I keep getting conflicting input from others about my type. A lot of people think I'm an INTJ just because I come off to them as an "intellectual" (I actually hate this term), instead of an ENTJ. I'm also not in a career associated with ENTJs, and I have a compassionate streak. Going by this logic, I'm either not an ENTJ or a defective one, and I'll admit, subconsciously I sometimes try to behave more stereotypically ENTJ because of this. Have you ever dealt with this before yourself as an INFJ?
My approach to typology is such that it does not contribute anything to my sense of identity. Part of this is because I am not in the stage of life where I am seeking to find myself or understand how I fit into the world (the joys of not being a teenager/young adult). Another part is because my understanding of typology is purely practical in the sense that I see it merely as a tool for dissecting myself and the occasional relationship issue, i.e., it is not a “way of life”, or a personal “mission” or belief system, or a rigid framework for deciding how I conduct life. To me, typology is a simple analytical device among many that is sometimes useful for building awareness when needed and that is all.
I get mistyped as INTP, INFP, INTJ, ENTJ, ENFJ all the time, usually based on how “warm” or “cold” I am at any given moment, so it goes to show how terrible people are at typing others, mainly because they don’t understand the distinction between cognition and behavior and how function development manifests. I hear people say things like, “You can’t be INFJ if you xyz” or “If you’re INFJ you should xyz” and I ignore it. Cognitive functions describe a set mental pattern of how people make sense of the world but the way the pattern manifests in real life behaviors is fluid and dynamic and highly responsive to environmental influences, and it can be manipulated by the personal will to grow and improve.
The main disservice the MBTI school has done to function theory is to strip it of nuance and inadvertently make it seem like type is deterministic or fatalistic in some way, that you cannot escape it or that it limits your range of activities and behaviors. Why would I want to be a stereotypical INFJ who suffers a superiority/martyr complex, swinging irrationally between door slamming and being a magical mystic? Why would you want to be a stereotypical ENTJ who can too easily rationalize away people’s concerns to achieve your goals? What good would it do to approach people by stereotyping and offending them with weird expectations of how they should behave according to their type? Applying typology in this way seems entirely counterproductive. I prefer to get to know someone for who they really are, unfiltered, and analyzing their type if and only if it is absolutely necessary for developing the relationship further.