Just a Girl Who Can’t Say No

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Satan himself could come up to me in the street and ask me to sign his petition, and I would do it because I wouldn’t want to offend him.

I am TERRIBLE at saying no to people. Instead, I get timid and weird, politely agree to whatever question has been posed, and then quietly panic about it until it passes or until I can indirectly find a way to say no without really saying no. I have probably disappointed far more people by doing it this way than by just giving a well-meaning yet firm no. I have over-complicated it like I over-complicate mostly everything.

It makes sense in some ways. I already live in a constant state of awkwardness. Saying no to someone who wants a yes presents a clear and present threat of more awkward. I don’t know if my body can physically handle it.

Thing is, it’s not always even just saying no. Sometimes, it’s saying anything at all. Last week, I had to buy stamps for work. It was for a big mailer and my job involves a huge approval process where every tiny little detail of everything is looked at with a magnifying glass. So, I knew when the girl in the post office started giving me stamps with fish, frogs, and George HW Bush on them that this was never going to fly. I was looking right at her as she loaded these wrong stamps into a bag for me, knowing that if I didn’t say something, there would be consequences.

And yet, I said nothing.

My mind was screaming, “Just tell her those aren’t good stamps! She couldn’t care less about which stamps you buy!” Alas, my mouth was fused shut. I walked out with the “bad” stamps, sat at work, panicked about it a lot, and ended up going back to the post office to exchange them for good old-fashioned American flag stamps.

No harm, no foul. Just time wasted and probably some years off my life.

Why? WHY AM I LIKE THIS?

I’ve often thought that my spirit animal is the pangolin. Not because my shiny and strong scales are sought after worldwide for armor and riches. But because pangolins perpetually look like they don’t want to be a bother.

Exhibit A:

I don’t know about you, but if I were to caption this picture, it would be, “Excuse me, ants, I am so sorry to interrupt your ant march, but if it is alright with you, I would like to eat you now. Please. Sorry again.”

Or perhaps, “Oh, forgive me poacher, I didn’t see you there. I am sorry I didn’t make myself more available to your poaching. Would I like to be poached? Uhhhhhhhhhh well…I’m sure you’re a very good poacher. I wouldn’t want to ruin your day or your future career as a poacher. So I guess you can poach me. Yeah, it’s fine.”

I wish I could say these captions were a comical exaggeration of my behavior. Buttttttt…

Clearly, I need to get better at this “no” thing. My survival might depend on it.

Does anyone else out there have this problem? Do you or a loved one suffer from chronic yes-ness? You probably aren’t entitled to compensation, but take comfort in the fact that the struggle is real.

 

Ending My Stigma Against Myself

I recently did my Myers-Briggs personality breakdown.

For anyone who may not be familiar, the Myers-Briggs system sorts people’s personality types into sixteen different categories, based on four sets of criteria: introverted vs. extraverted, intuitive vs. sensing, thinking vs. feeling, and judging vs. perceiving.

I am an INTJ. No surprises there. If you’d like to take the test, you can do so here: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test (and about 999 other places on the internet).

I’ve never really been a fan of these sorts of things, but I go back and forth on why, depending on the day. Either I think it is impractical to box humans, with all of their complexities, into a simple 16 categories, or I think you’re either a dumbass or not a dumbass and there is no reason to over-complicate it.

It turns out this is a very INTJ thing to say.

Another INTJ thing: this was the most concise chart I could find, but it is taking all of my strength to ignore that it says “extrovert” instead of “extravert.” Extrovert has evolved into an acceptable spelling over the years, but it doesn’t make any linguistic sense.

A me thing: I hate myself for making that statement.

I did the test because we often use it in my office when students are struggling to find a major or a career path. I thought it would be useful for me to better understand the system so I could help the students. As I stated already, I wasn’t exactly shocked by my results, but when I started to do more research, it got a little crazy.

Reading about the INTJ experience was like reading a description of myself: the things I like, the things I’m good (and bad) at, the way I approach conflict, relationships. It was all laid out there on my computer screen.

INTJ is one of the rarest Myers-Briggs personality types, and an INTJ woman is the rarest gender/personality type combination of them all, making up roughly 0.5% of the population. Because of this, an INTJ woman notably has a harder time connecting with other women (and people in general). At first, reading all of this gave me comfort. I had some definition, a name to put to all of my questions about why some seemingly easy things, like being in public, were difficult for me, why I never felt like I was getting anywhere with people. I was just on a different plane. Not a better or worse plane, just different.

There were some qualities of a typical INTJ that I consider good qualities: they are competent workers, they have high professional standards for themselves and others, they embrace the weird and the creative, they are known as the entrepreneurs, strategists, architects. Some famous INTJs include Mark Zuckerberg, Nikolai Tesla, and other innovative thinkers.

But then, I started to get angry.

Because as I scrolled through my Google results, I started to see headlines like, “How to be a Likable INTJ Woman,” and, “Maintaining Your Femininity as an INTJ Woman,” or, “What It’s Like Being an INTJ Woman (And How to Fix it).” It was like the greater population’s consensus was that I needed to be repaired, reprogrammed. And there was nothing about being a likable INTJ man or person. Just woman.

This all started to make me think about all the times I’ve been called a bitch, arrogant, odd, crazy. How many times people have offered up ways I could improve myself, tricks and tips for behaving like a normal woman. I absorbed that information deeply within myself, as an INTJ would, and took it seriously. I set out to make myself a different me because I truly believed the me I had developed over the course of my life was poorly built. I’m really, really tired of thinking that way. It is hard to be fighting with yourself all the time.

Now that I’m older, I realize…I am odd. That’s okay. Call me odd. But if we are going to throw around nasty terms at one another, I think they should be reserved for those filled with malice, ill-intent, hatred, sadism. I’ve never approached any social situation with anything other than discomfort and obsessive concern about whether or not I’ll be wanted. I don’t think I deserve to be called a bitch because I don’t fit into your idea of what I should be. We may have different interests, but we are both human, and that means something.

And you know what? As Tina Fey once said, “bitches” get stuff done. And so do INTJ women.