I can certainly identify with lor's post. I don't remember a time in my life when I haven't felt consumed and lost in self criticism, even self loathing.
Sigh. yup.
Actually, the last year of my life has been the BEST EVER... and it still sucks compared to the "average person" (as best as I can tell from outside their heads). I have forgiven myself for much lately, and now allow myself to be human... but now I have to put up with shit from other people because I'm not fulfilling their expectations. In the past, their criticisms would have destroyed me because they would have been amplified by my own internal self-destructive criticism circuitry, and now I have ego boundaries and can say, "They're not right, they're judging you unfairly, and you can stick up for yourself, because you're a good person and you know what you need." But even THAT is still exhausting.
And the friction still leaves me feeling bad.
I know sometimes even my opinions here have felt "sharp" to me and sort of abrasive, and I feel bad for "arguing" with Fusion and others about religious topics. Even though I'm just stating what I see to be true. I feel bad about the friction. It hurts to assert oneself, even if you believe something strongly.
My brain never stops and it feels like it is consuming itself sometimes. I often feel like I am on the verge of snapping, in a weird way, even wanting to snap, so that I lose all sense of reality and get lost in a self unaware bliss. But I don't snap, which brings me even further down because the reality and absurdity of life is overwhelming.
Oh, dear, yes -- I cannot tell you how many times I wish I could just go "crazy" and lose touch with reality because of the stress level and exhaustion. If I was crazy, I would no longer have to carry the burden.
But you can't go crazy, can you?
My therapists think I'm one of the sanest people in therapy they've ever met, which is why it has been so productive. I would think many of us are the same way -- we are much more sensitive to the nuances and stimulation and ramifications of things than others (highly aware), yet also have such a commitment to that reality that we can't lie about it, excuse it, change it, or paint it differently.
It creates a very very painful internal tension.
Spirituality only patched over it, but below the surface I continued to seethe. Now that I have shed myself of spirituality I am free to be honest with myself about it, but never free to be honest with anyone else about it.
Yes. That's, like, the next step.
But there's hell to pay when you start.
I carried the tension inside for years.
Now I have had to deal with lots of external opinion and garbage, when I finally let myself live according to what I actually believed and/or challenge the status quo.
All my life people have told me I just need to "pick myself up", "develop a positive self image", or "think happy thoughts". But frankly, I just want to say "go fuck yourself" to that. If it were that easy I would have done it by now.
Yes, exactly.
And it goes back to what I said a minute ago; I think that INTPs, especially ones with some life experience and context, are stringently committed to "reality at all costs." We don't like bs, we don't like "colorations" of the facts, we just want to see and respond to and assess what is THERE.
We don't care if that makes us feel bad.
We don't care if that makes us unhappy or depressed.
We don't care if it's inconvenient.
Because the 'commitment to reality' is far stronger and more important than what we feel.
And even our feelings are a reality -- when I'm happy, it would be a lie to make myself feel sad, and when I'm sad, it would be a lie to pretend to be happy.
A positive feeling state is not the ultimate goal in living life; the ultimate goal is having a clear sense of reality at the moment in time it is assessed.
