EIIs/INFjs as Teenagers

[FireNinja606]

Just wondering, how was it like for you guys in your teen years? Have you guys experienced any teenage angst, or any hatred in the world? Was it depressing for you guys to have what you originally believed as your ideals crushed by cruel reality during this period? Or did you guys have a great time with your life during these years, and wouldn't regret any second of it? And also, when you were a kid, how did you imagine teen hood would be?

EDIT: Well, not really having your ideals crushed by reality, but I guess I mean going from being curious and excited about the world as a kid to more insecurity and self-doubt about yourself.

[FireNinja606]

For me, it's a mixed bag, but I still have a bit left, so I'm holding on to the hope that it could get better.

[jaein]

In my teenage years I was angsty. I dont think I hated the world but I was having a hard time figuring out how I fit into it. My ideals weren't crushed by a cruel reality, I still believe that they can be achieved..nothings impossible right? I didnt think of my teen years when I was a kid they just happened upon me, I wasnt too eager to grow up..anyways yes I guess my teen years were 'normal'. They were angsty with specs of unbounded hope and awkwardness

[Beautiful sky]

Um...

Teens

13 I struggled to fit into the patriarchal mostly SEE mentality Armenian society because in that society men are the ones who work outside the home and women are the stay at home moms who didn't really do much with their education so I used to argue a lot with my parents asking how that was fair in any way. I told them that when I grow up and got married my husband would be the kind of man who would do every thing for us, cook, clean, take care of the kids. I got laughed at but turns out my duals are exactly what I asked for. in my duality (thank God he really heard my prayers) we are a team and LSE, my goodness, are the best at cooking. Oh Lord. I am good at preparing healthy food and food people want to eat but my duals are like tasty masters.

14-16 Since my dad wanted us to be independent and high achievers at school he really pushed higher education on us so we all went to college. I felt confident that my dad didn't differentiate the girls from his boy except he let my brother be lazy maybe because he always knew he was so he let him be himself. He was proud of us and because of that I had good confidence and self esteem. My mom's morals kicked in; we went to church and we talked a lot about people's roles in society.

I suffered from depression mostly because I didn't have good mentors, female mentors. I struggled with identifying with my periods and being a girl girl because I had terrible period cramps early on and I had to go on Vicodin from age 13. Every time it came it paralyzed me with migraine, and vomiting, fainting. You name it. I was upset that all this was in my way.

16-19 I wasn't allowed to date. So that was really great honestly. Now that I look back on it I am glad my parents disallowed it because it allowed me to be a kid. I got into culture (went to museums etc) went for hikes, hung out with girl friends. I learned how to be a great friend because I didn't think of boys and didn't get caught up in the jealousy, triangle life of a lot of teenage girls.

Overall I had a really great teenage life. I just wish that my parents would have recognized some of my talents like dancing and art and really pushed me to succeed in those things. They just let me do whatever I wanted and since that was the case I wanted to try a lot of different things. It wasn't until past my teen hood did I hone in one my favorites and go deeply into my interests.

[Kyusaku]

My childhood ended with the death of my father, a year later i was in my teens. It was mostly confusing but it did end well looking back on it. The ride was steep though.

[Beautiful sky]

My childhood ended with the death of my father, a year later i was in my teens. It was mostly confusing but it did end well looking back on it. The ride was steep though.

well, chronic depression characterized those years of my life, so i can't really say whether or not my experience was "normal". i had low self esteem, social anxiety, and i didn't like myself. additionally, i was living in a toxic home environment. if i had to describe my teenage years, i would say they were disenchanting.

in retrospect, i feel like i wasted my teenage years... adults told me it was going to be the best time of my life, full of fun and experimenting, but it wasn't like that at all. giving children an idealized view of teenhood just sets them up for disappointment. it can be fun, but let's not forget how awkward it is. i think a big part of why i found those years to be so bewildering is because i'd been fed expectations that weren't grounded in reality.

i remember being really frustrated as a teen because it was hard to get my opinions, thoughts, etc taken seriously. people only treated me with respect when it was convenient to do so, otherwise i was just a dumb kid to them.

I can see how EII wouldn't be taken seriously especially when their thoughts are expressed in absence of emotions in a cold factual and logical manner that seems to appeal to people (masses) more. I am interested in listening to an upcoming lecture on empathy and how that is evolving. I presume that people will be more so and more patient in how they regard personal feelings of others.

[Emmym]

My teen years weren't great, but I got through them. A lot of the things I dealt with them are still relevant now, but you do grow stronger with time and experience.

[UDP]

@Minde

i think many of them were significant nerds and potentially very attached to belief communities
Some wrote books and got high also - like the namesake representative of EII

[Aramas]

My teenage years started off okay and rather ordinary. I was a pretty dejected loner kid, living (way) out in the boonies without knowing too many people. Instead of socializing or intellectual learning, I spent my days mostly with RPGs and video games, and my only outlet was the Internet. My later teen years were defined by abuse that I only overcame through several years of soul searching and growth by interacting with people and gaining some of the skills I felt I never learned while I was a kid. So there was a contrast between ordinary/bleh and almost dying. I'm glad I survived. It seems like the happiest years in my life were around 2008-2009. I started becoming more social then and didn't have too many responsibilities. So, for me, that time was a period of exploration where everything seemed possible or new. I had the chance to hang out, learn some of the basics of social interaction, and develop a worldview that was shaped by the experiences I'd had up to that point. Now I'm making headway toward potentially gaining some credentials that might or might not lead to a job. I'm hoping for the best, I guess. Ideally, though, I wouldn't have to do anything. I'm still hoping to win the lottery so I can continue a life as a lazy bum.

At the present moment, I think I have some issues with depression, as well as problems with anxiety I have had since forever. It seems like all the fun times I had several years back are pretty much dead, gone, and in the grave, and life seems more like a drudge now than anything else. I slog through most days and hope to be able to come home and distract myself with something mildly titillating. My angsty years seem to be upon me in my mid-to-late twenties rather than my teen years. We'll see what happens.

[Saoirse]

I was at my most angsty in middle school (11-13), which is mostly before the teen years, I suppose. I think this is actually the period that determined my instinctual stacking, as theorized in this article. A psychiatrist wanted to put me on antidepressants, but I sought refuge in my friendships, became a lot happier, and ended up not needing them (I am not trying to belittle real depression; I don't think I had it, and I only mention the antidepressants as evidence of how sad/lost I seemed to others).

In high school (14-17), I felt a lot better day-to-day because I had a great friend group, but I was still really socially awkward with anyone outside of my friend group. I just had no sense of what was the normal thing to do in most situations (it probably didn't help that my parents were very shy, socially awkward immigrants who didn't speak English well, so they didn't really raise me as part of a community where I could observe any norms--until I was in school, I guess, but that was too late. though I actually wasn't a shy child, so I think I must say yes to the question clarification in OP's edit. anyway, enough of this Ne digression ). And I think American high schools greatly value Se (being good at sports, speaking up a lot in class, dressing fashionably), so it was quite painful for it to be my PoLR. Though my social skills were rather stagnant at this point, I was growing increasingly confident in my academic/intellectual/professional capabilities through continued success in increasingly difficult classes, as well as my main extracurricular, which was something incredibly nerdy. I was never a super popular kid, but I did achieve a large amount of respect for my accomplishments.

The tail end of my teen years, which was the first two years of college (18-19), was when I started developing my social skills, mostly because I had to in order to make new friends. The most important piece of advice I read (I read a LOT of self-help books on how to make friends) was to just say things without thinking (and all the reasoning behind why this is a good thing for naturally shy people to do), which can be interpreted as developing my Se or maybe at least accessing it at all for the first time in my life . Not developing it to the point where it's good or even a little decent, but just to the point where it wasn't cripplingly awful. I'm still not the life of the party, but I can talk to pretty much anyone now, and people who go by dichotomous MBTI frequently mistake me for an extrovert. However, this is also when I started losing confidence in my intellectual abilities, a process that has continued to this day.

That's my spiel. Overall a pretty lucky/good/calm childhood with solid friendships that have lasted to this day (I'm 24), the worst part being self-consciousness about my Se PoLR.

[someoneaskedmetofly]

Very, very reclusive. A result of bullying and deep oversensitivity which lead to the formation of many incongruent unconscious assumptions about the world. I spent a vast amount of time on the computer just drowning the negative feelings. Felt I had nobody to talk to. Only now at 20 am I branching out a bit due to a girl dumping me. Still can't seem to accept the fact that I'll be this volatile and fragile for ever. My ideals lay elsewhere.