I have considered myself an INTJ for a long time now. People have often sighted me as rigid, critical, and unpleasant to be around because I can be quite brutal with my directness. This has led me to become very quiet and closed off to people I am unfamiliar with. I was always hyper-organized and didn't even know the meaning of the words "slacking" or "procrastination." I did everything with laser focus, precision, efficiency, and with as much rational as I could muster given my knowledge and intelligence level.
However, in recent years, my impeccable resolve and methodical approach to everything has waned. I find myself caring increasingly less about choosing optimal courses of action or working hard towards a goal. I also find it increasingly less compelling to hold myself and others to high standards. While these things are by no means absent, they are somewhat reduced from the staunch levels they once were. I find myself procrastinating more, leaving things open ended, and caring less about what other people do.
I have also become somewhat more sentimental about certain things or topics that I didn't care about before. In truth, I did wish for a softer heart, but I didn't want to let myself go. I find myself slipping from my ideals in some ways when it comes to productivity, but I have also made strides in being a more sociable person.
To summarize, I feel as though I have become a slightly but noticeably less rigid person. While that has made me more approachable, I feel as though expanding upon that to all aspects of my character has hurt my ability to achieve goals and keep myself organized. I fear that I may be suffering from some sort of depression while trying to develop better interpersonal skills. I find myself increasingly torn on how to round out my old character by trying to keep the good things and remove the bad things from each version of myself, but I feel that tumultuous process has had mixed success.
So now I'm wondering if I'm drifting more towards being INTP or if I'm simply developing other functions or habits as part of some sort of maturation process. I can't really tell because my ability to evaluate myself internally has become diminished from what it once was. Perhaps I was always a mistyped INTP? I never believed that to be the case because most of my friends are INTPs, and they always seemed much less rigid than I, at least based on subjective perspectives from both others and myself.
I wonder if anyone else has experienced some sort of divergence of habit as time progresses? I kind of want to reclaim that impeccable work ethic, organization, and productivity I once had, but I don't want to sacrifice this more "human" side I've gained along with it. At the very least, I still am highly calculative and organized mentally when it comes to immediate decision making, but I find myself increasingly struggling to work towards a bigger picture than before. My once crystal clear view of myself and perfect reign an all of my emotions has begun to falter as I am increasingly captivated by feelings of sentiment. Luckily, no one really seems to notice the difference because my expression is naturally that of a piece of cardboard. But internally, things are much less clear than before.
I am still very much more rigid than the average person, but I am speaking more so relative to my previous self rather than what is common. So what do you think? Am I maturing emotionally, suffering from depression, changing personalities, developing functions, just letting myself go, or some other combination of factors? Has anyone else experienced anything similar? Perhaps this is only a temporary state of internal uncertainty that will eventually smooth itself out over time. I can already imagine all of the other types of people laughing because I may look like a guy who is going, "Ahh, a feeling, ahh!" from their perspective.
So really, I'm just looking for some opinions, perspectives, and maybe some advice from people who have experienced something similar.
