I've always been someone who teases others, is overly sarcastic, and says insensitive things more often than I would like.
That being said, I've been told I'm very nice by enough people that I've finally accepted it.
When I think back (often when "looping") to many of the times I was extremely nice to others, despite the reason, I realize that it blew up in my face. I was taken advantage of, the person used it to make themselves look better and/or make me look worse... my net "position" in the situation was basically lowered. There are very few people that have generally expressed any sort of positive response to it (and sometimes people act really weird or guilty about it), and that can be frustrating, because I'm not necessarily nice "by default".
I have a few hypotheses:
- I've mostly surrounded myself with IxTx types my entire life: they often have difficulty expressing appreciation to others for the things others do, and they also may not empathize as much if they (unintentionally or intentionally) take advantage of this.
- There's very rarely inherently an upside to being nice; we do it because it feels right... a superego thing.
- I'm "bad" at being nice. I don't smile enough when I'm doing it, I don't make a big deal out of it (except for when ranting on the internet
), etc.
I don't really
know why I go out of my way to make others good, help them out of difficult situations, etc. I end up exerting a lot of energy and time to do so, but I continue to do it. I often think about just focusing more on myself, which would potentially be a net benefit for my self-development in my own life, but I always fall into these patterns of helping others and then end up worse than I started. I start to think that this world was made for assholes.
Thoughts? In my experience, INFJs are some of the nicest people around, and they may actually be a perfect example of the kind of people that will help others to the detriment of themselves (except for the Hitler sub-type).
