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When a highly sensitive man doesn't recognize himself... (INFJ / INFP) · Lightbearer's Library

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello, dear soul.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if you've ever had the strange feeling that you don't really know who you are.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe you've spent a lot of your life adapting to other people, to your family, to work, to different relationships, and you became what was expected of you, and you've become very familiar with who you needed to be, but maybe you've forgotten a bit about who you actually are on the inside.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: So in this journal entry, I wanted to explore and get curious about how we come to know ourselves again and um see what we can find out.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I think there's kind of three ways that we can be unknown.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: We we've talked about a lot of them on the channel before.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I think the first one is nobody knows me.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's kind of like I've we've talked about that.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: I have this this big inner world that I see things that others don't, or that that we've never really shared with other people.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we feel like no one knows who we are.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's one way.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: The second way is I I don't let people know the real me.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where we've learned to, you know, what parts of ourselves are acceptable, useful, safe to share or welcome with the people that we currently have in our lives.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: And we've learned that over time, from being small, small children to now.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think when we become aware of our patterns of doing this, of where we hold back, where we hide, what we show and don't show to different people, different situations, it it helps us to um to see see ourselves better.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't think it's necessarily wrong to show up in different situations differently, because I think, you know, especially for for certain situations, like in a job, for instance, I know many of you have shared with me that that's a necessary way of feeding yourselves and putting a roof over your head and maybe your family's head is to just be the person that goes and does that job.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it but it may also help us to realize where we need to, you know, what relationships in our lives, you know, we would like to maybe try and share more of our authentic selves, more of what's happening on the inside with the people around us.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I think what happens when we could do that is that we can perhaps find that relationship shifting and they can't see us, and that's such a wonderful thing.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: Or we we show up as more of ourselves and then they reject that part of ours, or they reject us and it's it's uncomfortable.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think we we can make the hard decision to let those people go out of our lives, and I know many of you have done that, and I've also done that.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's when we we engage in friendships or you know, maybe even familial relationships or friends, maybe old friends that we've had a long time, that when we share more of ourselves, they yeah, it's it's just it doesn't feel right to be in a to continue in a relationship with them.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So we kind of let distance grow, or we, you know, however we navigate that.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: There's lots of different ways, um, more more overt or more diffuse.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's sort of the third way of being unknown, and it's the sort of the time where we we realize that maybe I don't know myself as well as I could, or that there's parts realizing that there's parts of ourselves that we've abandoned, or that we were told were too sensitive, too emotional, too intense or analytical.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um whatever it might be that we we we kind of dampened or set aside.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: And and I think when we're kids, when we're in especially with our parents, you know, we rely on our parents to look after us, to keep us safe, to feed us, to house us, shelter us, all the things.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so there's a real there's real consequences to not kind of appeasing our parents or pleasing them in some ways to get the care that we need.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just how how it works sometimes.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And but I think as adults, we can start to reclaim those parts of ourselves that we shut off because we needed care and be there's there's a certain amount of bravery in that because it can mean that we maybe don't have our parents in our lives so much anymore, and we don't have maybe the support that we were relying on from certain people um to to honor our own selves, to honor our own individuality, our own ways of being and perceiving the world.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So that can be a difficult journey to go through.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been I've been sharing some of that on on Light Bears Library, but um but I think when we realize this, we can start to get curious about these parts of ourselves that we've left behind, and we can ask questions like what what what do I genuinely like?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_00: What do I want?
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: What matters to me?
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: What makes me curious?
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: What makes me angry?
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: What do I believe?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of a life feels like the life that I would like to be living?
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I know some people like want to, they want to retire and go sailing and just live on their boat.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Other people, you know, it's like, what is that vision that you have for your life of where where you'd like to go?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um getting curious about that.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: And instead of, you know, I feel like it's like, oh, that'll never happen, whatever, whatever.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we just need to give ourselves space to dream, space to kind of just become more childlike a little a little bit, you know, maybe reconnecting with childhood dreams and goals.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: It could be that.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: And so in doing this, we start to reclaim our natural way of seeing the world and being in the world.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: And I think there's this, it can help us to, there's a language that can help us to see ourselves more clearly.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: It can help us to explain our way of perceiving the world, sensing the world, how and how we make sense of those perceptions and how we make decisions and judgments about those perceptions.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And it can help us to realize what it is in us that we have squashed to fit in, or where our to figure out what our our gifts are, you know.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And um, that's why I find personality theory so helpful and useful and interesting because it doesn't give us another box to inhabit.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: You know, I I talk specifically about Myers-Briggs personality system because it's built on a foundation of Jung's cognitive function, Carl Jung's cognitive function.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't use it as a way to say, this is my personality type.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: I'm an INFP, and INFPs do this.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, it helps me to realize how I'm how I see the world, how I make decisions about the world, and and it gives me a language of the cognitive functions to understand what's in what's to ask questions of myself, you know.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so it helps to make sense of the way that we naturally experience the world and can be a way of embracing ourselves as we actually are, as opposed to who we've, you know, become over the years of fitting in to all the all the all the spaces that we've needed to fit in.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: And so that that is a, you know, I don't believe in taking a personality test and just being like, yep, that's what I am.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: I believe in doing it, it took me almost a year to kind of settle in and because I did all the work of researching and reading about cognitive functions, and it's it helps me to understand myself as an INFP, my husband as an INFJ, and and to understand our relationship dynamics and how why we see things differently, why we have the kind of you know, uh tensions that we do sometimes, or why we make decisions the way we make them.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And it helps us to get clearer on why our lives have gone astray in some ways and why they've gone right in other ways.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: And it's helpful to kind of, especially if we're feeling lost, it helps to make a the path clearer.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_00: At least for me, you know, Light Bear's library came out of my intense ponderings about who I was and how I saw the world and what my gifts were.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: And this is the unfolding of that.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so it it's it's yeah, it's a beautiful thing.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I would encourage you to get to know some of the cognitive functions and and thinking, thinking about how it is that you actually see the world.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's it becomes a way of connecting with others as well.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so for the the library men's groups that I hold every week, it's a place where, you know, when we come together, it's a place to be, to not have to explain so much of ourselves, where we can practice being a little, a little looser, a little um more curious about who we'd like to show up as from the inside out, as opposed to you know, deciding who we're gonna be from the outside and what we need to be outside, and then kind of putting that on ourselves.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a place that where simply by listening to others sharing about their situations, their how they see things, how they're dealing with things, it helps to go, oh, like I see parts of myself in in them, and and it it just is like um a sense of feeling like, oh, I'm not alone in that.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And and then when you when we share each share, it's a a form of being witnessed in in who we are, and to just be seen, that's a really powerful, a powerful thing to be able to share authentically and to have people go, yeah, I hear you, or I feel you, or I've I recognize parts of myself in your story.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it's just somewhere where we don't have to hide so much, and um it we can explore parts of who we are.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_00: So I would invite you to Wednesday evening's men's group.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: There's more information in the links below.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to meet you and see you, and um, we've been having a really, really wonderful time.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: There's been young people and young, young men and older men, and um it's been a wonderful, wonderful human connection, and I'm loving that.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope this has been um a curiosity building.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I would love to hear from you in the comments about anything that this is brought up for you in terms of how do like knowing myself, you know, have you been on that journey or are you starting that journey?
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Whereabouts are you?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I just love how we are creating this this sense of community with one another in in how you're you're sharing and other people are are recognizing themselves and their in each other's stories.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's so beautiful to me.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_00: And um so yeah, thank you so much for being here, wishing you so many blessings.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: XOXO Kate.