One good thing--I think most people like an INFJ. At least we aren't human bull dozers :-)

It takes time, but the payoff is good.

I have an analogy that will give you some hope.

you can have one of two planes...

you can have a german Messershmit from WWII, incredibly easy plane to control and fly, very simple cockpit, easy to read gauges. One can literally learn to fly one in a few hours of training.

Or

you can have an f-15 fighter jet modified for air craft carrier use. To fly it successfully, to land it on the carrier, to even get an intuitive sense of the myriad gauges and other controls... you'd probably take a good month of traiing to get the familiarity with that craft as you'd have after the first few hours with the other one.

Now one is obviously instant ease and pleasure from the get-go, but which one would you rather have in a war.

We have a very frustrating set of traits to master due to their complexity and the vast number of possibilities it can seem to open up to the point where making choices could be very difficult. It can mean being a late bloomer, feeling foolish, career behind everyone else's you'd know, goals changing every single month.... but slowly that internal complexity gets more and more consolidated, harmonized, focused by the will, until eventually the will is it's master.

The only thing I can say which might be helpful is this. It will get better, but cultivate your power of will right now and you will find at some point that being IFNJ is later on in life an enhancement to life and it's pleasures rather than a hinderance. I can only tell you that it gets easier and easier every year, slowly I make progress to increasing happiness, less bad days... it's been a steady course upwards from "the pits" back in 1996 when I was 27 and really beleived the rest of my life was a hopeless cause. Note I didn't find it at all a rapid rise, just a relently slow but stable rise out of that pit. No going "backwards". There is so much less internal conflict and so much more clarity, so much less fear. That's when life gets enjoyable. I'm not even where I want to be yet, but over a decade of steady improvement from feeling utterly overcome with dispair as a daily condition... i know I will get to where I really want to be in a matter of another few years in all probability.

it's nice to be able to figure out what people are really saying when they're speaking

i also appreciate the particular kind of ethical sense that seemed to come with it. perhaps i'd be "happier" without it, but i wouldn't trade it for Anything

> I've rarely, if ever, found myself react in an emotionally explosive manner.
> I get to see more of how the world works than most people ever will.
> Our depth gives us a wider range of feelings and emotions, such that by experiencing the worst, we can appreciate the best all the more so.
> Should you find that special someone, you have a depth of feeling to offer that is far beyond what most others could match.
> Honest eyes.
> Regardless which side of the religion fence you come from, you cannot deny that Jesus was an INFJ.
> Metaphors.
> I'm not sure if this is just true for me, but I feel I get an aesthetic pleasure from the world that few experience.
> I'm male, straight, and have a great sense of style.
> We're the rarest personality type. Seriously, how awesome is that?

I had a similar experience years ago. I became a mutual fund junkie in the 90s. I delved into the details of funds and learned the signals of market trends. I don't know if I could intuit the market because that's too big or complex, but when I saw people with no skills investing in extremely risky friends (dot.bomb funds) it told me the party would be over soon. My intuition and other factors told me it was time to get out so I never lost a dime when the market crashed in 2000.