on a lark, i took the myers-briggs personality test — you know the one, with all the initials et al. i couldn’t help but think about my incredibly creepy, nerdy uncle who was brandishing about a war-and-peace sized book at a family reunion when i was 13, attempting to harass my mother into submitting to this convoluted typing test that would invariably prove to him that he was better than her. he was always jealous of her.
but i thought, you know, a lot of people find some merit in this so maybe i should take a look. so i tried one test with 45 questions. then i decided to take a few more, just to see what kind of result i would get. out of 6 tests, i rated as infp on all of them. alrighty, what’s this all about?
i began my research into this and oh my fucking god. for the first time in my life, i felt normal, like someone understood me and that how i am is perfectly okay. it talked about how infp’s find it hard to extend into extroversion, but that they can practice it and get away with it — a sensation which always leaves them feeling that they’re on the outside and that someday someone will figure out they’re a fraud. check. next up: relationships. infp’s were compared to hans christian andersen’s the little mermaid, and how she sacrificed all this pain to walk for her man just for love, and that she bore it in silence and just hoped that he would one day appreciate it. uh, check. it covered my great need for extensive alone time to recharge (saying shit like ‘your favorite activity is to stay in your pj’s and read a book in bed all day’ which really is my form of shangri-la), my extensive internal world and loner-tendencies, my devout romanticism and idealism. everything.
i finally felt not wrong. it has been very liberating.
one of the topics that i have written about is feeling not part of this society and not knowing how to actually be part of it. now i see that my natural tendency — and, perhaps, even my role — is to not be part of it. to be on the outside looking in, watching the bigger picture and sharing what i see. infp’s have a significant facility with language and are very perceptive of others’ motivations, simply because they’re fascinated by them.
on the down side, my idealism gets the best of me, i’m often restless, i’ll never know what i want to be when i grow up because there will be no deadline and i will most likely always be dissatisfied in my relationships. ugh. i guess there’s a peace in that, though. and an understanding that for me to ever hope to be happy in my work, i need to be involved with something that i find to be very meaningful. personal development and evolution is my only motivation.
so i have begun reading more about it and learning a little about myself in the process. obviously, there are myriad components that influence how our personalities develop and this one typing approach isn’t the end all and be all. but it did wake me up to a little more self-acceptance. when struggling in work and relationships, i can now understand that, really, the way i feel is okay — it’s not defective, in need of fixing or wrong. with estimations of 1% - 4% of the population possessing this personality type, it’s no wonder i always feel like i don’t belong.
and that’s okay.