Shutting down/retreating when stressed or upset?

I shut down socially and retreat within myself.

I think this is absolutely fine. I do it myself and I think time alone to process is a necessary part of healing.

What I would say about it though is, be purposeful about how you use this time. It's like you're checking out from the world, but it's for a reason.

When I do this, I spend about 20% of the time moping and feeling sorry for myself. Venting to a trusted friend helps. Emotional eating? I do that. I try to do this in the early stages so it's out of the way. Venting makes me feel better and gives some feedback about the situation to help you cope with it. Emotional eating always results in me feeling like crap so I normally just pick one thing now and go for it.

Use the rest of the time to determine how you are going to get yourself out of this state. It's shit to be there. It's a problem, so problem solve. That's one thing we can do well. The goal is to identify the root cause, plug the gaps with corrective or preventative measures and for those things that you cannot prevent or plug, change your thinking so you can accept what has happened and move on.
As you familiarise yourself with an effective process, work towards lessening the duration of time you need to retreat. Get more efficient at it.

I recently had something happen where I couldn't retreat from the world, enact my problem solving plan immediately (despite knowing exactly what needed to be done), or think my way out of it.
These tools failed me in this situation so I had to talk it out, I could tell by how unstable I felt that this was going to take some getting over so I needed a proactive response.
I told loved ones, felt sad with them and allowed myself to accept their sympathy (not pity, there's a difference). I listened to their advice and their stories and realized I'm not alone in this.
It's been profoundly helpful to do this even though in any normal situation I would have tried to avoid people at all.

/r/intj Thread