Why We’re More Than Four Letters

December 11th — Some labels once felt like home. Now I'm learning how gently we can outgrow even the softest ones. 

The Origin of Personality Types

Most of us have stumbled upon a personality type at some point, maybe you've taken a test that told you you're an INFJ, ENFP, or INTP. These four-letter labels come from the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), which was inspired by Carl Jung's original Psychological Types (1921).

Jung introduced the idea that people perceive and interact with the world through different functions:

• Thinking (logic and analysis)

• Feeling (values and empathy)

• Sensing (details and facts)

• Intuition (possibilities and patterns)

He also spoke of introversion and extraversion as fundamental orientations — the direction in which our energy flows. But Jung's goal wasn't to box people into rigid categories. He also believed personality was a living, changing system, something fluid that evolves as we grow and face life's experiences.

How Myers and Briggs Turned Jung's Theory Into MBTI

Decades later, Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers wanted to make Jung's abstract ideas more accessible. They created the MBTI, a tool that divides people into sixteen types based on four dimensions:

1. Introversion (I) or Extraversion (E)

2. Intuition (N) or Sensing (S)

3. Feeling (F) or Thinking (T)

4. Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

It's an elegant system, easy to understand and deeply validating. Reading "your type" can feel like someone finally put your soul into words. That's part of its charm. But it's also where things get tricky.

The Comfort and the Trap of Being "a Type"

Personality type descriptions can feel soothing. They offer a sense of belonging: Oh, so that's why I think like this.

But there's a shadow side. Once we label ourselves ("I'm an INFJ, that's just who I am"), we risk believing the description more than our lived experience. Psychologists call this the Barnum effect — our tendency to see vague, positive statements as uniquely true for us.

When we internalize these narratives, they can quietly limit our growth.
You start to think:

• "I'm introverted, so I can't do that."

• "I'm intuitive, not logical."

• "I'm sensitive, so the world is too harsh for me."

But you're far more complex than four letters can hold.

Were We Born This Way – or Did Life Shape Us?

Here's a question I've been sitting with lately:
If we weren't born INFJs or ENTPs, how did we become them?

Personality doesn't arise in a vacuum. It's an evolving response to life itself — to our genetics, our upbringing, and our environment.

• Part of it is temperament, the nervous system we were born with.

• Part of it is conditioning, what was praised or punished when we were children.

• And part of it is protection — the ways we learned to survive.

Think of the INFJ stereotype: empathic, intuitive, deeply attuned to others. Those qualities can emerge not just from innate sensitivity, but also from growing up in spaces where you had to read emotional cues to stay safe or connected.

So maybe what we call a "type" is actually a story of adaptation, the way our inner world learned to meet the outer one.

The Myth of the Fixed Self

Jung himself would probably remind us that the psyche is not a finished sculpture, but a river.
We change, mature, and heal. Our dominant traits shift as we integrate forgotten parts of ourselves — the thinker learns to feel, the feeler learns to think.

When we over-identify with a type, we risk staying in one chapter of our story, never discovering the others. But life keeps inviting us to grow beyond what we thought we were.

A Gentle Reminder

It's more than okay to find comfort in these frameworks. They can be beautiful mirrors for self-reflection, as long as we remember they're mirrors, not cages.

Sometimes the most self-loving act is to gently question even the things that once made us feel seen. Because growth asks us to leave the box and step into something wider, softer, and truer.

A Gentle Reflection for You

Have you ever found yourself identifying strongly with a label, and then, one day, realizing you've quietly outgrown it? 

Maybe the real journey isn't about finding who we are once and for all, but allowing ourselves to evolve — again and again.

If this reflection resonated, follow me on Instagram @selflavie for more soft thoughts on growth, healing, and self-love. ✨

Soft hugs,
Selflavie 

Curious to Know Your Type?

If you're curious to explore how these sixteen types work, you can take a free version of the Myers–Briggs–inspired test on 16Personalities.com.
Just remember, the result isn't a definition, only a mirror. Something to reflect with, not to live by. 🌿