- This is a short form podcast where the hosts answer questions from the personality hacker community.
- The first question is about shadow typing and the lack of consistent details about it.
- The term "shadow type" has been used in different ways, such as referring to negative versions of preferences or opposite versions of cognitive functions.
- There is no consistent definition for a shadow type and it depends on the context.
- Different authors and schools of thought have their own take on shadow types.
- The concept of shadow type refers to the parts of our mind that are in the shadows, the least represented or understood parts of ourselves.
- The shadow part of us is still within us and influences us, even if we are not aware of it.
- The term "shadow type" is confusing and should be replaced with different words to create distinctions.
- A recommended book on the subject is "Was That Really Me?" by Naomi Quink.

- The speaker recommends looking up material on the 8 function stack in relation to Jungian psychology and shadow typing in Beebe's 8 function model
- The topic being discussed is highly technical and advanced, and may not be understood by everyone
- The focus of the podcast is currently on helping people understand their primary cognitive functions, not the subconscious or unconscious aspects
- The hosts do touch on the impact of the inferior process and ways to overcome it, but they don't use the term "shadow type"
- They have their own take on typology and focus on what they believe is the most effective approach for personal development
- The hosts use a metaphor about video formatting systems to explain their approach of focusing on what is most important and moving forward
- The speaker recommends a book by Noemi Quenk called "Was that really me?" for more information on getting in the grip of shadow processes
- The hosts invite listeners to submit questions for future episodes.

Hi and welcome to questions from the personality hacker community.

And this is a very short form podcast that's going to come out once a week where we take questions from you in any of the community formats that we have, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, our website, email, here on the podcast reviews, whatever that is, and we answer questions here on the air.

So it's gonna be much shorter, and we're going to deal with very specific questions that you decide to send in, and we'll just choose 1 a week and answer them.

So this week's question, our first question comes from Colin.

It says, hello, I wanted to ask thoughts and information about shadow typing, as there seems to be not very consistent details about shadow types, which I assume is a type under especially major stress.

For each type, there seems to be a shadow type described by becoming a negative version of all one's preferences, and also 1 described by an opposite version of all one's cognitive functions.

In summary, I'm asking, what is the actual definition of shadow type?

I'd appreciate any and all information as well as the sources, whether it be online or in book form, because I'd be glad to add to my Myers-Briggs books section in my personal library.

Thanks in advance and much appreciated for any and all help in advance, Colin." So shadow typing, he's got a question about it.

Yeah, and I think that's a fantastic question.

And 1 that I would not be surprised if a lot of people are confused around, because I think the answer legitimately is, there is no consistent definition for a shadow type.

I think this word shadow has been co-opted in multiple different formats.

I think people have used the phrase, your shadow persona or your shadow type in contexts that have nothing to do with Myers-Briggs or personality typology.

I've heard it in reference to your shadow cognitive functions, which would be the 4 functions that are not in your cognitive function stack, or what we call the car model because we think it's a lot easier.

So 4 of your mental processes are in the car model.

And then there's 4 of those 8 mental processes that aren't.

And so the question is, well, how do those influence us?

And a lot of times people will call those 4 that are not in your car.

They'll call those your shadow processes.

And then some people refer to your shadow processes as the backseat passengers in the car are the 2 cognitive functions in your cognitive function stack that are not your strengths.

Some people will say your shadow type is whatever your four-letter Myers-Briggs dichotomy is in reverse.

So like for me, I'm an ENTP, so my shadow type would be ISFJ.

And then I've also heard it said that your shadow type is when you take the 8 cognitive functions and they also have a stack according to John Beebe's model.

John Beebe is the I think he's the guy who heads up the Jungian Institute right now in California.

And I believe there is some talk around your shadow type being whoever, like in that 8 function stack for people, whatever is the reverse of that 8.

So I believe for me it would be a, let's see, so mine would be, NETI, I'm gonna use really Quick math here, so if you don't know the function names or their shorthands, it's okay if you don't follow me, but I would be N-E-T-I-F-E-S-I, and then my opposite would be, from there would be N-I-T-E-F-I-S-E, so I believe my exact opposite would be an ESFP.

Because I believe that that would be the 1 that would go the opposite of me.

So my, according to this model, and I don't even know if Beeb himself has called this your shadow type.

I think it's been co-opted to be called your shadow type whatever your 8 function stack is in reverse.

I think people just grab the word shadow type and they attach it to effectively what they're looking for is what are the parts of your mind that are in the shadows?

What's the part of you that is the least represented or really not being, you know, not really, you're not really touching or getting a finger on the pulse of, you're not really touching in with this part of who you are.

So unfortunately the answer is I don't know.

I don't know what a shadow type is because it really is context dependent.

That said, I think all of these different concepts of shadow types have some merit to them.

I wish they would use different words to create some distinctions around them.

There's a lot of very interesting insights you can get when you reverse your dichotomies.

So for me as an ENTP, my reverse would be an ISFJ.

I remember an ENTP saying that when he was referring to his shadow type, he was using this, you know, in, he was using the word shadow type to refer to the ISFJ side of him, and I remember him saying that he was imagined as this like, meek little Asian woman who, you know, was just very giving and caring, and As an ENTP, he has a meek little Asian woman inside of him.

And that was his stereotype or his prototype or archetype, rather, for the shadow part of who he is.

And what's interesting is that he even swapped genders when he was referring to his shadow type.

It was a female and he was American, or he was an English speaker and an American, and this shadow person was Asian.

So it's really interesting that he reversed a lot of different components to who he was, not just his Myers-Briggs type, but also his gender and his nationality, or race rather.

And so the shadow part of you is the part that is still within you, I believe no matter who's co-opting it for whatever context.

It's the part of you that is there, but you're not really checking in with or understanding that much.

And so if you are, say like me, an ENTP and there's an ISFJ part of you, That ISFJ part of you is in the shadows.

It is a part of who you are and it's going to come up in odd moments and it's still there.

So I believe most of the time when people are talking about shadow parts, they're talking about things that don't go away even if we're not looking at them.

So basically the non-obvious parts of us that still have an influence potentially over how we go about, you know, learning information, making decisions, living our lives that aren't necessarily directly obvious parts of our personality showing up is basically we're talking about we're talking about this general sense of shadow type.

And it sounds like each teacher, each each writer, each author, each school of thought around archetypes, you know, Jungian typology, Myers-Briggs, everybody has kind of their own take and own definition about what shadow, quote unquote, shadow types are and shadow typing is.

And so it's very, like you said, very context specific.

It really depends on who you're reading, who you're studying, and who you're working with at the moment, because everyone has kind of a different way they take to this.

Yeah, and I think that's 1 of the reasons why I stay away from the word.

I mean, I know the phrase shadow type, and every once in a while it will end up sort of sneaking up in my vernacular.

I generally try to avoid it, though, because of this confusion.

And again, I wish people would use different words to mean these slightly different things.

They're using the same words to mean slightly different things.

I think the mean, actually excuse me, They're using the same word to mean the same thing, but in slightly different ways.

So the same, they're using the word shadow to indicate, like you just said, that part of you that is there, but you're not really seeing.

And there's a lot of different ways to break that down.

There's a lot of different ways to slice that out.

My favorite, just to give a quick resource though, my favorite resource is a book by Naomi Quink, and the last name is spelled Q-U-E-N-K.

She's got a book called Was That Really Me?

And I don't know if the original book was called In The Grip or, anyway, but the new version is called Was That Really Me?

And it is all about your Myers-Briggs type, your dichotomies in reverse, so this would be your 4 function stack or what we at Personality Hacker call the passengers in your car, she doesn't call it that.

And how we get into the grip of those inferior processes or what we call the three-year-old process.

So again I'm going to use myself as an example as an ENTP my three-year-old process or my inferior cognitive function in my function stack is called introverted sensing or what we call memory.

And that's the same for you as an ENFP, Joel.

And so how do we end up visiting there or get caught in the grip of that quote unquote shadow part of us?

And she's got a great book talking about how sometimes these shadow parts of us put us in a grip, in a place that we can't crawl out of, and what that will look for us.

So she's probably my favorite book on that particular subject.

She might not have actually been the person who mentions being in the grip.

I think a person, a friend of Personality Hacker was recently talking about a book, was it called In The Grip?

Look that up, look up the phrase Myers-Briggs in the grip and see if there's yet another resource.

I haven't personally read it so I can't say whether or not it's been vetted for awesomeness, but the person who recommended it to me was somebody, a dear friend that I really appreciate and has a pretty good finger on the pulse of this stuff.

So you might want to look up that book too.

I haven't read it so I can't really attest to its awesomeness, but I do like the book Was That Really Me by Naomi Quink.

You might want to look up some books by Beeb.

Not all of them go into his 8 function model.

He's got some general books on Jung, but I do believe that he's written some material around his 8 function stack.

So I would look up some of that information too and see if you can't go down that rabbit's trail and pick up some really good stuff about that form of shadow typing in Beebe's 8 function model.

Now this is super geeky and heady stuff that we're answering here.

So if you're like, talking about cognitive functions and stacks and karma, what are these people referring to?

Maybe you're a new listener here on the Personnel Hacker podcast.

Just know that this is some highly technical stuff.

It's okay if you don't understand what we're talking about because this is not for everybody.

This is very, very, very advanced material that, you know, we haven't even gotten into teaching this kind of stuff because it's so advanced that we're still on the part of getting people to the point of understanding how their primary part of their brain works, how they primarily learn information, how they primarily make decisions.

We're not even really dealing with things that are so subconscious or unconscious that they're that shadowy part of us.

And that's another reason why we don't maybe have a formal answer for you or we don't use those terms ourselves because we're so focused on crafting the content to help you grow in your personal development journey right now, that this is something that we'll get to maybe years from now or a while from now.

It is interesting if you're a Myers-Briggs geek or if you're really into personality typology, there's a lot of interesting study here, but if you're overwhelmed, don't panic.

It doesn't have to be this deep out of the gate for you.

Yeah, well, And just to maybe clarify what you just said, we do mention how your, what we call the three-year-old process, or your inferior process, we do mention how that's gonna impact you and put you in a grip.

We do touch on these subjects ourselves, We just don't use the phrase your shadow type because we understand that that word has been co-opted a million different times to mean a million different things.

We do talk about how those parts of us can impact us and put us in a grip form and some ways to get out of it.

We just don't necessarily do a lot of deep dive into all of the different distinctions between shadow types and what different schools of thought teach.

We have our own take and we generally look at typology and the genius style assessment through the lens of What we believe is the highest leverage way of looking at it, you know the easiest for personal development

I remember back in the early to mid 2000s when there were you know, we're still shooting video formats on these different formats these different HD formats, right?

You've got all these different types of Encoding processes and different and if you're in video creation, you're like man, which which system should I use?

Which 1 should I go with it's like well if you get so bogged down on the nuance of which, you know, which video formatting system you're going to use, you miss the whole point of why we're doing in the first place, which is to create interesting content to be watched, right?

So, you know, sometimes you can get so bogged down in the details of all these different things and there's people that have different takes on it here personally we want to try to bring things together and make sense of all these disparate pieces and Focus on what we think is the leverage point of moving forward not on all the not on the disagreements but on the parts that we can agree on and what we are moving forward with.

All the feelers just went, yeah, totally.

Not that there aren't distinctions we'll be making.

Anyway, anything else you want to say about this question before we move on?

No, just again, I would say that probably my favorite reference is Quenks, Noemi Quenk, again Q-U-E-N-K's book, Was that really me?

I love her take on how we can get in the grip of what could be called our shadow processes.

And yeah, there's a lot of different, I guess just as a recap, there's a lot of different ways that people can go with the word shadow.

And so we don't use the word shadow, we use other words and maybe that's a better way of going about it so we can create distinctions around all this.

I don't think I have much more to say on that topic other than to recommend to go read that book.

Once again if you have questions head over to our website personalityhacker.com or facebook.com forward slash personalityhacker twitter.com forward slash personalityhack h-a-c-k and we would love to hear some of the things you're thinking about some of the questions you have and answer them here on the air from our questions from the community section of the podcast.

And we'll talk to you on the next questions from the community podcast.


Speaker 0: Hi and welcome to questions from the personality hacker community. My name is Joel Mark Witt

Speaker 1: and I'm Antonia Dodge.

Speaker 0: And this is a very short form podcast that's going to come out once a week where we take questions from you in any of the community formats that we have, whether it's Facebook, Twitter, our website, email, here on the podcast reviews, whatever that is, and we answer questions here on the air. So it's gonna be much shorter, and we're going to deal with very specific questions that you decide to send in, and we'll just choose 1 a week and answer them. So this week's question, our first question comes from Colin. It says, hello, I wanted to ask thoughts and information about shadow typing, as there seems to be not very consistent details about shadow types, which I assume is a type under especially major stress. For each type, there seems to be a shadow type described by becoming a negative version of all one's preferences, and also 1 described by an opposite version of all one's cognitive functions.

In summary, I'm asking, what is the actual definition of shadow type? What is shadow typing? I'd appreciate any and all information as well as the sources, whether it be online or in book form, because I'd be glad to add to my Myers-Briggs books section in my personal library. Thanks in advance and much appreciated for any and all help in advance, Colin." So shadow typing, he's got a question about it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's a fantastic question. And 1 that I would not be surprised if a lot of people are confused around, because I think the answer legitimately is, there is no consistent definition for a shadow type. I think this word shadow has been co-opted in multiple different formats. I think people have used the phrase, your shadow persona or your shadow type in contexts that have nothing to do with Myers-Briggs or personality typology. I've heard it in reference to your shadow cognitive functions, which would be the 4 functions that are not in your cognitive function stack, or what we call the car model because we think it's a lot easier.

So 4 of your mental processes are in the car model. And then there's 4 of those 8 mental processes that aren't. And so the question is, well, how do those influence us? And a lot of times people will call those 4 that are not in your car. They'll call those your shadow processes.

And then some people refer to your shadow processes as the backseat passengers in the car are the 2 cognitive functions in your cognitive function stack that are not your strengths. Some people will say your shadow type is whatever your four-letter Myers-Briggs dichotomy is in reverse. So like for me, I'm an ENTP, so my shadow type would be ISFJ. And then I've also heard it said that your shadow type is when you take the 8 cognitive functions and they also have a stack according to John Beebe's model. John Beebe is the I think he's the guy who heads up the Jungian Institute right now in California.

Speaker 0: B-E-B-E, correct?

Speaker 1: B-E-E-B-E. B-E-E-B-E. Right. And I believe there is some talk around your shadow type being whoever, like in that 8 function stack for people, whatever is the reverse of that 8. So I believe for me it would be a, let's see, so mine would be, NETI, I'm gonna use really Quick math here, so if you don't know the function names or their shorthands, it's okay if you don't follow me, but I would be N-E-T-I-F-E-S-I, and then my opposite would be, from there would be N-I-T-E-F-I-S-E, so I believe my exact opposite would be an ESFP.

Because I believe that that would be the 1 that would go the opposite of me. So my, according to this model, and I don't even know if Beeb himself has called this your shadow type. I think it's been co-opted to be called your shadow type whatever your 8 function stack is in reverse. So my shadow type would be an ESFP. So I've read it so many different ways.

I think people just grab the word shadow type and they attach it to effectively what they're looking for is what are the parts of your mind that are in the shadows? What's the part of you that is the least represented or really not being, you know, not really, you're not really touching or getting a finger on the pulse of, you're not really touching in with this part of who you are. So unfortunately the answer is I don't know. I don't know what a shadow type is because it really is context dependent. That said, I think all of these different concepts of shadow types have some merit to them.

I wish they would use different words to create some distinctions around them. There's a lot of very interesting insights you can get when you reverse your dichotomies. So for me as an ENTP, my reverse would be an ISFJ. I remember an ENTP saying that when he was referring to his shadow type, he was using this, you know, in, he was using the word shadow type to refer to the ISFJ side of him, and I remember him saying that he was imagined as this like, meek little Asian woman who, you know, was just very giving and caring, and As an ENTP, he has a meek little Asian woman inside of him. And that was his stereotype or his prototype or archetype, rather, for the shadow part of who he is.

And what's interesting is that he even swapped genders when he was referring to his shadow type. It was a female and he was American, or he was an English speaker and an American, and this shadow person was Asian. So it's really interesting that he reversed a lot of different components to who he was, not just his Myers-Briggs type, but also his gender and his nationality, or race rather. And so the shadow part of you is the part that is still within you, I believe no matter who's co-opting it for whatever context. It's the part of you that is there, but you're not really checking in with or understanding that much.

And so if you are, say like me, an ENTP and there's an ISFJ part of you, That ISFJ part of you is in the shadows. It's there. It is influencing you. It is a part of who you are and it's going to come up in odd moments and it's still there. So I believe most of the time when people are talking about shadow parts, they're talking about things that don't go away even if we're not looking at them.

Speaker 0: So basically the non-obvious parts of us that still have an influence potentially over how we go about, you know, learning information, making decisions, living our lives that aren't necessarily directly obvious parts of our personality showing up is basically we're talking about we're talking about this general sense of shadow type. And it sounds like each teacher, each each writer, each author, each school of thought around archetypes, you know, Jungian typology, Myers-Briggs, everybody has kind of their own take and own definition about what shadow, quote unquote, shadow types are and shadow typing is. And so it's very, like you said, very context specific. It really depends on who you're reading, who you're studying, and who you're working with at the moment, because everyone has kind of a different way they take to this.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's 1 of the reasons why I stay away from the word. I mean, I know the phrase shadow type, and every once in a while it will end up sort of sneaking up in my vernacular. I generally try to avoid it, though, because of this confusion. And again, I wish people would use different words to mean these slightly different things. They're using the same words to mean slightly different things.

I think the mean, actually excuse me, They're using the same word to mean the same thing, but in slightly different ways. So the same, they're using the word shadow to indicate, like you just said, that part of you that is there, but you're not really seeing. And there's a lot of different ways to break that down. There's a lot of different ways to slice that out. My favorite, just to give a quick resource though, my favorite resource is a book by Naomi Quink, and the last name is spelled Q-U-E-N-K.

She's got a book called Was That Really Me? And I don't know if the original book was called In The Grip or, anyway, but the new version is called Was That Really Me? And it is all about your Myers-Briggs type, your dichotomies in reverse, so this would be your 4 function stack or what we at Personality Hacker call the passengers in your car, she doesn't call it that. And how we get into the grip of those inferior processes or what we call the three-year-old process. So again I'm going to use myself as an example as an ENTP my three-year-old process or my inferior cognitive function in my function stack is called introverted sensing or what we call memory.

And that's the same for you as an ENFP, Joel. And so how do we end up visiting there or get caught in the grip of that quote unquote shadow part of us? And she's got a great book talking about how sometimes these shadow parts of us put us in a grip, in a place that we can't crawl out of, and what that will look for us. So she's probably my favorite book on that particular subject. She might not have actually been the person who mentions being in the grip.

I think a person, a friend of Personality Hacker was recently talking about a book, was it called In The Grip? Oh man I wish I could remember now. Look that up, look up the phrase Myers-Briggs in the grip and see if there's yet another resource. I haven't personally read it so I can't say whether or not it's been vetted for awesomeness, but the person who recommended it to me was somebody, a dear friend that I really appreciate and has a pretty good finger on the pulse of this stuff. So you might want to look up that book too.

I haven't read it so I can't really attest to its awesomeness, but I do like the book Was That Really Me by Naomi Quink. You might want to look up some books by Beeb. Not all of them go into his 8 function model. He's got some general books on Jung, but I do believe that he's written some material around his 8 function stack. So I would look up some of that information too and see if you can't go down that rabbit's trail and pick up some really good stuff about that form of shadow typing in Beebe's 8 function model.

Speaker 0: Now this is super geeky and heady stuff that we're answering here. So if you're like, talking about cognitive functions and stacks and karma, what are these people referring to? Maybe you're a new listener here on the Personnel Hacker podcast. Just know that this is some highly technical stuff. It's okay if you don't understand what we're talking about because this is not for everybody.

This is very, very, very advanced material that, you know, we haven't even gotten into teaching this kind of stuff because it's so advanced that we're still on the part of getting people to the point of understanding how their primary part of their brain works, how they primarily learn information, how they primarily make decisions. We're not even really dealing with things that are so subconscious or unconscious that they're that shadowy part of us. And that's another reason why we don't maybe have a formal answer for you or we don't use those terms ourselves because we're so focused on crafting the content to help you grow in your personal development journey right now, that this is something that we'll get to maybe years from now or a while from now. But It's very highly technical stuff. It is interesting if you're a Myers-Briggs geek or if you're really into personality typology, there's a lot of interesting study here, but if you're overwhelmed, don't panic.

It doesn't have to be this deep out of the gate for you.

Speaker 1: Yeah, well, And just to maybe clarify what you just said, we do mention how your, what we call the three-year-old process, or your inferior process, we do mention how that's gonna impact you and put you in a grip. We do touch on these subjects ourselves, We just don't use the phrase your shadow type because we understand that that word has been co-opted a million different times to mean a million different things. We do talk about how those parts of us can impact us and put us in a grip form and some ways to get out of it. We just don't necessarily do a lot of deep dive into all of the different distinctions between shadow types and what different schools of thought teach. We have our own take and we generally look at typology and the genius style assessment through the lens of What we believe is the highest leverage way of looking at it, you know the easiest for personal development

Speaker 0: Yeah a metaphor for this. I remember back in the early to mid 2000s when there were you know, we're still shooting video formats on these different formats these different HD formats, right? You've got all these different types of Encoding processes and different and if you're in video creation, you're like man, which which system should I use? Which 1 should I go with it's like well if you get so bogged down on the nuance of which, you know, which video formatting system you're going to use, you miss the whole point of why we're doing in the first place, which is to create interesting content to be watched, right? That's why you shoot video on something.

So, you know, sometimes you can get so bogged down in the details of all these different things and there's people that have different takes on it here personally we want to try to bring things together and make sense of all these disparate pieces and Focus on what we think is the leverage point of moving forward not on all the not on the disagreements but on the parts that we can agree on and what we are moving forward with.

Speaker 1: Yeah. All the feelers just went, yeah, totally. And all the thinkers were like, what? I want the distinctions.

Speaker 0: Not that there aren't distinctions we'll be making. You get what I'm saying.

Speaker 1: I totally, of course.

Speaker 0: Anyway, anything else you want to say about this question before we move on?

Speaker 1: No, just again, I would say that probably my favorite reference is Quenks, Noemi Quenk, again Q-U-E-N-K's book, Was that really me? I love her take on how we can get in the grip of what could be called our shadow processes. And yeah, there's a lot of different, I guess just as a recap, there's a lot of different ways that people can go with the word shadow. And so we don't use the word shadow, we use other words and maybe that's a better way of going about it so we can create distinctions around all this. I don't think I have much more to say on that topic other than to recommend to go read that book.

Speaker 0: Thanks Colin for the question. Once again if you have questions head over to our website personalityhacker.com or facebook.com forward slash personalityhacker twitter.com forward slash personalityhack h-a-c-k and we would love to hear some of the things you're thinking about some of the questions you have and answer them here on the air from our questions from the community section of the podcast. My name is Joel Mark Witt.

Speaker 1: And I'm Antonia Dodge.

Speaker 0: And we'll talk to you on the next questions from the community podcast. Oh.

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