Instinct to Impulse

[flow]

When I was a youngster I used to have tremendous instinctual talent. I could naturally do things most kids would have to learn, and I didn't even "think" about it, I could just do it. Granted, these were just things like quick reflexes in sports and assertiveness and whatnot. Anyways, as I became ever more conscious, these natural "instincts" seemed to fade into impulses. I would eventually have to consciously decide whether or not to act on them, and the instinct seemed to fade. Of course, now I have to think about everything I do, and I usually feel like I'm over analyzing even the smallest things.. to the point that I don't even seem to act on instincts anymore (unless intoxicated). Has anyone else felt this way? Have our instincts faded to feelings of impulse?

 

[JoeJoe]

I think that fear of making a fool of yourself makes us more reserved. You say you only react when intoxicated. Maybe you have had bad experiences when reacting to your "instincts" and "decided" to be more cautious when sensing an "impulse". When you're intoxicated you're less cautious and you don't have the mental ability to stop and look at things before acting.

 

[Ogion]

I think i know this feeling, what flow descrribes at the beginning. Though not only at sports. I think i do many things just with gut feeling, instinct and maybe talent. I mean, i never work hard to achieve something, yet a few things i am not too bad at.
And i do place a lot of trust in me there. I am calm most of the times because i know i can trust myself to be at least a little apt even at things i don't know anything about yet... When thinking about it i mostly label it "Common sense" or simply adaptive intelligence.
But that is a reason for why i can't really prepare myself for things. I am best in a situation where i have to solve something. But i can't prepare for a specific situation because i would have to actually be in the situation to do as good as i can. So the only way i can prepare is by generally increasing my knowledge.
Often when i am sort of forced into a situation and then work and solve it i think "It's wasn't so bad, why aren't you doing it more often?". Things then seem so easy and i ask myself why i am 'wasting' my time not solving things. But the thing is, when i am not in a situation, i don't really think about it until i find myself again (or in a new) in it.

Hm, i hope this is at least to some point intelligible.

Ogion

 

[Ermine]

When I was a youngster I used to have tremendous instinctual talent. I could naturally do things most kids would have to learn, and I didn't even "think" about it, I could just do it. Granted, these were just things like quick reflexes in sports and assertiveness and whatnot. Anyways, as I became ever more conscious, these natural "instincts" seemed to fade into impulses. I would eventually have to consciously decide whether or not to act on them, and the instinct seemed to fade. Of course, now I have to think about everything I do, and I usually feel like I'm over analyzing even the smallest things.. to the point that I don't even seem to act on instincts anymore (unless intoxicated). Has anyone else felt this way? Have our instincts faded to feelings of impulse?

This has happened to me in the case of reading and writing. I was never taught how to read or write. I was simply introduced to the concept and took it from there. After I achieved the basics, I didn't ever have to think about how to write well and articulately. I just did. In the last few years, however, writing is a lot more deliberate. There was originally a time where I churned out a fairly decent 30 page story within a few days. Now I'm struggling with 10. I have impulses, but I don't remember how to act on it because there wasn't anything to remember. It was as unconscious as eating or sleeping.

 

[Agent Intellect]

i find that a lot of things most people seem to do without thinking, i have to think about and do it deliberately. for instance, often times when i'm walking, i have to think about how i'm walking. or if i'm just standing there, i'm very aware of what i'm doing with my arms. i've had it before where i'm walking up some stairs and almost forget which leg i'm supposed to put up next. when i talk, i always have to think over what i'm going to say before i say it, otherwise it might not make any sense. it makes me seem a little slow (and perhaps i am) but i think its just being over analytical. i probably could say the first things that pop into my head, but then i'd feel like i hadn't articulated it well, and i'd end up repeating myself four times before i felt satisfied that i said it the way i meant it.

then, like ermine said, some things just sort of came naturally to me, like writing. in school, i was always able to write well (when we had to write a two page essay, i'd write six), i was always good at vocabulary words (often able to derive meaning just by looking at the word) and grammar, but i was never given any special teaching or schooling on the subject.

 

[Ermine]

On the other hand, I think I was born without any social instinct. I have to deliberately learn what everyone else just "knows". It's starting to get a bit less deliberate as I keep going though. It's odd going from impulse to instinct.

 

[wadlez]

When I was a youngster I used to have tremendous instinctual talent. I could naturally do things most kids would have to learn, and I didn't even "think" about it, I could just do it. Granted, these were just things like quick reflexes in sports and assertiveness and whatnot. Anyways, as I became ever more conscious, these natural "instincts" seemed to fade into impulses. I would eventually have to consciously decide whether or not to act on them, and the instinct seemed to fade. Of course, now I have to think about everything I do, and I usually feel like I'm over analyzing even the smallest things.. to the point that I don't even seem to act on instincts anymore (unless intoxicated). Has anyone else felt this way? Have our instincts faded to feelings of impulse?

I think that since humans invented language and started communicating and thinking with symbols, we think in a completly different way than what we had been doing for the most part of our evolution. Since we think so logically now we lose our way of interfacing with other highly evolved functions and cannot use them aswell. So our logical mind is pushing out our instinctual mind.
For an example of this, I was at work and a friend came up to me and said hi and the usual small talk. After he left I just had this strange feeling that he was hiding something and he was feeling guilty about something, logically i couldnt explain what made me think this at all. Later i find out that he had cheated on his girlfriend at the staff christmas party. So in this example, Our mind has a function to detect social cues with body language and slight changes in tone of voice that we had evolved over thousands of years of living in tribes etc. But this function does not transfer over to the style we currently think, so we are just given a strange "feeling" instead.
I think this is similar to what you are saying because our abilty to quickly act on things physically with incredible accuracy is also within this realm. So as you've grown older and developed the logical part of your mind more you have lost some ability to use these functions.

 

[Da Blob]

When I was a youngster I used to have tremendous instinctual talent. I could naturally do things most kids would have to learn, and I didn't even "think" about it, I could just do it. Granted, these were just things like quick reflexes in sports and assertiveness and whatnot. Anyways, as I became ever more conscious, these natural "instincts" seemed to fade into impulses. I would eventually have to consciously decide whether or not to act on them, and the instinct seemed to fade. Of course, now I have to think about everything I do, and I usually feel like I'm over analyzing even the smallest things.. to the point that I don't even seem to act on instincts anymore (unless intoxicated). Has anyone else felt this way? Have our instincts faded to feelings of impulse?

This is odd, considering your User Name (?)
You just described what is termed Flow Experiences...???

http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Flow_theory

 

[wadlez]

I dont think she described the flow experience. I think the flow experience occurs when you are doing a difficult or challenging task and your mind is 100% focused and engaged in it and you perform amazingly. I think i have experienced this before while learning to program. Your minds races and you think incredibly fast and nail what your doing perfectly, you feel euphoric.

 

[Da Blob]

I dont think she described the flow experience. I think the flow experience occurs when you are doing a difficult or challenging task and your mind is 100% focused and engaged in it and you perform amazingly. I think i have experienced this before while learning to program. Your minds races and you think incredibly fast and nail what your doing perfectly, you feel euphoric.

You might be right, but it seems Ironic that often as 'envious' adults we search for that which we had and devalued as children, whereas as children we sought that which we envied in adults.

I guess Flow can be the only judge on this issue. She experienced it....?

 

[flow]

Well I don't think I'm the only one who could properly judge this issue, and I'm sure we've all "experienced" it. INTPs have unique minds that are exceptionally aware. How we act on our awareness is probably what causes the perceived loss of instinct. We analyze, reanalyze, repeat. We get so caught up with thought, we don't ever know when (or how) to act.
I'm male btw.

 

[wadlez]

Yeah she is I guess. Its hard to really explain and share exactly what you are experiencing

 

[JoeJoe]

I once met a guy who said humans have 52 senses, instead of five and we usually use 6 to 8. What wadlez experienced with his colleage would have been one of those senses and my father once sensed that a colleage of his had heart problems, just by walking by him.

 

[Da Blob]

Well I don't think I'm the only one who could properly judge this issue, and I'm sure we've all "experienced" it. INTPs have unique minds that are exceptionally aware. How we act on our awareness is probably what causes the perceived loss of instinct. We analyze, reanalyze, repeat. We get so caught up with thought, we don't ever know when (or how) to act.
I'm male btw.

Sorry, sir (It's Wadlez's fault)

A couple of points
It is estimated that 65 - 90% of the information shared during a conversation is of a Non verbal form (which was an astonishing fact that I discovered late in life) I still don't read people very well, apparently there is a great deal of "reading between the lines" that I have missed out on. I took a course in Nonverbal Communication in grad school and it actually was a bit of a frightening, but it certainly explained my relative lack of social skills.

Here is something else, the deprivation that seems to occur as a byproduct of maturation may be due to the Left brain-Right brain functions. I believe that "flow' experience can be categorized as Right brain driven experience, while the Left brain, (which develops slower but usually ends up being the dominant hemisphere) drives language and objective thought processes. The two hemispheres co-operate rather than compete. So we lose something for everything we gain after a point, cognitively speaking