*stands up*

Hi, I’m Jessica Brown and I’m an INFJ.

Welcome to my ongoing struggle to balance the drive and inspiration to be a warm, driving force in birth work while being filled with crippling self-doubt and perfectionistic paralysis.

What is an INFJ? Broad strokes: INFJs are people guided by feelings and their internal intuition, and judging rather than perceiving. Now, don’t worry, that doesn’t mean I will judge you or your actions. All that shows is that I prefer to have structure in my personal life rather than flying off the cuff and improvising. So I make lists of tasks so I don’t forget things, I have to focus solely on one thing at a time or I’ll get side tracked and not complete my task, and I like to keep my personal space organized.

I wish I remembered to keep a mood tracker!

Granted, I do tend to fluctuate between judging and perceiving depending on how I’m feeling. It’s a lot easier to be laid back go with the flow type when you aren’t stressing yourself out on a million different seemingly unrelated things. . .

Okay, so I’m definitely more INFJ than INFP.

A key marker of this is just how much I procrastinate and get overwhelmed by trying to do too many things at once.

*See all the things that go into starting a business, a website, a blog, posting on social media for said website, continuing education for said business, feeling like I have 10000 things I need to do all right this minute and starting several projects or none at all and completing none of them.

Add the fact that I’m introverted so reaching out and networking and doing all these things that feel very extroverted can be rather difficult. At least when I allow myself to be filled with self-doubt and feel like an imposter no matter how qualified I am… The struggle is real.

However!

I have the satisfaction of finding the career or life path that fits me to a tee. I love everything about birth work. I love learning all the different ways to help birthing people, their families, and becoming more and more knowledgeable and helpful on the vast subject of birth, holistic health, and women’s health. There is quite literally so much to learn and do and share.

Which can be overwhelming for someone like me who sees the big picture and wants to put everything into it’s perfect place right away so birthing people everywhere have access to this beautiful thing I want to create for them to make their lives easier.

I want to care for, support, encourage, empower, inform, guide, and provide helpful services to you. Whether you are pregnant, in your postpartum period, wanting to avoid pregnancy, curious about healthful living, or going through a major life change. There is just so much I want to be able to offer to a wide array of people.

So rather than this inspiration and passion driving me to a focused and organized approach to achieving these goals: I am struck with decision fatigue and paralysis due to fear of failure.

I’m aware of these tendencies that undermine my efforts. Truly, I am. Each day is different, so sometimes I am very focused and get many things done and feel optimistic. While other days I am devastated by how little I’ve been able to do or feel like the content I want to share (and have yet to post) will come across as too academic, or not informative enough, and worst of all: Unhelpful.

This brings me to why I’m sharing all of this with the great wide internet on my business blog (albeit the personal journey side of it).

During one of my many moments of fear of failure and imperfection inspired procrastination, I stumbled upon the Frank James youtube channel. This sweet sweet INFJ has posted several videos about being an INFJ and ways to cope with the struggles we encounter and to improve ourselves (another INFJ trademark).

Seeing someone who is very similar to me in the simplest of ways (being an INFJ), but posting videos that vary between informative, personal, and comedic on a regular basis was inspiring.

I’m assuming he probably struggled with a lot of the things I am struggling with when he first started his channel (and maybe still does with each video he posts). He still makes and shares his content.

So as I look at the mountain of blog posts I’ve started, but have been unsure of how to finish and too afraid to post; I decided to start with where I am at.

This isn’t a summary of how I became interested in being a doula or a midwife or why I stopped taking hormonal birth control. I will get to those topics in time, but for now I really needed to put into words something personal enough that I used my own voice instead of my academic programming from 16 years of school.

I hope that this helps you understand me better, and maybe (hopefully!) give you the patience to stick with me through my journey into blogging and opening a birth centered business.

Bonus, if you related to any of the things I shared I would love to hear about it. I found it rather cathartic reading the comment section of the Frank James youtube videos. So many INFJs who related to his content and sharing with each other the struggles they have been facing.

INFJ Struggles

However!

You are not alone. Hella cliche, but accurate nonetheless.

The not so loud, but still rather proud: INFJ :)