I definitely hypostatize. (Thank you for the word!)
When I was younger, I pushed big feelings aside often because I needed to remain in control of myself and my behaviour. However, I learnt that the deeper you push, the more powerful the overtake is, and the emotions bubble back up ten fold.
My process now is to experience, dissect, understand, and manage. The way to do that for me is I talk about it - by myself, with someone else (who is on the same level as me). I write it out, I seek art, I produce art, I give it form somehow. This way it is easier for me to get a handle on it and deal with it.
In terms of MBTI, I would say this would be my Te and Fi working in tandem. Sometimes the process takes years (like recovering from trauma) or a couple of hours (like a fight with a partner), depending on how complex and routine the problem is.
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You do seem rather extroverted on here.
Now you're sounding like Sartre... you really do like your French existentialists
What emotional problems? I don't have emotional problems. You've got emotional problems.
I like this piece of thought very much, thank you.
You may now become a Frenchman.
C'mon, it's just a matter of consciously putting in the effort.
D
Deleted member 16771
Yeah this sounds familiar. I don't 'provoke fights', but I do approach the other person.
I get this, though I wouldn't invoke the categories of extroversion/introversion to describe what's happening, since I'm certain that those terms have a physiological basis in our neuro-chemistry (the thickness of the membranes around our neurons; whether our dopamine or acetlylcholine circuits are shorter, &c.). Rather, I do become more 'outgoing' when my 'self' is comfortable in the current company. For instance, I'm much quieter and more reserved around my family than I am anywhere else - they are practically all ESTJ and for as long as I can remember I just didn't know how to engage with them, or they with me.
Personally I think this is a learning response that should be the default for most intuitives, and if we've been raised deliberately or by trauma to do the opposite then it's going to cause psychological problems.
To hypostatise engages our ability to abstract and create more manageable concepts from the undifferentiated morass of thoughts and emotions that constitute reality. In doing this we lead with our strengths ('we' as in 'intuitives') - to the outside world we 'overthink' things in order to control them.
In that vein, I think there might be a case here for suggesting that different personality types should be encouraged to manage emotional problems in different ways, though I'm using 'personality type' to refer to the neurochemical differences that express on a spectrum between IN and ES: IN preferring acetlycholine and having thinner neuronal membranes, resulting in people we might think of as 'sensitives', with ES preferring dopamine and having thicker neuronal membranes, resulting in people we might think of as 'robusts'.
That is, we might encourage IN types to hypostatise and analyse, and ES to 'cope' and 'repress', and in fact the IN bias in therapy and counselling might account for some of its ineffectiveness (even to the extent of being counterproductive) we see in large samples, such as in the case of the widely publicised study on post-9/11 trauma therapy.
People caught somewhere in the middle of this IN-ES spectrum (think ENxx or ISxx) might be especially torn between the two approaches, as either neither seems to work, or they both do, leading to frustration with both repressive ('I need to get this feeling out') and expressive ('I need to stop whinging and just get on with things') methods.
To give a proper answer, my response depends on how 'big' or squicky the problem is. I remember my early days of cannabis-assisted introspection and I would be literally writhing. I haven't had that feeling for a while but I am aware of problems I have that would provoke similar, if not worse, levels of distress. I have this inner image that pops up when I hit the wall in terms of hypostatising of just crying and crying and crying so I don't tend to push it. The writhing I described before was mostly, from what I remember, feelings of intense anger which I have also remember stopping quite abruptly. The memory of that is both vague and vivid. I have a feeling I know what precipitated the anger dissipating but I don't know for certain. The problems I have yet to deal with I can think about up to a point but I am aware that I am essentially fighting a proxy war in a way. I can analyse and deal with the problems that are mirrors or outgrowths of the core, and I can recognise them as such, but there is a point where I stop because I feel acutely aware that risk of engulfment is too high...for now.
D
Deleted member 16771
How Ren downplays his emotional problems.
You've pinned it down, pretty much.
My emotional tactic: turn every problem into the picture of an illustrious Frenchman.
