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In this episode, Joel and Antonia talk about how introverts and extraverts deal with the COVID-19 quarantine brought on by the 2020 coronavirus.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Quarantine is tough on everyone.
- Judgers may be having struggles because the quarantine is throwing them out of their routines.
- Extraverted judging functions aren’t getting the nutrients they need from the external world.
- FJs need regular connection with people
- TJs can usually find projects to do around the house
- FJs can try a virtual happy hour with friends.
- IPs like freedom in the outer world so they can test out ideas and emotions.
- Some Perceivers may feel like they are living Groundhog’s Day
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Leverage point for Introverts quarantined by self:
- Get out of the house and go for walks
- Forest bathing
- Qigong
- Chakra meditation
- Energy platforms
- We don’t know when this quarantine is going to lift.
- EPs need variety, novelty, and freedom of movement
- Get to work on projects that have been languishing
- We are being forced to slow down
- When we don’t have distractions, we have to sit with the life we have made for ourselves.
- If you are quarantined by yourself, you may have emotions coming up that you have managed to distract yourself from until now.
- Old trauma
- Unprocessed emotions
- This quarantine is like an enforced vipassana retreat
- If stuff is coming up for you, this may be a gift
- Look at your life
- What are the leverage points of change?
- Get your priorities in line
- Why do I have this job?
- Why do I hang out with these people?
- This may require some of us to re-evaluate our finances
- How self-indulgent have you been?
- Extraverts trapped with people – the same people – no variety
- Earbuds are important
- Get up early or stay up late to get your alone time.
- Great time to reconnect with your family through group activities
- Someone on Twitter said divorces would likely go up after this
- Try to differentiate between the stress of a relationship that is complete and the stress of the situation.
- What is the source code of the explosion?
- Is it yours? Or are you overwhelmed by the emotions of others?
- Introverts trapped with people may already have coping mechanisms in place
- Isolated with kids can cause problems because a lot of parent’s systems are unavailable
- A lot of introverts may get their alone time on their commute or while their partner is working
- Grace goes a long way
- Apologize when needed
- Don’t be too hard on yourself or others.
- Grace allows us to let things go, and it is healthy for us.
- One of the ways we find connection is through social media
- There’s a lot of negativity in the news and on social media
- Curse: May you live in interesting times
- What are you feeding your mind?
- If you feel overly negative, check what you are feeding yourself.
- The news can dump toxins in us.
- Challenge: Micro gratitude expression
- Post on social media something that you are grateful for
- It will train you to start looking for things you can be thankful for
- It will change the trajectory of online messaging
- Caught in the Act: At dinner, everyone says something good about every member of the family
- One person can offset millions in terms of positive, energetic output
- Be a force for good in the world
- Make it your responsibility to counteract the negative energy around us.
- That means you can’t stay in a bad place.
- What is going on for you?
- What leverage points have you discovered in this experience?
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38 comments
Forgot to add for my wife’s process of adjusting also involved not only her “hive” but also what are the tools and resources in this new life so she can start effectively planning how life will work here and how it fits in her life goals.
ENTP “stuck” with my awesome INTJ wife.
When this all struck, my wife and I had just transplanted from west coast to east coast 13 months prior. We were both already living on novelty, especially me, learning the culture, driving around, being fascinated by the rich history here compared to the ever changing structures (metaphoric and concrete) of the West. We still were in that mode.
We also were in new jobs and a new community. My wife didn’t care so much about this, she was more about reestablishing her “hive” her retreat from the the bombardment of new people. I, on the other hand, was excited pushing buttons with the new people and “social calibrating”.
Both of our jobs were very team heavy and collaborative. I had many roles that involved teaching, establishing systems, team coordination, etc. Very busy. Very extroverted.
When this hit, we both were excited for different reasons. My wife was happy she had extra introversion. I was excited by the new challenges and was already coming up with theories about cultural shifts, economic, relationship, etc etc. my mind was buzzing.
After a week, I got BORED! When this happened I was eating. Where did that come from? I often skip eating now I was overeating. The podcast about decisions helped me realize, I was eating with Fe and Si. I grew up in a culture of comfort food and eating for pleasure. My mom and stepdad often ate to fill the time between meals. Here I was reverting to that programming to nurse my boredom and fact I was picking up on other people’s stress, or was it my stress? Maybe.
So I decided I need to really sit with Ti and Si. I have been real busy taking in new experiences, new people, new culture, and a new way of living and I have not sat down with any of it to post-process.
Si has now been going a little haywire with some pretty ugly things that I had buried (add being an Enneagram 7 tendency to reframe past in a positive) things about past relationships where I was quite the jerk. Crazy that my mind was willing to allow Si to get in there before Ti. My resistance to Ti was real.
Now it’s been amazing. Applying Ti to the new life we have and I have been really evaluating my core beliefs and seeing if anything has been altered without my permission by Fe lending out to others in order to fit in the new environment.
I have learned to give my wife plenty of space. I get out and go for a walk with a podcast or book which appeases both our need for alone time and my need to get out of the confinement.
INTJ wife has been engaging her Te and Se with cooking projects. She is making meal plans and getting creative with them to make them real tasty with a variety while using the same limited supplies.
In regards to feeling that collective. Man, I feel it and see it. Mostly I see Ti being used and wielded terribly especially in people trying to apply logic in their own way of surviving this and in blaming others or systems. There must be a collective Fe that will emerge from this. We see it in the positive stories out there, but I think this makes sense especially when everyone is done trying to survive and they have re-evaluated their beliefs and the relationships they had before and during all of this. I think a new global relationship will emerge? Seems to make sense when I think of Maslow and apply it globally.
I think I agree about Fe having the hardest time but I am finding my Se friends having a harder time than me. That could just be my experience, but I think Se might even be up there with Fe because of their need to be doing something. They seem to have a harder time sitting still or having movement restricted than Ne.
Hello all,
I am an INFJ isolating alone (with my lovely cat), furloughed off of work in England.
I have only come across the Personality Hacker website in the last couple of days, as I have been using what I am choosing to consider as a “gift of time” that is lockdown/quarantine/isolation/whatever you call it in your region of the world to deep clean – both my home and my life. It has been fascinating to read about my characteristics as an INFJ during quarantine and feel empowered in how I work as a person, at a time when I have been feeling supremely guilty for mostly enjoying my experience of lockdown; true, I’ve had my moments of upset and I’m trying to make the best of a bad situation, and I appreciate the stress and strain a lot of others are under at this time, but I’m doing quite well considering the disaster going on outside my four walls. Other INFJs have mentioned the connection that we can still have with technology, which I wouldn’t want to be without in this situation, but I’m focusing on the ways I can use this time productively, especially internally.
I was prompted by questions from journalists to the UK government about when the lockdown will end, and what life will look like as restrictions are eased, to turn the focus to my own life. I have been asking myself some fairly straightforward questions based on the theme “What does coming out of lockdown mean to me?” which have thrown up some surprisingly deep and profound responses which in some instances I am hoping will be life-changing for me. For example:
Q: When restrictions are eased, what am I looking forward to getting back to?
A: Spending time with my loved ones and being able to walk freely around the town I live in, whether to work or just for fun.
Q: When restrictions are eased, are there any things that I don’t usually do that I want to do more of or try for the first time because I have been interested but never got around to it?
A: I really want to go out to eat at a restaurant and go for a drink in a pub, whenever those are reopened – even if I do it alone, which usually makes me very uncomfortable. It would be great to support a local business which has struggled in the crisis, as well as eat a delicious and nutritious meal which I have not had to prepare for myself!
Q: When I am able/requested to return to work, how do I feel about that?
A: I am feeling very anxious and negative about going back to my job. I feel really guilty to admit it but for me the lockdown could last a long time just so I can delay the return.
My answer to the last question about work didn’t really surprise me but I was shocked to realize that I would prefer for the lockdown to last a long time so I don’t have to go back. That made me ask some deeper questions, mainly is there anything at all I’m looking forward to going back to (mainly just to make sure everyone is okay), and why do I feel so strongly about it? I have had affirmed through my INJF personality profile that the reason I feel desperately unfulfilled working in the private sector doing adminstrative work is because I am not doing work where I feel I am truly making a difference in my community/wider society! I have decided to get out of that professional path that clearly leads nowhere for me personally and retrain to be a secondary school English teacher. This is something I have considered several times in the past few years, but didn’t have the time to really get into it (or the inspiration, as my personality profile has helped frame what motivates me in words which I haven’t been able to express myself).
In terms of keeping out the negativity that could quite easily leak into my consciousness and take me underwater with it, I have been watching news no more than twice a day at the beginning, and now I’m really just watching the live government briefing and turning it off as soon as the journalists start in with their dramatic questions laying blame and finding fault. I do belive that every single country, and the world as a whole, has lessons to learn from this pandemic, but as you guys were discussing in the podcast, now is not the time to be spreading vitriol – we need to be focusing positive attention on solving the most immediate problems that will get us safely through the pandemic, and then when deaths and infections are down and we’ve got lots of testing going on to ensure public safety (and hopefully a vaccine to really seal the deal), we need to have a global effort to share all of the honest data and resources and allow constructive conversations to take place to asses where things went wrong and what needs to be done to ensure no future generations have to endure the devastation that this disaster has wreaked upon the world’s people and economy.
Everyone stay well, stay safe, and keep doing your best to support yourself and the ones you love through this incredibly challenging time.
Really good podcast. I am a ISTJ from Denmark, living alone. Luckily we don’t have to quarantine fully, so I have a friend that I meet with about weekly and go for a walk to try to stay sane.
I have never been so happy not to have kids, or be an extrovert.
But a downside is that I normally don’t have a lot of energy left after work, so now I don’t have anyone to do video chats with or even call beside my parents.
I have also mostly quite the news. I just follow the updates from the danish authoritys. I was actually starting to panic slightly over all the bad news from the whole world, after listening to the radio all day for the first two days working from home, and that is so not me. So I decided that I can’t do anything about it and therefore it doesn’t make sense to stress my self out.?
Stay safe and sane
Hi Clara, I’m also an INFP and also had to go offline and not reply to people for a while! Quite ironic during social isolation. I also live with a bunch of extroverts. So what I’m saying is.. I relate :p