I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons about being an INFJ over the last few years. Perhaps chief among them is that I truly have to guard my emotional and physical energies, because when they are depleted, it takes time to recover. And that time usually has to be spent alone, sometimes in silence. It has to do with lowering the amount of sensory input I am receiving, down like ten or twenty notches. Or a hundred. When I try to continue life without first recovering, my walls are down and my guards are all at home sleeping; the results can be disastrous. These are the moments where the above words are so apropos.

I suppose the whole thing can be likened unto the gas tank of a car. If I have slept well, had my quiet time in the morning, exercised wisely, and eaten well, my tank is full and I’m good to go! It’s when I neglect these things or make poor choices that the problems start to occur. If my tank is only half full in the morning, then I have to be very careful about how I use my resources and how readily available I make my time and energy to others.

I’ve been a public school teacher for quite some time. This territory involves a lot of people and an enormous commitment of time and energy. There are long winter months when I arrive at school before the sun has dared peek over the horizon and I return home after it has completed its trek across the sky.

It doesn’t happen often at school (when it does, it’s usually the afternoon of the last day of the week), but when my tank is depleted, my students can plainly see. I mean, my normal approach is high-energy and bad dad jokes. In these moments of stark contrast, my students show concern and ask questions like, “Are you depressed?” This is actually quite touching, because they care about my well-being, as I do theirs.

It can be hard to explain, but no, I’m not depressed. But I understand that’s how it looks: extremely low energy, low output, sputtering along. I’m on “E”. I think some of them can understand being exhausted, or “on empty,” in a sense. Maybe the kiddos that work hard on the farm and know what exhaustion is. Or maybe the intense introverts who are forced to undergo the same scholastic social lifestyle as everyone else; I know many of them would rather crawl under a rock and hide for a while.

I will confess that there have been times in my life where I have been so depleted, yet forced by circumstance or necessity to continue, that it was only through an extreme power of will and mental fortitude that I could continue. Those times were followed by an utter physical and emotional breakdown that required sleeping for about twenty straight hours and a great deal of self-care to recover.

So, to my fellow INFJs out there, or anyone who can relate with this, I encourage you to guard your time and energy, make wise choices about how you refill your tank each day. Be healthy and active, but do all things in moderation.