Download Episode Here – right click link and select “Save Link As…”
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.
To subscribe to the podcast, please use the links below:
Subscribe with iTunes
Non iTunes Link
Download The Android App
Subscribe on Soundcloud
Subscribe with Stitcher
If you like the podcast and want to help us out in return, please leave an honest rating and review on iTunes by clicking here. It will help the show and its ranking in iTunes immensely! We would be eternally grateful!
Want to learn more?
Discover Your Personal Genius
We want to hear from you. Leave your comments below…
Share:
Podcast - Episode 0054 - Why Lovers Fight About Sex, Money, and Family
Podcast - Episode 0056 - Integrate and Transcend
215 comments
Thanks for the comment Dana! I’m glad you enjoyed the podcast!
I have often thought that Fe (“Harmony”) is the usual cause for women staying in relationships that aren’t healthy for them. To me, it seems Fi women would realize when a situation isn’t working for them and be more ready to move on. But, I’m not Fi.
Maybe they stay for different reasons: Fe stay because they can’t stand the idea of hurting someone else; Fi stay because they see what the person’s potential is.
Thanks for the feedback, Rebeka! This week is INFP week at Personality Hacker, so keep your eyes out for INFP info.
I’m a wee bit behind but I listened to this episode today and I found myself nodding along vigorously. Particularly to the “INFPs might feel misunderstand but it’s not really a problem for them.” Not sure if it’s an “INFP thing” or if I should thank my dad for repeatedly telling us “if someone calls you weird take it as a compliment!” But I enjoy being a little off. My INFJ Sister also enjoyed it when we talked about it, she commented that it’s obvious INFPs must enjoy classifying themselves that way if some many emailed you because they also wanted to be acknowledged as feeling misunderstood. I am loving this site/podcast so much! Although I am having a bit of an I/E identity crisis!
continuing to listen:
at slightly before 33 mins, you mention being in a group and picking up on subtle changes in people. i often feel as tho id make a great advisor to someone in charge who has to make tough decisions. i dont want to make any decisions for a group, but i feel like i could help “leader” figure out what would be well received by others and to present them and guide the presentation of the decision along to make everyone comfortable with it and help foresee the issues that would arise from it.(this ties into ~1h8m, i want to help guide a group, without leading them! i want to be the shaman in the village, not the warlord!)
aikido
i am OFTEN on the road driving around with my road raging boss
if someone cuts him off, it could be hours of frustration rollin round in his head and across his face like a storm cloud and ruining my life! so im often catching myself suddenly laughing and blurting out something like “oh man, those track days have paid off! i think id have been a bit more jarred by that sudden bumper in my face than you were!” and suddenly hes proud of his driving skill, not frustrated by someones narcissistic driving.
i do feel as tho i am constantly subtley tweaking things around me when dealing with people in order to find some harmony so i dont have to deal with drama and be drained out even faster!
america
you mentioned the hard working and the loving of great artists
the thing is.. we like the low level hard workers for their sacrifice and work ethic.
and then hate the overly greedy and nonstop ambitions high level ceo’s at the expense of their underlings.
then we hate the low level artists wasting their lives and slacking off and “mooching off society”, and love the “great” artists who are famous (who spent 40 years being those slackers mooching off society while developing)
murica! eyeroll
cold hearted:
if its a negative feeling, i will often struggle to cut myself off and zone out from the emotion, so i dont have to experience it, knowing i will EXPERIENCE IT. and seeing how some of the others are vaguely experiencing it. ive also not been able to do this, and had people tell me to stop being dramatic because its not happening to me, its happening to someone else. but it IS happening to me, and this is HOW its happening to me. i cant help that the person who is concretely having something happen to them is feeling it less than i would be feeling it! so its easier to try and cut myself off from it until later when i can live it out.
laid back:
when i 1 out of 100 times want something specifically MY way, i either get people who are so used to getting their way that they try to sway me (good luck) to their option, or people who are like “OMG ELIOT MADE A DECISION?!?!?!” and dramatically act like theyre fainting, or they check me for a fever. ;)
intent:
when i DO decide something, i feel the need to make sure people know WHY and that im not being selfish, its just X Y Z. and yes, i can totally see the dark side of how someone MIGHT take things when i DO decide something. if i could express the amount of energy i spend every day making sure people cant take what im saying or doing in a bad way…
i just had to stand up for small business owners from some bigot in a neighborhood facebook group today, and then was told that i was being offensive. IM being offensive? ME? holds up mirror
i have literally spent ALL DAY wondering how i messed up and they could somehow take my phrasing to possibly be rude or offensive. like i have #INFPfail’d myself! somehow my small business owner defense got turned into an attack on a bigot.. ok i keep saying bigot, but i didnt in the actual post ;) my aikido was weak! :D
permission to go to 10:
totally get that! i nail bite, i guess thats as physically self punishing as i get. but i do berate myself over emotions all the time. i think being a guy in his mid 30s and very emotional is a big part of it. i was by far THEE emotional person in my family all my life.
and i can totally feel the feels just sitting there under the surface waiting for me to let my guard down enuf to burst out.
my best friend, now for half my life (YAY BFF!) and i met going to see DEEP IMPACT. we literally barely spoke in person as we were rushing to the movie. we had chatted online for a few months casually in a chat room. the movie ends. im sitting there with the feels desperately trying to not feel. and he says “so… whatd you think?”
infp… 11!!!!
i burst into sobs and collapse into him drooling the words “TEA LEONI DIDNT HAVE TO DIIIIIIIIIIIE!”
and we’ve been best friends ever since! lol
and we still say “TEA LEONI!” every time something super sad and unnecessary happens! and then “but the waters receded…” when things have calmed down (also from the movie)
logistical efficiency:
whyyyyyyyyy do we have to have the weakness that seems so MOST important to AMERICA, lol
collapses to knees and screams to the heavens – exhausted desperate breaths
there are actually now programs that help infp-like people to run a small business. helping you to make templates for emails to clients, setting up reminders to get stuff done.. kind of like siri on crazy steroids, eating gmo corn and soy, and frothing at the mouth.
very handy!
thanks for the great listen!
omg!
infp here, male, 36…
after reading EVERYTHING i could find on infps months ago, i have somehow stumbled onto your website… how did i get here?!… and reading through your list, because i am constantly needing to understand myself – ha! – i read your description of infps mirroring emotions.. and my brain just snapped open at that!
ive never heard it described that way before! i always felt like i was very YOUR PAIN MY HEART, but then something was… off… with that, and made me feel like i wasnt being… truthful? genuine?… by saying it that way.
i cant even tell you for how long or how many times ive thought i was an alien, or a robot, or a sociopath because of that mirroring! im very emotional, but i always felt like it was FALSELY emotional for some reason. and reading the mirroring thing, i think it was that the /situations/ were not real(or not happening/real to ME), but my /emotional reaction/ to unreal (to me) situations, WERE real.
kind of like.. im not crying because something is sad… im crying because if that something happened to me i WOULD be sad, this is how sad i would be, this is how my life would be devastated, this is how it would affect my family and friends, and this is the guilt id feel for putting them thru this, and this is how i would recover from it, this is how id look back years later and my growth from that situation… etc… the exploration of the feeling based on an unreal situation still leads to a real emotion.
i feel like i can live thru very real emotions of things that are not happening to me, or have not happened to me.
i can swell with pride after an amazing performance i havent performed(this just happened at the end of cirque du soleil as they all stood in a circle to bow. i could see the pride and accomplishment in their faces, especially the man who ALMOST fell from the high wire, his “i pulled it off… i did it… i caught myself, and everyone here understood that i needed to try again.. and it paid off…” conrorting facial features), i can cringe in horrid embarassment over a social misstep that i didnt take(when someone in a movie is about to be utterly embarassed, and you can see it coming.. i cant even watch, i have to look away and concentrate fully on the curtains, or the texture of the screen behind the scene, or SOMEthing, so im not living that embarassment FOR them), feel the devastation of regret for a decision not made, and i can cry until my body feels like its imploding and ill never be able to smile again, all in the same minute, and all within seconds of deciding to experience these feelings.
all of these unreal situations are very real to me! it is the feeling that is important, not the actuality!
its now making me wonder if this is part of how i seem so utterly content to people outside of me. im OFTEN told “the whoooole world could come crumbling down around you, and youd be just fine and not even notice it!” but im wondering if its just my ability to notice something i dont want to feel coming up, and just mirroring something else to change my emotional state to get thru something tough.
during stressful work situations where everyones starting to sweat and panic.. im suddenly totally confident that we will accomplish our goal.. because in my head, we just did, and im already feeling it! in my head ive already had the boss glance at me as he thanked the team, knowing that he knows my contribution, and knowing i dont want to be called out for it. knowing it was my calm in the storm that helped us all get to this end point.
does this make any sense?
something else i either read here, or heard in the podcast… about infps knowing how things are going to cause others to feel, and wondering how everyone else doesnt GET that… i am frequently living that reality! many times a day i think “what the hell.. why would he/she do that?! doesnt he know how X Y Z are going to take that???” and then needing to guide them along to finish off a comment in a way to adjust how others will react to it. generally its my boss who is very concrete/factual and seems clueless as to how things might come across to others when he is blunt and harsh. lol.
anyways
now that i sound entirely like a sociopathic alien robot whos just stepped thru the looking glass…
thanks for the twist of phrasing to help me better understand me.
aaaaanyways
im only 26 minutes into the podcast, but i was just feeling overwhelmed with sudden gratitude at new understanding that i wanted to get it all out before something drifted off in currents and eddies of my brain waves!
TO THE PODCAST!
TALLY HO!