Why I Hated Being An INTJ

This was a hard one to film and I had to take breaks which means more cuts than usual. Regardless, I hope you enjoy.

INTJ, INTJ Female, Myer Briggs, 16 Personalities

[LisaMarie-brtn]

I wish this video existed 30 years ago. I've kept my world so small that I never met anyone else quite like me until I had my first child who is INTJ. I've always tried to protect him from these things ppl say and the way they make us feel. I felt like an alien my entire life and learned how to fake acting "normal" just so ppl can feel comfortable around me at work. It's so exhausting that when I get home I am a complete hermit. I can't tell you how many times I have been told, "That's just not how ppl think Lisa! Nobody thinks like you!" Then me screaming inside, but if I am human and I think this way then it must be rational or there must be others who agree. This video touched me and I have enjoyed all your content so far. I look forward to more videos. Thank you.

[justcallmejon]

It takes a lot of courage as an INTJ to open up the way you did in this video so kudos to you! Keep telling your stories because one of the strength of being an INTJ is learning through listening. I'm sure you're making an impact on a lot of lives with these type of videos. You got a new fan!

[Matti_Mu]

As an "unhealthy infp", who is almost always stuck in his magical fairytale land and who then tries to radically compensate for it for a period of time, I can assure you, that you're not the only one out there who struggles with relationships! Whenever I'm around intj's I always feel grounded in a way, which is nice! I also think that you look and are quite beautiful and I can't imagine anyone seriously thinking otherwise! 🧐❤️

[JorgeHernandez-tibk]

Nice cat ears 👀
I’m an intj as well, those younger years definitely make you feel like an outcast.
It doesn’t help that you’re so sure about yourself & that you’re going about your way, but it helps to atleast not care enough about what others think of you

[julianizdebski]

Hi!

Fellow INTJ - this is very relatable and very similar. (Male) so I can only imagine the extra difficulties for being female.

Your right (you already know) but keep pushing this stuff out of you - I am doing the same thing but your right.

We process a realm that most people will never know exists. That can lead to severe isolation, but a true INTJ would never have it any different.

Keep it up!

[AaronLance]

I rejected the personality tests for a long time too. I knew my thought processes were different and that I had a hard time relating to most people, but I attributed it to specific aspect of my background and experience. I felt like an alien, so I quietly spent decades trying to figure things out; mostly trying to work out what was wrong with me. Recently stumbling on your channel helped me appreciate personality tests and specifically the INTJ personality type we both have. Even though we're very different, it's been refreshing to see you open up about many of the same issues I've faced. Now, rather than feeling isolated, I'm finally interested more comfortable interacting with others of all types, though I think I'll always prefer those who think more like we do. Your delightful. Thank you!

[nickr]

I do enjoy your content far more than the other personality type content here. Sharing your experiences, rants, and perspectives is far more enlightening than just the surface level overviews that other videos offer. I can learn a lot from what you have to say.

[ijacob]

The only thing i hate about being an INTJ is that i seem boring and creepy to others. It's difficult to find relationships because of that on top of being severely independent. It sometimes feels like a contradiction where i like my solitude, but i dont want to be alone. Im more comfortable with a relationship where we each do our own thing, but enjoy eachothers company. But it seems like most people like to be overly attached and lovey dovey. Now im turning 30 and have never felt more alone. I don't have as many opportunities to meet people and being by myself for so long has me set in my independent ways to where it may be too late for me in finding a significant other.

[KARLA-xdko]

As an intj, I'll tell you Smth..
hating yourself means that you don't know yourself enough.. This world is meaningless nothing deserve to hate yourself bc of it. You are the only one who can trust.loving yourself means having self confidence.. Just not caring about people's opinion will cause you more problems cause you are lying to yourself the human is a set of feelings we are actually taking care of people's opinions even if we hide this fact to ourselves so the first step to actually get self confidence is to be completely honest with yourself which is Smth difficult to do for real but it's possible of course.. Second just live your life baby..this life will teach you a lot..being an intj the mastermind is Smth I'm so proud of girl..we are so cool isn't we☺🌚??+ your skin is holy awesome 💓😂

[WolfoxBR]

It's incredible how much I relate to everything you say. Which makes me feel less "alone", in a sense? Even though I'm sure we're different in many aspects, there's so much I recognize in what you say, that I feel understood. And that's a wonderful feeling I didn't get a lot of through my life so far. So thank you for that.

I wouldn't go as far as to say that I hated being an INTJ (even before I knew what that even was). But I was acutely aware of how different I was compared to almost anyone else around me, and the cost that had on myself. I feel both blessed and cursed. Blessed because, for instance, my analytic skills prevented me from suffering a lot and guided me through a mostly fulfilling life - but those same analytic skills force me to see the Absurd around me in such a clear way that it can be overwhelming, like you said. So much noise, so much wasted time and talent, so much needless and avoidable suffering. "For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief", reads an aphorism in Ecclesiastes, and that's exactly right.

Anyway, I made peace with myself. I am what I am, the world is what it is. Both I and the world will change, but a lot about us won't. Reality can hurt when you are able to see how much better it could be, but truth is a friend, and I'd rather have an unpleasant reality than a pleasant illusion, I suppose.

Anyway, I hope you had a nice dinner! Loved the cat ears. Looking forward to your next video (but please don't feel pressured to make a new one!). Cheers.

[MS-zcjh]

Same, it is tough to be an INTJ especially being female. There are so many societal expectations. Like for example, I am just sitting and I don't want to talk, people would say you can talk, do you find us noisy. Like in my head, I do not want to spend energy on anything right now.

[iuspuniendi]

Dear Niki, I feel what you've been through. The world judged you without making the effort to understand you. If you didn't blend in, you were an outcast. Your heart is purer than of any person who is all lovey-dovey on the surface but cold on the inside.

I grew up around extroverts. I was always an INTJ, I always liked wearing black, but my narcissistic mother and my environment kind of forced me to suppress my true self. I wasn't considered normal for reading so much and being annoyed by loud people. I was forced to be outgoing. I started sharing my insights and I got laughed at, even though my insights helped me excel at school. My professors liked me though. When I saw a professor trying to teach a bunch of of unhinged brats, I told her she is throwing pearls to the swine. You can imagine that I got hate from the class, but it was true. Today, I suppress nothing. I am proud to be an INTJ.

Stay strong girl.

[AdjourArcane]

Wow the sense of self thing, so real. I feel like 4 year old me (earliest memories) is the same person as 41 year old me. Took me a very long time to understand that other people didn't have a firm sense of self, or one at all. I still can't imagine it. That said, I always liked wearing the bright colors (probably due to 80's cartoon and fashion influences that I grew up with, but who knows), and was told that was a phase (it wasn't). I did however always know they had the issue, not me. Saying I was making attitude faces when I know I wasn't feeling anything or was actually happy. I had the benefit of knowing that these shitty adults were just projecting, even when It was frustrating. Thank you for making the video. Subscribed

[Gio-sxkt]

That's fascinating. I too initially hated getting the INFJ label when I took the Myers Briggs in High School, but for the opposite reason of feeling like I was more of a thinker then a feeler. Like I did not prioritize my own feelings on things at all, and felt more of an observer trying to understand and solve others feelings as I felt it all connected to a larger picture that my mind was seeking to understand. I didn't understand what the code actually meant. After learning the cognitive functions it started to make sense and fell into place. It always bugs me when people try to differentiate people as "feeling" and "thinking". From my perspective we all do it all, just expressed in different ways that just makes us look different and perceive things different. I also hate the idea of being unique. Being "unique" is more like a kind of torture in a way, but I also experienced that irritation of people picking on my looks and how I did things. And I think for me the painful part of it comes down to not feeling seen. It's not like I don't like how I am, its that I'm almost never seen even when I'm trying to make myself seen. So I just give up trying most of the time. I think the closest to feeling seen is by friends I've typed as an INTJ. And with other INFJs I tend to feel understood more then seen. I'm not sure if that is what is going on, but that is just how it has felt from my purely subjective experience. I think it's something like this ENFPs hold space for me, INTJs make me feel seen, INFJs make me feel understood. I don't really understand it, but this is just from my unique experience. I think understanding type has more just given me the words to a lot of things I had previously observed or noticed but without the words to describe it, so that is why I like it. For me it's not a box, but a vocabulary.

[theZam]

Hey... Be yourself, you can be anyone in this life. You shouldn't feel bad about who you are, it doesn't matter if you're intj or any of those silly letters, your tastes, your skills, your goals, are what define you. No one is perfect, but we all have something good, you just have to find it and share it to the world

[gymnopedist]

I'm 22 and often hate being INTJ - doomed to wander this world lonely and misunderstood. I had a few mental breakdowns thinking about how I will possibly be forever alone, even though I can hardly admit it.

[roughrosa]

All I can say is ‘no worry’. Being INTJ is actually cool. Embrace your uniqueness.

We are so worried that we can’t fit in and people want to change us. But please don’t. We change ourselves on our own good time.

As a matured older INTJ, I can tell you that age makes us softer. We appreciate our unique personality as well as the personality of others and world is better and a lot more beautiful that way. We don’t have to be nice, we just need to be kind.

I think having an understanding partner with compatible personality can give us comfort and freedom to be who we are. So, when you find one, you know. It’s not so alien and misunderstood anymore.

[enfieldjohn]

You are quite brave to talk about things like this and to share your feelings with others on a video. Just the thought of making a video like this and posting it raises my anxiety levels, so kudos to you.

I can relate to some of what you are saying. I first took the MBTI test in a college freshman class on leadership and communication. One of those required 'humanities' classes. The only humanities class that I remember really enjoying was 20th Century Science Fiction Literature because we got to read sci-fi novels, some of which I'd already read, discuss them and write about them. I've always enjoyed reviewing things like books, gadgets, movies etc. so it was a fun class. I had a great teacher for that class who was a Nebula Award winning author himself. Had some great philosophical and conceptual discussions with him in that class.

Anyway, in the leadership class, they had us take the MBTI test and I tested as INTJ. After the test, they had us read about the test and what the different personality types meant. I could understand why I tested as I did because I was totally honest in answering the questions rather than answering how one might expect a 'perfect' person to answer them. I've taken it several times since for different jobs in which they used it as part of employee training, or in an effort to help the employees get to know each other better, etc. I've always tested as an INTJ.

In the Enneagram tests which I've taken as part of a club I've joined in an effort to socialize outside of work (which is so very hard for me to do), I tested as a 5 wing 4 which is sort of equivalent to being on the fence between an INTJ and an INFJ. It's an interesting alternative personality theory which in some ways takes the complexity of human cognition and behavior into account more than MBTI does, but both are interesting. It makes some sense too because I've always been a little bit more interested in art and learning for their own sake without needing it to be a step towards achieving a big goal than the stereotypical INTJ is. I'm also less confrontational than the 'typical' INTJ and tend to let things go rather than risk damaging a relationship. I've always hated to argue, especially if things become heated.

I know what you mean about growing up feeling like you don't fit in and that you aren't good enough to suit other people. I grew up on a cattle ranch in a rural area of Western Nebraska in the 70's, so I was expected to be a cowboy. However, I never was interested in rodeos, riding horses, listening to country music, etc. I preferred to stay in my room and draw imaginary maps, monsters, robots etc., listen to music, read comics and sci fi and fantasy novels, play with my Star Wars toys and things like that. I helped on the ranch the best I could because my dad needed me to, but I never enjoyed it.

I didn't think that most country music was interesting and preferred music that was considered 'weird' by my peers like The Police, Dave Mathews Band, Spin Doctors, classical music like Strauss and Mozart, etc.

I never related to other people very well and had very few friends. Most of my friends were also outcasts like me because they had recently moved there for their dad's work and they weren't any good at sports like me either, so they were rejected by the other kids. My best friend was a kid who spent most of his time at home because he had asthma so severe that he'd have an attack if he ran for more than 40 yards or something like that and would need oxygen. Our parents set up play dates for us so that we could keep each other company. He was really into G.I. Joe and western movies because his uncle was a stunt man for westerns. We used to watch them together and he'd point out the scenes where his uncle was doing a stunt. He hated having his medical condition as much as I hated mine because it limited us so much.

I was born with a tumor on my brain that affected my eyes - preventing me from being able to focus so I saw everything double and thus had no depth perception. It also gave me massive headaches and fevers high enough to make me hallucinate. So you can imagine that I wasn't any good at all at the stuff that boys were 'supposed' to enjoy doing. Took the doctors years to figure out what was causing my symptoms and some of their guesses included mental retardation, so you can imagine how that hurt my family, especially my mom who felt so bad about it. Mothers of kids born with physical and/or mental challenges often feel like it's their fault that their kid turned out that way. She had migraine headaches and depression for most of my childhood.

I finally got physical therapy for the double vision and the tumor shrank enough that I didn't have fevers anymore, but not until I was about eight years old, so I was incredibly behind the 'normal' kids around me. Once I was able to see words on the page like I should and started to learn to read, I became a voracious reader and spent a lot of time in the library which was also a sanctuary from the bullies since the librarian didn't put up with any nonsense. You actually had to be very quiet in libraries in those days.

To make a long story shorter, I'm not sure how much of my personality is genetic and how much is shaped by my experiences, but given all that I went through, it's no surprise that I'd be like an INTJ. None of the kids who befriended me stayed in the county long before their dad would get a job somewhere else, so I never had a close friend for more than a year or two and there was a lot of time between that and the next time a family with a kid I could relate to would move into our tiny community.

Really, my wife, whom I didn't meet until I was 30, is the first best friend I've had for more than a couple of years. We've got quite a bit in common, though she's a little more outgoing than I am. She's likely an INFJ.

Great video. I appreciate your content.

[SOULJAJOE]

Thank you for sharing, Niki. I've also had similar experiences in terms of people that are acquaintances or even strangers that stated I should not wear so much black (I used to wear literally all black at work, and it wasn't even like eccentric clothes, just regular clothes but in the color black), that I should talk more and smile more and do this and do that but make sure if anything I am like 'them'.
I think there is a complex reason why society is like this, and I'm not going to get into that 😂😂
Looking forward to seeing more content, have a good one

[neolink]

I can relate being an INFP as my base personality. Has so many negative downsides