28 Points Concerning the INFJ Personality Type
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- INFJs have to find some way to sort out their feelings from the feelings of others – if not in writing or art, then in an expression of religious faith, or the effort to help others to express themselves.
- Because INFJs are so alert to the unsaid, they may find it difficult to sort out their own emotions from the mood and feelings they discern in others.
- INFJs are exquisitely sensitive to nuance and suggestion – all the ways we unwittingly express how we feel, who we are, what we believe about ourselves and others.
- Young INFJs, in particular, are sometimes labeled hyper-sensitive or melodramatic, because their self-experience is tied to others emotional boundaries.
- INFJs wrestle all their lives with the conflict they perceive maintaining harmonious relationships and expressing emotional truth, and it is a central issue in the books, novels, plays, and psychological articles that INFJs write.
- INFJs are also capable of turning their inner experience into trenchant social commentary – by finding their truest voice and using it.
- Their personal approach and ability to find common ground with others combines with their intuitive need for innovation and alternative views.
- Like INTJs, INFJs have a tendency to use their secondary function for protection – for example, to distance themselves from a relationship that demands too much of them emotionally.
- Optimally, they bring their emotional insights into the community as art, or they use them to help others come to terms with conflict in their own lives.
- The INFJs sense of physical well-being is very much allied with their relationships and emotional investments.
- INFJs frequently express themselves indirectly, depending on unstated implications to carry their meaning, and they can be put off by too direct a reference to something that is of great value to them.
- Types who do this can become a potent focal point for others’ unexpressed fears and yearnings.
- They often have a gift for verbal imagery and they are sometimes capable of raising to consciousness something that others can only dimly sense.
- They are particularly sensitive to others’ feelings of exclusion, and they may address or try to rectify inequities of status or opportunity within the context of their profession.
- However, if their inner life is not balanced with reality, they may feel so different from others that they become self-conscious and defensive.
- INFJs require a sense of meaning in the work they do.
- Their primary relationship is to their inner world, and they are receptive to others only up to a point.
- It should be recognized that INFJs and more like INTJs than they initially appear.
- Unlike INTJs however, their sense of the unexpressed is oriented by emotional awareness.
- They may be drawn to dysfunctional people, romanticizing their ability to see something in them that others cannot see.
- Their 1 percent representation in the population belies the tremendous influence these types have in shaping cultural ideas about identity and being true to oneself.
- When they are able to use their Extroverted Feeling function well, they bring their vision back into the public domain; they find a way to integrate it into the fabric of the community.
- These types often find that their sympathy and perceptive listening have been mistaken for an overture of friendship, which they didn’t intend.
- Because INFJs use Fe to relate to the outer would, they may seem more outgoing than they really are.
- They are not interested in the precision of language, as INTJs are, but in its rich possibilities for metaphor and multiple layers of meaning.
- Their intuition takes them into psychological areas that other types are likely to keep at bay.
- People appreciate their ability to listen and to consider group feelings and values.
- They are entirely capable of meeting the expected surface demands of a situation, all the while nursing secret criticisms of a partner or a friend.