INTJ Tantrums

While this isn't the most flattering description of INTJs, I think this captures the essence of why INTJs sometimes get upset at work and "shut down" for a while.  I believe this originally came from the INTJ Forum (apologies to the original author for not keeping the attribution; I have tons of notes I'm going through from many locations).  This may apply equally well to any **TJ personality types who tend to be detached, generally avoid emotions and have high J drive to complete work.  It is also complicated by the I(ntrovert) side as introverts generally seem to not highlight their own accomplishments in my experience.  I bolded key concepts below:


"I think we tend to throw tantrums when we forget the emotional reasons why we do things.

We tend to ignore emotion or treat it as an idea or object inside our minds.  Something we can just pick up and place about or just shuffle away when we're busy or don't want to be distracted.

Because of the J, we tend to be very goal driven perfectionists who kind of like to get stuff done as efficiently as possible.  This can cause us to pour too much of ourselves into something in trying to get it to work and work well.

The tantrum generally results when we've poured too much of ourselves into something and then kind of realize... Hey, why am I doing this?

The meaning that it previously had is suddenly under question because the emotions have changed.  Generally the reasons we started doing it in the first place no longer seem valid, or in short, it no longer seems worth it.

This can cause the INTJ to kind of shut down everything and refuse to budge until he can either figure out why he started doing it all in the first place or the process itself becomes more relaxed and pleasurable again.  This always causes friction however because it jars with the J need to see a task through to completion and the value, meaning and worth of said task.  It can come out of the blue where everything seemed to be going along fine and then suddenly the INTJ shuts down everything has a bit of a tantrum.

What people don't realize is that everything was going along fine because the INTJ was making sure everything was going along fine.  Generally, it did not just come about by happenstance or luck.  Our ultimate goal is to generally put in place a system so well that it can run itself so we can go back to doing whatever we were doing previously.  Thus, a lot of times, people don't realize the amount of work that we put into things because by its very nature its supposed to be unseen; it is designed to be unseen.

Generally I find INTJs throw tantrums if they feel like the work they are doing is not being valued or that nobody is on their side in things and they feel isolated.  They feel like they're doing all this work just for the sake of it, which unless we're doing it purely for ourselves and have no demands to meet, is not really fun.  While we come across as kind of cold and solemn people, most of the time the reason we do the things we do and hyper focus on doing them so well and efficiently, is for the very people around us.  If people don't seem appreciative or just kind of take it as a matter of fact then why would we care about or jobs or what we are doing?  Why are we doing it?  Why should we even try so hard?  There could be other things we could devote our time and energies to which could have better payouts.

This causes a crisis of evaluation where a cost/gain ratio analysis is being done regarding work put in and the emotion surrounding it to see if the activity is worth it."