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[INTP] INTP and being sentimental

slowriot

He who laughs
Joined
Dec 1, 2008
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So I was thinking about how much you think the introverted sensing has to do with INTPs having bouts of sentimental and melancholic moods.

I have them plenty, the older I get and I seem to attribute songs to different people in a melancholic way. Like for my deceased grandparents and when I listen to them the emotions stirs up in me and I enjoy it. I actually enjoy the feelings of melancholia more than I enjoy feelings in the present moment.

I understand this can be universally attributed to all types but I just want the INTPs view on this.
 

teslashock

Geolectric
Joined
Oct 27, 2009
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Well, I'm an ENTP with inferior Si, and I still feel sentimental about silly little things. This is really one of the only ways that I experience my Si. I don't get sad though; it's kind of comforting.
 

Matthew_Z

That chalkboard guy
Joined
Jun 15, 2009
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1,256
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xxxx
I've gotten less sentimental as I've gotten older. That, or maybe I've merely tried to make more sense of those connections. I've seen many sentimental connections as nothing more than inhibition, holding onto a past by whose memory nothing more can be brought to the present. I've tried to break every such connection I have, some not successfully. I've reasoned that it's probably not a good idea to sever those connections that allowed for my normal attachment and subsequent normal development when I was younger. Ignoring those, I've tried to kick attachment to all the little things that make any decision regarding them nigh impossible.
 

sofmarhof

New member
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Apr 30, 2009
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327
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INTP
Well, I am reverse sentimental about things that remind me of not nice things... like how I had to get rid of all the books and papers from high school as soon as I graduated. I think that's the main way I experience Si, in relation to negative things. My inability to tolerate cold definitely has emotional roots.
 

Spamtar

Ghost Monkey Soul
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Sep 1, 2009
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Hot and cold with me.

Some of the most touching moments I am dead inside.

Then there is a silly interaction and im all mushy fuzzy warm and teary eyed.

Then I notice I hurt someone’s feelings I love or like allot and think its funny the twisted look on their face as they look like their insides just got twisted out of them (rare but poignant enough to be off-putting)

Fe inferior is messed up trick.
 

Night

Boring old fossil
Joined
Nov 2, 2007
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4,755
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INTJ
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5/8
I get sentimental about things relating to family - especially my immediate family. I'm kind of a sucker for memories that remind me of a bygone pleasure of my youth (video games tend to bring me back - Secret of Mana reminds me of happy times in middle school, for instance).

Nostalgia is normal, so long as it doesn't distract from the present.
 

Totenkindly

@.~*virinaĉo*~.@
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I've always enjoyed melancholia and bittersweet feelings, and nowadays at my age I get a lot of nostalgic feelings when I go places where I grew up or I listen to the music I listened to when young or play games I did when young or read books, etc.

It's actually sort of cool to feel things and not just dismiss them. I don't need to feel threatened just because I feel something, it's just part of my life that I can embrace and enjoy.
 

Blank

.
Joined
Mar 10, 2009
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I've been searching for nostalgia since I was in the third grade. =\

Although, this weekend I downloaded a torrent of 250 songs from the 90's and I've been having a blast swimming in nostalgia.

I wish I was a little bit taller
I wish I was a baller
I wish I had a girl that looked good
I would call her

I wish I had a rabbit in a hat with a bat and a '64 Impala.

B^)
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
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Wow, I always wished I could be sentimental. I save a lot of crap just because I am too lazy to organize anything, so if you call that pile on the floor "saving"...

When I do get around to organizing, I have been known to toss anything that adds more clutter to my life or requires dusting. My INTP cousin has gasped at me shredding cards and letters people have sent me, chucking baby teeth and mix tapes. Out with the old and in with the new, I always say. Inferior Si, ftw.

My INTP bf has a crazy amount of toys collected from his youth. I just don't get it.

The one thing I hold on to is photographs. But it's more about the morbid curiosity I have about the aging process. I've taken photos of people obsessively since I was a kid, basically to document how people age and to see if my theories are correct (e.g. - I have a theory that whatever hair pattern a baby boy is born with is the same one he'll end up with and I haven't been proven wrong yet as I watch my brother and cousins lose their hair in the same balding patterns they had at birth). So, yeah.
 

Orangey

Blah
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Wow, I always wished I could be sentimental. I save a lot of crap just because I am too lazy to organize anything, so if you call that pile on the floor "saving"...

When I do get around to organizing, I have been known to toss anything that adds more clutter to my life or requires dusting. My INTP cousin has gasped at me shredding cards and letters people have sent me, chucking baby teeth and mix tapes. Out with the old and in with the new, I always say. Inferior Si, ftw.

My INTP bf has a crazy amount of toys collected from his youth. I just don't get it.

The one thing I hold on to is photographs. But it's more about the morbid curiosity I have about the aging process. I've taken photos of people obsessively since I was a kid, basically to document how people age and to see if my theories are correct (e.g. - I have a theory that whatever hair pattern a baby boy is born with is the same one he'll end up with and I haven't been proven wrong yet as I watch my brother and cousins lose their hair in the same balding patterns they had at birth). So, yeah.

I'm the same. I've always been known for not giving a crap about keeping my old records, art, writings, photos, toys, or anything that most people would keep for sentimental reasons. It's kind of bitten me in the ass here recently, because I've been looking for tokens from my past that might lend some insight to my type, and I don't have anything. Ah, well.
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
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I'm the same. I've always been known for not giving a crap about keeping my old records, art, writings, photos, toys, or anything that most people would keep for sentimental reasons. It's kind of bitten me in the ass here recently, because I've been looking for tokens from my past that might lend some insight to my type, and I don't have anything. Ah, well.

Yeah, *positive* tertiary function development usually develops in your late 20s, I think. Until then, your tert usually is weird and wonky - either rejected completely, or relied on in a way that is a total misunderstanding of what it's supposed to be. For me, my tert Fe was all about people manipulation when I was younger and now it is a genuine sense of empathy and caring for others. So, I'm guessing that your Si won't be this way for long.
 

slowriot

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Yeah, *positive* tertiary function development usually develops in your late 20s, I think. Until then, your tert usually is weird and wonky - either rejected completely, or relied on in a way that is a total misunderstanding of what it's supposed to be. For me, my tert Fe was all about people manipulation when I was younger and now it is a genuine sense of empathy and caring for others. So, I'm guessing that your Si won't be this way for long.

Yeah I am in my 30s so I get what you mean. Well its a strange thing for me, I might just be a very logical INFP. Because Ive always been a very intense as a kid with a big imagination, I had some strange ideas. I think that having a IXFJ mother really helped me develope my extraverted feeling. She has been the influence on a lot of the moralcode I live by (as all parents are to a certain extend) but the Fe helped me develope that from an early childhood I think.

I have been taking the functions tests a few too many times. And I scored high on Fi, which might suggest INFP. But as I have dug deeper into my feeling side and understanding it I have come to the conclusion that it might very well be more of Fe I use.

Just a little about me thats unrelated but still not completely. I just think that as Ive grown older I have developed a different kind of melancholy than Ive had before, which might be the emergence of the tertiary functions in my personality. Im also not as intense internally as Ive been in my 20s.
 

jenocyde

half mystic, half skeksis
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Yeah I am in my 30s so I get what you mean. Well its a strange thing for me, I might just be a very logical INFP. Because Ive always been a very intense as a kid with a big imagination, I had some strange ideas. I think that having a IXFJ mother really helped me develope my extraverted feeling. She has been the influence on a lot of the moralcode I live by (as all parents are to a certain extend) but the Fe helped me develope that from an early childhood I think.

I have been taking the functions tests a few too many times. And I scored high on Fi, which might suggest INFP. But as I have dug deeper into my feeling side and understanding it I have come to the conclusion that it might very well be more of Fe I use.

Just a little about me thats unrelated but still not completely. I just think that as Ive grown older I have developed a different kind of melancholy than Ive had before, which might be the emergence of the tertiary functions in my personality. Im also not as intense internally as Ive been in my 20s.

You sound very Fi to me, hahaha... either way, we all use all the functions to some degree, and yeah, parents have a huge influence on us. I was also just speaking in another thread about how women tend to learn (or learn to use) Fe faster than their male counterparts because that is expected of us as women. There are many variables to consider, I suppose.
 

slowriot

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You sound very Fi to me, hahaha... either way, we all use all the functions to some degree, and yeah, parents have a huge influence on us. I was also just speaking in another thread about how women tend to learn (or learn to use) Fe faster than their male counterparts because that is expected of us as women. There are many variables to consider, I suppose.

I just think Im a very humanistic oriented INTP. Because some to most INFPs drive me up the wall with their emotional rants and needs to show emotions. And I dont know if you've read the descriptions by Linda Berens and Dario Nardi that description fits me about 80-85% to the INTP.

(And yes I understand that you didnt mean it that serious :) )
 

Fluffywolf

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I'm INTP and have a healthy dose of fairly developped Fi available to me. Although it's never dominant and always regulated by Ti.

This is seen from my strong sense of the illusion that is control. See what I did there? :p
 

Tallulah

Emerging
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Feb 19, 2008
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I've always loved history, and I loved seeing stuff from my mother's childhood or high school days, so I always saved things that I thought were cool, sort of as artifacts. I figured my children or nieces or nephews might get a kick out of it someday. But a lot of that stuff doesn't necessarily have sentimental value.

I'm sentimental about my grandparents, who are gone. I made sure to keep a few things that represented things we did together. I didn't care so much about having "stuff" that didn't represent anything. So I guess it's situational.

I don't get a kick out of being melancholy or anything. If I feel negative emotions, I try to make them go away. Most of my strong F friends seem to get mired down in the negative feelings, and let them take hold for a while. That would drive me nuts.
 

Fluffywolf

Nips away your dignity
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Most of the times I am sentimental, I'm not really sentimental but just don't have a clue, and am choosing the safe route, just in case.

Some of the times, when I am really sentimental, it's due to reflection and realization of false predictions.
 

Salomé

meh
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I'm the same. I've always been known for not giving a crap about keeping my old records, art, writings, photos, toys, or anything that most people would keep for sentimental reasons. It's kind of bitten me in the ass here recently, because I've been looking for tokens from my past that might lend some insight to my type, and I don't have anything. Ah, well.
+3

Not sentimental at all. Rather glad about that. Sentimentality is really lame and self-indulgent. I'm not melancholic either - not in that wistful way. I'm just a miserable sod. :cheese:
 

Alwar

The Architect
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922
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I have some occasional sentimental memories or thoughts, but I don't keep objects for long. My parents kept my school yearbooks because I told them I was going to throw them away. The lack of attachment to objects and novelty only seems to increase with age. I quit watching TV entirely, in fact, I don't even own one.
 

milkyway2

New member
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Dec 7, 2009
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?
I don't like just sitting around being sentimental.. but I like good memories and feelings connected with smells. I usually enjoy that when it happens. Is that Si?? For example, I was at the store and I sniffed the kind of cologne my ex used to wear and all of a sudden I got all these memories and feelings about what I was doing then and what I felt like and what I was thinking. I usually don't remember stuff very well, so it's cool when I do.

But I don't like it when a song comes on that reminds me of my boyfriend cheating on me because then I get super pissed and want to cry and punch things... and I'm like TURN THIS GODDAMN SONG OFF
 
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