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Hear me out
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Asking questions is a useful exercise. No need necessarily for the answers to be ready or figured out before writing down the questions. It’s good enough intellectual stimulation. I used to believe that I identified with INTP, ADD, and Autism. So, I have 3 models that I relate to. Also, 3 categories of people are now accessible, which are not the majority. It makes sense since I never wanted to be or felt belonging to the majority. Many downsides include loneliness, dismissiveness, non-social life, and self-made projects only. INTP is very close to INFJ in the sense that they share Introverted thinking Ti: The capacity to think and evaluate for oneself without the need to check what anybody else thinks. It’s a thinker mindset, a thought leader’s natural approach to Life.
Ti is a cognitive function that automatically works for Ti users without any effort to make it work, especially for Dominant Ti users like INTP and ISTP and Tertiary Ti users like INFJ and ISFJ. ESTP and ENTP need some conscious “activation” to work whenever needed. Other than that, it doesn’t require psychological energy, unlike what Extroverted thinkers with Te function imagine. For them, they need to think out loud and express their thoughts somewhere, spoken or written, to process them correctly for later use. They also need to check what other people think. The more people or brains agree on a thought, the more it is true. For Ti users, it can be the opposite. The analysis and evaluation processes are internal, personal, and intimate, and don’t invite anyone by default. The more a thought is widespread, the more risk it’s an intellectual manipulation. Since the thought is personal, people can’t have the same thoughts from Ti users’ perspective. Of course, there are references for Knowledge, but these are either believed “inhuman” like sources of Religions, or obvious or practical in which case they don’t involve a variety of intellectual efforts.
INTP and ISTP make internal decisions, sometimes very quickly, before gathering enough information. However, when they gather enough, their evaluations and analysis can be the best you can have from a human being. On the other hand, ENTJ and ESTJ, who have dominant Te, are excellent decision-makers when it comes to managerial decisions and forcing their decisions on others. INTP with ENTJ and ISTP with ESTJ see everything from a different angle. This can be either an eternal conflict or an eternal complementarity depending on the mindsets that each of them holds and chooses to have. This mirroring, or in Jungian psychology words: Shadow personality, is valid for all aspects of life including romantic relationships. Some models used by some apps[1] [2], “believe” that INTP with ENTJ and ISTP with ESTJ are perfect matches. Of course, this can be true only if they have the complementarity mindset properly “installed”.
No one wants to believe that others are right, but He/ she is wrong. There is a psychological resistance against this situation that pushes the thinker, Ti or Te user, to ignore the results of these cognitive functions: decisions, evaluations, and analysis. In reality, this resistance shouldn’t be taken as a stagnant state or a hurtle to fight against. All that is needed is a bit of effort to restart the work of the cognitive function again about the issue with new information gathered on even the same ones but this time, the person is in a better emotional state or in a different environment. Emotions and environment are huge influences on decision-making, neurologically and psychologically speaking.
Coming back to the INFJ with INTP since it is a personal story in my journey of identifying with a personality type, if there is one that matches, to begin with. I chose the INTP because I didn’t have enough information about myself and these 2 types, even if I spent 2 years and a half researching the field of personality types. I was sure that I had introverted thinking Ti very early on since it was obvious to me. However, I kept checking over and over INTP, INFJ, ISTP, ISFJ, and ENTP as I didn’t have enough elements to conclude and I found contradictions in me with every type I evaluated. Looking back at it now, it doesn’t seem that strange since when I had almost no knowledge about personality types and I was relying only on the tests: I got ESFJ, INFP, ESTP, and ENTP.
It was a long road with a lot of introspection and trying to understand the models going along with the confusing definitions of P and J, and contradictory in practice until I found the cognitive functions. Everything started to make sense again. INTP and INFJ have both Ti in 1st and 3rd positions respectively in the cognitive functions model. They can look similar in many ways, especially an INFJ male like me, who grew up suppressing his emotions and seeing them as a weakness for a male. I am also introverted. I didn’t get along with people that I didn’t meet anyway! I spent my spare time on Video games and movies.
With no money in my pocket and no one to encourage me to go out, they were the accessible things to do and enjoy. Modern INTPs are famous for spending a lot of time on Video games. They satisfy an intellectual stimulation and challenge that they didn’t find in their environment, plus dealing with people is difficult for them in general. Me, as an INFJ, I didn’t have the chance to evaluate my born social skills as my life was consumed by studies first, then the two digital hobbies. Not meeting people was not strange or unusual at that time. I saw people in Movies anyway! So, the confusion with INTP was easy for me to fall into.
No sign that I have introverted Intuition Ni or Extroverted intuition Ne. My feelings were ignored, and I was almost never in an environment that encouraged me to express my feelings or understand them. Hardcore science, Mathematics, Physics, Engineering, Scientific research, “cold” rare sports activities, ESTJ dad who gets hurt and feels uncomfortable until now by my emotional expressions when I speak with enthusiasm and passion, an INFP mom who always kept her emotions inside except when talking to her sisters. My INFP mom passed away almost 3 years ago, but I still feel the sadness writing it right now. She was the biggest love in my life, so her leaving created an emotional destruction inside me that took out the last layer of the emotional shield I had. I became very sensitive and started to get offended and hurt emotionally very easily. Overall, my emotional intelligence was very low and is still a “Work in progress” until now.
To evaluate if I Identify with INTP or not, the deciding factors now would be if I had Ne Extroverted Intuition and Introverted Sensing Si as my 2nd and 3rd functions. Si was confusing as I analyzed sometimes recent events and I thought this was Si’s expression and involvement in the thinking process. However, the more I learned about how INTPs love learning facts and talking about them sometimes, how dominant Si users are traditionalists and rely always on past experiences to make decisions and live their lives, I realized I am far from the Si expression.
Traditions don’t mean anything to me by default unless they are backed by something else. Also, facts are not something I’m interested in as I admit that I am disconnected for a long time from the news, local facts, or international practical matters that the majority follow on TV or Newspapers/Social Media. I have my topics, as projects, that I dedicate myself to, ignoring all unrelated topics, especially the news or random facts. We can say this is the tunnel vision of Ni Introverted Intuition but the dominant Ti of INTP can look the same from the outside when analyzing single topics.
When it comes to Extroverted intuition Ne, I thought, since it is a second function, I use it in a production mode only when I decide to. The truth is the second function in general forces itself many times and gets expressed whether I decide to or not. When I decide to, I can maybe use it more, with more control and more efficiently, but it will manifest itself whether I like it or not.
This is what I notice with my second function, Extroverted feeling Fe, as it will manifest itself when my brain senses or believes that the environment is safe enough. So, it’s a matter of the recipient who will trigger the blockage of the function or in a situation where the brain knows it’s inappropriate to express it, even if there is a desire to do so.
Extroverted intuition Ne is an idea-generating cognitive machine that sees a lot of possibilities and scenarios, connects ideas, and creates novel original concepts. I do have a dominant intuition as I love connecting ideas and creating new concepts. However, I’m very aware that my brain doesn’t see many possibilities and scenarios. It plugs ideas into one bigger framework or system all the time. So, my ideas are converging to models or groups of beliefs. This is the definition of Ni Introverted Intuition. I am not spontaneous in public speaking, even if I love it. My brain freezes if I don’t think before about what to say. It is slower than the Extroverted Intuition Ne Brain to come up with ideas.
When Ne users start talking, ideas start flowing one after one and they can keep talking for a long time. Of course, they can go on “tangents” and diverge from the first topic because some ideas, along the thinking road, lead them there. However, with time, they learn to stay on topic as much as possible. This concludes my journey with INTP identification hoping that it brought some clarifications for the personality types travelers who are still on a major introspection journey or the ones that think they found their type but they actually chose the wrong one and have an inaccurate perception about themselves.