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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
Misunderstood is the right word. You just are not understanding the context in which it comes up. It is not about my personality and what it feels like to be me. It is the experience of going to a meeting and after everyone is done. They look to me. I say something deep and insightful and they all give me the deer in the headlights stare. I get frustrated and the more I try to explain, the more confused everyone gets until I clam up. Then I email the person who ran the meeting and say the exact same thing and they always ask, “well why didn’t you bring that up in the meeting?” I just want to punch them. I did bring it up in the meeting. They were all just perfecting their dopey impressions while I was doing it. That is what I mean when I say that people don’t understand INFPs and don’t even seem willing and able to try to understand. I think you were also making stereotypes worse by what you said in this video. Just because I think in analogy and metaphor, doesn’t make my thought process any less logical. Analogies are a third of the logic portion of the LSAT!
Hello! I am INTJ and my 14 year old son is INFP. Your podcasts are very helpful in unpacking the processes by which we relate to and interact with the world. I have always been blown away by my child’s ability to sense the emotional states of others (including myself) and offer deeply empathetic, sophisticated advice when it comes to the realm of feeling – from a very young age. I also see how this incredible ability (incredible to me as an INTJ especially!) Is devalued or dismissed by others on a very regular basis – particularly adults. So thank you for your astute analyses and insights – I will have him listen to this podcast with me and hopefully together he and I can develop strategies to help him articulate these gifts in a way that will serve him as he establishes a presence in the world. ?
As a newly “diagnosed” INFP, thank you for bringing me new insights.
Regarding being misunderstood: I’ve never felt misunderstood, but I have felt really, really frustrated by being unable to put into words why my point of view should be considered by a group, and I think it is overlooked because I’m coming from a different perspective and I really can’t explain it very well. Authenticity as my driver helps explain this. So, not a solution, but at least a start to understanding.
I feel like I have always understood that we all have very different interpretations of our experiences, and that no one can truly understand another person. At the same time I have noticed that my reactions to situations and events are different to many other people, and have felt very apart from even my most intimate friends. I have a relative who is INFJ and she tells me she understands me, sends me nuts because I’m sure she really doesn’t! Having started to hear and read a bit about this, maybe she means she picks up my emotions? Which is very different to understanding.
I’m a pretty together sort of person, managed to start and run a successful business for years, although I couldn’t have done it without my business partner who kept me focussed and accountable. But now the business is sold I am overwhelmed by choice and searching for something that feels right for me. So many things I could probably do well, but which one is right?
The biggest challenges for me are developing some sort of routine, limiting my response to distractions, completing something (just anything will do!), and finding a job that I believe in. Although this sounds like a ridiculous list when put down in black and white, I know life slides into place from time to time. I trust my heart; with my head to help I’ll be fine.
Thinking about the part about self-punishment: I recognise this in me, but didn’t realise it was a more generalised trait. I apply my inner framework, keeping my dark heart intentions in check. I used to do a fundraising ride in a beautiful part of my country. Eventually I decided that it was a wonderful holiday justified by the fundraising I did, and I stopped doing it. I still fundraise, it’s just not that much fun anymore.
By the way, I don’t think dark heart is an emotion, to me it has to do with motivation and intention. I agree that emotions need to be experienced, and can’t be good or bad, although what you do with them can be. But the dark heart – rings so true to me – is about what you intend. Is it only INFP who experience this feeling of the ability to corrupt, or perhaps more correctly, to be corrupted from within? I had always put this down to my religious upbringing.
Anyway, I’ve got some thinking to do, thank you for starting another part of my journey.
Hello! I absolutely love all of these podcasts and have listened to mine and my family and friends. I was listening to the INFP podcast because I gave my 10 year old son the quiz. I definitely see so many of the qualities you guys explain in him! I have always gotten ENFP no matter what test I take and the podcast about ENFP felt very correct, but when I listened to this about INFP, it also resonated with me. My question is, is it possible for a person’s type to change as they get older? Because I feel that the INFP was more me when I was younger and the ENFP is more how I am now. What could I be missing? Thanks!
As an INFP, it is completely true what you said about not WANTING to be understood 100%. That would mean I am predictable, and with my head feeling so full and non-stop all the time, it WOULD be disconcerting if someone with a clear head understood what I fight all day to understand! I also see VALUE in my crazy, passionate head in its difference to the rest of the world. My head provides a different facet of our beautiful diamond as a mirror or mediator to bring balance to the world. What value do I have if a non-INFP understands me 100% already?
But you guys are the first ones to talk about how important it is to INFPs for people to “get” them. I love being called “weird” or “oddball” or “different”! I always say thanks when I get those comments. But my closest friends see the VALUE in it. They don’t think like I do, nor do they care to, but they value a different perspective and KNOW I am always trying to do the right thing and put my best foot forward.
I’ve lost co-workers, close friends, and almost my wife over my knowing what to do next with such certainty, even when the direction goes against common wisdom and I have nothing but my gut as proof. I had a very close friend that I felt “got” me — and during a rough patch I was told “And don’t give me that ’I’m putting my best foot forward’ bullshit!” I don’t think an INFP could be hurt more than by a statement like that from someone close to you. To not understand AND not “get” me…after knowing me for years…rips a hole in you. Two years later and we’ve never recovered. I’d go so far as to say it COULDN’T recover. If after years of knowing me well you think I am malicious, then you will never see me as I am. What I am saying is that validation for an INFP is extremely important. I don’t care if you don’t understand me, or think like I do, but I will love you forever if you let me be me and “get” what I’m about. I would rather have ONE close friend like that, than 100 that stick with me but shake their heads or wonder what I’m up to.