Stuck in the infamous / horrible " Ti + Si " loop of death ! Help...

[DIALECTIC]

Hello !




Does any of you have any remedy to break from the Ti-Si loop i have been stuck with for about one week now ? It does happen to me 4 or 5 times a year and every time i seem to get out of it randomly but it's hell during that time... Also it does follow periods of intense creativity and optimism about life / the future in general.

It is like if i have been evolving too much / too fast and i then somehow get "stopped" for a while, until the cycle of evolution then stagnation starts again...
It's like running too fast on a treadmill, at first it's great as you feel so confident that you can basically run faster than the machine / "system" but after a while you fall from it and you feel dizzy for ages from the fall.. Then when you go back on it, your endurance / stamina has been zeroed by the fall and you run or rather you walk but this time the speed of the treadmill is too fast for you so you lose self confidence as you get tired and out of breath, then you look at other people / treadmills and they go much faster than you do (yet before you fall you were making fun at some of them because they were going soooo slow compared to you then) which makes you even more feel like you're worthless...

The symptoms: self doubt, procrastination, lack of reflex coordination, less physical strength, intense tiredness, implementation of "energy conservation mode" (i even have problems interacting and just smiling at people !), i can't connect any ideas together either (obviously Ne is "on holidays" or something...) or maybe i will connect to one or two and then nothing while usually i can connect stuff ad infinitum and the more i connect the more motivated / excited i am...

I have been listening to podcasts on spirituality, quantum physics etc the last couple of nights and they did wake up my Ne but just for that moment... Usually i can "think for myself" but the right now it seems that i have to rely on others to think for me and feed them with their thoughts / data... The problem is they won't even excite me as much as usual...

Also Fe is gone away just as much as Ne... Didnt think i would miss Fe but i do, especially the energy that comes with it / them...

It seems to me that introverted functions are over mature with no fun at all on their own as they prevent error... While extroverted functions are more immature (therefore they include the very possibility of error in the process of "trying") with a lot fun and excitement ?

Also all the usual activities that interest me don't anymore when i am stuck in this horrible loop. I can also tell my senses aren't are sharp as usual, music sounds crap, emotions are gone, i can no longer read between the lines, food tastes bland, colours aren't as vivid, etc. And no it is no depression as i have nothing to be depressed about and at the moment but to be honest i do think i had been on a major up phase for several weeks with intense creativity and very low latent inhibition... Not anymore ! I did have a few days with stress last week and i had some sort of subjective "Ne paranoia / fear of the future + Fe explosion" and it's when the loop started !!

How do i get out of that boring Ti-Si loop because is done, created and even the analysis sucks as it's not as impartial as it would be when Ne and Fe are also part of the equation !

HELP !!

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

It does happen to me 4 or 5 times a year and every time i seem to get out of it randomly but it's hell during that time... Also it does follow periods of intense creativity and optimism about life / the future in general.

What do you make of this OP, which identifies a similar "bipolar" pattern in mood and creativity? http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=16337

Otherwise, these may be of use:

http://personalityjunkie.com/the-inferior-function/

http://personalityjunkie.com/05/dominant-inferior-function-dynamics-healthy-vs-unhealthy/

 

[DIALECTIC]

What do you make of this OP, which identifies a similar "bipolar" pattern in mood and creativity? http://www.intpforum.com/showthread.php?t=16337

Otherwise, these may be of use:

http://personalityjunkie.com/the-inferior-function/

http://personalityjunkie.com/05/dominant-inferior-function-dynamics-healthy-vs-unhealthy/

Yes i can recognize myself in this too...
However INTPs do have a very intense bipolar relationship between intensive reason (Ti) and expansive emotions (Fe)... I am sure and especially in the past (i am 39) i would have diagnosed with so called "bipolar disorder" as my up's used to be really up there (mania/hypomania) and my down's used to be way way below...
With age i learnt to manage my emotions a lot more which avoids me to be destructive / self destructive, also i stopped relying on unhealthy "externals" for a quick fix (drugs, alcohol, shopping sprees, junk food), however i am still trying to beat the last one: porn ! I only watch it when feeling down and when intellectual stimulation / excitation doesn't work no more, but i did notice that it just makes me worse in the end... I read somewhere it wrecks havok on acetylcholine neurostransmission which seems to be associated with intuition...

 

[scorpiomover]

The Ti-Si loop, is when Ti comes to a conclusion, that contradicts something that the INTP has previously accepted as unquestionable fact in his Si, something that he was taught, or read, or observed, and generally assumed that it's true for everyone and everything, only that it really isn't always true. If can be that the Si assumption is not always true, and the confusion comes from Ti pointing that in some circumstances, Si can't be right. It can be that Ti is wrong, and Si is right, but because of some other Si fact, that Ti has forgotten to include in its calculations, or that Si simply hasn't noticed, even though everyone else has.

The useful thing here, is Ne. Ne is more about possibilities. It's also about going about in the world, and observing, and inferring patterns from those observations. Observation is the Perceiver's version of experimentation. It's how INTPs can tell if their theory is just a possibly explanation, or if it really does fit reality or not.

So in a Ti-Si loop, what you need to break free, is to first question yourself if you know everything perfectly. If not, then you might be assuming some Si "fact" as always true, when it may not be always true, and may be sometimes not true, or that you may be missing some important fact from Si, and then Si isn't giving you the complete picture, and again, Si isn't accurate.

This might help, as an algorithm:

1) Start with a certain smidgeon of self-doubt about what you think you know, and assume some of it may be incorrect, only you're not sure which part.

2) Then use your Ti & Ne to figure out what salient factors, however sure you are of them, that if they were wrong, then things would make sense. You'll probably have several, and they will probably all seem to be impossible or far too unlikely to be possible.

3) Then for each relevant factor, use your Ti & Ne to think of situations, that would occur often IRL, where in most of those situations, there would be some behaviour or other observable phenomena, that, if it was present, would be obvious, and if it wasn't, then the factor would clearly be wrong, or some other behaviour or observable phenomena, that if it was present, then it would be obvious, and if it was present, then the factor would clearly be wrong. Either will do. We're just looking for situations where we can clearly test each axiom of our theory, simply by observation.

4) Then use your Ne to observe those situations IRL. One event alone is often a one-off anomaly. So it's best to rely on many observations of each type of situation. The mind is normally slow to spot the patterns at first. But as it gets used to looking for those patterns, it suddenly finds one, and then another, and another. Once you've found one, you then recall that you've seen many, and then the pattern becomes obvious to you.

5) After collating all this data, and all those patterns, you may now feel even more confused than before, because you now are no longer sure of what you were so sure of before. But now you have clearly observed patterns, lots of data, with which to feed your Ti, and figure out what's what. So feed all these patterns back into Ti, and now use Ti to decide which of your Si facts are still generally true, and which of your Si facts are only true sometimes. Then your Ti will now have to expand its theory to include all those cases when Si wasn't right, and then it will have a clear and consistent vision of both Si facts and reality, in which both are consistent, and thus both can be correct. Then everything is clear.

 

[DIALECTIC]

Thanks for your answer / time / help.

The Ti-Si loop, is when Ti comes to a conclusion, that contradicts something that the INTP has previously accepted as unquestionable fact in his Si, something that he was taught, or read, or observed,

Yes that's exactly what just happened ! It's like losing total self confidence in pretty much everything i believed in for the last couple of years. Yet no new information / facts (Si) came to induce this, just unrelated stress that led to over using Ne and Fe for the wrong reasons respectively paranoia / fear of the future and sentimentalism...

So in a Ti-Si loop, what you need to break free, is to first question yourself if you know everything perfectly. If not, then you might be assuming some Si "fact" as always true, when it may not be always true, and may be sometimes not true, or that you may be missing some important fact from Si, and then Si isn't giving you the complete picture, and again, Si isn't accurate.

Yes, you are correct.

Suddenly it's like i see forms (Si) but not contents (Ne). 2 weeks ago i was still able to see both at once ie reading over the lines (Ti and Si; "THE HOW") and most importantly BETWEEN THE LINES (Ne and Fe; "THE WHY")... I.e. mixing both reason and emotion / intuition at the same time giving me access to some sort of spiritual knowledge...

That horrible Ti-Si loop seems strictly temporal / rational... While Ne-Fe is spacial / emotional... ? But in the ideal working of an INTP i.e Ti Ne Si Fe it's spaciotemporal / spiritual...

 

[scorpiomover]

Suddenly it's like i see forms (Si) but not contents (Ne). 2 weeks ago i was still able to see both at once ie reading over the lines (Ti and Si; "THE HOW") and most importantly BETWEEN THE LINES (Ne and Fe; "THE WHY")... I.e. mixing both reason and emotion / intuition at the same time giving me access to some sort of spiritual knowledge...

That horrible Ti-Si loop seems strictly temporal / rational... While Ne-Fe is spacial / emotional... ? But in the ideal working of an INTP i.e Ti Ne Si Fe it's spaciotemporal / spiritual...

Ah, you sublimed. T analyses the details, and i then synthesises them all together. If you do this with enough of the details, you're actually synthesising the entire system, and in the process, you convert those details into a series of rules-of-thumb, that are akin to the laws of science. At this stage, they give clear judgements about the system as a whole, holistically, and so sound remarkably like Fi. Then Ne can visualise these rules-of-thumb, into a series of possible concepts, that might explain it. This results in an Fi-Ne idea, or an Ni theory, that seems to speak to NF spirituality.

However, once the intuitive vision mentally flashes, it quickly degrades and fades, like a dream that was crystal clear when you woke up, but can barely be remembered after a few hours. Then Ti questions its rationality.

At this point, one has to recall one's mental steps, to recall how one built one's ideas, to have the understanding that gave the mind reason to speculate the intuitive vision altogether. Then at least, one has a beginning to start with, and then Ti & Ne can fill in the gaps, figuring how the idea might be possible, and how it might be proved, and thus, under what conditions it would be true or not.

I've done it before. You end up becoming very much epistemologically nihilist, seeing evidence only as proof that some of the trillions of possibilites are false, and leaving trillions more. At the same time, you start to acknowledge that certain spiritual concepts, while being not proved from clear physical evidence, can be said to be able to be logically consistent with what we actually can be sure of from the universe, that stems only from that which we can be absolutely sure of, which, from the view of an epistemological nihilist, is very little, and at the same time, is such, that if we assume those concepts to be true about the universe, make the universe appear to be simplified greatly in understanding what goes on, and which make it much more easy to navigate and use. Spiritual parsimony, is thus about creating as few logical dynamic entities (theories) as possible, by a flexibility in the creation of as many logical static entities as necessary.

 

[Ex-User (5841)]

Quoting this here just to make sure the other thread stays semi on track.

Do you take any medicines / vitamins / supplements ?

http://www.intpforum.com/showpost.php?p=332219&postcount=33

Recent changes involve eliminating ethylphenidate and trazodone and replacing with a marijuana tincture at 42mg THC 8mg CBD once daily. Kills anxiety with a waffle iron. Troof.