INFJ & sexual assault

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Neuropedia

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a few years ago, when I was 16, I was sexually assaulted twice within a few months, and abandoned by my best friend/boyfriend. I was very traumatized by both the assaults and the abandonment, and have since been unable to feel like anybody could love me. In relationships and friendships I always feel unloved and afraid of abandonment. Consequentially, I have stopped talking to most of my friends out of this fear,and incidents where I have felt abandoned (though to a smaller scale than when I was 16, it felt just as bad) and the ones I do talk to are the ones I love to much to not be in contact with, even though I don't feel that it is reciprocated. I am seeing a psychologist, however my fear of people only seems to worsen as I work through my memories.

I know the infj type is often seen as being sensitive, and I was wondering if my personality type is somehow related to my inability to heal from these experiences? any insight would be super helpful :)
 
Yes, I do think being INFJ could make such experiences more difficult given especially that, while male INFJs can get away with the "strong but silent type" persona in western society, female INFJs do not have an equivalent. So people are via societies expectations disposed to receive you poorly, which means rejection (worse for INTJ girls though), and it takes a lot of confidence to overcome this kind of disposition and reach out to people and interact with them.

Your problem is a problem of trust, and those are never easy regardless. I can't say that there is an easy way to feel accepted other than to actually be accepted and realize how good you actually are and that good people actually do exist even if most of them suck and will rip you apart given the opportunity. The more you try, the easier it gets.
 
I think experiences such as these are so complex and impacting that I'm not sure type can really explain our reactions to them. Although if you are a sensitive person (and many INFJs are) and in touch with your emotions, it will have an effect on how you process what has happened, as you've described here.

However, I think healing is more of an individual experience when it comes to deeply personal experiences, but maybe I am mistaken. I am glad to hear you are seeing a therapist and trying to find safe ground again. :) Take care of yourself and I hope you will feel safer and able to trust again, in time. :hug:
 
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i sometimes find it difficult to understand how major traumas can ever be processed by anyone who suffers them but i think this type is driven to assimilate experience over time and to move onward. you may never heal but you may accept what has happened and yourself as the changed person it has made you. if you refuse to lay down but instead continue to acknowledge your feelings and to get out of bed and go on with your life i believe you will become a stronger more compassionate more capable and bigger person.
 
I'm sorry to hear of your experiences, I hope you manage to come to terms with them and regain your confidence to empathise.

Now, because I'm an INTJ with a twisted sense of humour (how the other half lives), I saw the title of the thread and thought of this:

I will openly admit: I have yet to be sexually assaulted by an INFJ ): I fear I *might* be missing out.

Pun intended but absolutely no offence regarding your situation.
 
Ahem, throwing around that INTJ label again..

I also think that the age of the traumatic event(s) will play a part in your healing process. You were just beginning to feel your sense of what it was like to be a woman. Also, I found that the ages between 18 and about 25 were such a period of self-introspection. You are defining the person you want to be, making important life decisions and such during this age. The work you are facing in therapy is worth the effort. Events like you describe have lasting effects on someone and can creep into all your adult relationships/life if you let the pain fester. Best of luck.
 
Neuropedia said:
a few years ago, when I was 16, I was sexually assaulted twice within a few months, and abandoned by my best friend/boyfriend. I was very traumatized by both the assaults and the abandonment, and have since been unable to feel like anybody could love me. In relationships and friendships I always feel unloved and afraid of abandonment. Consequentially, I have stopped talking to most of my friends out of this fear,and incidents where I have felt abandoned (though to a smaller scale than when I was 16, it felt just as bad) and the ones I do talk to are the ones I love to much to not be in contact with, even though I don't feel that it is reciprocated. I am seeing a psychologist, however my fear of people only seems to worsen as I work through my memories.

I know the infj type is often seen as being sensitive, and I was wondering if my personality type is somehow related to my inability to heal from these experiences? any insight would be super helpful :)
Click to expand...



Hi. We have the same life.


I'm sorry you have to go
through this.
 
^^ I dunno whether INFJ has anything to do with it... but pretty much like sonya said, having it happen at that age range would make it a particularly nasty incident. People can have a (very) wide range of mental responses to sexual assault, but if you went the "don't think I can be loved" route (which is one of the common ones), being abandoned by your boyfriend shortly after would also make it more traumatic than usual.

Three years is really not a very long time to give yourself, when you're trying to work through something like that.
 
The cognitive processes that inform your type will influence how you engage with the process of healing and recovery, but I don't have a sense that being any type makes it more or less easy to accept, and move on with one's life, after sexual assault.

Also, given your age and the age at which your assaults occurred, my sense isn't that you have an inability to heal so much as the time betweenst is but a blink of the eye to the psyche and its timetable.

I was sexually assaulted when I was age 4, 15, and 17. I am 41 now. I am in a much better place than I was at 21, or 31, but even at 41, there is still an ache where there was once an open wound.


Namaste,
Ian
 
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