"A quare child, if ye'll believe me," Judy used to say.
"What makes her queer?" Sidney asked.
"Sure, a leprachaun touched her the day she was born wid a liddle green rose-thorn. So she can't ever be just like other folks. But it isn't all to the bad. She'll be after having things other folks can't have."
"What things?" Sidney was curious.
"She'll love folks...and things...better than most...and that'll give her the great delight. But they'll hurt her more, too. 'Tis the way of the fairy gift and ye have to take the bad wid the good."
"Pat of Silver Bush" ~ L.M. Montgomery

After much mulling and contemplation, I have accepted the fact that I have a split personality. *s* At first I just believed I was strange...now I believe that I am strange, but in a good way. *s*

I have felt that for years that my "true" personality was hidden underneath my mistrustfulness and shyness...my fear of being rejected. Which it was, until I finally learned in college that it was okay to act like the wacky, somewhat sarcastic, sometimes amusing, and generally congenial person I wanted to be, and my friends would still love me anyhow. *s* I also learned that it was okay to still be the fairly studious, sometimes quiet, frequently worrying, and always daydreaming person I was too...and that being both was just fine. Most people would wonder why I even worried about this in the first place...as I stated before, I am a strange, strange girl. *s* I felt that people wouldn't think I was "nice" if I actually acted the way I really felt...now, I have found that people prefer me to do that. *s* Are you actually still reading at this point? *grin* If so, thank you for sharing in my little voyage of self-discovery. *s*

Would you like to know what various other sources have revealed about my personality? Oh, of course you do (and yes, I love these type of personality things)!

I have taken the Keirsey/Myers-Briggs Personality Type indicator, and am smack in the middle of two different profiles (see, split personality! *s*), although I am one general personality type...and I do think it is pretty accurate. I think I lean more towards the INFJ though. *s*

IDEALIST NFs, being ABSTRACT in communicating and COOPERATIVE in implementing goals, can become highly skilled in DIPLOMATIC INTEGRATION. Thus their most practiced and developed intelligent operations are usually teaching and counseling (NFJ mentoring), or conferring and tutoring (NFP advocating). And they would if they could be sages in one of these forms of social development. The Idealist temperament have an instinct for interpersonal integration, learn ethics with ever increasing zeal, sometimes become diplomatic leaders, and often speak interpretively and metaphorically of the abstract world of their imagination.

They are proud of themselves in the degree they are empathic in action, respect themselves in the degree they are benevolent, and feel confident of themselves in the degree they are authentic. Idealist types search for their unique identity, hunger for deep and meaningful relationships, wish for a little romance each day, trust their intuitive feelings implicitly, aspire for profundity. This is the "Identity Seeking Personality" -- credulous about the future, mystical about the past, and their preferred time and place are the future and the pathway. Educationally they go for the humanities, avocationally for ethics, and vocationally for personnel work.

Social relationships: In their family interactions they strive for mutuality, provide spiritual intimacy for the mates, opportunity for fantasy for their children, and for themselves continuous self-renewal. Idealists do not abound, being as few as 8% and nor more than 10% of the population.

Portrait of the Counselor (iNFj)
Copyrighted © 1996-9 Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.
The Counselor Idealists are abstract thought and speech, cooperative in reaching their goals, and directive and introverted in their interpersonal roles. Counselors focus on human potentials, think in terms of ethical values, and come easily to decisions. The small number of this type (little more than 2 percent) is regrettable, since Counselors have an unusually strong desire to contribute to the welfare of others and genuinely enjoy helping their companions. Although Counsleors tend to be private, sensitive people, and are not generally visible leaders, they nevertheless work quite intensely with those close to them, quietly exerting their influence behind the scenes with their families, friends, and colleagues. This type has great depth of personality; they are themselves complicated, and can understand and deal with complex issues and people.

Counselors can be hard to get to know. They have an unusually rich inner life, but they are reserved and tend not to share their reactions except with those they trust. With their loved ones, certainly, Counselors are not reluctant to express their feelings, their face lighting up with the positive emotions, but darkening like a thunderhead with the negative. Indeed, because of their strong ability to take into themselves the feelings of others, Counselors can be hurt rather easily by those around them, which, perhaps, is one reason why they tend to be private people, mutely withdrawing from human contact. At the same time, friends who have known an Counselor for years may find sides emerging which come as a surprise. Not that they are inconsistent; Counselors value their integrity a great deal, but they have intricately woven, mysterious personalities which sometimes puzzle even them.

Counselors have strong empathic abilities and can become aware of another's emotions or intentions-good or evil-even before that person is conscious of them. This "mind-reading" can take the form of feeling the hidden distress or illnesses of others to an extent which is difficult for other types to comprehend. Even Counselors can seldom tell how they came to penetrate others' feelings so keenly. Furthermore, the Counselor is most likely of all the types to demonstrate an ability to understand psychic phenomena and to have visions of human events, past, present, or future. What is known as ESP may well be exceptional intuitive ability-in both its forms, projection and introjection. Such supernormal intuition is found frequently in the Counselor, and can extend to people, things, and often events, taking the form of visions, episodes of foreknowledge, premonitions, auditory and visual images of things to come, as well as uncanny communications with certain individuals at a distance. Mohandas Gandhi and Eleanor Roosevelt are examples of the Counselor Idealist (INFJ).

Portrait of the Healer (iNFp)
Copyrighted © 1996 Prometheus Nemesis Book Company.
Healer Idealists are abstract in thought and speech, cooperative in striving for their ends, and informative and introverted in their interpersonal relations. Healer present a seemingly tranquil, and noticiably pleasant face to the world, and though to all appearances they might seem reserved, and even shy, on the inside they are anything but reserved, having a capacity for caring not always found in other types. They care deeply-indeed, passionately-about a few special persons or a favorite cause, and their fervent aim is to bring peace and integrity to their loved ones and the world.

Healers have a profound sense of idealism derived from a strong personal morality, and they conceive of the world as an ethical, honorable place. Indeed, to understand iNFps, we must understand their idealism as almost boundless and selfless, inspiring them to make extraordinary sacrifices for someone or something they believe in. The iNFp is the Prince or Princess of fairytale, the King's Champion or Defender of the Faith, like Sir Galahad or Joan of Arc. Healers are found in only 1 percent of the general population, although, at times, their idealism leaves them feeling even more isolated from the rest of humanity.

Healers seek unity in their lives, unity of body and mind, emotions and intellect, perhaps because they are likely to have a sense of inner division threaded through their lives, which comes from their often unhappy childhood. Healers live a fantasy-filled childhood, which, unfortunately, is discouraged or even punished by many parents. In a practical-minded family, required by their parents to be sociable and industrious in concrete ways, and also given down-to-earth siblings who conform to these parental expectations, iNFps come to see themselves as ugly ducklings. Other types usually shrug off parental expectations that do not fit them, but not the iNFps. Wishing to please their parents and siblings, but not knowing quite how to do it, they try to hide their differences, believing they are bad to be so fanciful, so unlike their more solid brothers and sisters. They wonder, some of them for the rest of their lives, whether they are OK. They are quite OK, just different from the rest of their family-swans reared in a family of ducks. Even so, to realize and really believe this is not easy for them. Deeply committed to the positive and the good, yet taught to believe there is evil in them, iNFps can come to develop a certain fascination with the problem of good and evil, sacred and profane. Tutors are drawn toward purity, but can become engrossed with the profane, continuously on the lookout for the wickedness that lurks within them. Then, when iNFps believe thay have yielded to an impure temptation, they may be given to acts of self-sacrifice in atonement. Others seldom detect this inner turmoil, however, for the struggle between good and evil is within the iNFp, who does not feel compelled to make the issue public.

Are you a glutton for punishment? *grin* Want to see even more personality analyses of me? Then go to Lark According to the Stars and Other Things!