I have often quietly speculated on this myself. I wish I could answer definitively. I've tried to make connections or divides on this in my own journey inwards over the years, long before I happened across the MBTI tool or Enneagrams of Personality. My thoughts on my experiences have pertained more to my T/F spectrum rather than any other of my function preferences. I'll have to give my IN-J more thought.
(I was/am a member of a frightfully large, dysfunctional family and was the recipient of repeated physical/verbal/psychological abuses throughout my young years.)
Typology in general has shed light on some matters, but only opened more doors to long door-filled corridors, so I'm not sure when/if this will be clarified. It would be interesting to converse with other members who are MBTI-savvy as well as Abuse Counseling-savvy to see what trends there may be.
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Lengthy, optional reading as follows:
Speaking as a
reflexively emotionally expressive person who has been such as long as memory serves, and growing up in an environment where emotional expression --particularly affection/sadness/visible suffering were tantamount to treason, I recall long periods of time with something like bodily disassociation or
living death. My situation could best be described as being unable to stop "feeling" and trying to inhibit the expression of "feeling" due to external forces, then psychologically numbing myself as
if I had died and was watching myself from the outside in a state of persistent manic detachment. This sort of experience is often recounted by
NDEers. My experience clearly wasn't actual death, just a form of psychological death where I was desperately trying to smother a part of myself, but only succeeded in muting it. About a year ago I discovered a description of the INFJ child under extreme stress that seemed startlingly accurate:
"If stress continues, they feel “unreal”, fragmented and disassociated. They split off from their physical bodies and suffer paralysis due to suppressed feelings. Physical symptoms can be real or imaginary.
...
they will begin a process of disassociating from their physical body. Sometimes it looks like they are standing dead still while their face fills up with color and their eyes start to float. At this point they are starting to push down their feelings and it’s taking all their concentration."
For the most part, emotional suppression (being the necessary "survival" response to my circumstances) felt a lot like playing a part or a role. I was just
trying to survive. But I do not believe I actually succeeded in transformation. Two quotes in Please Understand me (I/II) by David Keirsey have echoed in my mind:
"Our attempts to change spouse, offspring, or others can result in change, but the result is a scar and not a transformation."
"Our attempts to reshape others may produce change, but the change is distortion rather than transformation."
Returning to my "former" self has been natural given my inclination for the "marriage" of identity and authenticity,
yet arduous beyond reckoning. It requires MUCH fortitude, patience, and love to build the self-acceptance required to bridge a psychological chasm the size of the San Andreas fault. I don't know if my experiences/realizations/results jive with anyone else's, but I'm curious to know.
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