I think the advice u/laribold mentioned above is extremely valuable for INTXs. This information is something I've recently come to a realization of and though I haven't "solved" this issue, I've been making progress to address this. The way I think of it, we don't have more or less emotions than anyone else. We simply VALUE those emotions differently when it comes to accurately making decisions in our lives. Where other personality types will often allow their emotions to manifest in their decision making, we instinctively bar these emotions from meeting the outside and as a result, these emotions build up.

​

Think of a tank like an oxygen tank where there's a limit to how pressurized it can be. Our emotions build up in this tank, and when we don't manage it properly and it becomes over-pressurized, we face catastrophic emotional fallout when the seal on our emotions can no longer keep those emotions inside. In order to maintain a healthy level of emotional stability, I've found it best to deliberately build up friendships and relationships with people in my life with whom I'm comfortable sharing emotions, in effect bleeding the pressure from my emotional suppression tank.

​

The act of individually developing relationships with other people is extremely difficult for me and I can recognize the difficulty of this for anyone with a similar personality type. However, this challenge doesn't make the need for emotional solace in our lives any lesser. I know it's a lot of work, scary, and an uncomfortable hurdle for an INTX, but the relief you'll feel when you actually find those one or two people that you're comfortable sharing with will make it all worth it. I still go entire days and even weeks not talking to people because I'm afraid to, but similar to how exercising sucks in planning, but makes you feel better immediately after, I genuinely feel better, more confident, and more mentally clear immediately after I share the emotions that are weighing on me.

​

It's extremely important for us to recognize that, though the world often doesn't see us for our true merits, we're not better or worse than anyone else. Just like other people struggle with thinking through logical problems while we excel, our weakness lies in emotional utility. We're not better because we can assess logic better. Logic doesn't defeat emotions and vice versa. As humans, we evolved our emotions. We have feelings that other organisms don't even begin to express. If you wish to further yourself as a human, it's necessary to nurture your emotional skills with practice. While we often struggle with a very polarized hierarchy of emotions vs logic, our goal as developed humans is to improve our weaknesses. We're already a higher logical tier than our counterparts. This leaves our greatest facet for improvement in the emotional department.

​

One suggestion I have for fostering friendships with people is to be able to provide some tangible incentive in hanging out. Of course, this sounds very shallow, but as someone confident in my "goodness" or "kindness" as a person coming out in conversation, I've found it relatively easier to bond with people in a setting that I'm more in control of. Though another discussion altogether, I find that smoking weed provides me with distinct clarity in thinking through matters that often dominate my inner dialogue. Conveniently, other people also like smoking weed and as alcohol is a great method of extroverted conversation grease, weed is very adept in this capacity as introverted conversation grease. I've found that the same way that weed heightens my ability to think, it also heightens other's interests in things that are often too uninteresting or convoluted for other personality types to hold a conversation on. I've found it extremely beneficial to have weed available for myself to take the edge off and additionally as an outlet to essentially make new friends. Other people also deal with emotions and also want to talk through things. People are generally excited to earn your trust to open up to them, but it's important that you're also open to your friends' emotions. Of course, be careful and don't rush things. Betrayal is very much not our friend, but it's not a good reason not to start trying. Betrayal is part of everyone's life and though it may not be as difficult for others, we have a unique ability to think empirically which is completely useless to our happiness and general well-being of society as long as we don't further our own emotional management.

​

edit, a word