BEING INFJ IS NOT A WALK IN THE PARK
Frankly, personality types are not the be all and end all of anyone; it's a contributing factor that can come in handy at times, though.
If you've taken the MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and consistently come up INFJ, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about; if not, don't worry about it because you'll never in this life be able to understand (nobody can, so don't fret yourself about it) - all you can hope for is possibly getting a handle on what to expect from us.
One thing that is on my mind today is the concept of being able to 'read people'.
Someone once put it this way: 'These are the people that you can rarely fool any of the time.' Pretty sure that was a guy by the name of Joe Butt.
He was referring to what seems to be an instinctive ability to grasp, almost immediately, 'something' about the other person that tells us a great deal about that person. We don't know how we do it, so don't ask us. Even if we DID know, chances are we wouldn't be able to explain it. Even if we COULD explain it, chances are we wouldn't do it anyway for a couple of reasons: 1) we don't think you'd be able to follow our explanation, and 2) we don't really care all that much whether you understand it or not, or even whether WE understand it or not. It just is and that's that.
Right off the top of my head I can think of a few situations in which this ability has come in handy. Of course at the TIME I had not the faintest idea that this particular function was at work. I just knew that there was something about a person that made me either trust them or want to run immediately to some safe place. When it kicks in that strong that fast, it's most often someone I really do NOT want to be around. Most often it turns out to be a wise choice to leave the area immediately because chances are that person will harm me in some way, given the chance.
Quite honestly I have no idea why on earth anyone would want to harm another, aside from vengeance, but some just do.
At any rate, I've been told more than once that there's something about me that makes others want to either help me or harm me; there doesn't seem to be much in the middle. Maybe it's a universal type of thing, this whatever it is that we have that impacts people that way; I wouldn't know, but I reckon that if it was common there would be no need to comment on it - so maybe it's just us. Or maybe it's just me ...
The kicker about this whole 'reading people' thing is that after finding ourselves consistently right, we trust our instincts - and then all too often we choose to give someone the benefit of the doubt ANYWAY, because we really do want to believe in that person, and find ourselves getting burned yet again.
Gullibity isn't something you'd expect to find in people who instinctively KNOW when someone's gulling them but there you have it. It just is. It seems to be a paradox, but the desire to believe that the best in the other person will rise to the occasion is so strong that we CHOOSE to gamble on it. Mostly we lose, but once in a while it works, just enough to keep us gambling - which is what gambling is all about in the first place, sigh.
Another kicker of this particular 'gift' is that we're incredibly vulnerable to whatever's going on within the people around us. We pick up on it automatically, can't help it because we're hard-wired that way, and it impacts us accordingly. We don't just 'pick up on' something; we have a tendency to 'pick it up', absorb it, and shoulder it internally somehow - so we end up carrying an emotional load that's not really exactly our own.
Again, it's not an easy thing to define; you either 'get it' or you don't and that's okay. We don't expect people to understand us, not really; what makes it okay is that WE understand YOU. We know that nobody (usually) deliberately sets out to load us down with a lot of emotional distress. It's just there. And because it's there, you can bet your bottom dollar that we're liable to pick it up and carry it; not that we do it on purpose - we're not a bunch of masochists, you know.
We don't CHOOSE the phenomenon, but it's like a magnet. If there are emotional pins, or needles, or nails, or knives, or spears, or machetes floating around they just fly right into us, whether they're aimed at us or not, and it's not exactly a pleasant sensation.
Self-preservation being another instinct, it doesn't take us long to figure out that a little protection might be in order. We'll wrap ourselves in an impenetrable shield, or as impenetrable as we can make it. Otherwise the bombardment would destroy us.
That's one of the reasons you'll find us quite very hard to get to know very well.
Yes, we come across as aloof - we HAVE to be that way, or else we'd be open to every last pin, needle, knife, spear, and machete out there.
It's okay for you to go ahead and say well that's just weird and you're either making it up or you're crazy. It IS weird; I'm not making it up; and I'm not technically or literally crazy although I have a well-loved niece who used to call me Loopy on a regular basis. She was more technically and literally right than she thought, as my brain really does tend to function in 'loops', utilizing all four quadrants almost equally. That too is a mite unusual in this neck of the woods. Which is neither here nor there right now.
I was talking about intuition and 'reading people'.
There's another reason we work very hard to minimize or hide this particular trait: once people become aware of it, perhaps having seen it in action a time or two, they become altogether too self-conscious. One of my other nieces tells me, 'Quit reading my mind - it's creepy!' I've been asked, 'Can you read my mind?' or 'Are you reading my mind?'
No. I can't. No. I'm not.
The problem is that it can seem that way, and nobody really wants to hang around with someone THAT perceptive; I don't care how many people try to refute that statement - it's true and we all know it. So up go the shields and on go the masks.
No wonder it seems to be a common thing for INFJs to feel as though they're on stage when they're around other people.
Aloof may be a label that fits; phony does not.
This is going to sound like another paradox, but generally what you choose to see is what you're most likely to get; but what you do NOT choose to see, or what you CAN not see for whatever reason, is by far the larger part of who and what we are. The phrase 'what you see is what you get' does apply, but not in the way most people interpret it. It's a very small tip of a very large iceberg.
Make no mistake, and I can't emphasize this too much, what you DO see is without a doubt as honest and sincere as the day is long, and I'm talking about mid-summer in the Arctic here - VERY long days.
We do pick and choose what we allow to be observed, but we seem incapable of malicious deceit and abhor it to the point of being unwilling/unable to tolerate it.
And therein lies yet another of those paradox things. The very skills which are so vital to our self-survival are skills of camouflage.
We are maybe the most adaptable people on the face of the earth - to a degree.
Being able to read people comes in mighty handy when it comes to figuring out what is called for in any given situation.
The roles we choose to take on are not play-acting. They are legitimate aspects of our own inner selves that come to the fore when called upon and as circumstances dictate. The unremitting personal integrity that pervades us will not allow us to present a false face. Yet the roles we choose to adopt do not, or very rarely, represent the totality of what's in there.
While we will rarely, if ever, allow anyone full access to our own inner selves (I'm not sure we CAN), there's a funny kind of irony in being able to see through the posturings and contrived acts that others put on and seem to believe are utterly convincing.
Never ever EVER try to lie to us. Okay, you can lie to your heart's content. We might let you get away with it as most of the time it's no big deal - but we'll know, and whatever trust might have been building will be down the tubes in no time flat.
That's just the bottom line.
It's not like we go around reading people like books all the time; in fact more often than not we'll avoid having to do so every chance we get. But sometimes it's unavoidable, when the pins, needles, knives, spears, and machetes are literally filling the air around us, when our defenses are down because of fatigue or some other factor, or when those missiles ARE aimed at us, however cleverly the attacker thinks s/he has them concealed. We never forget that we CAN. Also, more frequently than we let on, we DO.
That can be intimidating for most people, but in reality it's not all that much of a much. Don't forget that we are basically ruled by our personal integrity; I would bet that finding INFJs who don't have a conscience would require searching the world over for a very long time.
Speaking of tips of icebergs ... this big long spiel that I've just pattered out is only just barely a measureable fraction of what's all in there.
Just so you know.
