Disability and Cognitive Functions: The Tertiary Function and Loops

Your tertiary function is the function that you engage in when you are being childish or childlike. This function comforts the dominant function and is used to recharge it. It is how we are creative and playful at its best and how we are immature and derailing at its worst. The tertiary function is often used along with the auxiliary in order to back it up.

When your tertiary function kicks in, you feel like a new person. Depending on what your tertiary function is, it can assist you in either seeing things from other perspectives (perceiving) or considering other factors in your decision making (judging). Your tertiary function forces you to challenge deep-seated beliefs or adopt better systems. For example, the ESFJ has tertiary Ne that enables extrapolation off of what the ESFJ already knows from auxiliary Si.

Living with a disability can force cognitive function development. The tertiary function is one of those functions. Humor, a skill developed by many PwDs as a survival tactic, is the prime place to see the tertiary function at work. An INTP may make a satire on how applying for accommodations or benefits is unnecessarily complicated using dominant Ti to make the satire logically consistent and tertiary Si to incorporate their own experiences and the experiences of others with the faulty system. However, that is not the only use for the tertiary function.

As stated before, the tertiary function can be used to change one's modus operandi. For example, an INFJ may have a vision of what they see as best for everyone. However, tertiary Ti allows the INFJ to see that not everyone will benefit from it. The INFJ will proceed to adjust this vision to allow others to reject it while still maintaining the integrity of their original idea. The latter may not occur in a loop: overuse of the dominant and tertiary functions.

In a loop, the dominant and tertiary relay information to each other with little to no input from the auxiliary and inferior functions. Loops impede self-care and intrapersonal development by "blocking" these functions. A loop may render one exhausted or prevent reasoning as to what is realistic and aligns with one's values. Looping extroverted functions generates a fake energy and veneer of overcompensation while looping introverted functions promotes uncharacteristic callousness (Ti) or emotional irrationality (Fi).

Loops, at best, are precursors to and symptoms of neurological disorders. They are not disorders themselves, though. They can mimic anxiety and/or depression or be a symptom, but anxiety, depression, and other disorders are not loops themselves. Channeling an auxiliary or inferior function will allow the loop to "break"; with a disorder, there is usually no such luck.