[INTJ] An Awakening; and A Call for Assistance

[Karina]

I have always known that I was INTJ. I learned about the MB types as a psychology major and have since taken the test several times over many years for the sake of robust data validation.

As I've grown into adulthood, and began establishing myself in a career; I began to more acutely notice how my behavior, analyses, and personality is affecting my employee and personal relationships.

Accordingly, I've taken the initiative to do a little research for the sake of self-betterment (as INTJs do, apparently).

It came to my attention (alarmingly) that my INTJ tendencies seem to be strengthening into a rigidness that is negatively affecting my ability to cognitively weigh in the emotions of those surrounding me.

At first this was only true for acquaintances and people in passing. I issued virtually zero consideration to the problems and emotions of people that I had no statistical likelihood to ever see or run into again. And yes, this was a statistic that I assigned an actual numerical percentage to in my head after analyzing several factors.

However, slowly but surely, these tendencies have unintentionally crept into my methodology for dealing even with the people I care about and am close to (friends, family, significant other).

Now you may have probably started to understand why I am alarmed by my own behaviors.

I come to these forums with the intention that I may share and learn from other people who have had similar experiences and obstacles in their lives. I aim to understand and implement coping strategies similar to what is described in the article here: Are you Too Smart for Your Own Good?

I have also recently developed an incessant need to attribute a specific example to any ideological or emotional concept in order to understand it (as you see me continue to do with these parenthetical elaborations). I have never found it to be sufficient simply to define something. I must see it in real-world practice and implementation for the purposes of analyzing, processing, experimenting; with the ultimate intention of attaining the maximum possible efficiency in everything that I do, say, or understand.

Apparently female INTJ's are rare (~0.8% as of the most recent estimate I reviewed); and I certainly feel isolated.

Although I have a relatively clear insight on how to navigate within the perception of social normalcy, I often find myself brazenly ignoring these avenues due to sheer apathy and statistical irrelevance to my current operation. Where I would once stop and listen to a friend explain why they had a rough day at work; My mind now seems unwilling to assign any merit or weight to their emotions because the statistical irrelevancy of doing that has already been calculated.

As I have learned, grown, became what most would describe as a "typical functioning adult"; my mind has become almost uncomfortably galvanized with the mindset of a computer; weighing explicitly and only logic, rationale, and reason.

Some degree of my current predicament is my profession... Part of my job involves me frequently writing automation code throughout a few various programs. My mind swims with math and Boolean formulas and weights and numbers and statistical values and you know something? I absolutely love it. I feed off it. It seems to be the one thing that I can't get enough of.

But be that as it may; it has resulted in the arrival of unintended consequences (and we INTJs absolutely despise variables that we didn't have the proper visibility on to account for them).

I would like for my friends & family to feel that I value their opinions, actions, problems, emotions; but I am going to have to develop a sincere strategy to exhibit behavior in accordance with these goals.

This has increasingly affected my romantic relationship as well. I am dating someone who is very much the polar opposite of me. Over the two years we have been together, my significant other has gone from reasonable/rational to being one of those iconic "artsy/spirit-energy" type of people. Inversely, I have gone from being reasonable/rational with the occasional room for incorporating mood/tone/emotion, to someone that has cut out all extraneous variables that influence my operations. In short, we started at a place with common ground; and stemmed in two completely opposite directions.

My partner often describes talking to me as "trying to teach a computer emotion".

I need a step back; I need a fresh perspective; and ultimately, I need to make a realistic determination about whether or not said relationships are worth encouraging. Part of me still very much favors the idea of running the direction away from self-reflection. Part of me, the INTJ part is screaming "It's not you, it's them. They are the problem. They don't understand. They are the intellectually inferior. Continue to abandon emotion. Stay the course because you have a statistically higher chance of being accurate and efficient than they do.".

I need a step back most of all because I don't necessarily want to live this way. A big part of me is proud with the condition of who I am; My accomplishments, my attention to detail, my financial success; but I've began asking myself what those things really mean if there isn't anyone in my life to enjoy them with.

I need a step back because I don't want to push people away anymore.

I need a step back because I'm still bothered by the fact that the "youre" in the article link I posted doesn't have the proper apostrophe. It's a URL... why would I continue to devote any attentional resources to something so benign. I need a step back because I can't stand that "attentional" isn't a real word even though it should be if you consider the conjugation rules applied to similar other words.

My mind has become muddied and clouded with a language of coding in which every individual character; every pixel on the screen is either correct or incorrect. There is no grey to me. I deduce everything into this binary "1 or 0" platform that leaves no indication of emotion or morality.


So there you have it. I am joining these forums and this community so that I may be more cognizant of these things. So that I may conduct myself in a manner more befitting a normal girl of my age and social category.

It is my hope that other people here may have valuable insight on coping with the issues outlined above.


I can't promise compliance... but I can promise efficiency.

-Karina

 

[IndigoViolet11]

The difference between INFJ and INTJ is only the thinking and feeling part, but they process the same something except it is whether the feeling is the input, or the thinking as the input. -- In terms of the dominant cognitive function (Ni) is the same, but the supporting role is either Fe for INFJ, or Te for INTJ. The feeling that you have might (just might, as a guess), be the relief role of the tertiary function.

If not talking about any mbti terms,

There is a space of feeling inside a logical person. This one the die hard logical person will explain it using logic, and guess what, the tool that we have can be the key to save the sorry logical person, so long as logic is not used to dismiss the particular "flaw" in the feeling.

I myself as a "logical" type (which later found where the foundation is) of person, like an INTJ. I am very flexible in my approach to people and I give maximum space to others. However when I take an approach in logic, it is as if I am flying, in a way, bullets of judgement. So hands down, this approach from an INTJ, I think this will be something that I assume is already familiar with, except that there seemingly have little solution to deal with.

It was, to me, in my experience before the INFJ mbti popped up, i was, well, trying to get a grasp on how to think logically way way before I dig into mbti. I mean, for years. For you, as T opposing to F, your problem will be another way round opposing to mine, swapping logical to feelings. There is nothing wrong if you analyse your emotions like a computer with software installed. Call it, "emotion decoder". Decoding human emotion and its if-then condition is one of the key to understand others, (ps I won't bother to type them tho). You might even want to write or in your mind think of an algorithm to try to acknowledge how people feel, as if a machinery. And have another algorithm, to define what a particular emotion mean. There is always a cause and effect in interactions just like anything in this world.

At least, this is how I deal with the cold hard logic that I at times stuck and cannot catch. The only difference between you and I is that what we are dealing with is opposite to each other, but the approach is exactly the same, while the method varies only because it is logic on my side I need to deal with, but on your side it is feelings you are struggling with.

It is easier for me at least to get this kind of get around, than just dive in to feel when the feel just do not seem to be there, so if you want, give it a try and see how it goes. After all, neither I would switch my feeling instinct to something else, and I don't see the point that anyone here to be something or someone else that aren't even about themselves.