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In this episode Joel and Antonia dive deep into the needs and desires of the INFJ personality type.
In this podcast on the INFJ Personality Type you’ll find:
- This podcast episode talks about the INFJ personality type
- We have an unusually high number of INFJs represented in Personality Hacker
- INFJs have the tendency to feel very misunderstood.
- 2 important components to understand INFJs:
- Their mental process is called ‘Perspectives’. They’re actually watching their own mind work and form patterns. Because this isn’t something verifiable, other people just don’t believe them or reject what they radiate.
- INFJs pair Perspectives with Harmony. When a person with the INFJ personality type tries to figure out what to do, the first thing that pops in their mind is, “how do we make sure everybody’s needs are met?” This process is in tuned with unspoken social contracts that we accept.
- INFJs are very sensitive to the emotions of other people that they end up absorbing them.
- The more sensitive they are, the more they have the tendency hiding. The less expressive they get, the more pain they experience.
- It’s difficult for the INFJ personality type to build intimacy with another person.
- INFJs who are developed and growth oriented don’t retreat to coldness. They’ve taken the harmony process in order to understand and create healthy boundaries.
- INFJs are also able to see how things will play out in the future and this is one of the reasons why they are hesitant to build intimacy with other people.
- Because they are so aware of what’s going on with the other person, they end up having one-sided relationships.
- Jesus of Nazareth, Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr were probably INFJs.
- INFJs are not in the receiving end in victimization. They have extraordinary capabilities within them.
- If you are an INFJ personality type or know someone who is, here are a few things you need to note:
- You don’t have to absorb other people’s emotions and have it stay there. You need to develop techniques to let it go.
- Words have power and the way you describe yourself will become your reality. Change the way you talk about yourself and think of ways of being a co-creator. Create a reality that’s positive to you. If you change the word use, you can change reality.
- When getting everybody’s needs met, you’re basically part of everybody. Getting your needs met means you take care of yourself. Get sensitive to what those needs are in real time.
- Honor what you need in the moment and be willing to take care of it. This will help you get other’s needs met.
- Continue to look for people who understand you. Allow yourself to be understood and form the relationships you’ve been desiring.
- You can’t change that you’re going to absorb people’s emotions. Manage and learn strategies that will help you figure out a way to let the energy come in and go out.
- Do what you can to see yourself as a person who has positive things to contribute to the world. Focus what you got as gift and not as a burden to others.
Helpful resources for the INFJ personality type:
Developing Your INFJ Personality Type (by Donna Dunning)
The INFJ Personality Type (by Dr. A.J. Drenth)
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304 comments
Thank you so much for existing on earth, for relieving the pain and solitude I feel in my everyday life. I feel like my family isn’t much my family sometimes. I know they love me. I know a lot of things but feel differently. They’re such concrete and methodic persons who go on in life in a certain path and I took a different one. I felt they were pointing me as the weaker one in the family. I will have 23 years old in April 12th and my brother is 20 and still goes to school and works while I’m not. My parents blame me for that. They blame me for having a depression and for being hurt. It’s incredibly lonely in my heart sometimes. I have a few friends but nothing deep. I had a friend once with whom I connected a lot and rejected me from feeling so much. I began to send messages to his inbox uncontrollably. Felt powerless and as if I had knives in my heart. He did not cared like I cared. He did not understand who I was. Still I feel this energy towards him that I cannot control and I hate myself for it. The cool part is… acknowledging the power I have to change and affect things in my everyday life. I feel that everything I put work and soul into turns to gold. But I have to say I don’t really care about this gift if I’m not feeling loved for who I am. In this society I’ve been crushed. I’ve been around people who really took me as a nobody. And when I took my guitar and sang then I was somebody to seek. And when I stopped, it’s like nobody ever knew I existed.. I wanted to be loved for the good reasons. But they only loved me for how I had so much to say, and feel and improvise. And what’s ironic is the other parts of me who were seeking understanding in my worst times were not taking in consideration. So they saw this shiny giving figure drop down and they did nothing to help me like I helped them. I think I needed love and help. I guess that’s why I isolated myself at home doing nothing but laying in my bed. Having no friends to comfort me and my parents who found my habits repetitive. If you knew how many times I had to say ‘’no it’s not that, you don’t understand’’. I know this seems as a pretty negative text.. but the pain is so deep today, i guess I felt like sharing. I just want to love and be loved.. I have so much to give. I know I will get better. I meditate, I try to breath and walk. But I still suffer and feel I am not respected as I should be. Sorry everybody Im not feeling so well today. Sorry again. Thank you for this broadcast tho.
Thanks! Hmmm, it seems that perhaps I mirror more than absorb emotions. But everything else that exemplifies an INFJ is spot on for me! Great article.
Thanks for the comment!
I’m not sure how certain you feel about your type, but just food for thought… I wrote an article on some of the lesser known differences between INFPs and INFJs. It’s possible that you’re more proficient at ‘mirroring’ emotions than absorbing them. Take a gander:
http://www.personalityhacker.com/infp-vs-infj/
Of course, no one knows you as well as you know yourself, and only can you determine your best-fit type. :)
A
I really enjoyed listening to this episode! Though, I have always thought of myself as a strange INFJ: I don’t really absorb people’s emotions! I can feel a vibe in a room and meet and talk to people and guess how they feel about me, how they feel about others, and will relatively quickly conclude whether I want to continue to get to know someone based on whether I see us being a longer-term, fulfilling/fruitful relationship, but as far as absorbing emotions to the point that I feel them that acutely, that’s an INFJ trait that I don’t possess.
I am much more likely to identify what someone is feeling (and perhaps can guess why), but I don’t feel what their emotions. Rather, knowing that another person is uncomfortable might make me uncomfortable, but then I just distance me feelings from theirs. I identify what they are feeling, but I don’t take it on so much that I can’t escape their/my feeling, and I do not mistake it for my own feeling (meaning, I don’t mistake me feeling uncomfortable as either ME suddenly feeling uncomfortable nor as me feeling someone else’s discomfort). Rather, I understand the exchange specifically as someone else’s discomfort causes me to become uncomfortable, not that I’m suddenly taking on their emotion by proximity. Because I don’t identify this as me feeling other people’s emotions (which then places control of my emotions in someone else’s hands, basically), and instead I look at as me allowing myself to merely be influenced by other people emotions, it’s easier for me to distance the influence that other people’s emotions can have on me. I more or less choose to not be influenced by how other people feel.
I understand that for most INFJs, it is impossible to NOT absorb other people’s emotions as your own, and therefore, this strategy wouldn’t work for them. Sometimes I feel like I am really missing out on a very interesting (albeit, frustrating and exhausting) INFJ trait by not having the innate ability to absorb other people’s emotions so accurately, completely, and quickly.
Thanks for the insightful podcast! I’ve always been “different” and not necessarily in a bad way but, until I stumbled upon the Myers-Briggs research and your podcast, I never had a context to put it in. A lot of my personality “quirks” I chalked up to living through a painful childhood. Raised by a loving alcoholic mother, I thought checking “the weather report” as I opened the front door after school was completely logical. Later in life, married to a difficult person and a part of a difficult extended family, I could check “the weather report” at family parties. I could tell, within a window of about 15 minutes, when the fight would begin. So I’d gather up my small children and politely say my goodbys and leave. I never realized that anyone noticed until my two younger sister-in-laws began following me out the door. They had seen the pattern :) At 61, I’ve learned a lot … and your information helps to clarify a lot more. My suggestion to others struggling is to be grateful for what you have (sometimes it is simply that the traffic light stayed green or you could breathe in after you breathed out) but the thought accumulates and builds a positive nature. And find a study/habit that grounds you in the “moment”. Photography has been a godsend … when there is too much static around me, I can analyze the light for future photo sessions or focus on how I would frame a shot of whatever is in front of me. Thank you for your work.