Sometimes, there is a certain difficulty with being an INTP.
To wit: Your emotions can really fuck with you.
Emotions are, by their very nature, emotional, and logic does not necessarily apply.
USUALLY, it’s not terribly hard to get a good, solid, logical grasp on the ‘what’ of an emotion, and learning the ‘what’ usually leads to the ‘why’, and understanding the why means it can be dealt with rationally. Either the why makes sense (and it’s logical to just go ahead and feel that emotion) or the why doesn’t make any sense (in the context of the ‘what’), and the emotion is stormed by little logic attackers with little biplanes and machineguns, and generally suffers the same fate as King Kong.
The kicker is when you only know that you’re feeling….something…and can’t put your finger on what it is. You’re sure that something’s amiss, but don’t know what – so you blunder on through your day, trying not to step anywhere too sprightly or carelessly, lest that be an emotional landmine that’s lurking in the back of your head.
It’s yet again more difficult for Wendy and myself, as we’re *both* INTPs. I thought *I* was cool and rational and somewhat disconnected from my emotions at times. Sometimes, she makes my Spock look downright like Dr. McCoy! She’s really, really good at telling me what’s going on in her internal monologue – once she figures out what that is, exactly. A couple of times lately, though, she’s just started to feel…’distant’…with no apparent cause.
That’s not *entirely* true, though. She’ll feel ‘distant’ while she’s sorting through whatever may be bugging her subconscious at the moment. I’m learning to identify those moments, and to step lightly around them whilst she sorts out what’s going on. She *is* very good about telling me what that is, once she finally gets it sorted, though. This is a wonderful thing.
This time out, it was her urology appointment the other day. She got poked and prodded and…well, now that I’ve heard what all went with the day, it seems fairly…violating…albeit in a detached, medicinal way. Then I got (really, really) sick Wednesday night, and was completely unavailable for any sort of decompression from that.
And it stuck with her until today.
Yeah, being an INTP, and having trouble identifying, much less connecting with, your feelings?
That sucks sometimes.