Reconsidering my MBTI type. Known myself as an INTP and get INTP no matter what test I take, but... (read desc)
I wanted to organize this a bit, so here is a summary of my concerns, followed by the types I suspect I might or might not be. Please give me your own thoughts and let me know what you think.
TL;DR: My strongest 4 functions seem to be Ne (maybe Ni?), Ti, Fi, and Si, in that order. Not sure what that means for me.
I have a very high Fi. I am starting to wonder if I am mistyped, or if I just so happened to unlock the key to a high Fi.
I am unsure as to what I truly am. Every test I take gives back INTP, although there was this one test that gave second-best guesses as well, and it said INFJ. I'm not sure I can relate to the INFJ's desire to change the world. I can respect it, absolutely, and in some ways I am also trying to change the world for the better working as a research psychologist. But...I'm in the job for my own selfish interests first. I love learning and uncovering things. My team researches autism from the perspective and experience of autistic people - I am happy that our research might help autistic people, as autism acceptance is important to me, but I ultimately got into the job to understand myself better and examine humans from almost an alien perspective; and I chose psychology as my college major to try and understand make sense of a painfully confusing world. If it was up to me though, I would have 4+ degrees, all in different things, with infinite time and energy to spend researching and studying various things.
My gut reaction to most things is "is this logical/does this make sense" first, however it often is followed closely by "is this moral/ethical/good as per my own framework".
When I was a child, I was extremely empathetic, well-behaved, and sensitive (and also the subject of severe bullying), much to my own detriment. This got beaten out of me by my early 20s and while I still consider myself an empathetic person, I have had to actively work on not having quite a dark and dismissive idea towards people who are irrational, maliciously ignorant, toxic, etc.
Learning, examining, testing, and discovering are my number one favorite things to do. If I hadn't met my husband, I likely would have spent a life of relative isolation doing nothing but learning things all day, every day.
Why I might be INFP
I can relate heavily to the enjoyment of creative pursuits; I dress quite plainly, but I love fashion, interior design, and general aesthetics as secondary hobbies. I play the sims and enjoy creating a sim with carefully crafted fits and extensive backstories the most. I can also relate to the sensitive, easily hurt part, as well as the empathy. Most importantly, I am very in-tune with my emotions. However, I might not be INFP, because being in-tune to my emotions was something I had to learn through therapy and self-help over the course of about 8 years. What made me finally understand and recognize my emotions was realizing that emotions are just information; I study them the same way I study psychology. Also, my Ti is quite high. I cannot relate to it being my demon function at all lol
Why I might be INFJ
I actually feel like of all my functions, my strongest is Ni or Ne***, which is exactly what it is for INFJ. More than anything else, I learn and lead with Ni; Ti too, but they work in conjunction. For example, a friend of mine is a lawyer and was teaching me law. He handed me a police debrief detailing the probable cause for an arrest and asked me what I thought. I could feel something intuitively was incorrect about it before I could logically piece it together; I used Ni to feel it out (not in an emotional way, like a gut instinct, which is different than an emotion like anger, sadness, etc) and carefully examined it. I then figured out that what he was doing was not actually a crime. This is pretty much my entire life. I know things before I know things.
I might not be an INFJ because they seem to generally have more altruistic desires than me. Again - I do believe it is my job to be a good person and not be some evil monstrosity in the world. However, the INFJs I know all have a much, much larger drive to enact real change in the world. They make it their calling, as if they were born for righteousness. I think I was born for nothing in particular.
Why I might be INTJ
I don't really think I am, but their Fi is much higher up than INTP's. I can't really relate to the Te thought processing very well, though.
Why I might be INTP with a developed Fi
Well, at the end of the day, I simply view my emotions as information to gather. They're nothing more to me than pieces of information about my underlying beliefs and what I need to work on, if applicable. If someone makes me angry by misunderstanding me, then I still have not finished adapting subconsciously to the belief that being misunderstood is inevitable and I can choose to not be upset about it. This might sound like Fi because I said belief, but there is extensive logical analysis behind that belief that would take an eternity to explain. (Also...everyone on earth has beliefs.) Simply put, through all the knowledge I've gathered my entire life, I believe I can live my happiest life by learning to separate someone's actions from their relation to me. Some call it stoicism, I call it cognitive behavioral therapy.
As stated before, my Ti is also quite high, which is in line with INTPs. Unlike Te, I judge everything by information previously gained and acquired, not by heuristics. Te is a nearly foreign way for me to think. I place heavy value on the patterns and modalities I've observed in information and how I organize it based on my own axioms/principles, not on the way this information presents itself in the external world. I still think Ni is my highest function by far, but when I witness how other INTPs describe the way their brain thinks, it is often nearly identical to mine. I am not nearly as proficient at explaining how my thought process works, but it looks something like this, using the example from the aforementioned lawyer story (keep in mind I have ADHD and this is quite literally how it sounds in my brain):
"I see this person was arrested for disorderly conduct. What is the definition of the charge? The officer witnessed a man sitting on a bench in X park playing chess by himself. They approached him and asked him what he was doing. He was combative and said he doesn't speak to officers. Officers requested identifica--identification? For what reason? He said he didn't have to give him his ID...Yes, that is correct. Officers informed him it's illegal to not show his--no it's not. There is no reasonable suspicion. He's done nothing illegal. Where is the reasonable suspicion? Is playing chess in a park illegal? Was it after the park closed? Let me see...That is not stated anywhere in the report. Was he previously trespassed? That isn't mentioned either. No, there's no reasonable suspicion. I think this is an unlawful arrest."
With all of this being said, please let me know what you think and if you have any ideas or input that might solve this issue.
***Edit: I think I got Ni and Ne confused. I read some descriptors of the difference between the two now and want to correct something. I think my Ne might actually be higher, although Ni is also intense; if Ni means "weird sixth sense about everything", at least. I'm a bit of a demon in games like Fortnite because I can just magically tell an enemy is coming over a mountain before seeing or hearing them.