Inside my Mind

It's hard to explain how one thinks, but perhaps I shall give it a rambling attempt. (This turned out very long, so I will try to divide it up with bolded sections)

Intro:
I should like to start with noting that many people seem to have difficulty, or simply dislike, answering the question "what are you thinking" usually replying with "nothing" or at most something very vague. Somehow, I've never been inclined to such answers. In fact, asking me this can be dangrous for those with a short attention span because I find it all to easy to tell you exactly what jumble of mundane and random things have been passing through my head recently, tracing back all the intertwining thought processes aloud for you. Most of this I don't think people actually want to hear, which is part of why nobody ever answers this question adequatley when I ask it and honnestly want to know.

Noisy Mind:
What sparked my writing this was a conversation a couple days ago with a friend about getting music and random phrases stuck in one's head. Although perhaps it is not in actuality the majority of the time, it is indeed much of the time that I have some kind of music playing in my head, usually on repeat till the point of exasperation. But this happens only half-consciously, like background noise in my head while I am also thinking about other things. Quite frequently I won't even notice that it is quiet in the house because there is so much noise going on in my brain. I do, however, notice when my environment is noisy because then the outside noise begins to clash with the inside noise becoming more than the other half of my brain can manage to tune out or 'talk' over.

Sometimes instead of music playing in my head, my brain will get stuck on some phrase, name, or line from a movie and will keep repeating it like some kind of strange compulsion. Just yesterday it was back and forth between "The Sands of Arrakis" and "Gennady Spirin" - don't ask me why (well I was recently looking at illustrated books, so that must be where the latter came from, the other has been dragged up from the much further past).

Virtual Conversations:
Another thing which often occupies my mind is playing out possible conversations with people, immagining what they would say and how I would repsond. This is usually when I am planning to talk to someone about something but haven't gotten around to it yet, but am nevertheless thinking about the topic now, and since the real person isn't handy I end up having the conversation on my own, just so I can get the thought out there and move on mentally for the time being. I will do this especially if I am worried about the conversation for one reason or another. Unfortunately sometimes once I have had this virtual conversation in my mind the thought will register as 'complete' and I will then forget I haven't actually talked about it with the person already, and thus fail to bring it up when the chance comes. I will also find myself doing this with past conversations, replaying what was said and inserting all the things I should have said, or wish I'd thought of mentionting at the time but didn't. It has been mentioned in various descriptions of introverts in general that they tend to both plan out their conversations ahead of time, and think of things to say much more slowly so that they often find themselves thinking of responces long after the fact, so this is not a surprising observation.

The dark side of this mental-conversation habit is that my mind is often reacting to immagined accusations or dislike coming from others and will then set up my defence of whatever it is about me that they are disapproving of. This is very pointless brooding, since the displeasure has not even actually been expressed, only perhaps hinted at and my mind has chosen to run wild with it. I try to stop these conversations so that I don't build up a sense of being perpetually under attack from others when in fact it is not the case at all. I suspect that this is something many INFPs fall prey to without even realising how much they are creating or reinforcing their sense of not being accepted by others. Because so much of our experience of life takes place within the environment of our minds, these thoughts we brood over can sometimes effect us more strongly than the outer experiences we have. I don't want to sound so harsh as to say we delude ourselves, or don't understand reality, but I think we often take for granted the stuff going on in our heads and don't realise just how much we focus on it without pausing to do a serious comparrison with the outside world. Sometimes we get stuck on one interpretation of something we experienced, replaying and amplifying it, and forget that there are other possible explainations.

Various Topics that Occupy my Thoughts:
Of course there is the usual stream of things I want or ought to do running through my mind, although they often like to present themselves at the very moment that I can do nothing about them, and then vanish the minute I might be able to actually do so. As I have explained to many an SJ before, it's not that I've actually forgotten, I just don't remember at the right time. And I should add that although some people like to say "if it was truely important to you, you'd have rememebred it" I can testify that this is simply not the case. I forget the most important things quite fequently, while remembering completely unimportant mind clutter, such as "The Sands of Arrakis" mentioned above for no reason what-so-ever. I don't do a lot of planning ahead, but rather do things as they come to mind or as the inspiration hits. Occasionally I will think about how I will do something 'in real life' such as a craft project, or some usefull invention I get an idea for. Most of the time creative ideas of this kind come while actually putting things together with the materials layed out before me, not so much in my mind ahead of time. I may make a vague game plan for the order I want to do some chores or errands in, trying to minimize effort and come up with the best tactic for accomplishing them, but it's not something I spend a lot of time focusing on or planning out in my head.

The topics I think about tend to mostly be 'abstract' in that they are not about tangible objects, but about concepts such as: trends in society; how someone else views life and why they do and say what they do; the nature of time and what that implies about other aspects of existance; how different number systems work and how we take for granted the groupings of 10s, whether or not characters in a book or movie seemed to be consistant in how their personality is portrayed; the meaning, significance, and implications of various plotpoints, or political issues, or philosophies; how different beliefes, ideas, and habits influence other beliefes ideas and habits of myself or other people; how customs, words, stories, names, etc. have developed over time; what the present and past imply about eachother, and so on. I do enjoy conversations about memories, actual events, describing things I have experienced, or analysing the form and function of specific objects, however that is rarely what occupies my mind when I am not talking to someone else. I am very theoretical and philosophical.

I tend to think a lot about how people work, both psychologically and socially. One of the things I enjoy doing is self analysis, and sort of defining myself. I think about the kinds of things I like and dislike and why that might be. I think about how I interact, how I think, how that seems to differ from others. And then I think about other people I know and try to put together my various observations and impressions of them in order to understand them better. However I tend to think about people a lot more in broad terms than thinking about specific individuals, using the individuals I know as examples of larger groups of similar people.

I spend a good deal of time processing feelings. I pay a lot of attention to my feelings throughout the day and try to pinpoint and understand what is causing them and how best to deal with them, either encouraging the good ones or changing the bad ones. I try to recognize bad mental-emotional habits and change them. I also try to conciously process the feelings that are brought up by various people and situations determining what is really important to me, how I feel about them, what I should do based on those feelings, how to interact better with a person or situation next time, what I really like about certain interactions, etc. I like trying to understand myself, and trying to help myself be a good version of myself, rather than a bad one.

I also enjoy imagining stories, making up characters, creatures, cultures, and worlds in which to play out and explore variations on reality and what if questions. I enjoy painting pictures in my mind and creating things based on alternate possibilities of how the world could have been sparked by the trends and observations I have noticed in the real world. I spend time immagining the family histories, the traditions, the beliefes, the various conversations that characters have and watching them interact with different situations. Creation of this immaginary kind is probably the thing that most captivates my attention and makes me feel most alive and happy. I get a lot of different ideas for other worlds or characters constantly from various little things I encounter throughout the day. It’s the same ‘bouncy-ball’ thought process, where one fact or concept will instantly send my mind off into another world, where it then dwells and explores and developes further. In this creation process there is certainly an element of my directing things and choosing how I want them, but much of it feels more like simply discovering something for the first time. Things seem to present themselves to my mind, and if I try to change them they resist. Many times they will reveal themselves whole all at once. Other times I will have to think about it more and try on different possibilities to see if they seem to fit.

Another thing which occupies my mind is things that I am curious to know more about. Sparked by things I see or hear, I often think to myself that I'd like to know more specific information about it, although I often don't get around to actually looking things up.

That brings me to the speculations. I speculate a lot. It seems that my mind likes to process, and re-process information a lot more than it likes taking it in. I have a very short attention span for listening to directions or doing research. Instead my mind will latch onto one fragment of information or concept or theory that's been mentioned and then run off on tangeant-speculations about it. My mind automatically moves to postulating things like how it came to be that way, how it effects or is related to other things, how it might look from a different perspective. I really like to come to an understanding of something 'at a deeper level' as they say, although a lot of times it's more like coming to understand how it fits in the grand scheme of things. While I fail at research itself, I thrive on wondering about things and coming up with ideas about them. I naturally come up with a wealth of questions that would be excellent to research, if only I could get myself to do it.

How I think:
I seem to have a great need to come to conclusions myself and to explore something mentally rather than being told the answers by an outside source. That is unless I really don't care about it or am afraid of being judged by someone for not giving the answer they want. In those cases I will sort of 'shut off' myself and revert to what I think of as 'zombie mode' where I just go through the motions of whatever someone tells me or expects of me so that I don't have to invest any personal energy, care, or attention into it. Normally however, I seem to have trouble taking in what someone else is explaining before I have had the chance to consider it myself. Intructions and explainations often make no sense to me untill I have looked at something from several angles, come up with theories and questions about it, and really engaged it with my mind on my own. After that I can understand what someone else is saying about it. It seems like what will often happen is someone will start telling me about something while I smile and nod. Meanwhile my mind stopped listening after the first main bit of the idea, and started running it through it's own analytical process. Often if I say "I see!" or "Oh I get it!" it's in responce to my own thought processes going on while the other person is talking, not so much because I'm following with them very well. When they pause in their explaination, I might talk through my thought process eventually arriving at the same conclusions they were telling me just in different words, and perhaps a more round-about path. Or I might get stuck on how something else relates to the idea they are telling me about and start dissecting that concept/relationship instead. When taking in information I always have to add my own speculations about it, or mention other aspects, other things it's related to, etc. expanding upon the idea. I sometimes feel almost like my mind works like a bouncy-ball hitting a bit of information breifely only to be sent off instantly in another direction from that point, then falling back and hitting close to it and again and bouncing off in a slightly different direction once more.

I'm inclined to say there is nothing unique about this, that everyone is like that, but although this may not be an accurate observation, it seems to me like I have talked with some people who seem to focus a lot more on just taking something in, establishing what the other person is saying, and accepting the information as is. As I explain my thoughts on something, they will ask questions to clarify but usually not questions that open up a whole new perspective or field of related topics. They will nod and repeat back what I am saying to affirm they got it right, and will say things like "I see, so that's how it works" in responce to my words, not in responce to their own thoughts about it. They appear to take things much more on someone else's authority, rather than needing to come to the conclusion on their own. I tend to find conversations with these people a bit awkward or unfullfilling because it feels to me like they are not really engaging the topic if they are not generating (and offering) their own ideas related to it because it's not giving me any new bits of ideas/information to bounce off from and stimulate further thoughts. Many times I feel that they mistake me as an authority on a matter. I love to talk about my speculations and theories, but I don't want people to always just take my word for it. I want them to offer their own perspective and ideas concerning something, because what I'm looking for is to process and explore the idea together, not just to communicate an idea.

When contemplating things, I tend to go from the specific to the general. I’ll start off with one example or instance, one fact, and extrapolate from that. I like to give specific examples when explaining my thoughts to others, but I am rarely speaking only of that specific event. I like seeing general principles and greater significance beyond the specific thing. My thoughts run something like “____ is, therefore probably ______ must be the case”

My mind is very much occupied with possibilities, uncertainties, hypotheticals. I tend to focus on what might be or what could be, or various 'what if' scenarios. Straight facts of 'how it really is" are often not terribly engaging for me because of my enjoyment of speculation and boredom with simply taking in info. I have sometimes run into conversation style clashes with people who assume that I am meaning to say "this is how it is" when in fact I am saying "what if it was like this instead of the way it seems to be?" They'll then argue with me that it's not that way, and I'm thinking "I know! but it could be." I get the impression that they don't see the point in talking about something that isn't actually how things are in reality. But while I do like discussing and trying to understand how things really are, I really enjoy hypotheticals and don't find the already proven facts to be of greater importance, which, I think, is what causes the misunderstandings. They want to establish what is, while for me,I get an idea of what is by exploring what might be.

Although I would enjoy finding out if my vaious theories are really true, I am for the most part fine with leaving things under the category of "probably like this, but actually unknown." I also seem to find it satisfying simply to know what I or what You think about something, not necessarily what other people have proven to be the case. I don't really feel compelled to come to any definate conclusion, simply finding it interesting to know what all the different ideas about something are. I tend to rather distrust any conclusions (even by big names and 'professionals') unless I can come to the same conclusion myself, and in most cases I'm not going to (or can't) put all the actual practical research into it necessary to confirm my ideas. When I say reseach I don't mean looking up the results of studies others have done. Nothing less than running the tests myself would satisfy me. Otherwise I freely dismiss other's 'proven' conclusions if they don't seem to line up with what I have logically worked out in my head. Likewise I freely admit that I am not sure that I'm right. Now, I may still decline to agree with someone else's assessment, but I won't insist that they convert to my assessment, as I realise I may be wrong and probably have less information to work from. I don't have any problem with agreeing to disagree on just about any topic - as long as it doesn't create practical daily-life clashes. In which case I suppose you could say I still agree to disagree simply by minimizing the interaction I have with that person in the context of our disagreed-upon topics.

I think my mind mostly works off the impressions and feelings I get about people and situations, although I may be able to give more detailed examples of what brings me to my conclusions if I really stop and think about it. Often the specifics don't stick in my memory, just the general impressions those details gave me. When trying to explain something I often can’t remember actual specific examples, but am good at coming up with detailed hypothetical examples. I get distinct feelings about things and just ‘feel’ when something seems to fit or make sense in the context of other things. However, I don’t mean it’s all mushy vagueness. I like to consider things logically, I like order in my thoughts, I like things to make sense. I think a lot along the lines of “this is my impression of something, it appears to be true, and if it is true that implies that these other things are also probably true.” I suppose you could say I first notice the feeling that something fits with my experience of reality, or doesn't, first and then have to do a little thinking to track down specific memories and reasons why this would be so.

Something I don't think much about is other people I know in the sense of wondering what they are doing today. I analyse their personality, tastes, habits, based on my impressions, and I may sometimes enjoy memories of times spent with them, but I don't often really think about their daily lives, or plans, or such. I'm not sure if other people do think about the people they know in this way, but for me I rarely wonder what my friends or family are up to, and rarely remember what they said they were going to do on any given day when it's actually happening. I do like to hear stories they might want to share or know generally what they occupy themselves with, but I don't think about it much beyond the conversation, and I don't really like that to be the bulk of my conversations with them. I suppose this would be why I don't really go in for Gossip, because I don't really care to know what people are doing or saying when they're not with me. What I do like to hear is what they think, feel, and theorize about various topics of mutual interest. And I like to know if they are generally happy or unhappy with whatever is going on in their life.

Here are a few examples of recent thought topics of mine:
I have a pet rabbit now and I worry that because I'm nocturnal he might not be getting the sleep he needs, because why should I assume he isn't bothered by noise and light if I am? Which leads me to thinking about how people often seem to view their pets as objects for them to play with when they feel like, and then forget about when it's back in it's cage, as if it doens't have a life or other natural habits that they ought to consider. And that brings me to wondering about the culture of different animals in their natural habitats. What kinds of interactions do rabbits have with eachother in the wild? How do they communicate different things, and how might I as a human be able to better speak my rabbit's language and give it the environment it would like?

My cousin's husband strikes me as an ESTP. I'm not exactly sure what makes me think this, although he's always on the go, involved in active sorts of things, is easy-going in his attitudes and habits, very animated and entertaining, and he seems to be pretty cool and calm while the rest of the family is having emotional melt-downs left and right.

Looking into the Christmas Tree and seeing the trunk and branches way back in there with all the little ornaments makes me think of a whole world that is a giant tree like that with the branches populated by different peoples, different climates for the upper and lower, inner and outer tips of the branches, and how the philosophy of those living near the trunk might differ from those living on the upper tips where they can see out past their world. And how might gravity work, and atmosphere. And what if there were natural lights that grew from the tree like berries, or perhaps which simply floated in the air among the branches, or perhaps hung from strings like spidersilk?

Being out in nature where nothing is man-made, where it all grows there of it's own accord made me wonder what a different perspective people must have who's culture has always existed in that environment. They wouldn't be surrounded by all things made by man.....how would that affect their views on themselves and the world and their place in it? I would immagine it would make them realise more that they are a part of nature, rather than a separate force, perhaps make them think about something other than themselves as responcible for making their environment.

I tend to not want to share things with people who I don't think will really appreciate it, but is that wrong? If they wouldn't be able to distinguish how much better one thing is from another, is sharing the better thing benefiting them any more than sharing the lesser if they are perfectly satisfied with it? Perhaps it is only beneficial to me to share the better thing with them anyways because it is in a sense making a sacrifice and being more generous. Or is it wastefull? I'm not thinking 'they don't deserve it' because probably they do deserve the better, but if they couldn't tell they had anything better, then does it make a difference to give it to them anyways? Or is it truely better to save things for those who will more fully appreciate them?

I get depressed so easily when I am tired. I bet it's the same for other people. I fancy that is part of why there seems to be so much depression these days. People are sleep deprived. If they could just get enough sleep they wouldn't feel so overwhelmed, apathetic, and disappointed with life because they would actually be waking up fresh and renewed with energy and hope and a better perspective. It's amazing how happy and physically fresh and light I feel after a really good night's sleep - and by that I don't mean the prescribed 8 hours. I mean staying in bed untill I don't fall back to sleep quickly after rolling over. Resting and snuggling untill I actually Want to get up. This can be anywhere between 9-12 hours. I don't think I ever wake up refreshed after 8. In fact I think the whole 8 hours thing must be some kind of conveiniently arbitrary number since it's a nice neat third of the day. I sleep in three hour segments. Which means I take 3 hour naps and feel good. Or get up after 6 hours and feel better than I would at 7 or 8, although I can't do that all the time. For normal days 9 is usually about where I feel like I actually want to get out of bed. But so few people consistantly get that much sleep. It's just no wonders so many people feel too burdoned by life to want to go on, let alone be able to find the joy in it. When you're exhausted even fun things can be overwhelming, and little other than sleep actually feels satisfying. But so many people are living with the delusion that 5-8 hours of sleep a night is normal, and okay, and that their weariness can't be from that so they must just be dissatisfied with their life.