how did you feel about yourself before your found out

[think2much]

how'd you feel about yourself before you found out your personality type. I always believed i was werid. I never understood why i was so different from everyone. Never really appreciated for being different. When i was in college i took phycology 101 and really took interest reading INTP cause it was describing myself. After reading that I felt pretty good about myself. Like there's someone out there just like me(i know that sounds bit lame). I just assume i was crazy or had mental issues since i was rejected by the society.

 

[ThatGirl]

Always thought it was them against me, then realized no it is really them, then realized it doesn't matter.

 

[INTJ123]

ditto. I also found out it wasn't just teenager hormones and rebellion that was the cause of my behavior.

 

[Quinlan]

I was really disappointed when I found out the rest of the world are actually irreconcilably different and aren't just maladjusted versions of ISFP (me) that could potentially be "made right".

 

[poppy]

I thought I was weird and that there was something quite possibly wrong with me. And I thought I was an asshole for no reason at all.

Now I have an excuse

 

[paperoceans]

The same way I felt before the test.

 

[Virtual ghost]

In my cases nothing has truly changed expect the fact that I undrstand other people much better now.

 

[BlahBlahNounBlah]

Nothing changed about the way I see myself, but it enhanced my understanding of other people.

 

[WoodsWoman]

Terminally odd. I knew myself to be a loner and outsider - once I began to understand MBTI and it's implications I see ways to communicate better. I was also able to accept that it's OK to take time for myself to regroup, it's not selfish it's necessary for survival.

 

[Amargith]

Weird, alien, not of this planet

Useless, incompetent, with no real talents (practicality is a bitch for me)

Misunderstood, alone and at the same time unique

Never part of society and never able to integrate myself properly in it.

 

[Oaky]

The thing is that everyone feels that they are one of a kind and 'not the same as others' so I take all this 'I'm unique' stuff as bullshit. As long as you meet people of different personality types you'd find yourself 'unique'. One who thinks themselves as unique is not unique as most other people think themselves as unique. I've found few people who are actually unique and they don't call themselves unique. They just are unique.

As for the question I felt I can now understand other people and why they wouldn't relate to me.

 

[mockingbird]

The thing is that everyone feels that they are one of a kind and 'not the same as others' so I take all this 'I'm unique' stuff as bullshit. As long as you meet people of different personality types you'd find yourself 'unique'. One who thinks themselves as unique is not unique as most other people think themselves as unique. I've found few people who are actually unique and they don't call themselves unique. They just are unique.

As for the question I felt I can now understand other people and why they wouldn't relate to me.

I can see what you're saying to a certain degree. There are many things about me that I thought were unique about me that were merely part of being an INFJ. But then there is also much about me that remains unique even amoung other INFJs. You shove 6 billion people into only 16 types, and you're bound to get many unique differrentiations within those types. Still, I definately relate to what you wrote in your op. So much about me that I thought was just plain weirdness was explained in my type description. Made me feel very validated as a person to know there are other like me in so many ways. It also helped me to be more tolerant and understanding of others.

 

[Oaky]

^ Nicely said

 

[Moiety]

I always felt pretty good about myself and who I was. Along came MBTI to throw me in a cell with a bunch of hippie loons and tell me I had this or that flaw...


I guess what I'm saying is that I somehow feel less understood now that I know I'm an ENFP, actually. If you don't fit to the model "just right", you're probably "lying to yourself" in some way...

 

[INTP]

I felt the same way about myself as i do now, now i understand some things bit better tho. It kinda gave me the right questions for the ansvers i pretty much allready had.

 

[Saslou]

Just as confused, lol.

Still smiling though.

 

[The_Liquid_Laser]

Nothing changed about the way I see myself, but it enhanced my understanding of other people.

+1

Also while it was interesting to learn about myself, I was much more interested in learning about everyone else.

 

[Katsuni]

About myself? Not that different oddly. My type alone did very little to aide me, it's like alright so I'm not that strange but yes I am since it's still very rare, and the most common types don't care for it so much. So really, it didn't change my views of myself at all really with that information itself.

Whot had a small impact, was reading stuff by peoples about my type; I think the big thread on NT females really helped me get far more used to how that information actually directly applied to my life and why my 'type' actually mattered. Without a context for situation where it applied, it just didn't do anything for me until I knew how to apply it to the real world.

As for other people, I've always figured that mindsets were different, though now I have a bit more accurate of an explaination as to exactly how much and in whot ways, now that I've seen MBTI and enneagrams and such. There's several ways we're different and chances are I'll never 'fix' anyone to my way of thinking, all I can do now is try to ensure that they value MY way of thinking and don't just brush me off with their typical ignorance. They don't have to think the way I do, they just have to accept that my way of thinking is highly useful in many situations, as their own is, and that both have their drawbacks in other situations, and that we can play these strengths off each other to be better than we were otherwise.

Knowing the types, and how they work, and my place in them, gives me more tools to achieve that goal now.

 

[Shimmy]

how'd you feel about yourself before you found out your personality type. I always believed i was werid. I never understood why i was so different from everyone. Never really appreciated for being different. When i was in college i took phycology 101 and really took interest reading INTP cause it was describing myself. After reading that I felt pretty good about myself. Like there's someone out there just like me(i know that sounds bit lame). I just assume i was crazy or had mental issues since i was rejected by the society.

Before - uncaring
after - uncaring but a little more educated

 

[Usehername]

+1

Also while it was interesting to learn about myself, I was much more interested in learning about everyone else.

+1

People start with different premises and values--often, all you see is the end result of action they took because of the premises. While I had a strong model in my head from actively trying to figure people out, a well-developed model such as the MBTI really helped me.

I took it at the end of my gap year program after living in a traveling community with 37 others. I immediately made everyone tell me their letters and I wrote them down to more quickly learn the theory as it applies IRL. Interestingly, my two favourite discussion partners were also INTJs, and we had noted an unexplainable but deep similarity between ourselves many nights when everyone had gone to bed* but we were still arguing--similar things could be said for everyone who broke off into their own cliques, it was startingly type-correlated. (The three unrepresented types in our group included ENTP, ENTJ, and as weird as it sounds, ISTJ.)

*Well, the xSxPs and one ESFJ were always running around hot tubbing/swimming or the like until 2 am, sleeping through the lectures the next day, but we were the only ones left in the common room talking.