INFJs and Lone Wolf Syndrome

Hi everyone. Today I'm talking about INFJs and Lone Wolf syndrome. This video is based on something that somebody said in one of my last classes that I thought was very interesting. I always have a really lively chat going on in my classes, and there was a chat going on between two different INFJs about feeling like they were a lone wolf. But also, how do you live life as a lone wolf? How do you live a life you love and you feel like you're thriving and you feel like you're happy, but you're still able to remain a lone wolf? I thought that was really interesting because that's something I see from so many INFJ personality types.

On the one hand, there's this awareness of being the lone wolf, and it feels pretty lonely, right? Like that word "lone" is there for a reason. Being a lone wolf can be really lonely, and so many INFJs feel like this because we feel like nobody else understands us. Um, we feel like aliens. We also, though, feel like we have a certain vision; we have a certain standard to how we want to do things. Like if we're working on a work project or a creative project, uh, we usually hate to do group work because we don't want to compromise our standards and we don't want to compromise our vision. We know how we want this thing to turn out, and we would rather just do it ourselves. We would rather just work on our own and only have to report to ourselves and be very self-directed. But that can also be very lonely. So there is this awareness of being the Lone Wolf; it feels really lonely, and sometimes it feels not good. I feel like nobody understands me; I feel like nobody gets me, um, and it's a sad feeling, right? It's this sad feeling. I feel like I'm missing out on part of life.

But then, on the other hand, for INFJs, there's this very definite feeling of "I don't want to lose that," right? Like I don't want to, I don't want to become different than I am. I don't want to become the extrovert. I don't want to become someone who suddenly loves to work in a group or who is absorbed into the group. I don't want to be the sort of mainstream type of personality that I see surrounding me everywhere, right? Whether that's in my school or my office or my friend group, that really doesn't appeal to me either. I want to retain my Lone Wolf—um, I don't want to say "status," but I want to retain my Lone Wolf skills, let's say it that way, my skills, right? Like I want to be independent; I want to be self-sufficient; I want to be able to be responsible for myself and not be waiting on other people and not, uh, have to sort of deal with everything that comes with other people.

And I think part of this for INFJs really is this—we want to avoid being disappointed by other people. That's a big thing for INFJs is that a lot of people have disappointed us in the past, starting in childhood, right? Whether because the person honestly couldn't handle what it meant to be in a relationship with us, even if that was like a parent-child relationship. A lot of times that's where it starts for INFJs, that we had a parent who really wasn't equipped to be a parent and really didn't have the skills to be a parent, whether that was their fault or not, they didn't. And from a young age, we usually saw that pretty early on. I've talked to INFJs who said, you know, as young as four or five years old, they were able to look at their parent and say, "Oh, Mom or Dad really is not doing a great job here, and I don't think they're going to improve," you know, "or I can't trust my dad to do this, or I can't trust my mom with this confidential information," right? Like, "I can't trust my parent to respect me, to honor me, to not blackmail me, to not emotionally manipulate me, uh, to not play the martyr, to not get lost in addiction," right? I could go on and on and on, but a lot of INFJs had that experience in childhood of being a very small child and looking at their parent, the adult, and saying, "Oh, yeesh, like this person is really not equipped to be my parent; this person's not equipped to raise me; they're not equipped to take care of a child." That kind of knowledge, that kind of awareness at a young age like that, it really grows you up fast.

And most INFJs—and again, I want to say INFPs too. I know I usually say that in my videos, but I want to make it clear I'm including INFPs in this as well—a lot of INFPs as well had that experience and then maybe even another added piece onto it, like maybe there was a sibling under us that we had to take care of, um, or maybe there was a family secret that we had to make sure nobody knew about, so we had to do damage control all the time, or maybe there was a lot of, um, like ugly conflicts breaking out in the house, violence in the house, and we were always trying to be the mediator to really minimize the fact of that violence and then the ramifications of that violence when it happened. So again, those pieces too, added into the mix, grows—it grows you up really, really fast. So most INFJs had the experience of being a child who didn't have much of a childhood or who was a very mature child, you know, or who became self-sufficient at a really young age due to circumstances or what have you.

So that brings us into adulthood, really embracing the role of the Lone Wolf. Because when you're left to your own devices, you're sort of like thrown upon your own resources at five, six, seven years old or even younger, and there is really no one you can count on. At some point, if you're going to survive, you have to really embrace it, right? You have to lean into it, and that's what a lot of INFJs and INFPs have done, and we've really leaned into it. Okay, fine, I can't count on anyone but myself, so be it. I'm not going to waste any more tears on that; I'm just going to go forward in life, and I'm going to be the Lone Wolf. So I'm going to make sure that I know how to do everything I need to do; I know how to get the skills I need; I know how to get the knowledge I need, um, and INFJ types can be very—I don't want to say secretive, but almost like, like crafty about this knowledge, like we're going to do everything under the radar, right? No one is even going to know how hyper self-sufficient we are, but you know, if the apocalypse hits, like we really have everything all lined up. I feel like the only type that rivals us in that might be the INTJ or the ISTP, who tends to be a little bit more practically prepared than us, but we're really emotionally prepared. INFJs and INFPs have really been in the emotional trenches of life, so we are prepared to just go it alone, lose everything, and just deal with the fallout all on our own.

So there's this conflict; there's this conflict in the INFJ about Lone Wolf syndrome, where on one hand it feels lonely, it feels sad, it kind of tears us up inside, and on the other hand, we really love it, and we would give it up for nothing, and it's our security blanket. We know we always can count on ourselves, and we don't ever need to count on anyone else. That can feel really enticing. The problems really come in when we get completely enamored with that positive side, right? I don't need anyone; I don't need to rely on anyone; I never need to be disappointed again; I'll just do it all on my own; it's fine; I'm a lone wolf; that's great; that's what I want to be; I want to be the lone wolf. And we really start going towards it. Like I said, we leaned into it in childhood, but we keep leaning into it in adulthood; we keep leaning into it in our 30s, 40s, 50s, and beyond. That's when it can really cause problems because we have a wall up, and other people sense that wall, and we have an extreme reluctance to ask for help, ask for support, reach out for connection, um, collaborate with other artists. Almost every INFJ or INFP is a highly creative person, and collaboration is really good for our health a lot of the time, even if we don't want to collaborate on an actual creative project. You know, if we have published a book, you're going to need to reach out and ask for reviews or ask for a blurb or ask for a beta reader—like ask for help for this or that. You know, if you have another creative project, you're going to want to ask for feedback, right? Even if you're just like, "I need feedback on my website." So it's really important that we don't get lost in the identity of the Lone Wolf and we learn how to ask for help and we learn how to give a chance for collaboration and we learn how to take those little risks—risks in being vulnerable with other people because that's the root of it for INFJs and INFPs. And I will say, um, I think a little bit more heavily with INFJ personality types here is this fear of vulnerability. It's not even just a fear; it's a terror of vulnerability. Someone will see that I'm weak; someone will see the real me; someone will see how weird I am; someone will find out about my past, um, they will find out this, that, or the other, right? Every INFJ has this like vault of secret things that they don't want other people to know about them, and it doesn't mean they're necessarily bad things; a lot of them are quite normal things, but INFJs are just highly, highly secretive about their, their private lives, especially their inner lives. INFPs can also have this as well; this is not just an INFJ thing, but I do see it in the majority of INFJs.

So the Lone Wolf thing, it's really about like, "I don't trust anyone else to see me; I don't feel comfortable with anyone else seeing me because if someone saw the real me, then I'm fully vulnerable now; things are dangerous." And that happens because we weren't allowed to be vulnerable in childhood, right? It was dangerous back then for us to be vulnerable and us to be fully seen and not invisible and not flying under the radar in childhood; that was a high-risk activity and that was a high-risk event that could really lead to some unfortunate consequences, especially if we had an abusive parent, you know, a parent who wasn't mentally healthy, a parent who's addicted and who's very unpredictable and volatile in their actions towards us. That could really be dangerous. So we've carried that into adulthood, like, "I need to be the lone wolf and have this wall up, and I can never ask for help, and I have to be hyper-independent." However, if we don't do the work of bringing awareness to that and awareness of like, "Okay, I have this thing where I really have a problem being a team player; I want to be on my own all the time," and we don't work to balance that—I'm not saying have to let go of it entirely; I don't think that's possible for any INFJ or INFP, and nor do I think that we should be striving for that because I think, I think our, um, self-sufficiency and the way we can rely on ourselves, that Lone Wolf in us, it is a source of strength; it is a source of creativity; and it does help us really push past limits and push past barriers that other people wouldn't and do some really astounding things. So I don't think we should disconnect from that entirely, but there is a balance, right? You don't need to live your entire life as a lone wolf; nothing else; you never ask for help; you're distrustful of everyone; you never collaborate with anyone else on any kind of creative project, right? You're just sort of like Emily Dickinson in her room writing poetry and like maybe throwing it over the wall, right? That's not a fulfilled life, as much as we romanticize Emily Dickinson; her life doesn't sound like a life to me that was very fulfilling, right? It's—I don't want to be the recluse who's just writing my pages of creative prose and shoving it under the door and I hope someone finds it someday, you know? I want to have friends; I want to have connections; I want people to read my work; I want people who want to talk with me about my work, right? All of that comes from moving outside of the Lone Wolf identity.

This is a topic I'm going to be talking about very deeply in my new class coming up. It's called "Living for Yourself." This new class, the whole thing was born out of the, the comments I talked about—those people chatting in that last class about being a lone wolf—and you know, one of them said, "Oh, I'd love it if you would do a class on this," you know, "being a lone wolf, living for yourself, like not having to serve everyone else's needs before your own because it's such an INFJ, INFP thing, and nobody talks about it; there's not much out there on it." So I thought about it; it was a couple of months ago, and then I said, "You know, this really is needed." I looked at the questions I get from my clients and my students, and so much of it comes back to, "Who am I? What do I want?" You know, I've devoted my whole life to being there for my partner, being there for my family, being there for my friends, like always advocating for harmony in the group and always being the support system for everyone else, so what do I want now, right? Like, who am I, and how do I find that out, and how do I come into this person who is able to assert boundaries and express my needs and live for myself and not be living for other people all the time? So that's what this new class is all about. It starts Thursday, November 30th. It's a three-week class: Thursday, November 30th; Thursday, December 7th; Thursday, December 14th; 7 to 8:30 p.m. Eastern. All classes will be recorded, as they always are; all of my classes are always recorded. I do urge you to register for this class, even if you can't attend live, because you will get the lifetime access to the recordings. So six months down the road, a year down the road, you'll still have them. So even if it's not right for you now, you can revisit it in the future; you can use them and listen to them whenever you want. If you have any questions about this class, please email me, uh, Lauren lawence@ao.com. I would love to get the questions answered before registration closes. Registration opens November 25th and it's open until November 29th, so it's five days, five days only, so please get in while you can. Get in—it will be opening in just a couple of days. I do expect this to be a popular class, so if you are an INFJ or an INFP who's really been wanting to meet other INFJs and INFPs, please really think about signing up for this class. We always do a private Facebook group; lots of really nice people in my groups, a lot of lovely INFJs and INFPs, and I always have students who have this sort of head-exploding experience of, "I've been looking for all of the other INFJs, INFPs in my life, and here they are," you know, "they've been here the whole time, and this is really great." So please, if you have no INFJ or INFP friends and you would like some, think about signing up for this class. Please also subscribe to my newsletter; you'll get all the updates and notifications on this class and future offerings. And please subscribe to my channel; I do tons of videos on intuition, creativity, writing, INFJ personality types, INFP personality types, all sorts of good stuff, so please subscribe to my channel, and you'll get all the new videos as they come out. Thanks so much, everyone. I will see you next time.