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In this episode Joel and Antonia dive deep into the needs and challenges of the INTP personality type.
In this podcast on the INTP personality type you’ll find:
INTP – Accuracy/Exploration in Genius system
INTPs have a crucial role that they play in our society. That task may seem a little thankless, which helps us understand some of the challenges they face.
Deep down inside, INTPs care more than they let on.
The Driver for INTP is Introverted Thinking (Ti), which we have nicknamed “Accuracy.”
What makes analytical sense? Decision-making process.
Driver = Flow State = the most rewarding thing you can do.
Ti works the best when it is without social obligation.
The opposite of Ti is Fe “Harmony.” Fe is about connecting and social interaction.
INTPs in the survey revealed their greatest challenge was in connecting with other people.
Copilot – Ne “Exploration” – is pattern recognition. Interaction with the environment without being attached to any outcome. A zoomed out process that allows you to explore your terrain.
Podcast Introverted Intuition vs Extraverted Intuition
When Ti and Ne are combined it is a fascinating combo of zooming in (Ti – surgical approach to data) and zoomed out (Ne – an overall view of patterns).
Together, these cognitive functions create radically new ideas.
Creating patterns and frameworks and architecting new maps and models requires them to be a bit destructive – like Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction.
Ti works the best when removed from the social bias component.
Emotional connection influences info.
INTPs often show up saying things that other people don’t want to hear, which is their gift to the world.
They are the great destroyer of outdated paradigms or untruths.
INTPs will always look for the strictest vetting process in their chosen field.
We are such social creatures we don’t appreciate it when people call us on our BS/Belief Systems.
We make extraordinary technical strides when we overturn the social norm.
INTPs break things down to their fundamental nature and depersonalize them.
Sometimes frameworks only get so far, and they get stuck because they run out of new frameworks for ideas.
The copilot process for INTPs is Extraverted Intuition, which we have nicknamed “Exploration.”
Exploration gives INTPs access to bigger frameworks and increases their territory, so they have more structures to hang fresh data on.
It is imperative for INTPs to grow their Exploration process.
The alternative is to stick with what you already know. If you don’t take in more territory, your framework may be radically off because you are missing a vital piece of info that’s just outside your existing territory.
Exploration allows INTPs to go out and experience things. Travel is essential to INTPs.
Going outside their comfort zone is imperative. All growth happens outside the comfort zone.
Sometimes we graft our identity to old pieces of info and INTPs overturn the things with which we identify.
But the INTP must first go through the uncomfortable terrain of change and challenge before they can do it for others.
INTPs need to be students of experience, life, and interaction.
The Survey revealed the INTPs struggle with a lack of motivation.
The INTPs that have the greatest motivation have decided they are going to bring their gifts to the world.
The more somebody rests on their laurels and holds back the more they feel a lack of inspiration and motivation.
The 10-year-old process is Introverted Sensing, which we have nicknamed “Memory.”.
Memory often means doing the thing that is known and comfortable. Finding a familiar context and staying there perpetually.
Frameworks don’t expand with Si. So, INTPs double down on Ti and continue to clean slice concepts and data until things become absurd. Without the input from Ne, they keep dividing until there’s nothing left.
Emotion is the seat of motivation, which is an INTPs blind spot. If INTPs double down on their thinking process, they avoid the emotions that will get them motivated.
Emotion is about finding the meaning behind things.
Exploration helps expand frameworks of mind and increase the narratives with which INTPs work.
Why does the data matter?
Ne gives meaning to the data. Without meaning, there is no motivation.
To see the narratives of our lives we need to zoom out.
Get outside yourself and explore beyond your comfort zone.
INTPs can have belief systems.
INTPs love absurd humor. Monty Python. Sketch comedy.
Even falling in love is nothing but a narrative.
INTPS who do the best are the ones who connect with other people through contribution.
INTPs can appear cynical because society doesn’t always honor their gift of radical honesty.
The natural state of an INTP is to be childlike and approach life with wonder and curiosity. Then they get the message that they are unacceptable which leads to cynicism.
Nobody can sustain a feeling of brokenness indefinitely. They either become depressed or resentful.
“You are not broken.”
“You are okay.”
We are seeing more and more media acknowledging the role of geeks and people who influence our technological world.
We see their contribution, but they are harder to reconcile in our day to day life.
We love truth. It reverberates through our spinal cord.
Society is getting ready for entering into a space of radical honesty, but it still means pushing people outside their comfort zones.
Modern technology is forcing us into a state of transparency; most technology is invented by INTPs.
The more INTPs show up as doing their job of being radically honest, the more we will head toward transparency as a society.
In the past, honesty brought death.
We can’t have real harmony without radical honesty, and we can’t have radical honesty without the need to connect with others.
The 3-year-old process is Extraverted Feeling (Fe), which we have nicknamed “Harmony.”
Healthy INTPs can become almost worshiped. They show up with so much credibility. They haven’t rejected Fe, they made it part of their aspiration and decided to use it to make others happy. Their intent is positive.
Podcast How To Love Yourself
Agape – Principled love. We are all in this together.
INTP men/women at the top of their game have many admirers.
Sometimes by solving problems for themselves, an INTP can find a way to solve for a larger demographic.
Female INTPs feel isolated because most women are Fe dominant, and men are usually looking for women to behave a certain way.
Spend more time in your copilot and understand why you struggle to fit in. Then go and find the context that will appreciate you for your gifts.
INTP women are polarizing. Birds of paradise. Not everyone’s going to love you, but some will and they are looking for you.
Pay for the privilege of finding your tribe. Conventions, Seminars, Cons, etc.
Online communities. Reddit.
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98 comments
I don’t know if Antonia or Joel will see this, but if so I have a question for a PHQ podcast!
I’m a 26 year old female INTP, the only child of an INFJ mother. I want to improve our relationship, but I’m so bad at connecting with people and understanding their emotions! With her personality type, sometimes it feels like we will never understand each other. Joel and Antonia have mentioned they both have INFJ mothers, and I would especially love to hear what Antonia, as an ENTP, has to say. How can we communicate better? And how can I get over how broken she made me feel as a child?
More background if it helps:
I know I hurt her a lot growing up, wielding that ‘dull sword’ of underdeveloped Ti (which I’ve since sharpened quite well in my opinion!), but I don’t think she realizes how much she hurt me. She wanted me to conform to my peers in every way possible, which I believe she did out of love, wanting me to avoid the painful emotions of being a ‘social reject’. But in reality, she just made me feel so intrinsically broken. Now, as an adult learning to fully own my personality, I have been trying to open up and calmly share my thoughts/feelings with her, but she either gets overemotional or lashes out at me. She really does make me feel like I’m going to be alone forever because of who I am, which is literally my biggest fear. How can we ever have a healthy mother/daughter relationship? I need help!
I think it was a very useful POD with some important insights. Particularly the ‘Shiva’ metaphor. I always think of it in terms of the fire metaphor: fire (the Choleric element) is necessary for change. In fire, nothing stays the same. When the house is rotten at its core, it needs to be ‘burned down’ so that a new house can be built upon it.
The same works with theories. Theories are based on Truth, and Truth is like fire, people don’t like to hear the truth. However, truth is the fire necessary to break apart bad and unhealthy belief systems so that new, fresh and positive belief systems can be built upon the ashy remains of the old ones. Too much truth is too much fire and it can burn down more than necessary. It can burn or hurt belief systems that are partially true. One should use fire, but in the right way and the right amount of doses. Truth in the right amount of doses, communicated in a way that it leads to the best response from the listener – that’s the challenge – that’s using Ti dominantly with small portions of Fe integrated into it – that’s what I aim for (subconsciously).
Loved this podcast, I resonated enormously with the improv class INTP, I’m 23 and recently started doing research in socializing and talking to women. It is a painful process but extremely rewarding.
Does Ti make it hard to “draw” out the actual framework in the mind? It is abstractly linked or drawed in the mind? Or is this a Ni thing?
As an INTP I found the description of part of my thought process as “depersonalizing everything” both informative and interesting. I don’t think of it myself as depersonalizing everything, but then again I don’t have the emotional attachments to my belief system in the way most other types do. I not only want to know the logic behind something [logic in the sense of how everything is working together], I NEED to know the logic behind something, otherwise I have no idea what to do in a particular situation. Unfortunately the only way I can do this is by breaking [or smashing] it down into its individual components and removing any emotional bias towards it.
For example, In the past I’ve had people give me the growth advice of “noting things that need doing,” but when I tried to do this I came up with absolutely nothing. When I discussed this with someone they told me that the person who gave you this advice is probably expecting you to be able to walk into a room and see what needs to be done, or what needs to happen, and do it. But unless I know how a particular room is supposed to be functioning [the logic of it] I have no idea what needs to be done. Is it a living room? A dining room? Is there an event happening in this room? If so what type of event? These all have different functions and thus need different things and different set ups.
What I don’t think people realize though is that we’re [and with “we” here I am referring to healthy INTPs] not smashing their belief system because we hate it [or them] or something. We’re smashing it because we want to find the weak points and strengthen them; we want to know how it works so that we can make it better, more stable, and able to stand up to all the attacks that life and people are going to throw at it.
On the feeling like we’re broken part…I actually had this same opinion of myself growing up [I’m 31 now]; I just felt like I was broken. Everyone else seemed able to connect with other people and make friends and all that, but for some reason I couldn’t. I really wish I would have known about MBTI back then. It would have not only explained a lot, but also would have shown me what to do and how to grow.
Thanks for this podcast, it was much appreciated.