Where does Type begin and Mental Illness End?

[Animal]

Some people would claim type and mental illness are entirely separate. "I'm not anxious like a six, that's my PTSD." "I'm not lethargic like a nine, I'm severely depressed." Others would claim mental illness is an expression of the lowest potentials of the type. For instance, Naranjo calls six paranoid, five schizoid, two histrionic, etc.

To me, the truth lies somewhere in between. Type is bound to give us proclivities toward certain mental illnesses - for instance the likelihood that a schizoid person has prominent 5 in their type is high, and the likelihood that an 873 has some dose of narcissism in lower levels is undeniable.

It's important to remember that mental illness is not character. Ten people might all suffer from severe depression and therefore have similar symptoms, such as lethargy, giving up, flat emotions, suicidal ideation etc - but each one will choose to tackle this in a different way, and fixate on certain things as 'causes,' talk about it or not, be ashamed of this but not that. The way people interpret their illness, and choose to follow up on treatment or not, says a lot.

Anyway, I invite you guys to explore this. Share personal stories or general thoughts.

[Animal]

I'll start by saying that my 'dark side' and trauma reaction has usually been in line with my typing - as in predictable that an unhealthy 4, especially with 8, would behave this way. (I'll get into that later.) But when I start having terrifying symptoms that threaten my life and/or impair my ability to think, I live in pure terror, like a core 5. I'm afraid to leave the house, to see humans, to drive. Everything overwhelms me and the whole world seems like one big death trap. This is not my usual self as I'm quite bold, and I'd rather go down fighting for what I believe. Death is not scary compared to living an empty life where my passions are locked in a jar. So normally I charge right at the world and express myself, worried only about consequences to my integrity, my image, my love life - but not worried about things like dying. It happens to everyone eventually and it's more important to be true to myself.

However, when I can't trust my own mind and body, due to mental slowness, dizziness or symptoms like shortness of breath and heart issues, I feel like I can't trust mySELF - which is the only thing I can trust. This is why in the deepest throes of trauma, I typed at 5. To my credit, the descriptions were by RH and their four description is steeped in attachment themes - it fits my triple-attached husband better than myself. A four might relate to it if they're 469 and probably high Social - but many wouldn't. So there's not much in there for me; just enough that I gave my 5 a 4 wing. But I didn't just type at 5 because of the line to 8 (which I knew I had, and I didn't know about tritype then).... or the bad four description. I also DEEPLY related to the complete overwhelm of pure terror that I was living in every day.

So in this case, losing trust in my ability to function made me behave more like a 5, hiding away in a hole, digging deep into myself, creating my own inner beautiful world and building up skills obsessively within that paradigm. That inner universe is my reality - but normally it exists in tandem with Earth, whereas during these periods, I avoided Earth as much as possible. It may be noteworthy that I still did my work, showed up to class and did what I have to do, but I did not consider that world 'mine,' or even 'real.'

Also, to be clear, the reason I say 5 instead of 6, is that I had a separate world that I lived in, and I was paranoid about being incapable in the world outside because my mind and body were glitching beyond my control. I wasn't paranoid about people, who to trust, or what they think of me.

This has only happened during two periods of my life, for less than a year each - when the illness messed with my basic functioning just enough to scare the crap out of me, but not enough to leave me bedridden.

[ledyanoy]

[ledyanoy]

[Animal]

ledyanoy

I agree that mental illness is far too often being attributed to regular coping mechanisms. These days every child who is introverted or weird is diagnosed with autism, and any kid that can't focus for the entire 8 hour school day and also do their homework is given ADD meds. Maybe the problem isn't the kids, it's the society.....



For many years when I was trauma-reacting, psychiatrists diagnosed me with PTSD, but I refused the diagnosis. I told them that having deep feelings and fear about a trauma is not a mental illness - it's facing the truth and my emotions about it. Basically I was staring my trauma in the face so I can process it fully and be reborn.

However, over the years, especially once my PTSD subsided, I realized why the diagnosis had merit - because this wasn't just about building myself up again, which is a never ending process. It was about physical issues with my brain processing which were caused by the shock of the trauma as well as the Lyme itself, which causes neurological symptoms. I was definitely right - I was rationally and profoundly staring my fears in the face - but beyond that, these periods of major anxiety had physical causes.

I can prove this recently. Most of my stuff was better and I went off antibiotics (for Lyme & other tick born illnesses) a few years ago. This past year I started getting all sorts of symptoms- breathing issues, dizziness, leaning over involuntarily toward one side (imbalance), confusion, heart palpitations, very low blood pressure, and so on. I mean I had to focus hard to be able to breathe at all, for quite a long time. So it's rational to panic right? But I was in perpetual panic mode even when these symptoms hadn't happened that week. The moment I got back on antibiotics, not only did many of my symptoms disappear but also my anxiety. Now I might have short episodes with symptoms but I'm cool. The change happened within about 2-3 weeks of taking the meds I need (during which time I also regained my ability to breathe normally). I will be clear, the breathing issue is NOT related to anxiety, it's cellular. But what I'm saying is, the medicine ALSO resolved neurological symptoms. So this wasn't just me panicking like any person would --- and I knew it! I knew something was wrong and I kept saying "this isn't like me. This isn't like me. I am not this way." I was right because my physical brain itself was under attack.

And this is what I believe mental illness is. I'm not a doctor or a scientist so this is just my personal thought, and I'm willing to be completely off - but I'll just share my 'observation-based' opinion. Which is : Mental illness is not about your 'mindset' or regular coping skills - nor is it about personal quirks. It's about actually having a physical issue inside your body that makes your thoughts go haywire, just as any illness does to the body.

[Vive]

(Any 'you' or 'your' here in this post is intended as a general 'you')

Type is a core fixation, part of the why behind your actions. It's your filter for reality. It is not strange then, if your specific filter and view leads you more often to a specific type of disorder.

Once you've entered the underworld of disorders though, it is very likely you'll pick up bits of other disorders. Mental disorders are often more like networks of symptoms than diseases. So far, no one in psychological science has been able to establish a proper (general) causal mechanism for any mental disorder. Sure, there are theories and they find that certain brain areas are related to certain disorders, but is the dysfunction in a specific area the cause of that disorder? Perhaps, but there are often exceptions and there is great heterogeneity in symptoms even within groups of people with the same disorder. A more recent development in psychological science has thus been to conceptualize mental disorders as a network, as symptoms of one disorder tend to predict and correlate strongly with the symptoms of another. With the help of symptom networks people can actually (to a certain degree) predict incoming depressions, by noting when disorder related symptoms start intensifying and increasing in correlation.

Mental disorders can be like snowballs from hell. Once there are a couple of symptoms and we cannot really speak of a disorder, the snowball is easy to stop and it doesn't roll down the hill as fast, but as symptoms strengthen and increase in number, the snowball because increasingly faster, bigger and harder to stop, that is unless proper psychological intervention is given.

In the end I think that you would able to identify your enneatype when you look back to what you were like and what motivated and drove you even before you developed mental disorder. Mental disorders can cloud self-judgement though, so that might be a problem when trying to separate the type from the disorder. I think that if you dig deep into the disorders and discover what might have sparked them and what fears contributed to it worsening/starting then you might also discover what motivates you on a deeper level, which in turn could help with separating your enneatype from the disorder.

[Fragmented]