Hi. Depressed INTP female here.
I'd like to know if any NT's suffered from depression, anxiety, and/or dysthymia and how they recovered from it.
For future references, I am not saying depression has anything to do with type, or is associated with a type. I'm just curious as to how a relateable individual coped with it.
AKA, it would help greatly.
I've suffered from all three, and continue to suffer from depression, though it comes and goes. I believe my depression stems from perfectionism, from expecting too much of myself, and from sometimes feeling like the rest of the world has an instruction manual and I'm trying to learn things by observation.
Medication helped briefly when I was severely depressed, to take the edge off of the crushing feeling of despair and futility. Once I got past that point, medication became a hinderance, because it only served to make me
feel like everything was okay, without actually addressing the cause of the depression itself. Counseling helped a bit, but I ultimately got frustrated with my counselor--I felt like I was more than he was equipped to handle. I would love a therapist who is trained in MBTI. I did find some useful ideas in a couple of self-help books on depression and perfectionism, some thoughts to help me see that my patterns of thought were not healthy or normal and to help me redirect them.
It helps to not think of your self/life as you would any other interest--don't attack yourself and only see the negatives, in an attempt to make yourself "better" and more competent. Don't see yourself as a problem to solve, and don't look for the holes to patch up. Try to see the positives and give yourself credit for those.
Try to enjoy things in the moment, instead of thinking about what you could do better. Just learn to be. Maybe develop your Se and integrate yourself a bit with the world around you. It can be a good antidote to living in a Ti loop sometimes. Sometimes we end up attached to these faulty ideas, and we just ruminate on them and get caught up in a cycle with no new information to counteract it.
Hope some of this helps. I can look up the titles of some of the books if you would like.