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In this episode Joel and Antonia dive deep into the needs and desires of the INFP personality type.
In this podcast on INFP Personality Type you’ll find:
- Why are INFPs misunderstood?
- The cognitive function is a mental process that helps you learn information or make decisions.
- The 4 letter code tells you how your brain is wired. It’s like an entrance on how you learn processes.
- Authenticity – Is a way that you (as an INFP) make your decisions which is more inclined what resonates with you the most as a person.
- INFPs understand emotions on a whole different level.
- Questions to ethics become very intriguing to INFPs. For example: “what determines an ethical or moral action?”
- Authenticity is very in touch with the subjective human experience.
- Authenticity is where we humans find conscience. Because that’s when we ask, “how do we honor people’s individuality?”
- Oftentimes, INFPs become masters of human experience in general.
- The ability to determine that something resonates is a maturity of the Authenticity process. As it matures, it understands that not everything they experience is the same as everyone.
- Do INFPs truly want to be understood?
- Nobody could be 100% understand them apart from themselves.
- INFPs feel being marginalized and dismissed way more than being misunderstood.
- INFPs seek validation.
- We want to acknowledge that they have a specific type of pain based from their personality type.
- Authenticity type should be balanced with Exploration. Exploration (the co-pilot function) is about advanced pattern recognition in the outside world – thinking behind the curtain.
- If you want more description or definition, check out our episode “Introverted Intuition VS Extraverted Intuition”.
- Your superpowers are developed when you learn to master your co-pilot.
- Art is one of the places where INFPs thrive.
- Art is a communication of feeling and INFPs simply flourish in this context. They create art that’s impactful.
- For INFPs, they tend to recall how they felt/reacted in the past.
- They have the ability to mirror emotions. They don’t need to mirror emotions in real time. For example, the can look at an art piece and mirror the emotion to themselves.
- Authenticity people tend to recall how they feel/how they imagined they would feel and then instantly replicating the emotion inside them.
- The emotional language can be transferred in long extensive periods of time.
- In order to be authentic, you need to have a mature and vast understanding of how the world works.
- Intent: The Darker aspect of Authenticity. INFPs tend to try to give a reason that’s combated with logic.
- INFPs tend to defend their intent, because they see a wide array of positive and negative intent. They understand how people can easily go and slip into bad intent.
- Healthy INFPs view everything has positive intent.
- Being able to understand that darkness is universal and part of the human experience will help you accept yourself.
- How to go about making a living as an INFP?
- Getting something done can sometimes be very challenging for INFPs.
- INFPs have the desire to make an impact and be an inspirational leader. Oftentimes, they will disregard the passion they have. Passion is extremely important.
- Authenticity people can have the tendency to marginalize people. Make sure you do what you’re passionate with. Check in with yourself what you really want.
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215 comments
As an INFP i highly resonate with all you said, even if i had articulated in many points an other way, but thats maybe because i am an other INFP-individual than those you talked to :)
I want to thank you both so so much for all the work and effort you put in this and how highly professional you got in your art!
In other episodes I stumbled over the fact that often get the points you made through joels talking, like i can’t compute that good what i heared from antona…it’s very weird. i wonder if other infp experienced the same? i think so and guess it has something to do with a more feeler talking of joel than the thinker talking from antonia?
hi !
First of all, i have to say the first podcast ive listen to was about the description of the INFP personnality and i found it really FANTASTIC really it openned my eyes on many things and it truly resonnated with me. However I’ve just felt the need, for the podcast, to interfere with something !
This is not personal of course, but just didnt agree with something
Antonia, when Joel talked about exploring many paths and have several passions.. and that you said maybe there was a problem of authenticity. Maybe there is, but really not necessarily !
First, i think sometimes theres this external pressure of “finding THE passion”. What if we have several passions? what if we love a lot of things ? that doesnt mean we are not authentic! and that doesnt mean we have to cut of all of the things we love just for the sake of one.
Besides, Ive just wanted to share i found out theres a specific kind of personnality type, called a “scanner” (barbara sheer) or a “multipotentialite” (emilie wapnick), that are the type of people that absolutely love to explore many many things, there are passionate about, and narrow their interests to study the one and only passion (those are called the "specialists) would be like A LACK of authenticity, like ripping out a part of who they are..
I just wanted to share that, and feel free to share you thoughts on this too!
I just listen to this and I have to say that was a pretty good job!! I found it very interesting that you said that from a business point of view an xSTJ would be the most helpful ..interesting enough I am dating one. I agree that their focus and their ideas are great ..but what I find is that they find it difficult to relate to us… and from a relationship point of view I am unsure that I am getting what I should be getting … Any advice on opening a stronger connection between an INFP and an ISTJ?
Hi Alice!
As a self-aware INFP, I’d like to help you understand a bit more about the type. It’s very complicated, and nothing’s black and white. Everything’s on a spectrum so it makes sense that you can see traits from both. (I see traits of ISFP in myself as well; there’s a few subtle differences.) As for the emotional aikido, does not have to apply to other people specifically. Sometimes it’s just a matter of imagining something that might influence your emotions. (Do you ever get lost in your thoughts and think of something funny and start to laugh and no one around you knows why?) Other times the INFP can make a conscious choice not to let the emotions of other people effect them. I would also like to point out that many INFPs can be insightful too. When the INFP has developed their Ne (what personalityhacker calls exploration) their ability to understand perspectives kicks in. The Ne leads them to ask people what they think, read about it, or do what ever else they feel the need to understand. The Fi (authenticity) helps the INFP understand. It makes an adjustment to their mindset and asks “How would I feel under these circumstances?” “What if they were different in this way?” “Where would this sit with me morally?” “How would my morals be different?” and other questions along those lines. (I see this all the time in a great mentor of mine who is also an INFP.) This combination of the use of the primary and auxiliary cognitive functions makes for an incredibly enlightened person. These INFPs (there’s sub-types to everything) tend to be more inspirational through their example than their words, or so one thinks. The true inspirational part of an INFP is most easily noticed when they are crossed in some way. This doesn’t mean mildly agitated. It means someone hit a nerve and cause an intense but just fury in the INFP. When this happens, they will likely be very stern and wild. People will see the fire burning in them as they seek to right what they perceive as wrong. In the past, when I felt that people were ignorantly offending a minority group, I stood in front of them and applied the best insights I could into how what they were saying might affect someone. In the end I swayed the majority of them because the manner and my passion with which I provided my insights was ultimately inspirational. It is important to remember that sometimes ‘helping people’ is not always what they might wish you to do, nor does it have to be conventional help. As for understanding people with an authenticity function. It takes a long time to truly master. That’s not a dis on you in any way if you happen to be INFP. I still struggle with understanding some people, especially when they’re quite different from myself. This is often the result of NF. NF types are idealist and will idealize people to such high expectations that what they do will surprise them. INFPs are among the worst offenders mainly because they lead with their Fi…. Just a thought.
Hope this helps. :)
Hi Joel and Antonia, I just wanted to say thank you so much for this podcast! This is the most in-depth analysis of INFP’s Fi I’ve seen. Most discussion forums and websites talks of Fi, on an extremely diluted and superficial level of just being “emotions” or “reacting to emotions” or “emo”. Thank you for articulating just the depth of Fi and how mature Fi leads to values/ethics/morals and the basis of conscience. (and this helped me solidify my type as INFP)
I was wondering if you guys have experienced an INFP using System Thinking on their Fi.
I think Fi believes that all emotions and experiences are subjective and true, and therefore it leads to unable to articulate or fight for our own voice when being challenged, because we will need to invalidate someone else’s subjective experience in order to win. (this leads to unhealthy level of feeling invalidated when we are constantly trying to validate others by not disagreeing with them and neglecting our own experiences; invalidating ourselves)
I feel like System Thinking would help with INFP dealing with their own emotional validation, and also hold validation of another person’s experience. I think it looks like Emotional Aikido from the outside.