However, under normal circumstances, all ego defenses are psychologically unhealthy to varying degrees because they prevent you from seeing and accepting reality as it actually is. When you reject reality by building mental walls between yourself and the world, you cannot adapt well and this increases the likelihood that problems will worsen or fester. If problems snowball, you might feel ever more defensive and fortify your mental walls further with each failure (tertiary loop).»

The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.»

When people are in a loop, they can become “extreme introverts” who get lost in their own subjective delusions or “extreme extraverts” who never stop to reflect on their actions. Looping inevitably causes many problems as people get poor results from their actions and then avoid the poor results by staying in the loop. A looping pattern can go on for a long period of time if a person does not realize what is happening and there is no catalyst to provoke change. On some level, deep down inside, people in a loop know they must change but they simply cannot bring themselves to because they fear opening up the ego to a challenge. When tertiary temptation leads to a negative result, a person has a choice to make: heed the advice of the auxiliary function to solve the problem for good (exit the cycle) or once again use the tertiary function defensively to avoid the problem. The longer a person is in a loop, the more unhealthy their behaviors become, and the more they will be at risk of inferior grip episodes as the dominant function becomes too extreme/overworked and eventually shuts down when confronted with the stress of mounting problems (thus defeating the original purpose of the loop in trying to protect and preserve the ego).»

Because the tertiary function is oriented in the same i/e direction as the dominant function, the dominant can “recruit” the tertiary in its defensive maneuvering to regain a sense of power or repair the integrity of the ego (like a band-aid). Unfortunately, the high price one pays for this very fleeting and false gain in power is losing touch with reality, which only serves to decrease one’s ability to handle future challenges. »