WHAT IS INTROVERTED AND EXTROVERTED INTUITION? BRIGHT SIDE AND DARK SIDE OF INTROVERTED INTUITION

Understanding the Cognitive Functions:

The entire behaviour of a human being works on two basic functions — perceiving and judging — which direct the activities of decision making by an individual. The brain absorbs information and then it helps in making decisions. Having a better understanding of cognitive functions and personality types will help you in understanding people in a better way. There are 4 totally different ways of perceiving and 4 totally different ways of judging. Together these are called the 8 cognitive functions.

Carl Jung defined and created 8 cognitive functions known as “Jungian Cognitive Functions”. Personality type theory actually comes from an understanding of these 8 functions.

Introversion and Extroversion:

Almost all of us have somewhere come across the term “extrovert” and “introvert.”Carl Jung, the Swiss Psychoanalyst was the first to define these terms. Extroverts are those types of people who talk a little more, louder, faster and feel good to have attention and conversation with more people around. They like to have more drama and action in their lives. Whereas, introverts are those people who are more thrilled by being within themselves, their own thoughts and ideas, visions etc. Introverts prefer to be quiet and like other quiet people. They think more and speak less. They talk in a flow but a little slowly. But if they get to talk about their favourite subject, they can show some characteristics similar to those of extroverts.

Introversion and extraversion are very commonly used terms when we speak about personalities and behaviours of people. These are actually the attitudes of the people and they primarily and largely affect the functions of their brains in terms of behaviour and decision making.

Interestingly and surprisingly, there happen to be certain scientific reasons for people being extroverts and introverts. Scientists have found that due to the chemical composition and activities of the brain, introverts generally exhibit a greater level of petrochemical stimulation in their brains. They are typically highly stimulated and they try to calm things down.

Introverted Intuition:

Introverted Intuition (Ni) is the study of understanding how someone works with the help of internal intuitive analysis. It depends on the “gut feelings” and hunches of an individual about the situation and helps them understand the situations based on them. See it to believe it is not a case of Introverted Intuition — people do not look at simply what they see and how the things appear to be. Introverted Intuition creates an inner plot and context of how things may or will work. The plot is slowly altered and adjusted in due course of time making the person to get a better understanding of the larger picture of things happening around, and about the various steps that are required to achieve the desired result.

Introverted Intuition takes the bits and pieces of random information and makes suitable sense out of it. It is not bothered about the tangible facts. It only works on the crux of the concepts and philosophies, and how they all fall into place together to form a meaningful picture. Introverted Intuition has the tendency to feel that something is not right there. They may strongly find out that someone’s body language, a tone of voice or simply a transient pause, which is contrasting to their usual behaviour. These dynamics are perceived in a very non-figurative way, such that it is extremely difficult for the Ni user to describe their suppositions to other people. They only get a general feel for the situation.

Introverted Intuition raises some abstract questions like “what’s actually happening here?” or “have I ever felt in a similar way somewhere else, if so, where?” Introverted Intuition is believed to be one of the most difficult functions to describe to a person who doesn’t understand it or have it in them. This is the reason why Introverted Intuition is often referred to as “mystical”, “magical” or “psychic.” But hardly do people understand that it has a lot more to do than being magical or mystical.

Bright Side of Introverted Intuition:

Ni users are fairly good at creating a guise. They recognised clearly comprehend how the world recognizes people. They can easily synthesize a vision of what they wish to become, and take the necessary steps toward realizing their dreams. They are good at understanding what certain things and happening denoted and how to turn these into tools for their advantage.

Individuals with introverted intuition typically have gut feelings that are mostly accurate. They are very good at identifying patterns to conclude or predict about things and people. They mostly do not understand how or why these feelings came into their minds. A person with a strongly introverted intuition gives birth to various practical and ingenious elucidations of people and events.

The Dark Side of Introverted Intuition:

One fact that cannot be negated is that Introverted Intuition is simply the product of the experiences an individual has felt in his life. Refuting new experiences may definitely make Ni be a less precise due course of time. Meeting and observing new people, places or situations and observing them without any predetermined notions will make the thinking of a person more open, and give them a better understanding of the subtleties of the outside world.

All this act of collecting cues and hints from the environment or event, and connecting the random dots may also lead to the revelation of astonishing or disturbing future results. Ni user might predict about painful breakups, crushing of ambitions and dreams, grave difficulties of near and dear ones, etc., to name a few. Ni dominant people are mostly overwhelmed by this problem more than anyone else. The biggest fight is when you clearly understand something that is going on in your head, but you are unable to explain the same to others. And in an attempt to do so, you are totally misunderstood. That is so because Ni user depends on the intangible and subconscious cues rather than material facts.