Your true type is the type that represents your natural preferences. But your environment may or may not support your path of natural development. People tend to develop the functions in the order in which they prefer them. If family, school, and environment support this natural path, an individual will use and trust most his or her dominant function, followed by increasing use and trust of the auxiliary function.

Sometimes family, school, and culture do not allow individuals to develop along natural paths. For example, a child who tries to make logical and objective decisions using Thinking may be made to feel guilty for not attending enough to family harmony and other Feeling values. In this manner, an individual may be discouraged from developing his or her naturally preferred dominant and/or auxiliary functions. He or she may instead be pushed to develop another less-preferred function first.

This kind of type falsification may lead to a person’s not feeling comfortable with his or her ability to make good decisions or not knowing what information is important to attend to in his or her life. For these and other reasons, a person may feel tension between some preferences (between Thinking and Feeling, or between Sensing and Intuition) and not be sure of his or her natural preference.