A new venture, a new identity
Hi all,
It’s been a really long time. As some of you may have noticed, my previous attempt at starting a scientific blog failed miserably. I wrote myself into a corner and couldn’t really find a good way out. I’ve kept myself busy since then with a variety of projects, including writing grants and papers and trying to get another blog off the ground, but it never seemed like that was “it” for me. I struggled to find the perfect fit, something that blended my interests for learning new things, writing, research and furthering Jung’s ideas. I want to increase the visibility of Jung’s ideas, because I believe them to be tremendously important for people’s emotional well-being, but I know that without further research, these ideas won’t gain the credibility nor legitimacy they deserve.
So I’m starting a small research company focused on the genetic underpinnings of personality, with the hopes of one day linking particular genes or sets of genes to Jung’s cognitive functions. For now, I’m starting small with a web app that will use data from consumer genetics companies and return research linking gene variants to personality traits. You can follow my progress by signing up for my newsletter @Personality Genie .
Please continue to share your stories and comments. I’ll continue to monitor this blog and answer any questions that come up.
Thank you,
INTPblogger
Reconnecting
Dear followers and readers,
I apologize for my long absence! As an INTP, it is inevitable that life and work get in the way of more creative pursuits such as writing. But all that has changed. I finished my postdoc in Neuroscience in June 2014, and moved to Boston with my husband. I’m now taking some time to breathe and figure out my next “career” moves. I’m trying to reinvent myself as an Independent Researcher/Writer/Freelance Science Writer, focusing more on the parts of science/neuroscience research that I enjoy (reading, researching, theorizing, writing) and less on the ones I don’t (actually running experiments in a lab). We will see how I fare.
For now, you can catch up with my thoughts at my new blog: Bleeding Edge Neuroscience, and what I read at Neurochattr. Beware that the writing style has significantly changed. I am no longer in the grip of strong emotions and ruminations, which I’ve found makes my writing more professional and scientific, but less emotionally-appealing. I need to slowly find a way to blend the two sides of my personality, to use my science writing to connect with people, but as always, that part of me is still a work in progress.
I thank everyone for reading this blog and hope to resume some of these discussions over at my new nesting ground!
Onwards,
INTPblogger
From an INFJ: the meaning of emotions
Now dear readers, since I usually have an overabundance of thoughts/ideas/insights/words and usually no one around to share them with (as evidenced by the length of some of my posts), I’m not usually one to steal other people’s words. BUT, given my recent epiphany about emotions and my recent struggles both with my new awareness of them and their potential meaning, I thought I’d share something I came across while prowling the INTP forum (a favorite pastime of mine).
“To extend that note, emotions are not something to be avoided. They are just a diagnostic: a heads-up from the primal, instinctual part of your brain to pay attention, if you will. In many respects, emotions are a source of human action, a way of expressing universal needs based on environmental feedback (i.e, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs). They are often described as a river one rides toward some goal; however, as you noted, that’s incomplete. Every river has a course it follows, an order to its construction. That is logic, the complement to emotion. Some people have weak logic and run all over everywhere, never really reaching where they want to go; others have too little emotion and are a straight line without any adventure, finding their river’s hollow end too quickly.” courtesy of a wandering INFJ (Radiant Shadow) at INTP forum.
Emotions: I heart you! (and I hear you… just don’t know if/when I will listen)
Emotions and decision-making, motivation and the struggles of being INTP
I’m afraid this is going to be a lack-luster and wholly uninspiring post. This is because I’ve been attending to things that have left me bored, frustrated and even slightly (or more than slightly) depressed. I’ve also been suffering from a raging morning-to-night headache for over a week now, which may or may not be related to the boredom, frustration and depression. Unfortunately, when you sink into this kind of situation (at least in my experience), as much as you try to exert conscious control over your thoughts and feelings (can anyone really do this?), the subconscious mind has a mind of its own and goes into overdrive filling your consciousness with negative perceptions and judgements, tricking you into believing that the world is a dark and dreary place and that the only solution is for you to escape it. Which of course, just serves to reinforce the feelings of frustration, depression and the pounding headache. The dreaded downward spiral into the emotional dark cave.
And yet, you may ask yourself, hasn’t INTPblogger found her “answers”? Hasn’t she been claiming, all these months, to have found her path to success, the keys to a life full of meaning and purpose? The secret to long-lasting happiness and a fulfilling life? Well, my dear readers, I ask myself these same questions every day. I’m now living proof that you can’t just find the answers (or think you’ve found them) and then expect that, through some magical power beyond your control, your life will suddenly be filled with red roses and candy hearts– you still have to consciously take the necessary steps and make the right decisions that allow you to live your life “your way”. A life that allows you to use your strengths and maximize your mind’s potential (living authentically by meeting your OWN emotional needs based on personality type) , despite external pressures that drive you to conform and adapt to someone else’s vision of “optimal living”. As a self-confirmed 34-year old INTJ told me a few weeks ago, “it might sound counter-intuitive, but you generate more energy and feel more relaxed by using 90% of your mind’s capacity rather than only 30%”. In my head, this gets converted to: “if you maximize/develop the use of all four of your available cognitive functions (in their correct order), your emotional needs will be met (dopamine release), and you’ll have more energy/psychological reserves/resilience to confront life’s stressors (again, dependent on personality type).”
Although I have been drilling this message into my mind for the past five months or so, it’s clear I still have a long way to go to faithfully align my external circumstances with my new knowledge, my new purpose and my new life goals (my new internal state).
So when did my mind start to unravel?
As many of you know I recently started a postdoctoral fellowship in Neuroscience. My transition into this new position was already in the works last year, way before the life-altering experience (that could, perhaps, be equated with an ego-death?)– I had to endure as a result of my inferior, ego-driven issues and foolishness of the last 2-3 years. Now, my reasons/motivations behind continuing in this position, despite the realization that I have no real desire/dream to continue climbing the Ivory Tower any further, are varied and confusing at times. I have a very obvious Fe-driven desire to “please everyone” in my surroundings– my husband who expects me to earn a salary during this time and hasn’t quite come to terms with the idea that I’d like to write for the rest of my life (and is afraid I won’t be making any money)– my new boss who has high expectations of me (based on my prior, extremely self-motivated and driven, but robotic and unhappy version of “Self”) and expects me to produce something great, seemingly instantaneously (in true ENTJ style, this equates to quick thinking and quick action, which contradicts my stubborn, slow, Ti-Ne evaluation of the idea, gathering of the necessary information, careful experimental design and when I’m finally convinced that the idea and experimental plan are sound, interesting and doable, I can put my plans into action)– my old supervisor who expects me to be around for the potentially countless rounds of revisions on my next paper–etc. My Ti swings wildly between the emotionally-detached, neutral and logical conclusion that I can use the time to work on a project related to my new ideas and learn a lot of new, exciting and interesting information that can definitely help me understand the inner workings of the mind better (nothing like working in science, to truly understand science, its biases, where it fails, but also where it shines) and the very negative, emotionally-driven and self-centred Ti decision that I need to take care of myself first, and I shouldn’t let anyone get in the way of my happiness, so why can’t I just quit and stay home to read the great number of books I’ve downloaded onto my Kobo? Then, of course Ne jumps in with “wait a minute, take the time to truly evaluate the situation first and gain a better perspective on the issues at play here. Where are these thoughts coming from? Is this really a rational thought or are you being biased by your present emotional state (that may or may not be related to your new work situation)?”. I’m also now very acutely aware that I much prefer to wait on making a decision, but that an overwhelming build-up of negative emotion and frustration at work could result in a rash, spur-of-the-moment decision to quit (my husband has been forewarned). So, final decision awaits.
One of the reasons why I’m adamant on postponing this very important decision is because I’ve been hit with an unusual number of perceived (or real?) stressors since September (or even going back to the beginning of the year…). I’m actually not sure whether the stress is any different from what I was used to experiencing before (it may even be less), or whether my new psychological/emotional state is just too weak at the moment to handle these stressors (something psychologists call a lack of resilience). It may even be that the years of dangerous and devastating emotional regulation tactics, which were basically IGNORE and SUPPRESS and bury yourself in work and then more work, have finally caught up to me. I am now very aware of my emotional state and because of my knowledge of personality type, I can actually attribute them to an outside source (Fe), and try my best to work on resolving the issues and misunderstandings (not always easy for me with my conflict-avoidant nature). I also now know that my emotions are very important, that they need to be felt and tended to (gently and with a great deal of care), that they might be telling me something important about how my environment is affecting me, and that they need to be analyzed and if real, expressed and dealt with in a reasonable manner and within a reasonable time-frame.
So, the major psychological hits/stressors (in order):
1. Since the beginning of September I have been jostling for my space with an ENTJ boss who apparently wants me to hit the ground running on one of his projects. Since I have a pretty good idea in my head of what I’d like to be working on for the next two years and I have an undeniable need to be passionate and caring about my work (it is how I define myself, after all), and much prefer that the ideas originated within my own mind other than any one else’s (I tend to trust my own logic and reason above any one else’s and if I’m going to fail, I’d rather fail doing things MY WAY), I’ve stubbornly resisted every idea he’s thrown my way. I eventually just told him how I was perceiving him (controlling, overbearing, micromanaging) and although he was taken aback, I think it has helped the relationship, somewhat. It turns out he feels responsible for giving us all projects to work on and for making sure everything is working out properly!
2. My husband, bless him, was away for work for a good part of the last 6 weeks. This is the first time we’ve been separated since all hell broke loose in February-March. Now, although I looked forward to my space and some extra time to work on my projects and at times wasn’t even sure if I “missed” him in the traditional sense (Fi), I’m now convinced that his departure affected some place deep in my subconscious and slowly eroded away at my ego, until after six weeks, there was nothing left. All the effusive “I love yous”, hugs, kisses, etc, although sometimes taken for granted in the moment, really do get in to my mind. I’m also quite aware that I miss having someone around to take care of (Fe) and that in his absence, I find it difficult to even muster up the energy to take care of my own needs.
3. From October 9th to October 17th I was away at the annual Society for Neuroscience conference in New Orleans. Now, I don’t know how other INTPs feel about travel, but I have always been less excited about new places than I am about new ideas and theories. I just don’t think I’m very present IN THE MOMENT (Se) when I visit these places. I’m mostly just trapped inside my head (Ti). I don’t get any enjoyment from the people, the sights, the sounds, the culture, the food, the entertainment, etc. And this was only amplified by the fact that I was travelling ALONE and that I spent most of my time at the conference alone. Now, the scientific conference is a forum where scientists come together to share new ideas, so the concept itself jives with my INTPness. I even attended a pre-conference on Neuromodulation and while sitting there realized that this was probably the first time in months that my mind was actually relaxed and paying close attention to information from the outside world (my once insanely long attention span has been difficult to re-attain; it’s now mostly a case of if I’m interested it’s there; if I’m not interested, it’s not). I actually felt energized, interested, entertained. However, as soon as I had to integrate myself into the main conference– with 28,000 other people and a staggering number of scientific posters and presentations– my energy and attention span soon diminished. The Ti-Ne axis is just incapable of taking in and processing that much information at once, so my mind soon got confused and annoyed. Besides, it appears that anything that doesn’t obviously add to my current Ti framework immediately gets discarded or filtered out (a good and bad feature of Ti).
4. Finally, and perhaps the most pertinent to my current emotional issues, is the fact that I agreed, back at the end of August, to write up a review paper on my old project with my old supervisor. Now, back in the old days I would have viewed this as a opportunity to beef up my resume for my eventual career as an academic scientist and possibly as another opportunity to “shine”. At the time I was asked, I had this sinking feeling in my stomach that signalled a mixture of anxiety, dread and sheer mental exhaustion– my initial thought had been to say no, but for reasons I still can’t comprehend (inability to say no to keep everyone happy? fear of failure? fear of not meeting someone else’s expectations?) I somehow convinced myself to say yes. I’m now left with a 10,000 word review on a topic that reminds me of my horrid recent past experiences (Si), that deals with a now uninteresting topic (Si), that no longer aligns with my new goals and purpose and therefore I’m no longer attached to (Fe) and that I feel won’t provide me with any intrinsic or extrinsic reward or any sense of satisfaction whatsoever. So, despite many many attempts on “my” part to convince my mind that I NEED to attend to this one hurdle since it’s preventing me from moving forward in my life, the stress and frustration have become so great that my weak mind has crumbled in the process. And, since this is the first time in a very long time that I’ve had this much difficulty concentrating on and completing a project, I have to wonder, where has the motivation gone? Evidently, if the mind perceives that the cost is just too great for the perceived intrinsic or extrinsic reward (dopamine), or that the project no longer aligns with future goals (more dopamine), it shuts down completely. Ugh.
So other INTPs (and even other types that stumble across this blog)… what do you think? Is there some important meaning hidden in our gut reactions and feelings? Should we be attending to and listening to our emotions more than we naturally do? Is there always a benefit in over-analyzing the situation and convincing ourselves (or god forbid, letting other people convince us) that we should take on projects that we know we won’t care about?
The power of dopamine
First off, I must apologize for my absence. As you already know, I recently obtained my PhD in Neuroscience and this month has been a slow transition into my new position– the postdoctoral fellowship. Those in academia will know that this cut-throat position is the next rung on the ladder for those clambering for the much-coveted position/status of “professor”. Unfortunately, something like less than 10% of all postdoctoral fellows (a position that can last anywhere from 3 to 10 years) actually end up with an academic job, the rest, well, I figure they must find better things to do with their lives.
Fortunately, my recent “epiphany” and dramatic increase in self-awareness and understanding of the world forced me to confront the fact that if I wasn’t actively daydreaming (creating images & expectations) about becoming an academic professor, then it was probably because my mind was staunchly opposed to the idea in the first place. Basically, my subconscious was telling me that I, a born and bred INTP, would probably suck at being a professor. Or possibly not suck, because I like to be independent, learn new things and succeed, but at the very least I would be very very stressed and very very unhappy.
You can choose what you do, but you can’t choose what you like to do. -Gretchen Rubin
Unfortunately, most people are usually deep into their lives & careers before they come to these realizations. It is far too easy to ignore all the warning signs, to continue forward on auto-pilot working towards meaningless short-term goals, to get sucked-in because it’s easy and comfortable to follow what everyone else around you is doing. Eventually, you may try to convince yourself that if this is everyone else’s dream/long-term goal then you must somehow find a way to make it yours too.
As I recently found out, the mind just doesn’t work that way.
You are probably now wondering one of two things. 1) What the hell does all this rambling have to do with dopamine? and 2) why has INTPblogger decided to do a post-doc then?
I’ll take a stab at answering #1 and if I feel up to it, I may answer #2 as well.
1. The short answer: EVERYTHING
The long answer: well, it will probably take me a few decades to fully build my theory and figure out all the facts & details (INTPs come up with plenty of crazy theories based on vague assumptions and personal experiences, but we take our sweet time when it comes to actually putting anything concrete together, it’s the part we find “fun”).
For now, let me just introduce you to dopamine. 
You might think that a dog is a man’s best-friend, or that a diamond is a woman’s best-friend, but I say that mankind’s (as well as all other organisms lucky enough to be synthesizing and secreting the stuff) best-friend is dopamine. Why? Well, because dopamine is the brain chemical that makes us “feel” good. It’s the chemical that makes us get up in the morning, directs and reinforces our behaviors/habits, motivates us to set and achieve goals, creates dreams & expectations, helps store our long-term memories, increases our confidence and assertiveness, drives us to meet our basic needs (food, sex, water, shelter, sleep, love) and the list goes on. It’s even the reason why some people can’t seem to get enough of their barking hounds or sparkling diamonds (unfortunately neither of those things give me pleasure; if only life were that simple). Now, I’m in no way attributing all of human behaviors to one pesky brain chemical, although I would sure love to and someone before me has tried. Of course, there are a slew of other brain chemicals/neuromodulators that also have a significant impact on our behaviors– leptin and grelin signal hunger and satiety, oxytocin and vasopressin are involved in pair-bonding, serotonin is involved in delaying rewards for larger long-term gains, noradrenaline is involved in the fight-or-flight response (stress). But, at the end of the day, dopamine is probably the final player that prompts us to do anything.
The power of dopamine as a motivator and positive reinforcer of behaviors was first demonstrated in 1954 by a pair of scientists, James Olds and Peter Milner. They found that they could get rats “hooked” on receiving electrical stimulation that targeted regions of the brain containing dopamine-producing neurons. They were able to train the rats to press down on a lever to receive this electrical stimulation, and, shockingly, the rats eventually went on to favor pressing the lever over all other survival behaviors/instincts — ie. searching for sex, food and water. Even more eerie is the fact that, before proper ethical guidelines were in place, this study was repeated, and produced the same effect, in (a few) humans.
This type of positively reinforced behavior, where the behavior is repeated to the exclusion of all other more beneficial behaviors, is strikingly similar to what happened during and especially near the end of my emotional affair. Basically, I was “self-stimulating” my dopamine-producing neurons by interacting with LO, engaging in pleasant conversations, fantasizing, creating unrealistic expectations, etc. Conclusion: really, I’m no better than a rat. Others will find striking similarities between these behaviors and the drug-seeking behaviors of addicts. This is not surprising: most recreational drugs target the dopamine reward pathway in some way or another.
The powerful impact of dopamine-seeking behaviors on human society has led some to conclude that intoxication or “pleasure” is a basic animal/human need. In fact, although I haven’t read the book yet, the author apparently promotes the development of “safe intoxicants”. I think it’s a safe bet to assume that such a thing does not exist.
Now, what many people don’t seem to realize is that evolution, somehow, has given us the masterful ability to actually consciously control our dopamine release. Not only are there pathways leading from the dopamine-producing neurons in the midbrain to the prefrontal cortex (that beautiful part of the brain that gives rise to our thoughts, feelings and actions), but there are also pathways leading from the prefrontal cortex to the midbrain. This means that the prefrontal cortex is able to control how much dopamine it is receiving and is probably striving to maintain this amount within an optimal range (the prefrontal cortex cannot function without a certain amount of dopamine and noradrenaline). Too much dopamine, and you start hallucinating, too little, and you feel bored or stressed (a prime stimulus to pick up dopamine-producing addictions or obsessive behaviors). Basically, what I think this means is that if you are using your mind the way it was supposed to be used (taking full advantage of your personality type strengths and weaknesses), you will be “happy” and there will be no “innate drive” towards intoxication. It’s not going to be a “high” like the one felt when people fall in love, or the one induced by drug-induced and natural addictions, but I truly believe that the psychological state reached/maintained/felt will be even better. It will be characterized by an absence of emotional highs and lows, a state of being at peace with oneself and the world. I guess that’s the mental state some people call “self-actualization”.
Hooray for dopamine.
A confession
So, as many of you know, I’ve been maintaining “no contact” with my LO/emotional affair partner since the middle of April. This has been working extremely well, allowing me to re-focus my energy on my marriage and understanding myself & my husband, while at the same time dissipating those pesky “feelings” and fantasizes of being swept away from the realities of real life by a knight in new & shiny armor.
Unfortunately, I’ve been working from my old lab for the past three weeks (lucky for me LO is on vacation so I don’t have to deal with him in person until Monday) and as people who’ve gone through similar experiences probably know, being back in the location of the betrayal is a trigger for all sorts of negative feelings– anxiety, stress, fear, sadness, nostalgia, longing– and with these negative feelings re-surfaced the desire/need for some sort of contact. For the first time in a few months, instead of my thoughts being directed towards my new theories, work or my next blog post, they were re-directed towards musings on the experience with LO and what I would say to LO if I were to send him one last email. As much as I tried to bury these Fe-Si-Ne-driven thoughts (the exact content of the fictional email changed every day and the urge to actually write it down grew and diminished based on my mood), I inevitably caved on Monday.
Since writing, sending it and receiving his replies, I’ve been trying to figure out my intentions and motivations behind its content. What was I really trying to say/prove/gain? What was the response I was expecting? It was written in a frenzy, definitely write now-think later. I knew that if I stopped to think about it for even more than a second I would convince myself not to send it (as I had for the first 2 weeks) and maybe regret not having said these things later? Who knows.
Anyway, my analysis has led me to these potential motivations (feel free to chime in if you can detect some other hidden motives). It really was very idiotic of me to write and send this (and I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone in the same situation). I did tell my husband that I’d sent an email; he wasn’t impressed and longs for the day when all this will be distant past.
1. A need to determine his frame of mind (I have started to feel bad for potentially putting him in a “mind funk” as well).
2. A need to help.
3. A need to preach/share my new knowledge and insights and hear his opinions about it.
4. A need to share my experience with someone who might actually understand.
5. A need to make next week less awkward since we’ll be seeing each other every day.
6. An attempt at closure.
7. A need to show that I was doing ok.
8. A need to show that I was available in case he had anything he needed to get off his chest.
Anyway, here is the email for all to laugh at my mistakes.
Title: One more [important] life lesson
Feel free to disregard/dismiss/ignore.
So, after months of deep introspection, solitude, existential loneliness, despair and self-hatred (a bit longer than the 40 days required by the Buddha, but I did have a thesis to write at the same time) I’ve come to several new conclusions regarding the meaning of life, the universe and everything. And, as I’ve suspected all along, the answer is not 42—but happens to be quite fascinating, intriguing and in its most basic, deconstructed form, actually quite simple.
It actually did feel, for a very long time, like my mind was slowly caving in on itself. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t prevent it from happening and I knew I just had to let my mind wander, ponder, feel and just wait it out—somehow the mind would find some way to correct itself. Anyway, I eventually hit what I consider rock bottom sometime at the end of May/early June—somehow I foresaw it coming (I believe it’s happened before, sometime in my teenage years, unprompted by any major life events except for puberty and a deep sense of being misunderstood & alone in the world— it was then that I picked up many interesting and maladaptive behaviors that somehow allowed me to function as a quasi-normal human being in this confusing and strange world). Anyway, it was at this point that I sensed a great void and had the fleeting thought—“LO stole my soul/identity”—I was reduced to nothing, basically the sum of my component neurons and that was it. I felt nothing, I was nothing. I had lost purpose, essence, meaning. It’s at this point that some people would think about throwing themselves off a bridge or starting a religion—but again, I found it to be such an interesting, profound experience from a neuroscience perspective that those thoughts didn’t even cross my mind (well, I may have considered starting a religion/cult for just a second…). I just waited it out.
Amidst a lot of obsessive reading/thinking, I eventually stumbled upon this: http://personalityjunkie.com/ and was like, “there’s NO FUCKING way” and then “holy shit, the strange puzzle pieces that have made up my life so far suddenly fit together”. And slowly the pieces of my soul started to put themselves back together again. Here’s to hoping that it’s stronger and smarter this time.
Anyway, you can take the test if you’d like, but it’s pretty clear to me that you are ENFP… and I am INTP. I think it explains why you have trouble making decisions/come off to others as too friendly & flirtatious/sometimes feel awkward in your interactions with other people… and my propensity to plug my holes with romantic relationships and work/achievement obsessions. And SO many other things about the world as well (at least in my mind, I see all the answers pretty clearly now).
Anyway, I have no blame or hate towards you, myself, my decision-making process or the life experience. It took me an extremely long time to forgive myself since my actions/feelings contradicted how I consciously saw myself. I didn’t identify with this risk-taking/easy-going/affair-seeking side of myself and having to admit to and accept that part of myself took a long time. I wasn’t taking care of myself and my own needs—actually not even consciously knowing what my greatest needs are—in these cases, the subconscious eventually retaliates, forcing you to examine yourself, your actions, your view of the world and try to make amends with it.
As I see it right now, we were just two personalities interacting naturally with each other, behaving as our “true selves”, which is why the interaction was endlessly fascinating, entertaining and dopamine-release inducing and led to that elusive feeling (at least in my experience) of being deeply connected & understood by another human being (even if in the end I don’t think you understood me that well, but that’s ok, no one actually has) and that sense of extreme vulnerability that comes with the realization that you’ve just placed your happiness in someone else’s hands (which is one of the reasons I freaked out—that shit is scary to my independent self). It’s pretty clear to me that I was responsible for setting my own personal boundaries, I just didn’t know what those were at the time (I need to experience life to learn how to function best in the world—and obviously I don’t enjoy following society’s view of how a “wife” should act & behave). How was I supposed to know that I “connect” with others by sharing my inner world of scientific thoughts/ideas/truths (evidently my version of deep secrets)? I mean, I only started being comfortable with my own ideas of the world once I reached graduate school and then finding someone who actually enjoys listening to them and seems to “get it” is another ball-game altogether… anyway, you can see that life has been a pretty lonely experience for me so far.
I really hope you are not too mad or hurt that I rejected your valiant attempts to salvage some sort of friendship— it really was because I ended up caring too much and was in some sort of unsustainable, frightening, altered state of consciousness… Anyway, I will be regarding you as a “friend” in a historical/spiritual sense – I don’t think I can be your friend anymore, you were draining way too much of my brain power and I’ve now found an idea way more fascinating and entertaining than you could ever be, an idea that will probably keep me busy for decades (and it will never get up and leave me mid-conversation or move away…).
I’m hoping I can have some quasi-normal interactions with you next week (you are planning on returning, no?)… although it could be that shyness/anxiety or fear forces me to retreat back into my head. We will see.
Oh yeah, if you come back professing your uniqueness and complexity I will have to hit you over the head with my Kandel book… think about this as a basic framework for what motivates our different behaviors, how our minds work, develop and make decisions, the differences in how people perceive and judge the world, what we naturally pick up and things we filter out, what we are naturally good at and the things we avoid doing because they stress us out—of course each of us will turn out unique based on our personal experiences (which will determine our interests & values), environment and how we’ve tried to adapt to the world. And if you are still not convinced I can lead you to a forum of people that think and behave just like you (my sister is ENFP too, which explains why I was always so confused that she turned out so differently to me…).
INTPBlogger
PS. It appears you may be better suited to academia & teaching than I am (which explains why I never really envisioned myself as a PI…). Evidently it was only a matter of time before I became disillusioned and jaded with the “system”. I’m already feeling the urge to throw in the towel to work on a book, or something.
Let’s just say that after sending it I realized that I hadn’t really considered how he would feel receiving an insane email like that. After one or two more brief exchanges, it turned out that he’d been happy to hear from me, but did not want to engage with me on anything I had written and wanted to keep the new status quo. It was the appropriate response, but I was nevertheless a bit rattled for a few days afterwards.
So there we go. THE END.
Emotional needs
aka:
1. Important things people neglected to tell you when you committed to a long-term relationship or marriage.
2. The tools needed for people to achieve and sustain a happy, fulfilled life by re-focusing their lives on what they enjoy the most and reducing or eliminating their stressors (“self-actualization”).
I remember not so long ago (within the last 2 years) thinking how ridiculous it was for people to need a “life coach” and applauding myself for being happy with myself, my work and my life so far and finally achieving what I deemed as quite stable mental health (not requiring the use of antidepressants). Of course, I now know that my mind had tricked itself into believing that– in reality my mind had been (to varying degrees) dominated by my inferior Fe, trying desperately to maintain those “in love” feelings in order to mask my inner dark thoughts, weaknesses and fears. And as discussed in this post here at Personality Junkie, while indulging the inferior function may temporarily offer comfort against life’s miseries (lots of yummy dopamine), it puts you into an altered state of awareness/consciousness which is ultimately unsustainable, unproductive and unfulfilling. By living according to my inferior function I was failing to live up to my full potential as a human being.
Now, as those of you who have been following my story know, I was eventually faced to confront my own reality, my true self, my “soul”. I had to confront a side of myself that I had repressed or ignored for far too long– my novelty-seeking, exciting, playful, low-commitment, unconventional and non-conforming self. It was a rebellion against my marriage and new house. A desire to escape reality and my unexpected inability to fit the traditional social role of “wife”. A need to explore new and unchartered emotional territory. A statement of my freedom and independence from being tied down to one person for the rest of my life. This buried self conflicted to such a degree with my internal, conscious image of myself that initially I thought I’d created or become this alien version of myself in order to match the type of person I thought LO wanted. Eventually, I realized he’d managed to bring out my full personality, what I considered my “best, happiest” self at the time. In retrospect, this enhanced positive perception of myself was likely the result of the altered state of consciousness I’d found myself in, a state induced by the ego-boosting/positive mirroring influence of the infatuation (a dopamine/noradrenaline-induced state of euphoria and abnormally high energy and self-confidence). This confrontation with self was so frightening and so devastating that it forced me to confront and accept my deepest, darkest fears of being alone, unloved and misunderstood. Although an eye-opening (mind-opening?) and jaw-dropping emotional experience (I experienced such a wide range of emotional states that it’s hard for me to put them all into words) I wouldn’t wish the experience on anyone else, let alone another INTP (since it is so easy for us to drown in the emotional deluge). And since I wish information such as this would have been available to my younger self to help me make better decisions (although it is pretty likely that I would not have believed it without experiencing it), I now put myself in the position of “life coach” for my current and future readers as I try to explain the abstract, subjective and seemingly elusive concept of “emotional needs”.
To sum it up in one sentence I would define them as “things you need to keep your mind happy and healthy”. The simple fact that humans, as well as all other organisms with a nervous system, have what we call “emotional or psychological needs” allows us (and them) to survive and evolve as species. The drive or desire to meet these needs controls our thoughts and motivates our behaviors. If any of your needs are not being met at any point in your life your mind will consciously or subconsciously seek them out for you; and in our teenage and young adult years, this will more than likely come in the form of infatuations and intimate relationships.
One of the major reasons that our subconscious mind seeks out romantic partners is to help meet our (usually unknown to us) emotional needs. As youngsters, we feel “incomplete”, like something is missing in our lives, like there is some void that needs to be filled. We lack self-confidence, we feel depressed and unhappy, we lack understanding of ourselves and the world, so we go searching for ways to “find ourselves” and plug the gaps. Some of us will travel to far and distant places, others will over-indulge with food, exercise, sex or drugs and still others, such as myself, will engage in a string of intimate, romantic relationships. All of these serve the same purpose– to raise the levels of dopamine in your brain, thereby giving you the false sense of feeling “whole” and “complete”. However, none of these inferior crutches are likely to bring happiness in the long-term. In long-term romantic relationships, this is usually due to the fact that although the initial stages of a new relationship are rich in intimacy, understanding and loving feelings, eventually the realities and stresses of living with each other in the real world catch up, and gradually and perhaps imperceptibly, those “in love” feelings fade away. Unbeknownst to one or both of you, you are no longer driven to meet each others emotional needs or, in the worst case scenario, you are infuriating or draining each others’ inferior or shadow functions. For some reason, while most of us “love being in love”, we invariably fail to consciously recognize the important life lessons that each intimate relationship is subtly trying to tell us– what activities/types of conversations make our minds happy (dopamine) and allow us to connect and love our fellow human beings.
Only by identifying and meeting our individual emotional needs and living true to our innate natures, will we be able to live a complete and fulfilled life.
And I can’t stress this point enough– we must strive to live according to our TRUE natures and resist the temptation to live in someone else’s version of the world.
Because although many websites discussing emotional affairs, emotional needs and how to successfully navigate a long-term relationship provide a list of common emotional needs such as “admiration, affection, conversation, domestic support, family commitment, financial support, honesty and openness, physical attractiveness, recreational companionship and sexual fulfillment” as well as recommendations for how to meet them, what all of these websites and psychologists/marriage counselors fail to address are the ways to identify these emotional needs and their relative importance in our shared lives.
Imagine my surprise when I eventually realized that in addition to the subconscious Fe-driven need for admiration, affection and love (and a “need to be needed”) that I reluctantly admitted to (before learning about type), I had a very real and dominant need to share my scientific knowledge and ideas with someone that was interested, intelligent and capable of following my complex train of thoughts. Since this need is most likely to be met amongst colleagues that share the same interests and passions, it wasn’t surprising that my first encounter with a male “kindred spirit” eventually led to strong feelings of “love”.
The very best way to identify your dominant and less-dominant emotional needs (before your subconscious blind-sides you and tries to lead you astray) is to know your psychological type. This is because not all minds are created equal and therefore what energizes and excites one person may actually drain someone else.
In summary:
1. Emotional needs will be individual and vary according to psychological type.
2. Some needs will be greater than others, but do not ignore the needs of the inferior function.
3. You should focus most of your (and your partner’s, if possible) attention on meeting the needs of your two dominant functions.
4. Directly indulging your inferior’s needs will give you a “high” and will be very addictive, but this behavior is draining, unsustainable and potentially very damaging to the psyche.
5. Try to find some activities that allow you to use all of your functions in order– these activities are those that allow you to establish “flow” or “peak experiences“. They will help achieve “balance” and keep you away from one-sided behaviors.
5. Trying to develop? or learn to use? your four “shadow functions” (by this I mean your 4 opposite cognitive functions) will drain you, stress you out and bore you, leading you to be more susceptible to your subconscious, inferior urges. Since indulging the inferior can provide a sudden burst of energy and good feelings, I think these inferior-driven behaviors attempt to compensate for the energy that is used up attending to aspects of the world that hold no interest or “meaning” to us. I think all shadow function-related behaviors are probably learned behaviors that we’ve picked up through our upbringing, personal experiences, being around others and attempting to adapt or fit into the world.
Although a combination of many compounding factors, my emotional affair was at least in part driven by shadow-function boredom– and this boredom was induced by my attempts to be independent and self-sufficient, to fit into the “real world”, to live a traditional life and to compromise for my husband’s sake. Growing up you get taught (or at least this is the Fe-lesson I retained) that relationships require a certain degree of compromise. However, by constantly being the one to compromise and adapt I became so completely bent out-of-shape that I lost who I truly was in the relationship. I did a reverse-Pygmalion project on myself, trying to become the person I thought my husband wanted, without even consciously realizing that this is what I was doing [in comes inferior Fe to show me what I was missing].
Lesson learned. Don’t try to be someone you are not. Don’t try to fit into the “SJ” world (edit: unless you are SJ, of course). Live according to your type and live up to your potential.
The long and painful climb out of inferior Fe
I’m happy to say that I can now refer to myself as Dr. INTPblogger. Unfortunately, this still doesn’t mean I have all of the answers, although I sometimes wish I did. It also doesn’t seem to have brought me that instant happiness I’ve been searching for. More like a dull ache that another arbitrary short-term life goal has been met. INTP brain I hate you. Ugh. Maybe I’ll be happy tomorrow.
Back to my (sob) story. As I’ve inched closer and closer to “closure” on this whole mindmate/emotional affair/limerence episode, I’ve started to wonder, is there such a thing as closure for the INTP brain? Will I always be looking back on this chapter of my life journey searching for more answers? Am I ever going to stop reflecting on and over-analyzing every thought, feeling and behavior? Since this experience has played a momentous role in expanding my self-awareness and pushing me towards individuation or self-actualization, probably not. Anyway, I fully plan to use this life experience and the insights & knowledge I’ve gained along the way (and will continue to gain as I read and think more about it) as a stepping stone as this blog moves more into the philosophical/psychological and neurological realms.
So, my Ti had finally made a decision– I was finally prepared to give up my “deep connection”, my “illusion” of a mind-mate , the connection that my mind had fabricated in order to crutch Fe while I was stressed, lonely and feeling (subconsciously) emotionally-deprived. The connection that was my main driving force for the last 2 years, the connection that gave me “that high” we all seek, the connection that had become the source of my self-confidence and self-esteem. The connection that eventually turned limerent and that my Fe-driven subconscious mind was obsessed with preserving. This connection that had become necessary for my essence, my existence, my survival, my being, my all. How this had happened, how I had let someone get that close to my inner being or soul, that close to the inner workings of my mind and that deep under my skin, wasn’t entirely clear to me at the time, but became clearer with time and deep introspection.
As another INTP on this mindmate thread so eloquently put it*, “I never thought that sharing thoughts could make you too vulnerable. They just seemed like thoughts.” It’s like lying naked on your bed in front of a member of the preferred-sex, just asking for it– except instead of penetrating you, they are penetrating your accidentally-exposed mind. And you’re left wondering, “WTF just happened?”. Whereas it’s quite clear in most people’s minds when a physical-line is being crossed, intellectual/emotional-lines are much more blurry, up for interpretation and subjective. And sometimes you might not even know when, why and how they are being crossed or where you should have been putting up your walls in the first place. All I wanted to do was have intellectually stimulating conversations with a male lab-mate on subjects we both study. Is that REALLY so wrong/horrible? When you find your mind slowly attaching the word “love” to said lab-mate and slowly and imperceptibly wanting/needing/craving/looking forward to more and more conversations and thinking such things as “forever is not long enough to get to know [the mind of] this other person”. YES. VERY wrong. VERY VERY wrong. Especially if you want to keep/salvage your marriage/emotional bond to your husband.
So, it wasn’t surprising then that once my Ti-driven mind finally settled on breaking this wrong connection, that it became VERY VERY angry with my Fe-driven “addicted” mind. And deep connections are not like light-bulbs, you can’t just magically switch the connection off, or turn back time (unfortunately). As I slowly began to realize, my mind was in for the biggest shock/heartbreak of its life, as I began the slow, painful process of untangling myself from the shared thoughts, experiences and memories.
The step-by-step heartbreak/de-connecting/untangling process (or how my mind exploded, then imploded, and then slowly started rebuilding itself):
THE EXPLOSION:
1. Weeks of lying in the fetal position, crying, writhing from the physical heartbreak and thinking how stupid I was to do this to myself. A lot of Kleenex, sappy love songs and How I Met Your Mother during this time-period. I rationalized it sometimes as “well, if you stupidly put 100% of yourself into a fantasy-relationship that you had no real intentions of ever pursuing, you have to be prepared to take 100% of the heartbreak that follows”. Also, “this is karma, your mind’s way of getting back at you for always being the heart-breaker and never the heartbroken- you need to experience this at least once in your lifetime”. It will only make me stronger, right? I hid most of this process from my husband– I thought it wasn’t worth it for him to see the emotional pain I was in over a fictional relationship/friendship.
2. An overwhelming feeling that my heart, or at least a small part of it, had been ripped out of my chest and trampled on. Or the feeling that my heart was made up of glass and that it had just shattered into a million little pieces and that I had to somehow find a way to start glueing those pieces back together again. I was confused, in turmoil, I felt unloved, misunderstood by everybody and quite incapable of loving anyone or anything.
3. Panic attacks about my husband finding out & kicking me out, a great deal of anxiety, loss of sleep, disturbing dreams, and a stream of constant thoughts trying to come to terms with my decision and the unexpected consequences to my own psyche and sanity (I thought I was crazy/having a psychotic break). It was a total mind meltdown of epic proportions.
4. Obsessive thoughts about contacting LO and explaining things to him, just to make the pain go away, even temporarily. I came up with a different email in my head every day but always backed out of writing/sending them. I told myself ” if you write this email/re-establish contact it means you love/want to be this person. That you are willing to give up everything you have worked for and cherish. Is that what you really want?” Thank god for a well-functioning Ti.
5. At the beginning, my mind actually tried to convince itself that there was a friendship worth preserving (beyond the physical-attraction bit). I initially read a lot of websites dedicated to “intellectual friendships”, “platonic friendships” “platonic love” and “opposite-sex friendships” and found myself at that blurry-line again. Well, my actions could all be perceived by outsiders as trying to establish a “friendship”. Why couldn’t we “just be friends”? Ti just told me I was kidding myself.
6. Si actually did a pretty good job of making my mind revisit every single remembered interaction/conversation/shared experience from most recent to 2 years ago, over and over and over again (the INTP mind really does latch onto some wicked obsessive-loops, doesn’t it?). I think this had the effect that I was still getting those dopamine-driven highs that my mind was still craving. Si also made me re-live my life journey so far. I’m guessing this is what Jung meant when he said the inferior function was a way to get to your unconscious. This was by far the most frightening thing I’ve ever experienced, especially since most, if not all, of my childhood memories are shrouded in negative emotions. I knew I had probably been repressing/refusing to deal with a lot of these memories for a long time, so I decided (not that I had much control over the whole thing…) to just let it happen, and deal with myself once and for all.
7. Once I was over the very worst of it and had started processing/analyzing things, I finally told a close friend/colleague at the lab. Up until this point all of these thoughts/feelings were mine alone to bear. As soon as I heard “well, do you want to have an affair with him?” I felt disgusted with myself and knew I had to get my mind out of this subconscious trap.
8. I eventually decided that the best way to do this was to release all my feelings to LO, in person first and then in email. To expel them from my mind and have him deal with them.
9. I also started talking about the experience with my husband. Although it took a lot of courage and many weeks to finally expel the real/whole story. It first came out as “a crush” and an “intellectual bond” (which I’d already mentioned to my husband several times over the 2 year period). My husband didn’t even seem to flinch and surprisingly took it with a grain of salt (on the outside– I’m now pretty sure that I haven’t been granted full access to his inner dominant Fi emotional world). No jealousy, no requests to read emails (although I offered), no requests to end the friendship, no requests to read any further correspondence. To him, nothing was wrong in our relationship, he saw no detriment to our “connection” and so everything was status-quo. His response surprised me and in retrospect I think I was looking for him to be angry, to yell, to scream, to do or say SOMETHING, because even at this point a part of my mind was still struggling with the idea that perhaps, maybe, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I wanted/needed someone external to tell me that what I’d done was wrong and make me feel guilty, embarrassed, shameful, because I just wasn’t feeling it. I was still mourning/grieving the loss of that connection and seemingly wasn’t as bothered with the hurt I’d put my husband through.
THE IMPLOSION:
10. When I got the “I thought about it and the feelings were not reciprocated. Just close friends” email my mind started racing frantically again. My intuition had been so strong, there had been too many weird, awkward interactions and bizarre, covert comments made on his part for me to not think that there was at least some sort of physical/emotional attraction there. The interactions had seemed, at least to me, charged with really good chemistry. Plus, the email seemed fake, contrived and devoid of any explanations for his emotional meltdown before I left. However, I was confronted with the fact that I just wasn’t going to get the satisfaction of knowing for sure (which, as an INTP, hurts). And as we all know, the INTP mind does not like being wrong. So, although I usually trust my intuitions, my confused & frazzled mind decided that maybe I was crazy and had made the whole thing up to make myself feel better. This did not go down so well since my mind pined for a man I never wanted to pine for. I just had to watch as my mind started to unravel and collapse from the weight of the fantasy-world I’d created. More crying, more emotional pain, more Si over-analysis of where I’d gone wrong with my intuitions, where I might have made mistakes or made events up completely. And throughout all this I just had to tell myself that I’d get over it, that the mind would find a way to heal itself, that time would heal. As the pain and hurt extended over weeks and then months, and the seriousness of the situation started to sink in more and more, I really just wanted time to hurry itself up.
11. By the time the next email rolled in, claiming a “deep connection” over our shared scientific interests, I was really confused by his perspective on the interaction. It wasn’t at all clear to me what he wanted from me. And I knew I wasn’t prepared to keep investing in this deep connection to the detriment of my marriage. I was also still extremely upset, vulnerable and craving the space and alone time that I needed to process things. So I just decided to drop the friendship in its entirety.
12. Eventually I reached a point of emotional exhaustion and stopped crying as intensely. It took a good 3-4 weeks to reach this stage. I later found out that this is the approximate time-frame for the “emotional fog” to clear after ending an emotional affair. I guess this meant that dopamine had left the building. Even after reaching this point of emotional exhaustion it took a lot longer for me to feel like myself again (and even now, I’m still struggling to reach my optimal psychic stability/balance).
13. Throughout this time-period and beyond I concentrated all the emotional energy I had left (which wasn’t a lot) on my husband (during the day, my mental energy was struggling through the process of writing up my thesis). I devoted myself completely to being the “good wife”, cooking meals, doing the groceries, laundry, etc, which provided some relief from the constant stream of thoughts racing through my mind. I also became exceptionally needy of my husband’s attention and affection. I wanted to be held and cuddled all the time, which we both knew was quite unusual. I just told him “I’m sorry I’m so needy of you, I just want to feel connected, I’m sure it’s just temporary…”.
14. As my mind started searching for answers to explain what had happened and why and to place some sort of label on the experience, I became quite literally OBSESSED with reading websites and forums devoted to emotional affairs. Was this what had happened? Did these websites hold the answers I needed? Did they have advice to help prevent the same thing from happening again? I read and re-read pages and pages of professional and personal opinions on the matter. I even spent a fair amount of time lurking on the more traditional, religious forums devoted to the matter. Reading some of the stories and realizing the devastation that these types of affairs can have on people’s lives finally prompted my mind to feel guilt, shame and embarrassment. I felt absolutely sick about what I had done and started to feel nauseous whenever thoughts of LO popped up. It became worse when I read things like “love is not a magic formula, if you spend enough time talking with someone and are not revolted by them, you’ll eventually fall in love”, “no flirting after marriage”, “no opposite-sex friendships after marriage”, “no talking to men on a one-on-one basis after marriage”. WTF??? I work in a male-dominated field where scientific discussions/debate play a HUGE part of my work. I enjoy these types of interactions. This is what I love, this is my work, my passion. I enjoy sharing my knowledge and helping younger scientists out. And you’re telling me I have to stop? That I’ll “fall in love” with anyone I have scientific discussions with? Hmmm… This didn’t sit well with me and made me depressed. I felt like I was being told to live like a hermit or take a vow of silence for the rest of my life in order to keep my marriage. That I had to give up a part of myself, that part of myself that made me feel “whole”. Reading all this stuff just made me feel awful about the situation and I started to hate myself. Although my husband had long since forgiven me, I was left with this pit in my stomach that told me that I had disappointed myself, that I had acted against my own internal image of myself, that I had let myself down. I felt like I would never be able to forgive myself for what I had done.
15. I slowly sunk deeper into a state of depression, existential loneliness and nihilism. There was a void that I couldn’t seem to fill. I was bored. Nothing brought any pleasure to my life (anhedonia). I felt like I had nothing left to give, that I was nothing, that I was worth nothing. I felt like the sum of my component neurons, like I was somehow not in charge of my thoughts, emotions and actions (still debating this one…). My mind became cloudy and unfocused. I had difficulty concentrating on the simplest tasks. I had trouble accessing the memories I needed to write up my thesis. I couldn’t concentrate long enough to read papers. I was engrossed in my own internal world of negative thoughts and couldn’t see a way out. It was like my mind had turned against itself and was slowly erasing my sense of self. I lost all learned behaviors, habits and need to fulfill short-term goals including completing projects related to my thesis and PhD. Throughout this time I had trouble paying attention to the external world and on the odd times I ventured out to see people I found it quite difficult to even formulate sentences. I had a lot of trouble driving, paying attention to the television, trying to get myself to fill out paperwork, pay bills, etc. I just didn’t “care” enough to want to do these things. I knew that this psychological state of complete despair, loneliness and isolation was a temporary result of my recent loss/trauma, so I just decided to FEEL it and wait it out. My mind would somehow find a way to produce dopamine again. Incidentally, I think this feeling of nihilism is where religions came from– people searching for higher meaning and upon failing to find it within themselves decide to create an abstract, hidden entity and rally the troops behind this “belief system” for admiration, fame, power (sounds very INTP, no?).
16. I eventually came across the limerence literature. I found the term suited my situation better since LO and I hadn’t indulged in the constant emailing/texting/phone calls/sexual innuendo/love letters more typical of emotional affairs. If I had being doing any of those things I would clearly have known I was in the wrong! However, even though I had found a more appropriate “label” for my experience, I still wasn’t convinced that it told me why and how I had made myself vulnerable to such a thing– I was married for crying out loud! Why would I go looking elsewhere? Why were the feelings so strong? Why had the interaction been so magnetic/fascinating/enticing? What was it that was really missing in my marriage and life? What was my mind searching for?
THE RE-BUILDING STAGE (on-going):
17. I had a huge “ah hah” moment when I finally decided to check up on these four letter acronyms that had been popping up on the limerence experienced website. Personality types… WTF??? I dropped the emotional affair and limerence literature that had failed to provide me with the answers I’d been searching for and immersed myself in Jungian/Myers-Briggs typology. It took a few weeks, but I eventually recognized myself as an “INTP”. My life so-far suddenly fell into place, weird life experiences started to make sense, the puzzle pieces finally seemed to fit together. I especially recognized myself in Dr. A.J. Drenth’s explanations of the INTP inferior Fe function and in Dr. Naomi Quenk’s book “Was that really me?” which explains how stress/fatigue brings out the inferior function and wrecks havoc on our personalities and decision-making processes. Hmmm… is this what had happened? Had I been blind-sided by my inferior function?
18. As I started to read more about the INTP personality type, type dynamics and other personality types, a strange & pleasant thing happened. I lost the obsessive need to continue searching for answers. I had found what my mind had been searching for: SELF-AWARENESS. I started to form a better understanding of myself and the world. I began putting myself back together piece-by-piece, coming to the conclusion that it was silly to have placed my sense of self/self-worth in someone else’s hands and that it was my responsibility, and no-one else’s, to make sure I feel “whole”. The fact that I instantly connected Jung’s theory with my neuroscience background and came to the conclusion that this theory provides a much-needed intuitive and deconstructive framework for how I (and everyone else) should be looking at the human mind, decision-making and behavior, gave me an intriguing but short-lived feeling of “peace”, “wisdom” and “power”. I had found it– the TRUTH. The big “IDEA” I had been searching for. The meaning of [my] life, my purpose in this world, my life-long goal. I have the answers– and the answers are inside my mind. My own belief system, my own “religion”. Haha– time to spread the word, time to gain my own followers, time to get that admiration/value/appreciation Fe wants…
19. uh…wait ….a….sec…. Ne Ne Ne!!! Slow down! There is still so much you don’t know! So much to learn and think about! That’s the fun and “meaningful” part, anyway, right?. So much research to do! So many things to read and analyze! So many Si-facts to gather! So much writing to do. Power/admiration/approval can wait. My theory of human behavior still needs more work. “At peace”, “wholeness”, “enlightenment” and “happiness” await somewhere down the line.
20. The last stage in my re-building process has to re-focus and re-prioritize my life and set new short-term and long-term goals. One of the intriguing things that I noted while going through this whole process is that I somehow lost my old “short-term” goals or “habits”. Things related to my PhD suddenly became less important, boring, something I didn’t want to focus on. It was a struggle for me to complete my thesis, work on a paper related to my project and practice/study for my defense. For the first time in my life, I just didn’t seem to enjoy these things anymore. My mind was engrossed by its new-found self-awareness and wanted to absorb everything and anything related to typology and decision-making. Forcing it to concentrate on these other, now seemingly “meaningless” things was such a challenge and is still an on-going challenge. And, in true INTP fashion, I really had no sense of where my life was going, what my long-term goals were or what would make me “happy”. I certainly knew what I didn’t like, but pin-pointing exactly what it was I was most passionate about had eluded me thus far. But, now I know. What I do with that knowledge is now up to me.
* yes, I read all 113 pages.
Crawling out of inferior Fe– Part I– The Decision
Falling into a prolonged inferior Fe “grip experience”
aka “How to get so deeply trapped inside your subconscious that you don’t even realize how and when you got yourself there”
I’m slowly recovering from the anxiety-provoking experience of having to return to my old lab yesterday. It’s been just over two months since I last laid eyes on LO and just a bit longer than that since I asked for “no contact”. I guess the fact that I’ve been safely hiding away and slowly rebuilding my life separate to all that (with a very understanding husband) had given me the false sense of security that I might be able to feel the much sought after “indifference” towards him. However, having read a variety of posts on limerence/emotional affairs/affairs in general I knew deep down that I just wasn’t at that stage yet. Whereas my “conscious self” is happy that I was able to extricate myself from the situation without going further down the affair road, my “subconscious self” still maintains a lot of the emotional memories that can be triggered by just about anything related to the experience– being back in the same city, being in the lab, a look, a civil “hello” or “goodbye”. Just being back in the building immediately increased the adrenaline, making my hands shake, my stomach rumble, my heart race and even made me overly talkative (but not in a good way) in meetings with my boss. Combine this with the urge to somehow dispel all this anxiety by running up to LO and trying to repair the “friendship”, and I really didn’t have a very good day. I’m not sure if this means I still have “feelings”, but the best I can do at the moment is check my behavior (continue to enforce the no contact), and hope my subconscious slowly follows suit. I’ve heard that it can take up to a year for the memories to completely die out. Since it might be in the nature of the INTP to ruminate on past experiences (can anyone confirm this?), basically using Si to re-live the memories (even when the emotional “meaning” of the memory has since faded) and then applying Ti logic to the experience to dissect every event, every sentence, every action to figure out when and where your normally logical decision-making process went completely astray and then in comes Ne to help you brainstorm ways to help you prevent the same thing from happening again in the future. And in circles it goes… I’ll be lucky if the experience fades from memory in under a year. My husband is accusing me of holding us back since I’m dwelling on the past– I have to resist the urge to say, it’s not me, it’s my mind that is keeping us back!
So, how did I land myself in this mess in the first place?
It all started in January 2009. A new guy joins the lab as an undergraduate student. He seems genuinely interested in science and learning new things, is hard-working, enthusiastic, fun-loving and an all-round people-person (definite ENFP). I, of course, being completely absorbed in work and wedding planning pay little conscious attention to him but sense an instantaneous Fe-driven feeling that this was someone I could respect and trust. I think this “feeling” fueled some pretty emotional (for me) outbursts when I was trying to convince him to continue as a graduate student in the lab. At this point I considered telling him that I was being selfish for making such a big deal about it, that it was only because I LIKED having him around to talk science with. I didn’t end up saying anything.
Fast-forward to the end of 2009. By this point my husband had moved away and we were having infrequent and short phone conversations (we are both terrible on the phone) and probably seeing each other maybe once every 2-3 weeks. ENFP and I sat having a conversation about his future, again, and how he wanted to go sailing, to be away from everyone in order to think and write. This dream kind of resonated with my introverted side, but since I had recently come to the conclusion that my own mental health issues were readily solved by close connections with people, I said something like “but won’t you get depressed out there all by yourself”. Anyway, I think that conversation flipped a switch in him, because the next day he couldn’t even string two words together to say to me. This kind of inexplicable, out-of-nowhere behavior stressed me out but since I had little experience in these matters (and low self-esteem/self-doubt), I didn’t confront him on it, as maybe I should have. I just let it be and didn’t talk to ANYONE about it. And unfortunately, probably due to the additional stress from this unwanted attention (or was it secretly wanted?), my subconscious Si-Fe went into overdrive putting 2 and 2 together and dissected all past actions for more “clues” (hand on the shoulder, hugs, looks, etc). And then Ne-Si went on the hunt for any future signs of “meaning”, slowly adding events, actions and words to a growing list of evidence for his feelings towards me. Sure enough, within about 2 weeks of the aphasia incident I was now “consciously” hooked on the guy– I had what people would call a “crush” or an “attraction”. I had somehow converted what would normally be a “stressful” situation to me, into a very “pleasurable” situation (I don’t know what it is about our minds that make us do this– but it’s pretty clear that people are more susceptible to addictive/obsessive behaviors when they are stressed).
Now I did what any self-respecting adult would do, and immediately told my husband about it. His reaction was just to laugh it off and tell me it was normal to have attractions towards other people (probably a bad idea on his part, in retrospect).
Now, ladies and gents, this is the point where I made
BAD CONSCIOUS DECISION #1: Allowing myself to create Ne fantasies and to create positive expectations for future encounters (and to keep searching for “clues” that would allow me to discern how LO was feeling towards me).
I’m not sure about the other INTPs out there, but I’m pretty sure that the only time I fantasize/daydream about people (instead of ideas and science) is when I’m actively “crushing” and the fantasies (sexual, romantic) are only ever directed at ONE person.
Crushes or infatuations feel good, since they fill the brain with adrenaline, dopamine and serotonin. Those “happy feelings” gave me increased energy, a boost in self-confidence and allowed me to be more focused at work. And since I wasn’t taking any time away from my relationship with my husband, I rationalized it in my head, “well, a small crush is nothing to worry about”.
BAD CONSCIOUS DECISION #2: Allowing myself to make LO a “friend” while inadvertently creating the elusive “intellectual connection”
Well, out came my innate Fe caring behaviors. Since LO was less experienced and less knowledgeable in the lab, I took it upon myself to teach him things, to discuss with him my ideas and thoughts on science, to share with him interesting blog posts. My manipulative (?) food sharing behaviors were positively reinforced as it became easier and easier to coerce him away from his computer for a conversation. He brought out my playful side and I started to engage in teasing, flirting and affectionate behaviors. On the rare occasion I paid him a compliment or two when I thought he deserved it (which I subconsciously knew he was always fishing for– and being rare, my compliments were apparently well-received by this ENFP).
Even if he wasn’t ready to be my proper “mindmate” (evidently, all INTPs are looking for mindmates http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?18143-Mindmates-for-INTPs) I was darned going to “believe” he was one. And maybe he was– he could hold his own in a good debate/discussion and since I’d often get tied up in my thoughts I sometimes let him win. I was much better with the email-sparring and could go back-and-forth endlessly (although this rarely happened– he usually stopped replying). But, at the same time, looking back, I think that my mind, hyped-up on drugs as it was, ended up projecting a lot of my own intelligence, my own competence and strengths and my own values onto him (isn’t this how love always starts?). He is intelligent and full of interesting and divergent ideas and obviously provided endless entertainment for my mind. But, at the same time, I down-played the real facts that he is unreliable, bad at planning ahead, more interested in people and living life than working and bad with long-term commitments, amongst probably many other things. Yet, it did feel addictive at the time– I felt happier, more confident, more intelligent and especially, less bored. I wasn’t interested in all those other little personality “details”– what interested me was his mind, and probably, more importantly, how he was able to so easily and comfortably bring out all my own interesting thoughts and ideas (some of which I hadn’t even consciously realized I had!).
BAD CONSCIOUS DECISION #3: Once I consciously realized the “mindmate” connection had been forged, allowing myself to continue to “feel”.
This was quickly rationalized as “well, it’s rare that I ever get to feel this way, to feel human, to feel so connected, so understood, so I’ll let it be”. And, I foolishly thought– well, it can’t last forever, we will eventually fall into that “friend zone”. And my mind’s best line, “well, the more I talk to him, the more I’ll find things I don’t like about him, so getting to know him better should resolve this situation”. It did occur to me, sometimes, that I had to stop interacting with this person. I made New Year’s resolutions to “be a better wife” and told myself that there would be no more emailing, that I’d stop interacting with LO so much, that I’d stop sharing so much. That worked, but only for short time periods, it wasn’t long before I fell back into my bad, addictive, habits. And although at the beginning I was forthright with my husband about my interactions and conversations, as the intensity of the relationship with LO grew, I gradually became less reluctant to talk about LO (at no point did I ever consider talking to anyone else about this). It was clear in my mind that somehow I’d created an entirely fictional “love story” inside my head– I could easily distinguish between “fantasy” and “reality” but was trying frantically to restrain myself from trying to bring the fantasy into real life. When I finally realized the emotional bond with my husband was at stake (started to find him less attractive, started fighting about petty things, started growing resentful of my marriage and being so settled) and that the preservation of this emotional bond (or at least attempting to get it back) was what was most important to me, I knew I had to extricate myself from the whole situation.
There were times, over the 2 year episode, when I was very consciously aware that the whole “mind affair” was extremely wrong. I was often angry at myself, my mind was in conflict and I was stressed. I frantically racked my brain for what could have caused such a rapid, natural and close emotional tie– but I couldn’t really come up with any. Ti could not come up with any logical reason for it. There wasn’t much involvement of feelings, past experiences, present experiences, discussions of marital issues, alone time outside of work. However, on the odd chance that I did reveal personality traits about my husband, I could sense jealousy in LO’s reactions. And that stressed me out to the point where I abandoned even talking about my husband in his presence. Effectively, LO and I created our own “affair bubble or connected-mind bubble” far far away from the realities of life. It was an escape for me, an escape from boredom. Did I pride myself at my restraint for not getting into a full-fledged affair? Did I ever think I was acting as just a “close friend”? Not really. I knew what was going on, it was pretty clear. But, at the same time, it was magical, I got to a depth of caring/emotional affection that I’d never experienced before; I just wanted to be able “to love” quietly and in my own way. Reciprocation didn’t even really matter. I started thinking about monogamy, its roots and its meaning. Maybe humans weren’t meant to be monogamous since I was clearly capable of loving two people at once? But, at the same time I knew I wanted to remain loyal to my first emotional bond. This was clear– I instinctively knew, when I was fully in my addictive grip, to force my mind back to reality– to think about concrete things, to remember how it felt when I fell in love with my husband, to think of the future I wanted for myself, to think how I wouldn’t be able to take myself seriously if I let this go any further…
I had created a giant mess of emotional connections inside my head, I just didn’t know how to get out of it.
And, I mistakenly thought I had my mind under pretty good control (I wasn’t overtly obsessing, after all). I was resolute to finish up my experiments in the lab by December 2011 so that I could move home to be with my husband, yet at the same time there was this growing dread of how I was going to feel when I left the lab. The last month in the lab was uneventful, LO was barely around and I was pretty stressed out with experiments. Then, out of nowhere, in my final week in the lab, LO suddenly started acting really weird and spewing some really odd thoughts. All of a sudden, he wanted to be around me all the time (we even went to dinner twice– very very bad idea in retrospect), said I was part of his decision to stay in the lab, said he thought I married too young!, said two friends of the opposite-sex couldn’t be close without some romantic attraction, even if not acted on!, called me up after we said our final goodbyes to see me one more time the next day, made imaginary plans to see me after Christmas, etc. His words, his actions, the visible emotion he displayed on his face all made my neurons scream RECIPROCATION (and, oh crap…what do I do now?)! I somehow managed to collect myself for the final goodbye so that I didn’t give away any visible signs of my own emotional turmoil (I was crying and my hands were shaking out of control), but couldn’t stop the cheesy “I’m going to miss you” and inappropriately long hug I gave him at the end of the evening (I know, I know, bad idea).
Over Christmas I didn’t quite come to a decision about what I was going to do next. So, when the emails from LO started arriving (maybe once/twice per week) detailing his vacation, asking me a bunch of personal questions, asking me a bunch of work questions, for the first time sending me articles I might be interested in, I kind of felt bad to leave him in the lurch, and it felt good to be needed, and so, in true INTP fashion I sent back detailed, but largely impersonal emails dealing with my thoughts on the articles, lab protocols, etc. It’s at this point that I’m pretty sure I went “limerent” as they call it– obsessively checking my inbox for messages, eagerly awaiting the next email, contemplating for hours responses to the emails. It felt good! I was connecting with someone on a deep, personal level and I felt so UNDERSTOOD. There was no way my mind wanted to give that up. But then, my corrupt mind started putting 2 and 2 together. He would send long emails with lots of details about his adventures and experiences and I would feel BORED. Then he would send his response to a blog post I’d sent him and I would get riled up and excited just thinking about a clever, and logically reasoned, response. WTF??? I wasn’t in love with LO, I was in love with the feeling I got while discussing science with LO (in retrospect there were a lot more instances of this tuning-out effect whenever he talked about anything besides science). Oh no, this was not good at all. How do I get myself out of this mind-fuck (of my own doing)?
I planned a face-to-face meeting. I had many ideas about what I was going to say, but nothing quite stuck. I was, for the first time, extremely shy in his presence and almost on the verge of tears. Apparently my subconscious knew better than me what I should do. Out of nowhere a little voice in my head told me what to say and after a few false starts this is how it came out (almost in tears):
Up next: The long and painful road out of inferior Fe (and the story is almost done– feeling better already!)
Neuroscience of Personality 