INTJ – Door Slam, Irritation & Anger

I’m surprised that not a lot of articles have touched, or covered the INTJ door slam and the INTJ anger in their varying stages with depth – actually, maybe not THAT surprised, after all, it isn’t that common that you’d see an INTJ angry when they have reached a level of self-control.

Yes, most (not all) young INTJs tend to exhibit anger tendencies because they didn’t differentiate the emotions anger and irritation properly. It doesn’t help that anger in general is an easy emotion to feel and act upon as anger is quick, straightforward and focused – when young, it’s one of our ‘go-to’ emotions whenever we cannot express ourselves properly.

***Side story: In my teens, I had to REALLY differentiate the two emotions as my frustrations bordered on anger (inside my head), so much so that I made a habit of asking myself “am I just annoyed or am I angry, am I being unreasonable” whenever a person or the given scenario makes me face-palm HARD.***

Thankfully, upon self-discovery, maturation and growth, you’ll find that majority of INTJs are reserved, laid back in demeanor and in control of their emotions (we dislike others to control our moods), plus, we don’t generally get emotionally invested enough to credit such a strong hateful reaction anymore.

That’s not to say that the anger and door slam doesn’t happen. Lets’ differentiate the two out of intrigue as I’m sure you’ll like to know what an angry INTJ look like or know when you experience or witness an INTJ door slam.

First off! The INTJ door slam is mainly associated with erasing people, however, there’s another kind that not many people come across – or maybe the door slam just looks like everyday irritated grumbling and mumbling of the INTJ. You’d be interested to know that there are two door slams: the door slam and the everyday irritation that potentially forms a different kind of doorslam effect (explained later) – both are different but with the same goal in mind.

For the INTJ door slam; simply, it’s when an INTJ knocks you out with as few words as they possibly can (not a physical literal door slam hahaha~). I’ve personally chosen the door slam as the bitch slap is less traumatic for the person receiving it – since the end results often lets the opposition explain themselves or to fight back. We INTJs don’t want that, no, the INTJ door slam is necessary to SHUT YOU DOWN. Permanently (well, for the next hours or so). The effect here is that there is a certain finality to the door slam that makes it different to our everyday irritated mumbling and minor door slams – this particular door slam just shuts people up and if you say another word…well, we’ll either just give you our death stare whilst envisioning you slowly dying in our heads, or, we just door slam you again; usually, the first door slam will work well because everyone will have felt the deathly vibe radiating from us – it’ll take a really REALLY clueless individual to retort back.

As said, there’s a finality to it, it isn’t a “how can we fix this” or, “let’s discuss it” type of thing; in our minds, it’s more of a, “lets’ not waste each others time, I’m done with this, let’s go our separate ways, goodbye” kind of connotation. May we never see each other again :)

Hmmms okay, the INTJ shutdown sounds better than the INTJ door slam. Lets’ go with this phrase for the rest of the post.

Now I’m not claiming that the shutdown is solely an INTJ thing at all as everyone is very much capable of this – I’m just explaining our version.

So, how do we utilize the shutdown? As indicated above, we will, at most use one word or one sentence to mute you. We will be very short, brash, harsh and direct with our answers or responses. Interestingly enough, the INTJ shutdown happens when we have not invested emotion into someone, basically, 95% of the time it is impersonal, so yes, strangers are screwed if they do the following:

• Probing into our business and getting all up in our grill when we don’t know each other like that yet.

• When we are in a situation that we cannot control and you are being immensely and incessantly irritating.
• When you mistreat our closest near and dearest with unjustified malice.
• When you ‘crossed the line’ – which is actually hard to do as healthy INTJs are very tolerable – of course there will be exceptions though.
• When you refuse to see and acknowledge the fact of the situation that is SO clearly in front of us.
• When you misplace your anger and frustration on us and you refuse to see the facts.

• Abusive use of power.
• Keep continuously initiating conversation or interrupting our time of ‘not wanting to talk’ (over-stimulation).

Of course, even when we are close to someone, as soon as we put our heart and emotions on lock down then you are equally as screwed, if not, even more screwed as we won’t hold back – also, we have a portfolio of your personality in our heads to cause you more damage when needs be. Don’t worry though, we only use it once in a blue moon, or not at all depending on the circumstances etc.

Seriously, the shutdown will be initiated if we don’t want to deal with you anymore – interestingly, there  will be no aggression or anger, it’s more of a grey area between the fine line that is irritation and anger – whatever the emotion in between is (which is similar to the emotion when we erase someone)…we are beyond resentment at this point and we just want you away from us; permanently and with immediate effect, we will just move to another room or keep our distance from you.

***Side story: one time during my job answering the telephone, I encountered a particularly angry customer that didn’t take a single breath between every profanity that left her lethal tongue (quite an art form actually). My mum came out to see what’s up only to have me turn to her and suddenly I strangely felt my synapse crackle throughout my body (interesting feeling, never felt it before). Needless to say, I told her to take the damn phone or.I.will.kill.someone.***

With the INTJ  shutdown, no second chances are given (if we can help it) as the shutdown comes on the spot with no premeditation – we are critical when triggered. Our voice is clear, unyielding and strong; funnily enough, you’d most likely see why we can be a boss/ leader especially in this moment as we summon this demonic aura that seems like our double-bladed wielding soul is going to slice and dice you in 0.00 seconds. The force is scary and highly uncontrollable.

***Side story: I got asked if I was from a triad before because I said the word “NO” so loudly and harshly that made the commotion around me stop – yes, I was providing a solution to a problem whereas a few other people was trying to solve a problem by thinking out of their a$$ whilst talking on top of each other. The noise and the stupidity was unreal. It was definitely a ‘proud’ mic-drop moment.***

#triggered

As stated though, the INTJ shutdown does not happen frequently as we’ll most likely just walk away or ignore the annoyances since we very likely couldn’t care less about you. Plus, in general, we INTJs are pretty much irritated and annoyed by society and people everyday anyways so again, do bare in mind that the INTJ shutdown and our everyday irritation is a different thing.

The INTJ annoyed and irritated ‘mood’ also come about when we are not emotionally invested – which is everyday unless we are feeling super duper for some reason…*kicks body bag over the hill*.

Ahem, anyways, we don’t tend to do anything when we are irritated and annoyed, except for when we really have to voice ourselves then sarcasm will come into effect. Yes, when annoyed, sarcasm is our weapon of choice; if we have had enough then the shutdown reaction is our weapon.

Which brings us to shutdown number two!

This shutdown is a little different, whereas before, the shutdown was not premeditated and is more of a spontaneous on the spot rip you to shreds kind or thing; for this shutdown, a prolonged irritation is the driving force. This shutdown is much more organized (as in we have seethed in our heads for ages by now). It’s important to realize that for some INTJs, it is hard for them to voice their dissatisfaction towards you adamantly if they are feeling mistreated – although we’ll attempt to subtly show you our dislike of whatever it is via humor, sarcasm or our quietness.

Our irritation is prolonged because we’ll try to see things from your perspective and then reason with how you perceive things in an attempt to understand you better. In a way, we subconsciously convince ourselves to give you multiple amount of chances to make us not snap and go crazy on you.

So having said the above, INTJs are annoyed and irritated 95% of the time…in general,  people are just annoying.

You’ll find that some INTJs adopt the perspective, “what I want the most when I am angry is a reason not to be angry” – which helps us control ourselves and to dismiss any anger that could potentially cloud our judgement. If whatever can be reasoned with or explained or that something done was not intentionally done with malice aforethought then that’s good to know. If you explained your intentions were to accomplish something and your course of action made sense and that your action was less negative than it appears to be and we just overreacted or over-analyzed the situation then that’s awesome. In reality, we just want to understand what your intentions are and why you are doing certain things – do help us to see that you are not malicious as you appeared to be.

Gladly, most of INTJs logic will be much stronger than their anger; this allows us to temporarily ‘paralyze’ ourselves from doing anything we’ll regret.

On the contrary, when our perception of you or the circumstance is accurate then this gives us permission to feel a sense of rightful anger…which we then just need to wait for it to subside; we’ll make plans to avoid you or the situation for the duration of the anger – here, we turn to solitude. If however the situation (in a public setting) doesn’t allow us to squirrel ourselves away then the death stare will be activated; you’d be glad to know that healthy INTJs are very aware of what is happening and tend to not make any snap decisions when crazy angry (more on this type of anger later).

When an INTJ is healthy, shutdowns rarely happens and instead, we’ll adopt the “lets’ talk it out” route. We’ll come to realize that communication is so so SO important when irritated, however, the communication style will be different; for example, if we are in a relationship and is going through a rough patch, our communication or ‘self-help’ session becomes more professional and concise (straight to the point). Other than this, like everyone when annoyed, we too don’t ask how your day went or open ourselves up to you – just keeping it real and professional until we solve whatever it is.

Regardless of the relationship, friend or family status, you’ll want to use this chance to discuss things, to get yours and our points across especially if we feel that you are not hearing or understanding us correctly or that we are not understanding you correctly. It’s not so much that we want your respect, it’s more like we WANT you to understand where we are at and where we are coming from and what the fact of the matter is and vice versa; basically, this discussion session is purely practical and serious to allow clarity for both parties.

When this irritated shutdown gets this serious or is initiated, it means that we have deemed whatever you are continuously doing must be stopped – when something is extremely important enough to actually make us feel the need to stop you or point out your bull-crap then we’ll do it. If it is the right thing to do, along the way, we’ll internally and externally highlight specific reasons as to why we feel this way. Don’t worry, we’ll catalogue everything and give it to you in full detail (note undetectable sarcasm), so you may want to pick up on our sarcasms and silences in the near future as sometimes they have more meaning behind them than you know.

Thankfully, even with this type of irritation that causes us to snap, we don’t hold grudges, if we do then that means you screwed up BIG TIME, consistently and immorally whereby we just erase you – welcome to eternal condemnation. For most diluted and general cases though, our annoyances about you don’t last long even if our resting b*tch face says otherwise.

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Now onto the INTJ anger; there is 2 distinct types of anger: the hot anger and the ice-cold anger (which will be explained in a little bit).

Now, anger is great when you can control it by directing the force towards a positive angle, but we already covered that; so what does it look like when an INTJ loose their sh*ts?

Pretty damn awful. Awful for you (because you are about to die) and for us (because we can’t control ourselves).

Once our irritation crosses a certain uncontrollable line/ threshold then we’ll ‘happily’ go with the flow. Sshhhh it’s okay, you’ll be fine as long as you co-operate by shutting up as any attempt to resist or argue back will be categorically met with our intentional motivation to argue with you until you tire out and regret your decisions. Yes, we will have enough factual and logical ammunition and angry drive that does not give out quickly.
If you are thinking, “I’ll be safe because the INTJs that I know have a more developed ‘F’ which means that they value harmony so I’m safe”…nah, once triggered, they don’t give a crap about your feelings either.

Now lets’ talk about anger type number one:

The Hot anger type comes about when you violate our values:

This is the type of rage anger that most people have and can freely express whenever they are angered by trivial or personal reasons etc. For us, this hot anger is triggered for specific reasons, FACTUAL reasons. Our emotions are not generally invested into you, instead, we are angry at what you did; for example:

• Putting someones’ life in danger (especially if this someone is close to us).
• Intentionally hurting us by hurting something or someone we hold dear.
• Unsolicited invasion into our personal life.
• Consistent injustice.
• Digging up some form of traumatizing past.
• Intentionally hurting us for your amusement.

Basically, this anger only happens if you did something deeply wrong that goes beyond all common sense and that the act is directly linked or is done directly to inflict pain on us.

This anger is definitely not were we can look at the situation from all perspectives with rational thoughts whereby we rage in our heads silently like we normally do; also, we don’t play out the scenario in our heads as to how we got to this emotion (what made it happen) like we used to do. If anything when this anger flares up in the moment, all our perspectives just fly out the window because the fact of the matter is, you are an a$$hole.

Make no qualms, we ARE attacking you as a person, but after we attack the FACTS of the problem first – e.g what you did etc. The burying you part is when we then attack your moral character.

As you have seen, we won’t hold back, our wrath of fully-fledged anger will all come out at once purely based on the present scenario. Our surface fury is a contortion of “wtf did you say/ do and are you stupid?!”. From then on, nobody will get a word in edgeways because we are angrily vomiting truthful verbal diarrhea.

Yes! This anger is purely based on facts and logic of the present moment, only very shortly after will we turn to all the nasty stuff you did in the past – all neatly compiled and locked away in our mind for when this day comes whereby you wrong us immensely by hurting another to get to us…or that your mockery have intensified beyond bearable, justifiable and moral. With this, we use the accurate accumulated facts and data to tear you down to prove how shady you are and what you did was completely and utterly wrong. Whether the anger was pending or not, a lists of your immoral factual acts will be listed in our minds beforehand, e.g what you’ve done wrong, stupid choices you’ve made, your character flaws etc. So if you are hurt, good, it’s intentional, we want you to burn.

***side story: I came back from college one day only to find that my dick of an uncle let my newly bought chinchilla loose with their over curious west highland terrier (known as a hunting dog) scouring the premises for my poor baby. I went berserk, it was an actual life or death situation. Thankfully, my talented little guy knows how to climb up walls and so he was behind the TV that was on top of a drawing cupboard. I was so mad at this so-called uncles’ action and the fact that my new chinchilla was very frightened; my chinchilla and I built a bond and I thought it was shattered due to someones’ else moronic action to upset me for fun.***

With logic in mind, it is one reason why INTJs feel so much more strongly about justice than mercy – we have a strong righteous anger that will fuel our justification for burning you. Again, no emotion will be present no matter who you are, we simply bypass our emotional connections with you and throw away the sensitive talk (not that we naturally do sensitive/ emotional talk to begin with).

We’re fine after this anger is released. There is however, two outcomes though:

1) More often than not, when it gets’ to this stage of anger where the respect or trust is annihilated then we will most likely nuke that bridge of memories that we built (or haven’t built) together. Your existence from this point on will never matter. The biggest reason to get rid of you is due to the things that you did to make us erupt, despite this, what you did is not the only reason we want to get rid of you; 5-10% of this final decision is because we regret showing you our vulnerable side via the raging outburst. We don’t care about you hurting, we just didn’t want to show our weakness because we are normally so well composed – so upon releasing our crazy, it’s not our proudest moments and we don’t need a reminder.

It’s ironic to say but, most INTJs that erase people don’t hold a grudge, again, it’s beyond resentment and no emotion is to follow after that. The sooner we get rid of you the sooner we can forget about you and move on.

2) Only a very few can make us willing to reconcile but it is very rare, this is where our emotions will come into play. If and when we feel guilty for hurting you afterwards then these are the little moments where we can and want to reconcile with you; to rectify the sudden imbalance. These are the moments where we feel disappointed in ourselves for how we teared you down so brutally; although there won’t be an apology, we’ll instead, do something for you to say sorry – make or buy you food, attempt to make you smile again, give you our puppy-dog eyes topped off with a pout (maybe not the pout). Whatever we do to say sorry, it will be practical in order to say that we didn’t mean to hurt you – we just needed to express how bad you were becoming. It was necessary to shake you up (in return, we also hurt ourselves, afterwards, when shaking you up).

Anger type number two: behold, the silent treatment:

The ice-cold freeze out comes about when you violate our character:

You can can hurt our feelings without violating our values – but you can only hurt us like this if we care about you and respect you enough. We only react this way when we care a lot whereby all of our emotions will be spinning inside of us.

When you hurt or offend our character then we’ll tense up and freeze you out – by falling silent and hiding ourselves away under our rock…or upgrade to the high life that is the park bench. We try not to show our anger, so in order to contain these negative feels, we find ourselves feeding into our introversion even more in order to avoid people – in a way, we smother the anger and hurt to protect ourselves and to get over it. Here, we will be even more cold and unemotional and we will block every form of communication that you attempt and just ignore you; also, it is hard to express ourselves in this moment so we just go quiet. It’s for the best, in our mind.

Yes, we’ll sulk and sometimes even silently seethe about it because we are so upset at you attacking our character; however, in most cases, we are so numbed by your attack that anger isn’t even present, if anything, we are disappointed in you and we are questioning everything. It’ll sound dramatic but if you can envision and feel the world crumbling around you then that’s close enough to how we are feeling.

So, we’ll sulk or brood for hours, days or even weeks – you will definitely notice that our hot outburst doesn’t last long whereas this ice-cold treatment will last for ages.

(CODED)

During our sulking, we will internalize and analyze the said offenses and situation on a deeper level by debating and counter-attacking the offense in our head; such as thinking  about what it may be like to tell you how we feel etc.

There’s a danger with this type of coping mechanism though as there will be moments whereby we physically want and can hurt someone intentionally or at least cause ourselves actual pain to help us relay our thoughts somewhere else – punching a wall or something may help us calm down. It’s like we are being stupid-rational, using psychology and science to direct our darkness and focus somewhere else.

The aftermath of this type of anger is pretty much the same as the hot anger, except we don’t feel the guilt or the need to erase you due to feeling like we have exposed our vulnerability. Instead, we erase you with a cold and dulled vengeful anger; with the exception that if this person comes back then a second chance may be viable (thanks to the somewhat still existing emotional connection). This doesn’t happen often though because it’s actually very hard to cut someone we like out of our life permanently – especially when that someone was close to us (like conjoined twins close). So erasing you then giving you a second chance THEN possibly erasing you again (if there is a reason) or connecting with you again will take a toll on our emotions and sanity.

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INTJs in general really don’t express anything worse than frustration because it just takes more to push us over the edge into reacting aggressively than most people; with the exception of unhealthy INTJs that are in the throes of depression, stress, inexperience with their complex minds etc.

A reason why most INTJs dislike people is because people are the Achilles heel of the INTJ, irrational people, nasty people and immoral people are the few things that can make us become irrational.

Ideally, the best thing to do is to explain and communicate the problem across early on before the frustration and tension builds up, even though it may be hard, you just have to say it or at least convey the problem across somehow – even if you were to hint at the problem. Another option is to ask for some space and alone time for when you need to get over it.

If you do find that we freeze you out then all you have to do is:

• respect our space and alone time
• don’t talk to us

However, if you really REALLY care then…get us something to eat by leaving the food outside our cave whilst we ponder over things in our solitude – you know we’ll be in there for awhile. This action shows us that you care about us and our health and that you understand and respect our need for personal space – if you yourself are equally as annoyed with us but still managed to carry out this act then props to you. You smooth devil you.

(CODED)

As for when the INTJ ‘recovers’, we will do something for you to make you smile; it’s one of our ways to say sorry, OR, if we did nothing to begin with then we’ll show you that we still care about you (after you hurt us) and that everything is okay now.

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Okay guys, it’s the end of another post and I want to share this song that I have been digging a lot. Happy listening~

Geomeun Goyangi =^-^=

***Disclaimer: 87% of these quotes are from myself. Also, 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.***