical examples

The 4-Hour Body: An Uncommon Guide to Rapid Fat-Loss, Incredible Sex, and Becoming Superhuman (physiology) — developing our bodies' potential through wise nutrition, training, and technique, supported by abundant research and self-experimentation

Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (nutrition) — study of traditional societies, their overall health, and what they ate

Highly Sensitive People and Socionics

last edit: 31 Oct 2012 (theta brain state)

Introduction 

I recently learned of a trait commonly termed "Highly Sensitive Person," or HSP. This is a trait I have long wondered about in myself and others and have called different names at different times (e.g. self-awareness, introspectiveness, sensitivity, etc.). I used to loosely associate it with ectomorphy; I think I was identifying a kind of ectomorphic variety of high sensitivity and ignoring other varieties. Since then I've noticed HSP traits in people of different somatotypes.

After investigating the subject, I'm convinced that it is a very influential personality trait that has important ramifications for intertype relations and personal development. So influential is the trait that HSPs may be practically untypeable socionically, having a set of traits that appears to conflict with or override typical type traits.

Further information online

In addition to the Wikipedia article, there is some really good information available in research articles on Elaine Aron's site, as well as large amounts of personal accounts and feel-good sites on the subject online. Lots of podcasts and interviews on the subject can also be found.

Distribution

According to studies, 15-20% of the population is HSP, and the numbers are evenly distributed among men and women and hetero- and homosexuals. The numbers are about the same for different nationalities, though different cultures may be more (e.g. Japan) or less (e.g. U.S.) accepting of the trait. Of particular interest is that the trait is also observed in animal species.

Psychological and physiological aspects

It is speculated that roughly 50% of psychologists' clients are HSPs. HSPs are more sensitive to childhood experience and display more maladaptive behavior with suboptimal upbringing and more well-adapted behavior with optimal upbringing relative to non-HSP children.

HSPs appear to be more prone to certain mental and physical conditions, such as neuroses, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, etc. Their brains appear to spend more time in theta state — typically, a drowsy or meditative state — which may indicate more reflection/"recharging" and deeper processing of impressions received during their daily activities.

I would estimate that 30-50% of socionics aficionados are HSPs and that these are many of the same HSPs that are likely to end up in counsellors' offices.

HSP and Asperger's Syndrome

Both of these groups have their online "fans" and often resemble pop-psychology. I've seen lists of famous people who supposedly had that or the other trait, and there was quite a bit of overlap... My personal opinion is that many psychological conditions are overdiagnosed. I myself have been wrongly labled as "high-functioning autistic" by at least two non-specialists who only saw me in certain settings. Of course, this did nothing to improve our interaction... While many AS and HSP online hobbyists seem confused about which diagnosis to give themselves, this article makes a good attempt at separating the two.

Difficulties with the HSP construct

Upon learning about HSPs, a lightbulb flashes on in your mind and many things begin to make sense. Then, once you start identifying sensitivity levels in different people, you realize that each HSP has a different variety of sensitivity, making it hard to generalize. Things that you would tend to attribute to sensitivity in yourself are absent in other HSPs, and vice versa. The search for an overarching, fundamental HSP trait runs into the needle-in-the-haystack problem that plagues socionics and other personality characterizations.

The exact nature of high sensitivity is not yet entirely clear (e.g. "processing sensory data much more deeply and thoroughly"), but there are some interesting lines of research that suggest that the trait can be pinned down physiologically and/or through behavioral testing. That is much better than personality questionnaires which are subject to biases and misinterpretation.

A problem with practical application of the HSP construct is that it has no well-developed counter-category with a potentially positive image — e.g. "low sensitivity person, or LSP." People only read about HSPs and may incorrectly self-identify with it because it seems to suggest creativity or intelligence or provide justification for problems they may have experienced. HSPs, on the other hand, are probably unlikely to wrongly identify themselves as non-HSPs.

Highly Sensitive People and Personality Type

In terms of the MBTI, introverted intuiters were most likely to be HSP, followed by extroverted intuiters and lastly by introverted sensers. Most HSPs are MBTI introverts, and extroverted sensers were not found among the admittedly small sample group studied (I believe under 30). Keeping in mind MBTI type skews relative to socionics, I would expect the trait to be more evenly distributed among the socionics types. For instance, I think I have known at least two SLE HSPs and at least one LSI, two LSEs, a few ESEs, two ESIs, and probably at least one SEE, not to mention many intuiters and SEIs and SLIs.

One can take the approach of examining the trait in isolation from socionics types, or in the context of types. The second approach might help one to identify the uniquely HSP-specific characteristics that are always present regardless of the type, but the risk is becoming too conceptual about the trait. The first approach often leads people to inject too many of their own individual qualities and experiences into the trait.

Effects of sensitivity on socionic type

High sensitivity seems to have a huge effect on personality. In my experience, the HSPs I know are all psychologists in a way and are particularly sensitive to other people's emotional lives and internal experience. They are all at least a bit brooding and are introspective and focused on processing their personal experiences. This is true whether their type is IEI or SLE, EII or LSE.

Such is the sensitivity of HSPs that an HSP LSE may be far more interested and thoughtful about things like perception, trauma, and overcoming internal obstacles than a non-HSP EII (this is coming from my personal experience). Non-HSP LSEs may listen to discussions of these topics with interest, but they have relatively little to say about them or their comments lack depth.

HSP SLEs, LSIs, ESIs, LSEs, etc. tend to lack the callousness that is often attributed to their types. On a philosophical level, HSP types with extraverted sensing (SLE, SEE, LSI, ESI) may reject any form of interpersonal coercion and may be wholly uninterested in politics, power, etc. They may often seem "unsure of themselves" or hesitant, and their extraverted sensing may seem to "flicker" on and off. Of course, this is all happening in the mind of the observer, who has a construct of what extraverted sensing is and is not. Without that mental construct, there's probably nothing particularly paradoxical about an HSP's behavior.

HSP ILEs and IEEs I have known (myself included) appear less extraverted than their non-HSP counterparts. More time is spent ruminating about things within oneself, and less time is spent gathering and distributing "random," superficial information, which is more typical of non-HSP ILEs and IEEs.

Effects of sensitivity on socionics schools

The best example of this I can think of is the contrast between Yermak's hard-headed analytical socionics and Gulenko's School of Humanitarian Socionics. Both are LIIs, but the first is non-HSP while the second is HSP.

Effects of sensitivity on intertype relations

HSP-ness seriously impacts intertype relations. The "truest" form of many potentially adverse intertype relations, for instance, is when an HSP is affected by a non-HSP. In other words, an HSP SLE may be more traumatized by a non-HSP ESI than a non-HSP SLE. Put an HSP ESI in place of the non-HSP, and the "supervision" would likely be seriously altered. A HSP IEE might not be much of a "supervisor" at all to a non-HSP ESI. The effect of the supervision might be so gentle as to basically be negligible for the ESI. In fact, the "supervisor" HSP IEE might well experience more distress as a result of the interaction as the "supervisee" ESI.

An HSP child might find even virtually optimal intertype relations with parents to be "traumatic," while another non-HSP child gets by just fine with parents from a completely different quadra. HSPs seem to need things to be "just right" in order to feel good in relationships and in general in life. As a missionary at age 19-21, I experienced many varieties of poor-to-awful relationships and just a few good relationships with missionary companions, while many non-HSPs seemed to "have a great time" with just about everyone they worked and lived with. So much for intertype relations!

Duality and sensitivity

Dual relationships may be quite different depending on partners' sensitivity levels. Two HSPs will probably have higher levels of understanding, but may need to take great care to regulate personal space and autonomy in order to avoid feeling "repressed." An HSP with a non-HSP may experience less mutual understanding, but the non-HSP may provide a greater degree of emotional stability in the relationship. Two non-HSPs may have a more stable and conventional relationship and fewer problems regulating optimal emotional/physical distance.

These are just suggestions, since I would need a lot more relationship experience than I have to make any far-reaching generalizations. Elaine Aron comes to similar conclusions, saying that both combinations have pros and cons but that she believes two HSPs together is probably a better combination than an HSP with a non-HSP.

Comments

I'm particularly interested in readers' comments on this post. I'm sure people will have a lot to say.