Anon wrote: Hello, Thank you for all the insightful posts . I am an INTP and the Issue I am having now Is I am born in a third world country in a small town not economically thriving . A non democratic country that doesn't teach you anything of substance , the elite kids go to the west and we the poor people have to study in rote memorization and passing the exam and before we know it the aha moment of how weak we are hit harder .
I dropped out from university in order to medicate myself from tuberculosis , and then I get cured , and the corona virus lock-down happened and then my father died and my aunt died . All have effected me deeply . The money I have saved for future interviews was wasted . And Now I am definitely in a Si loop , stuck and sometimes my mind and daydreaming sends me to dark places , wishing death upon myself , wanting to just end it , imagining myself being angry and hitting someone and hitting his face with my feet . I truly have become unhealthy and destructive . Feeling guilty , imagining how I could have done it better .
I constantly feel worthless and think how useless I am and how I wish I was never born because I am not going to be amounted to anything ever . The home situation is unhealthy , I have always been belittled , made feel worthless , insinuated to feel bad about myself . I remember since I was a kid , never felt loved or cared for , just been reminded how odd , slow , in my head , and not going to be as much as good as whom ever they compare me with .
I have an unhealthy ESFJ mother who can't be reasoned with . Explosive , hot temper , not logical or cares about clear communication . Her and my sister are truly insecure . I will Explain a scenario , we are in a bad economical situations , my brother triggered her , she started lashing out on everyone , cursing and insulting how useless we are without hearing or having a communication . I left to my room till they stop , because I can't handle this anger and drama where we can fix them if we think through things but she doesn't want to think or communicate . She confuses communication with complaining because for her communication is only a vehicle to use to release her hostile feelings and passive aggressiveness .
When I come back , she said why did I run to my room . I said I can't handle screams and this chaotic production of words . She said , you should and they started her and my sister : ISFJ , speaking at the same time , like literally at the same time . I asked them one by one , she said No why not listen to us both at the same time . Like what a hell is this . Here you notice and many patterns I have that they don't care about fixing the problem , they don't care about reasonably indulging members of the family to a conclusion , they want to release the tension . My mother specifically wants to release her hostile emotions , she wants us to feel belittled , useless , tell us how she is the only one who thinks about this issue and how useless we are and she thinks this is parenting , she thinks this is leadership.
Now I know since my father died who was an ISFJ , He was our only economical support and he was dutiful and doing his best to get me into a position where I can take the family but even he had issues with her , she swallowed him through her drama , passive aggressiveness , and her hostile attitude , belittling him too and comparing his lack of privilege to others who had far more advantage as if he had a choice in the cards he was given . Since this economical shortage only enraged her and made something to complain about and our household was not of kindness and mercy , I subtracted my needs since way back but my brother still takes from her money and she gives him and she comes back to complain and ruins the household .
The reason I brought my father is I feel bad for not doing anything for him and what a shame that he had no one to help him . He really deserved better and needed more care and love and I always felt unable to do anything when he had cancer . He apologized for me as if he felt bad for not doing enough for me . My friend . I really think and have evidence that my mother and family are unhealthy . I live in illiterate religious area , how do you think Fe and Si expression would be ? -- They don't care about reason , just any high status man who has money or is religious or looks religious matter and his opinion is far better and I , could speak for years and no one would care .
I think she is unsafe and unhappy and her hypergamic instinct produces this passive aggressive tests because she thinks by belittling us , we are going to somehow be motivated to provide and replace my father . She doesn't understand how the Ukraine|Russian war affected us , how our government changed policies to hire more females , she doesn't understand that I can't just get a job , it's all difficult in this competitive environment and I just have lost 3 years where tuberculosis , Corona virus lock-down , death of my father and the shock and depression this made me feel and let alone her training me to feel worthless isn't going to make me more optimistic individual because I can't even film myself speaking in a content creation out of fear and being self conscious of my voice nor dreaming of being able to be loved and desired by any female in romantic relationships to get out of this toxic voice in my head that hammers me and find some refuge in lovely partner .
I know I am unhealthy too - -- I read your study guides and my functions are all unhealthy and I could release the anger and hit someone or could not be able to contain myself and verbally defend myself if I get triggered . I am still studying to find a way to improve and optimally express all my functions but please with the contexts I have provided . How can you help me find answers to this following questions :
How can I remove this worthlessness and feeling I am useless from my mind and how I perceive myself ?
How can I trust that I would be able to get a job in this country and town ? I have limited skills like English and my native language because of time that was wasted ? [ I am planning to use the 4 Hour work week principle that prioritizes Te and Ni for effectiveness , working on skills to learn , 20/80 Analysis , low information diet , delegation and automation , and creating a product to sell to liberate myself from traditional 9 to 5 ] - I don't work in 9 to 5 Jobs . I Don't have any job now .
How can I deal with this toxic mother and her hostile attitude and her inability to be satisfied ? .
How I can heal the wounds that this mother infected me with since I speak to myself a lot and I get lost in my thoughts and she notices and doesn't try to understand , she tries to insult and belittles and laughs at me as if i am some crazy dude . It's the only place I feel safe and I have no friends and my mother doesn't talk to me except to release her tension , so I opt to my head and this had negative affects because my thoughts swallow me and I become self absorbed and any one notices I am speaking to myself and lost it . I do that because I am unhealthy , broke , unemployed , no job , and no healthy environment to drive me and give me help .
Do You think since I am unhealthy , I would waste time reading and consuming information about the study guide as some unhealthy coping mechanism and I should better opt to just exercise a few Ne Activities to drive myself out of my self and subjective narrative and my family and explore few experiments rather than read every detail and wait till I finish to exercise my functions ? Like see how Ne world is good and come back to reflect .
1. "Feelings" of worthlessness or uselessness are simply judgments (about yourself). In order for judgments to be sound, one must arrive at the conclusions properly, through logic and reason. This is the basis of having good critical thinking skills.
For instance, you say you "fell behind" in career goals due to physical illness. Was the illness intentionally caused by you or was it under your control? If not, should you hold yourself responsible for the consequences of being ill? Are you going to call every physically ill person in the world worthless/useless because, through no fault of their own, they have diminished capacity to achieve their goals? If so, I see no difference between you and your mother when it comes to the way you harshly and unfairly judge people.
Are you exercising good critical thinking when you make a judgment or draw a conclusion? If not, you need to improve upon it, in order for Ti to regain control over your cognition. You must have a reliable process of scrutinizing and validating your belief system, otherwise, on what basis are you going to make good decisions for yourself? When Ti is absent, Fe grip will keep haunting you.
2. Trusting the world comes with Ne development. It means venturing out into the world. It means trying and experimenting and seeing what happens. It means going to wherever the opportunities are. It means thinking of ways to make the best use of what you have. It means turning the negative into a net positive.
In other words, Ne is an extraverted function that requires initiative, ingenuity, and action. Ne is not about your predictions of the future; it's about making things happen. You can always find something good to express gratitude for. You can always find a silver lining in a negative situation. You can always visualize potential for change and improvement. But the key is to have an attitude of openness that keeps your eyes and ears attuned to opportunity. Are you nurturing Ne openness in yourself, or are you quick to reject ideas because they are "imperfect"? Whether things are perfect or imperfect is missing the point. The point is that things can be changed as long as you're willing to put in the work to change them.
3. The answer is boundaries. I've already written about the difficulty of drawing healthy boundaries in family relationships, especially parent-child relationships, consult past posts. Because there is so much history and, in some cases, so much bad blood between family members, it's easy to get stuck in negative patterns of behavior, and very difficult to change them even when you want to. Old habits are hard to break.
I always say that an essential aspect of growing up is learning how to view your parents as human beings rather than treating them as mere symbols of your personal ego drama. Was your father a "saint"? Is your mother a "villain"? These are symbols that reveal the flaws and biases of your perception. In the end, your parents are simply people. Every person is multifaceted. If you only ever see one aspect of someone, your eyes need adjustment.
Put yourself in your mother's shoes. Your mother also lives in the bleak sociopolitical environment you live in, with few economic opportunities. She has also experienced disappointments and heartbreaks. She has also had her hopes and dreams dashed. You share a lot more in common with her than you believe. To be clear, this is not meant to be an excuse for her negative behavior but, rather, a call for you to exercise empathy.
When you get a deeper understanding of why people behave as they do, you will be less inclined to blame and more inclined to maintain healthy relationship boundaries. The key to dealing with toxic people is to maintain proper emotional distance from them, rather than getting entangled with them and constantly embroiled in their dramas. To have healthy relationships in general, you must i) know the difference between "my business" and "not my business", and ii) stop involving yourself in things that aren't your business.
Her issues and problems are hers, so don't take them on as yours. It's not your responsibility to satisfy her demands. It's not your responsibility to live up to her expectations of you. Your only responsibility, in moral terms, is simply to be a good person. This raises an important question of whether you understand what it means to be "good". Do you have your own ideas about it or do you default to what your family taught you, since your judgments about yourself closely echo your mother's judgments about you?
Do you know what intergenerational trauma is? It's when families transmit the negative effects of unresolved hurt, pain, suffering, abuse, and trauma from one generation to the next. You are now consumed by pain and anger, not unlike your mom, so are you going to unwittingly transmit it to everyone you come into contact with? Or are you going to be the one to stop the cycle of trauma by taking responsibility for your pain and suffering? By seeking help, you're proving that you care enough to change the situation. I understand that your options are limited for healing your pain and trauma, so I will focus mainly on what you can do on your own.
4. With regard to Anger: If you don't want to end up like your mother, hurting everyone around her, then you have to confront the pain, you have to soothe the anger properly, and you have to challenge yourself to do things differently. This is achieved through Ne. Envision your better self and be it. Envision a better life and live it. Envision more possibilities and bring good ideas to life. By training your mind to be focused on always building something better, there is little space remaining for things like anger and blame.
I completely agree that your family environment is incredibly toxic. However, I cannot agree with blame. Blame is a mental trap. It is an immature and illusory way to feel strong and powerful. It only leaves you worse off physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. For all the sound and fury that blame entails, at the end of the day, you remain in pain because you've trapped yourself in perpetual victimhood. Without adequate health and well-being, will you have the mental energy you require for improving yourself and your life?
You can't have it both ways; you can't feed the negative aspects of your psyche and still hope to get back in touch with the positive aspects of yourself. Is the anger worth sacrificing your health and well-being for? Are you attached to the anger because you like the self-righteousness or because you want revenge? If so, you are choosing the negative over the positive, and you must take full responsibility for that choice. If you don't like it, choose differently.
With regard to Despair: When you feel angry, it means that something is broken and requires fixing. In this case, the relationship is broken and your boundaries have been violated. Like any reasonable person, you hope it can be fixed and the love salvaged. However, when confronted with the impossibility of fixing the relationship, despair follows.
Many people get held back and held down by despair because it can feel like a safer emotion than hope. Why? Despair is predictable in that you can maintain the status quo of known pain, whereas hope opens you up to new and accumulative hurt and disappointment through trying and failing again and again. As soon as sinking into despair seems like the better option to you, you are stuck deep in Si loop.
A person with good emotional intelligence doesn't succumb to emotions, rather, they take time to understand them and use them wisely. By putting despair in the right perspective, it can become an incredibly powerful emotion. Despair indicates you've suffered great loss and feel hopeless. However, in order to feel the loss, you must've placed great value on something to begin with. From this perspective, despair can open your eyes to what is most precious and valuable in your life. For example, despair over family conflict reveals how much you value your family, and despair about your career reveals how much you value your future self. When you know what you value most, it's easier to make good decisions for your well-being.
Despair is meant to teach you how to let go of the things you've lost. Oftentimes, people suffer because they are too attached to the things that bring them pain. Being unable to give up the attachment, they must bear the pain as a consequence. Logically, if you don't want the pain of despair, you must let go of the attachments that bring you despair.
Some people might misinterpret "letting go" as license to "detach" from the world and live on a metaphorical island, abandoning all the things they don't like. Quite the contrary. These people have failed the first test of emotional intelligence because they believe that their emotions are caused by external factors, so they try to cut out those factors.
The fact is that your feelings and emotions belong to you. They are generated by you, therefore, it is up to you to either answer them or change them. Your feelings are closely tied to your beliefs about the world, the way you think about things, and the way you judge things. When I say that you need to "let go", it means you have to change the way you think, give up old ideas, so that your beliefs better line up with your new reality. When you let go of mental attachments that distort your view of reality, you become much more capable of participating in reality. You will no longer feel bound and trapped by your own imagined expectations of how the world "should" be.
Career Example: Have you heard the saying "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry"? No matter how well you plan things, unexpected accidents or misfortunes still happen. While it's good to have plans and look forward to achieving goals, it's not good to be so single-minded that you are incapable of adapting to change. When plans go awry, you are encountering a crossroads and have to make a decision about which way to go. Do you try to keep going with the same plan? Do you tweak and adjust the plan to better suit the change of circumstances? Do you abandon the old plan and come up with a new one? These are all possible strategies.
Family example: Do you understand that a toxic relationship dynamic requires two people to keep it going? Both you and your mother are attached to ideal images of how the other "should" be. By imposing these images upon each other, you are both failing to respect each other, you are both violating the boundary that should exist between you as separate and independent individuals, and you are both hurting each other with harsh judgments and criticisms. While you might keep your judgments and criticisms to yourself more than she does, their very existence represents something negative within you that wants to lash out and be violent. She most likely inherited that violence from her family growing up and she has now transmitted it to you, which means it is now yours to deal with. All of us have inherited some negative things from family. It's part of your personal journey of growth to become aware of them and change them.
To a certain extent, you "allow" your mother to hurt you because you love her. If she were anyone else, you probably would've abandoned them long ago for such nasty behavior, or you wouldn't even be bothered by their criticism. Your mother's behavior brings you pain because you want her approval and love. However, if you were to drop your attachment to what you believe she "should" be (e.g. a loving, nurturing, motherly saint), you may suddenly find yourself capable of seeing the reality of what she is. When you take time to see and understand people more objectively (i.e. practice empathy), you won't take their behavior so personally. The reality is that her behavior isn't directed at you. Her behavior is an expression of her own pain and suffering, directed at her own failures and dashed hopes. But you take it personally because she's failing to meet your expectations of her, and then you fashion her into a villain. Think more reasonably: If you believe you ought to have the freedom to be you, you also have to grant others the freedom to be who they are.
The takeaway point is that the way through despair is to let go of the attachments that bring you pain. It could be attachment to an idealized image of how people/you "should" be, an ideal concept of "meaning", or an ideal path that you have set for your life. Ideals are mere mental constructs, so they can be changed at will. You defined them, so you can "undefine" them and redefine them. Attachments that lead you to deny reality are like a black hole in your mind, sucking up all your mental energy. By letting them go, your mind becomes truly free for something new. But you have to be brave enough to leave the known behind and venture into the unknown with fresh eyes, open mind, and different choices -> Ne.
5. I don't consider it my place to tell people how to live their life. You need to learn how to exercise your best judgment, which means ensuring that your process of making decisions is fair, impartial, objective and well-informed. In terms of your mental health, it's a good idea for you to get out of the home as much as possible, away from your mother's abuse. Try to find safer spaces to explore your ideas and possibilities. Try to engage in activities, interests, or hobbies that bring you some relief, even joy. Try to make friends with people who can bring you comfort or help you out of your situation.
