12 Awkward Moments INTJs Absolutely Hate
Strategic. Stoic. Cunning. INTJs aren’t exactly the types you think of when you imagine someone getting flustered or embarrassed. Chances are you think of a more emotionally “sensitive” type. But everyone can get embarrassed; and often about very different things.
What rattles an INTJ?
What embarrasses them?
What simply annoys them socially?
That’s what we’ll be exploring in today’s post. Let’s get started!
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12 Awkward Moments INTJs Absolutely Hate
Nobody’s Listening
When you start explaining a strategy or insight, but in the middle of the sentence you realize nobody is paying attention and you just completely shut up or start saying something absolutely absurd just to see if anyone’s paying the slightest bit of attention. This is especially frustrating for you as an INTJ because you don’t tend to open your mouth unless you have something actually relevant and useful to say.
It is your birthday.
We’ve all been there…you’re sitting at your favorite restaurant, about to dig into a delicious meal, when suddenly you see a group of people with feigned smiles walking towards you, banging on pans or blowing kazoos. Or worse, you’re just entering your house, anxious for a few hours of quiet R & R when confetti and shouts of “SURPRISE!!!” rain down on you without your consent. Between the awkward hugs from friends and family you hardly know (or don’t really like) and the noise and attention, you feel trapped in a waking nightmare.
Public Present-Opening
You appreciate the gesture. You really do. But ripping paper off a surprise gift while everyone watches, hopefully anticipating your response, is a rare form of torture. First of all, everyone is staring at you. For some reason this feels like electrical currents being hurled at your body without any way to protect yourself. Second, unwrapping the present seems to take forever because when you begin to open a gift, something changes in the time-space continuum. Everything slows down. People’s mouths seem to be opening and closing in slow motion. Your hands seem to freeze as your peeling off that last bit of paper. And you know you’ll have to feign a far more intense reaction than your usual “resting death glare.” But you also know that your reaction will probably look more scary than authentic. After all, your forced smiles have a habit of making people recoil in terror.
Anything involving names.
When you’ve had countless interactions with someone, but their name eludes your memory, and it’s gone too far to admit it, so you’re left with no choice to call them “dude” or “mate” forever.
Invisible Tripping Hazards
That moment when you’re strolling along, trip unexpectedly, and then glance back at the invisible stick that betrayed you. INTJs, masters of overthinking, sometimes lose touch with the physical realm; but they want to appear coordinated, composed, and cool at all times. DARN YOU INVISIBLE STICKS!
Not Being Able to Correct
When someone says words incorrectly like “aks” instead of “ask” or “I could care less” instead of “I couldn’t care less” but it’s rude to correct them because they’re a stranger, or your boss, or your new partner’s parents… but you’re dying inside. You know that your Extraverted Thinking is suffocating inside of your brain, begging to get out and fix this, but you have to contain it.
When someone is visiting you and they just won’t leave
You’ve glanced at your watch, made random comments about projects you need to get done, invented errands you have to run… and yet the person is still there. You can almost feel your skin beginning to crawl as the minutes extend and you feel trapped in some demented version of Groundhog Day. As much as you’re trying to be polite, you can’t help but move your body a little closer to the door in hopes that they’ll get the hint and leave.
When Someone Interrupts You and It’s Rude to Glare
As an INTJ you focus intensely on what you’re doing. You go “all in”; conceptualizing, strategizing, devising, analyzing. So when somebody interrupts your focus it can feel like you’ve just been slapped across the face. All your carefully composed ideas and strategies seem to flutter away like ashes in the wind. It can be really hard not to glare or roll your eyes at this person, but you’d rather not start a war of words and just deal with it in silence. But you give them just enough of a split-second glare to make things awkward.
Why Are You Sitting There?
When someone sits beside you in a train or bus when there are dozens of other seats available.
Forced social events
It’s a funeral. A wedding. A mandatory office party. Something you can’t possibly get out of without really screwing up your personal or professional life. But every moment seems like an eternity.
Excuse My Face
People talk a lot about the “INTJ death glare,” but here’s the thing…we don’t always want to be glaring. Sometimes you actually want to make a good impression on someone. You get up, shake their hand, even attempt a smile. And you think you’ve succeeded; all has gone well. Instead, you later find out your face just looked like this:
Chilling Grocery Encounters
When you’re next in line at the grocery store with your parent or partner and they leave you to “just get one more thing” and the anxiety and awkwardness builds because you’re up and they’re nowhere to be found. As an INTJ you hate wasting people’s time so this is the absolute worst. You wind up paying for everything yourself and leaving in a hurry, frantically throwing all your food back in the cart and escaping as quickly as possible, or standing there awkwardly as your heart hammers in your chest.
What Are Your Thoughts?
Do you hate moments like these too? Are there any other examples you’d like to share with fellow INTJs (or other personality types)? Let us know in the comments!
Find out more about your personality type in our eBooks, Discovering You: Unlocking the Power of Personality Type, The INFJ – Understanding the Mystic, The INTJ – Understanding the Strategist, and The INFP – Understanding the Dreamer. You can also connect with me via Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter!
Other Articles About INTJs:
10 Things People Misunderstand About INTJs
26 Memes Any INTJ Will Relate To
24 Signs That You’re an INTJ, the Strategist Personality Type
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This is so absolutely bang on! A coworker once organized a birthday cake in the conference room and it was the most horrifying feeling being trapped like that. The worst were retirement parties. For mine, I just dug in and said if they organized one, I wouldn’t show up. There was such pressure that it appeared that not having a party would be more of a reflection on my colleagues than on me. I preferred to say goodbye to my workmates one-at-a-time, possibly over coffee. I get that some people enjoy that type of thing, but I really wish they could understand that some of us don’t. Instead they seem to have to project that we must have self esteem or confidence issues. Same for gifts which are mostly useless, consumer junk that adds to the degradation of the planet. I got around that by telling people I’d only accept donations to some kind of charity. Work meetings that started out or degenerated into chats about kids and clothes shopping were equally insufferable. I used to say “they call this work for a reason.” The team of labor law professionals I worked with were great when we were actually discussing cases and strategy but the small talk was sooooo aggravating. As for waiting around for others, I rarely allow myself into a position where I have to wait. And yes, the death glare. I often get asked if I’m depressed or angry when in reality my mind is off building big picture predictive models or trying to imagine where a new piece of data fits. The really great thing is occasionally meeting another INTJ and immediately falling into what I call “the Vulcan mind meld.”
Yes, all ring true. Especially, but not exclusively, the correcting one. All. The. Time. The face one, always, always, always. Just recently, the bus one. And don’t get me started on the names.
Accurate! Another nightmare to address is when everyone is talking about something, they all share the same opinion, and then ask me, “What do you think?” Now I have to choose between sharing a very different perspective or just saying something short, like, “You all seem to be in agreement on this,” and letting them move on.
I like turtles.
What are my thoughts?
I thought you nailed it! Just reading through these situations puts a knot in my stomach.
Suggestion:
Maybe put a picture of a kitten at the end of the article to bring us back to a ‘happy’ state?
Now I’m off to drink some camomile tea to settle me down… 🍵
Girl, did you ever nail this one! You just better with time.
You have no idea how accurate this is. You spend minutes talking but the other clearly isn’t listening. Luckily for me I’m at school for most of my parties and nobody there knows when it is and my parents and friends have never thought of a party in advance. My spelling and grammar have to be absolutely perfect and nothing can change that. (It’s my pet peeve when people can’t get it right. If I mess up let me know I will fix it.) I swear no visitors for me EVER. If you wanna meet then let’s go out somewhere not in my house. There’s this guy who used to come over to my dorm room and nobody liked him yet he’d never stop TALKING. I’d just sit there breathing air until finally I had to leave my own dorm room to do some made up task. My friends say I’m strict or too serious. Thank goodness we don’t really do the whole gift giving thing cause I really hate forcing a smile(All about authenticity though I’ve been told I have an alter ego) or being put out there for show. I literally swear at the pavement whenever I trip even if someone else hears me. I don’t attend anything I don’t absolutely have to I don’t do photos and the grocery line thing? I always make sure I’m the one dashing off. About names this is a funny one. See most guys where I’m from don’t really use their names, don’t bother to introduce themselves so we all call each other ‘bro, dude, bruv, mate or my guy’ I literally once went a whole month without learning someone’s name and at the end of it turns out he didn’t know mine either. Mother would literally ask who he was and I’d just shrug like whatever. That’s how it is between the boys but you’ve gotta make an effort with the opposite sex apparently or they won’t be happy about it (someone tell me I’m wrong). Also, sorry for the rant, it’s just that this post just hit different.
Hi Susan, You are so right in your analysis. But does this only apply to INTJs? Or might it fit a broader group like all INTs? Or maybe even all introverts?
I used to have this problem in college and grad school where someone would say something off color or embarrassing and I would begin to flush. Sure that everyone was looking at me (they weren’t) I would turn a deep crimson. Several times I was so flustered I had to rudely get up and leave the classroom, later apologizing to my professor.
As an INTJ I can’t stand the idea that a lot of people are looking at me!
Totally accurate! I often have the trouble of the gifts and I always have to clarify, that I don’t hate the gift but that in my program isn’t a surprise face or something like that.
I love your articles 👏🏻💕
“Not being able to correct”…Yes! Like when someone writes, “Your hands seem to freeze as your peeling off that last bit of paper,” and I can’t tell him/her – “It’s YOU’RE”!
😉