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第二章：过载（译文）

实话说，我非常喜欢作为INTP的自己，这样的存在就像是有神兵利器在手。然而，这样的存在也有相应的盲点和陷阱。并且往往，看不见的危险带来最大的伤害，就像被神奇女侠的隐形喷气式飞机击中，伤痕累累躺着，抬头却只见到清澈的天空。

今天，我要关注过载这个话题。这是一个非常隐秘的INTP陷阱，因为过载是由我们最喜欢和珍视的分析功能导致的。你越用分析功能尝试解决自己的不快乐，你伤自己越深，你的铠甲也是你的软肋。

让我们做个思想实验。现在你是一个刚走出洞穴的原始人，世界对你是全新的、完全开放的。这是一个炎炎夏日，你的皮肤感受到一种有趣的感觉，今天我们管这种感觉叫做“热”。另一个早晨，你走出洞穴，你感觉到一种不同的感觉，天空阴沉，寒风如刀，我们今天管这个叫“冷”。这两种感受困扰着你，是什么使你感受到这些不同？是某种看不见的神明在操纵你的身体吗？还是因为你吃了什么？你的大脑进入了分析模式。

你注意到天空中闪亮的大球照到你的时候，你的皮肤感受到一种更强烈的感觉，而当你走进阴影，皮肤上的感觉渐渐消失。有点意思，也许是土壤、树木和岩石从大球中吸收了什么，又把它释放到空气中。也许是大球造成了“热”。

但是且慢，你日渐注意到季节变换，每天的冷热都不同，有时夜里甚至很热，有时天晴却很冷。你感到越发困惑。从关注气候开始，你又逐步开始研究空气流动、海洋温度、全球水流、地球轨道、太阳耀斑和臭氧层，诸如此类。每个新发现都带来更多的可能性。但随着你钻研深入，找到了越来越多问题的答案，最终你开始慢慢接近自身能量的极限。观察和假想日渐堆积，问题的复杂性引发麻痹和妥协，我们开始将那些困惑标记为不可解决，我们觉得自己已经积累了足够多的信息，足以推断自己无法达到问题解决的彼岸了。对于INTP，对任何主题的长期关注最终都可能将我们引入过载的困境，但有一个领域似乎更容易成为泥潭，那就是上一篇文章说的，人际关系和疏离感。

如果你感到疏离，我打赌你能拿出一大堆你在这个主题上收集的信息和做出的分析。你能说出一大堆童年阴影，原生家庭父母的忽视和误解，你能给出你的理论。你观察到许多真相。你和大学舍友的关系从亲密承诺开始，到日渐疏远，最终被孤立。你解构自己和世界的互动，构建起一套关于你需要找到哪一类人以及可以在哪里找到他们的理论。你还可以说出来，不止一次，你觉得自己找到了那个人，但随后某个事件又证明自己搞错了。

所有这些信息构建起关于问题的日渐庞大的概念。为什么问题越来越复杂了呢？因为我们想要精确又完全地解决这些问题，否则我们不会感到满足。我们不断尝试可能的解决办法然后回过头来观察结果，我们又把每次失败看作一个新的可供分析的样本，周而复始。这就是我们的理性乐观，我们觉得解决方案一定存在，我们只是需要更努力一些。

INTP的陷阱在于你彻底的坚定不移的对解决问题的尝试实质上增加了问题本身的复杂度。而这种复杂性又会反过来告诉你问题不可解决，或者至少超出你的能力范围了。然后呢，你会怎么做？你更加用力了。随着问题的复杂性的增加，你更用力地分析他们。这种滚雪球式的信息过载会催生很多负面情绪，疲惫、沮丧、失望日渐堆积，最终，你会走向绝望。

INTP最容易在人际关系领域陷入深深的过载。最可能的原因是，关系涉及情绪，而情绪不可捉摸。你要处理自己的情绪（即便你觉得自己没什么情绪波动），还要处理别人的情绪。因为INTP比起拥抱情绪，更倾向于压抑情绪（尽管这也是一个情绪驱动的决定），所以虽然我们不那么渴望拥有相关技能，但实质上我们需要。那么让我们来以最符合逻辑的方式来解决人际关系的问题。鉴于我们自身的情绪最终决定了我们是享受生活还是被生活折磨，我们就从自身情绪出发来考虑这个事情。

我的提议非常简单，但对INTP的思维模式来说会很陌生。如果过载是由于追求精确和关注点过大导致的，那么幸福就可以通过不那么严苛和着眼于细微之处来实现。值得一提的是，关注点更小意味着你会得到碎片化的而不是宏大的解决方案，离散的细微的成功，尽管每一次都很微小，但聚沙成塔，最终也能收获颇丰。

所以，如何缩小我们在人际关系上的关注点呢？假设说你和某人有过一些交往，尽管你曾期望这是个能有共鸣的灵魂，但你观察到了太多的不协调，于是认为共鸣不会发生。现在你有机会和这人再喝几杯咖啡，你的理智脑说“何必呢，我早知道这人并不投缘，一起呆完我只会更沮丧，不如不去”。这就是过载型思维。也许这人身上的某个部分你会喜欢，也许通过一起喝杯咖啡你们能够开开玩笑，也许某些事情你们可以共情。如果你仅仅只是寻找玩笑或者共情，你就可以享受这人短暂的陪伴。你感到一丝丝快乐，因为在这个瞬间，你感觉良好。

我想告诉你，感觉不好本身就不好，感觉好本身就是好的。尽管一杯咖啡无益于解决你在世上的问题，但至少你在咖啡店里面的那半个小时感到开心。这就是有意义的。这就是好的。你解决问题了吗？没有。你最终会认为这人是个志趣相投的灵魂吗？不会。这不是一个完美答案，这是局部优解，是权宜之计。但积少成多，这都是你的收获。

留心那些可以让你体验到短暂快乐的机会。当你去体验这个快乐的时候，放松你严苛的理性的大脑。更多关注自己的情绪状态。如果在体验过程中遇到小挫败，克制进入负面情绪的冲动。收集越来越多这样的时刻，以此构建一定的稳定性和未来的可预测性。搞清楚哪些朋友是你可以出于什么原因去拜访的。通过让成功获取小的快乐成为生活的一种选择，你就拥有了获取更多快乐的方法。

我刚刚所描述的东西对其他人格来说可能显得非常无脑。但对INTP来说，这并非自然而然的，这需要努力。让我再说清楚一点儿，这不是疏离感的答案。作为INTP，时至今日我仍然相信，本质上，我们是疏离的。（译者注：如果一个成熟的INTP仍然觉得是这样的。那么，有一种可能，某种程度上，你感到和世界的疏离，不是因为你有什么缺陷。而只是因为你太聪明了，而又太过固执了。世界中个体的本质是分离的，唯一区别是其中的个体是否感受到这种分离。没有疏离感或者疏离感较弱的人，是对这种个体间的分离不那么敏感、没有强烈感受的人，能够容忍幻象，并在幻象中忘却真实，而你，INTP，你时不时跳出来，总是记得真相，总是强烈而自觉地感受到一切事物人之间的分离性，总是对亲密保持怀疑和警惕，总是无法感到真正的联系。这是你的幸运，也是你的悲哀。你是黑客帝国中选择了红药丸的角色，你注定过清醒而痛苦的生活。如果一切没有解，那么请你拥抱真实的自我，同时，也对自己好一点，不必过于严苛，时不时找一点儿微小的乐子，去码头整点薯条，没有关系的，不要太执着。如果一切有解，那么唯一解就是向某个人事物臣服，暴露你的缺陷，献祭你的自由，获得它的认可，接受它的拥抱，同时承担它抛弃你的危险。做到这一切也并不难，唯一需要的是勇气。）然而，尽管这些做法没有解决问题，但他们确实在情绪方面帮助我们达成了一定的训练、经验和成功。情绪比我们想象的更可控，他们只是情境的产物。我们有很多机会根据自己的感受做出决定，但我们首先要停止犯一个错误，那就是将情绪解释为在暗示某种事实。（译者注：这里的意思大约是，不要将情绪看得过于重要，他是没有深意的，变动不居的，稍纵即逝的，仅仅是环境的产物，能够说明一些问题，但仅仅是很浅层的问题，是不值得深入挖掘和分析的。太过严肃对待只会使我们疲惫。）

所有人格类型都会曲解情绪传递出来的信息。情绪仅仅是人性使然。举例来说，你在黑暗的房间里面感到害怕，因为你觉得暗处可能有人，但这并不意味着暗处真的有人。但在当时大脑不这么想。它觉得我们感到害怕是因为暗处很可能确实有人。情绪会被解释成对事实的暗示。拿人的五感（视觉、听觉、嗅觉、味觉、触觉）举例，如果你看到火炉热得发光，你就不会去触碰它。同理，如果你感到恐惧，一定是有什么恐怖的东西。情绪塑造了我们对于现实的感知。

情绪塑造了我们对于现实的感知，这一点对于疏离感也适用。我们是因为疏离而感到沮丧，还是我们先感到沮丧，然后错误地假设疏离是背后的客观原因。我想常常发生的是后者。疏离感一半是真实的一半是想象的，因为那时情绪本身已经不堪重负。如果我们能摆脱想象的那部分疏离感，我们就能达到更好的情绪平衡，避免失控。也许我们没有自己想象中的那么疏离，也许有相当多值得我们感到开心的事物。

最后，对于大哉问的解决方案也许依然存在。永远充满希望。并且如果没有过载和螺旋式失败的重负，这种希望将更健康。与此同时，不断收集那些微小的快乐，你会过得更好。

Chapter 2: Overload（原文）

(WHAT’S NEW: 10/23/15–I’ve been away for a good bit grappling with new challenges and the next stage of life struggles. But I’m coming back with a new article, and a new idea! It’s about the INTP drive for creation and achievement. Along with the new article, I’d like to create a page dedicated to INTPs supporting other INTPs in business. If you need a product or service, why not go to another INTP?? You know will get a person who understands your approach to the world!)

I’ll admit it. I like being an INTP very much. It’s a state of being that puts some nice tools in your hands. However, it also brings some potent blind spots and traps. And usually, the dangers you can’t see tend to be the ones that cause you the most grief. It’s like getting hit by Wonder Woman’s invisible jet plane. As you’re lying mangled on the ground, all you can see are clear skies overhead.

Today I’m going to focus on overload. It’s a very insidious INTP trap, because the path to overload covers the same ground as our most loved and valued INTP analytical functions. As a result, the more you try to solve that unhappiness with the tools at your disposal, the deeper you dig yourself. As is often the case in life, our greatest strength can be our greatest weakness.

Let’s say you’re a proto-human walking from your cave for the first time. The world is fresh and wide-open. You feel this interesting sensation on your skin that bright, summer day. Today, in English, we would call the sensation “heat.” Another morning, you walk out of your cave, and you feel a different sensation. The sky is cloudy with a stiff wind. We would call that one “cold.” These two sensations perplex you. What makes you feel these differences? Is some kind of unseen spirit possessing your body? Was it something you ate? Your mind flips into analysis mode.

You note that the big shining orb in the sky makes an even stronger sensation on your skin when it hits you. When you step into the shade, the feeling lingers in your skin a bit, then goes away. Interesting. Maybe the soil and trees and rocks absorb something from the orb and release it back into the air. Maybe the orb causes heat.

But wait. Over time, you notice the effect of seasons. Each day doesn’t heat and cool the same way. Sometimes it’s hot even at night. Sometimes it’s cold with a bright sun. The conundrum deepens. After climate, you study air currents, ocean temperature, global water currents, the orbit of the Earth, solar flares, the ozone layer. On and on and on and on. Every new discovery factors in and opens new possibilities. But as you delve and find more and more questions to answer, you eventually begin to approach an overall limit of energy. The observations and hypotheses mount. The complexity of the problem starts to breed a sort of paralysis or surrender. We begin to label the overall conundrum as not reasonably solvable. It’s like staring over a chasm at an ice cream stand. As much as we want a banana split, we believe we’ve amassed sufficient information to determine that realistically we just can’t get there. For an INTP, everything has the ability to spiral into an overload situation. But there is one area that seems to be a quagmire more than any other. My first article focused on it–interpersonal relationships and isolation.

If you feel isolated, I bet that you can regurgitate the huge amount of information and analysis you’ve amassed on the subject. You could tell me about the friction in your childhood. How your parents didn’t seem to get you. How when you said this, they heard that. You could give me your theories. Your observed truths. The way your relationship with your college roommate started with great promise, but cooled and ended up with you being increasingly alienated. You’ve deconstructed your interactions. Theorized about what kind of person you need to find and where you might find them. You can tell me how many times you were hopeful that you found one, but then a progression of events proved that you were mistaken.

All of this information builds into an ever-growing conceptualization of the problem. Why does it grow? Because we want to solve problems exactly and fully, and nothing else will suffice. As we apply each potential solution and step back to observe the result, we’ll take each point of failure as a new challenge to be analyzed. It’s our rational optimism at work. A solution must exist, we just have to try harder.

The trap of INTP is that your thorough and unflinching approach to solving problems inherently increases their size. Size, in turn, begins to empirically prove that the solution may be impossible or beyond your abilities. So what do you do? You try HARDER. The complexity of the problem grows. HARDER YET. Bigger. The building overload spawns negative emotions. Fatigue, frustration, and disappointment mount, finally fermenting into despair.

Nowhere do INTPs seem to fall victim to overload more profoundly than in interpersonal relationships. The most likely reason is that relationships involve a great deal of tricky emotional content. You have your own emotions to contend with (even if you’re convinced that you don’t have any), as well as the other person’s. Since INTPs would rather suppress emotions than embrace them (which actually is an emotion-driven decision), we have a need for skills that we aren’t terribly eager to master. But let’s tackle the problem of interpersonal relationships in the most logical place. Us. Since our own emotions ultimately control whether we have the experience of enjoying life or being tortured by it, our own emotions are the place to start.

What I’m proposing is really very simple. However, it’s foreign to usual INTP thinking. If overload is created by being exacting and looking too big, then happiness can achieved by being less exacting and going small. But here’s the catch. Small means pieces, not grand solutions. Discrete little victories. Each one might not amount to much, but if you walk around collecting pebbles, you will eventually have a sack of pebbles as heavy as a boulder.

So, how do we narrow our focus in interpersonal relationships? Let’s say you know someone who you’ve spent time with, and although you once hoped that this person would be a kindred spirit, you’ve determined that it’s never going to happen. You’ve observed too much incongruity. The person let you down too many times. But now you have an opportunity to have a cup of coffee with this person. Your rational brain says, “why bother? I’ve already established that this person isn’t a kindred spirit. I’m just going to be further disappointed. I’m going to come away feeling worse than if I didn’t spend time with them at all.” That is overload talking. Perhaps there is some part of this person that you enjoy. Maybe over coffee, you’ll end up joking around. Maybe there is something that the two of you can commiserate on. If you just look at the joking or the commiserating, you can enjoy being with this person for a short time. You feel a slice of happiness, because in that moment, you are feeling good.

I submit to you that feeling bad is bad, and feeling good is good. Even though the cup of coffee does not solve the problem of your place in the world, you can feel happy for that half hour in the coffee shop. And that is meaningful. That is good. Did you solve the problem? No. Did you determine that this person is actually a kindred spirit after all? No. It’s an imperfect solution. A partial solution. But remember that bag of pebbles. I’m trying to get you working on that sack of pebbles.

Be mindful of where you have opportunities to experience small moments of happiness. When you go collect one, make yourself step back from the exacting, rational machinations of your brain. Be more aware of your emotional state. Fight the urge to leap to negative emotions if little setbacks happen during the experience. Collect more and more of these moments with the goal of building some stability and future predictability. Establish which friends you can call upon for what. By having options for small victories, you have a means to achieve more happiness.

What I’ve just described will certainly seem like a no-brainer to other personality types. But to INTPs, it’s not natural. It’s an effort. And let me be clear. It’s NOT the answer to our isolation. As an INTP, I’m still convinced that we are, in fact, isolated. However, even though it’s not solving the problem, what it does achieve is some much needed training, experience, and success for our emotional side. Emotions are much more subject to our control than we realize. They are not simply the result of a situation. We have a huge amount of opportunity to make choices regarding how we feel. But in order to do it, we have to stop making the mistake in interpreting emotions as an indication of truth.

All personality types misinterpret the message of emotions. That’s just part of being human. For example, if you are afraid in a dark room because there might be someone hiding in your closet, that does not mean that someone IS hiding in the closet. But that’s not what our brains tell us in the moment, right? It feels like there COULD be someone in the closet because we are afraid. The emotion is interpreted as an important indicator of possible fact. Just like our five sensory emotions. If you feel radiant heat, you don’t touch the stove. If you feel scared, there must be something scary out there. Emotion shapes our sense of reality.

The same can happen with isolation. Are we feeling down because we are isolated (reality indicating), or are we feeling down first and incorrectly assuming that isolation must be the objective reason (reality creating)? I believe that the latter is happening a great deal. Isolation is partly true and partly false as a result of emotions that have become mired in overload. If we can unwind the false part, we can strike a much better emotional balance. Maybe we are less isolated than we think. Maybe there is much more that we deserve to be happy about.

In the end, a solution to the grand problem may still exist. There’s always hope. And without overload and the weight of spiraling failure, that hope can breathe and be healthy. In the meantime, though, collect those pebbles. You’ll feel much better in the end.