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Saturday, June 1, 2019

(Mis)understanding the INFJ Door Slam

A few more thoughts on the famous INFJ door slammed. If you look on the internet you will see lots of websites which are trying to be helpful by telling INFJs that they do the door slam and giving helpful advice as to what to do instead to try to salvage relationships. These are usually along the perfectly reasonable lines of negotiating and communicating with people, but unfortunately the advice embodies two profound misunderstandings of how INFJs relate to other people.
The first misunderstanding is not allowing for the fact that we function through a set of rules in our head. These rules are perfectly reasonable to us but the key to understanding this is that we don't explain these rules to other people. This may seem unreasonable but that's the deal. Sorry, not sorry. We also feel free to throw these rules out of the window when it suits us. If we like you and want to incorporate you into our world we will ignore the rules for your benefit, but won't tell you that either. This means that by the time an INFJ gets to the door slam, we have actually already negotiated our own rules and by that time we are usually way beyond further negotiation. We may give you a warning, but our innate bullshit detector will know your stuff by then, and excuses etc will merely put a bolt on the already slammed door.
The second thing which the outside world doesn't get is that by the time of the door slam, we don't care. Genuinely. You can tell an INFJ trying to salvage a relationship by our emotion and repeated attempts to tell you what is bothering us. If you ignore them or prevaricate and we are forced to just tell you with no emotion you are being door slammed. Again that is only if we are bothered about you. By that stage you won't be admitted to our inner world and if we're not bothered about you, we'll just disappear. You may think that this is unreasonable but we don't care.
Could we do something different as the helpful advice suggests? Of course we could. But in reality we've already done it.

2 comments:

  1. I take it that someone of your acquaintance has recently had a door slammed in their face?

    P.S. Smashing cow pat! Although, it does look like it was prepared for a city dweller. You can tell by the closely mown grass and regular shape. Although, real cow pats can also be of a regular shape (as long as the cow stands still while "producing"), and can be found on a lawn if someone left the gate open... Plus points for the reservoir of wee and/or poo juice.

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    Replies
    1. A cowpat of such artistry took some finding, let me tell you. I discovered a festival in India where people throw cowpats at each other while looking for it, and still feel frankly nauseous.
      And just one thing, is poo juice related to bin juice?

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