Last year after one such conflict, I was reading up on personalities in the hopes that I could better understand what causes these things to happen to me. I consider myself to be extremely open minded, kind, patient, and understanding of other people, no matter their point of view. I'm real with people. I genuinely feel sympathetic connections with them and find it generally quite easy to see where they're coming from. I'm not trying to butter myself up to be this perfect person, because I'm not. I do have plenty of weaknesses as well. I just needed to make that point clear before I move on to the next. My weakness is exactly that: I walk around with an open heart. My genuine feeling of respect for people is continuously challenged. The moment I feel that knife of disbelief or disrespect for my honest respect for them, they have pushed me to my limit, and I can no longer expend the energy to respect them. It's my breaking point. Now, it's rare that I ever actually reach my breaking point, because I have lived my whole life with this kind of ultra sensitivity, and therefore built walls and defenses around myself. I still feel the stings of insult on a near daily basis, but I've taught myself to ignore my feelings in many situations, simply because I know the world around me won't be accepting of them if I let them out because my feelings are deep. My passions are strong, and everything I love, I love with such intensity I can often not handle it myself. So, I developed the walls of defense to protect my open heart from the world. People can still penetrate those walls, unfortunately, but it's only if they have crossed the point of no return and triggered my breaking point of total disrespect. I think I can count the total times this has actually happened in my life on one hand. That's how rare this is, just so you know.
Now, I've always known I'm different. I'm not stupid. I can see that clearly by the way my strong reactions affect others, and the way they constantly tell me I overreacted, or I have issues, or the most common of them all: I'm far too sensitive. The interesting thing about this is that in researching the psychology of this to find out if they were all right about me (because of a lifetime of those same accusations, I seriously thought I had a mental disorder), I stumbled across a really fascinating theory of personality types, developed by a psychology researched mother-daughter team. It's called the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, and it's a personality test. The Myers-Briggs test is a psychological inquiry which supposedly measures the psychological preferences of the way in which people perceive the world and make decisions. After reading all about it, I decided to take it and see how accurate it was, not really expecting much from it. Out of the 16 different personality types there are, I tested as an INFJ (which stands for Introvert-Intuitive-Feeling-Judging), which is supposedly about 1.6% of the population, and the least common of any of them. Now, the least common part definitely made sense right away, since I have always felt like an outcast my entire life, so reading that was an immediate comfort. Next, I began reading what each of the 4 letters of my type stand for, and what they mean. Following the conclusion of that, I was sold. Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING I read about my personality type rang undeniably true for me. I even had my husband read it over and asked him if he thought he was reading about me, and he nodded all the way through and agreed whole-heartedly that it was me to a T. Suddenly, my world was opened up to me in a way I had never viewed it before. I know it was just a random internet personality test, but I did at least make sure it was a legitimate, popular and respected test. But it made me feel like finally I wasn't crazy. It freed me of the lifelong belief that I was actually a complete mental case! I don't know if you can imagine what it's like to feel that way and then have the burden instantly lifted after so long, but it was such a good feeling. Finally, I understood why everyone always thought I was so insane. All my "flaws" and "issues" were transformed into personality traits, turning me into a perfectly sane individual instead of the mentally unstable person I had been most of my life. Best of all, everything made sense. All my past experiences, hardships, relationships, jobs, etc. I finally figured out who I am.
Obviously, there are a few skeptics, as there are for everything, who don't think the Myers-Briggs test should be relied upon for accurate information. Here is one such article: http://fortune.com/2013/05/15/have-we-all-been-duped-by-the-myers-briggs-test/
But, in my defense, I have taken this test multiple times on different websites, and I always have gotten the same result. Also, one of the things I really like about it is that it isn't all black & white, like the above article suggests. It actually shows you the percentage of each of the four letters of your type that you tested for, called "preferences", so you can see which direction you are leaning to another personality type. For me, I tested 100% Introvert, which made me laugh, but for the others, I was in various "strong" percentages. This shows that our personalities are a continuous flow into the next one, and not all or nothing.
So, the most interesting part about all this, was in tying it into the conflicts I've had with people. Most of my experiences in having disagreements, arguments or full on verbal attacks from people have always left me feeling almost instantly flushed hot, shaky, in complete defense mode. In the end, I feel completely zapped of energy, I cry, I always seek out someone "safe" with whom I can talk it out with, which is either like my best friend or my husband. But the thing of it is, while the other person seems to have moved on and forgotten about it, I'm still plagued thinking about the conflict for days, weeks and even months sometimes! It eats me alive. This is another reason I avoid conflict like the plague, because I know it will destroy me, mentally. When I read about my personality type, I found so much insight in reading about how INFJs deal with conflict. The following 10 points are seriously spot on:
The reason I'm writing about this all now, is because two people have brought me to my breaking point in the last year and a half. The first one was my uncle, and it was one such incident that had been building up over the years. He had insulted my vegan diet relentlessly, and of course I just keep my mouth shut and take the abuse, because that's what I do. But one day, my husband finally spoke back to him with a stern comment to shut him up, because he'd had enough. My uncle triggered my INFJ "door slam" the moment he replied, "Hey, Mike, Fuck you!" This was on Facebook (even though he had actually insulted me on many occasion in real life too), so everyone saw this, including my 91 year old grandmother (my uncle's mother). My sister in law chimed in to chew him out, and he cussed her out as well. By the time I went online to see this, it was in full blown fight mode, and I completely lost what little respect I had left of the man, and told him off, ending by verbally cutting him out of my life. I know it hurt a lot of family to have to see that, especially my mom (his sister), but I just couldn't take it anymore. The last time that happened was probably about 8 years ago, so you can see this really isn't a super common thing for me. It happened with two of my closest family members at once, both of whom have never gained back the relationship we once shared. The difference between that event and the one with my uncle was actually vastly different because I valued deeply the relationship I had with my aunt & cousin 8 years back, but I was actually struck with immense relief when I ended contact with my arrogant uncle. What happened with my aunt & cousin was very deep, and extremely controversial, which I believe was the reason it struck me so hard. I thought everyone should be treated equally, and they both thought white people should be oppressed as punishment for their history. There was never any resolve, I fell into a deep depression following that lengthy conflict between them, and they wouldn't talk to me for over a year. When my cousin graduated, out of what I felt was the good of my heart, I reluctantly attended her graduation and wished her well. Thereafter, we've seen each other at family events, and even had a bit of small talk, but I know it's only for the sake of the rest of our family. They both soon moved away, and we've never been close since.
Late last week, this happened all over again with two different people when I posted a petition online. I'm not going to get into it on this post, since this one is already plenty long enough for today. Besides which, it's a whole other story. But I'll conclude this post by simply saying, I'm a drained, nerve-wracked mess now, and I would very much like it to be resolved, but I have a feeling that won't happen. I just need an honest vacation. The cliche one where I get to sit under a palm tree on the warm, sunny beach sipping virgin margaritas.
