Sumayyah asked: As an INTJ. I used to be very detached and anything emotional aggravated me. However, my problem lately has been that I’m usually in a bad mood or temper. I snap at people more often. I don’t like to hear or have any conversations that make emotions and feelings the center. Also, I have been betrayed by the man that I liked. I don’t know how to deal with these sudden feeling and emotions. It seems very illogical to me and aggravates me that they are controlling me. Do you have any advice or tips for an INTJ do deal with this situation.

Here’s my #1 piece of advice: DO NOT TURN OFF YOUR UPPER FUNCTIONS. Do everything you can to avoid locking into only your lower functions (this is called being “in the grip” and it isn’t a healthy state to be in). Make use of your upper functions.

My second piece of advice is to avoid locking into a loop between your Extraverted Thinking (Te) function and your Extraverted Sensing (Se) function. Often, INTJs experiencing emotional trauma will do this in order to detach from the strong feelings they’re enduring. Just as I warn you not to lock into only your lower functions, it’s unwise to stop using any function simply to avoid dealing with a problem.

To quote one of my all-time favourite Christopher Nolan films, “you always fear what you don’t understand.” And it sounds like there’s a disjunct between your emotions and your understanding of them (thus your fear of them).

Take your TeFi and analyse your feelings. Allow yourself to feel those feelings, but then ask yourself why you’re feeling what you’re feeling. Mature INTJs do not hide from their feelings. They face them without allowing the feelings to control them.

It is perfectly possible to feel strongly and still be rational. The feelings themselves may be irrational, but the only way you’re going to talk yourself out of that irrationality is to analyse those feelings so that you can understand them, and to do that, you have to feel them.

You will never understand anything that you spend all your time hiding from.

Abbie asked: Help! I’m an INTJ and I’m crying… In a public place… With no secluded spot or sanctuary I can run to… And people are watching… What do I do? What do you do?

Answer: Curtesy queue interruption –this is what you should do.

Forget that other people are watching.

It does not matter what anyone thinks of you. A person who judges you for crying is not someone whose opinion you should value enough to let it affect you. When you cry in public, that’s when you really discover the character of the people you care about. The ones who judge you aren’t people you want to keep around and those who don’t will probably be your friends for life.

Secondly, you should never be ashamed of crying.

There are large quantities of immature T-types out there who will tell you that emotion is for weaklings. To that, I say that if you have not cried –if you have not been broken, your life has been too easy and you have not learned enough.

Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you’re weak for emoting. Crying releases endorphins, which is why we sometimes can’t feel better until we’ve had a decent cry. Emotion is what makes us human. If we could not feel, we would not make moral decisions.

If there is nowhere to hide your tears, stop worrying about it and deal with what’s really important (aka the issue that’s making you cry in the first place).

When an issue is important enough, just let yourself cry. Who cares if people are watching? Cry, and then move on. That’s all I can really tell you.