Am I an INTP or a weird ENTP

In conversation you might also see intuition dominants rapidly jumping from one subject to seemingly unrelated other. It is because their dominant and well-developed intuitive function has already formed connections from whatever the subject was to a couple dozen other subjects. To an INTP conversation with an ENTP will probably feel somewhat confusing, muddy, a run-on of a lot of things together. While the clarity in conversation that INTP needs will seem frustrating and unnecessary to an ENTP.

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That comment struck a tone, as one of my buddies loves to dance with me around subjects that are seemingly unrelated to the casual observer. I believe that he is an INTP or ENTP as well. My sister gets irritated to no end. She loves being able to figure people out as an INFJ. However, she quickly gets tired of trying to understand me and my random connecting of events/ideas

In your experience what kinds of people interest you conversationally? For example, I had some people over yesterday and they all talked about people they knew or things that they did. This was relatively boring, as this was a college setting, and I had to hijack things to spice it up. I do not mean to offend in those situations, so I was wondering, what strategies(probably tactics in this case) do you guys use conversationally with people who are more of a sensor or a judger?

Andrea said:

"devil's advocate"

tell us about yourself, not about the ENTP. all NTs love playing devil's advocate, and too often i hear it drop when people try to convince themselves they're ExTx. tell us about yourself, bar nothing, and we'll decide if it's relevant or not.

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Thank you for that Andrea. I will try to be more specific. I noticed that the way I learn concepts (especially math) were more pattern based. Memorizing the formulas and applying a step by step approach was a difficult task. For me, I learned by playing with a formula and learning how doing different changes to the equation would affect the answer. I used this play to relate to how the logic worked in the rules we were supposed to memorize( I often came up with my own steps to solve the problem rather than a precooked way of thinking about the problem). I took a more heuristic approach to problems and this helped me make connections and improved my understanding far more than the methods taught at school/uni. Also, I am far more interested in how people make decisions and interact than understanding basic physical laws. As for learning, I often would get into one subject only to see that I needed to learn about a separate field to improve my understanding of others. This led to several switches in my concentration from History to Political Science to Economics before I finally decided that I should just stick with one (Economics) and learn other things(like applying psychology to economics) in my free time. I loved integrating these into the overall picture of how we as humans respond to legal, social, or personal rules (follow them, don't follow them, change them).

As a young-ling I was in constant fear of being found out that I did not believe in god (parents were very Christian and it took me until the end of the seventh grade to tell them that I did not believe). This unhealthy family life left me with a huge fear of rejection (always thought that I would get kicked out of the house if I did not believe as they did). During High School I interacted with different groups of friends (geeks, jocks, hicks, punks, etc all too arbitrary for me I liked learning from them all). However, I often preferred a balance. I could say that I spent all of my weekends with friends, while my weekdays(after school) were more for myself ( I looked forward to the weekend, but I also enjoyed my alone time during the week after school). Many of these weekend get togethers were one on one interactions. However, I also partied with friends (alcohol involved) and soon grew sick of the new dynamic. I enjoyed other activities with friends, but grew to dislike the party scene. Many of my friends started to like parties more to the exclusion of other activities (sports, hiking, deep conversation, making something together, etc). Fast forward to college. I had already gotten sick of parties that revolved around drinking and hooking up in high school. But for many people it was a new experience. It was a party school and I transferred out to another school in the hopes that it would be different (sadly it was the same and now I was a transfer student without a common freshman experience). It began to be really hard to find people to relate to and there were few friends that I would "hang out" with. At this point, my social skills deteriorated and I became disillusioned with making relationships. There was a point where I felt that I had no friends (although several people probably thought that they were friends). In hindsight,(just graduated this year) I believe that I was shy ( self-centered too) and allowed this fear to sabotage my ability to relate to and enrich others. People that knew me would call me "introverted" or sometimes "anti-social". I began to see them as immature, shallow, boring, and less intelligent( there are different intelligences and I no longer judge along these lines as IQ merely shows how quickly you learn concepts as opposed to your motivation and sense of direction). My first assumption from the previous sentence may be true, but it is true for all of us, as I have come to understand, there is always some avenue where we have not reached our full potential. The third one has no relevance. I still have not figured out about the second one (beyond the fact that judging others to be shallow is in itself an act of being shallow, in fact all judging is shallow, there is more information/relations to be considered). Just because I do not find something interesting does not mean that another won't. What makes my interests better? After taking this new perception to heart, I have found that I may have used introversion as a way to make an excuse for my fear of rejection (ideas and as a person). People are interesting and I probably wasted four years as a loner because I did not want to accept that I needed to grow in my own way. It is not good to use others lower path of growth to justify retarding my own. It could also be what another poster mentioned and I am more of an XNTP.

Thanks for reading if you got this far.:crazy: I hope you found something useful in this.

Andrea said:

i read it fully. thanks for typing it out
INFJ is another strong possibility. like, if i read it cold, without the NTP planted, i'd say definite INFJ. even though your behavior is consistent with ENTP, your writing style doesn't hold strong for that at all. i didn't detect any xNTP bitterness, sarcasm or arrogance. you were clean and straight throughout the thread. what country did you grow up in?

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I grew up in the United States. I have learned to cut out the arrogance, sarcasm and bitterness because it is not useful at all ( also slightly unhealthy for your mental wellbeing and in maintaining an accurate view of your abilities). Also, the poster wanted a more objective sample of my experiences, so I decided to tell it as I saw it. There is no point to being arrogant and I have wounded enough people with the actions mentioned above. It might be helpful to know that I have a close family member that is INFJ and she has really helped me to be aware of others and how my actions can really affect them emotionally (she invested a large part of herself trying to get me to acknowledge my weaknesses on the feeling side). Emotions are scary for me as I used to shut them out since I felt that they were of a lesser essence than logic. Even 6 months ago you would have found me to be the typical arrogant, bitter, and sarcastic NTP. I loved to one up people and show where they made no sense. I used this to inflate my ego and self-importance since I felt that everyone else was illogical and lacking in the ability to think for themselves (such as questioning religion, social norms, morality, politics, etc). However, I have learned to tone it down and save it for a select group of friends that can handle the sarcasm and actually enjoy battling over ideas. Hard to say though, I will look up INFJ.

Andrea said:

it was not only the lack of arrogance, but the lack of humor or tangents or whim, pos or neg, that led me to an INFJ conclusion. an ENTP under the age of like 45 would be offended that people were so sensitive to their sense of humor, but maybe grudgingly conform. an INFJ would sincerely concerned about their effect on people. in addition, "scary", "wounded", "large part of herself", "really affect them" ring strong INFJ, rarely finding themselves into ENTP communication in the same context. your call though.

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Could be, many of those words are just a mirror of what she said to me (minus the "scary" part). I am revolted by the idea that I could actually be a feeler, when I spent so many years putting logic on the forefront in my way of thought (and suppressed emotion). That would have been a sad state, as an INFJ in denial. I have been told that I am the most "idiosyncratic" person they have ever met. As I don't believe in objective morals or the purported importance of humanity (Lord Byron's Darkness is one of my favorite poems), I believe that politics is just a force to change the rules of the game for those who have an interest in power, and society is bred to be de facto peasants for those who control the factors of production (whether government or privately owned). Basically, I hate doing what everyone else does unless I can calculate that it has the highest net positive effect for me. I do know one thing, I have been changing and the INTP personality seems like O.J. Simpson's glove for me now (could it be that working on FE through the help of an INFJ is making me aware of a deficiency?).