Everyday it seems to be getting worse and worse. My mood swings are so frequent and drastic that i could be living in paradise for 1 moment, and back to hell in the next. It's uncontrollable. I have noticed that during my good moods, i justify everything that i do with positive reasoning. Like for example, I need alone time from people so I don't have many friends, I'm very picky with girls and therefore, i don't have a girlfriend right now, I'm working a shitty job, but who isn't right now? I'm fine.
But in my bad moods, i beat the living crap outta myself. I am alone because no one wants my company. I don't have a girlfriend because I'm not good enough for anyone. I work a shitty job because i know i can't handle a job that expected anything from me. I'm miserable.
My reality is constantly switching back and forth and I'm scared that one day the bad mood will just stay with me. INFP's are generally known for hitting periods of sadness but after a few days of wallowing they are happy again. Does anyone else have to deal with this on the DAILY basis? I really dont think i am bipolar, but then again i'm no doctor.
I know what you mean. I have been on an emotional roller coster since the weekend. And since I don´t work this week it gets worse when I am alone at home. I met with a friend wednesday and then it was better, when back at home my mood swings were full on again, but mostly I ended up in a bad mood...
But for me I see light in the end of the tunnel so to speak. A few days ago I found a forum on the internet that seems to be the right thing for me and they are starting a self-help group in september and I will join them. The forum is for grown ups who are children who have narcissistic parents. My parents have no diagnoses but I think they have strong characteristics. I have always felt something is wrong in our family but have had problems pinpointing what they are. Now when I read other peoples stories I can relate. It has always been about THEM. I have had to validate their feelings to connect and they have never been good at affirming me for being my true self.
I have always had a major problem with them wanting to be closer to me than I felt comfortable with. I know now that they don´t like boundaries. It´s awful to think about it but I think they have been emotionally invading me for such a long time and that´s why I have been so rebellious to them and society as a whole. I have been trying to establish boundaries and they have not been helping me. Being an INFP I have been too empathetic for my own good and as a child you are loyal to your parents and can´t grasp the idea that they can be doing something that is not good for you. I don´t mean that they are all bad, but some things were bad in our relationship.
Enough is enough. I am not going to internalise the problems anymore and I am no counsellour or therapist to them ( I work as a social worker, but that is my work and I get paid for helping CLIENTS not my parents.) As I read on the forum I found: it doesn´t matter what you do or try to change, they will be who they are and it is not your fault. All through the years when I felt bad I have thought it had to do with me and something I did. And when noone could relate to what I was feeling I withdrew. When I was 19 I had a life crises and an emotional breakdown.
Sorry if this only seems to be about me. I just want to tell you since someone once seemed to think I was bipolar when I had acted in some way that must have been similar to that behaviour. I have met a bipolar in real life and I am not bipolar. I have seen counsellours and a psychologist and they never said I was bipolar. I just have mood swings that may be stronger than some other people's. But hey I am an INFP and I am not average. I know now what it comes from. I have stress reactions when meeting my parents. I stayed awake for two hours in the night this weekend and my thoughts were spinning. After seeing them for 24 hours I was emotinally frustrated. Since they don´t like conflict at all I have always been left with my negative feelings and thoughts that have not been accepted. And you can´t solve your conflicts with people who don´t acknowledge the conflicts at all. So they made me feel it is all about me and what is wrong with me. THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH ME. Sometimes I like what they do and sometimes I don´t that is all. They are the crazy ones pretending to be living in a family without conflicts and wanting to be best friends with their children.
Every individual and every family is different. I don´t know if this is helpful at all. I just wanted to give another perspective. Don´t assume there is something wrong with you just because you feel bad sometimes.
Maybe you vill change over time? I know I have. A lot. I love the concept of Self Actualization. If you don´t get the help from others that you want, get it yourself and ask for what you want and need:
SELF ACTUALIZATION
"Self Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is."
Abraham Maslow
Maslow studied healthy people, most psychologists study sick people.
The characteristics listed here are the results of 20 years of study of people who had the "full use and exploitation of talents, capacities, potentialities, etc.."
Self-actualization implies the attainment of the basic needs of physiological, safety/security, love/belongingness, and self-esteem.
Maslow's Basic Principles:
1.The normal personality is characterized by unity, integration, consistency, and coherence. Organization is the natural state, and disorganization is pathological.
2.The organism can be analyzed by differentiating its parts, but no part can be studied in isolation. The whole functions according to laws that cannot be found in the parts.
3.The organism has one sovereign drive, that of self-actualization. People strive continuously to realize their inherent potential by whatever avenues are open to them.
4.The influence of the external environment on normal development is minimal. The organism's potential, if allowed to unfold by an appropriate environment, will produce a healthy, integrated personality.
5The comprehensive study of one person is more useful than the extensive investigation, in many people, of an isolated psychological function.
6.The salvation of the human being is not to be found in either behaviorism or in psychoanalysis, (which deals with only the darker, meaner half of the individual). We must deal with the questions of value, individuality, consciousness, purpose, ethics and the higher reaches of human nature.
7.Man is basically good not evil.
8.Psychopathology generally results from the denial, frustration or twisting of our essential nature.
9.Therapy of any sort, is a means of restoring a person to the path of self-actualization and development along the lines dictated by their inner nature.
10.When the four basic needs have been satisfied, the growth need or self-actualization need arises: A new discontent and restlessness will develop unless the individual is doing what he individually is fitted for. A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write--in short, what people can be they must be.
EIGHT WAYS TO SELF ACTUALIZE
1.Experience things fully, vividly, selflessly. Throw yourself into the experiencing of something: concentrate on it fully, let it totally absorb you.
2.Life is an ongoing process of choosing between safety (out of fear and need for defense) and risk (for the sake of progress and growth): Make the growth choice a dozen times a day.
3.Let the self emerge. Try to shut out the external clues as to what you should think, feel, say, and so on, and let your experience enable you to say what you truly feel.
4.When in doubt, be honest. If you look into yourself and are honest, you will also take responsibility. Taking responsibility is self-actualizing.
5.Listen to your own tastes. Be prepared to be unpopular.
6.Use your intelligence, work to do well the things you want to do, no matter how insignificant they seem to be.
7.Make peak experiencing more likely: get rid of illusions and false notions. Learn what you are good at and what your potentialities are not.
8.Find out who you are, what you are, what you like and don't like, what is good and what is bad for you, where you are going, what your mission is. Opening yourself up to yourself in this way means identifying defenses--and then finding the courage to give them up.
Maslow Self Actualization - unlearn.
I too need alone time from people and have not had many friends through the years. I don´t have a boyfriend and have almost always been single. I have had difficulties opening up to people and trusting them enough - emotionally more than anything. The thing is people have most often liked me for being genuine and guys too I think. I think I have created my own life situation based on my own needs. Lately when I feel my needs are being met more and I can set healty boundaries I find myself opening up more and I don´t bottle up my feelings so much anymore. I don´t have to isolate myself so much anymore to feel fine and to be my true self. It´s easier said than done, but accept your feelings for what they are and you have the right to feel what you feel and accept that it is like that in that moment. Accept the feeling and then try to let go of it.
Sorry, this turned out to be a LOOOOONG post....
