I understand that completely. I'm also in therapy (not just for shame) and I will concur my problems someday. I'm surprised the life hasn't been sucked out of me yet. haha.I am in therapy for it.
I am getting better, but I have wasted a large part of my life being a slave to it. and that in itself causes even more shame.
I will conquer it.
Do you feel excessive amounts of it? Would you say shame is an emotion that dominates INFJs as a type?
If you look closely, you'll see there is agreement. People respond with one of two answers: either "yes" or "I used to, but I don't care anymore" (this is, of course excluding the INTJ who responded, Hi WaeV!). What seems to me to be the case is that we all have that acute sense of what we're supposed to be, and knowing we're not. This leads to the shame you describe. However, shame is not a positive emotion, and people get tired of it wen its so constant. This tiredness can drive people to simply stop caring if the general populace thinks we're weird or not. Without caring there is no need for shame, so we have no shame.Hm, interesting. Not quite the answers I was expecting (I was going for more agreement) but still interesting.
Personally I've always coped with a great deal of shame. I feel embarrassed about the smallest things. I used to let the fear of it hold me back all the time, but in the past few years I'm going more with a "well if I'm gonna feel shame no matter what I do I might as well not feel fear and shame" kind of attitude. It's actually helped to diminish it quite a lot.
My assumption was because INFJs as a whole are so acutely aware of the social norms and aware of how different they are (even when functioning within those norms, as we do quite well) that for a lot of INFJs this would cause some sort of sense of being embarrassed or ashamed. That would feed back into the pattern you see that INFJs loathe doing something "stupid", as they already feel flawed and shamed from the start.
In essence I was theorizing the shame that comes from being different and knowing it and being able to hide it well is the root cause for a lot of INFJ issues.
Thoughts?