" The INFJ Was Not Born — They Were Broken Into One"

[meowzician]

This made my eyes tear up. I'll be processing this for a long, looooong time.

 

[John K]

A couple of thoughts @meowzician

This video is powerful stuff that will ring true for a lot of folks who are of INFJ type. It's particularly on the ball for those of us who struggle with how we relate to the world in which we find ourselves - it's full of resonances. It's good too, though, to consider the benefits of being INFJ as well as the struggles that many of us have in relating to the folks around us. For me the magic that most others don't seem to have is worth every penny of what it has cost - I hope this is true too for you and many other INFJ folks.

Something that I think is misleading is the title - speaking personally of course because it may be different for others. I didn't become of INFJ type because of my childhood, but rather my childhood was as it was because I was born of INFJ type. I was luckier than many of us because my mother was INFJ and my father probably INFP - my childhood home was a castle in which I could escape from the blue meanies outside.

 

[TomasM]

A couple of thoughts @meowzician

This video is powerful stuff that will ring true for a lot of folks who are of INFJ type. It's particularly on the ball for those of us who struggle with how we relate to the world in which we find ourselves - it's full of resonances. It's good too, though, to consider the benefits of being INFJ as well as the struggles that many of us have in relating to the folks around us. For me the magic that most others don't seem to have is worth every penny of what it has cost - I hope this is true too for you and many other INFJ folks.

Something that I think is misleading is the title - speaking personally of course because it may be different for others. I didn't become of INFJ type because of my childhood, but rather my childhood was as it was because I was born of INFJ type. I was luckier than many of us because my mother was INFJ and my father probably INFP - my childhood home was a castle in which I could escape from the blue meanies outside.

I wanted to say it but I held my tongue. You are truly unique in this instance as I have talked to many and never heard of another. It makes me wonder about the potential while also making me happy that someone made it through without the pain. It’s a blessing from the almighty in my mind.

 

[John K]

I wanted to say it but I held my tongue. You are truly unique in this instance as I have talked to many and never heard of another. It makes me wonder about the potential while also making me happy that someone made it through without the pain. It’s a blessing from the almighty in my mind.

I certainly had plenty of problems and grief with people my own age, particularly until I went to secondary school at 11 years old - until my mid teens really. That shaped very much how I developed. I think some INFJ folks hit problems because they get pulled away from their core type by social forces. At least I didn’t have that problem at home like many do, but I did outside my home. Of course I knew nothing about type in those days and not until many years afterwards, so this is all looking back with hindsight.

 

[Wyote]

I didn't wanna start a whole nature vs nurture debate, but I agree @John K
My childhood played out in many ways because of my innate disposition.
The ways I handled difficulties were also largely due to it, not the other way around.
It can go both ways though, certainly to some extent.

 

[Fruiteloop]

Chaotic emotional childhood I think happens to many people but we all do not start observing those around us.

I really think that it depends on the kind of child and the kind of chaos.

My mom told me that as a baby my dad slapped me on the head until I stopped crying. When I was six years old and saw a scarry movie he told me to shut up. That meant I had to observe things but it was not observation of what others did but only of everything because latter in my childhood my mom bought me lots of toys and let me watch tv all the time as a baby siter. So I became attached to those toys and cartoon characters. But mostly I saw that no one was around me and was all alone.

Today I went to the park at a church gathering and a little girl was disappointed to not win the prize. So I walked up to her parents and asked them to give her my pamphlet on library activities. Then I left. When I got home I teared up a little too.

What the video in the first post reminds me of the attachment style anxious avoidant.

My mother seemed to not show any emotions at all or only sometimes. I became clingy.

I never went to school until age 9 so I never went to kindergarten.

My brother and sister seem to be disorganized in attachment style.

Of course this can all blend together in different combinations.

 

[meowzician]

A couple of thoughts @meowzician

This video is powerful stuff that will ring true for a lot of folks who are of INFJ type. It's particularly on the ball for those of us who struggle with how we relate to the world in which we find ourselves - it's full of resonances. It's good too, though, to consider the benefits of being INFJ as well as the struggles that many of us have in relating to the folks around us. For me the magic that most others don't seem to have is worth every penny of what it has cost - I hope this is true too for you and many other INFJ folks.

I'm actually extremely happy to be INFJ.

I have this funny sense that events, either world events or local, are going to inevitably take a twist that will require my direct involvement in some small way. I have this funny sense that everything I have gone through in my life has prepared me for this moment. Perhaps not in an inevitable "destiny" way, but certainly in the "right place, right time" way.

The intuition is so strong that I literally made a private appointment with a friend who is a psychiatrist to ask if I were developing delusions of grandeur. If I was losing it, I needed him to be honest with me so that I could put the brakes on before things spun out of control. After listening to me for a long while, he told me, "This isn't delusion. This is you rising to the occasion."

We talked a lot about the traumas I experienced as a child. While the traumas are not okay, while they will never be okay, they have forged me into the person I am today. And honestly, I really like who I have become. I have become the person I always wanted to be.

He talked to me a lot about my woundedness being like my secret weapon, how quite often it is a person's painful experiences that drive them to take action. It was their encounters with injustice that motivated MLK Jr and Gandhi. The trick is to harness the hurt in a healthy way. And he said that was exactly what I was doing, and that it showed depth, not illness.

Something that I think is misleading is the title - speaking personally of course because it may be different for others. I didn't become of INFJ type because of my childhood, but rather my childhood was as it was because I was born of INFJ type. I was luckier than many of us because my mother was INFJ and my father probably INFP - my childhood home was a castle in which I could escape from the blue meanies outside.

I get it. I'm quite alright with their observations not being true for every INFJ.

 

[meowzician]

I certainly had plenty of problems and grief with people my own age, particularly until I went to secondary school at 11 years old - until my mid teens really. That shaped very much how I developed.

I make no claim to being a genius, but I was smart enough to know quite a few who were. They sometimes shared with me the unique problems they had.

I think some INFJ folks hit problems because they get pulled away from their core type by social forces. At least I didn’t have that problem at home like many do, but I did outside my home. Of course I knew nothing about type in those days and not until many years afterwards, so this is all looking back with hindsight.

None of my traumas had anything to do with family. I was actually extremely lucky to have been born into a home where I knew I was loved. My parents had a kind and stable relationship, and they provided a structured home where you could relax knowing where all the boundaries were. The only kink was that they were all thinkers, and I was the feeler who didn't fit in. My parents worried that I would be led by my feelings and end up in trouble.

 

[meowzician]

I never went to school until age 9 so I never went to kindergarten.

Homeschooled?

 

[Fruiteloop]

Homeschooled?

yes,

When our grandmother got Alzheimer's my mother was left alone on the ranch so moved in with her sister my aunt in the city.

Currently my mother has the same condition now.

 

[meowzician]

yes,

When our grandmother got Alzheimer's my mother was left alone on the ranch so moved in with her sister my aunt in the city.

Currently my mother has the same condition now.

OMGosh, I'm so very sorry. My mom had dementia for years before she finally died of a common UTI that she was unable to communicate. All I can say is that I've watched a million scary movies, but never experienced horror until her final years.

 

[Akar]

This made my eyes tear up. I'll be processing this for a long, looooong time.

I watched the whole video. Interesting. If you're up for talking about it, I'd like to know what struck you so deeply about it?
For example, I suffer from epilepsy, my mother has two autoimmune diseases, etc... So, my childhood wasn't exactly a walk in the park. Yet, despite everything I went through back then, I never thought environmental factors were what made me this way. As someone else mentioned, it's more about my intrinsic nature. The obstacles I faced along the way didn't just steer me; they forged me.
And trust me, I've been through some stuff.
From my perspective, reducing the development of the mind solely to environmental factors is a bit hard to swallow, don't you agree?
I don't know, pinning everything solely on environmental factors while excluding others seems quite reductive to me. It’s not a criticism or an absolute truth, just my point of view.
Childhood traumas forge a wide spectrum of personalities that, regardless of MBTI logic, can be categorized as either functional or dysfunctional within the social fabric. So, in my opinion, we first need to distinguish between functional and dysfunctional personalities before tying them to MBTI nomenclature

-Giammarco
.

 

[meowzician]

From my perspective, reducing the development of the mind solely to environmental factors is a bit hard to swallow, don't you agree?

I wonder if there is ANYTHING in life that is the result of environment alone or DNA alone. I watched this set of Stanford University recorded lectures on Behavioral Biology by Dr Robert Sapolsky (they are available on YouTube). I came away from them reeling from the knowledge of just how many different factors DO influence behavior. There's no such thing as a cake with only one ingredient.

I watched the whole video. Interesting. If you're up for talking about it, I'd like to know what struck you so deeply about it?

What actually struck me hard enough to motivate sharing the video here was its synchronicity with other things going on in my life. I share a bit of this in post #7. Specifically, it has only been mere days since I had a long talk with a personal friend who is a psychiatrist, and the direction he took the conversation was that it was my childhood traumas that were a significant factor in forging me into the idealist I am today and prepared me for the important work I am about to begin.

It's going to seem like I'm about to go off on a tangent, but trust me this is going to circle back to the video.

Probably an INFJ forum is the only place where I can freely say that I can see extraordinary visions inside my head, often of the future. Right now, the world is spinning down again into an extremely ugly time, but I have been expecting it, and preparing for it.

I know we are all taught that time is a line, but so often I get the very uncanny feeling that it's not a line at all but a spiral. And as it spirals around, things from the past bleed into the present. History repeats, but never the same way twice. Right now there are so many echos of the 1930s that it is chilling. But there are significant differences this time around. This time around, the St Louis will be able to dock in Israel. And who could ever have imagined that it would be the heinous tyrant who is protecting the Jews from danger? Sheesh Louis, I don't think even the most prescient INFJ could have seen that one coming.

In our troubled times, there are *so many* groups at risk in nations all around the world. In my own nation alone, the US, the troubles are overwhelming, from demonization of immigrants to a resurgence of various forms of sexual oppression to the undermining of the very constitution that has, until now, kept us free. It is going to take a very complex reaction, and those fighting the darkness (I'm INFJ, can I say darkness here without being labeled dramatic? LOL) will be fighting on many, many different fronts. But the various movements will connect like a web. Can you see it?

Each of us in here will have a choice--what will our part be? [Sound booth, please roll "We are the World.] And I'm not saying that this room houses a Gandhi or MLK (although it may). But in times like this, INFJ's are uniquely suited to respond and galvinize. And honestly, even a very small role (like mine) is never insignificant. It's like a math equation that takes up the entire board--change just one tiny number, and you have changed the entire equation. I am already curious to see the different directions each of us on this forum will take.

I know the role I will play. I am amazingly in just the right time and place. [Putting on my Blues Brothers sunglasses] I'm on a "mission from God," -- to help preserve the Jewish people, so that we not only survive the present rise in antisemitism, but thrive despite it. There is not going to be another holocaust, not on my watch.

Everything, everything that has happened in my life has prepared me for this. And @Akar the FOUNDATION of that preparation was the 1-2-3 punch of traumas I experienced between ages 7 and 10. That is what my psychiatrist friend is telling me. In fact, the moment in the video that I found most insightful was when he said that all the pain, "is not a wound. It's a foundation."

Those traumas took my better than average empathy and turned it into empathy on steroids. The hypervigilance that I developed to survive those years has made me into a data gathering supercomputer that now has the necessary information to make sound predictions and envision the necessary solutions. The previously dysfunctional social anxiety created by those years has left in me the rather unique ability to gauge the room and know exactly how best to reach others. The pain of those experiences has smelted my sense of justice and compassion into a moral lattice made of steel--it is my unwavering compass for the days to come.

That is how I see myself. But I'm always second guessing, often experiencing terrible doubts. What the video did for me? VALIDATION. The video reassured me, "Meowzician, you are not imagining this. You are not a nut case. You are not twisted. Your perceptions of the world and of yourself are not distorted--they are clear. You are far from a psycho. You are a 64 year old INFJ that has come of age. You thought you were an ugly duckling, but look at your reflection in the water--you are a swan."

See I told you I'd bring it back home to the video. LOL

 

[Wyote]

Life is definitely a weird spiral prismatic parallelogram octagon dome

 

[TomasM]

I wonder if there is ANYTHING in life that is the result of environment alone or DNA alone.

I've been studying the DNA side and I do believe there is a genetic component. I've identified one that is specific. DNA is the lattice that gives shape to the spring. Environment is what tightens the spring and makes it ready to expand. A traumatic childhood makes the spring strong and more capable as long as it doesn't break during those formative years. Overcoming a break is possible but that kind of wound can be quite paramount and leave a scar that blurs our mirrored reflection of the self and family.

Among the NF's I have found that there is a level of hypersexuality and it can be seen all around this forum. There is also ADHD and even a mild level of autistic traits - though many don't always recognize it in their self. These characteristics give an edge to our idealism and it can break in some incredibly good and bad ways and that's why we see outburst when a personal ideal is breached.

These are only a few of the characteristics I have identified yet not all apply equally to everyone.

 

[meowzician]

DNA is the lattice that gives shape to the spring. Environment is what tightens the spring and makes it ready to expand.

That is an exceptionally appropot metaphor!

A traumatic childhood makes the spring strong and more capable as long as it doesn't break during those formative years. Overcoming a break is possible but that kind of wound can be quite paramount and leave a scar that blurs our mirrored reflection of the self and family.

I believe I began life as an exceptionally resilient child. The deck was actually stacked in my favor being born into an incredibly loving, well structured family living in a safe neighborhood. I was extremely gregarious--all my report cards note that I talked way too much LOL. My family still speaks of how I was such a charming, intelligent, imaginative child that people were mesmerized by me. The molestation that happened when I was seven was terrible, but in the end, I had the insight and the strength to walk away from it all on my own (and I'm very proud of that). The sepsis that I barely survived at age 9 changed my entire personality to one that was quiet, reflective, and more than just a little sensitive, flipping more than just a few epigenetic switches, but I was still incredibly functional.

It was fifth grade that finally broke me, and I am not exaggerating the brokeness. As I told my psychiatrist friend, THAT wound will never heal.

There is also ADHD

Check!

and even a mild level of autistic traits -

Check! Especially, perhaps, the highly masking sort.

And I would suggest probably a disproportionate amount of anxiety and depression. In my case, bipolar disorder.

These are only a few of the characteristics I have identified yet not all applied equally to everyone.

I think we are very much on the same page here.

 

[Akar]

Forgive me @meowzician , I didn't mean to sound inquisitive; I’m just genuinely curious to understand how trauma correlates with character formation.
The way I see it, not everyone processes trauma in the same way, so it follows that besides environmental factors, there must be other elements that contribute to the construction of the psyche and character. For example, if you take a sample of 10 people who have all experienced the same trauma, you'll notice they might show some common 'symptoms.' Yet, the way each of them processes it differs radically.
And that’s where I’m posing my question,not specifically to you, but in general: is there really any scientific study that predicts the emergence of an INFJ personality type? To me, as of now, it doesn't exist.
Anyway, I’m glad you’ve found your mission in life; it’s important to have a purpose

I've been studying the DNA side and I do believe there is a genetic component.

As for the genetic correlation, I agree with you up to a certain point. In the sense that I see it in a broader way: in my opinion, a lot stems from the structure of our mind and how we react to our first traumas. This is where my analysis is focused, but I'm glad you've found such deep correlations in it

-Giammarco

 

[meowzician]

Forgive me @meowzician , I didn't mean to sound inquisitive; I’m just genuinely curious to understand how trauma correlates with character formation.
The way I see it, not everyone processes trauma in the same way, so it follows that besides environmental factors, there must be other elements that contribute to the construction of the psyche and character. For example, if you take a sample of 10 people who have all experienced the same trauma, you'll notice they might show some common 'symptoms.' Yet, the way each of them processes it differs radically.
And that’s where I’m posing my question,not specifically to you, but in general: is there really any scientific study that predicts the emergence of an INFJ personality type? To me, as of now, it doesn't exist.

I actually agree with you. But the fact that people can respond to similar traumas in different ways does not negate that those traumas significantly impacted their psychology.

Think of trauma as analogous to vinegar. If you add vinegar to milk, you end up with workable culinary substitute for buttermilk. If you add vinegar to baking soda, you end up with a fun, frothing mess. If you are cleaning house and accidently add vinegar to bleach, you find yourself breathing in chlorine gas. So the results of similar traumas (vinegar) vary depending on what you are adding the vinegar TO (genetics, epigenetics, etc). But notice, if you DON'T add the vinegar, you don't get any of those reactions. IOW, environment DOES matter. It matters a great deal.

Anyway, I’m glad you’ve found your mission in life; it’s important to have a purpose

 

[Akar]

Your chemical analogy is particular, but in my opinion, I believe it creates a paradox: if trauma is the agent that determines the psyche in an absolute way (like vinegar changing milk), then 'choice' or 'free will' in the process of healing from trauma do not exist. But if there is no free will, how can a person 'find a mission in life' or 'be responsible for their own purpose'? Either we are chemical machines determined by the past, or we are beings capable of transcending trauma. I see it this way, however, I respect your point of view, even if it does not reflect my way of seeing things

-Giammarco

 

[meowzician]

Your chemical analogy is particular, but in my opinion, I believe it creates a paradox: if trauma is the agent that determines the psyche in an absolute way (like vinegar changing milk), then 'choice' or 'free will' in the process of healing from trauma do not exist. But if there is no free will, how can a person 'find a mission in life' or 'be responsible for their own purpose'? Either we are chemical machines determined by the past, or we are beings capable of transcending trauma. I see it this way, however, I respect your point of view, even if it does not reflect my way of seeing things

-Giammarco

Akar, I am the very first one to say I don't have all the answers. Life is full of paradox. I no longer believe in free will. But my sense of meaning has only grown and grown.

And you need never worry about disagreeing with me. Not only do I not mind it when others disagree, it is those who disagree that I find the most fascinating. They are the ones who challenge my thinking, and THAT is what brings growth. If the only people I listened to were those who agreed with me, I would stagnate.

You are a valuable new friend.