By Jenna DeNardo
I have wanted to write something for Personality Junkie for quite a while, and one of A.J.’s recent posts inspired me to finally do so. I feel like he is always just enough ahead of where I’m at, so that he always has something applicable to share, and something that would have undoubtedly taken me much longer to figure out on my own. It’s really special.
I am a female INTP in my mid-twenties, and have had some major life-changes—leaving religion and leaving a bad marriage for a good one—that while satisfying and resolving, at times leave me feeling aimless. I’ve also struggled to find consistent balance in my life, working to ensure I have enough to do (“the unfed mind devours itself”) but without pushing myself too hard.
My latest discovery has involved learning to accept and deal with the strain of female hormone cycles. It has taken me until now to fully acknowledge the real ways this has affected me, and that it is best if I work to accept rather than fight or deny it.
Portions of every month leave me dealing with my inferior function (Fe) in what has always seemed to me a nightmarishly unacceptable situation. I display many of the symptoms of Borderline Personality Disorder (minus the impulsiveness—a must-have for the diagnosis) which apparently is common for women during PMS. This has created a very bipolar cycle in my life that I have struggled to understand, much less accept.
For a small section of the month, if everything’s going right, I feel like what I consider my normal or real self. I’m logical and coherent. I enjoy solving problems and working at things. I can easily disconnect from emotions. I can be calm, organized, and productive. But before I know it, it’s like a switch is flipped, and I just can’t think. I’m lost. I become prone to excessive anxiety, even to the point of panic. My feelings become exaggeratedly intense, even physically painful. I feel disoriented, unable to make plans or trust my own judgment. It feels like becoming crazy overnight, like Jekyll and Hyde. The loss of control is terrifying. And the harder I fight or try to be my “normal” self, the worse it is. The more control I try to muster, the more exhausted I become, which only leads to more negative feelings and behaviors, more disorientation, and more shame. This horrifying cycle has contributed to feelings of depression, hopelessness, and self-hatred, not to mention suicidal thoughts. It’s something I have long been running from. At times, I would make progress and somehow break free from the negative cycle for a moment and feel like, “Maybe I’m finally done with this. I’ve finally learned how to get better.” And then bam. Again and again and again. Sigh.
PMS is something that, for women who deal with it, happens during the luteal phase of the reproductive cycle. That’s the time between ovulation and menstruation, which is usually 2 to 3 weeks. It’s not the same every day; it can be really bad one day and not so bad the next. For me, it is the uncertainty and unpredictability that has consistently shattered my trust in myself. It’s embarrassing how such a seemingly basic human phenomenon could be so disruptive and confusing.
While I’ve really only just begun my personal growth, I have managed to solve at least some of my emotional mysteries, including coming to a better understanding of my PMS. Although I have always believed in the reality of PMS, I didn’t have a solid understanding of what it really was. I also realized that my Ti function, without being properly tempered by a function that gives reliable context, is prone to obliviousness in certain ways. It’s like someone who looks only at the step right in front of her but fails to look up and see she has circled her destination 14 times. Moreover, through increasing development of my tertiary Si function, I have come to better appreciate the relationship between my mental and physical health. This has included realizing the effects of my poor eating habits (I was visibly underweight for several years). I have also come to see the ways in which my childhood and first marriage have contributed to my emotional struggles.
It’s weird how my most helpful realizations were such simple things that, in some respects, I thought I already knew. But there’s something about how experience affects knowledge, adding meaning and context to the words I already knew.
Thanks for reading. I know these things are very personal, which can make some people uncomfortable. To me they’re just facts. They’re just what happened. And they’re things I think may have helped me if I had been more aware of them.
Cat INTP says
Thanks for writing and sharing…..PMS has been the bane of my life, in my mid-forties I now finally feel I have it under control (through understanding my moods and thoroughly knowing my cycle (period tracking app has been really useful))…I can tell you the minute I ovulate….a fierce anger erupts from no-where. I’ve learnt to give myself lots of rest and alone time and to be conscious of not placing any demands on myself.
Now to occupy myself with dealing with menopause for the next 15 years!
All the best to you
Anadyomede says
Hi! It’s so nice to hear that you’re in a better place and you can feel yourself evolving a good direction. I respectfully suggest you look into the diagnosis of PMDD – basically a rare form of PMS from hell – since you mention suicidal thoughts. That is way beyond the ballpark of physical pain and irritability of a standard PMS diagnosis.
You can find an interesting TED talk by the psychologist Robyn Stein DeLuca about the myths and science of PMS, where she mentions PMDD. You can also find, by googling ‘xojane overmedicated’, the testimony of a woman who was heavily medicated since her teens for a host of psychological issues. Her physical health was deciling due to side effects and she didn’t feel like her physchiatrists were trustworthy, so she decided to stop all her meds to know what her baseline was. To her surprise, she felt fine except for moments of intense dysphoria before her period, which was finally diagnosed as PMDD and easy to appease with a small dose of anti-anxiety medication, which was all she needed in the first place.
I hope this helps you or someone else! Such intense distress in the premenstrual cycle as you describe is not ordinary, and you don’t deserve to suffer.
Elle says
Hello!
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. I am a 30 year old woman who has only recently tested as INTP. Knowing my type has helped make immense sense of the situation I find myself in right now, because I see how my inherent INTP-ness (truth over tact, for instance) is both my greatest strength and weakness.
However, I feel that being an INTP woman brings a whole other layer of complication to the matter, thanks to intense mood swings and what feels like storms of emotion in the midst of all the rationalizing I’m attempting to do.
It is so heartening to come across accounts like yours because they help me feel like this is something I can come to understand and deal with through the experiences of others like me.
Js says
More FEMALE INTP articles please!!!!!
It’s a bizzare existence and literally no one else gets us.
Whitney says
Thank you for this article so much. I would love to read more like it. I am an intp female as well and have had similar issues. It is so good to hear that I am not the only one who has been overwhelmed by my own feminine bodily functions.