LIFE AS AN INF (Introvert Intuitive Feeler): Part 1 of 3

Excerpts from Chapter 19

Despite many years of psychoanalysis, we were never really able to completely eradicate my lifelong problem of feeling like a social misfit. I had learned to get along "out there," but only by becoming an expert chameleon, quickly adapting myself to the social environment in which I found myself at any given time. This didn’t mean that I deliberately compromised my spiritual or social values; it just meant that in a quiet, introspective milieu, I was quiet and introspective. And in a noisy extroverted crowd, I became (or tried to be) noisy and extroverted, although it never felt completely comfortable. I would come home utterly drained and strangely dissatisfied by this vague feeling of not having belonged.

My inability to fit in anywhere baffled me. What baffled me even more was my constant craving for solitude, despite being paradoxically attracted to these social gatherings. Even while I craved to belong somewhere, and somehow learned to expertly adapt myself into belonging, in the back of my mind I would be counting the minutes until I could be back home, alone in my own space. Much of my life’s struggle has involved this constant bouncing between a profound craving for solitude and an equally profound yearning for a healthy social life.

I could never understand that craving for solitude and grew to see it as a major flaw in myself. It seemed to render me socially inept and so completely unlike everyone else who appeared to be able to cope so much better than I ever did out there in the real world.

Even now, that struggle continues to dominate my life. With severe fatigue added to the mix, it’s not so much of a struggle, since the exhaustion pretty much determines what I’m capable of doing on any given day. The relentless calling to withdraw into solitude has become even stronger since my latest breakdown in February 2002. It’s inexplicable, this driving force that calls me to take time out, to read, write, listen, pray, think, be…time out to do absolutely nothing at all.

It has been my lifelong experience that most people, (including my own self), cannot fathom that profound, driving need for solitude. Some have misinterpreted my withdrawals as being anti-social, unfriendly, moody or even selfish and snobbish. I had often second-guessed myself and misinterpreted it that way as well, until Dr. Q [my awesome therapist] was able to reach in past my blind confusion and help me "see the light.”

When I first sat down in his office I was lost, broken, exhausted, nonexistent and utterly unable to function socially. We had to very carefully extricate me from a toxic chaos of internal wreckage and deal with an assortment of old issues that hadn’t been adequately dealt with before.

Our most common ground became the Myers-Briggs approach. [I won’t be explaining the specifics about Myers-Briggs here…for background information, see *** at the end of this post.] At one time in my life I had been very interested in Jung, and had done in-depth studying into the Myers-Briggs' personality types as a tool to understanding how/why humans interact with each other the way they do. Although I had been able to comprehend it theoretically, and even apply it rather superficially to other people, it had never taken root enough for me to be able to connect any of it to my own self. Perhaps that had more to do with having become such an expert chameleon by then that I simply couldn’t find an authentic self to apply it to!

As we began using the Myers-Briggs model to try and untangle all of the chaos and internal wreckage, I again found it difficult to make that quantum leap from theory to personal comprehension, but we slaved away at it, trying to find “me” somewhere in all of that jargon.

The "aha" moment jumped out at me one day when he was describing some of the attributes of my personality type, which the tests revealed to be Introverted, Intuitive and Feeling (INF). Dr. Q was explaining that one of the strongest, most dominant traits of an INF was a constant craving for solitude.

As he continued to elaborate, I could actually feel the light bulb going on in my head. My mind swirled with the prospect that I could have been wrong about myself all these years. Was it possible that these "character flaws" were not signs of serious brokenness but actually legitimate qualities? Not things to be fixed, buried or eradicated, but bona fide characteristics that I could dare to embrace as being the real and gifted me?

I asked him my incredulous question, "Do you mean that it’s okay for me to NOT keep trying to fix these things, to look at these "flaws" as legitimate personality traits? If that’s true, then shouldn’t I be nurturing and cherishing them instead of fighting against them?"

He answered with great excitement as he saw the light come on in my eyes: "Please do.”

It was another amazing epiphany. Liberating. The end to 40 years of constantly putting myself down as being a social moron, trying and failing miserably to exorcise these flaws out of me when all of this time they were normal, legitimate and potentially beautiful characteristics of my core self – an Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling self I had never allowed to exist.

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*** References for Myers-Briggs Personality Type

A fairly simple explanation of Myers-Briggs: http://www.teamtechnology.co.uk/tt/t-articl/mb-simpl.htm

A more detailed explanation (and quick test): http://www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html

It’s best to take the long, official MBTI® ( Myers-Briggs Type Indicator ) test from a qualified professional. Most psychiatrists and psychologists, as well as career counsellors, should be able to administer it. To take the “quick” version of the Myers-Briggs test: http://www.humanmetrics.com/cgi-win/JTypes1.htm

For a comprehensive explanation of different types: http://typelogic.com/infj.html

For more info, simply type “Myers-Briggs” into any search engine and start browsing the results.

[ September 22, 2005, 10:37 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]