Everyone has good days and bad days; every type enjoys successes and suffers through failures. Yet we each react to those same successes and failures differently, depending on our cognition. The things we value most, and the things we focus on most, determine how we subconsciously interpret everything that happens to us. While our Type Specialization reflects what we most desire out of life, every cognitive type also has a Type Angst, a reaction to our deepest fears, worries, and insecurities.
Of course, anyone can be afraid of anything. And anyone, of any type, can suffer from any weakness. In fact, it’s much easier to gain the unique weaknesses of other types than it is to gain their unique strengths! When we attempt to adopt the strengths of another type before mastering our own, usually all we end up with is the weaknesses of both and the strengths of neither. Yet each cognitive type has one deepest, most fundamental worry, resulting from their unique order of cognition steps.
As an INFJ Paladin, your central fear, beneath all others, is that the real you is fundamentally not likeable, not acceptable, and just too different from everybody else. You may love the person you are, but you fear that you must show only little bits and pieces of yourself to the world; you worry that if anyone sees the real you, they’ll roll their eyes at best. Again, anyone can have this fear. But for Paladins, this worry is at the root of them all.
With INFJs’ weakest cognition step being Observation via Sensing, Paladins naturally fear that they’re out of touch with others’ thoughts, motives, and secret opinions. Specifically, they worry that their observations of people lack all-important meaning and significance (F), in an experiential way (S). Deep down you fear that your interactions with others lack the in-the-moment fun and normalcy of SF. This unconscious worry that your interpersonal awareness is not SF enough results in the fear that you are fundamentally too different from the crowd. That while others may endure bumps and crises, you envy them for having the usual, understandable kinds of problems. With your mind naturally wanting to touch the face of the infinite, you look back with longing at everyone else and fear that you can never truly be one of them.
This is almost certainly false, but that doesn’t make the fear any less persistent.
Since these worries come from our cognition, we might not even realize that not everyone has them, just as we sometimes forget that not everyone has our same Type Specialization. And since these fears come from our cognition, they’ve been with each of us for as long as we’ve been thinking. They can be overcome, entirely, but only by understanding how they work. Yet when each of us is young, we inadvertently react to every scare or disappointment through the lens of our own type’s central fear. The things that leave the deepest scars are the ones that hit us right in this most vulnerable place.
But since our minds therefore associate these fears with the earliest experiences of childhood, we ironically tend to run to these fears as if they were a place of safety. Childhood usually feels warm, safe, and right in our minds, even if in reality it was nothing of the sort. So when life gets hard, when disappointment strikes, whenever we feel insecure, overwhelmed, or uncomfortable at all, our minds naturally and inadvertently rush back to these deeply ingrained childhood fears. The coping behaviors that result are our unique Type Angsts.
As a Paladin, whenever you feel or experience anything stressful or negative in any way, your mind tries to rush back to the supposed safety of childhood. This causes a surge of your central fear that you are unacceptable and unlikeable as who you really are. As a result, you then feel the tempting pull to indulge in INFJ Hercules Syndrome.
Hercules Syndrome is the tendency to feel shame and embarrassment about the things that make you unlike everybody else. But the parts of you that make you so different—your guilty fascination with universal principles on a cosmic, eternal level—are your Type Specialization, and therefore your greatest strengths! But you fear that if anyone knew about this secret love, they’d think you were kinda strange and certainly uncool. So you may overcompensate against the meaningful infinite, burying your greatest strength in an attempt to prove that there really is more to you than this profoundly serious side. Of course you can be fun and spontaneously unexpected, but it’s your secret affair with universal principles that gives you such a unique and hilarious propensity for joy in the moment. When you try to bury your strength to prove that you’re sufficiently normal, you lose your most likeable, most fun, and coolest source of charm.
Hercules Syndrome causes Paladins to sabotage their own treasured specialization, cutting themselves off from cosmic, universal principles which leaves them unable to apply any of them in the here and now. And since you struggle with correctly observing others’ motives and reactions, you may think that when people act uncomfortable around you, it’s because they think you aren’t likeable. Yet to the contrary, people frequently show discomfort when you’re impressing them too much! Give them time to digest the principles you shine with, and you may be surprised to find how much they actually like you.
On the flip side, beware of implying that it’s bad to be normal. Embittered INFJs often cope by saying, “Fine, no one likes what I have to offer, but it’s because they’re shallow and meaningless.” Respect is the key here; learn to respect the hidden profundity in so-called “normal” people. Even people who genuinely are shallow and mean can inadvertently stand as awe-inspiring examples of universal principles, displaying all the wondrous complexity of human will. As you cultivate respect for all the variety and depth in the people you thought were normal, you will learn so much from everyone, love being around practically anyone, and find that you fit with flair in as a unique center of any group.
By contrast, particularly unhealthy INFJs expend tireless effort seeking to prove that normalcy is a weak and pathetic plague which must be eradicated. It never helps the INFJ feel any better about themselves for more than a moment, and then they feel only more unlikeable and unknowable after the high of hostility passes. An unhealthy INFJ’s entire reason for being becomes denying normal folks the benefits and power of principles, in direct opposition to their Type Specialization of applying principles in normal life. This ultimate contradiction, desperately fighting against one’s own deepest, most treasured desire, is miserable to say the least.
Yet even healthy Paladins tend to indulge in Hercules Syndrome when life gets hard, when they fear to stand out from the crowd yet secretly want to be liked as who they really are. As a natural and unintentional way of guarding themselves, a Paladin may privately sneer at the in-crowd, or publicly laugh at their own specialization in order to appear normal. These unintentional slips into INFJ’s Type Angst are nothing to beat yourself up about; after all, they’re unintentional. Beating yourself up may make you feel safer from the accusations of others, but in truth it will usually make you feel even more alien from everyone else, making the cycle worse.
All types can be tempted to declare that they or their loved ones are already everything they’d like to be, even if it means ignoring glaring truths or putting others down. Our Type Angsts tempt us to feel entitled, like we deserve to already be at our goal, rather than being willing to learn and grow patiently, gaining successes for real. This sense of entitlement is a harmful twisting of the good desire to be special. In reality, everyone can be equally special in ways that are different from one another, allowing all to be unique in unique, diverse ways.
As you surround yourself with the loving support of people who care, as you seek out others who try to understand you and accept you, you can grow less and less vulnerable to the self-sabotage of Hercules Syndrome. Look to your Type Specialization, be a Paladin with a vengeance, and your mind will retreat less and less into the fears and scars that result in your Type Angst. And even when no one else is around, perhaps the best, most effective, and most fulfilling way to gradually eliminate your Type Angst for good, is to get in touch with your Paradoxitype.
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