Making peace with my Myers Briggs: Confessions from an ESFJ

I was in the corporate world and uncomfortable with the F.

I took my first Myers Briggs test in August 2014. It was my first introduction to a “real” personality test. Until that point, I had grown up perusing the quizzes in American Girl magazines and mot recently BuzzFeed “Which Sex and the City Character Are You?” Anything that would get me closer to understanding me. I knew there had to be trends in people that could be neatly categorized, I just didn’t know how.

Receiving those results led me down deep paths of introspection, validation, and even some shame, which is what this article is about. You’ll read about me getting labeled as an F (Feeling) and why it felt like a punch to the gut.

My new party trick was to slurrily ask people if they knew their Myers Briggs, and if they didn’t know, I’d excitedly pull up 16types.com or ask questions to help them decide on a letter. “When this party ends, would you want to keep going or go home and rest?”

Humans are complex, and the word of caution about this test that I didn’t hear is that the Myers Briggs helps us understand the most basic elements of a person. One ESFJ might seem different from another ESFJ because their history, programming, and experiences manifest in a multitude of beautiful subtleties.

The mistake I made is thinking a person is Extroverted OR Introverted, Sensing OR Intuitive, Feeling OR Thinking, and Judging OR Perceiving.

The OR in that line of thinking leads to exclusion of the other option. Growing up, this is how I saw the world: Actions were Good OR Bad and there was Love OR Hate. I contribute this extremism to being driven to a Southern Baptist church every Sunday and Wednesday until I was 17. My exposure to the world was limited to 2 out-of-house experiences: demanding academia (Make an A OR you’re not smart) or fire-and-brimstone morality spouted from a mahogany pulpit to thousands of upstanding people (Follow all these rules perfectly OR be a disappointment to your faith. And if you’re a woman, here is an extra set of rules to follow OR you’re a disgrace to the genders.).

This short decision tree of ORs was survival to know how to navigate the world as a teenager. When everything is so confusing and so much, it was a simple formula to help me know how to fit in. All a teenager wants is to fit in. What I didn’t know then is that I was forcing myself to fit in to a suburban world that I wasn’t wired for. On the other end were the teenagers who found their own paths and “caused trouble” as they couldn’t stomach fitting in to the sheltered world they were born into. I heard my parents and teachers lament over these outliers — In a world of bad OR good, they are bad for disrupting the norm and making life difficult for others. Based on my simplistic formula, the bad would be a dead end to progress, so I had to choose good.

Good led me to college, to a corporate job at a bank, to an MBA, and to another good job.

These experiences also highlighted a similar view of good: Show up to meetings on time, do what’s asked of you, stay level-headed.

So in August 2014, when my test came back, I saw:

Extroverted! Yay!

Sensing! It checks out.

Feeling…. I feel?

Judging! Harsh word but yes.

Feelings were not discussed in church, in my studies, and certainly not in my job. If anyone showed too much distress or disagreed with anyone in the hierarchy, it was usually met with termination or blank stares and judgment. I was always rewarded for hustling, for making others’ lives easier, for “listening so well.”

In 2014, it’s not that I was a robot. I had genuine connection with friends, loved boyfriends, and pioneered my own path by being the first in my family to leave the suburbs and religion — all based on what felt best for me. But I was still timid, looking for the right boxes to check, and not causing any “trouble.”

When I saw the F on my paper, I truly thought I had failed. I was afraid my coworkers would see it and think of me differently — as an emotional woman who couldn’t keep up with the demands of business. All my friends were Thinking, and I had done such a good job to blend in.

I took the test again in 2018, hoping the test would be “right” this time, and put me in the Thinking column. Alas, I was still marked as Feeling.

Now it’s 2021, and I finally embrace this “diagnosis.” Through therapy, using my authentic voice, and practice following my intuition, Feeling is my superpower. Instead of suppressing it, I’ve actually entangled it into my business conversations — I work in corporate Learning & Development and now rock at change management because I can put myself in the end-users’ shoes and advise on a strategy that will consider their points of views. I use it in conversations with friends because I can feel when their energy is different and pivot my conversation or approach to a topic in a way that won’t overwhelm them. I am complimented not just on my listening now, but on the insights and questions, I bring to the table that my Thinking counterparts don’t naturally consider. I’ve also gotten to know myself better, as I explore my genuine wants and feelings versus only mirroring those around me.

You are not just one thing. You are Feeling AND Thinking.

It’s not that people do one thing to the complete exclusion of the other, it’s more about what they will be drawn to first. It would be a mistake to say that thinking types don’t take into consideration the feelings of others, or that feeling types are incapable of rational thought. People with a thinking preference may start with the logic, then consider the impact on people before returning to an objective standpoint to make a final decision. The feeling approach tends to start by looking at the effect on people, then looks at the logic involved, before finally checking that the feelings of all concerned have been considered in the final decision. — Tim Schuler

Test or no test, embrace your natural tendencies. The world needs you in your full beautiful offering. I’m embracing my Feeling and the power of AND.