Oh Smile, sometimes your posts leave me speechless. You touch me so profoundly that it's akin to healing.

When I was studying that, they tried to fit everyone in one category all the time and some people fit different categories at different times.

Reminds me of the old "fitting the square peg into the round hole" scenario...and the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" could fit in here too.

For me personally, as an INF, the workplace was always a difficult place to fit into. I could never figure out how to fit into other people's logic-based expectations of me. I was a loyal, hard-working enthusiastic-to-the-mission worker, but didn't recognize the giftedness of my "INF difference" in the workplace. And so I would do everything I could think of (without compromising my values) to "chameleonize" myself into belonging. It was a survival instinct, I guess. INF's can't stand controversy or disharmony, so we do tend to become peacemakers and "bridges".

The result was that I WAS a peacemaker in every workplace, and became a valuable team member, but very few people at work ever truly got to know me well. Or so it felt, because I was forever having to repress my intuitive insights and vision, because I didn't know how to express them without being emotion-based, and so just hid that side of myself.

The other result was that I frequently burned-out from all of that biting my tongue and repressing who I was in order to fit in better.

Knowing God made me as I am because my weaknesses fit the strengths of others in the huge beautiful jigsaw puzzle of His creation helps too.

That IS powerful imagery! Very empowering.

[ September 20, 2005, 07:42 PM: Message edited by: Eagle Heart ]