So Many Thoughts

INFJoe

Lately I’ve been doing a TON of thinking. I’ve become more withdrawn and have allowed my thoughts to flow without trying to hold them back or restrict them. Because of this, I’ve also had a lot of realizations, subtle and not, and have re-learned some things about myself that I had previously forgotten.

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I think that’s part of the reason I haven’t been posting as many actual posts here lately. I’ve had too many thoughts to put any of them down.

I like the world inside my mind, and I like who I am… Mostly. But there are also parts of me that I really don’t like so much, parts that I keep hidden from myself and the outside world. The outside is easy, but inside, that’s a different story. The only way to hide from myself is to suppress things that I’m naturally good at and naturally inclined to do.

Okay, that isn’t entirely true. As an INFJ, I tend to be far more in tune with how others are feeling than how I myself am. A prime example of this is the last visit I had with my family.

INFJ Doodles

I was feeling really uneasy and anxious though I didn’t know why. I mentioned it to my mom. And, being as understanding as she is, she pointed out that maybe I was feeling her stress, rather than my own.

She was right, of course, because after she began to feel less stressed, my anxiousness went away too. I should have realized it on my own, but sometimes it’s hard to distinguish what is me and what is outside.

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Self-awareness is such an important thing to me, yet sometimes I seem so bad at it. It sometimes takes me such a long time to realize things about myself that should have been obvious. It’s not that I’m blind in general, only with myself. It’s like there’s a barrier there that I can’t see behind. And I wonder why.

Why is it so easy for me to see others, and so difficult to see myself?

I think this adds to the feeling of isolation that so many INFJs experience, we’re so complex that we ourselves don’t understand us. If we can’t understand us, we who have all of the history and experience and background information on us, how could anyone else?

INFJoe

I have been very blessed in this regard. I have an INFJ brother who understands me better than I understand myself. He has helped me through so many things in life, and to gain insight and understanding where I would have been lost otherwise.

Anyway, those are some of the things that have been running through my mind lately. Have any of you experienced anything similar?