The Place I Went When I Couldn’t Go Anywhere Else…

I have spent a lot of time trying to understand what happens to a person when the world they once knew no longer fits.

Not just emotionally.

Physically.

When your body changes the rules.

When trauma changes the way you experience yourself.

When the things you used to do without thinking suddenly require energy, planning, recovery, or sometimes simply aren’t possible anymore.

I think this is where being an INFJ has affected me in ways I didn’t fully understand for a very long time.

Because when I couldn’t move through the outside world in the way I once had, I moved deeper into the inside world.

I went where I could still go.

Into my mind.

Into ideas.

Into patterns.

Into questions.

Into the endless landscape of trying to understand why things happen the way they do.

I became fascinated with the architecture of being human.

Why do we become who we become?

Why do certain memories stay with us?

Why do some experiences change us forever?

Why do we repeat things we consciously don’t want to repeat?

What happens to the parts of ourselves we had to leave behind in order to survive?

And perhaps most importantly:

Who am I underneath all of that?

I didn’t know it at the time, but I think my mind became a place of refuge.

When my physical world became smaller, my internal world became enormous.

My Mind Became Somewhere I Could Still Be Free

There is something comforting about being able to understand something.

If I can find the pattern, I can make sense of the chaos.

If I can understand the wound, maybe I can understand the behavior that grew around it.

If I can trace something back far enough, perhaps I can finally see where it began.

So I researched.

I read psychology.

I explored trauma.

I studied personality.

I became fascinated with astrology and Human Design and all the different languages people have created to try to understand themselves.

I looked at childhood.

Relationships.

Memory.

The nervous system.

Creativity.

The inner child.

I kept collecting pieces.

Not because I wanted to become an expert at being broken.

I wanted to understand the person who had survived.

There is a particular kind of safety in understanding yourself.

It gives you a map when your internal landscape has become unfamiliar.

But there is a trap hidden inside that gift.

You can become so good at analyzing your pain that you never actually allow yourself to feel it.

You can stand outside your own life with a clipboard, taking notes.

You can become the scientist studying the wound instead of the woman sitting beside it.

I’ve had to learn the difference.

Understanding myself helped me survive.

But eventually, understanding wasn’t enough.

At some point, I had to come home to myself.

I Had to Learn That My Energy Was Mine

I think one of the biggest changes that happens when your energy becomes limited is that you begin to see relationships differently.

For a long time, I think I believed that being a good person meant being available.

Understanding.

Accommodating.

Giving people the benefit of the doubt.

Trying to understand why someone behaved the way they did.

Making room.

More room.

And then somehow finding another little corner of myself to give away.

Until there wasn’t much left.

When your energy becomes finite, you can’t keep living that way.

Something inside you starts keeping score.

Not in a vindictive way.

In a survival way.

You begin to ask:

Is this relationship nourishing me or consuming me?

Do I feel more like myself when I am around this person, or less?

Am I staying because I love them, or because I am afraid of disappointing them?

Those questions can change everything.

I have learned that boundaries aren’t walls.

They are doors.

And I get to decide who I open them for.

There are people I can love without allowing them unlimited access to me.

There are relationships I can understand without continuing to participate in them.

There are people whose pain I can empathize with without taking responsibility for healing it.

That has been a difficult lesson for me.

Because caring deeply about people is part of who I am.

But caring deeply doesn’t mean abandoning myself.

Then There Is the Body

This may be the strangest part of all.

Because I can spend so much time living in my mind that I forget I am also a physical being.

My thoughts can be enormous while my body is quietly asking for something very simple.

Rest.

Quiet.

Food.

Space.

Sleep.

Less stimulation.

A slower pace.

Sometimes my mind wants to keep going long after my body has already said no.

And eventually the body wins.

It always does.

There is no amount of intellectual understanding that can negotiate with an exhausted nervous system.

That has been one of the humbling lessons of my life.

I can’t think my way out of being a human.

I can’t research my way out of grief.

I can’t analyze my way out of exhaustion.

And I can’t make my body become something it isn’t simply because my mind has decided it should.

So I have had to begin listening.

Really listening.

To the signals I once ignored.

To the things that overwhelm me.

To the environments that make me feel safe.

To the people who make my nervous system soften instead of tighten.

To the difference between solitude that restores me and isolation that keeps me hidden.

That distinction matters.

Then Came the Anger

I don’t think anger is always the enemy of healing.

Sometimes anger is the part of us that finally realizes something was wrong.

For a long time, I thought healing meant becoming peaceful.

Forgiving.

Understanding.

Letting go.

But there is a stage of healing where something inside you finally stands up and says:

“Wait. That wasn’t fucking okay.”

That anger can be incredibly clarifying.

It can tell you where the boundary was crossed.

It can show you where you abandoned yourself.

It can expose the places where you were taught to believe you were less capable than you actually were.

And for someone like me, anger doesn’t always come out as screaming.

Sometimes it comes out as research.

Sometimes it comes out as writing.

Sometimes it comes out as a very calm sentence that I have spent six months figuring out how to say.

Sometimes it comes out as refusing to participate anymore.

And sometimes it comes out through art.

I think that is one of the reasons creating has become so important to me.

Art explains the things that I cannot always explain using language.

It allows the unconscious to speak before I have figured out what it is trying to say.

It permits me to take something that once existed only as pain and give it shape.

Color.

Texture.

Meaning.

A place to live outside of me.

That feels important.

Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life simply analyzing what happened to me.

I want to make something from it.

I Don’t Think I Am Supposed to Become Who I Was Before

This may be the part I understand differently now.

I used to think healing meant getting back to myself.

But what if there is no going back?

What if the person I was before everything happened was simply an earlier version of me?

What if becoming isn’t about returning?

What if it is about integrating?

Taking the frightened parts.

The angry parts.

The exhausted parts.

The fiercely independent parts.

The little girl who learned to disappear.

The woman who learned to survive.

The artist who kept creating anyway.

The mind that needed to understand everything.

The body that eventually demanded to be heard.

And instead of deciding which parts are acceptable, letting them all become part of the story.

Not allowing the trauma to disappear.

Not allowing it to define everything either.

Just giving it its proper place.

Part of the archive.

Not the entire collection.

I think that is what integration means to me.

It isn’t becoming someone who was never hurt.

It is becoming someone who no longer has to hide the hurt in order to be whole.

And maybe this is why I keep creating.

Why I keep writing.

Why I keep looking for the connections between psychology, spirituality, art, memory, personality, symbolism, and the strange invisible threads that seem to connect one human experience to another.

I am still trying to understand what it means to become myself.

But I don’t think I am searching for the old version of me anymore.

I think I am meeting someone new.

Someone who knows that the body has boundaries.

Someone who knows that the mind can be both sanctuary and hiding place.

Someone who knows that boundaries can be an act of love.

Someone who knows that anger can carry information.

Someone who understands that grief doesn’t have to be conquered.

And someone who has finally begun to understand that survival was never supposed to be the final destination.

It was the beginning.

The rest is becoming.

If you have yet to find a creative outlet for your thoughts and feelings, or to be able to access your physical body… 

Here are some INFJ hobbies that will help you unleash your creativity:

• Journaling
• Music 
• Photography
• Drawing
• Dancing
• Cooking

Take a look at some social INFJ hobbies that will help you foster a sense of community:

• Volunteering
• Pen pals 
• Attending cultural events (live music concerts, art exhibitions, festivals)

If you’re  looking to boost your personal growth, here are some INFJ hobbies you should consider:

• Meditation 
• Coding
• Chess
• Yoga/ Pilates 
• Research
• Reading

If you’re looking to spend some quiet time outdoors, you’ll definitely enjoy these unique INFJ outdoor hobbies:

• Beekeeping
• Rock/ shell hounding
• Gardening 
• stargazing (astrology/ astronomy)

We are all out here, just literally trying to become our authentic selves. Or, at least, some of us are.

♥️ Shilo