Download Episode Here – right click link and select “Save Link As…”
In this episode, Joel and Antonia dive deep into the unique challenges, needs, and desires of the INTJ personality type.
In this podcast on the INTJ personality type you’ll find:
Perspectives/Effectiveness
Cassandra – Greek Mythology – Gift of Prophecy without believers.
Ability to see what’s coming down the line, but nobody cares.
Foresight is different from prophecy.
Prophecy knows what’s coming up. Foresight can predict based on observation.
Strategy: Where’s the puck going?
Cynicism comes along with an INTJ recognizing that the world doesn’t value their gifts.
Isolation, loneliness, misunderstood, separation.
Mastermind Article – “Smartest people in the room based upon analytical and linguistic intelligence.”
We as a society have decided different criteria for intelligence. Not necessarily right. There are multiple styles of intelligence. Other types outclass INTJs regarding different kinds of intelligence (i.e. kinesthetic, emotional, etc.)
INTJs are very careful thinkers. They spend a lot of time thinking about whatever has captured their interest. Because they’re careful about how they think, they are also very careful about how they articulate their thoughts. They will show up as smarter because they express their words more precisely. They encourage everyone else to be more careful with how we think.
They expend Energetic credits in thinking through things, which is why INTJs have such an Economy of motion.
Many INTJs think the vast majority of people are careless thinkers.
The driver process for INTJs is Introverted Intuition that we nicknamed “Perspectives.”
Driver – Ni
Perspectives is the ability to watch your mind form patterns over a long time.
Podcast Introverted Intuition vs Extraverted Intuition
INTJs are inside their mind all the time.
They have a sixth sense of what is coming down the pike.
Perspectives is not right 100% of the time. It is a skill that must be developed. Predictions become more accurate the more you develop the skill.
INTJs love conceptualizing what is happening next.
People who use Perspectives think about the box. It’s about meaning and meta perspectiving.
Perspective users start to realize the subjective nature of how people see the world.
The copilot process for INTJs is Extraverted Thinking that we nicknamed “Effectiveness.”
Effectiveness asks “what works?” What is the bottom line? What will accomplish the objective?
Effectiveness is linear. A step by step approach to how to get things done.
Metrics. How do we measure whether something is pass-fail?
Effectiveness Can appear cold hearted because of its way of navigating around feelings to get a project accomplished.
Break things down to component levels. Uses Humans as resources. Effectiveness is Best when emotions aren’t clouding it.
Ni + Te = Perspectives loves to predict. Effectiveness is about metrics and implementing strategies. Coupled together, these create sustainable systems.
INTJs systems are context dependent. They want to make sure no one comes along and breaks their systems.
The 10-year-old process is Introverted Feeling that we have nicknamed Authenticity.
Tertiary – Fi
Authenticity is a decision-making process that checks in with inner alignment.
How are things impacting you emotionally?
Done well it can replicate someone else’s emotions and mirror those feelings back
As a 10-year-old it isn’t a strength. It becomes solely about how things are impacting the INTJ.
It makes the average INTJ feel like a sitting duck; A childlike part of them that can be hurt.
It’s not just a recognition about how things impact you, but it’s an internalization which becomes more crippling.
INTJs struggle because they have a tendency to over rely on this process.
Driver process is Introverted – Copilot is extraverted: we need to have access to both worlds. Introverts need real world feedback to stay balanced.
Ten year old is introverted. Introverts can find themselves avoiding the outer world and staying within. So they rest on that Ni – Fi loop.
If you get inside somebody else’s perspective, then mirror their emotions it becomes overwhelming to a Thinker. So they shut themselves off and create massive distance from the world.
Why INTJs feel so lonely. Human relationships require a measure of vulnerability.
The solution is that INTJs need to become vulnerable. They will survive. They are resilient.
Pain may seem neverending, but it does fade. People can massively add to the quality of your life.
To get to vulnerability, INTJs need to use their Copilot first. Create systems and frameworks of connecting with others.
Create a social event you can feel some control over. As the host, you are the highest status person in the room, and you know everyone.
When INTJs feel out of control, they clamp down.
When Effectiveness feels good in general, it is more open to experiencing closer relationships.
If INTJs aren’t implementing enough effectiveness strategies, they’re going to feel vulnerable and out of control.
Get out of comfort zone and get into action.
Swap the feeling of vulnerability with empowerment. Empowerment comes from building things in outside world and knowing you got the world handled. Then the vulnerability fades.
Even when Authenticity is used well, and it is healthy it is very idealistic. It’s not so much about reality but conviction. This is how things should be making me feel.
Perfectionism is a running theme for INTJs because it is an idealism of the way things should be.
Idealism gets turned in on INTJ themselves, which is crippling.
The opposite is Effectiveness which is pass/fail criteria. Good is better than perfect.
Authenticity is about “does it feel good to me?” So to INTJs nothing is ever good enough. They are waiting for just the right time. Just that perfect moment to implement the ideal strategy.
INTJs should never wait for that perfect moment to act. Start acting first.
Let Authenticity serve Effectiveness.
Effectiveness forces you out of your shell. But there are so many problems when INTJs use Fi as their navigator.
The 3-year-old process is Extraverted Sensing we have nicknamed “Sensation.”
Inferior – Se
Real-time kinetic connection with the environment. Blind spot to INTJs. Sensation Usually shows up when they are Overly stressed. Causes them to Overindulge in sensory behavior.
Both back seat passengers are incredibly indulgent for INTJs: Fi is emotional indulgence, and Se is sensory indulgence.
The thing that they have to monitor themselves for is whether or not they are going to an indulgent space. INTJs need to be physically aware of their body’s needs. The body is not just a vehicle for the brain.
There are Neurons in the stomach and heart which means that the brain cells extend into our body.
A good relationship with three-year-old means you’re nourishing your body and not feeding it junk food.
INTJ women feel disconnected from other women and intimidating to men.
Thinker Women and Feeler Men podcast
25% of women are Thinkers.
When you don’t fit the ideal imprint of the average female you are not going to attract the highest percentage of people, but there are people out there that are looking for a bird of paradise just like you.
If you haven’t run into these people yet, it is because you’re not in the right place. Go beyond your comfort zone.
INTJs don’t have a lot of patience for themselves. One of the best ways to make space for others and be more patient with others is by being more patient with yourself.
Stop worrying about how you should be and be willing to fail and learn. Be the person who gets things done as opposed to conceptualizing things.
Push through the challenges. There will be waste, but action is better than non-action.
Feedback from the outside world will make you feel stronger and more empowered.
To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:
Subscribe with iTunes
Non iTunes Link
Download The Android App
Subscribe on Soundcloud
Subscribe with Stitcher
If you like the podcast and want to help us out in return, please leave an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! We would be eternally grateful!
Want to learn more?
Discover Your Personal Genius
We want to hear from you. Leave your comments below…
Share:
Podcast - Episode 0087 - Igniting An Intuitive Awakening
Podcast - Episode 0089 - Trusting Your Intuition
86 comments
The quality of information and depth of knowledge you guys have and shared with us, is amazing….
I am really greatful for the time and effort you guys have invested in this podcast and above all for the passion you have as an Intuitive.
-
Thank you for this podcast.
I appreciate the comparisons you made between male and female intellectual types and their numbers.
Males may have to face unpleasant stereotypes but female intellectuals have to face solidified social expectations from their entire outside world and the sense of failure for not meeting those expectations.
A subsequent feeling of needing to apologize to everyone for not meeting their preconceived expectations that all females are emotional and impractical ensues… and is exhausting.
Isolation, though lonely, is a far lesser evil than feeling like you have to apologize for who you are all of the time to everyone.
Solitude is merely the lesser evil.
Thank you once more for the podcast. Its structure and format made it a pleasant and very mentally stimulating delivery of information.
This podcast was spot on. As an intj I resent being labeled as “smarter” than others. I do however acknowledge that I have a tendacy to think long and hard about any topic that interests me.
Most of what interests me is not feeling vulnerable. Much of my thinking goes to the areas where I need to protect myself. But not always.
When the Cassandra story was mentioned I got goosebumps. I read this years ago and assigned her character as a kindred soul.
Your article accurately articulated all that I’ve observed in my adult years in respect to the self destructive tendencies I face as an intj. You perfectly mirrored the conclusions I have reached.
I also am grateful that you have been able to unveil the romantic/idealistic side of my nature -you know, the one we try to pretend does not exist!?
I almost didn’t tune in… if this was a video rather than an audio file I would have dismissed it. I’m glad you were aware listening intently is a great avenue to reach me. Visual stimuli is distracting when learning for me.
Thank you
Female intj
2 things
1. ouch to Emma’s comment above. and hang in there it gets better. and find some good strong analyst friends who don’t think your a broken freak of nature to hang out with.
I haven’t been impressed with professional counselling either, or helpful family, or society in general. Our culture seems to think the whole world should be vanilla flavored people and if your not they will give you labels that tell you what you need too take out and what you need to put in to become vanilla. WE ARE NOT ALL VANILLA. And it’s a damn good thing too. Or we’d all be just as foolish as they are.
I am big into self help stuff… Briggs Meyers, Tony Robbins, LDS general conference have been the most helpful for me.
2. When you guys were talking in the podcast about seeing where the puck is going to be… I thought that’s interesting to be able to see where it’s going to be. But the thing that really gets me excited is when you can plan out ahead of that to the point where you can now see the puck where you want it to go. That’s when I suddenly jump up and start celebrating. Then people think I’m weird or too reserved because I’m not freaking out over having just made a goal. When really I just did my celebrating 10 minutes ago before anyone else knew what was going on. A.k.a. when y’all thought I was crazy, nope not crazy, just way ahead of you.
INTJ women unite!!! (even though our personality type makes that tough to accomplish ;-)
I am so endlessly grateful to find this information, and to see comments from so many people who experience the world in the same way I do. I am a bit late to the game but still feel this knowledge, even of the negative aspects or challenges of this personality type, can only be empowering to me from here on out.
I felt for most of my life like my brain (which, as an INTJ, defines my identity more than anything else) was like a tool. My brain was a phillips-head screwdriver, and everyone else was wielding flat-heads. From a distance, and without prior knowledge that these kinds of differences exist, it looked to me like I had the same tool everyone else did, but I was struggling to make mine effective, while they were all getting the job done easily and quickly.
This put me through a whole range of emotions, everything from anger to resentment to hopeless confusion, self-blame and even a disorientation from self — something like an out-of-body experience but for the mind, wondering if I really even was who I always thought I’d been. Maybe, I thought at one point, I am really just a terrible person, and all my past displays of empathy/compassion/well-intention were somehow imaginary.
It was easier for me, and the people around me, to think of my tool— my phillips-head— as being broken because it didn’t work like theirs, rather than to imagine that it wasn’t ever supposed to accomplish the same task. As an example, even my mother, who undoubtedly loves me, reinforced this feeling of lameness, of being somehow broken because my head wasn’t the same shape, in that she would become angry with me whenever I cried because she thought I was faking it to manipulate her. My emotions, which felt so real as to be almost physically tangible, looked calculated and inauthentic to her, probably because I turned them in towards myself more often than expressing them outwardly. She planted the idea in my head that I might be a sociopath.
Now I can finally say with some confidence (forgive the cliche) that I AM, in fact, a soul whose intentions are good, and that I HAVE actually been misunderstood for most of my life.
It always felt very self-indulgent to me when I’d begin to wonder if I really was fundamentally different from anyone I’d met in my entire life. It is childish, on some level, to imagine ourselves as special like the protagonist in a story, the ‘chosen one,’ because the real world is not Harry Potter— still, I think if someone had approached me and told me I needed to go to wizard school because there was a prophecy about me, I would not have been surprised. Not because I’m better than anyone, but because there had to be some explanation for my difference. There had to be someplace where the screws would only work with phillips-head screwdrivers, right?
I became deeply disheartened when my inability to ‘fit in’ with most women led me on a quest for so-called ‘self-improvement’. I say so-called because most of the advice I found was not geared towards improving who I was, it was about changing who I was or denying it on some level. The world in general is much more likely to answer the INTJ’s ‘why am I like this’ question with the suggestion that we are mentally ill, emotionally underdeveloped, suffering from PTSD, etc.
I’ve even had a ‘therapist’ suggest that I might be struggling because I’ve always been subconsciously attracted to the same sex (nothing could be further from the truth). There seems to be an assumption that the source of our unhappiness is that fact that we are hiding something, lying to the world and ourselves about some deep dark secret. Everyone, from my mother to a professional counselor, had trouble taking what I said at face value when I was being fully honest.
Any other INTJ’s out there struggle with the nearly constant suggestion that we should be talking to a professional about their issues, only to find the professional’s lack of authenticity makes them feel even MORE isolated? I definitely believe therapy/counseling is effective and necessary for some people, but for ME, I actually felt it did a bit more damage to my psyche and I almost wish I hadn’t ever gone down that road. Suggestions of prescription drugs especially, to manage my anxieties and sleep issues, felt like being hammered into a round hole to break off my square edges.