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crumblycornbread · 3 years ago

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So here’s a little story all about how social interactions go when I speak with someone who has my personality functions but flipped and turned upside down. 😅

Hi, late 20-something INFJ here who is living in a small, sleepy Appalachian city. 🖖🏻 I’m also a master’s level social worker with a trauma informed and clinical background who recently decided to begin practicing in a medical environment. While the change of pace has been nothing less of exhilarating, there has been the occasional bump in the road while adjusting to the social environment of this workplace. I was quick to recognize/observe questionable relationships between coworkers and knew to be more assertive with my boundaries than usual. However, as always, there’s that *one* co-worker who just loves testing boundaries and thus pushing my buttons. This co-worker is no other than a middle aged ESTP who has been running from himself for as long as I’ve been breathing. So, keep reading if a story about addressing a boundary setting in the most INFJ way possible sounds interesting. (ADHD-side note: This is story is also your sign to make that decision you, fellow INFJ/human, need to better yourself… and always trust your intuition when it comes to speaking your mind.)

I feel the best stories are told when the characters have names. Emphasis on characters and not narrator. 😉 So, this ESTP deserves a name, but not just any name. It should be a name that belonged to a pretty famous INFJ: Remus Lupin. Perhaps, we can just say Lou for short because after all we’re talking about a middle aged man from West Virginia here. If you’re wondering why I feel that Lou should be named after an INFJ, let me tell you why: It is a reminder that the story and details you are about to learn about this person is not limited to a specific personality type. Everyone has their demons, or werewolves. Whatever. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Another character featured in this story is Sybil, an INFP. I actually met Sybil way before I met Lou. In fact, thanks to her I learned more than I cared to before I even met the guy. Like me, Sybil is a social worker but she’s been practicing for a bit longer than myself. She’s also much closer in age to Lou than I am. It would make complete sense for the two of them to be friends. However, unbeknownst to the two of them I had already been briefed on their horribly kept secret office romance. Sometimes I wonder if she would have told me as much as she did, if she had actually known I was much more difficult to manipulate than she predicted. Anyways, Sybil shared legends of Lou that were stained with admiration, obsession, lust, and annoyance. Girl had it bad. Lou was great at letting her feel in control through the use of his apathy. Their relationship was almost villainous. Regardless, I learned a lot from Sybil. She told me about how Lou’s bias towards people who struggle with addiction likely comes from having to overcompensate as a parent due to his ex-wife’s alcoholism. (His daughter is 5 years younger than me btw.) Repressed resentment can do a lot to a person, but I knew it could not be the source that created the wounds that afflicted Lou so apparently. Sybil is an incredibly resilient and intelligent woman, but she is incapable of seeing this man for who he really is. Whereas, I saw him for who he was the moment he said his first sentence to me.

There is nothing more irritating to me than having the ability to see so clearly through an ESTP’s bullshit while everyone is left stunned and fumbling while trying to follow their stuttering Ti. 🤬 They’re not THAT brilliant y’all, but god are those weasely fuckers good making you think otherwise. (I clearly have an almost visceral love/hate relationship with ESTPs. Please reference the Elena, Bonnie, and Damon trynamic to understand Sybil, myself, and Lou here.) On the day I was first able to put a face to Lou’s name, I think he must have grown two inches the moment he saw a new member in his audience. He flung the office door open as an entrance and I could almost smell the God complex roll off from him as he strut past me like an English Bulldog on a leash sizing up a fire hydrant. He was then of course too impatient and did not allow me the time needed to prepare in introducing myself to such organized chaos. He took it upon himself, gladly. It was quite frankly disgusting. I loved it. 😂 Lou is low key Nurse Ratchet at our place of work which is rather ironic. Our jobs are interdisciplinary in nature where we alongside and act as gatekeepers deciding who will and will not be admitted to our psychiatric unit. Though we always deflect by making the psychiatrist sound like the all great and powerful Oz. We, meaning Lou and I, are still the information gatherers and boy do we gather information differently.

“I’ll lead this one, okay,” Lou sharply spurts out as he reaches and swiftly pulls to open a privacy curtain. I think I’ve lost count how many times this man has said this to me as we prepare to assess a patient. It’s been very hard for us to establish a good working rhythm. It’s unclear to me if he’s uncomfortable with our power dynamic because I have more education while he has more experience in this position. Or, if Sybil has told him about how I prefer to take my time during assessments so I can gather as much information as possible for diagnostic purposes. I wonder this because it seems Lou likes to rush through questions because he’s already came to a conclusion before having even set eyes on the patient. He ironically voices this same frustration with other coworkers. It is glaring how blind he is to himself.

In between assessing and staffing patients to psychiatrists, Lou is bombarding me with personal questions hoping to probe himself into a debate. He’s also doing the whole damaged-goods-eliciting-rescue routine that I’m sure works on a lot ladies, like Sybil for instance. It’s not doing him any favors with me though because it’s only pissing me off. Can’t a woman just write out her note and process information so that she can come to her own conclusion in peace? 🙉 I can tell he both loves and hates that I can’t immediately agree with him. His inability to get a good read on me though seems to keep him curious and engaged. In the span of a week this man had revealed an ungodly amount of personal information to me, intentional or not. Here’s a short list of things I learned about the guy:

-His dad was a WWII veteran that was abusive “but” not nearly as abusive as father was to him.

-He was married once and has a daughter from that marriage.

-He gained two cats from the divorce and he expected me to be shocked that he had two cats for some reason.

-He was a respiratory therapist (RT) at a major trauma/research hospital in the Midwest for many years before deciding to go back to school to become a nurse, and ultimately starting his life completely over.

-I asked him to tell me about the grossest thing he had ever seen as a nurse. Ya know, expecting to have a humorous conversation about poop or something, but no. Lou proceeds to tell me three extremely gruesome and graphic trauma stories he witnessed as a RT that happened more than 10 years ago. This man- this father has witnessed more children die than any father/man/human should have ever seen. He apathetically laughed while being able to recall the sight of brain matter collecting on his shoes, completely unphased.

-He boasts of the multiple failed relationships and flings he’s encountered (many with coworkers) as if to make himself sound alluring. He regrettably tells me the story of the woman who broke him and how he’ll never be able to love again but he doesn’t know why...

What unfolds next is eerily reminiscent of the Twilight scene where Edward broods just enough to persuade Bella into saying the “V” word (and no I don’t mean virgin). Lou repeatedly and admittedly tells me he doesn’t know why he can’t fully connect/trust others, over and over. It was as if he was waiting for another response to attack and defend for the victory. But let’s just be human for a second. I’m a trauma therapist. If you probe a trauma therapist enough she’s going to say the “T” word. I looked at him square in the eye and said:

“It’s sad to me that you don’t see yourself as deserving of love and other positive feelings. Though I’m not surprised these are the results from your line of thought. If you believe, consciously or not, that you are stupid and undeserving of love you will never allow yourself to receive a love that is unconditional and long lasting. That is a self-fulfilling prophecy that prioritizes your safety over loneliness. To be completely honest, you sound like someone who has been traumatized.”

He became speechless. Suddenly, he had no rebuttal. It’s as though some of the fog had finally lifted for him. I continued:

“From what little I’ve learned about you, I’m not shocked by this. Your job as a RT was hard. You saw things no human should be made to witness. And you know what? The way you’re responding to that trauma is a completely human response. It is not your fault that you did not receive the support you needed in that profession to not still carry around some battle scars. You deserve more.”

He became very teary eyed and lost the ability to keep eye contact. I averted my gaze and began respectfully distracting myself with my note until I (finally) finished it. I felt like gloating in that moment. He spoke up a bit later to talk about his shock because he didn’t know it was even possible to become traumatized by one’s profession. We also talked about how complex trauma is and how it’s never truly “one thing”. I then covertly educated him on trauma responses and interventions/treatments while also normalizing his experience. He is one of many medical professionals who are living with PTSD. Mind you, the Covid epidemic has also exacerbated this lived experience too. Nevertheless, given the fact that Lou is a man of his age living in Appalachia and has his own particular set of life experiences, he lacked the emotional intelligence and self-compassion to sit with his pain long enough to see it for what it is and what it’s not (anger). He just needed a little direction and borrowed patience from another human. We all need that from time to time.

With all that being said, you now know that this INFJ’s response to the exhaustive boundary-testing ESTP, Lou, was to do a quick patch on some deeply rooted trauma and therefore silencing him just long enough to finish doing my fucking job. Don’t fuck with me, Lou. Listen, this bastard was brazen enough to be on a phonecall with one of his coworkers that he canoodles with (not Sybil btw) while sitting next to me in our office. He clearly underestimated the abilities of my youthful ears which meant I had to overhear a jealous woman ask about his feelings towards me, a woman he very nearly met. He responds by laughing and I can I tell from my peripheral vision he’s waiting for me to look at him but he again runs out of patience before saying, “I don’t think she has daddy issues.” I sure as hell ignored his existence after that until he later apologized for his inappropriate comment. But also- how kind of him to assume I don’t have any daddy issues after having a father that was an ESTP.

P. S. I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t an ego boost to render such an argumentative person speechless and then seeing them on the verge of tears because they finally got the courage to not run from the mirror when they were really just tryna get them some. 😈

P. P. S. Casual not so casual reminder to treat people as the humans they are and not the roles they fulfill, including yourself.

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