Silver Linings (40+)

So, what you're saying is, you're an expert at trivia?
That's one way of looking at it. :blush:

I want to be an expert at doing what I do so, soooooo badly. I'm crippled by this. INFJ perfectionist overload. It isn't good. If I weren't so preoccupied by this desire I'd probably be an expert at what I do! Hahaha.
It's tough! There are so many other interesting things to be distracted by. I have a constant thirst for learning, which ironically enough prevents me from diving too deep into one subject because my interests are so varied. It's a blessing and a curse, I suppose.

I am curious about your INTP perspective.
It is interesting (and cool) that your social habits haven't changed either way. You sounds much more comfortable in your own skin, though.
Yes, that's it exactly. More comfortable, but still not so much that it makes me a different person. Rather, I am more accepting now of the (reserved, anxious, quiet) person that I am.

I would like to do better. For pete's sake, I just attended a music festival where dozens of my favorite musicians just wandered around mingling with the crowd in their off time, but I was too bashful to go up and talk to any of them. It's like my brain holds onto all the times when I embarrassed myself by opening my mouth, so I just...don't. I would like to get to that mythical "don't care" point that I hear others speak of.
 
- As my elders age, the Boomers age, and a pair of dear friends move to assisted living this month, I keep thinking more and more about how assisted living and nursing home facilities need to change so people will enjoy living there, instead of fearing and rejecting it.

Yes. My mom was a clinic nurse in the 70s-90s so she heard all about the horror stories to come from the nursing homes of that era, and now that's the image cemented in her mind.
 
I'm certainly not the best equipped to do that, but someone will have to. It doesn't help that both parents, especially my mother, are opposed to even the idea of an assisted living facility.

- As my elders age, the Boomers age, and a pair of dear friends move to assisted living this month, I keep thinking more and more about how assisted living and nursing home facilities need to change so people will enjoy living there, instead of fearing and rejecting it.


I would like to do better. For pete's sake, I just attended a music festival where dozens of my favorite musicians just wandered around mingling with the crowd in their off time, but I was too bashful to go up and talk to any of them.
Ha! I never talk to people I admire, or famous people.
My SO works in the movies and I've seen some huge stars from across the room and don't try to speak to them. He was also in a band, and toured with many of my childhood heroes, many of whom stayed in my home, or were at shows I attended, etc. A few have either complemented me on my disinterest in fame (and have bonded with me because I care who they are and not about their fame) or even picked on me about it because I tried to avoid meeting them. I'm the person who is nobody and knows a lot of somebodies, and it is not because I try.

I have a constant thirst for learning, which ironically enough prevents me from diving too deep into one subject because my interests are so varied. It's a blessing and a curse, I suppose
Maybe try focusing on subtopics that support your main interests.

PS: I deleted my post and added it to this one, so you answered my post before I posted it, making you look like you have very well developed Fe. LOL.
 
Ha! I never talk to people I admire, or famous people.
My SO works in the movies and I've seen some huge stars from across the room and don't try to speak to them. He was also in a band, and toured with many of my childhood heroes, many of whom stayed in my home, or were at shows I attended, etc. A few have either complemented me on my disinterest in fame (and have bonded with me because I care who they are and not about their fame) or even picked on me about it because I tried to avoid meeting them. I'm the person who is nobody and knows a lot of somebodies, and it is not because I try.
Interesting. I'm reminded of the author George R.R. Martin, who still (even though he's now a lot more famous than he once was) makes an effort to personally engage and mingle with fans at conventions. Folks say that if they ask anything about his books, he kind of shuts down and doesn't talk much, whereas if they ask him questions about his hobbies and interests outside of writing, he will go on for hours. I think a lot of folks forget that "famous people" are just people too. I'm sure they appreciate the opportunity to talk about something other than their work.

For me it's not really about their fame. I am simply awkward when making conversation with people I don't know. I guess I am a perfectionist in that regard; context is incredibly important to me. I don't want to be the guy who, through a lack of context, brings up a lame or embarrassing topic with a stranger.

PS: I deleted my post and added it to this one, so you answered my post before I posted it, making you look like you have very well developed Fe. LOL.

Either that or time travel... :thinkinghard:
 
It is difficult to find people who relate to different kinds of troubles such as elder care, life stages, career, and reaching personal goals and fulfilling dreams, and other assorted 'lying awake at night' concepts.
Oh yes, you're right there - these are just as difficult and disheartening as romance problems, but the path forwards can sometimes be much harder to follow. One of the weirdest experiences is having to become the adult to your parent's child. The role reversal is disorienting and never felt "right" to me - i found myself fighting an unconscious resentment.

Caring for family:
My SO's parents have been our focus for over a year now. My FIL had a stroke, and my MIL has Alzheimer's. It has been difficult for my SO and his sister. This isn't the same as caring for a spouse at all, but I am familiar with caring for parents.
My heart goes out to you and your SO <3 - it can be a terrible mixture of nightmare and privilige to care for parents like this, and doubly challenging that you have two to consider.

My father seems to be preparing me for the worst in small ways. There was a time when I would have fallen to pieces if something happened to him, and I'm slowly getting used to him not being as present in my life. Sometimes, this behavior makes me think he's hiding a horrible illness from me. (As far as I know, he is not, but as the "baby" of the family, he would never tell me.) This must be a difficult task for him.
I do hope you have lots of good years left with your father. My own father's funeral was yesterday, but he was 2 days short of 99, lived a good life and we gave him a really good send-off. I have moments of sadness, but he had suffered from progressive dementia for 6 years and he was more than ready to go.

Caring for family and dealing with the death of a parent are much more stressful and difficult topics than most 'romantic challenges'. This is not to say that love is not a serious and (sometimes) painful, topic, but not every broken romance is worth the kind of attention it receives.
This is my experience as well - when you are young you can often walk away from a failed relationship and recover, even if that takes some time, though of course there are lots of exceptions to this, such as the people who have been treated so badly by a partner that they suffer a serious illness as a result. But you can't just walk away from your children or your parents in the same way without doing untold damage to them and to yourself.

Caring for your wife is a unique challenge, and when you mention it, my perception is that you must feel peerless with this struggle. <3
It can be a nightmare. 3 years ago my dad became unable to live alone and I managed to persuade him to go into a care home a lot nearer to us than where he lived. It was a great home and a real godsend - he settled in well and it was a huge relief to me. I sold his house 3 months later - the same month our GP changed my wife's meds because the ones she was on were expensive. She suffers from a treatment resistant somatic anxiety disorder and we should have refused to agree to the change but i was completely spaced out at the tail end of sorting dad out. 4 months later, she became suicidal, and had to go into hospital for 3 months while they tried to repair the damage. That 12 months period is like a bad dream experience - the only positive thing I can say about it is that they didn't trigger her problem 6 months earlier because I was busy then sorting out subsidence in dad's house, dealing with the crisis when he had to go into care and then selling the house. I'd never have been able to manage all these things at the same time.

Enough ranting though - and thankyou Asa for setting up this thread where I can sound off in a bit of company. :tiphat:
 
In terms of social interaction, I am probably no more or less "introverted" or socially active than I've ever been. I have always required a lot of time alone, I've always dealt much better with people I already know, and by that same token I've always been dreadfully bashful and quiet around strangers. Age has not changed this one iota that I can tell.

I am certainly a bit less anxious about impending social interaction than I was in my youth, but only because I am now more comfortable with the notion of just listening, observing and not saying much of anything. Again, a change in perspective.

I'm very simliar to this in some ways, and different in others. I spent a lot of my working life running teams that had a lot of people interfaces and I got to be good at building networks and getting things sorted. I'm OK for a while with some casual chat in small groups but it wears me out quicky unless I know the people well. I'm dreadful with celebities or authority figures and just can't approach them easily or relax at all with them - even at 68 years old I'm still in a "pupil / teacher" type relationship with them in my own head. I seem to be able to interact much better with people when we are involved with, say, a common task, service, or interest rather than purely socially.

Trouble with any of these ways I interact with people - it almost always feel inauthentic, like it's not the real me that's talking to them. There's a long way between the Ni and the Fe and a lot gets scrambled. It's feels much better if I write things down like I'm doing here.
 
Trouble with any of these ways I interact with people - it almost always feel inauthentic, like it's not the real me that's talking to them. There's a long way between the Ni and the Fe and a lot gets scrambled. It's feels much better if I write things down like I'm doing here.
Indeed. I have a real need to not only be my authentic self, but to also present my best self to people. If I don't do that, then I feel like I've failed in the interaction.

It's odd because I don't hold others to anything near that standard. I'll forgive someone else just about any social faux pas, but have trouble forgiving myself for the simplest slip-ups. The best part is years later, when an embarrassing moment will randomly replay itself in my mind frame-for-frame. :disappointed:
 
I've only skimmed this topic, but I do want to read it more thoroughly. I've been stubbing my metaphorical INFJ-T toe while marching to my Jubilee year (50 next week) and I'm very interested in this thread. I feel like I'm on the surface of learning something new about myself; I'm in the dark bumping into things but I've got my hand on the candle and matches. I just need to find that danged wick.

In other words, some kind of crisis, or whatever you want to call it. It's not bad, but I want to do so much more than I am doing - and I'm both apprehensive and looking forward to finding out what that is. Gotta get those dreams realized, or whatever.
 
I think as i get older my life goals do shift around. Its no longer about money and career, but more about peace within. Like in a years time i plan to follow my dream of living on the Oregon coast..because it calls me and im going to answer..
 
@Asa I was just re-reading this thread and my answers to your questions are taking a huge amount of space so I've tidied them up inside a spoiler:

Yes - sort of. I can certainly get spaced out if I have to do a lot of Se and I'm no use to anyone for an hour or so at least if that happens. If I'm doing a lot of work needing thinking or Si then I concentrate deeply and get irritated if I'm interrupted. I didn't show this at work because I'm can be an awful people pleaser and hate conflict so I could easily bring my irritation home. There was a lot of multi-tasking needed in the kind of jobs I did, and in some of them I was creating a role at the same time as delivering it - it's easy to run on adrenalin in this sort of situation, and it's easy to get a bit addicted to that, which leads to anxiety that you can't switch off easily. The situations that gave me the greatest difficulty were very extraverted demands - having to go "on-stage" - or those that involved conflicts, particularly where it was necessary for me to actually create them.



Yes, but my wife is probably intj so we both like a quite life and we get lots of nice introvert withdrawal! Of course when our children were young that was a different story, but we are of a generation where you could do OK with just one salary coming in and she stayed home until they were older. My wife has a chronic and serious anxiety disorder that has coloured our lives strongly - it's an awful condition. I'd say that our greatest challenges were at home rather than at my work. When she was going through bad patches it was the company and support I got from my colleagues that kept me going.



I think Ni is at the heart of mathematical creativity. A great mathematic theory is as beautiful on its own ground as any work of art and the insight that went into conceiving of it is probaly closely related to how a great piece of music is created - the people who do the big ticket creating are a rare breed though. Mostly what you see as a common or garden mathematician is the equivalent of a musical score and training in how to read and play it, which starts with Se, Si and Ti. Ni looks on and if you are lucky you get insight into what lies behind the exposition. If that doesn't happen, you are stuck with a partial understanding at best using Ti only. This is why some people seem to be naturally gifted at maths and find it easy while others struggle to make any sense at all beyond straightforward arithmetic. I think the most gifted mathematicians are using virtuoso Ni/Ti in a tight embrace, and expressing their ideas using Te - with a few of the more poetical ones using Fe too.



I think it's Ni/Fe that kicked the interest off. It started a few years back when a cousin asked me about one of my grandfathers (her great grandfather). I found the story I'd been told was not quite right, so I got curious, went exploring and got hooked. There are a lot of drivers - I think I respond most enthusiatically to something like this when it appeals to me in several dimensions and at several levels all at once. So to start off with there was just plain glorious nosiness about long departed family and their scandals who I knew as a child ! It turns out one of my great grandfathers was a drunk who took his family to America - his wife came back home 4 years later, pregnant and with their 4 children, leaving him behind. She must have had an awful time of it. He turned up on her doorstep in the UK 20 years later, still drunk, and my grandfather and his brother kept him drunk, took him to Liverpool and shoved him on a boat back to the USA. Turns out this story is more or less true and I found the ship manifests that show him coming to the UK, and going back home shortly after! How could anyone resist digging deeper after that - I've got back to early 1600s on my mother's side. There's a steep and rewarding learning curve to get to grips with the computer databases like Ancestry, and the PC package I use to hold my family tree, lots of old cracked and faded family photos I've scanned and restored and made into a photo book. There's a lot of grunt work simply capturing information and systematically organising it into my database. There's a lot of detective work when you go looking for something elusive and the eureka when you find out something totally unexpected. Ne gets used quite a lot to find ingenious ways around brick wall obstacles in tracing ancestor lines, Ni and Ti hold the big picture keep the whole lot from collapsing into a chaos of unstructured data.



Oh I over-complicate everything I touch. It comes from Ni - I have this very clear Ni perception of something that I can apprehend in an instant, but to turn it ito words ... I go on and on and on. And I'm a perfectionist and rework things over and over. As I get older I'm becoming less tolerant of this need to express my Ni verbally - it's mostly not verbal. One of the great things about the forum is that there are plenty of people who know what I mean without having to go through a lot of explanation. I'll have to work a bit at this though.



I don't actually like giving Se much conscious space, I find it very tiring. I'm usually living in my head and I trust my unconscious to handle the Se for me a lot of the time. It works out reasonably well as long as I'm on familiar territory - I've got to watch out when I'm not because I become accident prone and things keep developing evil personalities and attacking me. My favourite moments though are if I get to blend Ni and Se together - that fills the world with magic for me, as though it's all lit up with a mystical light. One of my hobbies is photography and the few seconds when I'm framing a picture is another magical belnd of Ni and Se - Se grabs what's out there and Ni gives me the best composition pretty effortlessly. Oh there's a high failure rate of course, but that's how it is when you get the magic shots.



This for me with a vengeance too. I can get to a point where I don't know what my own feelings are because I'm picking up other people's broadcast feelings and I go into please-you mode. Like for you, it can completely swamp my Ni perception. I seem to have better control on this as I get older, but I still respond this way if someone is prickly with me or if I think I may have offended someone :coldsweat:. I do chameleon as well - take on the character of the group I'm with. It's odd being with a group of dominant sensors who have no conception of intuition whatsoever and just project their world view onto me - I can only keep pace with them in small doses.



I think I've covered some of this already :relieved::grinning:

I think I have definitely changed how I handle things over the years and strangely I think the final insight is quite unexpected. I can see now that I have always used Ni and Fe throughout my life but they have been underground for a lot of time. INFJ is a rare type and our natural way of thinking and relating to the world is not appreciated by the commoner types. Our dominant is actually the inferior function to the largest type groupings, while their dominant is our inferior, so no wonder. What has been really great for me is recognising my infj type and giving it competely free reign now I'm retired. Even among infjs there are differences, and one of the things I enjoy, and comes naturally to me, is context shifting - seeing the world from lots of different angles and happily living in all of them as the mood (or forum thread!) takes me. It doesn't bother me in the least that many of them are incompatible with each other - Ni is a perception not a judging function.

@Asa just been going back over the thread again after a couple of weeks. Did any of this make sense to you?

I find it very hard to be objective about it and think it likely that someone fluent in mbti would have me labeled as infx from my teenage years onwards. That's very different from my own conscious awareness of it which is recent and I'm still exploring the insight that this brings - which colours strongly and biases anything I might say about how I got here. Like I said, and like many other people, I got damaged in childhood, though by no means as badly as a lot of folk, and this has affected my type development. I think that the fluency I developed in the thinking functions was slave both to my wish for insight into "life the universe and everything" which has always been my major, and my need for affirmation from others (or for a defensive feeling of superiority over them :sorrowful:) which I found I could get by being clever.

Since my 40's (now 20-30 years ago) I've developed a real fondness for Si, though only recently would I express it explicitly like that. It helped to root me in my job, giving me a foundation of knowledge about the people I served and their needs - I'm not talking about Ni type insight here, I'm talking about the structured knowledge and navigation of specific requirements of several hundred users of our computer systems for example. More recently, it has rooted me in a structured view of the fine details of my family history. For me, there is an intimate connection between this Si and my Ni and Fe.

As I get older, I think in a sense I spiral around the functions. I'll never ever consider"E" as a possibility because I just don't have that ability - of all the components of MBTI type this attitude is the one that I'm most resistant to ever identifying with. I get terribly stressed if forced into E for any length of time. I enjoy all the functions though, even though my skills vary enormously with them. I've been wallowing in INFJ very much these last few months - I've never consciously worn these clothes before I joined the forum in late April, but they are the right ones and it has been a revelation and a joy to be aware of them. There will come a time when I start to crave something different though, and I might well return to Si / Te as a complete change such as by going back to further family history research, or perhaps learning a new photographic computer app. However this happens, I think the motivation and my "rootedness" will come from the Ni/Fe - I suspect that for many people in the 2nd half of life the motivation for development of their non-preferred functions is deeply rooted in their preferred ones. To give an extreme example, I found that while I was restoring old photos of my family from over 100 years ago, I found myself feeling that I was caressing them and making them whole.

Sorry if I've repeated some of the things I said earlier, but the context is a little different.
 
@John K

The role reversal is disorienting and never felt "right" to me - i found myself fighting an unconscious resentment.

My condolences again about your father. You must have felt such a mix of emotions at his passing and funeral.
I’m so sorry, and understand why you’d feel unconscious resentment. Even during adulthood we expect our parents to have a certain role, even if we never ask them to play that role.

I haven’t been through this. My dad is still young and it is still funny when he acts childish. Childish for him is partying. Every time I text him he’s off to a party. He’s an introvert, so it is strange that he is so social, but I also know he has grown to dislike being in his own head.

It doesn’t seem like the circumstances are similar. My in-laws were abusive and my MIL is mentally ill. My SO feels a strong sense of duty to be there for them, but he does resent them, too, because they were never decent parents. The dynamic is edging on “normal family gatherings” now that we only see his dad in the nursing home, surrounded by staff. It still stresses my SO out and he acts more dysfunctional after he sees them. I told him to stop visiting his mother as often. She doesn’t remember him anymore, so the visits are of no benefit to her, while they are distressing to him.
It raises an interesting question: What do kids owe abusive parents in terms of elder care?


Regarding you wife:
I want to give you a hug when I read this, but Brits don’t really do hugs, do they? I’m so sorry. It must have been unimaginably stressful and scary. I hope she is living a happier and more balanced and peaceful life now, even though she struggles. A part of you must always be stressed out over this.


Regarding social interactions:
I’m more introverted. We used to host touring bands at our house and we also had a club in our basement for a while, plus touring, and shows (local or away). I played the host – making sure everyone was comfortable, felt wanted, had their needs met, etc. It was a social and extroverted role. I also had many jobs where I had to play similar roles with the public (shop girl, front desk, etc). I did find downtime to recover, but I got burned out often. I’m permanently worn out by all of it now. I can tolerate about two hours of social time now before I implode.

I don’t know if I feel inauthentic with the exception of knowing I am being mistaken for an extrovert. I can have a lot of trouble unscrambling how I feel, and/or don’t care how I feel and shove my feelings aside.

I’m still a weirdo with authority, too, and I’m so afraid of police. I am a goodie two shoes, too.


“Follow Your Dreams”:
Yesterday I saw an inspirational quote that read, “Follow Your Dreams, But Take Your Brain With You.”


Si:

I find your use of Si interesting. Si is in the “Shadowlands” of our stack, so I’m wondering how using Si causes you to fall out of balance. There is always push and pull. Did other functions suffer? How did you cope with the anxiety and irritability?
TBH, I find it so odd that you rely so heavily on Si at work, considering Si isn’t in our top four. I find it particularly interesting that you use Si more often than consciously using Se.


I think Ni is at the heart of mathematical creativity. A great mathematic theory is as beautiful on its own ground as any work of art and the insight that went into conceiving of it is probably closely related to how a great piece of music is created - the people who do the big ticket creating are a rare breed though.

I agree that “mathematic theory is as beautiful on its own ground as any work of art.” I’m not sure if Ni is always at the heart of great mathematic theorists, or that mathematicians are using Ni/Ti. To be a truly great mathematician, one must embrace both theory and practical arithmetic.


“As I get older I'm becoming less tolerant of this need to express my Ni verbally - it's mostly not verbal.”


Haha. As I grow older I have less and less desire to discuss all my Ni thoughts, or debate, talk philosophy, etc. I remember being younger and getting so excited when I found anyone who wanted to discuss deep and interesting topics. The older I get, the less special any of my thoughts seem to me, and I don’t feel like wasting other’s time rambling about them. This combined with my (seemingly) permanent socializing burnout keeps me quieter.

I’m jaded, too. The sensation of trying to discuss ideas with people who are not open to such ideas is awful, and so is the issue of (and I’m not saying this would happen here) men either using our discussions as a way to hit on me, or forming crushes on me because of our discussions. It isn’t worth it.
I don't feel special enough to waste my time opening my brain and pouring it on people's laps anymore.

“And I might well return to Si / Te as a complete change such as by going back to further family history research, or perhaps learning a new photographic computer app.”



Do you believe we can change our stacks?
 
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The best part is years later, when an embarrassing moment will randomly replay itself in my mind frame-for-frame. :disappointed:
Ugh. And the accompanying sensation of wanting to jump off a bridge!

I've only skimmed this topic, but I do want to read it more thoroughly. I've been stubbing my metaphorical INFJ-T toe while marching to my Jubilee year (50 next week) and I'm very interested in this thread. I feel like I'm on the surface of learning something new about myself; I'm in the dark bumping into things but I've got my hand on the candle and matches. I just need to find that danged wick.

In other words, some kind of crisis, or whatever you want to call it. It's not bad, but I want to do so much more than I am doing - and I'm both apprehensive and looking forward to finding out what that is. Gotta get those dreams realized, or whatever.

Interesting. I have two more years until I hit 50, and right now I feel at peace, focused, and balanced.
Did you go through the classic mid-life chaos in your 40s?
My early 40s were so bad that I'm actually terrified any time anyone mentions Saturn Returns, and I don't even believe in astrology. I can't do that again. I really, really can't.
(A lot of this has to do with my SO's severe depression, and his midlife crisis. I think I would have been OK if it were just me coming to terms with being at mid-life. Either way, I don't have it in me to do that in my 50s.)

I think as i get older my life goals do shift around. Its no longer about money and career, but more about peace within. Like in a years time i plan to follow my dream of living on the Oregon coast..because it calls me and im going to answer..

Ohhh, yay! The Oregon Coast is gorgeous!

For me, it is both. I am more focused on money and career, but have also made big changes in my life so I am more "at peace" and "balanced".
 
Part of the fading concern over money is the fact that I retired from a long term public job that gives me a monthly pension, and that coupled with social security will leave me with a very comfortable income. . so it's a bit easier to lose those issues in life.
 
Part of the fading concern over money is the fact that I retired from a long term public job that gives me a monthly pension, and that coupled with social security will leave me with a very comfortable income. . so it's a bit easier to lose those issues in life.

I bet you get free healthcare for life, too.

Funny how money issues weigh harder on people in the US than in other parts of the world. I wonder why that is...
 
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