really odd INFJ or really emotional INTJ?

[melpomene]

Hello! I'm new here, but I've lurked for ages. I have been questioning my type, and since this forum is always where I go to research typings, I was hoping for some help!

I have been typed INFJ for years, but have taken this cognitive function test lately and well, my results are...unusual. I'm a woman, in case that helps.

Cognitive Process Level of Development (Preference, Skill and Frequency of Use)
extraverted Sensing (Se) (-0.6)
unused
introverted Sensing (Si) ********************** (22)
limited use
extraverted Intuiting (Ne) ************************************** (38.2)
excellent use
introverted Intuiting (Ni) ********************************************** (46.6)
excellent use
extraverted Thinking (Te) ************************************** (38.1)
excellent use
introverted Thinking (Ti) ******************** (20.9)
limited use
extraverted Feeling (Fe) ************************************* (37.5)
excellent use
introverted Feeling (Fi) ************************************* (37.7)
excellent use



So, as you can see, I'm obviously a NI dom, but I don't use Ti. I really enjoy Te. I use Fi and Fe evenly, and all my sensory stuff is crap. I figure my Ne is so high because my husband is an INFP and literally all his friends are either Ne dom or aux, so I've learned to roll with it (in the past, I'd get steamrolled in conversations with those guys).

On second thought, I probably should tell a little about myself, heh. (I'm not great at this!) I'm 27, married, and kind of a bleeding romantic. I'm also a prototypical social justice warrior type, and I've been going to school for social work, but I just recently changed my major to counseling psychology because I couldn't stand all the government interference in the social work field. I love sociology, politics, anthropology, and all the other -ologies I can't think of right now. I enjoy volunteer work and getting people to smile by cooking them food and random compliments and remembering things they like and need so I can surprise them later. I am a democratic socialist and just the concepts of greed and working for a profit (not the "trying to live" profit, the profit for profit's sake kind) abhor me. I think we should, as a community, sacrifice everything we can to share, get along, and make sure everyone has the basics to thrive in life. I also enjoy gardening, but I get really upset that I have to kill caterpillars in order to have my plants survive.

You'd think with these above interests that I'd like people, but honestly I'm not close to them. I tend to really enjoy the concept of people at arm's length, and want people to understand what kind of person I am (I have to say my biggest pet peeve is being misrepresented) but I don't really want to let them too close - probably because I don't handle criticism and rejection well, also combined with the fact that I read people really well and I just know how shallow, uncaring and fickle so many people are. I see myself as the kind of person that helps people and then disappears into the night, or something cheesy like that. However, I also hate snobs and if someone WANTED to ever get close to me, I'd definately welcome it.

I'd say people's biggest criticisms of me are that I probably let people stomp all over me, that I give too much to others, while also that I seem aloof, overly logical and aggressive and uninterested in people. (Yes, I've heard these both from the same people, to which I'm like "What?") I don't keep in contact with friends very well at all, and social stuff is my worst weakness, as I tend to be a brooder and killjoy. Manners are really important to me, and I hate it when people offend others - I can safely say I'm pretty damn politically correct and nothing bothers me more than hurting another person. This doesn't keep me from openly debating every issue ever though and speaking up when I smell injustice....fighting social injustice is everything to me. I do everything I can to make myself available to friends that need me though, and I would have to say my biggest strengths are my loyalty and resilience, as when I want something, I don't give up. I also get really obsessed with learning, and will literally pour over the same topic for months to absorb every piece of wisdom on it, ever, whether I agree with it or not, and no matter how dumb it might be. I have to always know both sides of an issue. I don't really like relying on my own internal sense of logic because cognitive bias is such a really powerful thing, so I trust extensive research to help me form viewpoints.

As for presentation wise, I do really come off either quiet, kinda blunt, awkward, aloof and overly logical or way too friendly, upbeat and childlike. I'm basically never in the middle, even without a change in moods (I'm usually really stable mood wise - unless something external happens, I'm usually always in the same calm, middle of the road mood. Not happy, not sad, but introspective, spacey, brooding and content...). It's...odd.

Anyway, that's enough about me, I think? I really am terrible at this.

 

[Galena]

That sounds like 6w5 Fe-aux to me. You've got the right idea already.

Welcome to the forum.

 

[Forever]

You give me an ISXJ vibe to me. You sound like you got your head on things. Your results don't seem really anyway close for an INFJ, how can you be low in sensation but amazing at Te?

I also welcome you to the forum.

 

[melpomene]

Hello, and thank you! It's wonderful to meet other people who are as interested in type theory as I.

I actually have been tested as a 6w5, so I grinned when I read that. (Oh, I put that on my profile, lol I forgot!)

I do really doubt I'm an S in any way though. Se is basically non-existant in my personality, and while I do tend to be quite rational like a Si dom, it's all based on theory, if that makes any sense. I'm also almost exclusively future oriented, and the hardest challenge in life for me is looking to the present moment, and the past isn't much easier. I don't dwell on things unless they were legitly terrible - I'm kinda the "okay, so that happened, what can we do now?" type. I legitly overplan everything, and I feel like the past is a poor thing to draw from because that's where all the mistakes lie, and everything changes, always. (and should!)

I also want to add that I'm completely impracticle in the real world. I suck at money, and beurocracy, and generally functioning. I get so disconnected from my body sometimes that I'll get hurt and never notice it bleeding all over the place, or forget to eat all day.

 

[Forever]

Hello, and thank you! It's wonderful to meet other people who are as interested in type theory as I.

I actually have been tested as a 6w5, so I grinned when I read that. (Oh, I put that on my profile, lol I forgot!)

I do really doubt I'm an S in any way though. Se is basically non-existant in my personality, and while I do tend to be quite rational like a Si dom, it's all based on theory, if that makes any sense. I'm also almost exclusively future oriented, and the hardest challenge in life for me is looking to the present moment, and the past isn't much easier. I don't dwell on things unless they were legitly terrible - I'm kinda the "okay, so that happened, what can we do now?" type. I legitly overplan everything, and I feel like the past is a poor thing to draw from because that's where all the mistakes lie, and everything changes, always. (and should!)

INFJ's are the weakest of the judging types. Do you understand Si though?

 

[melpomene]

I do believe I do, as a significant amount of my relatives are Si doms. What do you see that represents Si in what I've so sloppily shared about my personality?

 

[Forever]

Si gets commonly thrown under the bus as simply being traditional. Stuck in the past. Things like that.

Si is about internal sensation. It's not about having a great memory either, although they can have great memories too.

It focuses on gut feelings on how to react to situations it has established from the past. When something comes new to be unfamiliar, they use their gut feelings to try to bring it back to the result that they have seen it done before.

Ni looks towards the future, but not necessarily always. Ni takes in the information it gathers from the environment and makes patterns to respond to. It is also a perceiving function too. So if you're an Ni dom and you have crazy amounts of planning going on, you're kind of missing the point of how Ni works, it adapts to its environment as you drink in new theories and observations.

I also want to stress that Ni plays with theories and ideas so much that some people may look you odd to begin with because it looks like you keep pulling information out of thin air with no proof. It's constantly speculating trying to understand the meaning and core of reality. It is expressed differently through its extroverted judging functions Fe and Te.

What you say gives you off more to be a concrete individual. Sensors use intuition too, it's just not the dominant.
[MENTION=23583]21lux[/MENTION] is an ISFJ and she isn't your stereotypical one either. And don't worry sensors aren't dumb either.

 

[melpomene]

Oh, I understand what you're saying now. I did understand it - I did play on the bias of their supposed super practicality a little bit only because of the fact the ISXX's of my life give me such a hard time about...basically everything (2 ISTPs, a ISFJ, and a ISTJ).

Adapting to the environment is exactly what I was trying to get at when I made the example of "So now this happened, what do we do?" I don't plan in the traditional sense, of like a 12 step plan for my life and success or anything like that. I'm just really, really good at coming up with solutions on the fly and just "knowing things" about people, as well as visalizing a myriad of possibilities and perspectives on the issue. This is why I'm going into Counseling Psychology/Rehabilitation Counseling.

I do have that problem with "pulling theories out of the air with no proof" that makes people kinda turn their nose up at me. I used to be a lot worse - I have a lot of INTP and INTJ friends that would just completely dissolve my ideas and observations about the patterns of the world that just seem obvious to me. That's actually when my obsession with research began - I got tired of the bullying of "if you can't cite this with 400 well placed studies, it's useless" so I took a logic class to appeal more to their level and then learned to cite everything.

My best skill has always been at observing patterns in my environment and deducing what happens afterwards though. I over analyze everything.

On further thought, I think the thing that confirms my lack of Si as per the test are these two points:

First, I am constantly striving to improve something. Doing something over whilst attempting to achieve the same result seems stifling and well, honestly irks me. I can't stand doing the same thing over and over, and I don't believe something can ever be complete. I'm really never satisfied with anything. I'm constantly trying to improve everything (this has caused problems in relationships, lol). Constantly second guessing everything too, to the point that I sometimes literally have to force myself to just stop trying to come to the best conclusion possible and settle down.

Secondly, my husband likes to also describe his experience with tertiary Si as a sort of muscle memory. If he's shown how to do something, he can recreate it later based on just gut feeling of how it went. (He excelled in sports for this very reason!) I, however, have absolutely none of this ability. I either have to be shown how to do something over and over, or you're going to get a different result every time.

 

[chubber]

ENFP

 

[melpomene]

ENFP

I'm not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination. Also, let me reiterate that I'm a Ni dom. I've taken basically every test on the internet, a professional assessment at university, and I've always scored INFJ with no deviations. Even taking this same "Key2Cognition" a year ago yielded me only elevated Ni and Fe scores, with everything else middle of the road. It wasn't until I retook this particular test recently that I scored any Ne at all, or Fi, or Te - hence my posting of this thread: INFJ or INTJ?

I have the ability to be quite the chameleon on the outside, and seeing as all my friends/relatives/ex boyfriends/husband are Ne doms or aux, I learned to roll with it. I don't normally use it when thinking in my own head, but in speaking, I can force myself to see things through a Ne lens. Even if it truly annoys me sometimes.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

ENFP is the most introverted extrovert. They love causes. They have tert Te. And inf Si

You sound very ENFP

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Ne and Ni are a spectrum.... you have strong intuition... the Ne/Ni part might blog come out well on tests. I test equally off the charts on Ni/Ne.... but I definitely use Ni.

Ni is about a single vision, not many. When I can't narrow it down to one vision, it hurts my head..

 

[chubber]

I'm not an extrovert by any stretch of the imagination. Also, let me reiterate that I'm a Ni dom. I've taken basically every test on the internet, a professional assessment at university, and I've always scored INFJ with no deviations. Even taking this same "Key2Cognition" a year ago yielded me only elevated Ni and Fe scores, with everything else middle of the road. It wasn't until I retook this particular test recently that I scored any Ne at all, or Fi, or Te - hence my posting of this thread: INFJ or INTJ?

I have the ability to be quite the chameleon on the outside, and seeing as all my friends are Ne doms or aux, I learned to roll with it. I don't normally use it when thinking in my own head, but in speaking, I can force myself to see things through a Ne lens. Even if it truly annoys me sometimes.

If you're so clued up with Ni and Ne, why are you asking us? You seem to "bend things"



Anyway, I'm sure you will find your type.

 

[melpomene]

Ne and Ni are a spectrum.... you have strong intuition... the Ne/Ni part might blog come out well on tests. I test equally off the charts on Ni/Ne.... but I definitely use Ni.

Ni is about a single vision, not many. When I can't narrow it down to one vision, it hurts my head..

Oh goodness, I can relate. I do have a very singular vision, but it has caused some serious fights in the past with my INFP husband. I see a situation, blurt exactly how it's going to turn out (there's no way to not make it blunt) and then he's like "Pfft, you don't know that, this and this and this could happen". Nope. I come out right. I've learned when talking to others, to humor those possiblities and perspectives while keeping what I actually see that's going to happen in my head, because people apparently think I'm a rude know-it-all.

 

[melpomene]

If you're so clued up with Ni and Ne, why are you asking us? You seem to "bend things"



Anyway, I'm sure you will find your type.

Hah, sorry. Even though I'm pretty sure I'm an INFJ still, I was only asking of the possiblity of INTJ because of the chance that the definition of the typical INTJ has become so genderized towards males that I could still be one while caring about causes and generally being mostly emotional. I've never met a female INTJ.

Confirmation bias is a powerful thing, but I also know the basis of my identity. I absolutely am not an extrovert, and Ni is my most comfortable mode of expression. Everything else is up in the air.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

Oh goodness, I can relate. I do have a very singular vision, but it has caused some serious fights in the past with my INFP husband. I see a situation, blurt exactly how it's going to turn out (there's no way to not make it blunt) and then he's like "Pfft, you don't know that, this and this and this could happen". Nope. I come out right. I've learned when talking to others, to humor those possiblities and perspectives while keeping what I actually see that's going to happen in my head, because people apparently think I'm a rude know-it-all.

Haha, you got Ni!


I do wonder if your Fe is just poorly developed. I write that because I spent most of my life in a NiTi loop rejecting Fe due to my childhood. I even tested as a ISTP (same functions) because I was so Ti. I rejected feelings and tried to figure out everything by thinking. It left me full of anxiety and depression. The more I embrace Fe the happier I become.

You test reasonably well for Te, but your descriptions of planning don't sound very Te.

As to the extrovert label, are you quick to react or slow to react? Do you need to take time to come to conclusions or do you reach them quickly? I thought I was a INFJ until I accepted that my very quick reaction speed was not a INFJ thing at all. After considerable pondering, I realized my introversion was a coping measure that I had developed, but my reality was that I was very outgoing and social.

Just some thoughts.

 

[melpomene]

Haha, you got Ni!


I do wonder if your Fe is just poorly developed. I write that because I spent most of my life in a NiTi loop rejecting Fe due to my childhood. I even tested as a ISTP (same functions) because I was so Ti. I rejected feelings and tried to figure out everything by thinking. It left me full of anxiety and depression. The more I embrace Fe the happier I become.

You test reasonably well for Te, but your descriptions of planning don't sound very Te.

As to the extrovert label, are you quick to react or slow to react? Do you need to take time to come to conclusions or do you reach them quickly? I thought I was a INFJ until I accepted that my very quick reaction speed was not a INFJ thing at all. After considerable pondering, I realized my introversion was a coping measure that I had developed, but my reality was that I was very outgoing and social.

Just some thoughts.

I might be able to relate to this. I've always been a very isolated person - as a child, I was kept inside and alone, not allowed to participate in group activities or socialize except at school. On top of that, I tended to always be staring off into space and through people when they'd talk in my own little lala land, and be very sensitive, so I was bulled a lot. I never really learned how to deal with people until I grew older and had to force myself to.

I'm not very quick to react. I tend to panic and get really jumbled when people demand something from me RIGHT NOW, and I haven't had time to dwell on it even a little bit. However, once I have dwelled, my conclusions are (usually) solid.

 

[melpomene]

Do you live in your head? When you live in your head, does your mind involuntarily create visions of possible future scenarios which might involve yourself or even others? If so, do you find this happening a lot, like a trance that often takes you out of the present moment and makes everything presently happening seem like a hazy distraction which it can almost seem unreal and "dreamy" in comparison to what your mind is focused on? Do said visions sometimes arise seemingly unrelated to present sensory data, yet further contemplation might reveal it to be connected?

This is the best description of how I am most of the time. I drift off, doing exactly what you've just described, living within my own head. My husband has learned to recognize it and constantly tells me "Come back to me!" in order to get me to be fully aware of and present in my surroundings. This is like you're looking into my own head. I couldn't describe it better. It's trance-like.


I used to be so bad at this as a little kid that I was in a haze more often than not. I had to train myself as an adult to stave it off in times of importance, such as lectures, job meetings, and when people are talking to me.

 

[Forever_Jung]

I'm not sure what the confusion is, you sound like a prototypical INFJ to me. I will say that INFJ's are closer to INTJ's than a lot of people think.

 

[SearchingforPeace]

I might be able to relate to this. I've always been a very isolated person - as a child, I was kept inside and alone, not allowed to participate in group activities or socialize except at school. On top of that, I tended to always be staring off into space and through people when they'd talk in my own little lala land, and be very sensitive, so I was bulled a lot. I never really learned how to deal with people until I grew older and had to force myself to.

I'm not very quick to react. I tend to panic and get really jumbled when people demand something from me RIGHT NOW, and I haven't had time to dwell on it even a little bit. However, once I have dwelled, my conclusions are (usually) solid.

You sound very INFJ then. I thought I was one, but the quick reaction thing kicked me into the ENFJ team, even though I feel my Ni is by far my most developed function. INFJs are not good reacting at the moment and need reflection to see things.

Many NFJs grow up with underdeveloped Fe because of difficult childhoods. My own case involved emotionally neglectful parents and an verbally abusive older brother.