The Invisible Identity War

INTJ Traits, Autistic Masking, and Breakdown

I spent my life digging through psychology, trying to understand myself. Then one day, I had simply had enough. I was at war with myself. For years, I fought a losing battle within, despite nothing external to explain it. The struggle lay between adapting to the context, playing the part, and the inner urge to either withdraw or break convention.

I was inward-focused and private, my thoughts and feelings mine alone to sit with. Calm, detached, blending in with other quiet types. My intuition raced ahead, seeing patterns, projecting outcomes, tracking results. Because all of this lived inside me, people were oblivious to the strategic planning and conflict bubbling beneath the surface.

The inability to simply inhabit the moment was exhausting. What should have been a fun dinner became calculation: am I pulling the right expressions, mirroring the right body language, saying the right things, while everyone else seemed naturally at ease?

This chameleon-like presence left me confident one moment and quietly observing the next. Being an INTJ felt like a hard pill to swallow. The constant doubting of systems, the urge to dismiss typology itself, it was the canary in the coal mine that made me hard to place.

So imagine my surprise when, after a breakdown that left me jobless and emotionally wrecked, I discovered I was also autistic and burnt out.

An INTJ’s private internal world is chosen, it gives more than it takes. Masking is forced, and it is costly. To the outside observer they look identical, but to live inside them is radically different.

The dinner table is the clearest example. INTJ privacy looks like quiet observation, waiting until something worth saying arises. Masking looks the same but feels entirely different. Drained afterwards, buzzing in the moment yet flattened by the effort’s aftermath.

This duality runs deeper than the dinner table. An INTJ’s restorative need for alone time and thought can be confused with the Autistic need for isolation from overwhelm. Seemingly a loner or aloof either way, though one’s preference is another’s coping strategy.

Coming across as detached, the self-assured INTJ may limit their engagement to what they deem worthwhile. Whereas Autistic masking reflects the equally composed and controlled exterior, hiding the internally anxious script.

Seeming absent from the moment, the INTJ is busy thinking ahead and projecting outcomes, while the Autistic side is too busy with masking and sensory overload to connect effectively in the now.

Silence, too, can look the same in both. The INTJ prefers to wait until something meaningful arises, while autistic silence is born out of processing and uncertainty.

This war between the authentic self and the adaptive self makes dropping the mask an active choice that often feels worse than the passive suffering of keeping it on. I came to see it as my own trolley problem.

It is not rational; it is egotistical. You would rather let the trolley run on and kill five passively than make the conscious choice to pull the lever and kill one. Even though the maths says fewer people suffer, the mind decides its ego is more important, removing responsibility by avoiding a choice. But of course, not making a choice is still making one.

It is not widely acknowledged that many live in this invisible war. For me, the split between INTJ and autism fuelled burnout and ignited identity confusion. Learning to integrate the two, keeping the privacy that serves and shedding the mask that drains, is how I finally began to win the battle and tell my two selves apart.