On Being an INFJ...

  In the past two or three years I have taken more personality tests than I can even count (okay, so that's not true, I actually could count them, but I'm going for emphasis here)!  Anyway, as many times as I have taken the Myers-Briggs test (and how many times I've tried to manipulate the answers so that I could come out as something different) I always end up being an INFJ (Introverted, Intuition, Feeling and Judging).  I guess in some ways I should feel privileged that I always come out in this group, as only 1-3% (depending on where you look) of the population are there... but honestly, it really just makes me feel like a paradox of a person.

  The best explanation I've read about what it feels like to be an INFJ, I actually found through a post on a Facebook group I am a part of.  The definition went like this...

"INFJ's are walking contradictions.  We want to be noticed and appreciated, yet we hate attention.  We want to make others feel happy and comfortable, yet doing so causes a great deal of stress for us sometimes.  We like to be  alone and are very independent, yet we yearn for companionship.  We are able to think very logically, yet we are willing to disregard logic if our intuition tells us something different. At times, being an INFJ can feel like being two people at once, and we regularly struggle with these two different personas"

 

 

  For me personally, this is so "right on" that I couldn't explain it better myself (although I guess in a way, I am about to try).  I am the type of person who can feel two exact opposite emotions at the exact same time...or at least it feels like it.  I can know what I "should" do and yet choose to do the exact opposite because that's the "better" option.  I am horrible with details, but I can be more organized than most people would ever expect!  I need my alone time, but I also can't go too long without interacting with other people or I start getting really down.  It really makes no sense to me why or how my personality works...and so I guess I can't really expect other people to get me either... but it's nice to know that there are other people out there who feel and act the same way as me...they get it...and even if we only are a slim part of the populations, us INFJ's are not alone!  And that, at least, is comforting!