The INFJ Writer: Cracking the Creative Genius of the World's Rarest Type by Lauren Sapala

Author:Lauren Sapala [Sapala, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lauren Sapala
Published: 2016-05-09T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

Finding a Way out of Sensitive Intuitive Self-Doubt

His very first email spoke to me on so many levels. He said he’d been up all night—not writing—and he came across my blog. He was a frustrated screenwriter who had tried everything. NaNoWriMo, writing groups, hard and fast deadlines…nothing worked. He was convinced that it was too late for him, that he had wasted his best years, and he was terrified that he would end up living, as he put it, “That oldest and worst of clichés, the life of quiet desperation.”

I was surprised to find out he wasn’t even yet 30 years old.

But my surprise quickly vanished when I learned he was an INFJ.

To say that INFJs are tough on themselves is an understatement. INFJs tend to set goals so high that only Gandhi or Steve Jobs could meet them. This is due to our perfectionist nature (see Chapter 8: The INFJ Loop of Paralysis and Perfectionism). But perfectionism isn’t the only reason we have difficulty starting. The other side of the problem is self-doubt.

Self-doubt seems like something that could be vanquished with some good ol’ self-esteem building exercises; or that once the writer experiences a little bit of success they will realize they have nothing to worry about. But self-doubt doesn’t work like that. Its effects can be insidious, tenacious, and grab onto a writer’s soul like an evil creeping vine that won’t let go.

The weird thing is that the people who suffer the most from self-doubt also tend to be the most driven. INFJs definitely fall into this category. It’s not uncommon for INFJs to excel academically, or have a reputation for being the hardest worker at their job while also supporting friends and family members in whatever way they can. INFJs can be relied on, a trait that quickly makes itself apparent to people. And rely on the INFJ they do. But because INFJs hate saying no and sometimes have trouble being firm about their boundaries, they’re vulnerable to others taking advantage of them.

All of this plays into the self-doubt trap. The Sensitive Intuitive is born with an innate ability to see all sides of a situation, which helps them in their role of counseling people, but can hinder them when it comes to preserving their own sense of healthy self esteem. Just like they can see every facet of how a situation might play out in the future, they can also see all the infinite ways they might say or do the wrong thing to jeopardize a good outcome.

For the INFJ, their Introverted Intuition sucks in every piece of information they can gather on a subject like a Hoover vacuum, filters it through their emotions, and then passes it down to their Introverted Thinking, which turns it over and over and over in a nearly endless loop. If the information is tinged with paranoia or fear, the loop becomes poisonous to the INFJ and either paralyzes them, or sets them on the path of workaholism and manic overachieving.

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