What are the main contradictions with INTJs that they are aware of themselves?

So, like someone else responded, I can’t answer for all INTJs. But these are mine:

·       Confident or arrogant vs awkward

·       Emotional vs robotic

·       Open-minded vs narrow-minded

·       Know-it-alls vs interest in learning

Confident or arrogant vs awkward

I wrote an answer on Quora to another question about how complex our social skills are, and I think that’s what some or all of these contradictions come down to. One big one is how we can sometimes seem confident or even arrogant and other times seem socially awkward. And some INTJs are more all-or-nothing about this. But I think many of us aren’t, in part because I’m partially talking about other people’s perceptions of us…which doesn’t always mean it’s reality.

And there’s a lot of conflation that goes on with words like “awkward,” “introvert,” “shy,” and not being “confident”—here, I’m using “awkward” as a stand-in for all of that as it relates to how people can sometimes perceive INTJs, i.e. to others, our awkwardness makes them think we’re lacking confidence.

But for many of us, in certain situations we are very confident and in others we’re genuinely not…and in others still, we’re just being our complex selves, which makes people not know if they should find us confident, arrogant, awkward, lacking confidence or what. It could depend on our mood. It could depend on how much caffeine we’ve had. It could depend on how much sleep we’ve had. It could depend on whether or not we’re adequately prepared to act a certain way. It could just depend on the topic or environment.

Emotional vs robotic

There’s diversity among us, like a scale of how emotional some of us actually are. But most of us, however emotional we are, are pretty good at not showing it and appearing to be robotic, i.e. unemotional. Blank, death stare or resting bitch face facial expressions. Flat/monotone or sarcastic voices. Not reacting to stuff while other people are reacting. We might not feel the same way “everybody else” feels about certain things, but we do feel a lot more than it seems—and sometimes even more than others do. We just don’t show those feelings.

Open-minded vs narrow-minded

There seems to be some conflicting information on whether or not INTJs are narrow-minded or open-minded. Now, I have never really seen it said that we are “narrow-minded.” We tend to be painted as open-minded more often than not. I just can’t say it’s true enough to be an oft-mentioned characteristic of INTJs.

Where I most tend to see the conflict is in how a lot of us feel about people. I see it in myself a lot. It’s hard to be like, “I am into diversity, and everyone should leave everyone alone and let people be who they are,” and then be like, “I hate people” or “I only want to be friends with and date very intelligent people” or “You have to make logical arguments/statements”…and really get away with it. I mean, INTJs might be open-minded to a certain point.

And then we also tend to think what everybody else is into is complete bullshit. Like, it’s all just standard shit that less intelligent people like and people who are clones of everyone else…it’s stuff they like. We don’t like “typical” stuff—we like to read and have intellectual conversations (or, for some, to debate).

Basically, a lot of us don’t actually like people and the shit they like to do. But we still somehow want everybody to be able to live their lives and be who they are, because we wish people would let us do that stuff (but they won’t).

And I know that I’ll never be that person who is “open to new experiences” and “meeting new people.” I am very serious about people not trying to change me and not trying to talk me into doing stuff I don’t want to do. I will seriously stop communicating with you over this type of stuff.

Know-it-alls vs interest in learning

I don’t really know what to believe about other INTJs on this one in terms of what they keep saying, but…knowing myself, I have a hard time believing that we’re interested in learning from other people. Frankly, most people? I have zero interest in that, and I’m not scared to admit it. If I want to learn something from you, I will seek you out. If I’m not seeking you, I’m not interested. I’ve got it covered. And if I don’t feel like I’ve got it covered and I want to know more about it, I’m significantly more likely to read up on the topic than to listen to someone else. I feel like I’m not supposed to admit this, but it’s just real.

Personally, I have a very strong “don’t tell me shit” side when it comes to other people. I really think a lot of INTJs do and deep-down know it but don’t want to admit it. We know that we’re often surrounded by people whom we feel don’t know what they’re actually talking about. We think we have the answers, and we think we can do almost everything better than almost everybody else.

But we do like to learn. I just think it’s a lot more on our terms, a lot more exclusive, a lot more doing it our way, than some INTJs online maybe come off as believing. I do love to read. I do love to search for answers. Very rarely will I say a book or journal is too expensive to buy if I’m interested—two things I’m always willing to put a credit card down on are good music and good books. But I’ll admit—I will not take every single opportunity to learn, and I’m not willing to learn from every single source.

—

If I had to guess, I’d say the majority of INTJs are aware of the first two and not the last two. But for myself, I’m aware of all four. I am pretty sure, though, that most INTJs have encountered the idea that we’re know-it-alls…it’s just that I keep seeing some emphasizing an interest in learning, so I’m not sure how many realize, as I do, that we seem to be both know-it-alls and people who are interested in learning.

And then for those of us who have some of the issues with people I mentioned—many INTJs are aware of those thoughts, but I don’t know how many INTJs have made the connection between those issues and not really being open-minded, if they even think of themselves as open-minded (which I generally would not use as a word to describe myself). They might just make the argument that it’s a matter of standards or preferences, like a lot of people do when they’re justifying being less accepting of others. But I don’t know.