INFJ door slam – Dreamyoga

I have started the process of looking around for an alternate orthopaedic surgeon. I have secured a provisional appointment. I just know that should I follow through, this it is going to open a can of worms. In principle a second opinion is “allowed”. In practice it can put noses out of joint, cause gossip and stoke rivalries. I can stop it. I am going to sleep on it. But the moment I tip up for an appointment I will have to explain myself. There will be uncomfortable feelings on both sides. It will not be smooth and I will be the problem, not anyone else. I am also a foreigner now, too. I do not have citizenship and my right to stay expires in a few months’ time, March.

Way back when I lived near Farnham, I had a GP doctor who was athletic-skinny. He had a pro-forma crib sheet for calculating BMI. It was issued by the Ministry of Truth. He calculated mine and proceeded to lecture me from his soap box about the need to lose weight. Even though I was not officially obese back then. I asked him to show me my extra body fat. He could not. He said that people can be fat on the inside. Whatever that means, those were his literal words, fat on the inside. I showed him my large biceps and claimed muscle mass but he persisted. I then said that I had recently read an article in the BMJ about how raw BMI data was often over interpreted in general practice medicine. His back was up and he was affronted.

I just knew that we would never get on and for our mutual benefit it would be better for me to have another GP. I saw him a few times before I changed practice and each meeting was fractious. He is a human being, so was I. I have rarely had a reaction like this from a woman. I concluded that possession of a penis played a role in interpersonal dynamics. I am not insecure about the average size of mine, physically and metaphorically. I don’t have a whole bag of chips on my shoulder.

The caveat here is that my perception could be skewed. I perceive that I have an uncanny knack of putting people’s back up especially when they deem themselves superior, more expert, to me. I can be more frank than some like or can handle. I am just being me. I am not trying to wind them up or belittle them. I get what I perceive of as bad reactions.

In general I know when I have the early stages of a bronchial infection. I report to a GP doctor and quite rightly because there is not enough cack in the lungs, they do not initially prescribe an antibiotic. I just know in many cases I will be back soon when the cack gets cacky enough for antibiotics. They have a process to go through to limit over prescription. I just know that I have to wait until a certain severity of illness presents. They are doing their job, that is all. It is possible that I might wait too long one day.

I had a bad clash of personalities with my cancer “care” nurse a decade ago. She had severe mother superior tendencies and I met her dogmatism head on. This made collecting my results from her an unpleasant thing which I came to dread. Rather than looking forward to her support, I would dread the meetings. I asked them to send my carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) results by email. They refused. If anything went wrong it would have to be very wrong indeed before I would reach out to my allocated cancer care nurse. I never did. I just knew that the best thing was to switch hospital care teams. It sounded simple and I could offer the reason of enhanced proximity.

However I opened a can of worms. Every time I went for a colonoscopy or to follow up blood in the faeces, they wanted to know why I had changed teams. They kept pressing me. They seemed obsessed with gaining this information. I gave the same answer that they were closer, which was true but incomplete. On a number of occasions the chimney sweep insisted that the blood was from piles. I just knew that was not the case. So we had to have an examination for piles before he agreed to a sigmoidoscopy. I don’t particularly like having endoscopes shoved up my arse but there was no way of avoiding his adamant insistence that it was piles. I just had to let him go through his process. He had all the power and I wanted to find out if I had a new cancer or a recurrence of the old one. I was not anxious I wanted data. People can see anxious when need for data manifests.

Sometimes I just know when the best thing is to drop something and walk away. It is for everyone’s benefit. Even If I am inconvenienced it can be better just to let things lie, leave them well alone.

A while back someone trying to be clever said that I was a part of the equation as to why things were not working out. I simplified his equation by removing a variable, me. I don’t know how well the equation worked out after that…If I was a/the problem at least they had the possibility of moving forward unencumbered by me.

This feeling that I am a/the problem according to others has presented multiple times in this life and it has resulted in a walk away or a door slam on more than a few of these.

If I am the problem I want to simplify things…

I just know when people are seeing or are starting to see me as a/the problem.

Maybe they are right and it is always me…

It is just one of those things…

The human ability to kid oneself is well known though for those kidding, difficult to accept. At the moment there are many who deem the slaughter in Gaza justifiable and apt. They do not imagine any karmic consequences because that notion would be very inconvenient. Irrespective of how things are temporarily brought to a close, there will be consequences ongoing.

The normal idea of success in the “West” might be to have a good career, make progress, climb the housing ladder and perhaps have a relationship or marriage and thence to propagate the species. One might like a nice car and pleasant foreign holidays. Perhaps gaining some measure of societal kudos along the way. One would not sulkily throw one’s toys out of the cot; one would comply more or less to the norm. Psychology might point you in this direction.

If for example you are a bodhisattva called Siddartha Gautama, it would be OK to run out on a young wife and child, leave the palace of your father the King and renounce the kingdom to which you are heir. But for normal people this would be wrong.

Viewed from one angle this is an ungrateful act of wanton self-sabotage. Siddhartha shot himself in the foot and abandoned a pleasant life, one which many might aspire to. To the starving, the poor and the unshod this makes no sense. Yet according to legend this subsequently facilitated his teaching and his completion of the career goal of any bodhisattva, namely enlightenment and Buddhahood.

In the post previous I pointed at something that many would not understand. I shelved a high value job at a prestigious space agency. The successful completion of which could have opened the way for senior positions and a way back from the “wilderness”. We would have had plenty of cash.

There were a number of warning omens when we were viewing properties in and near Leiden. Retrospect suggests that the job was a temptation of sorts.

Earlier I walked out of a marriage with a very young child which caused the sale of a house in London now worth £ 1 million. I left a new age group which I gave heart and soul to establish. I “gave” my shares back to a start-up company the vision for which was to a fair extent mine. I quit a then tenured academic job at a top university, something to which many aspired. I had no other job lined up just a few training courses. One of these went pear shaped so I gave them up too. To move from a highly timetabled job into near nothing was a bit of a shock to the system. I resigned from another short lived university teaching post. I cut contact with my aged mother. I forwent relations with family.

None of these were easy. I am not a prince.

One could say that I am simply a loser who could not hack it.

One could say that these were acts of stepwise renunciation. The integral over micro-renunciations has a similar effect to sudden departure.

Or one could call deem them all the INFJ door slam, a fault in my character.

What is it that seeks success? It is the self and not the Soul. In this logic renunciation is indeed an act of self-sabotage. The ambitions of the self are stymied in stepwise succession. I know that I can live without any of these accoutrements. If you like I have physical plane proof by experience. I am not bound by the fear of missing out on a normal successful life.

I could be kidding myself. Trying to find an excuse for my squandering of opportunity. Or maybe I have simply thrown my toys out of my cot because things did not go my way.

Nobody else has experienced these things like I did. Nobody else has felt the tearing, the ripping. I am alone in my moccasins which I may not loan to another.

People might have opinions.

I cannot return to the trajectory my life was once on. Any attempt has gone badly awry. The dramatic might say that I am not meant to. Or one could argue that it is the karma of wanton squandering. I made the bed and now I must sleep in it.

There remains one question concerning what if anything I do with the remainder of earthly sojourn.

Hmnn…

Tag: INFJ door slam

When You Just Know

Renunciation or Self-Sabotage?