How does your mind work?

[Queen Kat]

It seems to me that everyone I know has a different way of thinking. Like all of them have a different kind of mind or something. Some people don't seem to have a brain and just do whatever other people do, others seem to do monologues in their heads and there are also people who I just can't follow. So, I'm curious, who do your thoughts and your mind work?

 

[Lithium Onyx]

I like the idea of this thread, though it's kind of vague. So, I'll try to answer your question as best as possible.

To start, I have only met a couple of people that I believe even begin to understand the way I work upstairs. Don't get me wrong - this isn't about genius or thinking on a higher level than other people: My brain is just not wired the same. At some times I'll understand something that no one else does and it's like adding two and two for me, and other times I feel like I'm the only one who's completely lost.

Things like Math and Science come easy; I just "get it." I can't explain it any better than that. But with social matters it all seems so arbitrary. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing most of the time, so I try to shun that sort of thing. I can mimic basic social techniques, but when paired with someone I don't know I usually freeze with a nervous grin on my face. Believe me, it's not the least bit charming. Sometimes I wonder whether it's my inclination towards introspection and avoidance of anything social that makes me awkward due to lack of experience, or if my awkwardness drove me to introversion. Then again, I have never been that strong in E to begin with.

I'm very disorganized, and very forgetful. My thoughts, my room, everything about me is pretty messy, even sometimes lazy. Especially when stressed or depressed, I tend to take a "I don't give a damn" or "I'll do it sometime later" approach to things around me. Because of this I sometimes drop everything, avoiding responsibility.

I don't know if this is how other INTPs work, but I'm also very musically inclined. Music is one of the few things that seems to actually make me feel strong emotion. My mind's like an iPod perpetually on shuffle; there's never not some tune playing in my head, even while I'm thinking in depth. It's very entertaining, actually.

Sigh. The only thing worse than being an INTP is a female INTP. (Or I suppose an INTJ. Or a female INTJ...)

 

[laughingebony]

I like the idea of this thread, though it's kind of vague. So, I'll try to answer your question as best as possible.

To start, I have only met a couple of people that I believe even begin to understand the way I work upstairs. Don't get me wrong - this isn't about genius or thinking on a higher level than other people: My brain is just not wired the same. At some times I'll understand something that no one else does and it's like adding two and two for me, and other times I feel like I'm the only one who's completely lost.

Things like Math and Science come easy; I just "get it." I can't explain it any better than that. But with social matters it all seems so arbitrary. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing most of the time, so I try to shun that sort of thing. I can mimic basic social techniques, but when paired with someone I don't know I usually freeze with a nervous grin on my face. Believe me, it's not the least bit charming. Sometimes I wonder whether it's my inclination towards introspection and avoidance of anything social that makes me awkward due to lack of experience, or if my awkwardness drove me to introversion. Then again, I have never been that strong in E to begin with.

I'm very disorganized, and very forgetful. My thoughts, my room, everything about me is pretty messy, even sometimes lazy. Especially when stressed or depressed, I tend to take a "I don't give a damn" or "I'll do it sometime later" approach to things around me. Because of this I sometimes drop everything, avoiding responsibility.

I don't know if this is how other INTPs work, but I'm also very musically inclined. Music is one of the few things that seems to actually make me feel strong emotion. My mind's like an iPod perpetually on shuffle; there's never not some tune playing in my head, even while I'm thinking in depth. It's very entertaining, actually.

Sigh. The only thing worse than being an INTP is a female INTP. (Or I suppose an INTJ. Or a female INTJ...)

Get out of my mind!

This is a better description of how I think than I could have written, myself. Everything but the part about being female applies.

In regard to math, science, and sometimes philosophy, there is more to it for me beyond just "getting it," although I certainly do "get it." Math and science are not just sets of rules and results deduced (or induced) from those rules. They are whole entities. Everything fits together, but it does so synergistically(?). Whenever I'm toying around with concepts in math, science, and philosophy, I feel immersed in the subject, as though I am swimming in a pool of math, or whatever else. Sometimes the simultaneous simplicity and complexity of the concepts and how the parts they play in composing the singular entities makes me giggle or even laugh out loud. This sounds a lot like the descriptions I have heard of Introverted Sensing, but with concepts instead of sensory stimuli.

I am also very musically inclined, complete with perfect pitch (although sharp keys tend to throw me off). There is always something stuck in my head -- usually the last thing I listened to. I have tried everything I could think of to get music out of my head, including foregoing listening to music for several months, but to no avail.

 

[Atomic Fiend]

Like a library.

 

[Phantonym]

Round and round it goes. I do the inner monologue thing.

 

[Ginkgo]

I do the inner monologue perpetually. I sometimes wish there was a pen somewhere, writing all of these thoughts down in a book, because I frequently lose track of them.

The most frustrating thing for me is trying to recall epiphanies and ideas. They can sometimes get lost between my other thoughts, like the books in library - if you will - but messier. I often find myself repeating my actions in an attempt to conjure up what I was thinking about 5 moments ago, because I knew there was something that led to that thought.

I'm too busy examining the crowd to just go along with it. I would rather try to determine whether I should even be part of it or not.

I'm not a follower. Neither am I really a leader, but I can be either if I need to.

Things like Math and Science come easy; I just "get it." I can't explain it any better than that.

Yes, I can identify with this. The most exciting thing about this (at least for me) is trying to dissect the concept and regurgitate it into a format that someone else can understand. I don't know why, but I get a great deal of satisfaction from this.

 

[Jaguar]

Combination of a movie screen and a library.

 

[Triglav]

I like the idea of this thread, though it's kind of vague. So, I'll try to answer your question as best as possible.

To start, I have only met a couple of people that I believe even begin to understand the way I work upstairs. Don't get me wrong - this isn't about genius or thinking on a higher level than other people: My brain is just not wired the same. At some times I'll understand something that no one else does and it's like adding two and two for me, and other times I feel like I'm the only one who's completely lost.

Things like Math and Science come easy; I just "get it." I can't explain it any better than that. But with social matters it all seems so arbitrary. I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing most of the time, so I try to shun that sort of thing. I can mimic basic social techniques, but when paired with someone I don't know I usually freeze with a nervous grin on my face. Believe me, it's not the least bit charming. Sometimes I wonder whether it's my inclination towards introspection and avoidance of anything social that makes me awkward due to lack of experience, or if my awkwardness drove me to introversion. Then again, I have never been that strong in E to begin with.

I'm very disorganized, and very forgetful. My thoughts, my room, everything about me is pretty messy, even sometimes lazy. Especially when stressed or depressed, I tend to take a "I don't give a damn" or "I'll do it sometime later" approach to things around me. Because of this I sometimes drop everything, avoiding responsibility.

I don't know if this is how other INTPs work, but I'm also very musically inclined. Music is one of the few things that seems to actually make me feel strong emotion. My mind's like an iPod perpetually on shuffle; there's never not some tune playing in my head, even while I'm thinking in depth. It's very entertaining, actually.

Sigh. The only thing worse than being an INTP is a female INTP. (Or I suppose an INTJ. Or a female INTJ...)

Same.

 

[Lightyear]

All that I can think of is that my mind is very people-focused. I am constantly scanning the emotional room temperature of my environment and if I see someone who seems like an outsider, hurt etc I try to somehow comfort them and include them. I am constantly trying to figure people out and why they do certain things. I see the relationships between people and try to figure out how to mend broken relationships and how to invest into relationships through encouragement, gifts, kindness etc so that they are healthy and go deeper and become more authentic. I feel like a doctor whose aim it is to find the wounded in a group and to nurse them back to emotional health so that the whole group can function better again. I am almost like a general of emotions, I am very strategic in figuring out the strengths and weaknesses of people and supporting them either way so that they can reach a higher level.

I am also an abstract thinker, one thing will remind me of something else that from the outset seems completely unrelated, for example I remember learning at uni about President Truman's doctrine of containment and on the same day I managed to flood my bathroom and as I saw the water spreading across the floor the first thought that jumped into my head was: "Containment! Containment!"

 

[runvardh]

A hat rack at the best times, a wall blogeoning device at the worst of times.

 

[Polaris]

I could go on and on about how my mind works. I am an introvert, after all. But no one wants to read a novel, so I'll try to limit it to something especially neat (at least to me).

The neatest thing to me about how I process thoughts has to do with the way I approach belief. When someone asks me a simple question like whether I think there's a God, I find it almost impossible to answer. I don't think strictly in terms of true and false; for any given object, I hold many contradictory beliefs at the same time. So someone will ask me if God exists, and at once these many layers will superimpose themselves over each other: To you, God is real, so yes. Religion doesn't appeal to me, so no. God is an idea, and ideas are real, so yes. The concept of God doesn't make sense, so no. And everything is true and false at once, so yes, no, both, and neither.

This leads to a lot of indecisiveness on my part. Whenever I latch onto one layer, it ends up feeling arbitrary; I've only done it because that layer appeals to me, and I could just as easily reach for something else. So I keep asking myself whether I shouldn't change my mind, and the more I consider that question, the more detached from objective reality I become. At some point, everything starts to seem meaningless and arbitrary, like a scattering of unconnected dots. I could see someone going mad if they stayed very long in that state of mind; it's incredibly alienating, and makes me long for someone to pull me out of it. It does, however, lead to a tremendous level of flexibility. Once I reach that point, I can see countless ways to dive back into reality, and I can choose any of them I like.

 

[Grayscale]

 

[Matthew_Z]

Assumption: My mind works.

I'm still trying to justify that assumption.

 

[Clonester]

Response #1- NEVER ask an ENFP how their mind works.

Response #2- Unless you want a crazy drawn out answer complete with enough randomness and thought jumping to kill a sensor.

Response #3- Or you can relate to an acid trip.

Response #4- Actually, not even I know how my mind works.

 

[Thalassa]

Like an Indigo Chyldes, apparently.

I really don't want to get into it. We both might get lost.

 

[Queen Kat]

This is my mind: take all of the stereotypes you know, drug them with alcohol, pot and extacy and lock them up together in a tiny little box. It's not that I'm schizophrenic, but it seems to me that I'm always arguing with myself. You have hippie-me, superhero-me, Harry Potterfan-me, barbie-me, my-mom-me, my-dad-me, Gandhi-me, emo-me, wigger-me, catholic-me, slutty-me, Eric Cartman-me, politically-correct-whiner-me and so on. All those mes together are never really able to compromise, so sometimes the more (on that moment) appropriate mes need to shut the more inappropriate mes up.

 

[sculpting]

thats kind of funny!

Inner voices always. I often argue with myself. Typically it is easy to parse into the Fi opinion and the Te opinion, although I get shades of Ne playfulness mixed in. Fi is being filled with pure love for things around me, a fuzzy mist that pours out of my body and makes me blur into other people. It reaches out and touches them and "feels" them. If they are in pain, Fi will take that pain inside of me to try and understand how to solve it. Ne is like a vacuum feeding everything emotive around me into Fi to analyze.

Te is a giant wall I use to block all of the input as it can be very hard absorbing other people all day long.

Te combined with Ne also allows me to take a meta approach to the Fi people info I absorb. I understand "patterns of people". I develop models to explain the patterns. I watch them do things, and after a few times I can predict what will happen with those same groups next time. I listen to a plan, can forsee the Te systemic issues with the plan, then can forsee how the individuals involved WILL respond due to Fi. So I plan accordingly or advise corrections before the plan is implemented.

I can sense changes in the "flow" of conversation, text or behavior. NeTe picks up on incongruent parts-there was a blip in the matrix so to speak. I can scan the people-things around me at a very high level and identify where the "problem/lump" is. Inconsistentancies are obvious. I will misunderstand why the change happened (especially with TiFe) but I can see the change is there.

In an organization setting I can see where the "lumps" are-the areas where there are people problems that prevent proper flow of information/work and buildup of resentment/unhappiness. It is obvious to me but to explain to other people can take an hour or so depending upon the problem, then sometimes it is hard to logically explain why.

 

[Yloh]

This is interesting lets go into my head and see what I can dig out.

Often times my head is in the clouds and I'm in my own little world. I could be thinking anything from a song to philosophy. I often think about why people act the way they do. What environment were they raised in, what values were they taught, who were their friends, where do they work, what is their natural personality type, what is their economic status, and etc. With those thoughts, I am able to act in a way to make their day a more positive day. I am able to tell the mood of a person just by looking at them.

I really do value peach and harmony, so it is very difficult for me to cause any kind of conflict. Making others happy is what makes me happy. I can tell people the truth when the time arises because I do know it will make them happier in the end or at least the pain will hurt less.

When problems arise my mind is hard at work to find a solution and/or make a plan. I just don't feel very good until one of these two things happens. I just can't let things slide by. If there is no problems/challenges, it is easy for me to just go with the flow.

Patterns of all sorts come easy, but memorizing comes pretty hard. Sometimes I can notice every little detail (did you wear make up, are you tired, did you dye your hair, did you cut your hair, etc). I do, however, have an easy time remember events from a long time ago.

I love symbolism and often think of ways to express aspects of live by symbolism.

One of my philosophies in life is to always try to have balance. There is a time and place for everything (work/play, relaxing/exercising, reading/watching, group/alone, etc). Life is like walking on a tight rope. If you lean too far in one direction, you will fall off. Instead of falling to your doom there is a net to catch you. That net is the mercy we should give others for messing up. We climb up that latter again learning how to be more balanced. Other people can act as a balancing pole for you as well, so you don't fall off.

I could write more, but this is a good general idea of my mind.

 

[BlackCat]

http://www.typologycentral.com/foru...ices/15906-describe-your-thought-process.html

Here is another thread like this. Lots of info.

 

[Jaguar]

I really do value peach and harmony.

Is that a new ice cream flavor?