Huh. Interesting. I did this too when the forum initially typed me as ENTP.
Do you think you still do, to any extent?
This is a big problem that I notice and I don't know how to help people shake out of it.
Ultimately it's up to the individual to create their own path of self growth out of this I suppose.
I think part of the issue is when people 'type
away' from the presumed INFJ baseline of the forum, which seems to make them feel
forced (or 'want to', I'm not sure) to play up their differences. It's something like a process of 'outgrouping', whereby the individual that is outgrouped doubles down on their 'special identity', because
that identity is not
entirely rejected. I've seen this happen with minority nationalities in a group of majority nationality - so the 'one American' in a group of Brits will become overly aware of their nationality and will suddenly start behaving in more 'stereotypically American' ways, if their 'Americanity' (a nice absurd word, lol) is over-emphasised by the group. If you tell people that they don't belong in some way, how are they supposed to react? By comparison, maintaining the ingroup identity protects somewhat against this stereotyping if the sense of belonging and acceptance is strong enough - if not, I suppose ingrouped people also autostereotype.
I do wonder if this will happen to
@soulareclipse if she decides that she's 'more INTP' - will we observe a sudden change in personality expression?
I just read a series of screen shots from Tumblr. It's really long, earnest, and makes an overbearing point, so I won't repost it, but it did make me think about establishing boundaries with children. The post discussed how the person's mother made it clear that the child did not have to put up with situations like bullies, while the other child's mom made it clear that it was best to just endure the situation until it was over.
As an aside, in my case I was raised to believe that I was inherently dangerous by my mother, because my father had been violent, so I was absolutely terrified of hurting people. She screamed in my face often 'don't you ever hit a woman!' and thought that she was making sure that my 'evil violent genes' weren't expressed - to this day she believes that I'm not violent because of 'her training' which is very hurtful. She aborted a second child with my father for this very reason, which she kept secret from everyone. I don't think she's a bad person, but I do recognise the damage that can be done when people act out in fear.
So of course, when I was bullied, my response was to stand there and stoically take whatever assault was aimed at me, because I was so terrified that I might hurt someone else. I didn't
want to hurt
anything, it just wasn't in my bones, but the fear that 'deep down somewhere' I might be violent stopped me from even defending myself. I dud this until I was about 13-15, and I started fighting back. Funnily enough, the first time I ever hit anyone back, I broke his nose with one punch and my mum leapt on this fact to prove that she was 'right'. It was a
conscious rejection of my mother's teaching because I knew it was wrong. It's very strange because we are told that when confronted with danger we have a 'fight or flight' response, but my response was 'stand there and take it' until I trained myself out of it. Perhaps not surprisingly, it was around this age that I lost respect for my mother, because I felt like I had to 'undo' a lot of the bullshit that she'd taught me (including that men are naturally 'bad', &c.).
Interestingly, because I was bullied for being a 'Paki' (my skin is darker than most English), even though I'm White European, there was no 'community support' to teach me how to deal with this kind of bullying. My mother told me that they were calling me that because I had 'ground in muck' - i.e. I was 'dirty', which predictably led to me scrubbing myself until raw and bleeding trying to get the 'muck' out.
This means that I've
always had the experience of being rejected in some way by the communities that I belong to, either because I don't belong (negative reasons) or because I stand out in some way (positive reasons). I've never just been allowed to 'be' within a community; always been singled out, either for good or bad, and now I wonder what effect that has had on my personality and development.
I suppose in the context of this thread, I wonder what effect that's had on the development of my 'boundaries', which I take to be quite strong. Sure I might 'context shift', but often it turns out that I find myself openly disagreeing with groups that I'm part of, and I've very often found myself in the situation where
everybody in the group is disagreeing with me. In the past this was mostly because everyone was a racist, and I wasn't, but now other issues force me to kick myself out of whatever group I thought I belonged to.
This isn't a deliberate process as far as I can see - it just develops by itself. So the poor INFJ becomes integrated into the other's illness and if the situation stays unchanged, the other will never look within themselves for a way forward, but only to you. In fact, doing what a lot of INFJs do naturally can actually make the situation worse. When I had to erect my boundary, my poor wife was forced to withdraw the transference, which was pretty traumatic for both of us. It was the right thing to do, because it caused her to take much more responsibility in her own mind for her own way out of the problem, and that I could support 100%. I can see now that good trained therapists take great care to avoid transference developing in their patients because it stops any chance of a way out, and can screw up the therapist too.
)
