I’m curious, does anyone else have experiences where friends, family or acquaintances use adjectives to describe you that you’d never attribute to yourself? For me the two that have come up multiple times have been charming and intimidating. There seems to be some gender lines drawn on this because ‘charming’ has usually come from my female friends, where ‘intimidating’ has come unanimously from male friends. The other day when yet another friend called me intimidating (an INFP), I asked him to explain what he meant because I found it kind of concerning. He told me that basically he consciously tries to speak more intelligently around me than his other friends. I’m always taken aback by something like that because I’ve never thought of myself as either particularly charming or remotely intimidating. It’s always interesting to see how we come off to other people though, especially since as INFPs we experience so much of our lives in our heads.

So how about you?

I get the entire spectrum of adjectives: Some call me proud, others call me humble. Some have called me a drama queen, others say I'm simple. Some say I'm tall, others say I'm short. Some say I'm ugly, others say I'm gorgeous. Some say I'm a hypocrite, others say I act with integrity. Some say I'm serious, others say I'm funny. Some say I babble, others say I am straight-to-the-point. Some say I'm too tactful, others say I'm gifted with candor. Some say I'm quiet; others, gregarious. Some say I'm talented; others, over-rated. Some say I'm sexy, others say I'm unattractive.

It's all subjective - for sure - and probably only as likely as the subjective paradigm that worded it is apt to frame others in a similar light. But maybe we are all the things they say we are (to a certain degree) - but show different facets at different times to different people. Frankly, at this point in my life, I only care to hear about what others have to say about me if I know it's gonna help me become a better person. I try not to listen to the descriptions otherwise.

I like listening to what very small kids have to say about me though - sometimes it's shocking, other times it's just plain amusing.

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The two things that have seriously floored and flummoxed me have been that:
i) I am bossy
ii) I've been steamrolling over someone

I understand where the bossy comment comes from (though a mutual friend was there and told off the guy--he's an extremely laid back ISFP, so I think a lot of people come across as bossy to him). In situations where things need to get done, I become very direct and short--though I'd never thought of myself as bossy, as I usually serve it with a heavy dose of 'please' and 'thank you'.

The second comment came from a colleague, and made me cry because that is so far from the sort of person I want to be, and I was actually already compromising on my vision and principles to accommodate this guy's needs. The efforts I made to be friendly and open to this guy and his team (another team had given up long ago and was at open war with them). I was so outraged and upset... but then I realised that when I was 'steamrolling', I was actually just doing my job. By which I mean, I was presenting ideas for how an exhibit could work... apparently that was quashing their artistic creative process and totally treading on their artistic creative feet and taking over their jobs.

When I talked about it with my upper manager, he said they were mistakenly trying to do my job, hence their impression that I was just walking in and stepping all over their work. It actually became such a pervasive problem (as the reason for the war with the other team was the same--this team thought the other team was trying to take over their work, when they were just doing their jobs) that the managers had to redraft our job descriptions to make them more explicit in terms of 'who does what'.

Anyway, that team was a big reason for why I left.

I think this is a great call. Sometimes it can be really difficult to understand other people's agendas or why they choose to interact with us in the way that they do. It's probably best to just let it go.



That sounds like an incredibly toxic work environment I think it was a good thing that you left, it seems to me like a situation that wouldn't be resolved without some strategic firings of the people who just couldn't work well with others. That's the sort of opinion I'd disregard because it's obviously coming from an unreliable source.

Here's my visual metaphor for it. If they lay it on thick, just sliiiiiiiiide!!!!



Although it took me a while to realize how easy it actually was to let go - that the world is our playground and there's enough room for all of us if we just find our own playthings and playmates.



Clearly upper management's fault. *sigh* There should be a vampire emoticon for this to symbolize how draining that experience must have been.

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Yes, our company had a habit of keeping people who were clearly unprofessional--which would be fine if the company even attempted to reprimand those who were blatantly unprofessional. We kept on a man who worked in customer service--he spent most of his time complaining about the company to the general public, and then proceeded to lose it and rant at the senior management at an all-staff meeting. I thought for sure he'd be either fired or disciplined. Neither happened.

I think I responded strongly to that colleague because it came at a ridiculously stressful time... my father-in-law had just had a stroke, and it was a week before my impromptu wedding (because of said stroke). My colleague most probably didn't know I was at a really emotionally vulnerable and stressful time, but it was like being punched when you're already down. It felt so unfair and petty that it was all I could do to hold myself together. I teared up, but luckily my ISTP colleague was there (and I think he saw) to talk things over and distract the idiot colleague until I got back my self-control.

I was called sneaky once.

Me sneaky? Never.

One that Pipster and I agreed we've been called many times is ....
too intense!

And after being a bit hurt about it - I've actually decided now I'd rather be intense than average.

I've also been called a drama queen ... which is just plain insulting. I can't help it that I'm more emotional than most people and things affect me more deeply

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"Creativity, like human life itself, begins in darkness" Julia Cameron

And considering introverts are actually slow to broadcast their emotions...calling it "over-reporting" seems severe. :/

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