Grahamcracker asked: How would you identify when someone is unhealthy for their personality type?

The tell-tale sign of an unhealthy type is that they will embody the stereotypes.

Well-developed thinking types will make decisions based on both logic and emotion and vice versa for feeling types. A healthy individual is well balanced between their four functions, relying on all of them interacting between one another to live their life.

Another classic tell is whether or not the person manipulates people. Unhealthy thinking types often disregard other people’s feelings and use “logic” or “just being honest” as an excuse for bad behaviour. Unfortunately, this means that thinking types can also be extremely good at gaslighting. Meanwhile, unhealthy feeling types often have a tendency to rely on emotional appeals such as guilting, projection, and triangulation, as a way to control other people’s behaviour. This is all stuff that any therapist will tell you is toxic (both for you and for other people).

Grahamcracker asked: And how would you know if someone was well-developed in all four?

Want to know how to find yourself a keeper? While I can’t guarantee you’ll cross paths or have success connecting with said keeper, I’ll offer a modicum of advice on how to identify healthy MBTI types.

First and foremost––this person does not manipulate people, especially not intentionally. Second, you’ll see them making decisions based on more than just logic, or emotion alone. They’ll use a balance of both. You see their better self, a healthy person who knows what is important, plays well with others, and is neither overly insecure or overly self-important. To be balanced, to make good decisions, and to be a good partner in a relationship, you need to be as emotionally healthy as possible, and that means using all your functions.

I’m tired so I will not go into these in-depth, but you can get the general gist by combining the cognitive functions that make up your type.

Healthy Fe-Ti: caring about other people’s feelings and preservation, while also being able to step back and analyze something objectively, to learn how it works so that you can improve your relationships.

Healthy Te-Fi: being motivated to organize things and adhere to logical principles, while being aware that politeness is a useful tool in life and that not everything needs to be said, while holding to a strong set of moral principles.

Healthy Ti-Fe: staying focused on logical objectives, but also softening one’s words to avoid hurting other people’s feelings or alienating others in attempt to work toward a greater purpose that benefits everyone.

Healthy Fi-Te: championing causes and inspiring others to follow your lead, while remaining true to your beliefs but also enabling others to have different values systems from your own, and organizing your time and space effectively to accomplish your goals.

Healthy Si-Ne: bring valuable information to the table through things you have learned and your own experiences, but accept that your memories are subjective interpretations of events and that considering new avenues of possibilities is not a threat to your usual routines.

Healthy Se-Ni: staying open to both participating in new experiences and helping others to see opportunities around them, while realizing that there is more to life than just this moment, and all actions in the present have future consequences.

Healthy Ne-Si: entertaining many possibilities but also remembering past experience, learning from the mistakes of others, and seeking out extensive details, so as to make wise decisions.

Healthy Ni-Se: visualizing goals and discerning how to reach them, while also being unafraid to take opportunities as they appear, thus avoiding staying too much inside the mind and seeing their ideas implemented in the real world.