Orangey
Blah
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2008
- Messages
- 6,354
- MBTI Type
- ESTP
- Enneagram
- 6w5
Okay, so I've recently been making my (terribly uninterested) ISTJ mother look at all this MBTI stuff, and some interesting things came up during our conversations. I asked her to describe how I was when I was a kid, and then had her compare her description to these "child types" descriptions. After all, our personalities are supposedly more "pure" when we were children, right?
Anyway, she compared her description to the different descriptions on the site, and it was amazing (and a little confounding) how well my behavior as a child matched up to the description of ETJ kids. I was like, WTF? I mean, I do remember being fairly fearless and gregarious when I was little, but I attributed it (or perhaps rationalized it) as being the result of having "T" style confidence. I then told her that I self-type as INTP (sometimes INTJ or INFP) and had her look at those again to see how well they lined up. She denied my being that much like the ITP kids at all, and said that those descriptions were closer to how my brother (who I'd already typed as INTP) behaved when he was young.
As you can imagine, it was something of a mind**** to realize that either (1) personality types really DO change drastically with age and experience, (2) I have been deceiving myself this whole time and am painfully less self-aware than I thought, and/or (3) I am a really screwed up extravert who has serious enough social anxiety issues to seem very much like an introvert.
So what do you guys think? Is it possible to be a "true" extravert whose social anxiety is severe enough that he/she seems totally introverted? I consistently score something like 95-100% on the introversion scales. It just seems really unlikely that I am this dormant ENTJ underneath an introverted mask. And if I am, then I need some serious therapy to get over the kind of "introversion" I'm used to identifying with. Thoughts?
P.S.- I feel sort of self-absorbed and attention seeking just making this thread, but it's been bothering me for the last few days and no one ever feels like talking about it with me, so I'm going to vent here. Might as well, anyway, since I've spilled more about myself here than to my friends IRL. So thanks in advance if you've taken the time to read this. Extra thanks if you respond .
Anyway, she compared her description to the different descriptions on the site, and it was amazing (and a little confounding) how well my behavior as a child matched up to the description of ETJ kids. I was like, WTF? I mean, I do remember being fairly fearless and gregarious when I was little, but I attributed it (or perhaps rationalized it) as being the result of having "T" style confidence. I then told her that I self-type as INTP (sometimes INTJ or INFP) and had her look at those again to see how well they lined up. She denied my being that much like the ITP kids at all, and said that those descriptions were closer to how my brother (who I'd already typed as INTP) behaved when he was young.
As you can imagine, it was something of a mind**** to realize that either (1) personality types really DO change drastically with age and experience, (2) I have been deceiving myself this whole time and am painfully less self-aware than I thought, and/or (3) I am a really screwed up extravert who has serious enough social anxiety issues to seem very much like an introvert.
So what do you guys think? Is it possible to be a "true" extravert whose social anxiety is severe enough that he/she seems totally introverted? I consistently score something like 95-100% on the introversion scales. It just seems really unlikely that I am this dormant ENTJ underneath an introverted mask. And if I am, then I need some serious therapy to get over the kind of "introversion" I'm used to identifying with. Thoughts?
P.S.- I feel sort of self-absorbed and attention seeking just making this thread, but it's been bothering me for the last few days and no one ever feels like talking about it with me, so I'm going to vent here. Might as well, anyway, since I've spilled more about myself here than to my friends IRL. So thanks in advance if you've taken the time to read this. Extra thanks if you respond .