#overcompensation

I tried to correct these traits by aligning myself with public morality and seeking others’ approval. However, here lies a paradox: I was attempting to grow, but my motivation was the desire to be better than others, so every approval I received became proof of my superiority. In this sense, I equated intelligence with maturity, and thus viewed approval as evidence of my intellect. Later, I began to recognize this paradox, though I didn’t try to resolve it — I simply accepted it as a given, even though I worried that it might make my judgment biased or unreliable.

Why am I telling this? Because I believe it contributes to the “strangeness” of my thought process. I experience odd emotional reactions — physically unpleasant, strangely enough — when I see people doing things purely for profit or acting in a shallow, insincere way. I suppose the closest word for this feeling is resentment.

Why do I associate this with my moral development? I believe these reactions stem from my efforts to follow societal values and norms, which leads me to judge others based on those standards. However, this judgment feels automatic and involuntary — not something derived from conscious reasoning.

So, I wonder: are these reactions simply ingrained social values, or could they be better explained by the Fi function? In other words, might Fi drive me to maintain alignment between my behavior and personal identity, values, and preferences — such that insincerity or dehumanizing behavior triggers emotional resistance?

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You've described your thought process well enough that I understand the patterns. I don't believe any of it points to Fi, though I get why you would consider the possibility. There is actually a very distinct absence of Fi all along the way, from childhood until now. Realistically, there's no way auxiliary Fi would arise so suddenly and so late, even if you were to experience a huge life-changing event (which you haven't).

Even when people aren't very subjectively aware of their auxiliary function due to delayed development, from an objective observer's vantage point, evidence of the function will still appear to permeate judgment and decision-making. But there is no such underlying evidence of Fi in your case. There is for Ti, though.

A lot of people suffer from self-esteem issues, so it isn't specifically a personality type problem. However, type tends to make an appearance in how people choose to respond to low self-esteem, which is one factor I often examine when assessing type.

A common response to low self-esteem is compensation:

Compensation is a defense mechanism whereby a person attempts, usually unconsciously, to address a perceived weakness, flaw, or deficiency by "growing" in a way that serves to mask their insecurity about it.

Overcompensation happens when people strive too hard for a sense of superiority in one facet of life in order to cover up a sense of inferiority in some other facet.

By my understanding, compensation is a reaction to low self-esteem (feeling bad about yourself) and overcompensation extends beyond self-esteem into low self-worth (not feeling "good enough", e.g., to deserve acceptance and love).

In order to possess the self-confidence necessary to succeed in life, one needs to build up life skills, skills that help one meet challenges and adapt appropriately to changing circumstances. Life challenges and circumstances are quite diverse, so life skills are also quite diverse. To give you a bigger picture view of life skills and why they require lifelong commitment to improve, they include things such as:

analytical skills

caregiving skills

civic literacy skills

communication skills

community building skills

conflict resolution skills

creative thinking skills

decision making skills

diet management skills

emotional regulation skills

financial literacy skills

home maintenance skills

housekeeping skills

leadership skills

media literacy skills

networking skills

organization skills

planning skills

problem solving skills

productivity skills

relationship skills

research skills

self-care skills

self-directed learning skills

self-expression skills

stress management skills

teamwork skills

technological skills

time management skills

Why is over/compensation unhealthy? Mainly because it is a distraction that doesn't address the real underlying problem. Using your case as an example, you felt inadequate due to the fact that your upbringing didn't prepare you to succeed in life on your own. What your parents did is not your fault, but now you have a problem to deal with. How should one respond to this problem? Logically, one ought to pick up the knowledge and skills that one missed out on learning earlier in life as soon as possible. Doing this would gradually boost independence and self-esteem in a healthy way.

Many people don't know that throughout the history of psychology, "intelligence" has always been a controversial concept and very difficult to define properly. In the most basic terms, intelligence is the ability to learn new concepts in a timely manner and apply them effectively. From this perspective, increasing your skillfulness through learning and improving life skills is a legitimate expression of intelligence. A truly intelligent person is humble, in that they know what they don't know and then work to fill in the gaps appropriately. The notion of superiority/inferiority never enters the picture.

The "intelligence" you speak of doesn't seem to bear any resemblance to the above, does it? For some reason, you linked the concept of intelligence to social approval and feelings of superiority. Social perception and subjective feelings are not reliable measures, are they? Social perception changes with the times. For example, what was once socially acceptable becomes socially unacceptable a mere ten years later. Feelings can be fleeting and are not always an accurate representation of reality. For example, today you feel great because you got a good night's sleep, but tomorrow you feel terrible because you ate a bad dinner the night before.

When you stake your personal identity on murky things such as social perception and subjective feelings, don't be surprised that your existence eventually becomes very unstable. Mental instability creates phenomena such as intrusive thoughts, weirdly intense feelings, and inexplicable mood swings. And then a lot of mental energy gets wasted trying to manage instability, energy that could otherwise be spent on learning and growth.

To put it bluntly, you were creating an illusion of intelligence based on appearances rather than expressing genuine intelligence, unconsciously believing that compensation would cure low self-esteem. But relying on other people's validation to feel good about yourself is a problem because it puts you forever in the position of a passive victim, always at the mercy of external opinions, always reacting from behind. Is it possible to become a truly independent person by taking this path? Quite the opposite, taking this path is the road to perpetual dependency and, thus, chronic low self-esteem.

When people engage in over/compensation, they're not actually addressing the most pressing skill deficits (long-term solution) but, rather, merely trying to alleviate negative feelings such as shame or resentment (short-term bandaid). Best-case outcome is that their skills never improve and personal growth stagnates. Worst-case outcome is they pick up bad habits that increase the chances of mistakes and failures in life, such as putting ever more energy into keeping up appearances and neglecting actual growth.

While you were correct to emphasize the notion of intelligence, and your desire to grow in that direction came from a good place, the method you chose was ultimately unhealthy and could even become self-destructive. Basically, you calculated wrong because you didn't know any better, and I hope that my answering this question for you helps you to know a bit better. For what it's worth, the particular method of compensation you chose for responding to low self-esteem is consistent with tertiary Fe loop patterns that result from underdeveloped auxiliary Ti.

At this point in your life, you are almost an adult, so the call to independence is at its loudest. You have a choice to make: Are you going to choose the right means to become a truly capable and independent adult? Or are you going to keep relying on childish tricks and games to fool yourself into thinking you're smarter than you really are? If you keep choosing the latter, your life will eventually be dominated by fear of being exposed as a fraud or imposter.

If you're going to keep relying on what you call "public morality", you're going to keep running into uncomfortable contradiction after uncomfortable contradiction. Why? Because the elevation of public morality as the ultimate moral standard is problematic. Public morality is a fuzzy and transitory concept, so it cannot be any kind "ultimate" standard. However, public morality does have legitimate usefulness in terms of societal cohesion and advancement, so it should not be entirely dismissed, either. The issue is whether you eventually have enough intelligence to apply the concept more appropriately.

These disturbing "feelings" you're describing are related to the emergence of your own personal moral conscience, which is a vital step in moral development for all people. Moral development is a separate matter from type development, though they intersect at times. Becoming an adult should include developing an independent moral point-of-view, otherwise, you will always be easily tricked and manipulated by external forces.

And when personal values and public morality collide, what are you going to do? You need critical thinking skills to work out the conflict in the best way, which should be part and parcel of Ti development. If you are anything like other ESTPs, your line of inquiry is heading in the wrong direction towards Fi perhaps because you are unconsciously trying to shirk the responsibility of thinking more deeply on such matters? If you did think deeply, it would seriously interfere with the old Fe loop compensation strategy, and then life would become much more complicated and threaten you with Ni horrors?