AN INFANT INFJ IN THE MAKING - A OR T?

WHAT MAKES AN INFANT INFJ ASSERTIVE OR TURBULENT? A PRELUDE TO CHAPTER ONE OF ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN, TITLED, `WHO AM I´? Post No.7 (A 15 minute read) 

Hello and a very good morning to ALL. I have the sunshine back to greet me again this morning, though the rain has been so gratefully received by the parched lands within my view. The colours deepen noticeably after a good rainfall, the change is instantaneous. Fading plants find a new lease of life and those fallen seeds now burst into life with this new moisture available and shoot up above the soil level to take their chances of a good, long, fruitful life.

How well they will grow out in the wild with no direct help or hindrance from humans, will depend on the climatological conditions. They have chosen to rear their heads now as they perceive that the conditions are favourable to growth. They may be right! Surely though, it is this dawn of their lives which is so crucial, is it not? 

If they can grow sturdy and straight in their early stages, they will begin to build their resistance. Rich soil in which to drink up their nutrition, will see them grow from within and favourable balances of sun, shade, wind, rain and snow, will see the outer layer grow resistant to any damaging effects of those meterological conditions.

As children, we do not choose when we are born, do we? Or to whom we are born either! Yet so much of each and every one of us, our very essence, is because of who we were born to and where we were born also. Even as I was deciding to get started on my writing, I could see that many of my seemingly straightforward, simple common sense ideas, were going to come across as rather strange to the typical non-thinking mind. 

So as not to be written off as a raving mad-woman, I decided to give an insight to my readers into my own upbringing, in order that they could see where my ideas had rooted from and why my ideas rooted at all.

Therefore, even before I got into the thick of my churning thoughts, I decided to revisit my home and try and see why I am as I am because it is from that inside of me, that I write. I think I wanted the reader to get a FEEL for me and what had been my life and upbringing. I wanted to build a picture in a reader´s mind of who their narrator was. 

Who was this person talking to them in this frank and honest way? Where the heck did she come from? Did she just drop of another planet? No, I did not! Aptly titled therefore, my first chapter was, `WHO AM I?´

I know myself, that childhood was the most precious time of my life. I know that I was afforded a very stable home which I shared with other very stable people. My own foundations were built upon those of my three 100% Judges, my mother, father and elder sister. With the three of them being very Assertive, I was encouraged to be the same. Turbulent was ever my middle name!!! That you are born with and you learn to cope better with age but our own lack of belief in ourselves is probably our most detrimental niggle! We so crave evaluation and that is the role that my father played so well for me.

He was able to evaluate within what was your capability at that time. He was an artist but he did not expect his toddler children to be as good as him, did he? No, is the answer lest any get my Dad mixed up with another! Because yes, there are those adults who seem to assume that because they can do it, so can their toddler. Having had a toddler to deal with myself, I saw this so clearly but of course, I am honest with myself and I would have flash backs and remember my clumsy attempts at doing the same at the same age as he was.

I would actually be able to compliment him and tell him honestly, that he was doing that far better than I could at his age and that was true in so many cases. He was a gifted child but he had me as his teacher. I was the teacher to him that I never had 24 hours a day. I had my father in the evening and my mother daytime. Mum would get tired of this child and her questioning! I have to hand it to my mother, she would answer up to a point but therein my turbulent sleep time!

I still did not get the point, I was still missing some pieces in that particular jigsaw puzzle and in sleep time, well, I would put all of my older pieces that I loved in their places, I knew where they all went, they were my framework, my boundaries, my family and home. It was trying to fit the new pieces that presented the problem for me. If I understood each piece then I could place it but if there was a piece missing from a clump of joined up pieces, I could see clearly where the gap was. If I had a piece that I did not understand at all, then I had no idea what to do with it.

Once asleep, this picture building process would begin and I would always start with the framework. First would be my sister and dog. The three of us would have spent all day doing lovely things, we would have had much fun and laughs and excitement too. All beautiful positive, warm, sensations of being happy and FEELING secure and deeply loved. I was so keenly aware as a toddler of how much I loved my trio of Judges and how safe they all made me FEEL. I was the little one then! Two going on three as I talk of here.

Then my Dad piece would come in and I would see him pulling into the driveway of our home and putting OUR car in the garage. Me, my sister and the dog, all flying to the front door to greet him and watch him take off his shoes and put on his Moroccan babouches. WOW!!! Poor Dad, hey? What a bombardment of, "We did this and we did that and the dog did this so we did that and then we went and did this" and on and on. Did we ever think to ask our Dad how his day had gone or even if he had had a good day let alone what he had been doing all day out of our sight? I do not think we did at that age. I know we did a little further down the line.

My Dad was my universe, he was all round me in my global picture of myself and my life. I would hear his voice in my mind and know that he was not far from me and whilst that were so, I would never need to have any fear. Then my mother would come into my thoughts and I would take longer placing my Mum piece!!! It depended much on the individual day really and what had been our communications on that day. Here in my swinging Assertive potential and my Turbulent disposition. The father, sister and dog relationships were totally and completely unconditional from day one to the very last day.

My relationship with my mother seemed to be more conditional. Once again, I have been a mother and know just how much energy is required to keep up with an insatiable child. My mother had two children of different ages and skill levels, so she was having to in effect double up. She could not read the same stories with me as with my older sister, that would not be fair. All in its right time, that is good judgement. I was allowed to be a toddler whilst my elder sister was growing into infant and being treated according to her growth speed. 

ME (left) AND MY BELOVED ELDER SISTER.

We each had our toys and books which corresponded to our age group. Maybe though it was when my elder sister started nursery, that I was spending many hours now with just my mother and dog. Watch with mother, oh, yes, I did so much watching with mother. What a great teacher she was and is when allowed to do the one on one teaching, tune into to you individually and go with your speed. I can see how complicated that must be in truth and the more children, the greater the teaching burden.

So, I do not think I missed my sister as such, I was quite likely enjoying having my mother all to myself for the first time in my three years of life to date. This was when my collection of pieces really began to grow and the picture of my life had to expand too in order to fit all of these new pieces. I have this period sat in my memory on a visible shelf, where it glows permanently with an eternal radiating warmth. 

I loved being a toddler and sitting on my mother or father´s lap. I am a lap sitter, not a `Lap Dancer´, just to clarify that for you! There is no place that equals the lap of someone who loves you and having their arms around you just makes all well with the world.

Sat on my mother´s lap, I would see some beautiful little programs made for little toddlers and these stay in my mind as though it were yesterday. I remember the songs and the music; I was like a sponge. Happily I was able to re-live all of these beautiful children´s programs with my Puppy too. "How do I know all the words to the songs", he would ask from his `sat on my lap´ position? I would tell him that some years back, "I too used to sit on my mother´s lap and watch these programs." It was a blissful repetition.

These of course, are all of the beautiful pieces, oh, yes, I wanted to keep all of those in my picture, I did! So, where did the problematic pieces come from? They could have been sounds, visions, actions and even words. If I did not understand what they were, then there was no placing them but in the darkened, tranquil night-time with the moonlight casting shadows of every size and shape all around, the inner eye is able to see more clearly the images within.

If a young mind has no guidance, it has to find its own answers. Asleep at night, with nothing to distract it, a mind like mine can run rampant! Hallucinations are the result of brain rampancy. Images would come before my inner eye and then begin to mutate and become terrifying. I would wake up screaming and crying. Poor Dad would come in to my room and I would be on his lap and buried in his arms, clinging on to my escape route from this terror of my own fabrication.

He would take me to the window cradled in his arms and draw back the curtains. We would look out into the back garden and he would talk me through the shadows and have me look at each one and tell me because of where the moon was at that moment it was creating those shadows. Our resident owl would hoot and my Dad would imitate the hoot, just as my mother would do in early evening when the owl woke up for the night! He would talk me all over our garden and he would talk me into tomorrow and what we would be doing in the garden tomorrow.

He would ask me to pay attention to the shadows during the day created by the sun and its movements. You can see the distractory strategy here, I had the same problem with my Puppy too. Give the mind something to work on! Challenge the mind because it cannot resist a challenge. For minds like ours, anything new is a challenge but if that new is particularly stimulating well, off you go!! 

Turning his thoughts back to sleeping, both for him and I, I would remember what had so disturbed me and ask my questions and he would make so light of them in such a gentle way, he would laugh comfortingly and with total security tell me that all I had to do was turn my inner eye to the light and there I would always find my happy picture again.

Bless him a million times, he did not get too many sleep`full´ nights at that time. As you can see, INFJs are born. We grow, we mature but if we do not have a guide to shine the light through our shadows of ignorance as very young children, we may become very insecure and certainly VERY introverted. I had my gentle, patient, soft voiced, night-time, light-shining guide called DAD!!!!

A decision was made, I imagine on my behalf and I began to share a bedroom with my elder sister and from there on, it would be more often her who would be my night-time comforter and light shiner. Then we went to a christmas pantomime and saw Hansel and Gretel! My sister always loved to eat and sweets and cakes she could barely resist. Of course, it was always going to be her who would fall into the wicked witch´s trap. The recurring nightmares of this were quite something. Night after night, trying to get up to that top tower room with the key, to the cage where my sister was imprisoned.

I can still remember the fear and anguish of my sister´s peril. But I was going to save her! Even in our dreams at night, we are so fiercely loyal! The peril was never mine, or I did not see my peril better said, in my dreams. Oh, no, it was the plight of my loved ones that had me conditioned to act and find the answers and solutions by myself. Without their guidance!! I was on my own when I was asleep. It takes some time to be able to guide our own thought patterns at will. It comes with age and maturity.

None the less, how easy it is to be instantaneously diverted off down a track that you would never have chosen to follow by an external factor. Being psychologically dragged where you would not want to go because you know what is down that track, you have been dragged down there so many times before, it holds no surprise for you or any stimulation for you, so why go, if not by force of  `social etiquette´? 

As young children we do not choose the people who surround us, do we? We have to cope with those around us though, which can be hard when all are trying purposefully to mould you into a behaviourial pattern that does not FEEL comfortable to you. I think that fundamentally, we are all Intuitive in our very early years but they are also the years that we are taught so many `NOs´. "You do not do that!" (I just did!) "You cannot say that!" (I just did!) "You cannot think that way!" (I just did!) So many `NOs´, what about the `YES´ factor for a child´s hungry mind.

I will ever be grateful for all the fodder that was provided to me and my sisters throughout our childhood. So much of our early learning and formation is done at home, in these early years. Our own parents and elder siblings have so much to do with that learning process and how they help you as the younger member process and understand your new knowledge. This is where I believe that we become an Assertive INFJ or a Turbulent INFJ. Maybe from thereon, the tendency to swing radically from one extreme to the other, becomes par for course for you!

Dependent always on those who really care enough to try and steer you onto the Assertive path but being permanently undermined by others who do not have the same generous distribution of their time and care. Those who, just like INFJs will do something that is good purely because they can do it. For no other reason. What are you or who are you, if you do not act on something or somewhere, when you can see so clearly the difference that you can make? I think like that too. I know that is an ingrained part of my INFJ personality type.

It is one of our most defining characteristics, is it not? Simply doing things because we can. We can do so much without even really thinking about it and so find ourselves regularly well used and generally, for very little appreciation too! But we have all got used to that, have we not? Hence a heightened need for evaluation, we are never considered! We NEED to be considered TOO!

My Dad and elder sister always did all that they could to try and guide me and support me. They did it from day one and I will carry them and their examples with me all through my own life. They were great examples to have, both of them.

This is an early insight into my toddler mind set and the influence that my own nearest and dearest had on my psyche in my beginnings. How did you fare for parents and siblings? Did you find strong bonding with your own family members? Have your family members influenced you and your behaviourial patterns? Did your family provide you with a stable ground on which to build? I know I was very, very fortunate indeed.

Thank you so much for reading. Please FEEL welcome to comment or make communication, I shall look forward to that, I shall. There is a comment space below the post and there is a contact box in the right-hand panel. Directly beneath this box is the follow tab, why not try keeping up with my trains of thought? 

In my next blog I will dive in proper and continue building my picture of  `WHO AM I?´ Moving on from my home influences into ever increasing circles and finding other sources of guidance and influence. All of which coupled with that of my family, have made me, WHO I AM today.

My first book can be found on Amazon with these links: ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN Paperback and ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN e-book

Other INFJ blogs can be found here: https://lifestyle.feedspot.com/infj_blogs