Irrational thoughts resulting from stress(hidden meanings that don't exist): Can one of you help exp

[IdeasNotTheProblem]

Hello everyone, I'm new here. I'm 28 and just recently began looking into my personality. What led to this was a recent bout with depression resulting from the loss of 3 of my closest friends in as many years. 1 had a heart attack and 2 were suicides. The later 2, I was never able accept or understand.(at least to satisfactory level) I soon became withdrawn, isolated, cynical and just plain mad at the world. I kept searching for some sort of meaning or connection behind these events. Ifelt stuck in a revolving door. Helplessness and depression resulting. Hoping to gain any sort of understanding, I began looking at my own personality and thought processes, initially thinking I had developed some sort of disorder. The discovery that I was in fact an INTP was very uplifting. INTPs characteristics explained nearly every tendency I've had since childhood. It gave me hope and I wanted to learn more. In particular, the types typical responses to stress and loss. Reluctantly, I decided to tell my father, who's a clinical psychologist, about my recent struggles and personal enlightenment so we could exchange thoughts on the matter. He wrote back to me this morning agreeing with my INTP assessment and would send me more info later in the week. Right now he is in the hospital recovering from his first heart attack. luckily my mom was with him so he's gonna be ok. But cmon! Really?

I know I over think things. I know the timing is a coincidence. I know it's irrational to think otherwise. I also know It will take forever for me to convince myself of this! Can someone explain this endlessly revolving thought process? Do INTPs typically search for "hidden meanings"? or did I read that from another personality type's description?

 

[Words]

Type is irrelevant. Many would be equally paranoid given your circumstance.

 

[Pyropyro]

You're experiencing a Ti-Si loop/lockdown. Ti is our primary function and Si is the tertiary. It is some sort of vicious cycle that INTP's experience when undergoing self-doubt or worse damage.

Basically its your thinking aspect, well overthinking memories from the past. The Ti could provide various insights but can only do so much when faced with a static archive (the Si). It would either obtain the same old results or make a worse one. The problem is that the Ti wishes to find new stuff

One of the best way to get out of this is to learn and experience new stuff (Exercise Ne) and connect with others (exercise Fe) both of which gives valuable info for your Ti to work with and your Si build from.

See http://intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=6582 for more info on Ti, Ne, Si and Fe

 

[Beholder]

Do INTPs typically search for "hidden meanings"? or did I read that from another personality type's description?

I know I do that, all the time. Noticing all kinds of random patterns in my life, and looking for explanations for them.
I think it's a Ti/Ne thing though, where the Ne is going through your experiences (Si perhaps? but not directly involved in the process) and finding patterns, and your Ti is trying to find explanations for them.
I think most of the patterns are "Texas sharpshooter fallacy" type things, especially the ones not directly involving you (like people around you having heart attacks and dying). We can't help but notice all these obscure patterns in our lives, but we need to realize that they're mostly bullshit. That's how superstition is born.

As for the suicides, I personally hold people who can do that in the highest respect. I know it's considered morally wrong or whatever, but I think it takes an incredible amount of courage and resolve to decide to take your own life, and it's a decision anyone should be free to make. I personally don't see anything tragic about suicide, except for the pain it can cause for other people.

Spoiler

There is a very popular opinion that choosing life is
inherently superior to choosing death. This belief that life is
inherently preferable to death is one of the most widespread
superstitions. This bias constitutes one of the most obstinate
mythologies of the human species.
This prejudice against death, however, is a kind of
xenophobia. Discrimination against death is simply assumed
good and right. Absolutist faith in life is commonly a result
of the unthinking conviction that existence or survival, along
with an irrational fear of death, is “good”. This unreasoned
conviction in the rightness of life over death is like a god or a
mass delusion. Life is the “noble lie”; the common secularreligion
of the West.
For the conventional Westerner, the obvious leap of faith
to make here is that one’s “self” and its preservation
constitute the first measure of rationality. Yet if one begins
reasoning with the unquestioned premise that life is good, or
that one’s own life or any life is justified, this is very
different from bringing that premise itself to be questioned
rationally. Anyone who has ever contemplated his or her
own mortality might question the ultimate sanity of the
premise of self-preservation. Even if it is possible to live
forever, moreover, this makes not an iota of difference as to
the question of the value of existence.
Most people are so prejudiced on this issue that they
simply refuse to even consider the possibilities of death.
Humans tend to be so irrationally prejudiced towards the
premise of life that rational treatment of death seldom sees
the light of day. Most people will likely fall back on their
most thoughtless convictions, intuitions, and instincts,
instead of attempting to actually think through their biases
(much less overcome them).
Yet is choosing death “irrational”? For what reason? For
most people, “irrationality” apparently refers to a
subjectivity experience in which their fear of death masters
them — as opposed the discipline of mastering one’s fear of
death. By “irrational”, they mean that they feel compelled to
bow down before this master. An individual is “free”,
apparently, when he or she is too scared to question
obedience to the authority of the fear of death. This
unquestioned slavery to the most common and unreasonable
instincts is what, in practice, liberal-individualists call
rationalism.
Most common moral positions justify and cloak this fear
of death. And like any traditional authority, time has
gathered a whole system of rituals, conventions, and
customs to maintain its authority and power as
unquestionable, inevitable, and fated; fear of death as the
true, the good, and the beautiful. For most people, fear of
death is the unquestionable master that establishes all other
hierarchies — both social hierarchies, and the hierarchies
within one’s own mind. Most are humbly grateful for the
very privilege of obedience and do not want to be free.
I propose opening your mind towards the liberation of
death; towards exposing this blind faith in life as a myth, a
bias, and an error. To overcome this delusion, the “magic
spell” of pious reverence for life over death must be broken.
To do so is to examine the faith in life that has been left
unexamined; the naïve secular and non-secular faith in life
over death.
Opening one’s mind to death emerges from the attempt to
unshackle one’s mind from the limitations of all borders. It
leads to overcoming all biological boundaries, including
borders between the “self” and the larger world. It reaches
towards the elimination of biologically based prejudices
altogether, including prejudice towards biological selfpreservation.
The attempt to go beyond ethnocentrism and
anthropomorphism leads towards overcoming the
prejudices of what I call viviocentrism, or, life-centeredness.
Just as overcoming ethnocentrism requires recognition of the
provincialism of ethnic values, overcoming viviocentrism
emerges from the recognition of the provincialism of life
values. Viviocentric provincialism is exposed through an
enlarged view from our planet, our solar system, our galaxy,
and the limits of our knowledge of the larger cosmos we live
in.

Sorry if I'm a bit insensitive and cold or whatnot... :/

 

[Mello]

Spoiler

AHEM. INTPs are Ni-Te/Fi-Se

You should move on. What happened in the past is in the past now.

 

[Beholder]

Spoiler

AHEM. INTPs are Ni-Te/Fi-Se

Care to explain?

 

[Mello]

Care to explain?

Right here?

 

[Beholder]

So you switched the functions of P and J. In that case we're INTJ's (if we're useing "Mello's personality types" terminology, which I didn't know we were) . What do you want?

 

[EyeSeeCold]

So you switched the functions of P and J. In that case we're INTJ's (if we're useing "Mello's personality types" terminology, which I didn't know we were) . What do you want?

One of Mello's points he raises in his new book, Mello's Personality Types is "Are the cognitive functions correctly matched to the personality types?".

INTP is a personality type, a concept of MBTI, but the functions of TiNe are borrowed from Carl Jung. The question is, what if the functions of TiNe have been distorted to describe INTP when it really describes INTJ? And likewise for NiTe and INTP?

 

[Beholder]

What is the basis of his reasoning?

 

[Mello]

Here.

 

[IdeasNotTheProblem]

Hey thanks everyone. some helpful stuff!
Beholder: I found it very interesting you saw suicide as a couragous act. Article made sense too. I've never looked at it that way before. Personally I see it as cowardly and selfish. Kinda like an easy way out. I would argue that it depends greatly on the circumstances. Like a young man with wife and kids taking his life leaving his family to fend for themselves(cowardly) or if a soldier jumps on a grenade to save the life lives of his comrades(Couragous), Then there's the old and sick, but im not touching that with forty foot pole. haha

And don't worry... just wanted some info/thoughts not compassion

 

[Beholder]

Kinda like an easy way out.

There's nothing easy about it, but yeah, I guess it does depend on the circumstances.

 

[IdeasNotTheProblem]

That is true.
As far as noticing patterns, I've always liked being able to pick up these random patterns no matter how subtle. Especially in day to day life and then point em out to someone who i know has missed the connection. But you're right, in the big picture they carry no true realavance to each other. Sometimes fun to observe, but not worth the effort trying to find any meaning. More so if the subject is not pleasent

 

[Vrecknidj]

First, I'm sorry for the losses you've experienced. I have had similar sets of experiences in similarly compressed stretches of time, and it's more than a handful.

Grief is atypical but necessary. Everyone experiences it, but not everyone experiences it well. Proper grieving will help alleviate other problems including the development of neuroses and other emotional symptoms. There is no deadline or statute of limitations on grieving, and, even sometimes when you're sure you've completed your grieving on some topic, you find later that you weren't and it comes back. One key for people here is not to be afraid to do the grieving. (It's an active process, not a passive one.)

Yes, INTPs look for hidden meanings and all that, but so do a lot of people of other types. We perhaps look for such things in a different way than some others, but, it's certainly a common experience for INTPs. (Ironically, there are also plenty of INTPs who reject entirely that there are hidden meanings and will argue vociferously in defense of their views.)

From a certain point of view though, your life is your life and so it's up to you, to a large degree, to decide how much value to place on such coincidences. Do you want such things to occupy an important place in the narrative of your own life? That's up to you. Other people don't have to accept it. It doesn't have to rise up to the level of "truth" as, say, 2+2=4.

All the best.

Dave