The unhealthy INTP is no fun to be with. The typical INTP personality is logical, independent, and likes to maintain a small social circle. They are critical thinkers who love to think outside the box or even imagine that there is no box.
They value intellect and logic over emotions, and always critically analyze things before arriving at a conclusion. So, what happens to the unhealthy INTP? How does their toxic trait affect their overall behavior?
Let’s find out.
Weaknesses of the INTP
Note that there is a difference between someone’s weakness and their unhealthy behavioral pattern. No perfect personality type exists. When people have a weakness, their self-awareness allows them to identify these weaknesses and seek help.
Those with unhealthy behavioral patterns, however, seem to go through life without realizing that they ooze toxicity and need to get help immediately.
The major weaknesses of the INTP stem from their untapped cognitive functions. For instance, they try to suppress their inferior extraverted feeling (Fe) because they hate to be seen as ass-kissers, people pleasers, and those desperately seeking approval and attention.
You’d also be surprised to note that INTPs have Introverted Feeling (Fe) in their function stack. But they tend to substitute those feelings for logic and analytical thinking. This makes them misunderstand Fi users a lot and clash with other personality types.
The Unhealthy INTP: What to Expect
Unhealthy INTPs often had traumatic childhood experiences or grew up in abusive environments that caused them to develop these traits as a coping mechanism.
The major symptom of unhealthy INTPs is their sense of imbalance.
Too Unconcerned With What Others Think
The trend in society is to always ignore what people say and live a life that is authentically yours. While that may be true, the unhealthy INTP seems to take it a little bit too far.
They often pride themselves in the niceties they avoid, and how unconcerned they are with public opinion. They don’t care about what others think, even though their actions may hurt the people that genuinely care about them.
The unhealthy INTP loves isolation and will do all it takes to push others away. They make their desire for an alone time pretty obvious, compared to other ‘unhealthy’ personality types.
They Make Up Rules According to their Impulses
Since the unhealthy INTP doesn’t care about what others think, they are servants of their impulses. They bend the rules to suit what they want or feel like.
In the workplace, they hate being micromanaged or told what to do. If you want to get unhealthy INTPs upset, put them in a team. Unhealthy INTPs hate teamwork or anything that involves cooperating with other people.
They will do everything they can to frustrate the people on the team until they’re kicked out. They don’t obey conventional workplace rules, are unempathetic to the needs of others, and even struggle to keep up with deadlines. If you complain, it still wouldn’t change them.
They are extremely brutal
This doesn’t mean that they are necessarily physically abusive. Since the unhealthy INTP doesn’t care about the feelings of others, they often say harsh and brutally honest things. They are harsh when criticizing others, but justify their actions by saying that they are only saying what is right.
This attitude often affects their personal and romantic relationships because they can’t sustain healthy conversations with people without trying to be ‘right’ all the time. There is nothing wrong with pointing out the right thing, but if you have to bring people down in the process or belittle them, then there is no point to it.
Try to fit everything into their logic mold
INTP has an Extraverted Intuition (Ne) as an auxiliary function. The unhealthy INTP distorts this function and starts seeing things idealistically instead of realistically. When they think something should be a certain way, they create a form of logic to justify their ideas without considering peculiar circumstances.
Their dominant function is Introverted Thinking (Ti), and this function allows them to focus on what’s true. But the unhealthy INTP backs every idea they have by a ready-made logic, whether it’s true and applicable or not.
However, the unhealthy INTP suppresses these two cognitive functions. As a result, they run away from anything that involves healthy human socialization and experiences outside their comfort zone.
They shy away from people so that they don’t have to deal with their feelings. When people call them out on their wrongdoing, they feel attacked. They’re adamant in their own ways, so this sets them apart and makes them lonely.
Deals with anything that threatens their independence
The unhealthy INTP feels attacked when an external force threatens their independence. They hate being micromanaged at work or in situations that require cooperative effort. They believe that their opinions and ideas are superior to everyone else’s, logically.
When they’re with smarter people or around people they can’t impose their ideas on, they feel incompetent and underappreciated. They may either bring up some excuse to leave that setting or suppress their emotions.
They’re not open to change
Unhealthy INTPs are usually not open to change. They are unwilling to change their mindsets about things. When they believe things are supposed to go a certain way, they refuse to entertain anything that tells them otherwise.
They even go as far as cutting people off who don’t think the way they do, even when those people mean well. They make conclusions or judgements on certain issues based on personal experiences, without considering the opinions of others.
The unhealthy INTP is not open to new mindsets, ideas, and even people. This is why they often struggle to make new friends.
They ruminate over bad experiences excessively
As the unhealthy INTP grows older, they look back at their lives and constantly think of bad, cringeworthy, and embarrassing moments, and feel lots of shame. As a result, they always live in constant anxiety when they are in similar situations because they feel they will mess up again.
