I've always taken an interest in personality types, specifically when I had to understand my interactions with other people. Quite a few INFPs describe themselves as feeling like aliens in society (an accurate description on my part), and for the longest time, my only way of dealing with this "alien" feeling was by lumping everyone into groups and researching how their differences made sense on a psychological level. I still remember the shock when I learned that not everyone wanted to discuss the meaning of life, and that most everyone got bored by constant updates on my emotional progress as a human being.
However, what really struck me is that throughout my life, I would get advice to "stop letting my emotions get in the way" and to "start being realistic." The two statements seemed to oppose the very core of my existence, that it took everything in my power not to laugh at these givers of advice and say what seemed so obvious: "but my feelings are real!" I couldn't just omit how I felt about a situation, or I would be left with nothing. Without feeling, I would have no need for writing, for friendships, for conversations past "lovely weather" and "what's for dinner?"
Feeling, is often perceived as something that gets in the way of reality, that we won't be able to take the correct course of action if we let our emotions come into play. But as someone who can't find an off switch to emotions, I find it useless to objectively view a situation, pick the best course of action, then realize it was the wrong decision once I'm back to my emotional, "feel-y" self.
Yes, to the outsider, heightened emotions may seem ridiculous when you look at the exterior course of events. But just because a majority of the "events" are going on in someone's head does not make them any more invalid. I wouldn't tell a depressed person they should get over it because their life doesn't actually suck; the same is true for an "F" dominant personality.
In high school, I liked a boy, the boy said he might like me and would let me know if he did in a few weeks, then the boy said he didn't like me and proceeded to date other girls. End of story. My brain, however, took that as the two year saga of "boy likes Kira and just doesn't want to admit it, Kira goes in endless rage about unfairness of romance." Yes, the added elements to the story were annoying, but I experienced it and had to deal with all the emotions that came with liking this boy--so the most irritating thing is hearing "that's not what happened."
My need to be in tune with emotions isn't an inherent flaw, which seems to be the most difficult thing for "T" (Thinking) personalities to understand. Having emotional understanding makes INFPs able to readily empathize with different personality types, and personally, it makes me want to connect with others. Cheesy as it sounds, having such a huge emotional capacity gives me a reason to interact with humans, since the heavy introversion isn't doing me any favors in that regard.
So, for the emotion-heavy personalities, sometimes what you see is not even half of what happened.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment