[nujabes]

I have a hormonal imbalance and am prone to mood swings. I prefer to be neutral and "chilly", but realistically I have many strong emotions and I've had to learn to live with them. I'm actually really sick of all of you immature ENTP's saying that ENTPs have no emotions, or are incapable of feeling emotions or caring about other people. Just because you are emotionally repressed doesn't mean everyone else who's an ENTP is a living replica of Darth Vader. There's no such thing as "hitting absolute zero" with emotions. You have them, and if you continue denying that it will only create a deep psychological disturbance which will manifest in irrational and often harmful behavior. So don't.

Repressed emotions are the ones people claim to never have.

Interestingly enough, it was an emotional overload that snapped me out of my depression recently. After a decade of abuse from my dad that gradually increased in severity it all came to a head when he tried to beat me with a baseball bat. My emotions went into overdrive for a couple hours sending me completely out of control until one of my friends got me to lay down in his backyard that night, smoke some weed and just reboot.

Then, suddenly, I was back to normal. Emotions back in check, Ti back in control, Ne functioning normally again. I still have emotions (duh, lol), I just have "control" over them again.

 

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Likewise, actually, but without the weed. It was actually our own @Stephen who recommended me a book on maternal narcissism, which got me out of a five-year depression. I became so incredibly enraged that I thought I would burn everything I touched, for a whole week. Before I read that book, I thought I was incapable of feeling anger. I was so used to repressing all the messed up shit my mother put me through, and when it all came out I was a total wreck. But it subsided eventually, and now I feel a hell of a lot more stable than I ever was before.

yea for me it was a lack of self-esteem and a whole lot of anger/confusion towards my dad, both caused by a romanticization of what my dad expected of me.

 

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@entpIdeas - I think I can probably shed some light on this conundrum. Most of the time I'm absolutely unaware of what "emotion" I'm currently feeling, with the exception of rather frequent feelings of either frustration (at the rate time passes or at a "failure" to be as competent as I want) or contentment. Anger is just a strong feeling of frustration and happiness is just a strong feeling of contentment. But I'm not in touch enough with those emotions to really explain how they function for me. Most of the time its just a cause/effect relationship that I notice, ie winning makes me happy, i just won something therefore my current mindstate must be happy. What happiness feels like, I don't know. Go ask a feeler.

But I'm also not as "broken" as someone like Psyphon. I have a lot of loose friends, maybe 5-7 close friends and only 1 or 2 "best" friends. I'm pretty open with my best friend (an ENTJ) but that's only as a result of what I talked about earlier. Prior to that, I was as closed-off as you can get. Wouldn't tell anyone how or what I felt because I didn't trust anyone enough to think that they wouldn't see my emotions as irrational, over the top, crazy, etc, so I just bottled up and lashed out occasionally.

I still lash out now, but its less often. I definitely can understand the lack of a connection with others. I even feel disconnected from my best friend, i don't know, 40-50% of the time? The only people in my family who I think either a) get me or b) care enough to not care what i say or do and just go with it are my 13 year old brother (an ENFP (which surprises me, i definitely had him down as a thinker until i had him typed a few times and he got ENFP consistently)) and my mom (an INFJ), though even my mom gets flabbergasted by my apparent "cold-hearted, emotionless bastardization of logic and reasoning."

My best advice is to not worry about whether or not you have emotions (because you do, unless you're a sociopath, in which case, please seek psychological assistance!). Don't worry about how other people perceive your emotions and/or your expression of your emotions (or lack thereof). If a person is worth keeping around and trying to develop a connection with, they aren't going to judge you on how well they think you are expressing your emotions but will be accepting and go with the flow.


EDIT: Oh, and if you really need some therapy to deal with feelings of isolation or abandonment, listen to Pink Floyd's The Wall. Get's me out of my shell every time, at least for a couple hours.

 

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Oh, ok, I meant some people put it as if they weren't detectable. How do you detect them?

Hm, I guess I don't want to learn how you can repress emotions instead of releasing them. Sounds very stressful. -.-

Repressed emotions manifest themselves in others. If you repress anger, you become highly sensitive to other people's anger.

And yes, repressing emotions is very stressful. Not healthy at all. Unfortunately, they're crazy irrational thingies that we have trouble explaining rationally, so we tend to avoid them.

 

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Could be on to something here. Going to take a look at my own behavior patterns and see if this is applicable. You know, we get so wrapped upon thinking we know everything and have our lives under complete control, get blindsided, and realize we know little or nothing. Square one. (almost)

The worst. Nothing is worse for me than coming to that realization. "I'm wrong."

And people get offended when that bothers me, like its somehow an attack on their intelligence.

My self-esteem is based on my competency. If I'm wrong, then I'm not as competent as I thought. That bothers me.

 

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If you were wrong it can often be because you did not have enough information on the situation. Nothing to do with your level of competency Or if you did have enough data... well sometimes even the most competent person can make a mistake. What's this perfectionism here

Quite honestly, its an NT thing. If I didn't have sufficient information, then my powers of analysis were not strong enough to notice. If I have sufficient information and fail to perform... well, then, I'm not competent enough. Wanting, desiring competency isn't enough for me. I must be competent. I must succeed.

Interesting... And pft, if there is one emotion I can't repress it's anger. I tried and then 5 minutes later it all came out even worse. After a few such tries, I gave up. I just let myself be angry, it's not a bad feeling anyway haha. I just didn't like the feeling of having no control over it, that's why I tried to make it go away on my own will (I tried several practices to that end, nothing worked).




Avoid what? Emotions? They don't need to be explained rationally... beyond figuring out what made you feel the way you are feeling. Then there is of course a few psychological theories on emotions, the ones using an evolutionary framework are pretty good. What other kind of explanation do you need?

We (or at least I) avoid emotions because even when I can rationally explain why X happened and why X is a predictable outcome of the situation, I will still feel anger, sadness, disappointment, etc. I distrust irrationality, so I avoid irrational emotions. And that's not to say I try to live an emotionless life - quite the opposite, actually. I like being happy, especially when I can explain why I'm happy. If I can't explain why, it makes me uncomfortable.

 

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You mean the perfectionism is an NT thing? The way I see it, if you've succeeded in life quite a lot of times, why should it be a problem if at times (infrequently enough) you fuck up a bit? It's an irrealistic expectation to try and be perfect at all times. Don't you agree then?

Yes, perfectionism has a high rate of occurance in NT's. The way I see it is this: I may think I'm competent because I have succeeded before, but if I can't perform now, then how do I know if I'm still competent? I do have "unrealistic" expectations of myself. That's why I'm able to achieve at such a high level. I force it on myself, as does every other NT. "Average" performances are unacceptable, because I'm always pushing myself and expecting improvement. Deep down, I'm not satisfied with anything other than perfection or excellence, though I may appear otherwise.

Emotions aren't irrational - there is always a reason for them. Hm, it is funny that you need to know why you are happy... I'm often happy just because I have the feeling of flow or just having fun or something. Or things are simply working out well Do you mean you need an explanation at a deeper level than that?

Don't get me wrong - I do like theories on how emotions work, I'm into psychology a lot (cognitive, evolutionary, neuro, etc), but I don't feel the need to apply all these theories in detail to try and explain everything in my life. Though I did take away the main messages and I do often interpret my life through that.


Another thing... you as Ne dom, shouldn't you be irrational a bit? So then why do you distrust irrationality?

Whether or not I "need" to be able to explain my emotions is subjective as there is no way to objectively analyze if it is necessary. Regardless, I require it. My constant question is why? If I can't answer it, I'm uncomfortable. In the same way an SP craves freedom so they may act whenever, wherever, and in whatever capacity they wish, an NT craves power/control over nature. We must understand to control.

Oh, and about the irrationality - Sure, my perceptive function is irrational. I see possibilities and connections everywhere and can't explain them often. But my thought process could not be further from irrational. Ti, bro. Logic logic logic until the ideas and connections make sense.

 

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You don't need to have the totality of perfectionism to achieve at a high level. I also like to be very good at stuff, I'm a high achiever myself and average is unacceptable to me simply because I know I'm not average. I know that from experience. But true perfectionism would be unnecessary stress.

(I am sure this is going to be nothing new, but) your worry about perhaps not being competent now even though you always were in the past is pretty irrational and obviously unfounded. As long as you have a healthy brain that you keep exercising you'll be fine. This is not to say I never have such thoughts myself but I always know that's irrational BS.

Maybe this is Ne for you though? I read somewhere that ENxP's need to improve themselves all the time. I do have that desire sometimes but then I'm back to focusing on what I'm actually doing. I suppose if I do things, learn things, achieve things, it does improve me in a way...

That's the key difference. You want to improve, but you're more focused on the "doing" of something and as a result of a lot of "doing," you become skilled. "Doing" has little to no attraction for me except in that it is a way for me to improve a skill I have. And yes, I would say it is an Ne thing. I know my own capabilities and can see the best possible outcome of a challenge, so it bothers me when I don't achieve it.

Ah, I also must understand to control just like an NT, I would say forget Keirsey Though sure, I do like that kind of SP freedom and I do strive to have it.

Meh. Reading Keirsey just gave me better words to describe what I'm talking about here, like NT vs SP etc. If we had this conversation 6 months ago I would have given you the same answers, it just wouldn't have been in this type of language.

Anyway, I do feel uncomfortable when I can't answer a why and I try hard until I can. But for the emotions I already have a pretty nice explanatory framework taken from psychology theories. Anything beyond that would only be needed for practical purposes... (this can still be very interesting and not simple at all.) Maybe there's the difference then between us, you want to develop a totally new theory for everything all the time?

yes, i'm obsessed with reasons. I want to know how I, people, the world, reality works, but more importantly, why it works. ​I can't explain it, its a subconscious drive.

Okay but it's not dominant Ti. I mean I'm also not dominant Ti and thus I can take a bit of irrationality here and there.

True, but I think an ENTP's aux Ti works differently than an ESTP's aux Ti. When working with dom Ne, it functions to pick apart and analyze each idea that Ne provides, keeping/preferring the logical ones and either discarding the illogical ones or improving them until they are satisfactory in their rationality. So while we can tolerate the existence of irrational ideas, we can't do the same for the implementation of them.

That's not to say I'm some hyper-rational robot. I enjoy irrationality at times, like when I'm playing the role of comedian. I don't wait and think "hm, based on the crowd's level of laughter from that last joke, i should use this joke over that joke next because the content of the last"- NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! STOP! I just Ne my way through it. And the best part? I'm really fucking good at it.

Perfect example. Every Friday is dress-down day in my office. Jeans, t-shirts, etc. This morning I saw, in my pile of clean clothes on my floor (next to my many piles of dirty clothes), a graphic t shirt that says "anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice" with a headshot of a dude with a mullet on the front and knew it was the right shirt for today.

Couldn't explain it to you if I tried. But I'd be lying if I told you I haven't gotten 5 comments on it and made 3 other people outright laugh at it... and i've only been in the office for 2.5 hours.