How To Love Yourself as an INFJ | Podcast 528

7 comments

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  • Isabelle
  • May 8, 2024 at 1:18 am

  This episode was incredibly helpful for me, and triggered a whole series of ‘ah-ha’ moments. Thank you so much, Joel and Antonia!

  One of the things it helped me to see was that it’s incredibly difficult for me to commit to my own perspective/experience/reality. I’m constantly perspective-shifting and am painfully aware of the limitations of my own perspective. This makes it incredibly difficult to stand solidly anywhere.

  This combined with an extremely high level of sensitivity to the energetic field of others has made me feel highly porous and lacking in any sense of internal gravity. A colloquial way of saying it could be that I’m constantly ‘gaslighting myself’ with alternative perspectives/with the perspectives of others.

  Listening to this episode helped me to see this more clearly and has also illuminated a series of other classic INFJ problems. I hold a huge amount of pain around not being seen or understood by others – but I realised a lot of the pain actually comes from not entirely trusting my own experience of not being seen. Trusting my reality somehow makes me feel so much more available for connection.

  I did have a question. I thought I was an INTJ for many years. I think I resonated with some of the thinking aspects mostly because my intellectual capabilities have been strongly rewarded and reinforced through the academic system (I was an over-achiever). But Effectiveness doesn’t resonate at all, and the INFJ cognitive functions seem a much better fit (and I now consistently test as INFJ). But I don’t quite understand how the cognitive functions intersect with intellectual capacity. I trained as a lawyer and am now retraining as a psychotherapist/psychologist. The former came very easily to me (the fine distinctions of the law seem like an Accuracy function), the latter feels more aligned, alive and ‘me’. If Accuracy is only at a 10-year old level, it doesn’t quite make sense to me how thinking-heavy disciplines like law came easily to me. Or am I missing something about how these functions work? (A simple version of this question: How do cognitive functions intersect with intelligence, in a classic ‘IQ’ sense?)

  Thank you so much for the very impactful work you are doing!

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  • Carol
  • April 26, 2024 at 5:14 pm

  Hello Joel/Antonia, Thank you for another insightful podcast with a specific understanding of sending self-love. First listen, the concept sensitivity is part of the healthy INFJ profile. I embrace it as mine to manage. Second listen, slower with pauses, to capture words for tripping points. Defensiveness when not accepted. Yep, own that. I am finding redirects for this. Self-critical as a drive for high quality that can go off the rails and hurt me. Yep. Own that, and will manage with tips you give elsewhere. The number one tone I heard is – manage don’t suppress! Thank you for your affection for us!

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  • Erin
  • April 20, 2024 at 1:25 am

  I listened to this episode when it came out and have been digesting it since. Today, I was recalling a dream I used to have often, that one of my legs was significantly longer than the other. It would cause me to struggle to do anything (like get away from a hungry beast, which was often part of the dream).

  In the context of this episode, I made a connection with one of the takeaways that has stuck with me: I have never fully developed my introverted intuition because the people around me discouraged its use. It started with my family of origin and my desire to get the approval of my teachers in school. My husband (ESFJ preferences) has always subtly pushed back on any of my assertions that couldn’t be backed up and explained with good introverted thinking; obviously, he would say, I haven’t really thought things through. Which is bad, I assume.

  But what’s meant to be my best cognition is not justifiable. This is my short leg. Its growth was stunted – but no more! I’m growing my use of introverted intuition and won’t accept judgments about how I’m supposed to be thinking.

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  • Fred
  • April 18, 2024 at 4:34 pm

  I agree with Chris on one point. I, too, am not sure how to love my INFJ qualities after listening. I think I always need practical, real-world scenarios due to my very limited SE capabilities. I just don’t get how to transform my Fe tendencies that absorb everything like an over-used, oversaturated bathroom rug that hasn’t been washed in years into something that allows me to interact on equal footing with other personality types.

  Of course, I frame this difficulty in context of the larger culture we all exist within. Most other types have something that gets them acknowledgement and recognition, except parent FE. Fe hero for sure gets acknowledged but not when you are being the responsible adult. It’s invisible, people don’t see it and everyone’s always encouraging you to use an immature version of Fi (look out for number one, etc.). FE parent usually challenges people and makes them uncomfortable. In a nation that highly prizes TE effectiveness and SI reliability/consistency, I believe INFJs are one of the true red-headed step-children of the social hierarchy of American culture.

  This podcast just makes me feel like all of my alienation and lack of validation are my fault. I get it, I need to speak my truth and have the tough conversations. I, as well as most INFJs, are not averse to self-improvement. In fact, it’s kind of our thing. It’s one of the reasons why this podcast is so popular with INFJs, we ARE searching for the truth about ourselves, both good and bad. But it’s really not that simple. People, particularly Americans “can’t handle the truth”. They are culturally conditioned to step over it and sweep it under the rug for the sake of subjective feelings and effectiveness. When you try to have the tough conversations or tell uncomfortable truths, when living in a culture so biased toward Fi sentiments (independence, self-reliance, personal truths over universal ones), I will get out Fi’d every time. In other words, if I stand up to my ENFP sister, she out argues and out guilts me every time and she has the cultural validation to back up every point. There’s no way to have an equal relationship with her because we are all socially conditioned to devalue introverted intuition and responsible extraverted feeling. I get told “be selfish” and “stop doing things if you don’t want to” Okay, sure, that sounds like a perfect way to have a sustainable relationship where everyone just does what they want all the time. While I get that people pleasing can be extreme, rarely do we ever hear about how treacherous or depraved Fi users can be. There’s no cultural standard against extreme self-absorption and that is probably why our society is in a dire condition.

  Just my two cents. Maybe I’m just shifting responsibility onto the culture. However, I’ve tried and tried to advocate for my needs, they all get dismissed by other larger cultural values, even by people who I know care about me and truly want the best for me. Many others will argue I should just be an FI user and affirm myself. Well okay, then you have just proved my point. There is nowhere I can turn in this culture where I don’t constantly get told that my life would be better, my relationships would be more fulfilling, and I would be better if only I could stop being an FE user and be an FI user.

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  • Casey
  • March 21, 2024 at 10:57 pm

  I’m an INFJ and I really appreciate this episode so, so much. It has given me tremendous insight (and validation) to my experiences. The last part of tenacity really hit home for me – I feel like I have both sides (self-referencing and outsourced). I would love to hear more of it so I can improve even further. (Also, I want to mention that JJ Park – my dear friend – is the reason I’ve been a fan of yours for years now! Your car model framework has given me so much clarity in my inner work, so from the bottom of my heart, thank you!!)