I have been called a great deal of things over the decades of my life. Some I take with a grain of salt while others I try to understand better and work on myself to be a better person. Through it all, both when looking at myself and the world around me, I try to find truth and understanding. Admittedly, I sometimes fail at both. But, here are a few of the labels that have been put on me by professionals, colleagues, through tests, others’ opinions or assessments and even myself.
A female, INTJ, 2e, polymath with highly acute executive function, dialectical thinking, and an intense introverted profile.
For me, I have learned that because of the degree of truth in some of those labels and how I both process information and how I engage with others (already from a very young age) my personality is more apt to seek solitude and quiet environments. Which leads me to understanding how I best operate:
Offering honest perspectives from a backstage position - not out of fear, but because it is where I can thrive more peacefully outside a spotlight.
It has taken me years of both professionally-aided and personal reflection to understand I am different. And for much of this life I did not equate being different to being extraordinary. Instead, different was something I needed to work harder on to fix myself to be more like the others around me. Those who seemed to navigate friendships and networking with ease and particularly those who could speak more than 1 language. Because to me that was the epitome of knowledge and intellect.
So, it was a surprise to me to be told (after nearly 6 decades) I cannot be fixed, because I was not broken. That my difference was extraordinary. Even for the rapid and unqiue way in which I process information, it simply did not compute. And for days I offered examples of how that had to be incorrect. So, they put it in terms that I could code and accept by sheer facts: