When did you first notice that something about you was a little 'off'?

[Cherry Cola]

yeah how does it all play out and connect function wise? Having joined the boards rather recently I find myself clueless, Spaceyeti don't seem much of a sensor to me.

Then again the well developed tertiary Ni of an intelligent ISTP is not to be toyed with. I could sorta see that..

 

[SpaceYeti]

And on topic; I remember my mother coming to pick us up from the baby-sitter's, and I would simply walk out to the car. I wanted to get home and not waste time talking about meaningless things, while my mother would talk to the bay-sitter and ask my brother how his day had been. My going out the door motivated her to catch up to me.

My step-mother thought my mom only cared about my brother because of it. She saw my mom asking my brother how his day was while I quietly went out to the car. She didn't understand that I was mopy because I was still at the boring baby-sitter's instead of on my way home.

 

[Brontosaurie]

yeah how does it all play out and connect function wise? Having joined the boards rather recently I find myself clueless, Spaceyeti don't seem much of a sensor to me.

Then again the well developed tertiary Ni of an intelligent ISTP is not to be toyed with. I could sorta see that..

he's blunt and bullshit-free. that conjures the image of some capable mechanic, although it's not an S trait generally.

 

[Architect]

Exactly what is it I do which suggests I'm an S instead of an N? I'm curious, and would sincerely like to know if I am.

If you're an ISTP then you've got Ni in the tertiary - a strong anchor, so you'd have quite a lot of N. I've known a lot of ISTP's from work (they show up in Engineering very frequently) and my sibling. ISTP's are quite like INTP's, with the same Ti-Fe dominant-inferior dynamic.

The giveaway is the flip-flop of Ne-Si (INTP) "otherworldliness" to Se-Ni (ISTP) "directness". You've got the physical directness that ISTP's have, both in your physical mien (photos you've shared of yourself) and in your writing (frequent discussion of sex and physicality). ISTP's are highly sexually charged. INTP's get horny too (though are often asexual too), but nothing like the strength, openness and raw physicality you show here. That same physicality shows up in your eating habits too (Se obvious love of good food).

Your pictures show a physical confidence, your frame looks compact and muscular while INTP's are invariably lean ectomorphs with light musculature mesomorphy. The eyes confidently challenge the camera, no wonder you've had such romanic good luck! INTP's are much more blank, looking off to the far distance, not the near distance. Compare to a picture of Polaris or Jim Parsons or Larry David, that cool distance is the hallmark. At most a mature INTP will be more "present" (like you see with me in my pictures, or consider the later pictures of Einstein) but never challenging.

Further the military. An ISTP would do well in it, even with the bitching that comes with the job. In the unlikely even an INTP ended up in it s/he would continually moan about the job and would likely be skirting a court marshal or desertion.

One main difference between the two is in the INTP penchant for theory and abstraction, and the ISTP preference for directness and action. Your posting style always seems to cut to the chase. Recall the food discussion we had on AA. You're questioning was perplexity combined with problem solving (this is how ISTP's solve problems, and I've see them do this every day at work). For contrast look at our own TimeAsylums - here is sheer delight when a problem is uncovered. An INTP reacts to problems in an abstracted "uh huh, that's interesting" and then they disappear into the corner while they try to figure it out. You're like a bulldozer, first getting to the root of a matter, then going somewhere else (this is the Ti-Ni dynamic with Se directness). Consider this post. Bam! Direct to the point. INTP's aren't usually direct like this but it's a sign of Se secondary ISTP's. This is commonly how you post.

There are many other clues but that's a highlight. Welcome cousin! Back OT, if I'm right yes you are different due to the oddball Ti-Fe dynamic, and you are very much like an INTP, down to interests (tech, computers, etc), but otherwise you're presence screams ISTP.

 

[Rome96]

My early academic life took a similar path - i was top of the class and whichever teacher's pet i wanted to be (not including the one from my anecdote!). Given special assignments etc. Don't think i'm boasting please, i'm not even that smart and quite a dunce in some areas. I also started questioning and then rejecting the validity of the education system, also starting at around age 13, and refusing to participate in the grade chasing, rote learning and the supposed seriousness of it all - so if i don't learn these endless lists of latin verbs my life will be a miserable failure, you say? - pah!
I agree that both genes and experience play a role, i'm just quite fascinated how the experiences affects what's already there. I think i would have had a much better childhood education if i hadn't been continually rebelling against the disciplinarian authority, the restricting syllabuses and suffocating expectations (and eventually getting expelled from high school). I continued my education alone, mainly reading books (from the library, there was no internet lol) and re-entered the system on my own terms when i was ready. I don't wish that things had been different but i'm sure i would have loved to have the internet as a teenager, as much as i can't imagine my life without it now i can barely imagine my life back then with it...the instant access to information about everything is such a motivation to learn about everything!

No, your reply wasn't too long! I enjoyed reading it, thank you. You are rather wise for your years and clearly doing a good job of educating yourself!

Sorry if my previous post came off as boastful, I didn't mean for it to. I always sound a bit arrogant when talking about myself, even though my self-esteem actually isn't that high, it's one of the reasons my friends always call me a snob. I'm also quite a dunce in some areas, sometimes the most simple of concepts confound me and other, more complex ideas seem perfectly clear at first think. Wonder if everybody on here experiences the same thing :S? I don't actually perceive myself as that smart, I think I might just think more than other people.. I think.

One other thing I remember is asking my dad questions about our religion when I was a child and having him tell me that I shouldn't question things, because questioning things leads to the "dark side" or something.. He told me that I should just accept the religion because it is the absolute truth (for some reason) and that if I didn't, I'd burn in fire for all eternity, constantly dying and being resurrected. Good parenting. I found it extremely stupid and decided that religion was not for me. That kind of mindless conformity disgusts me.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Sorry if my previous post came off as boastful, I didn't mean for it to. I always sound a bit arrogant when talking about myself, even though my self-esteem actually isn't that high, it's one of the reasons my friends always call me a snob. I'm also quite a dunce in some areas, sometimes the most simple of concepts confound me and other, more complex ideas seem perfectly clear at first think. Wonder if everybody on here experiences the same thing :S? I don't actually perceive myself as that smart, I think I might just think more than other people.. I think.

Sorry, i didn't mean to imply that your post was boastful at all, i was just trying to ensure that mine didn't seem boastful.
No, I'M more sorry. He he.

One other thing I remember is asking my dad questions about our religion when I was a child and having him tell me that I shouldn't question things, because questioning things leads to the "dark side" or something.. He told me that I should just accept the religion because it is the absolute truth (for some reason) and that if I didn't, I'd burn in fire for all eternity, constantly dying and being resurrected. Good parenting. I found it extremely stupid and decided that religion was not for me. That kind of mindless conformity disgusts me.

Thank you for sharing this. It's a subject i find really fascinating. Your situtation must be...extremely frustrating. Although my parents didn't really practise religion, it was taken for granted that god existed (which is weird to me because if i believed it, i'd do my best to please the lord).

Welcome to the Dark Side!

Don't know what music you're in to but this always perks me up when i'm feeling oppressed!

Spoiler

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72srSaFskVU


Slayer - Disciple

Drones since the dawn of time
Compelled to live your sheltered lives
Not once has anyone ever seen
Such a rise of pure hypocracy
I'll instigate I'll free your mind
I'll show you what I've known all this time

God Hates Us All, God Hates Us All
You know it's true God hates this place
You know it's true he hates this race

Homicide-Suicide
Hate heals, you should try it sometime
Strive for Peace with acts of war
The beauty of death we all adore
I have no faith distracting me
I know why your prayers will never be answered

God Hates Us All; God Hates Us All
He Fuckin' hates me

Pessimist, Terrorist targeting the next mark
Global chaos feeding on hysteria
Cut throat, slit your wrist, shoot you in the back fair game
Drug abuse, self abuse searching for the next high
Sounds a lot like hell is spreading all the time
I'm waiting for the day the whole world fucking dies

I never said I wanted to be God's disciple
I'll never be the one to blindly follow

Man made virus infecting the world
Self-destruct human time bomb
What if there is no God would you think the fuckin' same
Wasting your life in a leap of blind faith
Wake the fuck up can't ignore what I say
I got my own philosophy

I hate everyone equally
You can't tear that out of me
No segregation -separation
Just me in my world of enemies

I never said I wanted to be God's disciple
I'll never be the one to blindly follow
I'll never be the one to bear the cross-disciple

I reject this fuckin' race
I despise this fuckin' place

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Pretty much. Do it with everybody actually, my natural mode is to observe and collect data on everything. Sometimes it comes in use, sometimes not. For most people I unconsciously just lump them in a bucket ... "SJ male ... "STJ female ... Introvert indeterminant " and only analyze to a likely type for people who are important or are interesting.

I've always done it too, just not in the framework of MBTI. It's just that i get a slightly guilty/amusingly sinister feeling when assessing children.
When i come across children who's behaviour i find unpleasant i make a huge effort to hide my dislike because i think they have to be forgiven the fact that they don't yet know any better.
Sorry, that's rather blatantly obvious isn't it!

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

At this time I also started noticing how much and how obviously a lot of other kids lied about things, such as having a bunch of cool toys, not having done some bad thing which they had done, retelling events inaccurately etc. This behaviour baffled me. Didn't they get that I got that they were lying? That it was super obvious a lot of the time?

This was the same for me, i.e. that it was obvious when they were lying. Watching them fail at deception made me a great liar when it was necessary to hide my 'subversive' thoughts/feelings/actions.
I'm still enthralled by the spectacle of adults lying badly.

I was comfortable enough with the people back then that I dared more or less be myself, sharing my honest thoughts on matters, which became more of a problem later on.

May i ask why? If you say 'for obvious reasons' then i think i know what you mean. I've had very few people in my life with whom i am anything like honest. My honesty usually upsets/offends/bewilders people.

 

[Cherry Cola]

May i ask why? If you say 'for obvious reasons' then i think i know what you mean. I've had very few people in my life with whom i am anything like honest. My honesty usually upsets/offends/bewilders people.

Well, six year olds act quite naturally; furthermore, I had been with those friends since Kinder garden and at such a young age our interests didn't differ much. At the point I had no experience of being different or an outsider, someone who had to adjust to function in the given context. That wasn't in my mental world at the point. Looking at those people now (thank you Facebook) it's obvious I have very little in common with them, and my childhood wouldn't have been as intellectually stimulating if not for the fact that I had to switch schools. At my new school I soon teamed up with Brontosaur and two INTJ's.
Much more stimulating company in a way.

Yet when we got to the swedish version of high school, I think we were getting too isolated in our little clique. Later graduating from upper secondary and going out to get a job I recall feeling hopelessness. I didn't know how to act normal, lacked social training; all jobs advertised wanted and still want "happy extraverted socially capable people". Because I had spent my time mostly alone or in my comfortable clique of somewhat likeminded friends and because of my nature in itself, I didn't fit the bill and was a useless non-contributor. At the same time I felt intellectually superior and frustrated. The Ni-Ti loop had been going pretty strong for years. Eventually I was forced to realize that while I am certainly a detached thinker in the same sense as INTP's and INTJ's my priorities and the goals that I set were ultimately concerned with and directed at a vision wholly moral in its imagined fulfilling, and that all my attempts to detach emotionally in the here and now were bound to fail and leave me unhappy. I've slowly gotten more confident and reassured in social situations, nowadays I recognize that while I am no brilliant people person, there are plenty of others far worse than me and I actually do quite well interacting in smaller groups. Identifying as an INFJ helped me in this process.

I wonder sometimes if evolution has provided an outsider archetype for the perpetual flotsam souls to quietly remove themselves and go under in order not to burden the rest. That the rarer oddball types are hit's n misses that cannot be afforded to exists in abundance but serve their purpose by acting the triggers of paradigm shifts, spicing things up. Too much salt n pepper and you can't eat the food tho.

Being the flotsam as I was through high to upper secondary, I wonder if it was worth it. I think I learned a lot and gained an intellectual aptitude that I might not have had should I instead have stayed in my old school and remained a part of it all. At the same time I also wasted 5 years (18-23) struggling with myself and being unable to set a path in life, albeit, again reading and learning a lot at the same time.

Nowadays I'm kinda getting going, got a job, got a diagnosis (ADD) that explains a little of my disorientedness and aloofness, got a plan (becoming a psychologist), but the sense of impending failure still lingers over me. It feels like there's always something that I've forgotten that will eventually pop up and fuck me over bad. It's just irrational emotional baggage, yet I can't do much about it.

erh sry this turned out to be a wall of text about meself

 

[SpaceYeti]

Further the military. An ISTP would do well in it, even with the bitching that comes with the job. In the unlikely even an INTP ended up in it s/he would continually moan about the job and would likely be skirting a court marshal or desertion.

I can see the rest of what you're saying, but I don't buy this. The military isn't 24 hour ready to follow the red-tape BS. There is red-tape BS, but generally you just have to be at the right place at the right time, at least for the lower enlisted. Further, it's actually easier than any other job I've ever had. The work itself is incredibly simple. It's kind of like gym class; Show up, at least appear to be putting in effort, pass. When I first joined, I was scared I wouldn't be able to get anywhere on my charm because it's so stuffy and anal, and I sure couldn't do the stuffy and anal part, but I was wrong. About the first thing. All I have to do is look sharp and appear to know what's happening and it's assumed I'm a super-soldier. I started out with charm and resilience (and, arguably, intellect), the military taught me everything else.

I understand that INTPs are likely the worst candidate for military service, but that doesn't mean they'd necessarily be miserable doing it, especially if they go in out of necessity instead of... why-ever else someone would do this stupid BS.

 

[Wolf18]

Tell me about your childhoods fellow introverts/INTPs!

When I was around 9, I had a very needy friend (ENFP). She always wanted to spend time with me, and she wanted me to listen to her, and all that. When we were 7 and 8 years old, we had lots of fun together. However, as I got older, I became more distant and cold around people. One day, she asked me if I was her best friend. I said, "no, I don't have best friends" (I was telling the truth). This made her so upset that she refused to talk to me for years. I didn't understand what the big deal was. This was when I began to wonder if there was something wrong with me.

In high school, my friends never really stop telling me how abnormal I am. Fortunately, they are abnormal as well (INTJ and INFJ, with an ISFP tagging along). The INTJ usually calls me out if I'm being cruel, before the INFJ can hit me, usually (aux Fe is dangerous, I have found). The ISFP boy makes me feel out of place, though. He just wants to be normal and popular, and he is average in every way, but is still an outcast. He can't seem to understand why it might be good to be an outcast, and a loner. Whenever I try to explain this to him, he tells me I need a therapist.

SW

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

Well, six year olds act quite naturally; furthermore, I had been with those friends since Kinder garden and at such a young age our interests didn't differ much. At the point I had no experience of being different or an outsider, someone who had to adjust to function in the given context. That wasn't in my mental world at the point. Looking at those people now (thank you Facebook) it's obvious I have very little in common with them, and my childhood wouldn't have been as intellectually stimulating if not for the fact that I had to switch schools. At my new school I soon teamed up with Brontosaur and two INTJ's.
Much more stimulating company in a way.

I've been thinking a lot about the point at which that changes, because i can also (vaguely) recall the time before i had to 'adjust to function in the given context' (as you so nicely phrased it). The problems i'm having in pining it down are mainly due to my sieve-like memory and 30ish yrs of being in an outsider state of existence. Hence the thread i guess.

Yet when we got to the swedish version of high school, I think we were getting too isolated in our little clique. Later graduating from upper secondary and going out to get a job I recall feeling hopelessness. I didn't know how to act normal, lacked social training; all jobs advertised wanted and still want "happy extraverted socially capable people". Because I had spent my time mostly alone or in my comfortable clique of somewhat likeminded friends and because of my nature in itself, I didn't fit the bill and was a useless non-contributor. At the same time I felt intellectually superior and frustrated. The Ni-Ti loop had been going pretty strong for years. Eventually I was forced to realize that while I am certainly a detached thinker in the same sense as INTP's and INTJ's my priorities and the goals that I set were ultimately concerned with and directed at a vision wholly moral in its imagined fulfilling, and that all my attempts to detach emotionally in the here and now were bound to fail and leave me unhappy. I've slowly gotten more confident and reassured in social situations, nowadays I recognize that while I am no brilliant people person, there are plenty of others far worse than me and I actually do quite well interacting in smaller groups. Identifying as an INFJ helped me in this process.

Being the flotsam as I was through high to upper secondary, I wonder if it was worth it. I think I learned a lot and gained an intellectual aptitude that I might not have had should I instead have stayed in my old school and remained a part of it all. At the same time I also wasted 5 years (18-23) struggling with myself and being unable to set a path in life, albeit, again reading and learning a lot at the same time.

Nowadays I'm kinda getting going, got a job, got a diagnosis (ADD) that explains a little of my disorientedness and aloofness, got a plan (becoming a psychologist), but the sense of impending failure still lingers over me. It feels like there's always something that I've forgotten that will eventually pop up and fuck me over bad. It's just irrational emotional baggage, yet I can't do much about it.

I can relate to a lot in this post. Feeling hopelessly inadequate whilst perusing jobs for happy extroverts made me laugh! I think that cliques can easily further isolate you from the rest of society because it's so easy when you don't have to don a mask that making the effort to socialize with anyone else seems pointless or too difficult, i struggled with this too...still do, always seem to get entwined in cliques of 2 and the rest of the world becomes completely irrelevant.
You make lots of positive statements - about intellectual and social growth, and having set yourself a goal - it doesn't sound to me as though 18-23 was a waste at all. I wouldn't worry to much about failing, i've failed in multiple ways, it's just another lesson, another means to growth. (sorry, hope this isn't patronising).

I wonder sometimes if evolution has provided an outsider archetype for the perpetual flotsam souls to quietly remove themselves and go under in order not to burden the rest. That the rarer oddball types are hit's n misses that cannot be afforded to exists in abundance but serve their purpose by acting the triggers of paradigm shifts, spicing things up. Too much salt n pepper and you can't eat the food tho.

This is a highly intriguing concept which i will go away and ponder.
Are we a burden on the rest?! I thought the rest were the burden

 

[Cherry Cola]

Before the INFJ can hit you? :O

What does that mean? How do they differ in the way they tell you off?

 

[Wolf18]

Before the INFJ can hit you? :O

What does that mean? How do they differ in the way they tell you off?

The INTJ says, "Self-control! Listen to yourself." I am usually doing something impulsive, so this works quite well.
The INFJ says, "f*** off!" *slap*. I am aware that not all INFJs are like that.

SW

 

[Cherry Cola]

This is a highly intriguing concept which i will go away and ponder.
Are we a burden on the rest?! I thought the rest were the burden

Well we are a burden in that our priorities are usually at odds with those of the body of humanity (the ruling perspective), when we do sync we are an invaluable asset though, a quick glance at celebrity types makes this fact rather obvious. The great thinkers.. they are N types, more often than not they are also introverted.

From my (or maybe our) perspective I'd say that they don't know what they need and that our mode of thought just transcends theirs. But that don't help

 

[Introspective]

When did you first notice that something about you was a little "off"?

Never. I was quite an elitist child and always wondered what was wrong with everyone else.

 

[Puffy]

Not until about 14 or 15, I think.

I've always been dreamy/ internal and so always found practical tasks difficult. So I didn't bond with people over sports and things like a lot in my school. But I wasn't ever exceedingly clever either, I managed to scrape by at the bottom of the top classes, but it was clear there were always others surpassing me. I felt pretty ordinary really, always had a few friends, and was maybe a bit more socially anxious and inward than most. I actually wanted to be an accountant then a very dull person.

These days all I can largely remember of my childhood/ teenage years is a womb of virtual reality; I was highly addicted to video-games for a long time, which I was pretty content within. I think around 14-15 was when my "sexual imagination" kicked in (I was a pretty late bloomer) and in abandoning this womb felt a more pronounced difference in myself to other people. Not in terms of intelligence, just feeling alien in the way I communicate. That's the first "break" I think I felt in my timeline that changed me as a person...

In many respects I don't actually feel I was "born" until around the time I joined this forum. There will always be continuities, I'm just a markedly different person, I feel I've gone through big "breaks" in recent years that just leave most memories before then irrelevant. All I have from then are these simulated artificial memories that don't really feel real. I have little nostalgia for childhood.

 

[Cherry Cola]

I've always been dreamy/ internal and so always found practical tasks difficult. So I didn't bond with people over sports and things like a lot in my school. But I wasn't ever exceedingly clever either, I managed to scrape by at the bottom of the top classes, but it was clear there were always others surpassing me. I felt pretty ordinary really, always had a few friends, and was maybe a bit more socially anxious and inward than most. I actually wanted to be an accountant then a very dull person.

This was me up until like age 13 or so, up until then I didn't feel smarter than the rest of the pack. I was even put in a retard class in first grade when I was 7, we sat there doing menial tasks such as practicing drawing lines straight, it was pretty nice because there were just four of us with one teacher, the environment was relaxed. But then at 13 I really started getting bugged by the stupidity of most of my classmates, the way half of the lessons were wasted on their incompetence. How they couldn't understand extremely basic physics or chemistry, it was as if though they completely lacked any ability to see the processes play out in their head and always needed to do hands down laboration in order to get anything, hand down approaches, which I abhorred and thought a waste of time. It was as if thought I had built my own mental system on much stricter criteria, leading me to develop my understanding of things much slower, but then when I started catching up the ground I was standing on was so much more solid than most of my peers, allowing me to intuitively grasp a lot of what they struggled greatly with in an instant.

Thus, despite being a goddamn socialist through and through.. I can't help but support elite classes. I think a lot more cash n research needs to go into aptitude tests that don't test your rote learning databank but rather your ability to reason with the data, in order that kids may be put in groups where they are actually stimulated.

We were also constantly told to think critically, but no teacher or subject existed to teach us how. Thus for myself and many others school was a process of alienation and frustration, an accumulation of baggage that has taken years to dispense of, and I'm far from done anyway. There needs to be a subject that teaches kids some basic philosophy, psychology, linguistics, and anthropology in an interconnected way, a kind of modern liberal arts education on a low level, just to put those concepts into the heads of kids while they are still young and can integrate them into their thinking. That many encounter and learn to grasp terms such as "subjective" and "objective" when they are 18+ is pathetic. That these kids are expected and encouraged to be critical thinkers at 13 is laughable.

Oh yeah, I'd also being a late bloomer isn't necessarily a bad thing. I hit puberty at 12.5 years and I was completely unprepared for it, I had no clue about sex, didn't even get that breasts were an erogenous zone. I think it would be a good thing if kids got to stay kids for an average of another 2 years, what with the demands of the modern world. When you hit puberty you get so many alien emotions, and they are so strong, I wish I would've gotten them a bit later when I had more tools to handle them.

 

[timber]

I was called immature in 1st grade on a teachers report card. I knew I was very shy until someone introduced me. Could not read as fast as many people. I was into science fiction and star trek and none of my friends were. I was not good at team sports but I excelled in anything I could do by myself (running, wrestling). But when I grew up I blew by everyone else I grew up with in terms of education (PhD) and income.

It was odd to always have the feeling that you are immature only to become an adult and work on things that the more mature folks can't even understand now.

 

[Nezaros]

I've been something of a social outcast my whole life. People rarely noticed me and when they did it was usually to say I was "weird" or "creepy." I had very few friends growing up, and abhorred sports, and just in general did not "fit in." Good times.

 

[Architect]

I can see the rest of what you're saying, but I don't buy this. The military isn't 24 hour ready to follow the red-tape BS. ...

I understand that INTPs are likely the worst candidate for military service, but that doesn't mean they'd necessarily be miserable doing it, especially if they go in out of necessity instead of... why-ever else someone would do this stupid BS.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to imply that. My uncle was a General in the AF and that whole side of the family followed him, so I have some insight into the service I think. Agree with your point otherwise.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

I wonder sometimes if evolution has provided an outsider archetype for the perpetual flotsam souls to quietly remove themselves and go under in order not to burden the rest. That the rarer oddball types are hit's n misses that cannot be afforded to exists in abundance but serve their purpose by acting the triggers of paradigm shifts, spicing things up. Too much salt n pepper and you can't eat the food tho.

This refreshed my thinking on the evolutionary advantages of the existence outsiders:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/26/opinion/sunday/26shyness.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0


But i can't seem to pin down the mechanisms by which the outsiders remove themselves or, more interestingly might be removed as a result of being a burden.
Perhaps i read too much in to it, but what i was looking for were answers to why 'they' - the jolly sociable extroverts seem to find 'us' unsettling and view us as needing to be fixed in some way:

In high school, my friends never really stop telling me how abnormal I am...The ISFP boy makes me feel out of place, though. He just wants to be normal and popular, and he is average in every way, but is still an outcast. He can't seem to understand why it might be good to be an outcast, and a loner. Whenever I try to explain this to him, he tells me I need a therapist.SW

I've been something of a social outcast my whole life. People rarely noticed me and when they did it was usually to say I was "weird" or "creepy." I had very few friends growing up, and abhorred sports, and just in general did not "fit in." Good times.

I can't count the number of times i've been critisized (at best questioned) for being anti-social, unemotional, too cerebral and so on (lol, see Bill Hicks - "what you reading for?"!). Not once have i ever reversed the pattern and questioned the motives/needs/actions of someone who was more sociable or emotional or less interested in learning than myself. This seems to be the status quo, and sometimes they are downright hostile about our 'wierdness'. I was hoping to find out why this is and also what the results of this have been through history, but have failed so far.
Very interested to hear any hypotheses.

 

[Perfectly Normal Beast]

When did you first notice that something about you was a little "off"?

Never. I was quite an elitist child and always wondered what was wrong with everyone else.

 

[Echolalia]

Though not raised among any INTPs, my family was quick in noting marked (unusual?) characteristics and behavior, and, in turn, relatively adaptable in parenting and interactions. For instance, my mother (an ESFJ) offered to homeschool me when I was in kindergarten after I expressed distaste for mundane group activities, forced participation and what I felt was an aggravated assault on my personal time and concentration. Up until third grade my form of education was my mother buying me textbooks, literature and classical records, followed by me reporting to her on what I had learned. What felt like an INTP's educational dream graduated into a system even more astounding: a classical co-op (two days per week) where the central focus was a three-step guide to learning.
1. Question everything (textbooks, authority, newspapers, etc...)
2. Find a variety of the most reliable sources on as many sides of the issue as possible (including thorough instruction on how to find primary sources, or the closest to)
3. Form own opinion/hypothesis and be able to defend it (as well as defend the other side)

(Even there, I stuck out a bit, a notable example being that by fifth grade, I had exceeded the Latin teacher's knowledge and was discretely appointed the job of grading quizzes and tests.)

The downside--upon entering the public system in middle school, prior education exasperated my innate tendencies, as now I had the tools to dissect anything seemingly apocryphal or unfounded. To the by-the-book teachers, I was a so-called terror.

I suppose there was never a time where I felt like the norm, but then again, I never cared or was motivated enough to attempt to blend in or stick out more. Such a state is rather pleasing as it leaves me free--no pressure to either conform or reject the latest passing trend.

 

[Ex-User (9062)]

I have always felt different.
The only factor that changed over the years was context.