INFJ Cassandra Complex

Hey everyone, today I am talking about the INFJ Cassandra complex.

A Cassandra complex is when you give warnings or you predict something. You try to warn people of something that's coming in the future and they either don't believe you or they ignore you or they outright dismiss you. This happens to INFJs frequently and it can be maddening and very frustrating and it can really um cause us to take a hit to our self-esteem and even undermine our own belief in ourselves and cause a lot of self-doubt.

So to talk about this today I wanted to tell a story about when I experienced the Cassandra complex myself so you can see how it sort of plays out in real life in a real situation. So, back in 2016, I was still working a day job. For those of you who followed me for a while, you know I often talk about my history working in a lot of different offices in my 20s and 30s. And this was my longest day job. I had been there at this point for six years. And I loved this job. It was a very low-key job. I actually did like the people I worked with. I always wanted to do my own thing, but that was still somewhere off in the future.

So I was working at this day job 2016 and it was a very small company. We got acquired by a much larger company. Our staff was about 12 people. We'd all worked together for those six years. We all knew each other. I knew everybody's partners' names, their kids' names, their dogs names. We were all very close. And then we got acquired by this bigger company.

Now when we got acquired by this bigger company, I knew change was in the air. I had felt something coming. Being an INFJ, I had noticed my two managers acting differently, acting a little bit out of character, a little nervous, more closed door meetings in the middle of the day, but I didn't know exactly what was coming. So, when we were all called into the conference room and the CEO of the company made the big announcement and said, "We've been acquired. This is what we've been working towards. This is very exciting. This is a reason to celebrate."

Again, being the INFJ I am, I closely observed him and I noticed there was this hollow note in his voice as he said this. I noticed that when he actually made the announcement, he didn't look at anyone in the conference room. He didn't make eye contact with anyone. He cut his eyes away. He looked a little bit uncomfortable. And then when he said, "This is reason to celebrate. This is what we've been working towards." I noticed that it seemed forced, like he was doing this sort of forced, cheerful thing. I also got the feeling that this was the beginning of the end for that company. I didn't necessarily think that the new company was going to be horrible or that something specific was going to happen immediately that would make things bad. I just got this feeling that the CEO felt a little bit weird about it and a little bit weird about making the announcement and I also got this strong intuition that oh this is the beginning of the end for my company. I don't know if that means next month or in six months or in two years but I can tell you this is the beginning of the end of the company.

Now, when he made that announcement, he gave everybody in that room the cue that, "Oh, we needed to be cheerful, too." And of course, all of the other employees followed suit. They looked at the way he was smiling. I don't know if they noticed if it was forced or not. It seemed that they didn't notice. And, you know, he said, "This is reason to celebrate. We're taking off work early. We're going to go have a happy hour. We're going to go get margaritas. You know, we're really gonna have a staff party and celebrate this." and everybody got into the spirit of it and got very happy and I couldn't.

So I was sitting there in this conference room with the other 12 people feeling very out of place because everybody was smiling and happy and joking around and saying, "Oh, this is great." And you know, um, when we get the new company, we'll have better health insurance or maybe they'll give us all raises, right? Very optimistic about the future. And I was sitting there with this stoic face, knowing I had a stoic face on, but also not being able to fake it, not being able to go along with the forced cheer because of the strong intuition I was getting that this was the beginning of the end.

So, we filed out of the conference room. Everybody went back to their desks to pick up their bags, get their coats, get ready to go to this wonderful happy hour. We were all going to celebrate this, you know, wonderful thing that had happened. And one of my co-workers came up to me at my desk and he said, "Orin, I noticed that um you don't look happy. Everyone else is very happy and and and you look uh upset. Are you okay? Do you know something? I don't know."

And I said to him, I didn't want to lie, but I said, "You know, I'm just not sure how this is going to turn out." I didn't want to say outright, this is the beginning of the end. But I I I tried to be gentle. I said, "I'm just not sure how this is going to turn out, and I don't know that us being acquired is going to be good for everybody in the long term. The people who are planning to work here for a long time. That might not happen. Things might really change." Again, I was being very gentle, you know, sort of feeling into it. He said, "Oh, yeah, okay. I see that's a possibility." And I said, 'You know, I just think this is a very big transition and um it could be down the road that our company is dissolved and is absorbed into this larger company. I could see that happening and then the people who work here now, they have to find another job or they have to find some other path that they want to take and I'm a bit concerned about that." He looked very pensive when I told him this, my coworker. And then he said, "Okay, that's good to think about." And we went out for the happy hour.

I left early as the INFJs do. I made some excuse and left early, went home. And when I came back the next morning, this same coworker was waiting for me at my desk. And he said, "I was thinking about it all night. I was thinking about how you were so upset. You were so unhappy because we got acquired and I was worried about you." And I thought, "Oh, this is interesting. We're seeing things change now. We're seeing things be distorted because there was no need to worry about me. That wasn't really the issue. The issue wasn't that I was having a problem and needed to be worried about. The issue was that I was seeing something that could possibly happen in the future that we needed to be realistic about that maybe wasn't so optimistic as the picture painted for us by the managers. But my coworker had zeroed in on I wasn't having the positive reaction that everyone else was having. And so he said, "I I stayed awake all night. You know, I tossed and turned and I kept thinking about you and I just I want you to know everything's going to be okay. You don't have to worry. You don't have to be a worry wart about this. You don't have to have all this anxiety about change. It's good that we're we're changing. You don't have to resist the change."

So this was interesting point number two. So now, not only am I something to be worried about, but I have a resistance to change. Now, I do want to say I want to pause here and say this coworker that I was having this conversation with, this experience with, he was lovely. He was a great friend of mine. He was not a narcissistic person. He was not a gaslighter. He was not trying to manipulate me. But what I was saying was so uncomfortable for him that he really couldn't face the information I was trying to give him. So he went home and he started worrying and he started resisting that. And then the next morning when he came back in, he sort of projected that all on me and said, "Oh, you are the one who's upset. You are the one with the problem. Let me reassure you. Nothing will change. Everything's okay." The intuition you're getting, the uh questions you have, you don't need to pay attention to those. Everything's okay. Right? So, he sort of was gaslighting me, but not on purpose. And it it wasn't in a manipulative way. It was in order to make himself feel better.

And this is the first part of what INFJs will see sometimes when they try to give a premonition or a warning. Everyone else is very optimistic. Everyone else is very positive. Everyone else is sort of blindly gripping on to everything's going to be okay. Everything's going to be all right. The INFJ comes in and says, "Wait a minute. I'm not so sure about that. Can we slow down? Can we look at the facts? I'm getting an intuition that maybe things are going to change and that maybe things aren't going to be all right and just go along as they always have, but maybe things are going to really take a sharp left and we need to be prepared even if that's uncomfortable. Even if it's not all rainbows and roses, we really need to face this possible reality ahead of us. So that's the first Cassandra complex angle that we see with INFJs. Everyone else is happy. Everyone else is blindly optimistic. The INFJ comes in and says, "Hold on, slow down. Not so sure that's accurate. Let's face reality." And then the blindly optimistic people get very uncomfortable and turn around and project onto the INFJ and say, "You're the one with the problem. You're always worrying. You're a Debbie Downer." Right? I've heard that from a lot of INFJs. You know, why are you being the negative one? You're just being negative. So, this gaslighting goes on in this way because there's such a contrast between the forced positivity, um the sort of sometimes fake positivity and the blind optimism and then the realistic INFJ where the INFJ is being called out as the negative one.

Okay, so here's the second half of this story where we see how the Cassandra complex operates in the opposite way. So after my company was acquired, we did go on for another two years, year and a half, two years, I'll say 18 to 24 months, we went on under the leadership of this new company. Well, then that company was acquired by an even bigger company. At this point, I saw the writing on the wall. My INFJ intuition had kicked in full gear. It had been 18 to 24 months. Enough time had passed, and the brand new company came in and started making sweeping changes. There were cameras everywhere. Uh, everybody had a badge to buzz in and out of the office. We were micromanaged. There was a lot of surveillance. There was a brand new culture that came in with a lot of discipline, a lot of distrust. Uh it everything changed very quickly and I saw really the writing on the wall that this new larger company had acquired us only to dissolve us because we were part of their competition and they were trying to become a monopoly. So that was the entire goal of why we were acquired.

When I saw this, I saw clearly we've got maybe six months and then they're laying everyone off. They're closing down this office and we're done. Well, I uh at this point decided, you know what? I I'm not going to do what I did before. I'm not going to try to warn people. They're going to think I'm negative. They're going to think I'm a Debbie Downer. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to prepare to make my own transition and I will quietly encourage others on the staff who I'm close with to make their own transition. Right? So and that's what I did for the next few months. I really put a lot of work into my coaching business into my pub, you know, publish publishing my books on Amazon, my writing business. I started to come up with a plan to teach classes. I started thinking about seriously teaching classes and because I was the INFJ in the office frequently people would come to my desk and talk to me and so a few of the staff would members would come and sit and say you know I just don't know what I want to do with my life or I don't know you know what's my path ahead am I going to work here forever and I would take these opportunities and say you know I think that maybe the time remaining with this company is short-lived so if there's something you would really like to do um that's not working in accounting or working in coding, you know, working in these jobs they really didn't like. I said, "Now would be the time. Now would be the time to think about, you know, do I need to go back to school or should I uh learn some new skills or maybe I want to switch careers alto together or maybe I just want to get my resume together."

And I did this in much more of a positive way. Again, I really was sort of burned by that experience earlier where my coworker thought I was being so negative and I was worrying and I was resistant to change. So this time I tried to be very positive and I said if this company did end it wouldn't be the worst thing. A lot of us who work here don't really enjoy our jobs. We don't really enjoy the career path that we're on. And it looks like this bigger company that now owns us has a very good reason to dissolve us. So maybe when that happens, whenever it happens, if you could put yourself in a position where that would be a good thing, where you felt like you were free, you felt like, "Okay, I'm ready for the new thing." As I did this with various people on the staff, uh most of them just nodded and smiled and said, "Oh, uh-huh. Yeah, that's that's a nice idea. Okay." But they treated me as if I was being very weird.

So then the day came and this was 2019 when people flew in from the main office that was on the other side of the country. Another reason for us for them to dissolve our office and they said we're having a meeting, you know, all hands on deck. And I said, here it is. And they made the announcement, we are dissolving, we're shutting down this office. We're dissolving this branch. Everyone is now laid off. Um we're giving everyone severance. You know, we're giving everyone two or three months notice. They really did provide a nice exit package. I was prepared. And so when they made this announcement, I was really happy. I started smiling and I thought, "This is it. This is my time. I'm going to go fulltime with my business. I saw this coming. And while I'm not totally prepared, I feel like I'm ready to take a new direction." And so I was very happy.

Everyone else in that meeting completely freaked out. Now, please remember these are the same people who were on staff with me the entire time, the same people I'd been working with at this point. The first time we got acquired, that was now two and a half years ago. I had had conversations with all of them. I had given them warnings. I had tried to be uh, you know, realistic about it and kind of cynical. And then I tried to switch ts and be more positive and gentle. I had tried to package this and um really talk about this in many different ways so that people could digest it and receive it and really um be open to what I was trying to tell them. Two and a half years. And in this meeting, every single person completely freaked out. One girl started crying. Uh two men just got up and left. Two of the guys, they just got up and left and they were very angry. Uh, most other people just shut down. They were also very upset. Everybody advanced complete surprise, complete shock, said they felt betrayed. They saw nothing like this coming. They had no idea anything like this was going to occur. They felt blindsided. That whole day I heard the word blindsided like 55 times. And I wanted to scream every time someone said, "I'm just blindsided." I wanted to say, "Really? Because I tried to talk to you about this 12 to 15 times in the last 24 months, and you didn't care. You dismissed it."

So, in this situation, this was the exact opposite to the first time. Because in this situation, I was happy. Everyone else was really upset. Everyone else was in a negative space because I had prepared. I was in a positive space. So, I went in to have the meeting with the managers about my severance package, grinning ear to ear, and they said, "Are you okay? Everyone else here is very upset." And I said, "I'm fantastic. This is amazing. I'm going to go launch my new venture." And now I have severance, so I have a little bit of cushion while I get that going. And I'm very excited. They were very puzzled. I tried to talk to my co-workers all throughout that day and said, 'Remember that conversation we had a few months ago about you getting out of accounting or getting out of data entry or getting out of being an editor? Now is your chance. You can really go off in this new direction. Nobody wanted to hear it. And in this instance, people told me that I was being a bit insensitive about their feelings.

So you can see in the first instance I was accused of being a worry wart, resistant to change, the negative one. In the second instance, I was accused of being insensitive to other people's feelings because I was trying to encourage them to lean into the transition rather than resisting it. So this is the other side of the Cassandra complex that INFJs will experience. Sometimes we're being told we are being the negative one and that's not okay. And sometimes we are being told that we are too positive and that's not okay. Either situation it is absolutely maddening for the INFJ.

So I really want to pause here and look at why the Cassandra complex is so it's such a hurtful thing for INFJs. Because on the surface it seems so frustrating because your warnings are dismissed. That is frustrating. It's absolutely maddening as I can tell you from experience. So that's part of it. But the real core of it is the way that we are treated by others when we are going through this experience. And that's why I wanted to tell you my personal story because it wasn't so much about my warnings being dismissed. I had worked at this company for a long time. I knew the other people I worked with well. I'd been into personality typing for a while. I'd had many of them take the test. I knew that I worked with people who are not of my type. I didn't expect them to have my intuition. I worked with uh ENTJs and ESTJs and ESFJs and ISFJs and ISTJs, a whole lot of S's, a whole lot of T's. You know, I knew that I was different. Honestly, even before MBTI, I probably could have told you I was different. I've always known I have very strong intuition, and not a lot of other people have strong intuition like I do. So, that wasn't surprising to me. I didn't expect people to understand my intuition or even to get on board with it.

What really felt hurtful to me was the way I was projected on, the way that I was made out to be the problem and in a very unconscious way. So the first time it was my coworker who I loved, who was my friend, but still unconsciously projected onto me. He was scared. He was threatened. He probably also felt something coming deep down in his bones and did not want to admit it. And when I voiced it, then I became the problem. I really resented that. The second time, you know, when I again voiced, hey, this is your opportunity to do something that you actually want to do with your life. This is a big change. This is a big transition that you could embrace that you could take advantage of. Here's your opportunity. That was threatening to people. That made people uncomfortable. They just wanted to go along same old same old in their same old rut as they had been doing for a long time. And so when I voiced that, hey, this could be a positive thing for you. Again, I became the problem. Then I was labeled as the insensitive one.

This is the sticking point for INFJs. This is the thorn in our side. We often voice what is unconscious for other people. To us, it's obvious. To us, it's right there. It's right out front. It's not like that for other people. And when they hear their unconscious fears or their unconscious desires voiced like that, they can really lash out and they can really project. Even when you know that's what's going on, it can still be extremely hurtful.

So, what is the solution here? This is one of those gray areas. There's not really a solution to the Cassandra complex. It's just something that INFJs will have to tend to carry probably throughout our entire lives. However, you can work with it in a more easeful manner if you understand number one that very few other people in the population have introverted intuition. It's your fellow INFJs and it's INTJs. So, if you're in a workplace or you're in a family or a social group and you're lucky enough to have fellow INFJs around you or INTJs, those people will get it. I also want to say, you know, as I referenced my story of the people I worked with, like I said, I had some ISFJs in there. I had some ENTJs in there. They had a glimmer of intuition as well. It wasn't totally that no one got it. I had a couple people on staff who said, "Okay, I can see where you're going with this, Lauren. I'll humor you." They were pretty good about it. And and one of them was an ISFJ. She was also very intuitive. So, you can have sensors who are a bit on the intuitive side. You can have thinkers who are a bit on the feeler side. So, you might be lucky to have a few people in this group of people that you're trying to communicate with who will believe you, who will get on board with it, and who will understand that you're intuitive. But most of the time, you won't. And that's something to accept and to just accept it from the outset that other people do not have your introverted intuition. And a lot of the time if you try to warn them about what's coming, it will fall on deaf ears.

So the best thing you can do for your own mental health is keep your predictions to yourself. This can be very hard for INFJs, especially if we think that someone is going to be hurt or disappointed or upset in the future. We really want to guard other people against that. So you can try, but if you do try to warn people, don't get very attached to them believing you. And when people project onto you, when they lash out at you because you are expressing their unconscious fears, their unconscious desires, their unconscious something, don't take it personally. I know that can be really hard as well, but try to not take it personally and understand it's not actually about you. You are just the target in front of them at that time and you just happen to be the one who voiced the thing that they didn't want to look at.

If this video was helpful to you, please like the video and subscribe to my channel. I make lots of different videos for INFJs and INFPs about all sorts of different topics, intuition, creativity, uh moving forward in life, personal growth, personal development, solopreneurship, all sorts of things. I also have a free ebook at this time. It is called Conquering the Fear of Being Seen. I wrote this book. It's a short book, seven chapters. I wrote this based on a workshop I did at the end of 2024 that was extremely successful. People loved it. A lot of people said, "I really feel like I moved forward with my fear of being seen after that workshop. And so, I knew I wanted to put something together that I could continue to distribute to people since INFJs and INFPs have a really strong fear of being seen most of the time. I will say some of us are better than others. Some of us are working with it, but most of us still really have a fear of being seen, whether that's in our creative work or our career or even in relationships, even with our friends. So, if you have a fear of being seen, if you feel like you want to play a bit bigger in life, but you keep keeping yourself small and you're not sure why, please make sure you get that free ebook. You can get it by signing up for my newsletter. The link is below. I will see all of you next time.