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momebieI am so damn intrigued right now. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
cleolinda has a poll going here where she's trying to correlate instances of INFP-ness to instances of someone being an empath. She has links to a Myers-Briggs test and explanations of what an empath is and it's all very interesting. If you're so inclined, I urge you to be a sample case for her poll. But really, that's not what's got me thinking.
As someone who has a Psychology minor, and who has never known what she wanted to be when she grew up, I've taken a LOT of Myers-Briggs tests in my time. From the time I was a senior in high school to the time I graduated college I was pretty exclusively an INFJ (Introversion Intuition Feeling Judgment). When I took the Myers-Briggs test she linked to just now I came up as an ISFP (Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving). I am not going to argue with either of those results, really. They both sum me up quite well. My issue with them is that they would seem to be coming up backwards. Or rather, it seems like I should have been ISFP then and an INFJ now.
I don't think I posted about it, and I don't really bring it up unless I'm ruefully, self-deprecatingly trying to be funny about my weaknesses, but last year some time all of my friends (the boyfriend included) pretty much told me in the span of a week that they don't think I'm particularly empathetic. And I'll tell you right now, that fucking hurt. I have always, to my way of thinking, tried to understand what other people are going through. I may not change my behavior to CORRELATE with those mental processes concerning the feelings and situations of others, but I go through the exercise. So while I might rant about people needing to get over this or go along with that, it's not that I haven't tried to find their side of the story. It's mostly that I think their side of the story is hurting someone else who I don't like to see hurt and because of that I want them to be better. I am not immune to this either. I often wish I could be better for people and sometimes don't really know how, which is probably part of the disconnect in the way my friends see me and the way I see myself.
So yeah, I lack empathy apparently. But then, you maybe all knew that. It comes to mind that a lot of the characters I really, really like lack empathy. Vicious being the most notable in that regard, but it's a common thread. I find the heartless intriguing. I always assumed that it was because I was allowing myself to explore a different facet of (non)emotional being, but perhaps it's always been that I relate to these characters because I too lack this trait and I want to be able to explore those parts of myself without people calling me on being a lousy person. (Which isn't to say that lacking in empathy makes you a bad person. It's just that I feel we're just taught that being sensitive to others is a paramount skill for navigating the world around us, and if we don't have that skill we're somehow letting other people down.)
In taking that Myers-Briggs test THIS TIME I kept thinking about the questions and wondering how my friends would answer them for me. I didn't answer the way I think they would, I answered honestly for myself, but the thought was in the back of my mind. And then when I came up with the new answer I had to wonder how much that whole revelation has changed who I am fundamentally. Do I now behave differently because my friends saw that I was lacking something I thought I wasn't? Am I now trying to make up for my actions in the past and does that make either set of answers disingenuous? For the record, I think that we are works in progress, myself especially, so I am not surprised by the idea that our Myers-Briggs scores could change over time. I'm mostly pondering how other people's reactions shape who we become. (And there's a long rant about Others and existentialism that I'll keep to myself, since I'm sure you've heard it before.)
But anyway, my head is rolling all of that around right now and I don't have a conclusion for my thoughts, I just wanted to get them out. And I also wanted to sort of gauge how other people see me and see how those scores work for or against my own scores. Is it just that I cannot properly communicate who I am, or is it that who I am is not who I think I am. And if I am not who I think I am, then who am I and how do I untangle the two gestalts? So anyway, if you will indulge me by telling me what Type YOU think I am:
[Poll #1728823]
I know that some of you know me very well and some of you don't know me that well at all. That's par for life. Even if you feel you don't know me well enough to answer I'm still interested in seeing what you think. There's no right or wrong answer here, I'm just genuinely curious about the way in which other people see me. It's a question I spend a lot of time ruminating on, but can never really answer in any meaningful way since I can only know myself (or anything really) as myself and not as anyone else.
cleolinda has a poll going here where she's trying to correlate instances of INFP-ness to instances of someone being an empath. She has links to a Myers-Briggs test and explanations of what an empath is and it's all very interesting. If you're so inclined, I urge you to be a sample case for her poll. But really, that's not what's got me thinking. As someone who has a Psychology minor, and who has never known what she wanted to be when she grew up, I've taken a LOT of Myers-Briggs tests in my time. From the time I was a senior in high school to the time I graduated college I was pretty exclusively an INFJ (Introversion Intuition Feeling Judgment). When I took the Myers-Briggs test she linked to just now I came up as an ISFP (Introverted Sensing Feeling Perceiving). I am not going to argue with either of those results, really. They both sum me up quite well. My issue with them is that they would seem to be coming up backwards. Or rather, it seems like I should have been ISFP then and an INFJ now.
I don't think I posted about it, and I don't really bring it up unless I'm ruefully, self-deprecatingly trying to be funny about my weaknesses, but last year some time all of my friends (the boyfriend included) pretty much told me in the span of a week that they don't think I'm particularly empathetic. And I'll tell you right now, that fucking hurt. I have always, to my way of thinking, tried to understand what other people are going through. I may not change my behavior to CORRELATE with those mental processes concerning the feelings and situations of others, but I go through the exercise. So while I might rant about people needing to get over this or go along with that, it's not that I haven't tried to find their side of the story. It's mostly that I think their side of the story is hurting someone else who I don't like to see hurt and because of that I want them to be better. I am not immune to this either. I often wish I could be better for people and sometimes don't really know how, which is probably part of the disconnect in the way my friends see me and the way I see myself.
So yeah, I lack empathy apparently. But then, you maybe all knew that. It comes to mind that a lot of the characters I really, really like lack empathy. Vicious being the most notable in that regard, but it's a common thread. I find the heartless intriguing. I always assumed that it was because I was allowing myself to explore a different facet of (non)emotional being, but perhaps it's always been that I relate to these characters because I too lack this trait and I want to be able to explore those parts of myself without people calling me on being a lousy person. (Which isn't to say that lacking in empathy makes you a bad person. It's just that I feel we're just taught that being sensitive to others is a paramount skill for navigating the world around us, and if we don't have that skill we're somehow letting other people down.)
In taking that Myers-Briggs test THIS TIME I kept thinking about the questions and wondering how my friends would answer them for me. I didn't answer the way I think they would, I answered honestly for myself, but the thought was in the back of my mind. And then when I came up with the new answer I had to wonder how much that whole revelation has changed who I am fundamentally. Do I now behave differently because my friends saw that I was lacking something I thought I wasn't? Am I now trying to make up for my actions in the past and does that make either set of answers disingenuous? For the record, I think that we are works in progress, myself especially, so I am not surprised by the idea that our Myers-Briggs scores could change over time. I'm mostly pondering how other people's reactions shape who we become. (And there's a long rant about Others and existentialism that I'll keep to myself, since I'm sure you've heard it before.)
But anyway, my head is rolling all of that around right now and I don't have a conclusion for my thoughts, I just wanted to get them out. And I also wanted to sort of gauge how other people see me and see how those scores work for or against my own scores. Is it just that I cannot properly communicate who I am, or is it that who I am is not who I think I am. And if I am not who I think I am, then who am I and how do I untangle the two gestalts? So anyway, if you will indulge me by telling me what Type YOU think I am:
[Poll #1728823]
I know that some of you know me very well and some of you don't know me that well at all. That's par for life. Even if you feel you don't know me well enough to answer I'm still interested in seeing what you think. There's no right or wrong answer here, I'm just genuinely curious about the way in which other people see me. It's a question I spend a lot of time ruminating on, but can never really answer in any meaningful way since I can only know myself (or anything really) as myself and not as anyone else.
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no subject
Date: 2011-04-11 04:44 pm (UTC)My dad's an ENTP and my mom's an ESFJ, so we're a family of extroverts. (Even the dog is an extrovert, man.)
Dealing with certain problems is hard, yo. I'd be shocked if most people can handle a lot of weird problems and situations with grace.
Only two of those on the HuffPo list apply to me, and the noise thing is specifically an ADD thing and not so much an empath thing. I really do feel for my friends, but I'm more likely to externalize it than internalize. It's a very actor-y thing, I think. (Again, I am never shocked when anyone believes I'm an ENFP, since I have the actor personality down to a tee.)
Whereas, on the other hand, I've been told I'm too observant. Heh. I'm too busy looking at the trees and not the forest.