INTJ – Jealousy Or Possessiveness?

So there are a few topics to discuss  just by looking at my blog data for what people are searching for regarding INTJs.

Well, VOILA! This is one of the many questions asked.

“Do INTJs get jealous or possessive? How can you tell?”.

Hmmms, lets’ define the words first shall we?

Jealousy is a submissive trait whereby you develop negative thoughts towards someone who has something that you cannot have WHICH “should” have been yours.

Possessiveness is a dominant trait whereby you feel protective of certain things (or people) when you feel that these things or personages could potentially be taken away from you.

Okay, in all honesty, we, INTJs do not feel jealousy or possessiveness much. Better yet, these feelings/ emotions tends to linger for about 1 minute OR a little bit longer if it is regarding something much more important. We all have our human moments where we feel things that turns out to be jealousy or possessiveness.

You still won’t find many INTJs being jealous or possessive and I’ll explain why in a minute.

First, I want to explain what we do when we do find ourselves ‘feeling’ something negative. At first, we start feeling this mesh of anger and irritation; when this happens, like everything we do, we pinpoint our ‘feels’ by taking a step back and assessing what we are actually feeling and the cause which made us feel this way. After a while, we would come to the conclusion that we are either jealous or feeling rather possessive.

Now, after acknowledging what we are indeed feeling, we assess and analyse it some more – here, our jealousy or possessiveness shifts from centre stage to the back of our minds.

Now, majority of our jealousy (if any) tends to stem from seeing successful people who are more competent in our area of expertise OR who has the ability to do something we are incompetent in – we all define success subjectively so whatever success to you floats your boat then use that as an example for yourself.

We start judging our ‘competition’ in a critical analysis about why that person will never “win” ‘me’ over or why we “will never” be friends. Admittedly, we do this to make ourselves feel better – we subconsciously “break down” this person. Fortunately, this judgement does NOT last long because once we calm down and get past this minor judgement phase, our self-awareness kicks in (you’ll be glad that our moment of hateful judgement only ever lasts a few minutes…or less).

Our self-awareness combined with our rationality means that jealousy isn’t something that we don’t have control over and since we know this, we look from an objective and subjective perspective to verify the cause and justify whether someone do deserve our jealousy or not – whether that something is trivial or not and whether we have the right to be jealous. If the answer is “no, jealousy is not needed”, then we simply just let it go and block off this particular ‘feels’.

Possessiveness is a little bit different for us, we get possessive about people who we respect, for example, if an INTJ is in a relationship, there are no doubt going to be a handful of times when possessiveness kicks in (which is true for 100% of the population), regardless of how confident we are in ourselves. We won’t show our possessiveness though and we won’t want to cage anyone in just because we are feeling possessive now and again (like once in a blue moon).

So, how can you tell when an INTJ is feeling jealous or possessive, well…you really can’t WHEN we take a positive spin on things. However, when we can’t think our way through the ‘feels’, we tend to get depressed; now this is when you can see that an INTJ is stuck on something. Jealousy or possessiveness has been loooong gone by now. Instead, we get stuck on something a little bit deeper.

Now that there are physical signs to tell that an INTJ is in the sh*ts when depressed, lets’ first talk about this positive “thing” that we do which looks pretty normal to the outside world.

Well…we know that jealousy is pretty much a one-sided problem and so we tend to decide on the best course of action; the action being ‘how to get that something for myself’ or ‘how to incorporate that certain something into my personality’ – how can we grow with this and from this. This right here, drives us to focus on our shortcomings as something to address (if possible). Our jealousy and possessiveness quickly turns into a powerful motivator when used wisely. If that person we were jealous of is, for example, good at socializing then we too will put effort into bettering ourselves in that area. You will find INTJs doing things not out of spite, but out of the sincerity of wanting to make themselves even better and more valuable – we will even learn FROM that person – no grudges held.

We will also get the motivation to do other things too that is completely unrelated to that person. We tend to practice existing skills and learn new skills, acquire new knowledge whereby some of us will become excitable or happy which makes us want to get busy practicing new things. Strangely enough, we can get really inspired to better ourselves…all thanks to this 1 minute of jealousy or possessive thoughts.

If and when we don’t feel motivated enough to better ourselves, don’t see where we can improve or see no point then we will think about what we are feeling and “figure out”/ imagine how to apply it for the future – saving the ‘feels’ for future references ya know. How we could have or can approach this feeling or situation better. We will harness the emotions to apply it effectively when needs be.

Now you see why INTJs say that they don’t get jealous or possessive?

An INTJs jealousy do not normally come from a resentful place, instead, we turn it into a challenge or a goal to develop our personality. There is no place for envy when something or someone makes us want to strive to be better. After all, INTJs are all about learning, self-improvement and growth; it is just how we are.

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Now the “good” stuff – I know some of you ‘sickos’ like to see INTJs crumble so this is for you. Just kidding hahaha! :P

Jealousy and possessiveness can make some INTJs have a moment of weakness, whereby they become depressed. Depressed because the INTJ felt jealousy due to feeling inadequate, our inadequacies makes us feel overlooked by the people we value and finally, INTJs feel overlooked because they feel insecure. Yups, jealousy doesn’t even have a chance to linger in our minds. INTJ represses a lot of emotions, so adding another one to the pile doesn’t help, therefore unfortunately, although we hide our feelings well and do not vent…we tend to do things that accidentally shows our dampened state of mind.

I must note that, jealousy and depression are two very different emotions. Jealousy is resentment directed at another person – depression is sadness and despair directed at yourself and relating only to yourself.

A depressed INTJ does a lot of the things that I stated in this stress post…additional to the below;

• We may remove ourselves from a situation where we have no physical or mental control over – if we cannot intervene a situation or stop thinking negatively then we will go;
• We tend to feel the need to distract ourselves – sometimes, doing things that people consider fun but we don’t. Nonetheless we will join in and sometimes actually start to begin enjoying ourselves until we somehow criticize ourselves (some INTJs may feel that there is a tiny sub-conscious INTJ sitting inside their brain commentating on all the pathetic attempts at numbing themselves or trying to “have fun” – this sub-conscious INTJ knows too much). I guess the saying, “you can fool others but not yourself” rings true.

We can numb ourselves which is great and all, however, the hyper-awareness that the INTJ possesses can become overwhelming sometimes. We will find that we HAVE to do mentally demanding and stimulating activities; otherwise, if a huge amount of our brain is unoccupied then this remainder brain power will start or continue the depressing monologue…without our consent.

• We may end up writing down a whole essay in order to express what we are feeling and why we are self-loathing (here, we will go off into a tangent of other things…God forbid you read an INTJs diary);
• We can and will over-indulge in either alcohol, eating and watching TV/ movies;
• We might continue to fantasize like crazy (not that we weren’t before), the result of us fantasizing is that reality will crush us more than usual which consequently makes us pull away or ignore someone who was the initial cause for this jealousy or possessiveness which resulted in our depression.

Not to worry! Our moment of depression don’t last long (that or we push it into the pits of Hades).

INTJs will slowly realize that they too have a lot to offer (INTJs are hot biscuits too ya know) – this thought alone will help us out of our depressed state. We can remove ourselves from this pitiful state knowing that the highest form of knowledge and acceptance is about ourselves and comes from ourselves. There is no comparison, everyone are all individually unique.

So…what can you do to help an INTJs that doesn’t show signs of perking up any time soon? Well…NOTHING…because you won’t know what the actual feeling was that made the INTJ depressed to begin with (because we won’t tell).

If however you have an inkling that an INTJ is in a self-loathing state due to incompetence then I will say this (feel free to reword it) –

Valuing yourself and working on yourself will attract the same people like yourself – what you have to offer will eventually attract people with the same offer as you. When you are in a state of self-doubt but still manage to attract someone with a higher value than you, slowly, this person will know that they are better and so they will always be on the look out for someone better.

Like a duet dance…when you work on yourself then you are allowing and opening up opportunities to dance with the best dancers – continued personal growth and practice allows you to be the best that you can.

You attract those who are psychologically at the same level as you – be it friends or partners.

If you are feeling insecure about anything then you are in the right room with the right people. What you choose to do with this fact is what counts. So quit self-loathing and start getting better…

…even if it means harnessing your inner weirdness because that is just you in a nutshell.

(Fellow wackadoos, where you be at?!)

 

Ahem, now to finish off.

The reasons above credits (in my mind anyway) why many INTJs say that they don’t get (or rarely gets) jealous or possessive. It is not jealousy that we justify a place in our mind, rather, a manifestation of our own insecurities. INTJ do not care nor worry that someone is better than them or has better qualities and skills than them and generally speaking, INTJs are happy for people who has nice things, who looks good and who are happy (if the INTJ like this individual), if not, then we will be indifferent or apathetic.

We don’t compare ourselves to other people because we are comfortable with ourselves. Having nice stuff, looking good etc are the things INTJs may feel that they couldn’t (or wouldn’t) change anyway – everything else can just be improved and expand upon.

If you are thinking, “how do you make an INTJ jealous or possessive”, well…you can’t because ultimately, it is a manifestation of our own insecurity if we feel a pang of jealousy or possessiveness…ironically, it has nothing to do with you even if you were the initial trigger to us feeling something negative. The entirety after feeling jealous or possessive is dwarfed by either our positive or negative spin on things.

So don’t be thinking that you can make INTJs jealous or possessive on command because  you will be disappointed. INTJs tend to save themselves from a whole lot of trivial headaches by only reserving thoughts and ‘feels’ that really matter.

Geomeun Goyangi =^-^=

***Please note that these blogs should NOT influence you to generalize that all INTJs, as a niche group, are all the same – because we are not; a lot of other factors shapes and individualizes a person.***