Warning: this is long.
I typed myself as an INTJ recently after going through a week of self-reflection and deep introspection. I've typed myself as an INTP in the past, but I've slowly come to the realisation that I don't relate to auxiliar Ne, yet, I'm an introverted, intuitive thinker. I'm telling you this because there might be a chance that I mistyped myself, and I created this thread to dispel a doubt that came to my mind. I've read that INTJs can come across as being arrogant because they tend to be confident in their insights, knowledge and self, and while I do come across as being arrogant/rude sometimes, I don't think that I have this confidence that seems typical of INTJs. This is one of the reasons that made me type myself as an INTP, because it's said that INTPs are just like INTJs, but lazy, passive, indecisive, etc. I wasn't aware that this was a huge stereotype at that time, so I believed it. However, it came to my mind that the reason I may not be as confident as some INTJs seem to be is because I've got some low self-esteem issues after having suffered bullying during high school. Now, I'm not here looking for someone to "correct" my typing as an INTJ or something like that, I just want to know if there are any INTJs that can relate to what I'm about to tell; if you don't relate to it, feel free to tell me how you would handle this situation.
I've shown very typical INTJ traits when I was a kid, I learned things pretty fast, and I was always in my own head, I was pretty blunt too, even more so than I am now because I wasn't aware of the social rules. When someone crossed a line with me, I would quickly cut them off no matter how much we were friends in the past. So I have always been a quiet kid, and where I live (Latin America) being quiet is seen as a sign of weakness, and I was small so I was a easy target for bullies. I had a few friends that would stand up for me when it was necessary, so this didn't affect me very much. However, when I entered high school, I went to a school different from the one that my friends went to so I was alone for the first time in my life. I quickly made some friends in the first few days, even quicker than what I had expected, I didn't have much trouble making friends because I was quite straightforward, if I wanted to be friends with someone, I just asked them.
However, these "friends" started to change their behaviour around me, I don't know exactly why, they began to mock my appearance and treat me like I was inferior to them. I wasn't exactly close to those people, they were just kind of nice classmates to me, but I was shocked by this change nonetheless. Feeling betrayed, I distancied myself from them, but this only seemed to worse the situation because then they began to outright bully me (asking me inappropriate questions, striking meaningless conversations just to piss me off, laughing at me for no good reason, etc.).
I tolerated this for a few months, waiting for them to get tired of it while completely ignoring them, but they didn't stop, and this enraged me, so I told my mom about it (I was too ashamed to tell this to the principal, and I knew that my mom would tell it to him in my stead). My mom got really mad when I told her about what was happening, so she went to the school with me to discuss things with the principal. She told him everything about my situation, and he called the students that were bullying me, they, of course, denied everything and said that I was the one being mean to them. I was so appalled by their hypocrisy that I could barely defend myself. Then they called one of our teachers, and she came and said that what they were saying was true because they have told her beforehand how I was calling them names or something like that. My mom became enraged at this accusation because she knew that I would never act like this, and a big discussion ensued, everyone was shouting at each other. I was completely silent, it was such a bizarre scene, those grown adults got completely carried away by their emotions and reacted in the worst way possible, it was completely unprofessional. At some point, another teacher entered the room defending the teacher that has accused me of bad mouthing my classmates, and he talked about how I was creating a big fuss about nothing, he was really angry and looked at me like he was about to kill me, I was genuinely scared. At that moment, my mom got fed up and left the room, taking me away from that place too, and then we went home.
In the next day, the principal apologised for everything that had happened and said that he would transfer me to another class (he didn't punish the students who were bullying me, by the way). But the damage has already been done, everyone in my school knew about what happened and some of them (most of them, actually) thought that I was the one to blame. They began to isolate me, and I was "fine" with it because I couldn't trust anyone anymore, so why bother. That day, I lost my faith in humanity as a whole, I saw that people were, in fact, just animals who were suscetible to the most irrational of behaviours. I also lost all confidence in myself, I was happy while I had friends in school because they protected me from the bullies, it was only when I got to be alone that I've realised how truly weak I was and how I wasn't even able to stand up for myself. I felt like the world was against me, and no matter how much I tried, no matter how much I struggled, I couldn't win against it, the world was merciless and cold and I was all alone in it, it was all useless, and life was meaningless. I felt incredibely alone, I've never felt more lonely in my life.
So I couldn't stand school anymore, every passing minute in that place was like hell to me, and I couldn't learn anything, my grades began to drop like a bomb, which only pushed me further into depression. I couldn't go to another school because it was the closest public school to home and we didn't have money to pay a private school. So I strated to skip classes every week to escape, I just couldn't bother about it anymore. My mom realised this shift in my behaviour, and she thought I was just being lazy. I didn't bother to explain my feelings to her because I was deeply ashamed of them, I didn't want to be seen as weak or to depend on anyone anymore, it was because I told my mom about how I was feeling about school that everything went to shit in the first place, so hiding those things from her made perfect sense to me. Only now do I realise how my mind was in an incredibly unhealthy state, it's even hard to type this without cringing at my past self.
A year or so later, that story about me began to fade away from people's minds, so my classmates began to treat me like a normal human being again. However, it was too late and my mind just couldn't adapt to this change so I started to consciously reject any attempt of interaction from others. It was like my mind was on "survival mode" 24 hours, I couldn't trust anyone and everyone was a treat to me. I only saw the nastiest intentions behind people's actions, so I immediatly pushed them away from me, I was borderline paranoid. When I saw that someone was being genuinely nice to me, I thought that I couldn't be friends with them because then we would stop talking to each other after high school was over as it was common to happen with people, but that was obviously an excuse, I was just scared of being hurt/betrayed again. And then I spent my senior year just avoiding people left and right until I somehow graduated despite skipping half of the classes (I think that my mom had some hand in this). The day I left this hell was one of the best days of my life.
It has been three whole years since then, and I still feel like I haven't completely recovered from that hell. In the first year after finishing high school, I entered in college to major in Computer Engineering despite knowing only the basics about computers. I wasn't interested in it very much, I only did it because I wanted to have a job that paid me enough to live independently from my mom, even though she didn't want me to live away from her, she's very overprotective (that's why I use Norman Bates as my avatar, I could relate to his struggle with his overprotective mother). I managed to make some friends during college, but I still felt like I wasn't the same old me, something was different, even though I called those people "friends", the word didn't mean anything to me anymore, I couldn't relate to them as fellow human beings, it's like I was from a different species, I've always felt that way to some extent, but now it was much worse. So I distancied myself from them too and dropped out of college right after, I just wasn't interested in it.
And this leads to the present, I'm still a college drop-out, I still feel like I'm different from other people, but I'm a lot better now. MBTI has helped me understand myself and others a little better, to see others as humans like me but wired differently, it was almost therapeutic in a way. However, I feel like the damage done to my personality during those high school years is irreversible, I still lack a sense of direction in life. I have some vague goals that I want to achieve, and I know that I have some kind of purpose in life even though I believe that, in the grand scheme of things, everything is meaningless, but it's like there's a wall between me and my dreams, I don't know how to explain it. In the end, I think I wrote this just to seek some validation and maybe some advice, and I know that I'll probably regret this, I rarely share personal things about me, even to internet strangers, but I want to let this out in some way.
Edit:
I've realized that maybe it would be more productive to post this on Advice Center or General Psychology, can I post the same thing twice in different foruns?
I typed myself as an INTJ recently after going through a week of self-reflection and deep introspection. I've typed myself as an INTP in the past, but I've slowly come to the realisation that I don't relate to auxiliar Ne, yet, I'm an introverted, intuitive thinker. I'm telling you this because there might be a chance that I mistyped myself, and I created this thread to dispel a doubt that came to my mind. I've read that INTJs can come across as being arrogant because they tend to be confident in their insights, knowledge and self, and while I do come across as being arrogant/rude sometimes, I don't think that I have this confidence that seems typical of INTJs. This is one of the reasons that made me type myself as an INTP, because it's said that INTPs are just like INTJs, but lazy, passive, indecisive, etc. I wasn't aware that this was a huge stereotype at that time, so I believed it. However, it came to my mind that the reason I may not be as confident as some INTJs seem to be is because I've got some low self-esteem issues after having suffered bullying during high school. Now, I'm not here looking for someone to "correct" my typing as an INTJ or something like that, I just want to know if there are any INTJs that can relate to what I'm about to tell; if you don't relate to it, feel free to tell me how you would handle this situation.
I've shown very typical INTJ traits when I was a kid, I learned things pretty fast, and I was always in my own head, I was pretty blunt too, even more so than I am now because I wasn't aware of the social rules. When someone crossed a line with me, I would quickly cut them off no matter how much we were friends in the past. So I have always been a quiet kid, and where I live (Latin America) being quiet is seen as a sign of weakness, and I was small so I was a easy target for bullies. I had a few friends that would stand up for me when it was necessary, so this didn't affect me very much. However, when I entered high school, I went to a school different from the one that my friends went to so I was alone for the first time in my life. I quickly made some friends in the first few days, even quicker than what I had expected, I didn't have much trouble making friends because I was quite straightforward, if I wanted to be friends with someone, I just asked them.
However, these "friends" started to change their behaviour around me, I don't know exactly why, they began to mock my appearance and treat me like I was inferior to them. I wasn't exactly close to those people, they were just kind of nice classmates to me, but I was shocked by this change nonetheless. Feeling betrayed, I distancied myself from them, but this only seemed to worse the situation because then they began to outright bully me (asking me inappropriate questions, striking meaningless conversations just to piss me off, laughing at me for no good reason, etc.).
I tolerated this for a few months, waiting for them to get tired of it while completely ignoring them, but they didn't stop, and this enraged me, so I told my mom about it (I was too ashamed to tell this to the principal, and I knew that my mom would tell it to him in my stead). My mom got really mad when I told her about what was happening, so she went to the school with me to discuss things with the principal. She told him everything about my situation, and he called the students that were bullying me, they, of course, denied everything and said that I was the one being mean to them. I was so appalled by their hypocrisy that I could barely defend myself. Then they called one of our teachers, and she came and said that what they were saying was true because they have told her beforehand how I was calling them names or something like that. My mom became enraged at this accusation because she knew that I would never act like this, and a big discussion ensued, everyone was shouting at each other. I was completely silent, it was such a bizarre scene, those grown adults got completely carried away by their emotions and reacted in the worst way possible, it was completely unprofessional. At some point, another teacher entered the room defending the teacher that has accused me of bad mouthing my classmates, and he talked about how I was creating a big fuss about nothing, he was really angry and looked at me like he was about to kill me, I was genuinely scared. At that moment, my mom got fed up and left the room, taking me away from that place too, and then we went home.
In the next day, the principal apologised for everything that had happened and said that he would transfer me to another class (he didn't punish the students who were bullying me, by the way). But the damage has already been done, everyone in my school knew about what happened and some of them (most of them, actually) thought that I was the one to blame. They began to isolate me, and I was "fine" with it because I couldn't trust anyone anymore, so why bother. That day, I lost my faith in humanity as a whole, I saw that people were, in fact, just animals who were suscetible to the most irrational of behaviours. I also lost all confidence in myself, I was happy while I had friends in school because they protected me from the bullies, it was only when I got to be alone that I've realised how truly weak I was and how I wasn't even able to stand up for myself. I felt like the world was against me, and no matter how much I tried, no matter how much I struggled, I couldn't win against it, the world was merciless and cold and I was all alone in it, it was all useless, and life was meaningless. I felt incredibely alone, I've never felt more lonely in my life.
So I couldn't stand school anymore, every passing minute in that place was like hell to me, and I couldn't learn anything, my grades began to drop like a bomb, which only pushed me further into depression. I couldn't go to another school because it was the closest public school to home and we didn't have money to pay a private school. So I strated to skip classes every week to escape, I just couldn't bother about it anymore. My mom realised this shift in my behaviour, and she thought I was just being lazy. I didn't bother to explain my feelings to her because I was deeply ashamed of them, I didn't want to be seen as weak or to depend on anyone anymore, it was because I told my mom about how I was feeling about school that everything went to shit in the first place, so hiding those things from her made perfect sense to me. Only now do I realise how my mind was in an incredibly unhealthy state, it's even hard to type this without cringing at my past self.
A year or so later, that story about me began to fade away from people's minds, so my classmates began to treat me like a normal human being again. However, it was too late and my mind just couldn't adapt to this change so I started to consciously reject any attempt of interaction from others. It was like my mind was on "survival mode" 24 hours, I couldn't trust anyone and everyone was a treat to me. I only saw the nastiest intentions behind people's actions, so I immediatly pushed them away from me, I was borderline paranoid. When I saw that someone was being genuinely nice to me, I thought that I couldn't be friends with them because then we would stop talking to each other after high school was over as it was common to happen with people, but that was obviously an excuse, I was just scared of being hurt/betrayed again. And then I spent my senior year just avoiding people left and right until I somehow graduated despite skipping half of the classes (I think that my mom had some hand in this). The day I left this hell was one of the best days of my life.
It has been three whole years since then, and I still feel like I haven't completely recovered from that hell. In the first year after finishing high school, I entered in college to major in Computer Engineering despite knowing only the basics about computers. I wasn't interested in it very much, I only did it because I wanted to have a job that paid me enough to live independently from my mom, even though she didn't want me to live away from her, she's very overprotective (that's why I use Norman Bates as my avatar, I could relate to his struggle with his overprotective mother). I managed to make some friends during college, but I still felt like I wasn't the same old me, something was different, even though I called those people "friends", the word didn't mean anything to me anymore, I couldn't relate to them as fellow human beings, it's like I was from a different species, I've always felt that way to some extent, but now it was much worse. So I distancied myself from them too and dropped out of college right after, I just wasn't interested in it.
And this leads to the present, I'm still a college drop-out, I still feel like I'm different from other people, but I'm a lot better now. MBTI has helped me understand myself and others a little better, to see others as humans like me but wired differently, it was almost therapeutic in a way. However, I feel like the damage done to my personality during those high school years is irreversible, I still lack a sense of direction in life. I have some vague goals that I want to achieve, and I know that I have some kind of purpose in life even though I believe that, in the grand scheme of things, everything is meaningless, but it's like there's a wall between me and my dreams, I don't know how to explain it. In the end, I think I wrote this just to seek some validation and maybe some advice, and I know that I'll probably regret this, I rarely share personal things about me, even to internet strangers, but I want to let this out in some way.
Edit:
I've realized that maybe it would be more productive to post this on Advice Center or General Psychology, can I post the same thing twice in different foruns?
