#badger primary model

I am the anon who you concluded to be a bird, who then said I'm not, and I felt terrible by misleading you and others. I still do so here I am. Please could you read this submission with more thoughts and conclude am I misleading you or am I confused after all. This will be long, written in a second language, and I am sorry for that. Sincerely.

All right, let's see what I can do. I did cut out a few sentences where I just wasn't sure what you were saying - so I couldn't be much help - but I didn't have to do that much, your English is very good.

Where do my values come from? A million-dollar question. I'm not sure, I don't know, or maybe it's complicated. Not only that, but I get confused when people are strongly convinced and reacting saying you can't do that, that is not right. I like that strong conviction, but something in me always asks “how do they know?” (I interpreted this as a burned lion thing, being able to trust yourself to a certain point. I just never know anything).

That's absolutely not a Burned Lion thing. Burned Lions never wonder about *why* their External Conscious is right. The External Conscious is Right, and the Burned Lion is Wrong, and that's all that matters. It's still an extremely feelings way of coming at things, just a Burnt Lion doesn't trust their feeling.

That isn't you. You don't trust your ability to reason. You keep asking yourself 'why' and getting no answers back. WHY are these people right. That is a Burned Bird thing.

Perhaps it's just because on those moments I don't find myself agreeing with them and never explored it or felt anything in particular about it. Even if I explore it a bit, I might still not have an opinion or a conviction.

My guess is that you're in an environment where you don't have the permission or ability to question and argue. That's an especially uncomfortable place for a Bird.

Can I change my mind about a value? I'm not sure, I don't know. Perhaps if I could change my views, it wasn't that strong in the first place, and I didn't care about it a lot. Although there are values, views and convictions I couldn't change. I just don't see it possible for those. I might go against it, I might have to, but I know these are stable enough for me to not change. Why? Thinking about it, I believe they make sense to me in every possible way.

Definition of a Bird right there.

Hurts someone, somebody - check, feels bad emotionally - check, doesn't make sense - check, and probably more points there that I can't think about now.

There, right there. You've got a sample checklist that you measure decisions against.

Hurts people

Feels bad

Doesn't make sense

I understand why you're confused, and I understand why you think you're multiple primaries at once. You look at your list and you go, 'oh, measuring decisions against what hurts the least people, that's badger.' 'Measuring decisions against what feels bad,' that's lion. But the fact that they are in a list at all, the fact that you're weighting them as equally important, the fact that the decision making process is this built and constructed - THAT is what makes you a Bird.

It was interesting you mentioned that burned Lions don't have these pings at all. I don't think that ever happened. I knew not to trust these, or had few of them, but can you completely be absent of them? Turn it off? But it's a flavour of life, how it just goes blank?

You're not a Burned Lion. Burned Lion, out of everything, is probably the state I know most about and can write best about. It's very, very specific, and I agree that if you haven't been there it looks absolutely crazy from the outside.

Do I trust these "pings"? It's complicated. Sometimes I don't have them, but think I should have them, and of course I can't trust them I do not want to and I can not get hurt over something so silly as a feeling of wanting to help or something being wrong.

Hmm. It sounds like you like (or even idealize) Lion primaries. Honestly, very common for Birds.

A life is not a painting where you can feel the colour balance, or not. That's why I loved art and hated it at the same time. I loved how I could be oblivious and just go with my gut, with the flow and with what I thought fits and how it looks best. And I hated all the art and colour theory, it made it all sound like computer science to me.

You're probably an in-the-moment, improvisational secondary (Snake or Lion) that's what I'm hearing here (and also what I'm getting from your writing style.) Painting technique is a method, after all.

Could I trust a ping drop out one major and maybe start a different one? No, of course not! I saw a lion primary talking about this, and I did the opposite and finished the thing I hated and knew I was wrong for. I wasn't happier, and I never felt at peace with that decision, but it was already made, who was there to assure me I will not feel the same way the next time, in a different major? Was I the problem, or was it not my path? Was that other choice the right one? Will I regret it in the end? Perhaps I will find a place here after all? I didn't know what would make me happy and what would be the right choice, so I stayed. I changed a lot internally, and not for the best, but I also gained things in the process.

I have 100% switched majors, and at one point schools, because I felt a strong enough 'ping.' And that felt moral and safe to me. But it doesn't make sense to you, because that's not how you think. It does sound like there's some Burnt Bird going on here though. You looked at all the sides of the issue... and didn't see a real reason why changing would be better. Birds can and do *make* themselves like a decision. It's very cool. But you seem in process of creating your system. And because it's half-built, you can only be half-content with decisions you make with it.

Also, I knew my mom was supporting my first major, and I never wanted to lose that support, and her being even a little proud of me being there, over just leaving because I knew I wasn't happy, and it didn't fit me. While my mother hates people and judges them in absolute, I never do that, at least I try. But I hate just the general idea of it all.

All things being equal, your Mom sounds like a really intense Authoritarian Badger, and you are really conflicted about her. I'm just putting that out there, because I think it explains some of the pressure you're feeling to not think about things - just do the the Badger thing - just do the thing Mom wants.

I'm a rule follower. If there's a rule, a code, I want to hold on to it. Unless it is actively harmful and hurting someone. Of course, rules are meant to be broken when they are harmful and hurting people, animals. Although it’s easier to just live in status quo. I don't see why I shouldn't follow the rules if they are fine and creating a stable environment to be in.

Bird with a strong Badgery influence.

It's not like I have a strong preference over these things most of the time.

You say that a lot. "I might still not have an opinion or a conviction." "Perhaps if I could change my views, it wasn't that strong in the first place, and I didn't care about it a lot. " And you definitely doesn't have to have a strong opinion about everything, nobody does. But I do wonder if you're maybe not *letting* yourself have strong opinions.

But I’m mostly ruled over by my emotions and general need to feel comfort, not pain in any of its forms. I’m nowhere near as thoughtful and data based as birds I've seen around in the community.

You could be a Bird whose entire system is "avoid pain." That's literally Epicurus. Sure, your system of thought does seem less developed than some others I've read. But you also seem younger AND it seems like you've spent in a long time in a situation where you were not encouraged to build out a personal philosophy.

I never know the answer unless it's absolutely right there under my nose or something is objectively wrong. It's really easy for others to convince me I was wrong, I did wrong, or just put at least a "maybe" in my mind. How can you function with a "maybe" all the time and with little to no memory for details and data you read about?

Being tortured by the eternal "maybe" is core Bird primary. (Having a lot of facts and figures in your head is not.)

I can remember what I experienced just fine. But details of how to do something, or details of something a research paper mentions and analyses? I'm out. I actually don't even care that much, just please don’t tell anyone else. To use something that are used in shc, if an information isn't shiny, new, interesting, my brain doesn't care a bit.

You do not have to memorize research papers. It's *fine.* You also don't have to care about ALL the information. No one does. It's not possible. Doing that definitely, definitely does not have to be this guilty secret or moral failing.

I was writing a paragraph about an actual situation but I thought the important thing is the why, the belief, so here it goes.

I like the specific examples better than the hypothetical examples, guys. Sadly I had to cut out the next paragraph because it was so vague and general that it could have meant almost anything. Absolutely change details if you want to make sure you keep yourself anonymous, but tell me a story.

I started to feel more things about life when I experienced it more, met more people, branched out, and also when I started hanging out on Tumblr. It provided me with things people thought are important, and I was like okay, yeah, I can’t see why not.

That's why I love Birds.

Even if it wasn’t my culture, my people or my country, I generally believe if you can, you should care, even if just for a little.

What can I say. I think caring - in any way that is not destructive to yourself or others - is good for you. What you care about can be anything. That's a big part of the reason why I also love Tumblr.

See, my life was always more about should and would than wants, which is why now I am so angry,

That is very much how it is, when you have an intensely Badger parent or grow up in an intensely Badger household.

I am not, but two things that tie me with Badger primary these days are – 1) that I feel so drawn to its burned explanation.

You can model Burned Badger. Which you probably do, if your Mom goes in heavy with the Badger-style dehumanization.

and 2) the power of having people around you. The more I keep going, the more I understand the need of having people around you, a support group. It's not coming from a happy place, it's coming from a realization, that while you can help yourself, a wound made by someone else will never heal by itself, it will always need someone else in your life.

That's a human thing. We're pack animals. We need connection, we need support. We just do.

I don't think I'm a loyalist

I agree.

although that pill was hard to swallow.

I hear you, and I've been there. It's hard, when you've got a lot of Loyalists in your life.

I will stay by the side of someone I care about when they need me, when they're hurt, when they need protection, support, be given space to talk it out. But I don't love them; I sometimes don't like the people they are. And I want that, almost the same as I want a relationship and a friend, or not to be alone. I want to admire them and like who they are. Not long ago I had a little head butting with someone from the family. We both thought that obviously our own opinion is the right one, and we should take the other to our side. I was aggressively asked why I am defending my side, why I always speak up for these people. I was a bit shocked to find out my freedom to hold my own opinion and talk about it and defend it while allowing them to do the same was met with such aggressive reaction.

And there we go. That right there is where the Burnt Bird energy is coming from. You want to do the Bird thing, debate a side, stretch your intellectual muscles. That's how Birds build and edit their systems. And then you're not even told "you're wrong." You're told "why are you even arguing at all."

Sadly I do not have a good memory for details and little to no control over my emotions in heated moments, so I never learned to argue, and I never have any actual points except my own experience, which is silly and people don't care about that, but it's the thing I know and remember the best.

I suspect that you're a Lion secondary. That's what this sounds like. And it sounds like your Lion might be slightly burnt, because it's been devalued. It certainly is not "silly."

I can only untangle, understand, clearly see and follow my train of thoughts and reasoning when I write it down (or maybe talk it out, but that’s too vulnerable sometimes, but satisfying also). I am useless in debates and heated moments.

Classic Lion secondary. Classic Bird Lion, actually.

Furthermore, I wouldn’t say something is right just because I feel it, but I would definitely be a bit dumbfounded and I would need time to figure what is happening in my head. Personal things are hard to untangle, but impersonal are easier.

I saw a beautiful and functioning found family that was underappreciated and brushed of by the media it was in. I felt that that would be enough for me, I would take that, would be happy and healthy. Not only that, but I can easily attach myself to these things that change my mind in this way and be like “this is my way now”.

I am not at all surprised that you are fantasizing about a beautiful and functional found family, or better - a beautiful and functional community. Bird primaries are external primaries after all. Their environments are really, really important to them.

I’m pretty confident now I am not trying to consciously and unconsciously appear as something, and even when I am doing that, it’s weirdly me. Imagine if I am a rainbow, I have at least 7 colours in me. Sometimes one colour appears stronger, sometimes I myself make a colour stronger, but I cannot appear as a colour that is not in me, I think.

This is a lovely, poetic version of the Lion secondary "dimmer switch" or "volume dial" metaphor.

I do not remember scientific facts about rainbows much, but I am kind of certain there’s no exact black or pink, or lake green. It would be a real hard work to produce these colours in me, although I’m sure it’s possible if needed.

I agree with one bird primary submission. The quiz is absolutely wonderful, but I can’t find the answers for myself, not because it’s not there, but because I see more than one, or I can’t translate what I think and feel into that answer.

That is indeed how pretty much every Bird primary interacts with the test. They could imagine building every single primary (and so they think that's what the other primaries are.)

When you think about it, I am a translator, of my mind and inner workings to this world, into words even. I like that thought. I guess everyone is a translator of their own world. No, an interpretation, because neither we neither the world is static, it does not stay the same after you translate it.

Beautiful, and true.

I thought I was loyalist, and strongly. And it has taken me a lot to take in the fact that I am not, although I’m not saying I don’t have doubts. The fact that I want someone I can see as admirable and having nice values made it clearer for me, it's a more idealized view and not actually seeing a person and taking them as they are or even needing that exact loyalist thing, just a connection, also me being able to cut ties in a blink of an eye. Thank god for my friend who is also probably not a loyalist for coming back. All I know her being in my world or not don’t change the state of my loneliness.

That's good. I'm glad you've got idealists in your life also.

On a happier note, I am just mainly writing to you, being an ass and asking can I really be a bird primary because if I am, I really require help to see that, because in a million year I would have never seen it. Do I sound combative and passive-aggressive?

Not at all. Sounds to me like you've got a sort of perfect, ideal version of a Bird in your head, and think if you can't be that, ALL the time... then you can't be a Bird.

My final thoughts (I hope so, I'm so sorry, this is so frustrating) (pls ignore if this is annoying you too)

Burned secondaries and their apologizing.

Thank you for your time and your opinion. I hope this will clear things up for you and for me too. I hope I’m not sounding ungrateful and rude.

I've been stuck deciding between 2 houses for primary and I really need some help...

So, I thought I was a Snake Primary at first but I read up a bit more on Badger Primary and it really resonates with me because I do think people are all people that have inherent rights and deserve respect, and I think I am prone to "dehumanising" to justify why I don't like someone, so I was sure that I'm a Badger Primary...

So far, so Badger.

BUT my religion is also very important to me, like if my religion stated that someone important to me was doing something very bad and had to be cut off..I'd do it. I'd probably try to identify the exact bad thing and try to justify that hey, maybe it's not so bad!

What's interesting here is the almost rules-lawyer vibe of this hypothetical. (And you know me, I always like specifics over hypotheticals, and can do a lot more with them, but hey.) It's fascinating that your instinct is to try to find a way to argue around the the hypothetical Bad Thing. That's definitely not an internal primary (Lion or Snake) where you would just get a FEELING and that feeling would be TRUE.

But if I was truly convinced they were doing something bad according to my religion, I'd cut them off. That sounds a lot like a Bird Primary to me..

An idealist, for *sure.*

So then I thought, well, would I feel guilty doing it? I'm not sure, because I've never been in that type of situation, but I feel like I'd try really hard to make that person be better and help them out so they wouldn't be bad and thus I wouldn't have to cut them out or something, and if I cut them off I'd feel pretty paranoid that I went too far and maybe it wasn't that bad, again, that sounds like a Badger right?

I could actually see that being pretty much anything. Cutting someone off is a big, complicated, dire thing full of a lot of emotions, which makes it hard to get clean data. Probably everyone would try to make the person better first (by their definition of better) and probably everyone would have at least one dark night of the soul where they wondered if their actions were justified.

I think the Bird Primary thing might just be a model from my religion or something, I remember once I almost believed something blatantly false that almost made me renounce my religion. I remember I was literally sobbing because I felt betrayed? I couldn't process the fact that my system for telling right from wrong was wrong itself, and that sounds very Bird

It sounds very VERY Bird. This is a VERY Birdy crisis.

but I remember thinking, "well if this is really true, then I'll have to become an agnostic because people are people and I can't support something that oppresses people because that's wrong" and THAT sounds Badger.

But it's ALSO possible that actually, the Badger Primary is a model, and Bird is my Primary. My Desi family is pretty big on family first, I might have gotten it from there.

I remember having a conversation with my mom about how I'm going to move out when I'm older, and she began the whole 'but who will take care of me' 'the nuclear family model was introduced by those angrez (white people/british) this is not our way' and all, but I don't remember feeling guilty? I was more angry that she wasn't considering MY feelings, because I'm important too.

I used to be pretty bad at considering myself important, probably because of my parents guilt-tripping and family-comes-first thing, I still kind of struggle with that but I'm getting better, like, community IS important to me, but if my community was doing something wrong or hurting me, I wouldn't hesitate to call them out, and the way I determine what is right and what is wrong is through my religion.

Your Badger and your Bird are very, very bound up together. I suspect most of the time you look Badgery, because you've got a Badgery system. But it's still a system. You get right and wrong from your religion, and apply them outwards into the community. If that community (or the people in the community) do things that you consider wrong - then you call them out, or might even cut them off.

You also have a trick of taking about your Badger tendency in slightly more negative terms than your Bird tendencies. You talk about "dehumanising" and "paranoia" and "guilt tripping," and I'm not surprised that you've got a super Badger family. Badger is talked about as something slightly external, while Bird is just neutral. Your relationship with religion seems to be very much *yours,* which is another reason I'm voting for Bird Primary, Badger system.

At this point I'm so confused that I'd take pretty much anything, even the initial Snake Primary. I'm just glad I'm sure of my secondary, I'm definitely a Snake secondary with a Secondary Bird Model, if that helps somehow.

I'm gravitating towards Bird with Badger Model, but I'm not sure, and the tiny chance that I was actually right about Snake Primary is now wriggling in my thought process, please help I can't decide things for myself lol

You sound like a Snake with a strong Badger model. "Others tell me that I'm selfish" tells me that you've got STRONG Badger voices around you, and (as a loyalist primary) I'd be surprised if they didn't heavily effect you when you were younger. Then the model burnt... and it sounds like you kinda liked it that way, and may have even found your Snake underneath everything. You talk about your Snake like it's part of you, and you talk about your Badger as something separate, a voice at the back of your head. It can feel *necessary* to burn, but it doesn't feel good.

As for the question 'do primaries change'... I've never seen it happen with a fictional character, but they're also not nearly as complex as real people, and sorting a character from the outside is a whole different skillset from sorting yourself from the inside.

SHC is just a series of words designed to help you describe yourself to yourself, and so if it is helpful or useful to you to think of your primary changing, I am all for that.

Hello, everyone! @wisteria-lodge asked the shc community if we would like to help answering some asks, and a number of us volunteered, so this is a reply to one of those asks. I am excited to give this a go!

To the question: The easy answer is, no, not necessarily. Birds can incorporate the ideas of different primaries into their systems (similar to how a Lion can have Snake ideals - one of their causes is protecting/caring for their loved ones) without having that primary as a model. My system has a lot of Badger to it, but I wouldn't say I model Badger. I believe that all people are people and that all people deserve certain things, and I love belonging to a group/groups of people (which is probably a person thing - everyone wants to belong to some degree/in some way), but I'm not motivated by those communities. I learn from them! I process what I hear and see if I vibe with it, and I decided if I want to incorporate it into my system or not, but I don't make exceptions for my communities - unlike what I sometimes do for the people who are a core part of my Snake model. (I don't model Badger, so my best point of reference is the Snake model. Sorry about that anon. 😅)

My primary model feels almost seperate from my primary? In the way that other-primary-flavored ideals within my system don't. I like to think of it as if my primary is a main, larger island and that my model is a smaller island connected to the main island by bridges. Basically, if it feels somewhat removed from yourself and how you usually make your decisions - it's probably a model. Models for me tend to be the exception to the rule, while my primary is the rule. Flavored ideals are more flexible then models (for me at least) because they're part of my system so I can somewhat easily edit them.

I'm not about cause than community, but I don't know I could go it alone.

I don't really know how that fits with my Badger primary model cause I don't really understand it very well. What I do know though is that it would take a ten times bigger disagreement with my family before I'd consider cutting myself off from them. They are home and I don't know that'll I'd find anyone else that would love me how they do. (Not that I don't think anyone could love me, it's just that I don't know how to find them.)

I decided to retake the quiz AGAIN and this time got Bird Primary right off the bat. Which on the one hand is a little reassuring because that's what I've thought for a good long while. But THEN... I started digging more just to see what models I might have aaaand now I'm torn again. Here's where I stand:

Anon who sent the ask about love and vulnerability : I also model Exploded Badger Primary if that helps.

This definitely sounds like an unhealthy Badger primary model. Especially since your mom is probably a Boomer, and unhealthy Badger primaries are kind of a cultural *thing* for female Boomers. Like, it’s not just her. The Karen trope is an unhealthy Badger primary trope, not that I’m calling your mom a Karen.