I am not asking if anyone has the capacity for meta-cognition. I am sure most people in this community are, as it comes with the package of being an INTJ.
It’s a simple skill to develop (for those to whom it doesn’t come natural), the hardest part about conscious implementation is accurate self perception.
Meta-cognition is only reliable if one has looked inside, seen the shadows, seen the good and the bad, and accepted the bad as a fact even if it tarnishes their own view of yourself. Building it requires genuine restructuring of self perception.
Only then will your meta-cognition be an accurate thought process you can trust. But I digress.
My question was: does anyone experience it as their first level of thinking, and need to make a mental effort to step out of it and look at things from the ‘first order’?
A lot of people could be doing that and not aware it’s what they are doing, the “symptoms” or “proof” that you are doing it is:
- People around you find your answers to things a little weird and out of context
- You struggle intensly and maybe even are incapable of small talk (I am not saying you dislike it, we all do, I am saying
you are
- incapable of it, or
you have
become incapable of it lately)
You need to explain a lot of what you say to make sense
You try to not even interject because you’re aware of the mental cost of ‘making sense’ to those around you
I think this is a more of a ranting post presented as a curious question. But to be honest it is extremely alienating to exist this way, to the extent of just feeling wrong. When literally no one around is like you, at some point you question the validity of your own experience.
As INTJs, we value our mind above all else. If we can’t trust it, what is left?
And I’ll add, as a final note, as I’m proofreading it pre-posting, I think this entire post, structure and content, is exactly my question/mental prison. And I think people will either intensely relate to it or completely dislike it.
PS. Edited for typos/structure issues.