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[MBTI General] F's and the cooling of feelings with age.

Billy

Crazy Diamond
Joined
Oct 20, 2009
Messages
1,192
MBTI Type
INFJ
I have been noticing the last few years as I have gotten closer to being 30, that my preferences are either changing subconsciously or I am changing.

My feelings have been cooling for some time. Whereas they used to be constant, bright, and vivid, always feeling, always in pain or happy but something has slowly faded to just cold precision and analyzing of an abstract nature. Mostly searching for meaning, then connections to other things, then to ultimately the bare essential facts of the abstractions nature, whatever it is that I am picking apart.

I have noticed that I am spending much more time sitting and thinking things through rationally and logically, and though I am struggling with it now I feel it is growing and getting stronger, it actually makes me feel quite optimistic in a way because I know its probably just my Ti kicking in to shape and really trying to develop itself.

When INFJs or other NFs start getting older, do they master their emotions and then begin to apply new criteria as their brain matures?

If so, I say good, feelings never got me anywhere, in fact they were a fucking burden most of the time.

I still have feelings, but its like, they are getting more defined specifically, not that I know what they are, but what I am saying is that my mental skin must also be growing thicker because the buttons that set off my feelings are becoming more defined, not so much the feelings themselves. So I know what to look out for, I know how to remain calm when its triggered.

I am trying to analyze my own mind and what I know about myself, but its like lately the last couple of years I have really been getting good at it and understanding myself and my nature and what I can do and cant do.

I almost feel hyper aware of myself, not just the deep convoluted abstractions of my ever swirling miasma of ideas and thoughts in head but for my body, I can focus my mind and feel my pulse, feel my heart beating, feel the data travel from my brain to my finger tips as I tell them to move and type, feel the fibers in my lungs screaming in agony over the abuse I give them, feel the digestive enzymes, see through my skin and see the intricate harmony of bone, sinew, muscle, tendon, blood, electricity, atoms, data, and intelligence.

Working as a system all together, pumping life into this body so that I can fade into this reality via my sense and just think and taste reality and existing… I am the universe.

I’m not even tripping, the lsd, bud, all that shit never really had a strong effect on me, even under the influence of gargantuan amounts of shit I always was able to remain “there” even through a bad trip, knowing whats happening to me, feeling the anxiety shrink wrap my brain with adrenaline and cortisol, was still there, calm, collected, analyzing. Vomit, pain is over, I feel better, still there, analyzing.

I even went so far to obliterate myself that I took 4 tabs at a whack, and when it melted the brains of my friends and they curled up into a corner crying on half the dose, I’m analyzing.

I don’t know if I am too connected to the reality of this dimension, tbh, who knows this could be a dream, a terribly boring and mundane dream.

Anyway tangent over,

I think age is giving more precision in the form of a developing Thinking function, my feelings in contrast seem like they have to share the spotlight and as such are reducing and diminishing in intensity.

Has anyone else ever undergone something like this?
 

gromit

likes this
Joined
Mar 3, 2010
Messages
6,508
Yeah I think balance is a part of maturation. I've certainly found myself becoming more balanced (in many ways) as I've gotten older. Like you, I find it a good thing. :)
 

cafe

Well-known member
Joined
Apr 19, 2007
Messages
9,827
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9w1
The reduction of angst as I've gotten older has been a wonderful thing. I wish I'd been able to turn thirty much sooner and am hoping forty is even more of an improvement.
 
Joined
Dec 9, 2008
Messages
1,844
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6w7
Instinctual Variant
sp/sx
I still have feelings, but its like, they are getting more defined specifically, not that I know what they are, but what I am saying is that my mental skin must also be growing thicker because the buttons that set off my feelings are becoming more defined, not so much the feelings themselves. So I know what to look out for, I know how to remain calm when its triggered.

Wow... I can really relate to your way of going about it Billy. (though I usually can know really well what emotion i'm feeling but also the buttons)

Pin point the connections and reasons why this has happened and realize when I feel that anger/resentment.

It's so hard to do this but I've been trying to incorporate Eckhart tolle's philosophy *following him since I was 19-20 years old off and on*.

It helps alot the methods he suggests but they are really hard. What I like is he says accept what your feeling don't try to suppress them. Look at things as how they "are" in the immediate present moment not how they were then or could be but now.

It makes me see it from a different perspective.

I do feel I've emotionally cooled down fairly enough compared to how emotionally reactive I used to be in the sense of defending myself.

Sorry if I rambled too long, just funny how this topic came up as it's been on my mind as of lately.

I can't wait to feel that feeling Cafe that you feel of reduced angst/ alittle more easier access to a kind and calm rationality without having to seclude myself alone so much before reacting.
 

mmhmm

meinmeinmein!
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
Messages
2,280
i don't know if it's just age. it's more like
if you're willing to self-reflect and essentially
self-improve. because with experience,
it's easier to know what not to do.

there's plenty of older people that are still emotional idiots.
 

angell_m

Permabanned
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Jul 6, 2010
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818
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IxFx
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5w4
I couldn't have said it any better myself. Your description is pretty similar to what I have either been going through in the past or what I am still going through, or so I think. But I'm still very much depressed and lost. Mainly because I want to disappear. If I could pick any super power, I would become invisible, so that I could go unnoticed. For the past three years I've been trying to wreck my brain in hope that it would turn me into a drooling blob not capable of analyzing let alone think as much as I generally do, but it doesn't work because my past experiences in life won't leave me. They say talking to shrink will help, but I'm not too sure about that; Can't they make me an alternate childhood instead, perhaps erase my memory? It would have been so much simpler! I don't know if it will disappear in time, but I can always hope. I'm indoors a lot, unwilling to get new experiences from the outside world, so I think not. And if it does come, it will be in a long time in the future.
 

Seymour

Vaguely Precise
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Sep 22, 2009
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I was thinking along these lines the other day. When a five year-old gets angry or upset, it's like his or her whole universe becomes nothing but the upset. There is nothing good in that child's world right then.

As we get older, it seems like we gain emotional ballast from experience. Our being upset no longer becomes our whole world, and we learn how to keep (however imperfectly) perspective despite the emotion of the moment. Having a history of successfully dealing with setbacks and adversity makes a difference, too. We know that we've weathered difficulties in the past, so that also helps to keep the current situation in perspective.

Finally, I think knowing our own reactions and quirks makes a difference. When we've learned work-arounds for those issues that we can't change and those work-arounds become habit, our issues become more tolerable.

All that isn't so say that I don't still have plenty of issues and challenges in my life or that I have my act together; it's just that life is less stressful than it used to be. I'm sure I have painful upsets and heart-aches ahead of me, and maybe then I'll discover if I've just been fooling myself.

Meanwhile, I admit I do sometimes miss the emotional intensity I had when I was younger, but I'm a much happier and content 41 year-old than I was a 21 year-old (or 16 year-old, for that matter).
 

Thalassa

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We develop our tertiary function as we get older. For IxFJs that would be Ti, for ExFPs that would be Te...so it makes a lot of sense that around 20-30 that those Thinking functions would be brought more and more into balance.

I, and others, saw evidence of Te in me as early as my late teens, but it's only that I got toward 25-30 that I begin noticing a much more no nonsense lack of tolerance for bullshit, and abandoned many of the kookier beliefs I had as an adolescent. My world view is much more Te and "realist" than it was ten years ago.

With Ti, that would mean that you're employing the use of internal logic more and more.
 

OrangeAppled

Sugar Hiccup
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I'm certainly less angsty and more balanced (which I have become increasingly so since leaving my teens behind - rough age for many INFPs I imagine), but at the same time, I find myself embracing my Feeling and expressing it much more, whereas I used to appear less passionate on the surface, but would brood a lot. Maybe the Feeling is less clogged by emotions, so it feels safer to let out of its cage.

I listen to my "heart" more & I feel happier for it - despite a lot of crappy life circumstances the past year. When everything seems to go wrong & you manage to keep your head on, I suppose it's a sign of emotional stability and strength. Something like healthiness....
 

William K

Uniqueorn
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
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986
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4w5
From my personal experience, it's more a matter of controlling my emotions rather than cooling it. When I was younger, it was like a sun burning within that kept sending out intense light in all directions. I wouldn't say the sun has gotten cooler, but the light and heat is much more directed and focused. Instead of reacting to every single thing that touched a nerve within, I now have a much smaller list of important stuff. Things outside this list will either get shrugged off or just accepted as it is. Even for things I'm passionate about, I now take time to actually stop and reflect about it before reacting.

As was mentioned by mmhmm above, it's more a matter of experience rather than just growing older. Unlike T-types, Fs don't learn mainly by gaining knowledge from books or experts. We learn by experiencing, by feeling. The maturing process is a tough one, but as they say "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" :)

Seymour touched on the other part where we start to recognize why we emotionally react in a certain way and learn how to cope with it.
 

cafe

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Age does tend to put things into perspective. You realize that things could be so much worse and that you are strong and will weather whatever is happening. I'm more willing to trust my instincts which, in turn, reduces the incidences in which I allow myself to become involved in hurtful situations. I know enough people now to know that I'm not so bad so I don't let myself feel as much guilt over stupid little stuff.
 
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