I ranted a little bit and posted memes about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator earlier last week. I have the tendency to misrepresent my emotional reactions by either exaggerating them or understating them, so I thought I'd take a more honest approach to why I feel the way I do about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and what's really going on in my head.
Watch out, everyone, I have my keyboard ready, and thoughts are about to flow from the typing of letters in words and sentences. That sounds a lot less impressive than it should. Or maybe it isn't impressive at all... let's see how it turns out.
My troubles with this system of classifying personalities began several days before I was even interested in it. INTJ is a personality type that tends to see the majority of the world as less disciplined, less competent, and frequently less intelligent, or so everyone else seems to think. Or perhaps they do. Whatever the case, they like to make memes about the things that annoy them, rather than what makes them happy. This makes sense, since emotions are not something they consider worth consulting when making important decisions.
So not knowing this, I'm trolling through my Google Plus one day, and I see one such meme receives a plus-one from a friend of mine. It wouldn't have bothered me except that it didn't match the way I perceived this person. And being the INFP that I am (though I didn't know it then), I just had to do something to alert them to my shocked state. I did so passive aggressively, by reposting the meme and fussing about it. Long story short, she responded very calmly and rationally, probably without suspecting that I was really even upset with her.
And I was sore embarrassed.
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| Before I get asked, this is not the meme referenced. |
So I finally did my research, and agonized over what the heck I must be. I thought INFJ, then ISFJ, then I actually took an online test, and I got INFP. The description and breakdown of the cognitive functions was pretty descriptive of me, though the type is far more varied and nuanced than the site lets on. It praised the empathy and compromise that INFPs were capable of without really addressing the darker side of the type. As empathetic and compromising as INFPs can become, they can also develop in another direction: one of manipulation and arrogance. I deduced early on that my intolerance of a pharisaic mindset was inherently hypocritical to some degree, though I dreamily relished the fact that I had a four-letter acronym to tell me who I really was.
So that was my introduction to the MBTI.
Within a few weeks I was obsessed with the four-letter acronyms and fell into the trap of dividing everyone into a set of 16 tribes of personalities. I was basically sorting everyone into the list of friends/enemies/neutrals based on four dichotomies--Introversion/Extroversion, iNtuition/Sensing, Feeling/Thinking, and Judging/Perceiving.
That was the mire of yesteryear. I've outgrown that school of thought, or at least I hope I have.
Knowing what I do about my personality type has guided my inspirational thoughts more than I'd like to admit, but it gives context to why I find it difficult to enjoy the moment when the moment is happy. I'll elaborate on that in a bit.
I frequently wonder if my behavior has driven others away from interacting with me, mostly online. While with some people I have nothing to fear, despite their absence, others are dropping offline. Objectively it's for the same reason: real life presses them into action away from the keyboard. But inside, I still wonder if it might have been different, had I not behaved so stupidly.
The hierarchy of my cognitive functions provides the solace of an explanation for this, though it is always short-lived, if I feel the solace of it at all.
Introverted feeling (Fi) is at the top, which dictates to some degree that I am guided by a subjective set of standards. In my case, harmony is a high priority, and I frequently find that this results in indolence. Until recently, I have been opposed to commenting on the competence or intelligence of others, and I frequently do not voice my objections to personal choices I consider to be immoral or self-destructive.
The real worry begins at the Auxiliary function of extraverted intuition (Ne), a form of perceiving by linking as many ideas as possible into not only one system, but multiple possible systems. Of course, someone left the web to work on their life's work, but I can't see their life's work. What if that's an excuse to avoid me? I can know one thing and still worry that it might be something else, or that the obvious explanation is part of a bigger system of causes.
Then there's the silent killer: tertiary introverted sensing (Si). Sensing perceives that which is real and tangible. And introverted sensing in particular tends to live in the past. When it works properly, it is used to decide whether a past experience or solution matches a present situation. When it loops with the dominant introverted feeling (mentioned two paragraphs prior), there is usually a lot of regret being processed--the past, often in the form of unpleasant feelings associated with a particular event, is being brought into the present and projected into the mind here and now. It usually happens during times of quiet and contemplation. This is the Fi-Si loop, and it's my bane.
I avoid feeling strong emotions, and I think that is because it hurts so much to feel them. I can't always be happy, and so when happiness shows up, I know it will go away. If the past has taught me anything, it's that happiness never lasts as long as you'd like it to. Frequently, it vanishes when the good thing leaves. As for pain, anger, and resentment, I can never get rid of them quickly enough. And once they leave, regret takes their place, staring me in the face, exerting its dominance while I look to the side in shame.
I feel like there was going to be more to this. Maybe the next time I pick up my laptop for the purpose of blogging instead of the normal recreation to which my computer usage is often limited.
Oh, and I made these memes with Mematic.
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