Helpful Hints For Dealing With Loss In Healthy Ways
Personality types manage loss in different ways and people with INTJ preferences will find their unique personality playing out in how they cope with loss. This loss might be personal such as grief; professional such as job loss, redundancy or not getting a sought-after job or promotion; or recreational such as how you react to losing a bet or game, or not being right in interactions.
This article explores INTJs and loss from the perspective of personal, professional and recreational contexts. Insights from research and personal experience and helpful hints provide ways for people with INTJ personality preferences to manage and make sense of loss in positive, life-affirming ways.
Personal Loss:
INTJs typically take any loss hard, especially emotionally, but the way this emotion is expressed is often private. MBTI® Practitioner, Coach and Grief Support Counsellor Clare Ayers has conducted research on psychological type and grief, presented at the British Association of Psychological Type Conference in April, 2019.
She found that INTJs reported processing grief through needing cognitive answers (T/Thinking), making sense from an intellectual perspective (Te/Extraverted Thinking), and creating routines and order to manage loss of control and strong feelings, as well as problem-solving what happened and why (TJ/Thinking + Judging). They seek ritual, music, and quiet space to grieve, work through emotions, and remember what the person meant in their life (Ni/Introverted Intuition). Clare also identified a “Chart the Course” tendency as INTJs work through practical follow up, focusing on the next thing to solve on the near horizon.
Personally, I know I fit this profile and relate to these reported responses as an INTJ. When my younger brother died tragically, my deep grieving was mostly carried out in the car driving in the bush when I had space to howl openly and connect with him via listening to the music we both loved. I organized all the poetry I had ever written in alphabetical and draft order as if seeking order and structure in the chaos. This was a way of organizing something I could manage and had created, as a way of getting a sense of control in my life when the emotions were overwhelming. I charted the course of grief over many years until I was able to better come to terms with what happened.
Helpful Hints:
- Clare Ayer’s important research shows us that different types grieve loss differently. Don’t expect your grief to look like other people’s, and manage the feelings of loss how it best works for you…which might be quietly, behind closed doors.
- The people around you might think you’re cold and unfeeling or might worry about you because you keep so much inside, managing grief or loss privately over time, in your own way. Talk to the people around you to let them know how you’re managing in your own quiet way.
- If you’re not okay, make sure you reach out for help. Emotions arising from grief and personal loss can be overwhelming. Getting support is not a measure of incompetence; it can be a strength. We all need help sometimes, especially when extreme events occur.
- Seek ways to create ritual and reflective space in your life where you can honor what you have lost. For example, meditation, prayer, writing, or events to celebrate remembrance and express feelings of loss.
- Understand that your need for order and control may express itself in different ways. For example, cleaning, making food for others, organizing aspects of your life, etc. …and that is absolutely fine.
Professional Loss:
Professional loss such as redundancy/job loss or not feeling valued for your skills through losing a job or promotional opportunity can be highly button-pushing for the INTJ personality. This is because, as INTJs, we pride ourselves on being competent achievers who strive for excellence. I have been through redundancy in recent years which resulted in all kinds of feelings of loss even though I wanted to go. We give our all to the organisation we work for, only to find they no longer want us. Our jobs are ‘deleted’ or ‘obsolete’ and we are made ‘redundant.’ The language certainly doesn’t help!
Losing an opportunity in the form of not getting a desired job or position can also take us a long way down for a while. As introverts, we typically need to prepare long and hard for job opportunities or promotions to make the most of our talents and then if they go to someone else, it feels like such a waste of precious time. As an achievement-focused person, any loss of opportunity can feel like a slight or commentary on our skills, when it might not be the ideal job for us or the best fit for our skills. I have found that not getting the promotional opportunities I wanted turned out to be the best thing ever years later!
Helpful Hints:
- Take the long view. Focus on your body of work over time and the larger arc of what you are working on. Your values, skills, and long-term competence provide a bigger picture in which to situate any specific loss more realistically. You might lose a job or opportunity, but you can take your skills with you.
- Learn from the experience and once the immediate emotional reaction dies down, take time to reflect and get feedback for your personal development to be stronger for the next time. Hone your skills as an introvert seeking opportunities.
- Realise that the best person does not always get the job and it’s not a measure of your competence or skill. The traditional recruitment process can be deflating and exhausting for introverts. However, very often in the scheme of things, you might find out later it was not the best path for you.
- Understand that redundancy comes about because of contextual changes like policy shift, labor costs, technology and organizational change. Try to balance some of the ‘lack of value’ feelings with objective analysis about why it is not about you.
Recreational Loss:
INTJs engaging in games, leisure activities, placing bets, and expressing opinions also find their competence and achievement focus can kick in. What is supposed to be an enjoyable pastime, like a game of cards or tennis, suddenly starts to feel out of control as your need to be competent flares up. We can feel foolish when we lose, like after we place an occasional bet on a horse or team feeling so confident of our intuition and objective analysis in advance, and being wrong about it. Generally, we are not huge risk-takers.
Sometimes we tend not to engage at all when not feeling competent, as our perfectionist tendencies speak out. We can miss out on experiences and fun because of our need to be right and not to be seen as inadequate. Typically, we are judging ourselves internally before we even start, so sometimes we don’t begin or play the game at all. Strongly motivated by achievement and competence which is generally a positive, it can switch the other way into being a saboteur and source of negative behaviour given we don’t like to lose and we don’t like to be wrong. Ironically, this fear of failure can mean we don’t learn and risk being actually incompetent.
Helpful Hints:
- Take a philosophical and logical approach if loss or mistakes happen. Activate that Te/Extroverted Thinking auxiliary function, learn, and move on. Don’t dwell on them.
- Remember that, realistically, you can’t always be right, perfect, or win all the time. Realise single events are not reliable indicators of your overall competence.
- Listen to your intuition and logic about when not to engage in bets or conversations where the odds aren’t in your favor, when it’s time to quit, or when you’re not sure of your footing. Use your quieter skills to observe and learn.
- Have a beginner’s mindset. It’s okay to attempt, to draft, to flail around, even to lose occasionally, and have a laugh about it. Have fun and be playful. Focus on the experience in the moment and activate that inferior Se/Extroverted Sensing preference that can ground you and open you up to being more flexible.
If you have INTJ preferences or are close to people who do, I hope these insights from life experience and research are helpful to you. INTJs can be hardest on themselves most of all, and loss can knock us for six in many ways. Giving yourself time and space to deal with loss of all kinds, and knowing that help is there if you need it can support you in getting back on your feet positively and in life-affirming ways.
My sincere thanks to Clare Ayers for providing information on the INTJ personality from her Type and Grief research to assist in writing this article.
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