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[NT] INT Child's Exploration

Salomé

meh
Joined
Sep 25, 2008
Messages
10,527
MBTI Type
INTP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Are you trying to say I drive you crazy? ;)
ME, TOO. The concept of eternity was the scariest thing I could think of as a child, and it still freaks me out.
It really surprises me that this is turning out to be a common theme. Perhaps not being able to conceptualize something is scary for an INT?

I wasn't afraid of eternity at all. All that time to procrastinate and fuck-up as much as you want, and an eternity of do-overs to get it right - heaven!
But I've never been afraid of mortality either.
I only have irrational fears, never rational ones.
 

Willfrey

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Nov 9, 2008
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615
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IsTP
Allow me to get the emo-crap part of my childhood out of the way: Social outcast, very few friends, treated badly, didn't like to socialize.

Subsequently I spent much of my time exploring the woods around my house, building forts, playing in/around the nearby stream and river. I would also occasionally help out my dad when he worked on the family cars, or the dirtbikes. I look back and feel very lucky to be raised in such a rural area.

My parents eventually got the internet, I think around 1996 or 97, which was 'cutting edge' given we were clear in the sticks. I almost instantly became proficient on the computer and spent a lot of time in a nerdy fantasy-themed chat room RP. I spent untold hours acting out fictional characters. I think because of this I both fascinated and frustrated my english teachers, who marveled at my writing talent (at the time, not presently) yet couldn't figure out why I wouldn't do much work, and was completely satisfied squeaking by with a D or C grade. I believe the word 'potential' cropped up in every single parent-teacher confrence.

Grades in Math suffered, as did History (which actually I find intensely interesting now). Science topics on the other hand were very fascinating to me, and I scored almost perfect in Biology, Botany, Physiology. My grades in Chemistry and Physics weren't as good, probably because of there mathematical aspects, but still they interested me.

As for my thought process I really can't say, I was a spur-of-the moment kid and would often just go off on my own and keep to myself, it was always deeply comforting to be alone with my thoughts.
 

527468

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Oct 22, 2008
Messages
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When I was quite young I designed fantasy buildings through architecture and engineering mimicry. Every day I had a new idea to implement to just myself. I used physical objects as props, such as the tree represents the original data source. With two sensor parents, I had to pretend I was in the physical world, so I made it look like I was out and about but I couldn't keep my eyes out of my imagination. I never liked the real world when I would occasionally see it. I remember viewing it as "dry" or "blendy" :/ (probably just me)

I remember being about 9 and organizing all of my ideas and math equations in this notebook. I had a white board with shapes and names which classified them, since each shape fit a certain angle of my puzzle. I don't really remember what I was doing. If I still had that notebook I would be able to identify all of the equations. (I write a lot less now.) In elementary school I was definitely super INTP creative prodigy, with music and math. My teachers said I was extremely gifted in a few areas. Middle school and high school were constant discussions with the teachers trying to give them my insight on their classwork, which proved well to about half of them. It seemed like every hour was a new question to perfect, which had nothing to do with schoolwork. I remember that everyone I heard speak sounded quite unconvincing and contradictory, though I always remained pretty humble towards them. For about a year I was in rush mode, humming and bumming new musical tunes I composed in my head for the school band and they gave me money. I wandered around campus aimlessly, skipping class simply to pace around school. Pacing helped me think better. Or maybe it was the fresh air.

The past seems like a jungle to me now, but I remember viewing it as so orderly and needed to be perfected back then. That is most likely because my past was a "select few" things.
 

nightning

ish red no longer *sad*
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Apr 23, 2007
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3,741
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INfj
My parents eventually got the internet, I think around 1996 or 97, which was 'cutting edge' given we were clear in the sticks. I almost instantly became proficient on the computer and spent a lot of time in a nerdy fantasy-themed chat room RP.

The lure of the internet. Oh I can definitely relate! I've became fairly addicted to text-based rpgs. There's something to be said of imagining yourself in a fantasy world and interacting with like-minds. A place for play-acting. You can be whoever you wish and can do practically whatever you want. It was the perfect escape from my very SJ family.
 

Anonymous

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Apr 23, 2007
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605
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INTP
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5w6
The lure of the internet. Oh I can definitely relate! I've became fairly addicted to text-based rpgs. There's something to be said of imagining yourself in a fantasy world and interacting with like-minds. A place for play-acting. You can be whoever you wish and can do practically whatever you want. It was the perfect escape from my very SJ family.

Ahh, yes! Now I remember what happened to this supposed exploration phase. It got eaten by the computer. I think I started using it as early as nine or so playing Civilization II and doing research on my pet cockatiel. Eventually I started playing Age of Empires, which had an online component, and joined a forum. And after that, I was just a plain addict.
 

blanclait

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Oct 7, 2008
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i didnt even think theories or studied at all.
i just played computer games like diablo 2, wc3, starcraft, lineage 2, etc all day. its been recently that i stopped playing games and went into exploring the world. which is after 2 yrs since puberty ended.
 

Jack Flak

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Jul 17, 2008
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type
In 7th grade, I stayed up every night watching A&E's Evening at the Improv, sometimes even Caroline's (which came on after), and slept through my first class or two. In 8th grade I think I switched to the late night talk shows.
 

INTJMom

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ME, TOO. The concept of eternity was the scariest thing I could think of as a child, and it still freaks me out. I never could understand why people thought getting to live FOREVER in heaven was such a great thing. I couldn't wrap my brain around never, ever dying.
...
My ISTP son and my ENFJ son both struggled with this as well.
When they were little, they would actually cry about it!
I was entirely flabbergasted how they couldn't look forward to "forever".
Since I grew up in an abusive home,
heaven was something I have looked forward to from a very young age.
They have both found their own way to deal with it since then.
 

Misty_Mountain_Rose

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I I *loved* reading, to the point where I was occasionally bribed/rewarded with books. It never ever felt like punishment, although I did sometimes get told off for reading too much.

My Mom used to ground me from whichever book I was reading for punishment because she knew it was the only thing that would bother me. (It drove me INSANE to be halfway through a book and not be able to read it) She would tell me to go outside and play, and I'd smuggle a book out with me and find a place to read. lol

When I wasn't able to do that, it seemed like I was constantly categorizing everything. I had collections and maps and structures for damn near everything. Coins, rocks, books, stuffed animals... I'd organize and then find a new way to organize them. I kept lists all over the place and drew maps of everything around our house. (Since it was in the middle of nowhere with one visible neighbor it mostly consisted of interesting trees, rocks or formations around our home)

My Dad is also of a very scientific nature so he would always tell me the how and why of all things Physics, Biology, Chemistry related whenever it applied. (IE - Hey Misty Girl, if I dropped a brick off the balcony and then a feather, which one would fall faster? What if it were in a vacuum? Could we create a vacuum out here? What if we put the feather on top of the brick and dropped them at the same time? So if I had two round sprocs, one with 15 pegs and one with 30, and they were each turning at the same speed, which one would pull more links of chain?) He still brings up a question I asked him one morning on a Cheerios box when I was little: If I'm building a house where all four walls face south and a bear walks by, what color is the bear?

I was always observing, connecting, associating everything. And always marching to the beat of a different drum, doing things that I thought were cool that other kids laughed at. :D I was confused at their reactions and thought everyone should think they were cool.
 

Nihilen

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I didn't read or academically learned anything when I was kid, I was constantly daydreaming, usually about philosophical/existential subjects; free will, death, life, perception, relativity, conscience, reality/delusion etc.

The rest of the time, I was daydreaming to fulfill my fantasies, created my own world inside my head.

It was somehow 'pathological', since daydreaming prevented me from doing anything else practically, but I got to tame it as I got older.
 

Nihilen

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I didn't read or academically learned anything when I was kid, I was constantly daydreaming, usually about philosophical/existential subjects; free will, death, life, perception, relativity, conscience, reality/delusion etc.

The rest of the time, I was daydreaming to fulfill my fantasies, created my own world inside my head.

It was somehow 'pathological', since daydreaming prevented me from doing anything else practically, but I got to tame it as I got older.
 

INA

now! in shell form
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Jun 6, 2008
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I remember pondering a lot of small philosophical points when I was very young, such as:
The color I see in the sky is blue and I call it blue because everyone says that color of the sky is blue. But when someone else looks at the sky, do they see, say, red and call it blue because everyone says that the color of the sky is blue?
I remember, years later, hearing about how Descartes arrived at his "I think, therefore I am" conclusion and remembered that I had pondered the same kind of thing as a child.

I also couldn't wait to learn how to read. I knew that all of mankind's accumulated knowledge was written down, most of it in English, and I wanted access. Once I could read, I spent countless hours with encyclopedia volumes spread across the floor around me, as the answer to one question raised another question, which raised another, and so on.
I identify with this most (edit: more Descartes + Nietzsche mix). Life was a neverending series of questions that prompted other questions that would send me in so many different directions in my search to get answers. Atlases, medical textbooks, encyclopedia, dictionaries, skin mags :D. A bit of trouble because I would just ask the questions, too, as they occurred to me, which wasn't always welcome. Nothing was sacred. I had no idea what philosophy was as a preteen, so imagine my excitement to later discover there was a field of thought entirely devoted to asking and answering these questions. How we know what we know was one preoccupation. Another was why we classify things according to one category when another works just as well. I had bouts of obsession with religion.
Made up words, wrote poems, an occasional song, did experiments (more trouble!).
I was also intensely sensitive and prone to daydreaming off in a separate world. Reading a story would lead to my constructing an elaborate version of what a particular place looked/felt like and how the people behaved and how I'd fit there.
Developed a habit of knowing what people were going to say when they started and finishing their sentences in my head.
I wasn't one for dolls, but the neighborhood kids were mostly boys, so I did whatever they were doing when I ventured out of my cocoon.
 

foodeater

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Mar 31, 2008
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Ahh, yes! Now I remember what happened to this supposed exploration phase. It got eaten by the computer. I think I started using it as early as nine or so playing Civilization II and doing research on my pet cockatiel. Eventually I started playing Age of Empires, which had an online component, and joined a forum. And after that, I was just a plain addict.

Yeah, that hit me around that age too.

I never talk, and from what my parents have told me I never really have. I can't remember what I thought about back then, so I don't really know when or what I was thinking. But I know I eventually got into the color thing, infinity, and some of the other things people have mentioned. Infinity didn't scare me, I don't think. I made a lot of forts, I remember that. A lot of video games.. exploration in the real world until I knew everywhere around my house that I was allowed or willing to go to and got bored... my dad read me books about natural phenomena like 'why is the sky blue' or the water cycle before I could read, and I was always asking my mom what new words meant (she eventually started telling me to look them up) or why I had to do chores (because she said so). I don't know how early those were though. I came up with theories about things I had limited knowledge about (dinosaurs became birds! That was when I was 5, I'm sure I had some help on that one...). I enjoyed thinking about evolution and long-term trends. Various worlds and situations in my head.. uh.. I'll have to try to watch some of the home videos sometime. I don't think we have any paper evidence of my early years left..
 

Rikka

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Dec 7, 2008
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38
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5w4
My parents usually weren't there and my INTJ brother was off nurturing his own curiosity, so i was alone during my intellectual endeavors. I would often draw at the coffee table for hours on end. We also had numerous children's books that i would read and re-read. I'd also play video games alot, finding immense satisfaction in beating a difficult level. I'd like to note that my family was a poor immigrant one (albeit i wasn't even one years old when we moved, so i am incredibly white washed) so we never had the time nor money to pay for any club activities for myself or my brother. I'm surprised i turned into an INTP considering my childhood environment. Perhaps it was the strong independence i gained as a child.

I also recall when i was 4-5 i would go out for solitary walks around the apartment complex, discovering new things all the time. At our other apartment in downtown, when i was 6-12 i would go out to the balcony and create a makeshift hammock, and lie there staring at the sky. It was amazing.
 

charliefoxtrot

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Dec 11, 2008
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36
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I was into roleplaying...exploring all the facets of how people acted, I guess. I'd pick up a toy or a marble, and ascribe a personality to it, and have it interact somehow with another toy "person". I'd see people on TV, or adults do things, and then I'd act it out and try to process their motives etc. I was also a bit of a perfectionist about this...when another child was involved in this, which was seldom, I'd boss them around a little. Everything had to follow logic or I didn't like it.
I also read a LOT of books. I read the Lord of the Rings series, the Narnia series, the whole Anne of Green Gables series, and a manic amount of other novels (some rather adult) all around the age of 8 to 10. Tried to absorb it all up, like a precocious little sponge, and I've always had a passion for the metaphor/simile/analogy. I remember being a little philosopher too - my parents made a bit of an attempt to bring me up as a Catholic, but from a very young age it just seemed so wrong to me.
 

Samurai Drifter

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May 8, 2007
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116
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INTP
Apparently when I was a toddler, I asked what everything around me was by pointing to it and saying "dat!"

I spent most of my time reading. My dad often commented that I was functionally one-handed because I was always carrying a book, wherever I was going. Normally it was some kind of fantasy or sci-fi, with the occasional nonfiction science book thrown in.

I became strongly interested in chess in first grade or so, after I was taught to play by my dad, and would beat people 5 or 6 years older than me in the school chess club. I also enjoyed video games, though my INTJ brother was hogging them a lot of the time.

My room became a country that I ruled over like a god, and my toys were my subjects. I'd have them interact in various ways, including wars (my closet was the slums which was in a perpetual battle with the rest of the room), there was a team of specialized agents who took care of problems at my behest, etc.

I also often carried around a notebook with me, in which I designed various things such as weapons (such as an assassin gun that injected poison upon impact), roller coasters, rockets for interplanetary missions, and also drew a bunch of mazes. Occasionally they'd have odd ramblings, lists, half-finished stories, or other such things.
 

Provoker

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Feb 4, 2008
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There's this one story that my dad tells people where I was working with my grandpa who has passed away but was a genius (incidentally, I would have loved to talk to him now that I'm older but he passed away before I was 12). In this particular story I was proabably about 7 or 8 and my grandpa is explaining to me how to use my watch as a compass by adjusting for daylight savings time and aligning the watch with the sun and so forth. After taking the time to go through all the procedures involved in this he asks me, "so what are you going to do next time you get lost?" And I say, "use a cell phone and call someone"..lol.

I suppose the above encapsulates my personality in a nutshell. Growing up as an INTJ was not easy for me. I was daydreamer, but my head wasn't up in the clouds when I was alone and thinking, on the contrary it was usually staring at the ground and engrossed in deep thought. I can remember walking home alone (probably around 10 or 11) and being stopped by my grandpa (my other other grandpa) who was driving past and he asked me why I walked with my head down? Then, at 10 years old, I took this as an indication to correct my posture. Now that I'm older realize it wasn't about posture, it was about an unhappy 10 year old with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Moreover, I was always getting in trouble growing up. In grade 3, I had made it into the gifted program but was held back by my teacher due to behavioral issues (I was in the principle's office daily) and he claimed that I didn't read enough. My parents contested this and took it to the principle but were ultimately unsuccessful in changing the outcome. Looking back, it probably would have been the best thing for me because it would have afforded me some recognition for my abilities which would have been fuel for academic achievement. None the less, at one point I was banned from going in the school yard at lunch because I was too disruptive. Instead, I had to report to the principle's office every lunch where I would draw pictures and occasionally play chess with the principle. None the less I was a very shrewd INTJ. In grade 2, my Jewish teacher whom I had a huge crush on sent me to the office. Out of anger, I drew a big Nazi sign in my notebook and tilted it so one of her colleagues could see as he walked by (and this was eventually translated to her). Even at 7 years old, I had some grasp of the magnitude of the atrocities committed against the Jews and used this as a means to express my anger toward this teacher. Fighting was a weekly (if not daily) routine, especially when I moved on to middle school in grade 6. I had a lot of anger and no real friends (at this school anyways) except a few other pariahs who weren't very close at all. I played hockey on the side but that's just because I love sports, not that I had any connection with any of the guys. When you're a guy growing up and you're involved in sports, size is everything and I was short. Suffice it to say that I learned to scrap pretty quickly. Still more, I hated the politics of fighting when I was young. I would throw a guy down and give him some shots and a bleeding nose (take a few shots as well) and people would tell me that I lost after which never really made any sense to me. Incidentally, I came to overcome this by getting involved in boxing in high school winning the provincial championships in 2001, placing third in the country, and later beating the champion at my weightclass to be ranked 1 in the country.

At high school, I met a person who would come to be my best friend and whom I want to be my best man when I get married. He's an INFJ, for the record. However, partway through he switched schools (for various reasons) and I was essentially left alone. I had been spending every single lunch with him literally for 2 years and we just clicked extremely well. When he left I had no friends, yet still had a huge pride and the ego to be aware that I had no friends. I didn't think anyone was worthy of me and I reasoned that I would rather be alone than hang out with these hacks. It was bad to the point where I would be getting food at the local plaza and not have anywhere to sit, and even though people liked me I thought it would be extremely random to just go and sit at someone's table. Accordingly, I would go off to nearby stores or sleep to fill the time and avoid the embarrassment and humiliation being seen alone all the time. I simply couldn't assimilate and felt a need to protect myself from them. Incidentally, things weren't as bad in my fourth and fifth years of high school for various reasons (in fifth I got a girlfriend and that opened a window into my feeling side that I'd never experienced before).

Overall, growing up I was interested in sports, drawing, the outdoors, building models, collecting things, chess, movies, and so forth. And yes, I was obsessed with Ninja Turtles.
 

sonata

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Dec 2, 2008
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291
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As far as exploration of the physical world, I don't think I did a whole lot of this --- it always seemed like a good idea but never got far past that.

I did the toy-interaction thing, too. I'd tell my father these stories with my dolls and Beanie Babies. I liked to collect things and organize things. I read a lot of books and spent too much time on the internet. I came up with my own ideas, but they weren't great.

School was a place to get away from my family and talk to other people. I'm a weak I, so I never felt the desire to cut myself off completely, and although I was never exactly popular, and didn't care (hello, INTJ :newwink:) having some people to hang out with was pretty important to me. Learning was done primarily outside school, because my elementary school went by the "everyone is equally special and smart in their own way" philosophy, which was all fine for self-esteem but meant no one actually got taught much. I used to ask my teachers "Why?" all the time, which they liked when it was about the subject matter but not when it was about the rules. I meant no disrespect; I just wanted to understand. I now know that this doesn't work too well. =P

However, there were some things that I didn't learn that most kids probably do. Like, in sixteen years of being driven places, for some reason I'd never really figured out how traffic worked. When I actually started driving, I realized that this was probably something I should have been paying a bit of attention to. (Yay, sensotards.)
 
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Aerithria

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May 18, 2008
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568
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I used to be obsessed with language. Any word I didn't know became my biggest priority. Naturally, I was reading constantly. Mostly fantasy, which progressed to horror as I got older. I lived in my head a lot, partly because of that, imagining places where I could never go. It was fun.

Heh, I remember the first time I understood the concept of death. I'd spend hours in my head, trying to figure out what it'd feel like if I didn't exist. I never got anywhere with that, but it was an interesting experiment.
 

Lexlike

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Jul 8, 2008
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149
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Very young I was very fantasy oriented and creative- I liked drawing industrial thinks like cars, which were my passions back than and i had a quiet good factual knwoledge about cars: there were my life. I also liked to write imaginare statistics, about Formula 1 or soccer... which is not really NT anyway... Besides that I was also very interested in politics and I was even young very critcial about "society etc.
My serious first "abstract explorations about life started very late actually... with 15, when I myself if there is a life after death after playing so much counter strike.,Sometimes I could even sleep a night, because of the Death question ...
After exploration about I started to try to fit in in life and to be more social, this was kind of exploration too, because I was always detached. I also started to be interested in human anthophology, and I m fascinated about it. WIth 16 I also "started" to like to read books... from Nietzsche, Freud to Tolstoy.... i also started really to be interested in psychology, philosophy etc.
I have to mention that, I m very sensitive, emotional instabil and high neurotic, to speak in Big 5 Traits., which is propably rare for a INTP, I would guess.i m also in real life a true late bloomer
 
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