Psyche Design Meghan LeVota

Hello there and Happy New Year! Today, I recorded an episode all about Change. Change is a necessary aspect of the self-discovery journey. While many seek self-development to find more security in themselves, you may find that that through the pursuit of stability — you will also find change. In fact, change is the only constant. True security comes from the full embrace of one’s creative potential, and learning to work with that energy. Listen here, on Spotify or iTunes, or wherever you get your podcast. Or, check out the conversation on YouTube.
Change, The Nature of Self Discovery, & The Transcendent Function:
Currently, I am in a state of flux. I began the year with a lot of endings, and am starting this new one with new beginnings. It has felt difficult to share as often as I’d like when I’m in-between worlds. The goalposts keep moving, as new values are solidified and priorities shift. Showing up as myself has felt awkward and clunky, as I’m still in the middle of shedding old skin.
This episode discusses change as it relates to the self-discovery process as well as Jung’s transcendent function. But on a personal level, I am in the thick of it. Change in my personal life and inconsistent surroundings has made it feel nearly impossible to show up online consistently. It feels lame to feel the need to apologize for that, but here I am. The ideas in this episode may be universally applicable to many things, but they also describe how I have been feeling about the act of content creation itself.
That being said, I am excited to breathe new life into my creative projects in 2023. In order to do that, some things may need to die first. A lot of that “death” involves pressure I have put on myself. It involves releasing aspects of my identity that my ego has become too attached to.
On top of that, the media landscape is changing tremendously — as well as how we interact with digital tools It’s easy for last year’s goals, or even last month’s marketing tactics, to begin to feel stale. When you combine that with interpersonal change, the whole thing can get confusing. I’m in the process of building systems that are a bit more flexible, to prevent setting goals that end up making me feel trapped in the future. As I figure out how I’d like to communicate these things, I will continue to share them here. Thanks for tagging along, even though I feel like a bit of a mess.


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit psychedesign.substack.com

Another episode, fresh out of the oven! This one is about the unknown, and it’s a rambly one. I have the transcript below, if you prefer to read. But I’d recommend to sit back, relax, listen and reflect. Let me know how you have been handling the unknown lately by leaving a comment.
Watch Psyche Design Season 2 Episode 3 on YouTube:
Transcript:
Hello. So today I'm going to be discussing the unknown. And one of the fun things about that topic is that I actually have no idea what I'm about to talk about. So, first of all, for those of you who follow the stars, Jupiter just went into Pisces this morning. So, I've been wanting to do this topic for a while, and I thought, why not right now? Because the energy of Pisces is a mutable water sign. So this energy now, in the collective is more focused on embracing the vastness in the chaoticness of every potential emotion that can ever be experienced is one way of putting it. When I think of Pisces, I often think about taking leaps of faith and marveling at the unknown, potentially.
So my personality type pattern (most of you know this, because that's what my channel has been about) is my type preferences are ENFJ. And with that, J, the stereotype goes that, you know, the preference for judging can be a challenge for embracing the unknown, I have had such a hard time with the unknown, for as long as I can remember. In fact, I've been having some more discussions with my parents lately about what I was like, as a child, as I have been. I think it's been a year and a half ago, now that I have been diagnosed with ADHD. And I've been exploring my neurodivergent traits, reading things about that, and trying to connect some dots. Part of the reason why I've wanted to do that is because, you know, I discovered personality type theory, whatever I was 17, I'm now 28. This model of Personality Typing has been with me for over a decade now. And I definitely wouldn't be as confident as an adult and okay with myself if I didn't have it. Because so much of me even recognizing that I was an intuitive at a young age, validated a lot of the ways in which I felt outside the norm.
And, anyway, I've been thinking about the ways in which I've always felt outside the norm in one of those ways. You guys are gonna just have to deal with me being rambly this time around, because I'm a little bit out of practice whenever it comes to talking to a camera. So um, for those of you who want to take the windy road with me, thank you so much. Anyway, um, what I was going to say with that is that I, my mom was, you know, sort of telling me how even as a young child, I would get into these outbursts. When things did not go according to plan. There was one time she told me about, that I was like five. And they, my mom, said that we had to leave the living room area, we were at my grandparents, because they were painting the walls and that it was going to be a different color, it was going to go from beige to peach. And apparently, whenever I got back, and I saw the colors, I freaked out and I was like, “They are not different colors! This is the same exact color as what it was before. You lied to me!” And I think that that is such a hilarious example of I think you could really see, like, the pitfalls of my psyche, even as a young child, it would be interesting to think about what things you used to have meltdowns about as a child in throw a fit about. And if you can notice any themes of how those things in a way, even if you aren't going to act out now, those things might still tell you something about your blind spots. Because in that as an example, not only was I not someone that was very aware of the differences between the colors, but I also had an idea in my mind of what I thought those colors would be. And whenever reality did not match up to what I had in my mind. It was very overwhelming for me and somy preference for Introverted Intuition as a function I think is sort of seen here. And that my default

Interested in a workshop all about dancing with your shadow functions? Join me on October 8: https://www.meetup.com/baaptsf/events/288338568/
(I realize that this is last minute. I plan to offer similar workshops at a later date. Let me know if you’d be interested in attending something like this by leaving a comment).
Watch Psyche Design Season 2 Episode 2 on YouTube:
Transcript:
Hello there. So today I'm going to be discussing Turning a Friendly Face Toward the Shadow. And what kind of lifestyle would that be if you were someone that genuinely had, or generally had, a friendly attitude toward your shadow. So this is a huge topic. And I'm actually going to be doing a workshop on a very similar topic that's called Dancing with the Shadow: Embracing Your Inner Paradox next Saturday, the eighth, I believe. I'll have a link for that below, if you're interested. And if you can't make it, I understand that this is last minute I want to be doing, I will be hosting similar workshops in the future on this subject.
So a lot of you listening to this probably are familiar with Carl Jung's concept of the shadow. This episode is not going to be really focused on defining the shadow, I might make another episode on that, but I'm going to assume that you have a general understanding whenever I say the word shadow— which is essentially all the parts of our psyche that we're not conscious of, they might make our ego uncomfortable, we might be in denial of these things, it's a pretty general term for those contents of your psyche that you cannot see.
So, um, we also want to bring up the question of — Now that you know, your personality type (assuming that you do know your personality type), now, what? How does that knowledge of your personality type shift your perception?
So, I've been circling around these sorts of topics for several years now. But what I'm, what I'm coming to... like, this main point, I guess, that I feel like I'm coming to is this idea of — what is your ego's attitude toward the shadow? And I think that ,if you are familiar with your Jungian personality type pattern, that will tell you a lot about how your ego naturally functions, and your tendencies, your preferences, but it doesn't tell you what your attitude is toward the shadow.
Um, there's a lot of talk out there within the personality type community, like... let's say you're not really you don't have as much background on Jung, but you have been studying personality type for a while. There's a lot of different ways of talking about things such as ...developing your shadow functions, or tapping into your Inferior Function. All of the all of that regarding developing the shadow functions is a portion of "shadow work" in a more general way, because your personality is only going to be your... your personality type is just going to be sort of a sliver of your psyche.
It can kind of tell you this hero's journey that your ego might be going through. Now, one of my biggest criticisms of how people discuss personality type is, I think that the ego trap that we can get into is that once we, once we know what our personality type is, then what again, like I said, — Now, what what do we do with that information? The ego can approach this in different ways. The ego can double down on its own self-understanding and be like "yes, I am that, I am an ENFJ, I am a feeling type, I am an intuitive type, I am an extrovert." The ego could be like, yes, that is me. Now, what are the shadow sides of that?
So, using myself, my ENFJ best fit type as an example. The shadow of that would be introversion. It would be sensing, it would be thinking (more specifically with my cognitive functions, Extroverted Sensing and Introverted Thinking would be the exact shadow flip side of my Dominant and Auxiliary functions). Not to mention the shadow functions that you don't prefer. All of these are parts of the shadow.
And we can take the attitude of, "I'm a feeler. Therefore, none of t

Transcription:
Hello, my name is Meghan LeVota, and you are listening to the Psyche Design podcast. This is the first episode of season two. And, I'm not fully sure everything that I'm going to talk about in this episode. But for myself, I'm treating it as almost like a personal manifesto of "How I Intend to Talk About Personality Type Moving Forward," and just some general ideas to set the stage.
So, I'm calling this episode a Call For Complexity. Because that is partially what I'm calling for, is a way in which to talk about Carl Jung's theory of Psychological Types — as well as the 16-type model that was popularized by the MBTI (Myers and Briggs), and all of the other systems that have followed.
And I guess what I want to bring up right off the bat, is that Carl Jung himself was pretty long-winded and convoluted, one could say. And in the book, Psychological Types, he talks a lot about the problem of opposites, and how opposites interact with one another, and what to do about it, and what problems that gives society dealing with those opposites. And then at the end of the book, he goes into the eight cognitive functions, which I'm not going to go into what those are just yet. So if you're new to personality type theory, and you want to know what these functions are, you might want to check out another episode.
But for those of us who have been in this personality bubble for a while, basically, the way I see it is, Carl Jung talked about the psyche, in quite a complex way, too. And, you know, interestingly enough, he wanted his theory of Psychological Types to be something that the layperson can pick up and use. However, in the way in which he explained things, it was not very easy for a lay person to pick up and use, what did people do, they jumped right to the section about the categories. And they just read about the categories and skipped over the beginning part, I've been guilty. I'm guilty of this literally when it comes to reading that reading his book. And I think that, you know, based on how the ego works, according to Jung and psychology, this shouldn't be that surprising that our ego is automatically going to go toward the information in which we, our ego feels like we can use something from it. Whether this is our self-concept, we're going to understand ourselves better. Or other people, maybe we want to get along with other people better. And so even though Carl Jung had hopes that his book Psychological Types would be able to be used for the layperson to be able to figure out how they are dealing with their problem of opposites, in instead went over a lot of people's heads. And I'd like to argue that it's going over our heads right now. I'm not even trying to claim that it hasn't gone over mine, I just want to bring out right off the bat, that the guy is pretty dense when he writes and not all of us have read all of it through.
And I'm not even a Jungian purist here. However, I am someone that philosophically aligns more with Jung than Freud. And I tend to agree with his philosophy on the psyche in the shadow a little bit more so than, like mainstream modern psychology. And so, whenever the Myers Briggs came to be, it was inspired by Psychological Types. And it went with the categories that Carl Jung proposed with the eight cognitive functions and it uses his theory about how we have a dominant and we also have an auxiliary function and then we have an inferior function that is opposite to our Dominant function. The MBTI was able to put those categories and use his theory and turn it into 16 types Next. And there are there are some debates and whether or not Carl Jung agreed with the MBTI. And there's some debate and whether or not the two systems even can work well together. But for most of us in 2022, for learning about personality, we're probably first learning about it through the lens of the 16 types. And then if you get more interested in the background, then you go back and look at some of the dept

If you're new to type, you may be wondering: which test should I take?


In this episode of Psyche Design, I'm joined by type experts Sterling Bates and Katherine Hirsch to discuss some of the problems with online personality tests and tips for finding your best fit type. There are many ways to discover your type— but there are some things to keep in mind to help you get the most value out of this tool.


Want help finding your best fit psychological type? This (free) online personal exploration engine will walk you through the self-discovery process in about 20 minutes: https://app.personalitywizard.com/register?Code=personalitywizard-meghanlevota


Listen to Psyche Design on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/psyche-design/id1548227570


On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EkdgUj7DY2EBuM6uxb3q3?si=BJwVdtY_SdGrcNnslzP-QQ


Like my content? Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/meghanlevota


DISCOVER THE UNIQUE MENTAL MATRIX OF YOUR PERSONALITY.


Hi, I'm Meghan LeVota — here to help you integrate your mind. I'm interested in cracking the code for how individuals can transform their relationships — with themselves and others — by integrating the psyche. This means illuminating the shadow, healing limiting beliefs, and navigating the collective unconscious.


This integration process becomes more manageable when one understands how their psyche functions. That’s where personality type comes in. By growing your conscious awareness of how your mind works, you gain conscious control over life. In other words, you’re getting your Ego on board with enlightenment, rather than forever feeling internal resistance.


For my current 1:1 offerings, available courses, and upcoming events: https://www.meghanlevota.com/


Got a fresh idea you wanna share? Do you have a media request? Interested in collaborating on a project? Contact me: https://www.meghanlevota.com/contacto


This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit psychedesign.substack.com

Isn't personality type just astrology for business people? Let's talk about the difference between astrology and type.


There's a good chance you've heard this one before. A lot of people like to compare personality type and astrology, but as someone interested in both I can tell you: the two are very different.


A lot of psychologists interested in type want to stay away from comparing type to astrology, understandably so. From a scientific perspective, there is actual research (including some neuroscience) that can improve the existence of 16 type patterns. Because type is harder to measure than other aspects of psychology, it is considered fuzzy. Comparing it to something even fuzzier (like astrology, which is nearly 100% rejected by science) is not a great way to get people to believe that there is validity to the theory of personality types.


A lot of astrologers are skeptical of personality type because they see it as too corporate, or they perceive it to lack nuance. They believe that their natal chart can already describe what personality type is getting at, but better. This is not the case, as Jungian personality type offers a more specific look at your cognitive wiring and your psyche's tendencies. Type is more grounded in something you can observe and use regarding how you operate. Astrology on the other hand, is much more than just personality or your mental functions. Your natal chart expands to cover other people in your life, situations you might face, karma, destiny, and other highly conceptual topics that are difficult to pin down. It's also worth knowing that psychologist Carl Jung was inspired by astrology when he originally discovered the theory of psychological types.


I believe that both of these tools have very different purposes and can aid your self-discovery journey in different ways. It's unfair to dismiss the validity of the theory of psychological type by comparing it to astrology, as the tools are not the same. For those who do believe in astrology, it's also worth knowing that type can offer something that astrology cannot explain.


Scientific studies on personality type (database): https://www.capt.org/MILO/


Center for Applications of Psychological Type: https://www.capt.org/


Listen to Psyche Design on iTunes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/psyche-design/id1548227570


On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6EkdgUj7DY2EBuM6uxb3q3?si=BJwVdtY_SdGrcNnslzP-QQ


Like my content? Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/meghanlevota


Want help finding your best fit psychological type? This (free) online personal exploration engine will walk you through the self-discovery process in about 20 minutes: https://app.personalitywizard.com/register?Code=personalitywizard-meghanlevota


A bunch of really smart people in the type world came together to make this online self-discovery experience possible, and it's highly recommended by me. View my profile to get an idea of what your report might look like: https://app.personalitywizard.com/profile/IBKFLIafbMIZDZ9


DISCOVER THE UNIQUE MENTAL MATRIX OF YOUR PERSONALITY.


Hi, I'm Meghan LeVota — here to help you integrate your mind. I'm interested in cracking the code for how individuals can transform their relationships — with themselves and others — by integrating the psyche. This means illuminating the shadow, healing limiting beliefs, and navigating the collective unconscious.


This integration process becomes more manageable when one understands how their psyche functions. That’s where personality type comes in. By growing your conscious awareness of how your mind works, you gain conscious control over life. In other words, you’re getting your Ego on board with enlightenment, rather than forever feeling internal resistance.


For my current 1:1 offerings, available courses, and upcoming events: https://www.meghanlevota.com/


Got a fresh idea you wanna share? Do you have a media request? Interested in collabor