<p>This hits close to home. As an [url=<a href=“http://personalityjunkie.com/the-intp/]INTP[/url”>INTP Personality Type: In-Depth Profile & Analysis]INTP[/url</a>], all I have ever cared about in life is to understand the world as abstractly and thoroughly as I possibly can, and to help other people understand it better. Until college, I was never challenged in school, and when I discovered challenges on my own, I gave up on them too easily because TV and video games were too tempting. Today, I have a short attention span, I am in a perpetual state of procrastination, and I experience sudden and severe bouts of self-hatred, anxiety, insomnia, and suicidal ideation. Since a year or two ago, when I encounter a difficult intellectual problem, I often become inexplicably furious and overcome by sensations of tension and heat throughout my body, rather than the healthy euphoria I remember feeling as a teenager when I encountered difficult problems (at least before abandoning them). Would I have become any different if I had received more encouragement at a young age to embrace difficult problems and to think outside the box, and if I had been trained in methodical problem solving methods, and if I had been given a foundation for self confidence?</p>
<p>It is one thing to talk about gifted children as a national resource; it is another thing to empathize with those individuals who “fall through the cracks” and to understand how early mental developments affect their emotional lives as adult human beings.</p>