How Health Research Can Be Dangerous for INFJs

To be fair, health research CAN be (not always IS) dangerous for anyone. There is a lot of bad information out there. Some of it is downright wrong. Some of it is half-truths, partially accurate but missing an important part of the picture. Some of it is helpful but only for certain people…certain genetic types, ages, sizes, shapes, personalities, genders, etc. But there is a particular reason Google health-search rabbit holes can be particularly dangerous for INFJs, and it isn’t even about physical health, per se.

INFJs are all about those moments where things just “click,” where everything falls into place, like peanut butter & jelly, Sonny & Cher, or maybe String Theory (fingers crossed!), and the world makes sense again. It’s the Introverted Intuition function driving that, by the way.

I’d been mulling this post concept over for a long time, but today something clicked, and I was so happy about it I had to run and tell you. Like a kid who caught their first fish. Or a high school senior who got accepted to their dream college. Or a toddler who just…in the…for the first time. Mommy, look!!! Ah, proud moments.

Let’s back up a tick…what is an INFJ? It’s a Myers-Briggs personality type. How about a primer?

How about an old post on Myers-Briggs itself?

How about a deeper dive into INFJ types specifically?

How about an old infographic about Myers-Briggs typing that I’m proud of drawing all by myself?

How about the one that shows an INFJ’s order of cognitive functions (less cool drawing but equally functional…get it?)?

Also – as a reminder – yours truly is an INFJ, the wonderful, rare, weird old soul who can be infuriating and delightful all at the same time, especially to the poor sap trying to teach me something about this world.

Back up to speed? Nice…I knew you could do it! That’s what Bob Ross told me last night as he painted a moonlit cabin in the snow. Those old Bob Ross episodes – now on YouTube – help me get to sleep. I watch golf when I want to be on-the-edge-of-my-seat engaged in fantastical television viewing, so I need something a little more sleepy before bed. Maybe a happy little cloud lives here…

I covered a lot of things in those Myers-Briggs posts, and the rest of the internets cover way more than that, but the big takeaway of the INFJ that we’re going to focus on today has to do with their dominant function, the old Introverted Intuition, and their inferior function, that dreaded Extroverted Sensing. I’ll just steal some language from my old posts to drop here.

The dominant function of the INFJ (the one that’s naturally a breeze to us):

Introverted Intuition – The intuition part of things is about synthesizing information together until it “clicks” and fits together, and since this form is the introverted form, it’s going to occur from within, during solitude, rather than, say, an outward brainstorming session (as would be the case with Extroverted Intuition). Introverted intuition is often referred to as the function that produces the “Aha!” moments, perhaps after a night of “sleeping on it.” Meatloaf preferred to use this function when dealing with tough relationship crossroads discussed by the dashboard light (let me sleep on it…).

Did I actually use a Meatloaf reference in that post? I hope I at least offered you some ketchup to help choke it down. Woof…moving on…

And the inferior function of the INFJ (the one we naturally suck at without a lot of cultivation):

Extroverted Sensing – This cognitive function is about one’s interaction with the physical world around them. This one heavily relies on our five physical senses to gather as much input as possible from our environment. It also is very much about the present moment, being immersed in the situation of the here and now. Professional athletes, for example, have a finely tuned Extroverted Sensing function, both for physical skill as well as the ability to get in “the zone” of the present.

So as those two “powers” combine – all Captain Planet like – us INFJs wind up with a strong desire to see the grand pattern of everything but have a hard time staying in the present, physical world to see any one piece for what it is. Essentially we have a hard time trusting something we don’t fully understand yet. As my newly-discovered kindred spirit, FJ put it: “INFJs can’t see the trees for the forest.”

Sidebar: FJ is short for Frank James…how perfect for an INFJ…talk about everything “clicking” together.

If you have the time, you absolutely must watch the video. I’m sure FJ wouldn’t mind me promoting his amazing work and giving him credit and more viewers. It’s twelve minutes, so if you don’t have the time now, bookmark this beautiful thing and come back to it.

Speaking of not seeing the trees for the forest, where the hell am I going with all this? Somewhere, I promise…I always do. At least I always intend to. You’re seeing high-functioning anxiety at its furious best here. I hope you’re reading as fast as I’m typing; it really heightens the experience. If not, find a really fast reader and have them read aloud, quickly as they can, then record it and play it back at double the speed.

So if we INFJs need to see the big picture and understand how everything fits, what do you think is going to happen once we crack that health egg open on our Google machine? We have to understand it, of course. All of it. And until we do? Well anything and everything could be broken until we check it all off the list…and that could take years, if ever! Meanwhile we’re simply spiraling in health anxiety until we have every last stone unturned.

What makes that worse? Our lacking, inferior function is Extroverted Sensing, the one that would keep us grounded in the present moment and comfortable in our physical world, with our physical selves…if we were any good with it. But we’re not, relatively speaking, so we can’t trust it (our physical body/health) until we fully understand it in its entirety.

But even doctors don’t understand all of it that well, that’s why they have specialists on every body part and system. And even the specialists don’t know everything about their specialty. So all the sudden we are trapped in the obsessive need to become a biologist, urologist, cardiologist, oncologist, orthopedist, and every other “ist” out there. And we have to be the best one too!

Talk about setting yourself up for failure! If you can’t trust something you don’t understand, and you’re trying to understand something that even the collective of humankind doesn’t understand, where the fuck does that leave you?!?!?! Excuse the expletive, but it felt appropriate.

When I talked about my new “health anxiety” in the last post, Discovering Uncertainty, it was this perfect storm of personality traits that led me there. It was today, with the help of my bro, FJ, that I finally dotted the I‘s and crossed the T‘s on my understanding of it why it happened.

So what are we to do about this, INFJs or otherwise? Well, I guess you could just never crack the egg in the first place. Or…and this is the hard part…you have to learn to be comfortable knowing that you can’t know everything. I know…the anxiety monster again…

I think if someone has a health concern, it’s a smart and responsible thing to try to understand it a little, if for no other reason than to speak intelligently to your doctor(s) about it and be able to make informed decisions if they give you treatment options. That said, you have to allow yourself to be vulnerable, allow the doctors to help you. And also understand that nothing is guaranteed.

I find it most helpful to think in spectrums and shades of grey (another classic INFJ trait). Think percentages, if that helps. You can never know anything with 100% certainty, and you certainly can’t predict the future any better than you can know the present. The goal is to put the odds in your favor by making the most informed decisions with the information available to you. After that, you have to let the outcome go. You have to discover, and be comfortable with, uncertainty. That’s no easy task…except for this guy who nailed it in the last post:

Some use religion to do so: It’s God’s will. God knows what’s best for me. If I die, at least I’ll go to heaven and see all my loved ones again someday.

Some use pragmatism (if they have enough of it…mostly Introverted Thinking types): Everyone has to die someday.

Some use fate: What will be will be.

Some use apathy or nihilism: In the end, nothing matters. I’m nothing. There is nothing.

The guy in the last cartoon used webcomics.

What should you use? Well, unfortunately (or fortunately), that’s up to you to figure out…it’s part of life’s journey. What do I use? I’m still trying to figure that out, and probably always will, but here’s what I got so far…

Not that…that was just a joke. This is what I got so far…

I try to focus on the process. I try to determine my success by how well I researched, decided, and stuck to my “program” rather than the outcome that’s technically out of my control. I always continue to tweak such things based on the pattern of outcomes I see, but it’s inevitably the process that I hone as my craft, that’s what I can control.

I try to remind myself, as often as possible, that I can’t know everything, but that doesn’t mean I can’t steer in the direction my knowledge leads me. I may wind up making a 180-degree turn someday, but all I can do now is go where the information takes me. I mean, there was a time when doctors thought “bad blood” caused sickness so they just put a bunch of leeches on people or cut their skin open to drain the “bad blood.” We have much better knowledge today than we did yesterday. Also, perspective helps.

I try to follow my gut (intuition). It’s certainly part of me, but in a way it seems like a different me, so I’m kind of playing that vulnerability card and letting “something else” take the reigns. It kind of has the same effect as, say, flipping a coin to make a decision, but at least it’s not totally random, it’s just tapping into a deeper “you,” what some might call the “higher self” that knows what’s best for you, even if it can’t know the eventual outcome.

In the end – and I know this sounds very cliche – it’s all about letting go. Letting go of what, exactly? Control and outcomes. Once you’ve done the research, put in the hard work, and made a decision, you just have to let the chips fall where they may. It’s never easy, and it’s a life-long struggle to master, but it’s the only way I know how to stay sane with all this entropy going around.

What’s the easiest way to summarize all that? Awareness. Being present. And what’s that relate to? Yep, my fourth, inferior Myers-Briggs function, Extroverted Sensing. So again it comes back to me knowing myself (INFJ on Myers-Briggs) and working on my weakness (my inferior function). You can break personal growth all the way down to simply cultivating your inferior Myers-Briggs function. Occam’s Razor: The simplest solution tends to be the right one…an INFJ’s dream. Peanut butter & jelly, baby.

If you enjoyed this and like to read books, I’ve published two. Check out the links below:

Bert Betterman’s Garden of Rabbit Holes

Fishing for More: A Memoir