stepharoth
New member
- Joined
- Jan 22, 2017
- Messages
- 2
- MBTI Type
- INFJ
Alright, you're going to want to settle in and grab a snack or two. I've been self and other-typed as every possible one in the book. Let's try it this way.
General: Leaning towards INFP or INFJ right now and I spend most of my time with an INFP male. I know I have a lot of reading still to go in order to understand the functions, but with all the contradicting information and stereotypes from the interwebs, I kind of just need a few smarty pants to tell me what type I am at this point. Otherwise I'll be going back and forth until the cows come home. Once I know my type, I'll be able to understand the rest of the system better. I need to grasp the entirety eventually but I also need personal reference to aid in understanding others (wait, is that Fi?). I tend to waste so much time researching something that I forget what works best for me: it's not until the application of information that I can truly vet my ideas in the real world and know if I made the right conclusion or not. This looks like dragging my feet to the pond only to realize the water was waiting for me to dive in before heating up.
Not sure what my driver process is. Since a child I've been obsessed with personality theory, specifically in reference to who I am, what my strengths are and who I am at my core. I would do those 20-page-long email surveys with friends circa late 90's, early 2000's and still have energy to keep answering questions and diving into myself. I have a hard time picking up new activities or instruments unless they feel like the absolute best representation of the timeless me. The fear is that I will pick up the cello and realize my personality and image are more like a bass. It feels like I'd be wasting practice time that should have been processed elsewhere. It sounds silly, but this is probably the loop that has controlled my life the longest, whatever function(s) it may represent. I'm most confused about Ni after reading somewhere that it never concerns itself with change in the tangible world. It seems that's all I would do all day if given half the chance (daydream about saving the world from itself based on my own moral/amoral convictions). So maybe I'm actually using Fi to drive a Ne brainstorm? But the topic is always linear, so that seems more Ni. dsfjhfljhfalskjdfh
Ni:
If I'm understanding Ni correctly, I do this every day when I have a chance to be alone with my thoughts. It becomes so automatic that I have to place a moratorium on it some nights, otherwise I'll wander around my house just thinking about future conversations, wasting my entire night preparing myself for a social situation that will probably never take place (or is this Fe?). I've shaken myself out of daydreaming that involved long-term goals for the Earth, politics and myself, often spending a good chunk of time before snapping back to reality. The social orientation of these has shown up later in life (mid 20's). The more fun reveries involving hobbies or other tangible things I'm interested in seem to have always had a place in my life but are tapering off now in lieu of more people-oriented visions of change. However, it usually doesn't take long before the abstract daydreams bother me so much that I have to act on them in the physical world (usually involving more painstaking research on how I should act on them). I love my daydreams and mentally acted out scenarios, but they have way too much control over my life and are likely also a loop of some sort.
I'm pretty sure I am who I am today because of a single Ni inspirational moment from high school when I realized I wasn't living the life I wanted to. It was my biggest aha moment and I planned out my life from then on based on the things I knew had to change to metamorphose myself into who I felt I really was inside. Maybe this is more Fi.
I sometimes just get musings or wonderings out of nowhere. Recent example would be watching Pandorum (ugh) last night. There is a scene where a crew member enters a duct so narrow that he can't turn around. As he continues forward, he starts realizing he's tilted himself downward. Before he can shimmy backward to safety, he falls presumably to his death. Suddenly I felt very strongly (though probably wrongly) that this scene was a starter analogy for Schrodinger's Cat. The thought process went like this in the span of a second or two:
I had read one tiny thing about this theory a few years ago, then someone mentioned it weeks prior to this thought. I actually know nothing about it, or much of anything if we're being honest. The idea came so strongly out of nowhere that I assumed it had to be Ni. I'm probably the least facts-smart/book-smart one in any friends group I've ever been in, but I give relationship advice easily and competently.
Fe:
If I'm conversing professionally or peripherally, I will not usually be showing that person who I really am in conversation unless they're younger and brighter, or older and more eccentric (read: safer to take conversational risks with). I mirror statements and elaborate slowly, safely, to make it seem like I'm adding to the conversation when often I'm really not. I can tailor my energy to meet whoever I'm talking with, and can usually keep conversation going indefinitely by sheer force of will and a bit of learned (in my teens) charm. It typically fools people into a fake connection, which eases my mind (an 'everyone has to like me' complex), which is not ideal but it's more efficient for time constraints and my willpower, so I just keep doing it.
I make a lot of assumptions about people by vibe, so if I feel like I don't have enough in common with them, then it's a waste for me to go into how I actually feel about something. People usually leave our conversations thinking I'm either mysterious or just like them, when I'm really just being unnecessarily guarded. I wasn't aware of this until recently (early 30's), and wasn't aware of Fe subtleties in people until teens/20's.
I have passionate beliefs about society and can be extremely stubborn when people show me my weaknesses because they have no clue how much information I have previously stored to refute their argument in my head, often researching more than anyone could have ever guessed and more than most will ever do themselves. So when they do challenge me, a little part of me feels like it's not their right to do so. It's just that it's usually a gamble if my brain will draw on that knowledge at the right time, or with the right values to showcase it all when I need to. I understand that it's not their responsibility to have faith in my philosophical ramblings but it seems like the intent behind it should be so obvious that they should be mirroring it immediately for the good of knowledge gained instead of just criticizing me. I have a thin skin, so I think a lot about this point.
I suppose I'm simultaneously trying to protect new people from my opinions but... also not. There's this added hindrance of knowing very little about how to argue my points, and I wouldn't want them winning an argument they didn't deserve to win just because I'm a bad debater. It would feel as though I let my fellow similar-minded peeps down by allowing someone who's wrong to think they're right when I'm just the wrong person to challenge them. I'd much rather just pretend everything's cool and get back to 'my people' than try to change someone's mind individually. I tell myself that's what my global change visions are for, that the only way I can change the world is by my written word since that's what I'm best at. It often feels very hopeless though, and I can take world problems personally often and walk around with a martyr complex for no reason.
I can have one-sided arguments extremely well, seeing everyone's perspectives clearly by creating an 'other' in my head with a completely separate worldview. I just can't ever win against opposing views in the outside world because I can't adapt when the initial "no, because this" hits me, unless someone is really poorly educated and using emotional unlogic. If challenged, I clam up and switch to polite complacency instead. I really want to change people's minds, but I just don't retain facts well enough to convince anyone of anything. I'm better at philosophical what-ifs and drawing comparisons with social 'isms and the current state of the world at large, but this is not something I am even aware of practicing when it hits me. It usually just looks like a poignant analogy said with snark, something nearly outside of myself but rising to the surface at the perfect time to make others take notice.
Fi:
I'm not as sure how Fi manifests, but I do have a strong sense of self and can be at the mercy of FEELINGS all too often. My poetry from childhood usually involved weird ideas like having a clone that was trapped in my mirror waiting to take over my psyche, body-snatcher style. I'd usually come to these visuals based on how I felt at the time. Nowadays I'd more than likely draw some political analogy about body-snatchers that hits me out of nowhere instead of just focusing so much on the vision or feeling like I used to in childhood.
Te:
I've had moments where I sound really smart by providing on-the-spot abstract solutions to subjective problems. This usually manifests in work scenarios. Not sure if Te, but I have an insane eye for detail and perfection. Seemingly out of nowhere, I had an epiphany one day about how to cut my hand-washing time in half to save money on the monthly water bill. I've since acted it out and it was successful. I'll probably do this habit until I die now.
My life does seem to have brackets of organization based on the timelines of self-appointed projects. For example: up and deciding to maintain a salt water fish tank then spending months researching and implementing the nitrogen cycle only to get bored and drop it before a single fish is put in it, writing a book because of how bad the one I just read was, etc. I will organize the shit out of just about anything as long as it interests or benefits me. I used tables, spreadsheets and D20s to write the characters for my latest book so I could make certain I was relying on zero stereotypes. I thought this was nothing special as a course for writing, until an INTP who I value for stringency told me she was blown away by my approach. However, I often feel like I research as if I were an INTP without the capability they have for holding all the information in place, especially if I never use it again. Without getting into stereotypes too much, I have this problem with rotary skills as well. If they're neglected for too long, it's as if I never learned them.
Once I realized I couldn't rely on chance in my values because patterns kept showing up anyway, I stopped writing it altogether after dumping 20k words into it because it seemed impossible to pick what race/gender/orientation/MBTI (yes, I had a die for this as well) the villain should be in order to have the most positive impact on society upon the masses reading. Even with this level of organization, I still feel like my life is very messy since I'm usually thinking or planning instead of doing. I tend to choose huge long-term goals so the amount of planning necessary for near-perfection is even higher. Liiiiiiike writing a book using MBTI knowing full well I'll have to learn the system inside and out during the creation of said book. One thing I think that is not Te is how rare it is for me to finish a project but I am getting better sort of.
Si:
I was probably more nostalgic in grade/high school. Some of my songs show this as 'being homesick for a place I've never been,' and I used to say that phrase constantly in my teens. I would get these flashes of images or impressions of new locations in my head that always had a feeling and unique color attached to them (I did this unconsciously with people I knew also), then I'd use those as inspiration for writing poetry or songs to others (with an added call for action). Usually there was a sort of melancholy wrapped around this and an urging feeling to discover the place in real life, if it even existed. If not, then to either paint the picture (literally or otherwise) so that others could be transported there as well with my art/writing. The emphasis was usually on appreciating beauty and maintaining a vigilant, questioning spirit.
Se:
I eat high-octane crap when stressed (the Louis CK diet), and Se in general is just something I either never notice, or notice with negative context. Food, sex, drugs have always been complicated for me.
The ones not listed (Ne, Ti) are the ones I don't understand. I'm sure I have a few misnomers that are causing my inconclusive results, though I know the tests can be more or less useless for some people, hence my focus on function stacks. Phew! Thanks!
General: Leaning towards INFP or INFJ right now and I spend most of my time with an INFP male. I know I have a lot of reading still to go in order to understand the functions, but with all the contradicting information and stereotypes from the interwebs, I kind of just need a few smarty pants to tell me what type I am at this point. Otherwise I'll be going back and forth until the cows come home. Once I know my type, I'll be able to understand the rest of the system better. I need to grasp the entirety eventually but I also need personal reference to aid in understanding others (wait, is that Fi?). I tend to waste so much time researching something that I forget what works best for me: it's not until the application of information that I can truly vet my ideas in the real world and know if I made the right conclusion or not. This looks like dragging my feet to the pond only to realize the water was waiting for me to dive in before heating up.
Not sure what my driver process is. Since a child I've been obsessed with personality theory, specifically in reference to who I am, what my strengths are and who I am at my core. I would do those 20-page-long email surveys with friends circa late 90's, early 2000's and still have energy to keep answering questions and diving into myself. I have a hard time picking up new activities or instruments unless they feel like the absolute best representation of the timeless me. The fear is that I will pick up the cello and realize my personality and image are more like a bass. It feels like I'd be wasting practice time that should have been processed elsewhere. It sounds silly, but this is probably the loop that has controlled my life the longest, whatever function(s) it may represent. I'm most confused about Ni after reading somewhere that it never concerns itself with change in the tangible world. It seems that's all I would do all day if given half the chance (daydream about saving the world from itself based on my own moral/amoral convictions). So maybe I'm actually using Fi to drive a Ne brainstorm? But the topic is always linear, so that seems more Ni. dsfjhfljhfalskjdfh
Ni:
If I'm understanding Ni correctly, I do this every day when I have a chance to be alone with my thoughts. It becomes so automatic that I have to place a moratorium on it some nights, otherwise I'll wander around my house just thinking about future conversations, wasting my entire night preparing myself for a social situation that will probably never take place (or is this Fe?). I've shaken myself out of daydreaming that involved long-term goals for the Earth, politics and myself, often spending a good chunk of time before snapping back to reality. The social orientation of these has shown up later in life (mid 20's). The more fun reveries involving hobbies or other tangible things I'm interested in seem to have always had a place in my life but are tapering off now in lieu of more people-oriented visions of change. However, it usually doesn't take long before the abstract daydreams bother me so much that I have to act on them in the physical world (usually involving more painstaking research on how I should act on them). I love my daydreams and mentally acted out scenarios, but they have way too much control over my life and are likely also a loop of some sort.
I'm pretty sure I am who I am today because of a single Ni inspirational moment from high school when I realized I wasn't living the life I wanted to. It was my biggest aha moment and I planned out my life from then on based on the things I knew had to change to metamorphose myself into who I felt I really was inside. Maybe this is more Fi.
I sometimes just get musings or wonderings out of nowhere. Recent example would be watching Pandorum (ugh) last night. There is a scene where a crew member enters a duct so narrow that he can't turn around. As he continues forward, he starts realizing he's tilted himself downward. Before he can shimmy backward to safety, he falls presumably to his death. Suddenly I felt very strongly (though probably wrongly) that this scene was a starter analogy for Schrodinger's Cat. The thought process went like this in the span of a second or two:
I had read one tiny thing about this theory a few years ago, then someone mentioned it weeks prior to this thought. I actually know nothing about it, or much of anything if we're being honest. The idea came so strongly out of nowhere that I assumed it had to be Ni. I'm probably the least facts-smart/book-smart one in any friends group I've ever been in, but I give relationship advice easily and competently.
Fe:
If I'm conversing professionally or peripherally, I will not usually be showing that person who I really am in conversation unless they're younger and brighter, or older and more eccentric (read: safer to take conversational risks with). I mirror statements and elaborate slowly, safely, to make it seem like I'm adding to the conversation when often I'm really not. I can tailor my energy to meet whoever I'm talking with, and can usually keep conversation going indefinitely by sheer force of will and a bit of learned (in my teens) charm. It typically fools people into a fake connection, which eases my mind (an 'everyone has to like me' complex), which is not ideal but it's more efficient for time constraints and my willpower, so I just keep doing it.
I make a lot of assumptions about people by vibe, so if I feel like I don't have enough in common with them, then it's a waste for me to go into how I actually feel about something. People usually leave our conversations thinking I'm either mysterious or just like them, when I'm really just being unnecessarily guarded. I wasn't aware of this until recently (early 30's), and wasn't aware of Fe subtleties in people until teens/20's.
I have passionate beliefs about society and can be extremely stubborn when people show me my weaknesses because they have no clue how much information I have previously stored to refute their argument in my head, often researching more than anyone could have ever guessed and more than most will ever do themselves. So when they do challenge me, a little part of me feels like it's not their right to do so. It's just that it's usually a gamble if my brain will draw on that knowledge at the right time, or with the right values to showcase it all when I need to. I understand that it's not their responsibility to have faith in my philosophical ramblings but it seems like the intent behind it should be so obvious that they should be mirroring it immediately for the good of knowledge gained instead of just criticizing me. I have a thin skin, so I think a lot about this point.
I suppose I'm simultaneously trying to protect new people from my opinions but... also not. There's this added hindrance of knowing very little about how to argue my points, and I wouldn't want them winning an argument they didn't deserve to win just because I'm a bad debater. It would feel as though I let my fellow similar-minded peeps down by allowing someone who's wrong to think they're right when I'm just the wrong person to challenge them. I'd much rather just pretend everything's cool and get back to 'my people' than try to change someone's mind individually. I tell myself that's what my global change visions are for, that the only way I can change the world is by my written word since that's what I'm best at. It often feels very hopeless though, and I can take world problems personally often and walk around with a martyr complex for no reason.
I can have one-sided arguments extremely well, seeing everyone's perspectives clearly by creating an 'other' in my head with a completely separate worldview. I just can't ever win against opposing views in the outside world because I can't adapt when the initial "no, because this" hits me, unless someone is really poorly educated and using emotional unlogic. If challenged, I clam up and switch to polite complacency instead. I really want to change people's minds, but I just don't retain facts well enough to convince anyone of anything. I'm better at philosophical what-ifs and drawing comparisons with social 'isms and the current state of the world at large, but this is not something I am even aware of practicing when it hits me. It usually just looks like a poignant analogy said with snark, something nearly outside of myself but rising to the surface at the perfect time to make others take notice.
Fi:
I'm not as sure how Fi manifests, but I do have a strong sense of self and can be at the mercy of FEELINGS all too often. My poetry from childhood usually involved weird ideas like having a clone that was trapped in my mirror waiting to take over my psyche, body-snatcher style. I'd usually come to these visuals based on how I felt at the time. Nowadays I'd more than likely draw some political analogy about body-snatchers that hits me out of nowhere instead of just focusing so much on the vision or feeling like I used to in childhood.
Te:
I've had moments where I sound really smart by providing on-the-spot abstract solutions to subjective problems. This usually manifests in work scenarios. Not sure if Te, but I have an insane eye for detail and perfection. Seemingly out of nowhere, I had an epiphany one day about how to cut my hand-washing time in half to save money on the monthly water bill. I've since acted it out and it was successful. I'll probably do this habit until I die now.
My life does seem to have brackets of organization based on the timelines of self-appointed projects. For example: up and deciding to maintain a salt water fish tank then spending months researching and implementing the nitrogen cycle only to get bored and drop it before a single fish is put in it, writing a book because of how bad the one I just read was, etc. I will organize the shit out of just about anything as long as it interests or benefits me. I used tables, spreadsheets and D20s to write the characters for my latest book so I could make certain I was relying on zero stereotypes. I thought this was nothing special as a course for writing, until an INTP who I value for stringency told me she was blown away by my approach. However, I often feel like I research as if I were an INTP without the capability they have for holding all the information in place, especially if I never use it again. Without getting into stereotypes too much, I have this problem with rotary skills as well. If they're neglected for too long, it's as if I never learned them.
Once I realized I couldn't rely on chance in my values because patterns kept showing up anyway, I stopped writing it altogether after dumping 20k words into it because it seemed impossible to pick what race/gender/orientation/MBTI (yes, I had a die for this as well) the villain should be in order to have the most positive impact on society upon the masses reading. Even with this level of organization, I still feel like my life is very messy since I'm usually thinking or planning instead of doing. I tend to choose huge long-term goals so the amount of planning necessary for near-perfection is even higher. Liiiiiiike writing a book using MBTI knowing full well I'll have to learn the system inside and out during the creation of said book. One thing I think that is not Te is how rare it is for me to finish a project but I am getting better sort of.
Si:
I was probably more nostalgic in grade/high school. Some of my songs show this as 'being homesick for a place I've never been,' and I used to say that phrase constantly in my teens. I would get these flashes of images or impressions of new locations in my head that always had a feeling and unique color attached to them (I did this unconsciously with people I knew also), then I'd use those as inspiration for writing poetry or songs to others (with an added call for action). Usually there was a sort of melancholy wrapped around this and an urging feeling to discover the place in real life, if it even existed. If not, then to either paint the picture (literally or otherwise) so that others could be transported there as well with my art/writing. The emphasis was usually on appreciating beauty and maintaining a vigilant, questioning spirit.
Se:
I eat high-octane crap when stressed (the Louis CK diet), and Se in general is just something I either never notice, or notice with negative context. Food, sex, drugs have always been complicated for me.
The ones not listed (Ne, Ti) are the ones I don't understand. I'm sure I have a few misnomers that are causing my inconclusive results, though I know the tests can be more or less useless for some people, hence my focus on function stacks. Phew! Thanks!
