I have always felt stupid because things have happened to me that were traumatic in my eyes but had they happened to someone else, they may be somewhat affected but would soon move on and forget.
Am I stupid for being traumatized for being yelled at when I was young for example? Is feeling trauma from such a thing justified?
Other INFJs, what is the most traumatic thing you have experienced or at least say whether you think it would affect a non-INFJ as much as it affected you.
I’m almost embarrassed by my sensitivity. I feel that if I share my traumatic experiences with someone else they’ll say that I’m soft and won’t understand and fathom how such a seemingly small incident could affect someone so much.
Our sensitivity really is blessing and a curse but in my life I feel it has being, more so, a curse.
I'm very phobic and have many complexes because I have painful memories associated with certain things.
Experiences? Thoughts? Am I alone in this?
Thin-skinned INFJ
What you mentioned in the first paragraph is pretty common, especially among introverted feelers. Introverts with the feeling preference also tend to judge themselves harshly for something they see as wrong, but won't judge someone else at all for doing the same thing.
There is nothing wrong with it, it's good to be in touch with what's happening. That said, you have to remember phrases like, "This too shall pass" and also that sometimes tough things happen to EVERYONE. Eventually, we all have trauma of some kind (some more than others...unfortunately the world isn't fair, except for karma). Also, people often are jerks. I couldn't believe how mean some people could be when I was first exposed to that behavior, but over time it's important to just accept it was kind of a universal reality. Once I realized that everyone is basically as vulnerable as we are, but deal with it in different ways, I strangely felt better. Some people deal with it by yelling at others, or trying to act tough; some just completely ignore everything, but might be bleeding inside. Just because they don't show it doesn't mean it's not happening. I think IFs are just usually more open and honest about feeling vulnerable, not just in their words, but in their physical cues. It projects, and people pick it up. Over time I've had to learn to just hide my more vulnerable side from most people, because most would take advantage of it.
When I was in junior high, I grew up being one of the couple of my background in school (being of Iraqi descent). There was nothing really wrong with me, although I was a bit on the shy side, but I different from the other kids, and I grew up somewhere where being different wasn't necessarily embraced. Kids would pick on me and start fights with me. Luckily for me, my dad had given me boxing lessons when I was very little, and so I could actually fight pretty well, and word got around about it. After a while no one laid a hand on me, but it didn't stop the emotional abuse; people made still made fun of me and called me names, often in large groups. I got called a wide variety of names throughout those times.
One time, this "popular" girl told me she thought I was cute and wanted to go out with me either on a dare or as a joke. I thought she might've been playing a trick on me because I was pretty sure she didn't like me, but I said I'd go out with her because I didn't want to risk hurting her feelings if she was actually serious. She of course wasn't, so when I said yes, she and her friends laughed at me and called me a loser in front of everyone. People who were neutral with me were even laughing. A whole crowd of people laughing at me. I reacted by saying, "Oh, I didn't know you were kidding. If I had known that, I would've said no."
That seems like nothing, and it really is, but it hurt because I started thinking that I was the type of guy that girls thought was laughably unsuitable for any kind of dating. I also thought that "popular, pretty girls" would never want to go out with me, and that all pretty girls were mean. Luckily that's not true.
Another time, I got called up in front of my math class to solve a word problem on a day where I forgot to put my glasses on. Everything was on the overhead projector and it was somewhat blurry, coupled with my horrible vision. I couldn't see anything on the projector, and tried to explain it to the teacher, but she made me try to read it anyway. I just couldn't, so she handed me the transparent sheet from the projector and told me to try to solve the problem that way. Everyone was laughing at this point, and I still couldn't solve the problem even when I could read through it. Even the teacher was laughing at me by this point (I'm not kidding), so I just sat down out of embarrassment. To add insult to injury, I heard stories from a friend that a whole lunch table of people were laughing at me later on that day.
Of a more recent thing, while at work, a chair I was sitting on was faulty (one of the legs was breaking) and broke. I fell about six feet off of a stage landing right on my ass. The reaction was a mixture of laughing and genuine concern, but more of it was laughing. I guess it was somewhat funny, but I thought it was pretty cruel of some people to be laughing at me for being in an accident that wasn't even my fault. I handled it by laughing at it too, but deep down I felt pretty hurt, like I was basically a big f**k up.
Anyway, my point is as much as stuff like this can hurt, you just have to realize things happen and people are often jerks. Keep your shield up, although look out for the wonderful people in your life (there probably won't be many though). Just remember this...
"There's no sense in gettin' riled up every time a bunch of idiots give you a hard time. In the end, the universe tends to unfold as it should...
Plus I have a really large penis, that keeps me happy."