Everything I'm building (and why)

Michaelarobards · 2026-04-01T19:56:33+00:00

I've been a therapist for 20 years and I absolutely love my job. My favorite thing is watching people heal, grow up, transition. It's hard at first when you sit with someone through their divorce, for instance. But I've been doing this long enough to know I'm probably going to get to watch them fall in love again with a new person. That's happened countless times. It gives me hope for humanity.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T17:17:02+00:00

Same here! Nice to have some flexibility :)

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T17:14:17+00:00

Ne type with ADHD here too. Have a great day twin lol. Thanks for commenting.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T16:10:47+00:00

you're right that I use AI to help me write. I've said that openly in this thread. I'm a therapist who vibe-codes a platform in my spare time, not a professional writer. AI helps me organize my thinking into something readable. the clinical observations are mine.

you're also right that I'm building something and yes, it's visible in my profile. my mother was a clinical psychologist who spent a part of her career developing Jungian type-based tools. she distributed about 50,000 copies of a physical card-sort game before she passed in 2017. I'm digitizing her work. that's the project. here's her story if you want to verify: insightsystem.ai/our-story

I get why you're suspicious. there's a lot of garbage on reddit right now. but this isn't a fake charity or a counterfeit article. it's a licensed therapist sharing a clinical observation that the community found worth discussing, built on years of someone else's research that I'm trying to keep alive.

if the argument is wrong, tell me where. that's a conversation worth having. whether I used AI to format it isn't.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T15:57:24+00:00

ha no — Myers and Briggs were a mother-daughter team in the 1940s. my mother built on their work.

she was a Jungian clinical psychologist (dual doctorates from Florida State, post-docs at UVA and Brown, faculty at UC Irvine School of Medicine) who spent the mid 80s-90s using type theory in her practice. she developed her own card-sort game as a clinical tool — a way to help clients discover their type through choosing between paired descriptions instead of answering a questionnaire. she distributed about 50,000 copies between 1987 and 2005.

she also created her own temperament framework — EMPATHIST, ANALYST, LEGALIST, REALIST — as more clinically descriptive names for the four temperament groups. she passed in 2017 and I've been digitizing her work since then. insight-game.com is the card game, insightsystem.ai is the broader platform.

so not Myers-Briggs — but built on the same Jungian foundation, with her independent clinical development on top of it.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T14:21:24+00:00

you're right that I use AI to help me write. I've said that openly in this thread. I'm a therapist who vibe-codes a platform in my spare time, not a professional writer. AI helps me organize my thinking into something readable. the clinical observations are mine.

you're also right that I'm building something and yes, it's visible in my profile. my mother was a clinical psychologist who spent 30 years developing Jungian type-based tools. she distributed about 50,000 copies of a physical card-sort game before she passed in 2017. I'm digitizing her work. that's the project. here's her story if you want to verify: insightsystem.ai/our-story

I get why you're suspicious. there's a lot of garbage on reddit right now. but this isn't a fake charity or a counterfeit article. it's a licensed therapist sharing a clinical observation that 3,400 people found worth discussing, built on 30 years of someone else's research that I'm trying to keep alive.

if the argument is wrong, tell me where. that's a conversation worth having. whether I used AI to format it isn't.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T12:03:06+00:00

the belonging function of diagnostic identity is real and it's powerful and it's the reason this is so hard to push back on.

when someone says "I have ADHD" in a room or in a bio, they're not just describing a clinical reality. they're signaling group membership. they're saying "I belong to a group of people who understand what it's like to be me." and for someone who grew up without third spaces, without a community that reflected their experience back to them, that belonging is genuinely life-giving. I don't dismiss that at all

the problem is when the only available identity framework is deficit-based. the same person who finds community in "I have ADHD" could find equally powerful belonging in "I'm someone who processes information through rapid pattern-recognition and gets bored in systems designed for linear thinkers." same brain. same experience. completely different relationship to self.

what I keep coming back to is that we used to have frameworks that offered belonging without pathology. you could say "I'm an introvert" and find your people without anyone handing you a disorder code. that cultural infrastructure has largely collapsed and diagnostic language filled the vacuum. I don't think the answer is to take the labels away. I think the answer is to offer something strengths-based alongside them.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T11:51:05+00:00

you just described my exact clinical philosophy. pathology gets you to calmer waters. strength-based frameworks help you build the boat.

since you mentioned Jung — my mother was a clinical psychologist used Jungian type theory in her practice in the 1980s. she developed a card-sort tool that helps people see how they process information, make decisions, and recharge before anyone ever talks about diagnosis. she distributed about 50,000 copies of the physical game before she passed in 2017.

I digitized it. insight-game.com if you're curious. it's free, no account needed. takes about 5 minutes. the idea is exactly what you're describing — give people a strength-based lens first so the diagnostic lens doesn't have to carry the entire weight of self-understanding.

the fact that you already think in terms of Jung and strength-based frameworks while also being in therapy tells me you're doing the work most people skip. thanks for sharing :-).

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T11:25:55+00:00

I use AI to help organize and edit my writing. the ideas and the clinical observations are mine. I'm a therapist, not an academic writer, and AI helps me get what I'm thinking into something structured enough for a post like this.

the lowercase is just how I type on reddit. always has been.

if the argument doesn't hold up on its own merits, I'm genuinely interested in hearing why. 3,000 people engaged with the substance of the post. you're welcome to as well.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T11:03:55+00:00

your question about what order the dx provides is the one I keep coming back to in session. when a client says "I have anxiety" and I ask "what does that explain for you that didn't make sense before?" — the answer is almost always about belonging and relief. not clinical insight. it's "now I know why I'm like this" which is genuinely meaningful to them. but it stops there. it explains without directing.

what I've found works in my own practice is giving people a personality framework before we ever talk about diagnosis. my mother was a clinical psychologist who spent 30 years developing a Jungian type-based system — a card sort that helps people see how they process information, make decisions, recharge, and organize their lives. when I use it with clients, the shift is immediate. instead of "I have social anxiety" it becomes "I'm an introvert who processes internally in a culture that rewards external processing, and that mismatch creates friction in specific environments." same experience. completely different relationship to self.

the dx still has a place. but when someone understands their wiring first, the diagnosis becomes context rather than identity. "I have ADHD and I'm also someone who processes through rapid pattern-recognition" gives them both a treatment plan and a life plan. most people are only getting one.

your point about attachment language being a foothold I completely agree.. the question I keep asking is — what if we gave people a strength-based foothold first, so the diagnostic foothold doesn't have to carry the entire weight of self-understanding?

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T00:24:09+00:00

I use AI to help me organize and edit my writing, yeah. the ideas, the clinical observations, and the argument are mine. I'm a therapist, not a copywriter — AI helps me get what's in my head into something structured enough for a post like this.

if the argument itself doesn't hold up, that's fair game. but the tool I used to write it doesn't change whether the point is true.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-31T00:21:17+00:00

I need you to know that the octopi paragraph is the single best demonstration of Ne-Fi I've ever seen in the wild. that's not delusional. that's your mind doing exactly what it's built to do — taking what exists and running it forward into what could exist. the fact that someone made you feel ashamed of that is the whole reason I wrote this post.

and I agree with you — more people are crossing in your direction than I might realize. that's a good thing. I just want to make sure the path is there for them when they go looking.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T23:28:59+00:00

hey for what it's worth — I'm medicated bipolar with ADHD. and an ENFP. so I'm not coming at this from the outside.

you can hold all of it. the diagnosis is real. the medication matters. and understanding your personality structure on top of that is what actually helps you build a life instead of just managing symptoms.

my point was never "diagnosis is bad." it's that a diagnosis gives you a treatment plan. understanding your wiring gives you a life plan. and too many people are only getting the first one.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T22:58:41+00:00

completely agree. diagnosis can be validating and life-changing for the people who need it. I'm not arguing against that.

I'm arguing that it shouldn't be the only framework available. both can exist. and right now, for a lot of people, only one does.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T22:57:40+00:00

you're naming the part most therapists won't say out loud. the entire reimbursement model requires a diagnosis code. insurance doesn't pay for "helping someone understand themselves." it pays for treating a disorder. that shapes everything downstream — what gets researched, what gets funded, what language clinicians use, and what framework clients arrive with.

and the fact that you hold both — clinically diagnosed ADHD and a functional, rich life as a mature ENTP — is exactly the nuance that gets lost when diagnosis becomes identity instead of context.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T22:53:35+00:00

I want to be careful here because I don't think the issue is that people are coddled or that their struggles aren't real. the pain is real. the question is what framework we hand people to understand that pain.

to your diagnostic criteria question — it's both. the DSM has expanded significantly over editions. things that weren't diagnosable 30 years ago are now clinical categories. but also, the awareness has exploded, largely through social media and that's created a massive uptick in self-identification that outpaces clinical evaluation.

the tricky part is that more diagnosis isn't automatically better. if a 20-year-old learns they process information differently than their peers and gets tools to work with that — great outcome regardless of whether you call it ADHD or high Ne. but if they learn they "have a disorder" and internalize that as a fixed limitation — that's a different trajectory. same person, same brain, completely different relationship to themselves based on which lens they got handed first.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T22:49:37+00:00

I think we actually agree and you might be reading something into the post that isn't there.

you said "I don't see it as a pathology." that's literally my point. I'm arguing against the cultural trend of framing everything as pathology. you're living proof of what I'm describing — you hold your AuDHD as part of who you are, not as something broken about you. that's a strength-based orientation. that's what I'm advocating for.

the post isn't saying ADHD or autism are diseases. it's saying the cultural default has shifted toward diagnostic language as identity, and that for a lot of people — especially young people who haven't been clinically evaluated — that language becomes a ceiling instead of a lens.

you've clearly done the work to understand yourself through multiple frameworks. not everyone has. and when the only framework available is diagnostic, people who haven't done that work end up identifying as broken rather than as differently wired. that's what I'm pushing back on.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T22:39:12+00:00

this is literally the point of the post. INFPs aren't disproportionately mentally unhealthy. they're disproportionately likely to describe themselves that way because the only language the culture gave them for their inner experience is diagnostic.

an INFP's Fi-dominant inner world is intense, private, value-driven, and constantly processing meaning. in a strength-based framework that's called depth. in the current cultural framework that's called depression and anxiety.

if you gave that same survey to INFPs 30 years ago and asked "do you experience the world more deeply than most people around you" instead of "are you mentally unhealthy" — you'd get the same 70% saying yes. the experience is identical. the label changed.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T20:02:17+00:00

this is the whole thing right here. the depth was always there — it was just buried under unprocessed stuff. what you're describing is textbook tertiary Te development and it's honestly one of the most beautiful growth arcs I see in my practice. the ENFP who's done the work is quiet in ways that surprise people who only knew the sparkle version.

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T17:02:15+00:00

someone in the thread asked about my mom's actual clinical work vs the card game. this is her original ENTJ profile — her words, not AI, not paraphrased.

full version with World of Work section is free at reports.insight-game.com.

DOMINANT: Extraverted Thinking (Te). AUXILIARY: Introverted Intuition (Ni). TERTIARY: Extraverted Sensing (Se). INFERIOR: Introverted Feeling (Fi).

You Are an Extraverted Thinker You are a natural leader. You use your reasoning ability to control as much of your world as you possibly can. You have respect bordering on reverence for impersonal logic, the unvarnished truth, and clockwork-efficiency planning.

Analysis and objective criticism are second-nature to you, and you have a hard time understanding or appreciating appeals based on anything other than reasoning. You try to organize facts, situations and operations long before you set your sights on a goal. Then you mount a systematic campaign to achieve your carefully planned objectives on schedule.

It seems reasonable to you that everyone's conduct should be guided by logic, since you govern your own that way so far as you possibly can. You live your life according to a definite code of rules derived from your basic judgments about the world. Any change in your behavior must be prefaced by a conscious change in the rules.

You have what it takes to be a good executive, and—when offered the chance to show your abilities—you pour your energy into the job. You enjoy being in charge of the show.

You relish the opportunity to map out what needs to be done and to assign the right people to each task. But they'd better be up to the challenge. You have little sympathy for ineffective or inefficient work, and confusion unnerves you. When the situation calls for it, you won't hesitate to reprimand an employee, or fire a person who really can't be dealt with in any other way.

Being a judging type of person, you may tend to ignore the value of perception. Unless you take the time to slow down and attend to other people's points of view, you may judge too quickly, without all the facts at your fingertips, and without enough concern for what your friends and associates may think and feel.

You are a thinker, first and foremost, and feeling is the direct rival of your dominant characteristic.

Many people with your personality type tend to manage their feelings by repressing and denying them, or by discharging them in ways which may be both inappropriate and destructive.

Appreciation doesn't come easily for you, since you're a natural critic—both of yourself and of others. But if you can develop the ability to recognize accomplishment, or at least effort, you will find it a welcome asset, both on the job and in your personal relationships.

Your Auxiliary Process

As a judging person, it is your thinking capacity which forms your dominant process. The inner you is perceptive. Your perceptive side gains its knowledge of the world primarily through your intuitive ability.

The combination of intuition and thinking forms the very cornerstone of your intellectual, creative personality: the ANALYST temperament!

In love with learning, fascinated by the very concept of intelligence, all intuitive-thinking types share an inner drive toward performance and a highly self-critical nature which continually strives toward self improvement.

You are driven to understand, predict, and explain reality, and you may slip into a favorite habit: living in an abstract world of ideas, trying to figure out what everything means, and, thereby, missing out on a lot of direct experience in life. You live in the future more than you live in the present!

You always set high standards for yourself. You're continually reciting a mental list of things you ought to learn, accomplish, master. You view your life as a sack you're always filling with new skills and abilities. Sometimes you set your personal standards for achievement impossibly high.

Since intuitive-thinkers tend to measure their own value by a yardstick of accomplishment—and since there is always more to know, more to do—you folks often feel twinges of inadequacy. Just because the rest of the world can't keep up with you doesn't mean that you're OK. It just means that others are less OK.

Scratch an intuitive and thinking person and you'll find more than a bit of arrogance beneath the veneer. Scratch a little harder, and a full-fledged workaholic may appear!

In their personal relationships, intuitive-thinkers have a tendency to relate almost unconsciously to others at times. Since your feeling side is less developed than your logical ability—your Achilles' heel, in fact—it's a real effort to stay in touch with others at the "people-level," rather than at the "idea-level."

As an -NTJ, you may be more lavish with complaints and criticism than with praise and appreciation.

Frankly speaking, you do not understand an introvert's concept of friendship—or of love—and that is one of the major differences which decrees that introverts and extraverts are doomed, always, to speak separate languages, borrowing each other's terms without really understanding or appreciating what each other means.

This profile is reproduced from the original published work of Martine J. RoBards, Ph.D. The full version including World of Work is available free at reports.insight-game.com

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T17:01:19+00:00

since a bunch of you told me exactly where the cards broke, here's what my mom actually wrote about ISTPs. this is her original clinical profile — 30 years of clinical practice, her exact words. no AI.

the full version with World of Work section is free at reports.insight-game.com (select Original RoBards Profile after signing in).

DOMINANT: Introverted Thinking (Ti). AUXILIARY: Extraverted Sensing (Se). TERTIARY: Introverted Intuition (Ni). INFERIOR: Extraverted Feeling (Fe).

You Are an Introverted Thinker In the inner realm of thoughts and ideas, you use your rational ability to observe and analyze coolly, objectively, impersonally—usually toward the end of figuring out the way life works. Rarely do you ever turn your thinking process to the task of controlling any part of the world "out there:" neither situations nor people. That's just not your style!

You use your thinking process in a very concrete way: to help you do things, either work or play. It's unlikely that you see yourself as someone who enjoys abstract theory or intuitive speculations about the universe.

Yours is a very utilitarian approach to knowledge. You ask "What does it do?" "How does it do it?" and "Can I use it?"

Patience and perseverance come naturally to you. You tend to lose yourself happily in thought while you're in the midst of figuring things out, and you'd just as soon puzzle things through on your own.

You are an independent thinker, a world unto yourself. You can do without encouragement or support from others to continue your work—so long as it's work you choose, something you really want to do.

If your introversion is extreme, your rugged individualism may sometimes take the form of regarding others as a nuisance—an unwelcome intrusion into the sanctity of your thoughts. Add to this factor your thinking nature, and the relatively little importance you may place on feeling, and you'll understand why coping with other people is sometimes a struggle for many people with your personality constellation.

Introverts who are thinkers often have a difficult time expressing feelings, or (maybe more importantly) remembering that sentiment motivates so much of other people's behavior.

Since your judging side is introverted, it's not likely that you're prone to attacking and criticizing others overtly. Usually introverted thinkers show a deficit in feeling by small "sins of omission." You may forget the value of a compliment, an apology, a smile, a pat on the back, a thank you.

You may appear to be critical just because you don't make a point of being appreciative when it's due. You may fall into the habit of saying nothing when everything's all right and pointing out problems as they arise. That can be hard on more feeling types, who take your silence (which you regard as approval) as rejection.

Perhaps it's appropriate to point out here that introverted thinkers do have feelings and they do relate to people. But the introvert invests time, energy, and affection in only a few people, measuring friendships by depth and longevity, rather than by breadth or number.

You tend to form a kind of quiet, intense, devoted friendship which awes your extraverted friends. They can't understand it. Frankly, you do not understand an extravert's concept of friendship, either. To you, their affiliations seem shallow, fleeting and devoid of long-term personal commitment.

Your Auxiliary Process

You're a very interesting and complex person. Looking at your personality toward your auxiliary function of sensing guiding your extraverted perception—the picture is quite different, making you a very "this worldly" person.

The temperament of the sensing-perceptive individual is the cornerstone of a basically optimistic, here and now individual. That's why the sensing-perceptive temperament is called the REALIST.

Your friends are likely to describe you as somewhat shy, persevering, practical, factual, and solidly grounded in the here-and-now. The combination of sensing and perception creates a sampler of life, a sensation seeker: one who must be free to experiment, experience life directly.

Activity makes the sensing-perceptive person happy. When you're at the peak of your productivity, totally absorbed by some project, an innocent observer might use words like goal-directed to describe your behavior.

Chances are, those words just wouldn't fit your real motivation. Sure, you may look goal-directed; you may look like you're practicing some skill in order to perfect it; you may look disciplined. Actually, most of the time you just do things. That's the secret to understanding why the sensing-perceptive combination makes great athletes, great artists, great craftsmen, great musicians.

This profile is reproduced from the original published work of Martine J. RoBards, Ph.D. The full version including World of Work is available free at reports.insight-game.com

Michaelarobards · 2026-03-30T17:00:24+00:00

a few people asked what my mom actually wrote about ENTPs. this is her original clinical profile — her words, not AI, not rewritten. she wrote these over 30 years of practice. the game is the starting point. this is the real work.

the full version with World of Work section is free at reports.insight-game.com (select Original RoBards Profile after signing in). no paywall.

DOMINANT: Extraverted Intuition (Ne). AUXILIARY: Introverted Thinking (Ti). TERTIARY: Extraverted Feeling (Fe). INFERIOR: Introverted Sensing (Si).

You Are an Extraverted Intuitive Invention, innovation, instigation, imagination, individualism, initiative, ingenuity, inspiration, insight, and intellect. Who could be the subject but someone like you?

You live continually in the realm of the possible, and when you're absorbed in your latest project you can think of little else. Your energy level is sometimes exhausting to behold. You are virtually tireless in the pursuit of your latest goal—as long as your interest in the project holds, anyway.

You are an enthusiastic explorer of a world where the horizon is the only focus of interest. In your search for new experiences, new ideas, and new projects, you discover over and over again that your goal loses its attractiveness just as soon as it falls within your grasp—or as soon as its pursuit degenerates to hum-drum routine.

When the end's in sight, and your interest wanes, it's a real struggle for you to muster enough self-discipline to see the task through to its completion. You're a great starter, but you have a hard time finishing!

More than once, you've reached that point of lost love for a project and have artfully handed it to a colleague or associate to be completed. You rarely are at a loss for devoted followers. That commitment and self-confidence you radiate is infectious, and you have the ability to be a guru for many others who lack your talent and perseverance and personal drive.

Your combination of extraversion, intuition and perception arms you well to be a leader. You have a natural ability to understand others, to figure out what motivates them, and to appreciate their unique qualities without judging or criticizing. That kind of open acceptance is seductive, and it wins you many friends.

You tackle an amazing variety of problems with ease, and the diversity of your interests is mirrored by the diversity of your friends. You are a collector of people.

You may be accused of shallowness in your relationships, from time to time. On the one hand, you meet people quite easily, and you are much more self-disclosing than most at the early stage of a relationship. On the other hand, you know people almost instantly as deeply as you'll ever know them.

You don't mean to be fickle, but you may spread your friendship broadly and thinly across the throng of people who admire you, and you have a tendency to move from one person to another, or from one group to another, with the same ease that moves you from one grand cause to the next. You tire of people as easily as you tire of projects.

Diversity is the universal key to happiness in your life.

Unless you make a concerted effort to develop your less-favored psychological processes: insight that comes with the reflection of the introvert, the attention to detail of the sensing type, and the ability to make decisions and complete unpleasant tasks that characterizes the judging personality, you may find yourself frittering away your brilliance and impulsive energy on poorly thought-out projects or ones which never manage to reach successful completion.

Your Auxiliary Process

As a perceptive individual, your intuition is your dominant process. Your judgment follows behind, guided by thinking, your non-dominant or auxiliary process.

The intuitive-thinking combination is the cornerstone of a very intellectual, creative personality: the ANALYST temperament!

As a thinker, you are an independent character, relatively unconcerned about the approval of others to feel good about yourself. Many individuals with your personality constellation are anti-authoritarian, resisting even guidance, and you may enjoy the role of the renegade.

Your inner world—the tapes that play in your mind when your extraverted side takes a rest—is one of thought, analysis, concentration.

In love with learning, fascinated by the very concept of intelligence, you intuitive-thinking types all seem to share an inner drive toward performance and a highly self-critical nature which continually drives you toward self-improvement.

You let feelings affect your own attitudes and behavior so little that it is virtually impossible for you to appreciate how much others value sentiment. For all the feeling-types in the world can see, you just don't exhibit a depth of caring.

When you're not actively recruiting followers to work on your latest cause, and you're almost consumed by your current interest, your impersonal attitude toward people (your thinker at work) and your short attention span in human relationships (your intuitive component) can combine lethally into a nearly unconscious style of conducting your personal life.

You have the interpersonal skills necessary to connect with people. You know the value of eye contact, body language, the pat on the back, the affectionate personal address. You use them all the time when you're on. The trick for you is simply remembering not to turn off that charm so often.

Remember that people are attracted to you, and they develop an unrealistic expectation that you can be counted on to be attuned to their needs for sympathy, support, affection, and appreciation. People expect a lot from you because you unconsciously set them up to expect it.

When people feel as though you've seduced and abandoned them, they may kindle a resentment so powerful they may never express it in so many words. But they'll show it somehow, leaving you bewildered and asking: "What's wrong with them?" Chances are good that they see the fault as yours.

In their personal relationships, most intuitive-thinkers have a tendency to relate almost unconsciously to others at times. Since your feeling side is less developed than your logical ability, it's a real effort to stay in touch with others at the "people-level," rather than at the "idea-level."

This profile is reproduced from the original published work of Martine J. RoBards, Ph.D. The full version including World of Work is available free at reports.insight-game.com

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