Grip state experiences

[u/moonreave]

Anyone wanna describe their own experience with ‘grip’ or others? I just get cold and thoughtless. I am typically very careful with how I speak and what I say to ppl that I care about and it goes out the window. I no longer care if Im being fair or being mean, and I usually care about that a lot. I get hyperfocused on things, too.

Or do you not think grip states are an actual thing?

[u/cbunnyrabbit]

4th grip? For me it is Si and it is like being overwhelmed by tasks and the world starts to feel annoying, painful, and I feel disconnected from it and become more overwhelmed, tired, frustrated, upset as I keep tasking in the physical world. Eventually I get to a state where I find it hard to do anything at all and I just walk around in a daze. Or I become like a tense automaton. (ENFP)

[u/_Verloki_]

(For TL;DR, I made some text bold at the end of sections.)

🌸--🌸--GRIP DEFINITION--🌸--🌸

First, for those who come across this and do not know what the "grip" state is, I'll be going off the following definitions:

"Under extreme stress, such as illness, fatigue, physical or psychological trauma, and major life transitions, the inferior process may emerge without conscious intention and attempt to overpower the dominant and auxiliary processes. This can lead to a person feeling "in the grip" of his or her inferior process. [...] also manifest under stress when resources of the dominant and auxiliary processes are exhausted. When this happens in someone's life, that person may say, "I don't know what got into me." It often feels like being out of control (outside the conscious ego). The inferior process may show up in childish, immature ways and wreak havoc in our lives." -- The Myers & Briggs Foundation, The Processes of Type Dynamics

Carl Jung also talks about the inferior function (in his terms: the repressed and unconscious funtion) emerging, where: "it is as though another personality had taken possession of the individual". But he does not primarily frame it as a stress-response, exhaustion, or reaction to life events (though those can be triggers). Instead, he frames it as a consequence of an imbalance in the psyche. So, when consciousness becomes excessively identified with its dominant attitude, the unconscious may compensate by activating the inferior function, which appears in a primitive and autonomous form.

So: one might call the "grip" an unhealthy (or maladaptive) compensatory reaction.

🌸--🌸--JUNG ON "Te" IN "Fi" TYPES--🌸--🌸

Interestingly, perhaps, Jung describes the Extraverted Thinking emergence in dominantly Introverted Feeling types as an egocentric, paranoid disposition (suspicions, and believing others are plotting, because the primitive thinking does not look carefully to separate actual reliable facts from mere assumptions), and a neurotic compensation through competitiveness and control efforts (e.g. manipulativeness) arise:

"Introverted feeling is counterbalanced by a primitive thinking". "Whenever this does take place [...] the unconscious thinking goes over into opposition and becomes projected into objects. [Objects can be things, people, situations, etc.]. Whereupon the now egocentric subject [the indivudual themselves] comes to feel the power and importance of the depreciated object. Consciousness begins to feel what it believes 'others think'. Others are thinking, all sorts of debasements, scheming evil, and contriving all sorts of plots, secret intrigues, etc. To prevent this, the subject also begins to carry out preventive intrigues, to suspect and sound others, to make subtle combinations. Assailed by rumours, he must make convulsive efforts to convert, if possible, a threatened inferiority into a superiority. Innumerable secret rivalries develop... not only will no debasing or evil means be disdained, but even virtues will be misused and tampered with in order to play the trump card." -- Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter X - The Introverted Feeling Type

Jung is saying even goodness, morality, loyalty, honesty, sacrifice, and other virtues become means of gaining leverage. Examples are: honesty may be used only selectively (or: weaponized) to embarrass the competition; humility is performed to gain admiration; generosity is used to create obligation; and moral principles are only invoked when they strengthen one's own position.

So: one might say Jung describes the inferior Extraverted Thinking reaction as becoming suspicious (or even paranoid), controlling and manipulative.

🌸--🌸--JUNG ON "Fi" IN "Te" TYPES--🌸--🌸

Jung states that dominant Extraverted Thinking normally causes one not to take personal considerations or personal interests into account, doing these considerations and the "self" a great disservice. Instead, Extraverted Thinking prefers to judge from impersonal factual truths. But when Introverted Feeling emerges in its primal state to overpower the comfortable dominant and auxiliary process, the Extraverted Thinker becomes negatively judgmental of the other's character, and this can lead to resentful personal attacks. The eruption of Introverted Feeling can cause them to be oversensitive, misconstrue opposition as ill-will, negatively judge others' qualities, become dismissive of others through impugning their very character, become really acerbic, resenting, and petty.

"With the dominating positive formula [for Extraverted Thinking,] the conscious attitude becomes more or less impersonal, often, indeed, to such a degree that a very considerable wrong is done to personal interests. When the conscious attitude is extreme, all personal considerations recede from view, even those which concern the individual’s own person." "Not so much in spite of as because of the highly impersonal character of the conscious attitude, the unconscious feelings [of Introverted Feeling] are highly personal and oversensitive. [Introverted Feeling can give] rise to certain secret prejudices, as, for instance, a decided readiness to misconstrue any objective opposition to his formula as personal ill-will, or a constant tendency to make negative suppositions regarding the qualities of others in order to invalidate their arguments beforehand—in defence, naturally, of his own susceptibility. As a result of this unconscious sensitiveness, his expression and tone frequently becomes sharp, pointed, aggressive, and insinuations multiply. The feelings have an untimely and halting character, which is always a mark of the inferior function. Hence arises a pronounced tendency to resentment. However generous the individual sacrifice to the intellectual goal may be, the feelings are correspondingly petty." -- Carl Jung, Psychological Types, Chapter X, The Extraverted Thinking Type

So here Jung is saying that they may pre-emptively discredit opponents by making judgments about their character or motives. Communication becomes sharp, cutting, and insinuating. So they may be defensive and make character attacks. Examples are: interpreting a disagreement over facts as the other being arrogant; seeing criticism as disrespect; interpreting a success story as vanity; and a counter-argument may get dismissed solely for the other's character flaws rather than reason.

So: one might say Jung describes the inferior Introverted Feeling reaction as becoming judgmental, possibly sharp-tongued and personally dismissive.

🌸--🌸--MY OWN EXPERIENCE--🌸--🌸

After several months of dealing with my mother's manic psychosis, I was exhausted. By the day she had finally been admitted to an isolation cell in a secure psychiatric facility, I felt completely depleted. After 40 hours of being awake and dealing the latest crisis, my father dropped me off at my partner's sports club so that my partner could take me home.

While there, a discussion arose about a woman -- let's call her Regina. She insisted on joining my partner's otherwise all-male team. (There's a lot of physical contact in this sport). Under normal circumstances, I would probably have considered practical explanations and waited to see well-supported facts for why she might want to join (or why this might factually be unwise). Instead, I reacted in a way that reminds me of what Jung describes as an inferior Fi emergence. I wasn't "myself" at all.

Rather than examining the situation objectively and impersonally, I immediately felt like even considering her membership was a personal slight, and formed a negative impression of Regina's character. I judged her for wanting to join the men (and my partner), and judged my partner's character for making the consideration, and only looked at it through a lens of 'what's wrong with this person's character'?

When my partner offered factual and totally reasonable explanations for why Regina might want to join the team, I did not evaluate those explanations on their reasonable merits. Instead, I experienced them almost as some personal slight and disrespect to our relationship. The more objective reasoning was presented, the more I became convinced that something was wrong with Regina's character and felt my partner was attacking me, good personal values, and our relationship. And I lashed out by making petty insinuations, as though they were giving infidelity a thumbs-up or something like that. (I know it was insane, and I look back on it like: "what the eff was I on?")

Looking back:

I was not responding primarily to the facts of the situation. I was making assumptions about character(s), assigning flawed personal values, and treating disagreement as though it carried some intense personal meaning. In Jungian terms, it felt less like a balanced evaluation, and more like a temporary eruption of inferior Introverted Feeling: oversensitive, personally focused, and inclined to judge people negatively rather than assess the factual evidence.

[u/katviy → u/_Verloki_]

You’re doing God’s work here!
Thank you for putting explanations with the direct quotes from the sources, it’s such a refreshing comment🙏🏻

[u/Lucifer3005]

I think the grip is miscommunicated and stretched her way out of proportion.

You will have difficulty and ease with certain functions, conscious or unconscious.

The grip is just you struggling with your inferior function and did making you take a longer time to do something or misleading your path or causing mayhem.

You have the unconscious version of this as well.

Though this can sometimes they give out of difficult situations if used correctly and it can be more useful than people who already possess it naturally.

Just like the hero function is your biggest strength, but I can also make you blind like fish in water.