Hi, I’m Mary. I’ve made requests for typing assistance in the past, both on this subreddit and elsewhere. Most notably, I’ve been typed by DaveSuperPowers and his partner. However, DaveSP’s work is effectively a system of his own creation, and doesn’t perfectly match to classic MBTI or Socionics in terms of how the cognitive functions are defined. It’s possible to be one type in his system, and a completely different one in “normal” Myers-Briggs. Because of this, I’ve become increasingly curious about what I would be seen as here. I think I can contribute and learn the most from the MBTI subreddit if I know that the other redditors and I are “speaking the same language” in terms of how functions are defined and what type I actually count as. I can be very verbose, and will likely write a great deal, but hopefully you will find that helpful rather than obnoxious. Thank you in advance to everyone who takes the time to read through this!
General Description of myself: I’m a devout Christian and attend Episcopalian services, although I regard myself as nondenominational. I love theology, and have a particular fondness for the work of David Bentley Hart and George MacDonald. I also enjoy thinking about personality typing (obviously), philosophy of mind, the nature of causality, and the nature of love. I enjoy tabletop gaming (both board games and RPGs) and play with my friends about once a week. I’m a hopeless romantic, but I haven’t dated in quite some time because of my insecurities and inexperience. I’m a transgender lesbian, and I don’t pass very well, so I often wonder if anyone would be interested in dating me at all. I got good grades in college and have a B.S. in Physics, but I work in the gig economy shopping people’s groceries. It’s enough to live on, but still not much. I struggle with regulating my sleep schedule and taking care of basic day-to-day tasks. I’m a massive underachiever.
Mental Health: My mental health is utter garbage. At minimum, I have ADHD and a massive inferiority complex. I’ve experienced depression and anxiety throughout my life, waxing and waning. Figuring out exactly what my mental conditions are can be tough, because of comorbidity and overlapping symptoms. I’m a bit of a mental illness hypochondriac, so I’ll probably start wondering if I have a condition right after I learn of the condition’s existence. In the past, I’ve suspected the presence of Aspergers, OCD, and CPTSD, and I still don’t rule them out. Regarding CPTSD, I don’t know if my childhood would count as abusive or not, but I had a lot of problems with my parents growing up. They could become very angry and berate me over very minor mistakes. My relationship with them has mended greatly, but there are still days when I wonder if I’m too defective to deserve love or respect.
Upbringing, religion and structured influence: My family is Catholic, and I dove wholeheartedly into my Catholicism growing up. It wasn’t just about copying my parents or pleasing them; I was arguably more into it then they were. I was particularly attached to the writings of Peter Kreeft (with whom I have since developed some very sharp disagreements on multiple levels). My faith formed a crucial part of my massive, sprawling worldview, and to a large extent I felt like I was my worldview, which made it very painful when I had to reject much of it later in life. Regarding family dynamics, Mom had very clear and passionate ideas on what kind of behaviors were right and what kind of behaviors were wrong. Not necessarily religious ones, but personal ones. She abhored laziness and overindulgence of screens like TV or video games, and unfortunately I have always had an atrocious work ethic. Much of our relationship consisted of her insisting that my refusal to get things done when I needed to was out of entitlement, selfishness and ingratitude. I, meanwhile, insisted that my ADHD made it so I couldn’t do what she asked even though I desperately wanted to. She knew about my diagnosis, and actively tried to help me develop helpful organizational skills, but it wasn’t enough to help me get my act together, and she took this as a sign that I wasn’t really trying and didn’t really care about her. I still wonder sometimes if she was right, and that I really was just making excuses all along.
My Job, and my feelings towards it: I currently work in the gig economy for a company called Instacart. We shop and deliver people’s groceries for them. I only work when the Instacart app assigns me a batch. Sometimes it’s delivery only, sometimes it’s full service (shopping & driving). I don’t care for it. Not being able to find an item while shopping can send me into an emotional tailspin because I feel like I’m botching something any normal human being would be able to handle. Traffic can be frustrating. It’s frustrating to unload very large orders (like a lot of soda or packs of water bottles) and try delivering them to skyscrapers downtown. I never run out of things to complain about. And yet I stay with Instacart. Part of it is because my sleep schedule is abysmal, and I take way too long to get up and get ready. Instacart doesn’t really penalize you for not accepting a batch as long as you get back on shift. In a real job, where getting late is considered a more serious problem, I likely wouldn’t last the first few weeks. In fact, constant lateness was a major factor in my poor performance in some of the jobs I’ve had previously. Besides, job applications stress me out. I feel like I get stuck right away on every application, either because they ask me a question I don’t know the answer to or because the answer to the question would give away what a terrible employee I am. I’ve had a few jobs in my life, and I have been competent at exactly 0 of them. I honestly wish I didn’t have to work at all, if only so I wouldn’t constantly have my face rubbed in my own uselessness. But, of course, that’s impossible.
How curious are you? Do you have more ideas then you can execute? : I’m super curious! I’ve always been a bit of an information sponge, with a vast mental library of various forms of trivia. I can’t possibly count the number of times I’ve thought “Oh, that would make a good book” and then never actually written it. I have an enormous number of ideas, but often fail to communicate them or enact them. Execution is the hard part. Some of the ideas are various forms of fiction, either original content or fanfiction. I have a really great Danganronpa fanfic in my head that I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to write, especially considering how many elements I want the story to contain. I also spend a lot of time thinking about theology and philosophy. I’ve developed a lot of interesting ideas about the nature of God that I have a hard time explaining. I find MBTI provides an amazing framework for philosophy of mind. The perceiving functions basically describe our epistemology, and the judgment functions embody different facets of morality. Even if MBTI fails as a science, it’s still an extremely valuable and interesting idea. Much of my thought is spent trying to pull a large list of disparate elements together in a way that makes sense. Is there some way to design a system that would reconcile all the different insights people in the personality typing community have had? Is there some way to make the whole thing logically necessary, so we’re not pulling things out of our ass when we describe the cognitive functions? There’s so much to think about. I tend to read a lot (usually online) to look for ideas that might serve as the bridge or the glue that finally makes the whole system come together. Lately, I’ve been particularly obsessed with CS Peirce. I suspect that his idea of the semiotic triad is for thought what atoms are for matter.
Would I enjoy taking on a leadership position, and what kind of leader would I be: This is going to sound paradoxical, but I’ve often fantasized about being in a leadership position of some kind even though I know I would implode under the pressure. I can’t even live up to the responsibilities of my day-to-day life, so why would I want to be in a position where everything rests on my shoulders? I think that much of it is simple vanity and ego. When I was a kid, I was considered “gifted” and it really got to my head. I thought that I was destined to change the world, which is part of why I’m so deeply disappointed with the person I eventually became. I spend a lot of time thinking about what kinds of policies I would advocate if I were ever in a position of power. I think even more about what I would say to the world if I were handed a microphone. That’s the best part of it to me: the “bully pulpit” aspect. I wish people thought more clearly about what the purpose of government should be, about what kind of world we should be trying to create, about what a truly just society would look like, and how we ought to pursue that no matter how inconvenient it may be to us in the short term. However, the fantasy turns dark and unnerving whenever I think about what the public feedback would actually be, and how many of my flaws would be picked up on and ruthlessly criticized. Actually being in that position could very well make me suicidal, especially if their criticisms were true. There is at least one massive social issue where I have no clue what side to take, because both sides of the debate involve policies that completely fuck over millions of people. I’d feel guilty no matter what stance I took there, and the public would absolutely call me out for failing to address that problem. Perhaps I would make a better contribution to the world as some kind of public intellectual than as a politician.
Are you coordinated: NO. Dex is my dump stat. I sometimes get quite self-conscious about how spastic and graceless my movements are. Although I love the fine arts (singing, acting, etc.) I have never gone anywhere near something that involved using my hands. I do not have very steady hands. In fact, back when I seriously tried wearing makeup, I often completely botched my eyeliner and wound up looking like a raccoon. In the world of physical realities, I am lost. Solving any problem of mechanical skill (from car repair to wiping dirt off a window) seriously intimidates me, and I avoid such things for as long as possible, or get someone else to do it for me. Not necessarily because I’m lazy, but because I know it will turn out wrong if I’m the one doing it.
Am I artistic: In the medium of words and sounds, absolutely. I love singing and acting and doing impressions. I’m quite proud of my abnormally good whistling ability. In spite of how much of a neurotic wreck I can be in other areas of my life, I can actually get a lot of energy very suddenly when I’m entertaining people somehow. If I hear a song I really love, and is within my vocal range, I often can’t resist the urge to sing along with all the passion I can muster. Sometimes it confuses or annoys people, but other people find it charming. And besides, songs that good deserve to be sung, you know? I also really like storytelling in all its forms. If I ever got my shit together, I might try writing fiction someday.
Logical consistency: I don’t know about my life, but I definitely need logical consistency in my worldview. I can’t stand the idea of being wrong, and self-contradictory sets of ideas can’t be completely correct. I spend a lot of time tossing and turning ideas in my head trying to get them to make sense. It’s actually hard to pull everything together into a perfectly coherent system because there are so many variables to juggle. This used to be a more severe and detrimental problem when I was Catholic, because I needed to hold rigorously to a very narrow philosophical perspective in order to stay orthodox. But logical consistency in my day-to-day life? Making my actions and routines predictable and effective? That’s tricky. I often don’t have enough willpower at the end of the day to do what needs to be done. My sleep schedule is a nightmarish mess. I started improving this several months ago after picking up some lessons from the DaveSuperPowers youtube channel. Regardless of whether Dave is right about personality typing, he does give good self-help advice.
Controlling people: I definitely try to influence people. I can be very forceful when I’m trying to win an argument (which is a character flaw I’ve tried to get better with over the years). I also tend to be very emotionally expressive, which is sorta ambiguous. Some people (including my parents at some points) believed I was trying to exaggerate my emotions in order to manipulate them. I often worry about whether or not that’s actually true. My pain feels real to me, but I know so few people who wear their hearts on their sleeve this much. I complain a lot about problems, but do so little to solve them. I don’t act like someone who was really experiencing that emotion would act. I come up with a lot of theories to understand why this is, and some of them are fairly disturbing. What if I’m so manipulative that I’ve somehow managed to actually believe my own lie in order to be more convincing? What if I have a completely different natural set of emotions than normal human beings do, and have just been calling them by the wrong words my whole life? What if I’m not really me at all, but a simulated personality created by another intelligence in order to trick people around me into thinking I’m human, and granted enough of a semblance of self-awareness to pass as human more effectively? And the thing is, I am aiming for a certain result when I have emotional outbursts. I do want to change the way people treat me, and I do try to make my emotional state as obvious as it can be, even at the risk of exaggerating things. I want help. I want people who are hurting me to stop hurting me. Or, if I’ve been set off by something in the conversation, I want people to pause their train of thought and help me calm down. Sometimes this doesn’t work, and people just keep doing the thing that upset me as if I hadn’t had the outburst at all. Worse, sometimes they double down on it to punish me for being “too sensitive.” And I honestly hate them for it. I would never treat another person that way. I want the people I upset to tell me that I’m upsetting them so I can stop hurting them. I don’t want to hurt people, and I sometimes don’t catch on immediately because of a poor emotional IQ. But that’s not because I don’t care, but because I don’t know any better. I’ve gotten better over the years at reading people, and if I’m not sure of whether or not someone’s upset, I’ll just ask them outright. I want people to be happy, and I want people to be very open and honest about what will make them happy or sad so I know how to treat them right. Part of the reason I’m so open myself is that I naturally assume other people will act the same way, and I can get very angry with people who don’t. People who don’t just misunderstand the emotional states of others, but who actively don’t care, or even go out of their way to be cruel. It’s so foreign to me and so pointlessly and blatantly malevolent that I wonder sometimes if such people are genuinely sociopathic. The only reason I don’t actually make that conclusion is that I know some people are Fe or Fi blind (I’m not sure which one would cause this behavior) and because it’s simply too common for sociopathy to be the proper explanation.
My hobbies: Tabletop gaming comes to mind immediately, both in terms of board games and in terms of RPGs like D&D. For board games, I’m particularly drawn to those where I get to develop some kind of economic engine. Dominion, Alien Frontiers, Orleans, Terraforming Mars, Altiplano, etc. I love when the decisions I make on one turn give me more options and resources on the next one. I love the sense of creating a kind of empire. I love when I’m able to take a vast number of different game mechanics and variables and get them to synergize into a beautiful whole. I think I enjoy solo variations of games like this just as much as I enjoy playing with other people, although I try to do the latter simply to avoid being lonely. It’s astonishing how inefficient I can be in my day-to-day life and how clever and effective I can be when playing. It’s nice to feel like I’m actually good at something for a change. I almost treat games like these like complicated puzzles to solve. What’s the most amazing kind of deck / colony / economy I can build with the time that I have available to me? And the more variables I’m juggling (within reason) the better, simply because it makes the final product that more rewarding. I can sometimes feel a twinge of sadness when the endgame approaches just when my engine hits the peak of its development. Games I do NOT enjoy include Codenames and Hanabi. It’s not enough to come up with good word associations or whatever. You need to make sure that the clever idea you had is the same clever idea that everyone else is having. I’m terrible at that. I’m terrible at anticipating what other people are going to think and do, and I always wind up feeling like an incompetent idiot when I play those games regardless of whether or not our team wins. I also admit that I can become quite upset on those rare occasions when I make a very simple mistake when playing, even if I’m still ahead. I feel like I’ve botched one of the few things I’m good at. Whether or not I actually win feels less important than whether or not the strategy I pursued was a clever, creative and holistic strategy. I can become very angry and critical of myself at times like that.
D&D is wonderful too, with a completely different appeal. While board games tend to appeal more to my problem-solving side, D&D appeals to my creative side. I love stories. I love creating interesting characters. I love roleplaying, and trying on different voices and accents to give my character a memorable personality. I love coming up with compelling backstories and character arcs. I love being given the privilege of seeing what my friends do with their characters, and getting to see the creativity of the DM. I love when I’m able to solve challenges in the adventure through finesse rather than force, such as with a well-worded and well-placed suggestion spell. And, finally, I love creating interesting character builds. I’ve been in several long-running D&D campaigns in my life, and I’ve made some incredible friends through that. It really is something special.
Aspirations in life: So many, which only makes my lack of a work ethic even more tragic. At various points, I’ve wanted to be an inventor, an author, a philosopher, a singer, a scientist, an actress, and a politician. But there’s one that has stayed constant for decades: I want to be a saint. Hence my username. I love God, and I know that he will fix and heal the sick broken world we live in, but I also know that this is something God will do with us, not for us. Saints - regardless of whether they’re canonized, or even well-known - are the people who love God and people so deeply that they’re basically mini-Jesuses. It’s through people like that that the world really changes. It’s through people like that that hardened hearts become soft, and truth overcomes deceit, and justice and mercy are brought back into a world that so desperately needs both. That’s the kind of person I want to be. The kind we should all want to be. And I know that we can be. We really can. And, if I can, how could I ever be satisfied with being anything less. That’s the big aspiration. If I can do that, then no matter how badly I botched everything else, I have succeeded at life. If I fail to do that, then even if I succeed at everything else I have failed at life. That’s aspiration #1. I hope I never lose sight of it or forget about it. And I think God will help me get there someday.
As for my lesser aspirations, I desperately want to be married. I’m a natural romantic at heart. I develop crushes very easily on a wide range of women, but have a very hard time actually pursuing relationships with them. Part of the problem is that I think I’m too defective to genuinely love. I’m psychologically defective, and emotionally defective, and physically defective. Why would anyone love someone like that? I want to be a mom, but how would I be able to avoid passing on my mental baggage to my children? I want to be a writer, but I lack the discipline to actually write anything. I want to be a philosopher, but I still can’t pull all the swirling ideas into my mind into a solid, full theory that I can share with the world. I want to be self-sufficient, but it’s hard to change my self-destructive habits. I’m sorry to be so hopeless and depressing about this. What can I say, life is hard.
What I fear and hate: What aren’t I afraid of? I’m terrified of criticism. I dish out so much to myself, so getting more from outside just causes me to implode. I’m terrified of situations where I’m confronted by my incompetence, and reminded of how useless and helpless I am. I fear being yelled at. I fear being thought of as a bad person, which is a sort of corollary to being an incompetent one. “If you were really trying, you’d be able to do this, so you’re not really trying.” I fear that I will somehow lose the few positive qualities I do have, or that I’ll somehow be exposed as bad at them too. I fear feeling like I’m the only person in the room who can’t see the obvious, or can’t do something basic. I’m afraid of having an idea or a value that seems extremely obvious or self-evident to me, and not being able to convince anyone else of it. Because, naturally, that would either mean that I’m wrong or that my argument for it is invalid. Basically, I’m afraid of all the different things that can trigger a spiral of shame and self-loathing. My inferiority complex is a bottomless pit and I’m afraid of being knocked into it. And the situations and people I hate are those that push me towards the pit.
Have you ever seen the movie Whiplash? The character of Fletcher is like a personification of that voice that’s constantly berating me in my head. As disturbing as the scene where he’s slapping Andrew is, I think I was even more disturbed by the scene before it when he goes up one of the musicians and asks if he was out of tune. The musician doesn’t really know. In that moment, he’s trapped in a no-win situation where his incompetence is put under a spotlight, and he’s shamed and yelled at for not knowing what he did wrong and how to fix it. That kind of thing is my worst nightmare.
This is a digression, but I think it’s too big a deal to leave out and I think this is the best question in which to address it. I had a roommate junior year of college with whom I had a lot of philosophical arguments. I was a diehard Catholic, and he was a nihilistic New Atheist. For a while, I thought of him as a friend. We could have worthwhile conversations comparing and contrasting the ways we viewed the world. The problem (which didn’t show up in every conversation but was awful when it did) was that he somehow knew exactly what arguments to make to make me the most upset. He’d give some edgy statement about how there was nothing inherently wrong with torturing children or about how narcissism should actually be regarded as a virtue and I’d flip out. The worst part was, normally I’m able to defend my ideas on logical grounds. I’m pretty good at taking some universally accepted moral principle like “people are more important than things” and using it to create a compelling argument even for some of my most radical positions. But when I engaged this guy, I was confronted with someone who seemingly didn’t share those common moral assumptions at all. Or, if he did, he convincingly pretended not to. And this brought out a side of me that I really don’t like. I felt like I needed to convince him or there was something wrong with me. And honestly, I think he actively encouraged this by phrasing his statements in the most condescending way possible, as if I were somehow stupid for not seeing how right he was.
I don’t know if this is a commonly accepted term, but I once encountered the phrase “argument ad lapidem” to describe a rhetorical strategy where you simply mock the counterargument or repeat it incredulously, implying that it’s too ridiculous to deserve a proper response. That’s usually the kind of thing that wouldn’t work on who you’re arguing with, but only on a third party watching the debate. But because of my inferiority complex, it does work on me. I have so many things wrong with me, and so often “miss the point,” that if you start acting like I am missing the point I’ll begin to doubt myself. And that’s extremely unnerving with the kind of subject matter we were engaging in. What if my conscience were the defective one? What if my moral instincts were deformed? In 99% of conversations, that’s not a problem because I share most moral assumptions with the person I’m talking to, but that didn’t apply here. And the thing is, I thought at the time (and still do, to some extent) that one’s behavior ought to reflect whatever one’s moral philosophy is. If the “correct” position is sexual abstinence before marriage (to use an example from my time as a Catholic) one ought to abide by that regardless of whether one likes it or not. So if the correct position was “morality is fake, and simply a glorified expression of preferences,” then hypothetically, since no course of action is intrinsically better than any other, none of my preferences are justified. If there are no right actions, then there are only wrong ones, and I have no right to do anything at all. In retrospect, this is an absurd instance of black-and-white thinking, and perhaps even a non-sequitor, but in that moment, I was so overwhelmed by the horrific implications of his position that I couldn’t think clearly or reason clearly. And, naturally, the only real counterarguments I could offer in that state were direct statements about how appalling I found his positions on a gut level. Which, of course, effectively confirmed his position, which he was all too happy to point out. It was as if by letting the topic turn personal, I had inherently conceded that I didn’t have any decent counterarguments. I felt naked, and humiliated, and ashamed, and even a little bit threatened. And you know what? I think he actively enjoyed seeing me in that situation. I think it helped him feel intellectually superior to me, which would explain why he started to habitually turn our conversations in this direction. For better or worse, I’ve had to learn to accept that I’m never going to be able to convince people like that, and learn to ignore them and walk away from the conversation. I can’t prove that my conscience is correct, but I have to treat it like it is even when people mock me for it, because if it’s not… I have nothing.
To tell you the truth, every time I read about Fi vs Ti, I think back to those conversations with dread. I’m a moral realist, not an emotivist. I still believe that there is some kind of true, correct moral position to which I ought to conform my heart. And I hope that the reasoning I use to reach my conclusions is sound, correct reasoning. Unfortunately, the kind of logical consistency required to arrive at the truth seems to be Ti, and the outbursts I had when interacting with that guy were clearly Fi. It seems like the only way to really reach the right conclusion is to use a Ti process with Fi premises. Some people on the subreddit seem to believe that as long as the subject matter is ethics, the method is Fi by default. But this seems strange. A preoccupation with finding sound lines of reasoning constitutes Ti when applied to ontology or epistemology or mathematics, but constitutes Fi when applied to ethics? Reasoning is reasoning. It’s like saying that there are two different kinds of math used in physics and biology. To pit them against one another, so at least one of them must be an unvalued “shadow function,” seems even more ridiculous. And, frankly, disheartening. To be told I use one more than the other is one thing, but to be told that I don’t care about one of them? That would imply apathy towards the good (which would make me evil) or apathy towards the true (which would mean that every conclusion I have reached was reached in bad faith). It’s a no-win situation. The primary reason I’ve been interested in Myers-Briggs for the last year was to figure out this specific paradox. I used to believe I was on the Ti/Fe axis, if only because I saw a way that the two of them applied together could grant a conditional “legitimacy” to certain Fi values, and explain why it would be unusually prominent for a shadow function. I’m unable to see how Fi/Te could “validate” Ti in a similar fashion, though. I mention my bias not to manipulate or coerce you into telling me what I want to hear, but to make the following request: if you do in fact conclude that I am Fi/Te, please provide me with some theory of how I have been able to express Ti behavior.
The highs in my life: There are many different kinds of “highs,” so forgive me if this section seems to be somewhat scatterbrained. The ones that stick with me the most are spiritual highs. Moments when I feel close to God, and loved by him. When I understand all he has done, is doing, and will do for me. When I’m flooded with awe and gratitude and joy and hope. When I fall in love with him all over again. When I see a glimpse of him, and know who he is and what he is, and want to submerge myself in the infinite depths of his love. When I can remember that I am his daughter, subject, patient, student, creation, and beloved. When I get my head into the heavens, even if I can’t quite get the heavens into my head. When I touch upon some extraordinary insight about him and how he operates, and I want to tell people about him. When I feel safe inside him. And I can clearly recall two specific moments like that in the last few years, which touched me so deeply they fundamentally changed who I am. Those are the most important highs.
Now I’ll talk about another kind: highs of achievement. Moments when I have some kind of shattering insight. When I think I’ve glimpsed the idea that solves a problem I’ve been puzzling over for weeks and weeks. When I feel like some great philosophical theory of the universe is forming in my mind, growing more and more coherent and clear. When I’ve stumbled upon some kind of truth I want to share with the world. When I can manage to write some of it down before it slips away. When I read about a similar idea someone else had, and get the confirmation that I really was on to something (I can’t wait to read “God and the World of Signs” by Andrew Robinson someday, but sadly the book is obscenely expensive on Amazon). When I post about or talk about the idea, and it goes from my mind into the real world. When I get to share what I’ve found. When I see other people get excited about the idea, and enthusiastic, and find it a valuable insight. When I feel like a fucking genius.
Moments where I have some kind of creative achievement. When I create a compelling story or narrative. When I come up with a solid plot. When I nail the emotional climax of the story. When I develop some kind of fantasy world. When I figure out how to work in meaningful themes. When I integrate my spiritual insights or philosophical ideas into the story. When I feel like the story is compelling, and interesting, and powerful, and can change people in both heart and mind. When I actually write some of it.
Moments when I perform. When I’m acting. When I’m singing. When other people are amused or excited by my performance. When I’m funny. When I’m witty. When I get to show off one of my talents. When I’m doing well at some kind of game (as mentioned in the board game section). A LOT of moments like this (as well as the storytelling things) happen in the context of Dungeons & Dragons.
And the rare, rare moments when I think, correctly or incorrectly, that I’ve made a romantic connection with someone.
The lows: Moments when I’m reminded of how incompetent I am. When I realize that I haven’t actually written any of the ideas or stories, and they’re just going to stay in my brain forever until I eventually forget them. When I begin to wonder if maybe they’re not as insightful or interesting as I thought at first. When I realize that a substantial part of my worldview just doesn’t make sense, and worry that the flaw there could signal that all the rest of it is actually completely wrong. When I feel like I just can’t figure out the solution to an extremely simple and easy problem. When I feel like my sadness and fear control my life. When I wonder if I’m a bad person. When I’m late for work, and barely earning a living, and my sleep schedule is fucked up. When I realize how much of my potential I’ve already wasted, and how little I’ll actually manage to achieve. When I realize that my abysmal time management and overuse of screens means I’ll never be able to actually take action on the things that really matter. When I’m reminded of how abysmal my presentation is, and that I’ll never look or sound like a real woman. When my life looks like an endless list of things I’ve done wrong. When I realize what a drain I am on people. When I wonder what I’m doing to justify my existence. When I suspect I’m going to die an old maid. When I suspect I’m going to wind up broke and homeless. When I’m criticized and mocked. When someone pushes one of my buttons and I start having some kind of emotional outburst and can’t make myself calm down. When I start compulsively hitting myself, sometimes in front of other people. When I can’t do my job correctly, and remember that I’ve never really been a good employee at any job I’ve had. When I think I’m just a disgusting parasite. When I think other people are starting to see through the facade and have started to see me as I see myself. When I’m judged. When I start doubting whether my own experiences are real. When I think about how mentally screwed up and defective I am. When I start thinking about my childhood, and the relationship I used to have with my parents, and how angry I made them, and how I failed them, and how I couldn’t make them happy, and couldn’t be who they wanted me to be. When CPTSD starts eating me alive. When I feel like some kind of broken, crying toddler. When I think I’ll be like this the rest of my life. That I don’t deserve to be loved or respected. I know this was less well-organized than the highs; there’s no common theme here. Just a messy pile of problems and pains. Sorry about that.
Daydreaming: When I was a little kid, one of my favorite things to do was pace around outside coming up with stories of various kinds. Sometimes they were original, more often they were a kind of self-insert fanfiction, but they were always extremely enjoyable. I did this every day without fail, usually in 45 minute increments, and I often became very restless or upset if I wasn’t able to do so for some reason. Recess was spent primarily on things like this, to the point that I didn’t enjoy socializing with other kids. Daydreams can’t be easily shared, after all. I almost always walked around while doing so, and would often absentmindedly twirl some kind of stick around. I guess a lot of people do this, but I never really stopped. I still do things like this today, although I don’t feel the kind of need for it as sharply anymore. Over time, the content of daydreams like this has morphed. The stories are more original. Also, there’s actually a lot of philosophical or theological speculation now, usually in the form of me semi-fantasizing about teaching my ideas to a kind of invisible audience. Or, sometimes, self-disclosing to them in an introspective way. In a sense, a lot of that time is spent mentally rehearsing exactly the kind of thing I’m writing in this very ”type me” post. One of the few upsides of my job is that I can easily do this sort of thing while driving, but I can do it pretty much anywhere. And, usually, it’s more vivid when I’m walking or pacing around (which has led me to get more exercise than I otherwise would have). In times like this, my attachment to reality is extremely tenuous, but I don’t mind at all. My mind can feel like a prison due to my mental illness, but it can also feel like a playground.
How long do I take to process my emotions? How important are they: I don’t know if I process my emotions so much as wallow in them. I spend a lot of my time sort of “licking my wounds.” Emotions of self-pity or self-loathing used to trigger feedback loops and spiral out of control, pulling my mind into dark places it was very difficult to get out of. I’ve developed some tools to fight back in the last few months, and I’m quite proud of that, but when I’m in the middle of an episode like that it feels like it’s going to last forever. That I’m going to be psychologically broken forever. That my baggage is never going to get resolved. That I’ll never “get over it.” Is it processing your emotions if you spend an obscene amount of time dwelling on them but never get any control or closure over them?
Agreeing with others: I want to do two things. A: to figure out what is true or correct and stand by it. B: to make others happy, or, if that’s not possible, at least avoid making them angry and upset. You’d think reconciling these would be impossible, but I’ve actually gotten quite good at it over the years. The first trick is to figure out multiple ways of explaining or demonstrating your point. I can usually think of 20 different ways to get my meaning across to someone, all of which remain accurate and truthful. Then, out of those, I phrase my statement in whatever way the other person is likely to find agreeable. I avoid actually compromising on the truth, but I usually don’t have to. The other trick is to find what parts of the other person’s position are correct, and to make sure to acknowledge them. If they make a good point, I say “that’s a good point.” This isn’t just respectful; it’s also honest. There is no such thing as false experience, only false interpretations of that experience. There will always be something right in what the other person is saying, and pretending otherwise is dismissive and unfair.
There are circumstances in which I will actually be silent, though. If the person I’m talking to has attached a moral weight to my position, so that they’ll consider me a “bad person” if they find out I believe it, I’ll desperately try to avoid bringing it up. If it does come up, I feel completely lost. I can’t betray the truth, but I hate the idea of being thought of as a bad person. So I just have to walk on eggshells. Luckily, it comes up less often now. And ironically, the times when this did happen in the past were on issues where I have since realized I actually was wrong, especially LGBT related. In a sense, being put in those uncomfortable situations was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Actually, when I’m interacting with people who hold the same positions I did back then it feels super awkward. On one hand, I don’t want to go to hard on them because I used to be the same way. On the other hand, if I’m too conciliatory they might never change their minds. I usually err on the side of politeness, even if that means becoming a doormat. And, now that some family members still won’t gender me correctly, I’m forced to admit that that was a massive mistake.
Please let me know if you want more information. There’s a LOT of material I had to cut.
Submitted February 03, 2019 at 01:15AM by SaintFangirl http://bit.ly/2GhQMvY
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