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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
Hi Mike,
“I tend to quickly grasp what a person wants/needs from me and I like to give it to them and often I forget about considering my self in that situation, so often I agree to things that are not beneficial to me. "
-> now I am confused again! I thought this is FE Harmony in an INFJ???
-> can someone else can jump in here, too? I can relate to both descriptions in the podcast regarding the “feeling others” in terms of a) taking on energy via FE as well as in terms of b) subjective Fi projection.
I either mistake my NI (INFJ) for FI (INFP) or the other way around. And yes, I am aware of the cognitive functions. I just cant figure it out. I have read so many Fe & FI descriptions but still have no clarity which one I am using. Maybe it would be easier if I would personally know some folks who either are INFJ or INFP in real live to better relate to one of them.
Thank you for sharing your insights….
Nic
Darn you, Personality Hacker. This is the second time you’ve made me cry in the last month! :)
I am an ENFP, but I was listening to this podcast so that my INFP brother-in-law and I could do our own private podcast post-mortem discussion when we saw each other over the Xmas holiday.
I was totally unprepared for how your discussion of Authenticity would affect me so profoundly. I was listening to it while driving and found myself having to pull over to the side of the road because I was worried that my sobbing would cause me to wreck my car.
Joel did a far better job of articulating his feelings than I would have, when he said that he so “strongly resonated” with what Antonia said about how Authenticity users want those around them to validate the process by which they arrive at decisions. In fact I’m still struggling to put into words the intense reverb I felt while listening to this podcast; and it was at this point that I started to cry. Not because I was sad, I cried because my feelings were so intense and conflicting.
The whole experience still feels ineffable to me. But I can say that I felt both relieved and grateful that I now had a vocabulary to explain my process and motivations to others.
I also felt frustrated with myself because I realized that I, too, had drunk the “Effectiveness Kool-Aid.” Effectiveness is lauded so highly in American culture, that it has completely dominated . And since Authenticity is by many measures the antithesis of Effectiveness, it’s little wonder that Authenticity users often feel de-valued and dismissed.
I grew up in a family with an ENTJ father, INTJ mother, and ISTJ sister. No one in my family honored or respected my unique gifts. In fact, throughout my life, those around me would sometimes censure me for being what they perceived as overly emotional or self-centered.
Thinking about this makes my anger flare. I can accept that non-Authenticity users don’t understand my process. (Until I began embracing cognitive function theory, I didn’t understand theirs very well either.) But NFPs and SFPs face the additional challenge of standing tall and believing in the value of their Authenticity process while living in a culture that inundates all of us with the idea that we should value Effectiveness above all else.
But I’m most angry with myself. I’ve been my own worst enemy in all of this. I internalized our culture’s “Effectiveness-Is-The-Best-Way-To-Make-Decisions” value system, which means I developed an picture in my head of how I should be that I will never be able to live up to. I can look back over my life and so clearly see now how my worst decisions almost always when I dismiss and de-value what my Authenticity function is telling me.
All day long, I’ve been immersing myself in various fantasies about how I’ll respond the next time someone challenges me about how I arrived at a decision. At the end of each scenario the other person is exasperated because I’m unable to explain my decision-making process to their satisfaction. This results in them saying (with disdain in their voice), “Tell me again why exactly it is that you think that?” Just before I turn around and swagger off, I reply, “Because I just feel like it’s the right thing to do – and that should be good enough justification for the both of us.”
Authenticity users unite!!!
P.S. [I know my fantasy isn’t as cool as Antonia’s sniper revenge fantasy, nonetheless it gives me a wonderfully self-righteous sense of satisfaction. Now if I could only figure out how to work weapons and assasinations into it. ;) ]
Omg what you say about emotional Akido was so funny. I’ve related to that my entire life! Even as a young child, I could manipulate emotions in another person into something more positive, like love. As a male INFP growing up I could easily do this with my sister when I wanted to bring a different outcome in a situation. Present day, I now experience this in helping people emote what they themselves feel. I love getting that out of people because it’s encouraging to me when I’m emoting. I believe INFPs can be great counsellors naturally. I really resonated to the topic on validation. As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to validate myself. That’s huge! Thanks so much for this podcast! The car model has helped me so much with my life! Getting into Exploration has been very exciting.
I can very well relate) with the inner child side ( that Ne runs wild and keeps me up at night, especially when I did not let it play during the day. Fi represesents the ancient inner Old Wiseman/ Noble Knight side. I also have an inner Adult – Efficiency barking and seeking it’s orders – that one frequently gets trumped by Ne. Wonder what inner Mother side would be? I guess I lack that one, sine I’m so bad at self care..
Dear Antonia and Joel,
After the podcast I’m convinced I’m INFP.
I agree 100% with all the points here.
INTP:
1. “Feels right” is hard to back up. Prefer intuition for decision making. I am MD. Intuitive based decision making works well for the patients, but gets hard to teach doctors in trainng who want “evidence based medicine” and do not understand the logics of choosing one treatment option over another.
2. Need for validation – definitely so, especially in STJ medical society..
3.Being marginalized – and marginalizing ( to avoid unnecessary interaction)
4. Feeling inherently “bad” – can not stand criticism – than I feel 100% bad ( if: I was brutally reprimanded for being habitually late – I felt like the worst doctor ever, doubted my ability at every level and even considered quitting my job)
5. Not allowing emotions to happen keeps them from going away
6. Struggle with efficiency( luckily I have a secretary:)
7. Boring to do self care and house care. I’m a procrastinator.
7. Self punishment, and even self destructive behavior – goes along with boredome of self cared
8. Need to tap into “passion mode” to be motivated ( then nothing can stop me)
9. Knowing what I want is hard. I tend to substitute “what feels right” by “what I think should be right”. In mid thirties – still have very undefined goals. Even knowing what I want for dinner is a challenged My boyfriend has to ask me: “do you want sushi”? " Do you want Chinese"? “Do you want aitalian?” With a pause Fter each sentence so I could tap not my feelings in regards to each option.
10. I do have internal honor-style principles. For a long time 3 Mouchketers was my favorite book.
11. Once I start, I can not stop. Get too much lost in mental process to go to bed or to do self care.
I wonder if you have observed ADD/ADHD traits in many NFPs? Inattention to boring routine staff, lack of efficiency, Hyperfocus, seeing thing from different angles – all features are there!