LIFE AS AN INF (Introvert Intuitive Feeler): Part 2 of 3

(For background info on Myers-Briggs, please see *** at the end of this post)

Excerpts from Chapter 19

Through extensive reading and research, I managed to discover that my particular personality type, Introverted, Intuitive, Feeling (INF), is relatively rare, especially in Western culture. What that means is that the majority of people around me view and interpret the world in the total opposite way that I do...primarily through extroverted logic. Which doesn’t make my perspective wrong, it just makes it very different. And we all know that "different" isn’t easily understood or acceptable to those who are members of the comfortable majority.

My perspective on life comes from an innately emotion-based intuitiveness. Most people approach the events and world around them in a more physically concrete, analytical and logical way, which would make me appear to them to be coming from a strange left field with whacked-out emotionalism that would look out of sync with the logical norm. That is exactly how I had come to view my own self and the way I interacted (and reacted) in social situations. It would explain so much about the uncomfortable reactions of others to my emotion-based contributions to those early-years’ philosophical coffee-table discussions.

Dr. Q helped me to see that my way of interpreting my world isn’t wrong or flawed; it’s just different, coming from a less familiar, but just as valid, perspective than the majority of people around me. In order to process my world and the life events that touch my world, to identify and analyze their impact and implications, I’m wired to require – instinctively crave – internal (introverted) time…solitude. Time in which it appears I’m doing nothing, when in fact, my mind is channelling the information through my interpretation process.

All this time when I saw this craving for solitude to be a major socially crippling flaw, it in fact had always been my most powerful gift to others. It is what had enabled me to listen beyond words to people’s hearts, to empathize with their pain, to understand their silence when their pain was too deep to speak. My chameleon skills had actually been a gift to others, in that I was able to become present to their entire “being”, tuning not only into their words, but into their underlying pain and need for compassionate, listening presence.

Ironically, the very qualities that I most loved about myself had come from the very places I had most despised about myself and from within the character traits that had most baffled me. It was precisely the craved-for solitude that was empowering my profound desire (and ability) to become whatever someone in need most needed me to be for them at any given time.

My unique gifts of deep presence, compassion and heart-felt listening to others were coming from those deepest roots within me, which made those places akin to sacred ground.


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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/psychologists or 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, 10:38 AM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]