I was recently, randomly, asked on one of my YouTube videos concerning what my Myers-Briggs personality type is. Not knowing what Myers-Briggs even was, I did a quick google search and I took some time to answer the simple, introspective, personality assessing questionnaire. After running through the entire test, which took up to about 20 minutes, I was presented with the word Advocate, and what is said to be the rarest personality type in the world, INFJ. This abbreviation stands for (I) introvert, (N) intuitive, (F) feeling and (J) judgement (16 Personalities, 2019).
The best quote I have found to describe this personality type was from an article by Kendra Cherry on the Very Well Mind website, "people with INFJ personalities are creative, gentle, and caring. INFJs are usually reserved but highly sensitive to how others feel. They are typically idealistic, with high moral standards and a strong focus on the future. INFJs enjoy thinking about deep topics and contemplating the meaning of life. The INFJ type is said to be one of the rarest with just one to three percent of the population exhibiting this personality type." As broad as this definition might sound, I feel I highly connect to this personality type in several ways. Allow me to just run through these connections and then give you my quick two cents on what I think about personality types. I will first delve through the strong and weak traits of an INFJ and then delve deeper into how different aspects of life affect myself as an INFJ, as well as how the INFJ personality type, in my opinion, is rather similar to my Asperger Syndrome, if not the exact same thing.
Strengths
First of all, let me just go through the strengths of the INFJ's personality traits. To begin, we're really good listeners, or are supposed to be be. I personally don't feel like I'm a good listener at all. It may be due to my autism or maybe it has to do with something entirely different but whenever, literally anyone, talks to me my brain goes off on some sort of tangent, or I "go off with the fairies", as some might say, and before I know it, I've lost half of the conversation and no longer know what the person, or people, in front of me are talking about. However, saying that, if someone is sad, or needs my advice, somehow this imaginary, constantly reeling part of my brain shuts off and I purely listen to what the person has to say. Thus, I guess on this level I would consider myself a rather exceptional listener.
The second strength is how INFJ's are serious about their responsibilities, and I very well can be. In all honesty that is all I have to say about that, I can be serious about my responsibilities. Next, INFJ's are serious monogamists, and call me old school but I am highly old fashioned, in every way of the word. When it comes to relationships I'm a pure gentleman. I take dating serious. I take it slow. I don't make any moves and I allow myself and the other person to get to know each other properly before I allow them to make any moves what so ever. I didn't even let Georgia kiss me until we were about 2 months into dating. The extra physical stuff took wayyyyy longer. In short, I take relationships seriously, and I won't bother getting into a relationship with someone unless I know that they are marital material which, obviously, takes quite a while to discern.
Fourthly, we are selfless and friendly. Ever since I can remember I've always felt the need to help others and be kind to all, I don't see the need or the point in being mean or doing things in order to attain some form of personal gain. I've seen far too many movies and know that the mean person always end up being the most disliked person. Then again, my personal experience shows that the nice person also can end up being one of the loneliest of people, so, which ones better off I don't quite know. What I do know is that being nice to people and having good intentions is the way that is and always has felt the most natural to me. Then again, saying that, I am also Asperger and so I may at times struggle with empathy and so don't always know when a person may be in need of my help, but when I do, I'm always there to do so.
Furthermore, we're also really good with communication, especially in terms of writing. And in all honesty, I find this to be one of the truest traits of my own. I have always struggled with communication due to my Asperger and so writing has always been the best way for me to truly and profoundly express myself, in speech I stumble on my words, my brain gets foggy, I lose track of what I was saying due to nervousness, but with a pen, pencil or a keyboard my words flow rather coherently, and I never miss the opportunity to form beautifully constructed sentences that raise emotion within those that may read them. Thus, despite lacking in one form I feel I make up for it in another.
Next, we INFJ's tend to go above and beyond our duty. I can be a rather lazy person but when a task is given to me by another person there is a desire to prove to the person and mostly myself that it will get done. However, I also like to prove that not only will it get done, but that no one would put as much dedication, determination, resilience, effort, time and attention into what it is that I might need to do. To me, everything in work is either black or white, there is no grey. It's either going to be done amazingly, or not at all. Saying this, it is truly more about proving these things to myself than the other person. I like feeling like I have made my best effort into the work that I produce, or the tasks that I endeavor to undertake.
Weaknesses
Now, there are a lot more strengths than weaknesses to this personality type, however, the weaknesses can be rather challenging and at times even obstructive towards personal progress. Let me quickly go through them. First, we expect way too much of other people. We expect that by being nice to others they too may be nice in return. We expect that when we devote ourselves to a being they would be devoted to us also. We expect that a person may behave one way but then may turn around and disappoint us. We expect that a person be proud of our accomplishments when we celebrate their achievements and then find out that in actuality they may not truly care. You can see the way in which this trait could bring a person down, but it's hard not to expect things of others, it's hard to not expect the world to be good, or desire for the world to be good and unselfish, but it's not always so black and white as we may hope it is. Moreover, INFJ's are extremely, and acutely sensitive, making the previous weak trait even more difficult to swallow.
Next, INFJ's are seriously bad with money, there's not much for me to say on this apart from, it is true. Continuing, our next weakness is that we have a tendency to hide our feelings from other people. I can't talk for other INFJ's but I do not like the idea of people thinking that I am weak or that I am a negative person, anything I might share is at times thought through, sharing nothing that I do not wish to share unless I have to. I don't like accepting defeat neither, which is why talking about it can be difficult at times, it's as though accepting that the bad or difficult thing occurring is truly and in fact troubling. Not to mention the fact that I just don't like talking about my feelings, I don't like crying, I don't like thinking about the things that hurt me, I don't like confessing my current challenges or upsetting situations. Therefore, understanding that anythingI do share that is painful, understand that I do so with the intention of aiding another person that may potentially be in the same situation.
And finally, and probably the worst, and harshest weakness of all, our desire to always produce near perfect tasks and pieces of work, our desire to constantly please all that surround us, our desire to have amazing, long lasting friendships and relationships, our desire to always devote ourselves to our partners and our families, our attempts at listening and communicating and having a good balance between the too, our inability to not expect things from other people and to be extraordinarily sensitive leads us to catastrophically and rather quickly burn out. In order for an INFJ to refuel any energy used up in any of the above experiences or interactions requires some serious alone time and TLC. We need space, we need quiet, we need time with our own personal thoughts, this is why we are introverted, because we refuel within our introverted spaces. The intuitive sides of our being come from understanding how others may feel and thereby, due to our sensitivity, the emotions of those around us affect us also, like a form of emotional radiation sensitivity. In this I mean that because we are so sensitive any emotions that another person may intentionally or might be unaware of leaking into the surrounding atmosphere, we instantly feel it within ourselves, thus making our burn outs more severe.
INFJ in personal life
Ever since I can remember I've been seen as a loner, always stuck in my own head, never really coming out of my shell where it's warm and comfy. Well, at times people thought I would seclude myself, truth be told a lot of time I just don't feel the need to socialize. Being a highly introverted person I like doing things alone, being on my own, deep in my thoughts or reflecting upon different aspects of life, attempting to answer life's hardest most confusing questions. I like my personal space, I like having room to think, space to breath. At times I find myself worrying about whether my introvertedness will shorten my life span due to recent studies revealing that those who spend more time surrounded by those they love tend to live longer. But, one day, after a long, philosophical conversation with my mother she stated something which I had not yet thought, despite already having known it; "there is a huge difference between enjoying being alone and feeling lonely." It's not that I am lonely, I just like being on my own. Not to mention the fact that everyone is different and if you're anything like me then being alone feels really refreshing, thus, I find that for me, it is healthy to have time alone. Hence, the introverted part of my personality. I think this is partly why I loved studying philosophy at university, it allowed me the space I needed to be reflective and think about thinks that are outside of my understanding, I like deep thought. It's a form of playing devils advocate, but then knowing exactly where you stand in retrospect to the ideals or the thoughts and then fighting for that cause that you agree with, I love fighting for the causes that I agree with. That's why I'm a vegan. Being an INFJ makes me an extremely compassionate person, thus, I care about the lives of all beings, not just those that are human, "all lives matter" and all that.
I'm the type of person to be driven by my personal values, these values consist of several different things; self-respect, loyalty, growth, sensitivity, forgiveness, family, spirituality, toughness, patience and goodness. All things which drive me. These values that I have slowly discovered in myself growing up, help me build and develop my personal being and allow me to realize if I am heading in the right direction in life or not. Which leads me to another point, being an INFJ I am also a developer, I like to develop things, projects, tasks, activities, people, but mainly, myself. I am all about self-progression, self-development, self-discovery and self-adaptation. Heck, it's why I started this whole List Girl thing to being with, to help discover and develop myself. And there is only one way a person can truly develop and grow and that is through learning, through discovering new thoughts and opinions, attempting to understand all sides of the story, all stories, other peoples stories. This is also why I've always loved to learn. Not the way that schools and university teach learning but gaining knew knowledge through reading, writing, music, through art, through travel, through experiencing things I've never discovered before. Thus, I guess, my persona The List Girl was crafted and invented through my INFJ personality. I assume that my half of the List Girl is pouring out a lot of my undiscovered traits and characteristics into one beautiful project of self-discovery and inspiration for others to discover themselves also.
INFJ at work
When it comes to work I become extremely reserved, I become private, both due to shyness and my inability to trust other people. I don't know if my lack of trust is an INFJ thing, an Asperger thing, or just something that grew from meeting a ton of horrible people throughout my past, but it's there, and it is fierce. However, I have very much learnt that my reserved and private manner is extraordinarily an INFJ sort of way of being. I wonder if this is due to our sensitivity to other people's emotions, maybe we just sense that we cannot trust others with our personal lives, or maybe we understand and feel that others are hurting so we don't want to bother people with our own personal baggage. Either way, that too, is very much there. Saying that, it's important to understand that, I as a person, find it extremely important to express myself, I understand the repercussions of holding it all in. I used to get into fights at school cause I'd hold in the fact that I was being bullied, I self harmed my way through teenagehood because I just could not find the right way or the desire to express myself, and then at 19 I attempted suicide because I was so busy attempting to please one and all that it drove me to an unending depression. Thus, when I do reveal my secrets, my thoughts, and my opinions, I do so knowing very well the repercussions. I do so to make a point. I do so to make an impact, to make a difference. However, before I started to freely express myself the way that I just did, know, that I first went through several years of therapy in order to lay my pains to rest. I now express myself to inspire, to help, and to allow others to understand that they are not alone with the way that they may be feeling. Thus, if another INFJ is reading this, understand that you don't have to talk to anyone you don't want to, but if you're hiding your emotions, it's important to let them out before it bursts out in ways that are out of your control. Potentially, see a therapist or attempt to open up to somebody you trust. Either way, we cannot remain constantly reserved.
Excuse the tangent, moving on swiftly.
Being that I am an INFJ (and I don't know if this is because of the INFJ, or if it's because of my Asperger Syndrome, or maybe it's all the same thing) I am an extremely, and I mean extremely planned, organised and creative human being. Thus, my career, my work, had to be something within the creative field, I would not function properly if I had to work a job that required absolutely no creativity, I'd either burn out, or explode in frustration, in fits of desire to want to let flow my creativity. This is why I want to make YouTube and blogging my career, as this allows me to have that brilliant flow of creativity that I yearn for. Saying this, I do currently work as a barista, which I fundamentally enjoy. Before this I worked as a videographer for a children's sports and events company and actually found that it burned me out really fast. I think this is for many reasons. Firstly, everyone there was always constantly stressed and being an INFJ I tend to soak in other peoples emotions, thus, being around stressful people consequently made me stressed also. Secondly, the boss that I had was an absolute dick. I don't know about the reader of this post, but for me when you work with a demoralizing, self-centered, rude dick it can put quite the damper on ones mood. And finally, I found that doing creative work for others whilst, on parallel, also creating creative work for myself can become rather tiring. You see, I feel like my creativity is a battery that requires frequent recharging, however, I'd be creative all morning for my old job and then I'd come home and spend my afternoons being creative also, leaving no room to recharge and wiping my battery dry. Thus, I have decided that from here on out I will only be doing creative work for myself as that is where I want my career to head. That being YouTube. In terms of planning and organisation, this too plays a huge part in my life as I find that if I am not prepared or that if my environment is a rye then nothing is produced and I am left rather lost. Thus, for me, planning and organisation is key to successful project completion.
A photographic set of china town that I took whilst practicing photography this past weeked.
INFJ in personal relationships
Growing up, I was raised to be a consistently devoted and caring partner, as well as an understanding and empathetic friend. Despite lacking in the latter due to my Asperger I find that despite the attributes of care and devotion being taught to me from a young age I feel that it's very much a part of who I am, and how I am towards those that I love. I'll be honest in saying that I thought it was merely a part of who I was or maybe due to the way that I was raised, but through the Myers Briggs personality test I was able to realize that it actually, very much, corresponds with my personality type. I have always been the type of person to support and stand by those that I love, and to love them unconditionally despite, maybe at times, not being able to see eye to eye, or whether there are opposition in beliefs. Personally, these things don't have a prominent or implementing doom in the friendships or relationships that I hold as I understand all beings are not created the same, and thus, I also understand that in order for people to get along it is highly important to accept the other persons uniqueness and any differing beliefs that they may have.
In my opinion, this is the only way peace and harmony can be found in relationships and acquaintances of all kinds. Through acceptance and support of everyone's different ways of being and living. This may be due to the way that I was raised or potentially due to my personality and just the way that I choose to be, either way, I strongly believe that attempting to understand and accept others is far more important than attempting to implement ones on beliefs into another being. Saying that, it is obvious that if a persons way of living brought physical or emotional pain to another being or to themselves I would then have an issue with this and clearly express my concerns for that persons behavior's.
Furthermore, I would just like to make note that due to my Asperger I have this slight inability to properly express myself and to fully understand other people and thus I frequently question people's behaviours and people's decisions, this is in no means supposed to come off as judgement, though it usually does, it is merely my Asperger brain attempting to understand people's actions, not a form of ridicule or judgement. Thus, in this way when it comes to understanding others, despite my best efforts I do very much struggle. Which makes me question whether or not my Asperger Syndrome clashes or connects well with my personality type. Let me explain this further.
INFJ and Asperger Syndrome
There are several things which this personality type and Asperger Syndrome hold deeply in common with. Allow me to swiftly go through them and add a brief explanation to my previous question and my current belief that potentially, they are one in the same thing. Firstly, there's the fact that INFJ's only populate 1% of the earth, and accordingly only 1% of people on this earth happen to be on the Autistic spectrum (Autism Society, 2015). Therefore, I would think it rather interesting to pin point all the INFJ's in the world and check whether or not they lie in the spectrum. Secondly, there's the fact that the attributes and characteristics which both INFJ's as well as people with Asperger Syndrome hold. They are both reserved, private and seen as loners, they're extremely thoughtful and found almost constantly lost in thought. They are planned and meticulous organised. And finally, they are creative as well as deeply passionate, which can sometimes, if not always, go hand-in-hand.
Saying this, obviously, nobody is the same; among INFJ's people will differ and among Aspies people will hold different characteristics and be affected in different ways. Therefore, it would be difficult to judge whether the two things are the same or whether they go together. However, I myself being both, can definitely see and feel the correlations between the two. In the way that I perceive the world, in the way that I interact with others and with my environment, in the way in which I communicate and express myself, I feel that both my personality type and my autism are one in the same. Thus, may I input a question out into the world wide web, that due to the connections and similarities between Asperger Syndrome and the INFJ personality type, is it possible that Asperger Syndrome just be another personality rather than a disorder, that personality being INFJ? The thought that I am trying to conjure in the readers mind is this: potentially, instead of seeing Autistic people as a group of people with a social and interactive disorder or difficulty, instead think "they are merely people with a different personality type to my own."
Conclusion
Thus, in conclusion, it truly makes me think about how, first, even people who may have the INFJ personality can still be completely different from each other, despite sharing these traits. As, despite having these traits, these traits can affect us in different ways and some characteristics might be more extreme for some than for others. Furthermore, by having taken this test I have been able to discover more about my being as there are things about this personality that I clearly understood and distinctly connect with. But, there were others where I had to deeply consider and attempt to understand as to how it fitted with the rest of the picture. All of these things make up a part of who I am, my precision and necessity for a plan. My desire to connect deeply with other people and to fully understand other people through questions, as it is the only way I seem to be able to understand people. It gives reason as to why I'm constantly burning out, apart from my Asperger Syndrome which also affects me this way (another reason as to why they may probably the same thing). And so on. Plus, when I conciser the fact that INFJ's make up only a small portion of the human race, I do not think of it as "look at me, I'm a rarity, I'm unique", what I do think, however, is the following. If the INFJ's cover only 1%-3% of the population, and if people with Autism are a minority, would it then be just for me to suggest that potentially INFJ's are people with Autism, or that Autistic people are the 1%-3% INFJ's that roam the earth?
References:
- 16 Personalities, 2019 - https://www.16personalities.com/infj-personality
- Autism Society, 2014 - www.autism-society.org/what-is/facts-and-statistics/
- Jenn Grannerman, 2018 - https://introvertdear.com/news/infj-secrets/
- Kendra Cherry, 2019 - https://www.verywellmind.com/infj-introverted-intuitive-feeling-judging-2795978
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