Ramblings – INFJ Ramblings

INFJ Extraverted Feeling (Fe) and Making It Work for You

Sun, 18 Jan 2015 10:28:28 +0000

One of the most prominent functions for INFJs is extraverted feeling (Fe). It is one of the things among INFJs that can be easily observed by others and can be something to look out for in order to spot an INFJ. Fe is what INFJs use primarily when dealing with other people and the outside world. To sum it all up in a simple view, it can be seen as having a keen sense of the outside world which easily affects us emotionally. It helps us to understand how the people around us are feeling and also how to express how we are feeling to them. If INFJs have strong feelings or opinions about someone we often tend to express them in one way or another since this type of expression comes natural to us because of Fe. This is why INFJs can be very loving and caring with the people we like but find it hard to get along with people we don’t like. INFJs can often end up in heated debates with other people when we feel they act careless, selfish or in any other way pose a treat to our values. Similar to ENFJs, but INFJs as introverts also more often choose to avoid arguments with others. We instead internalize a lot of feelings which can end up affecting us in a negative way in the long term. Fe is a natural process for INFJs to deal with emotions and we need to express them with our Fe in order to deal and process them. This is why therapy and expression through art can be so beneficial for INFJs.

What is important to understand as INFJs is that our happiness depend not only on learning to understand why we react, think and do what we do. But also how we can predict and change our behavior accordingly to benefit us. Life can be more difficult for INFJs then many other personalities at times, and that’s why this is even more important for us. From what I have learned it is crucial for INFJs to start understanding and taking charge of how our emotions affect us. INFJs are a very feeling oriented type of personality, we are deeply emotional and most of our problems in life will relate to this heightened emotional sensitivity.

Taking control of how your Fe affects you in everyday life is a good first step to gaining more stability in your life. The steps to succeed with this is more simple then you might think and applying them in practical situations will help you gain an understanding and start changing yourself over time. This is how I would break it down in three steps:

1. You need to start noticing Fe and how your emotions fuel you in your everyday life. You need to realize how much your feelings control your well being, and how much the external control your feelings. Notice how your negative thought loops are often created from what happens out in the environment around you. How other peoples feelings somehow affect and get ahold of yours. How the external world often creates all the thoughts and feelings you experience at the moment. Practicing meditation is also a fast way of gaining this realization because when you shut out the external often, you start to realize that without it what you are left with inside is stability, calm, clarity and peace. That without all the things happening around you a lot of the negative feelings you might experience start to fade away. Use this as proof to help you understand how really extraverted your sense of feeling is. INFJs depend much on their environment for how they feel inside. Surrounding yourself with loving and caring people is crucial for your development.

2. Your second step is to start to predict your emotions. Understanding and predicting what causes you your pains starts to separate you from it. It helps you understand that even though your feelings can sometimes take ahold of you or jump out and surprise you, it is not who you are. When somebody gets you angry, it is really that external energy that affects you and how you choose to react to it determine how you will feel towards it. Your emotions are not much different then any other sense in your body like smell, taste etc. With practice you can change how it affects you.

3. The last step is to learn to let go. When you respond with anger or sadness to what somebody did to you or something that happened, what you really did in your mind before that was to create presumptions on how something should turn out. You create an ideal of how you want something to be or how somebody should act. You have to realize that trying to control what other people do or what happens in the outside world is pointless because you simply can’t. Hence chasing negative emotions that result from them is only you causing yourself more pain because you can’t control the situations. Every time it happens to you again, your mind is as surprised as the previous time and have failed to learn that grasping ideal situations really is pointless. The mind is fascinating in that way that it still thinks it can control the situation the next time and ends up letting itself down over and over. I like to picture it that it is no different then hitting your head against a brick wall, over and over.

Realize that how you react to your emotions will form the foundations for how you feel inside. Start to let go of what you cannot change and the mind will stop holding on to these negative feelings and there will be more room for what makes you happy instead. Extraverted feeling is a great ability of INFJs and can bring you much happiness in your life as long as you stop letting it control you and cause much negative emotional feedback. Start cultivating love and stability inside yourself and this will end up being what you express with your Fe to the outside world.

Here is a book I highly recommend to cultivate emotional health and stability, a great book on meditation and mindfulness:

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INFJ Love Dilemmas: INFJ Relationships, Romance and Sexuality

Sun, 18 May 2014 04:15:53 +0000

INFJs have the ability to see both sides of people, both the good and the bad. We can often feel what other people think, know and want without really knowing how. It is a gut feeling which stems out from our primary function introverted intuition with support from our high abilities in external feeling (Fe).

It’s not hard to see that the world around us is simply not just good or bad, black or white. Just as chinese philosophy speaks about the yin and yang, everything in the world have good sides as well as bad ones. Most of us are not completely conscious of our own dark sides, and INFJs are no exception here. Yet INFJs has the ability to see these sides in other people, see people for who they really are. What intentions they have and way they value. People might look like class A citizens from the outside but on the inside they are still filled with dark cravings and thoughts like the rest of us.

The hard part about being an INFJ with these skills is that it makes relationships so much harder because you always find faults in people. You often know when somebody is dishonest with you and for most other people maybe it would have just slipped by. Maybe sometimes it’s even better that way because what you don’t know can’t hurt you.

The question is do we just sign off on close relationships because we almost never feel like they meet up to our expectations? The dilemma lies in our nature as INFJs, we always treat other people with respect, even those that might not deserve it. So when a friend hurts you in some way, were most people might get angry, INFJs can feel pity because we know that on a existential level this person can’t help it because it is part of who they are. That we all have our demons and even though we are aware how they make ourselves or others suffer, it’s very difficult to change.

Unfortunately seeing these demons in other people might make INFJs feel like they are setup for some disappoint from the start, and that it is unavoidable. This is one of the issues that might contribute to INFJs wanting to isolate themselves from the world at times. When you already know what might happen, it can feel like it is just not worth the effort and especially considering how emotionally vulnerable INFJs can be.

Another point in this is that it can also make INFJs to forgiving to people that might not deserve it, just because we know they can’t help it. In todays world being to forgiving is often seen as a weakness, which is a shame vulnerable the world would sure be a better place if people where more forgiving and less spiteful. It is important that you stay aware of other peoples intentions so they don’t take advantage of you just because of this weakness. Something that can easily happen to unexperienced INFJs in their first relationships. Always remember that it is better to forgive and then choose not to spend more time with the person, then to be spiteful. Negativity only fuels room for more negativity. Just as the saying you are what you eat, you are what you think and if you fill your mind with a hateful mentality this is what you also will become. For INFJs it is vital that we are very selective and careful when picking our relationships, because they become such a big part of our world, if we make the wrong choice we will suffer the most in the end.

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INFJ Kindness: The Act of Giving

Sun, 20 Oct 2013 16:31:00 +0000

There is one situation in relationships where I often realize how different I am from the world as an INFJ. The hidden meanings behind gifts and giving separate me from most other people. Throughout history gifts has been a way to form and reinforce relationships, and in some cases even force them onto others. The act of receiving something often reinforces a feeling that you should be giving something back in return, or are in a type of debt to the other person. More often then not people help each other because they expect to receive the same back when they need it on their terms. It’s an untold rule in human relationships and if people would not treat us like we treat them, we would not help them.

Humans are often selfish by nature and this is the way nature intended us to be in order to survive. Problem is that today we live in different kinds of societies that could sure benefit more from people being less selfish. Buddhists have a great view on this and I’ve read interviews with the Dalai Lama where he talks about keeping compassion and forgiveness close to your heart when dealing with people that let you down. Because we have to remember that every human being just wants to be happy, this is the core wish in our lives and what controls all our actions. Even if our actions are sometimes not kind to others. Just because people do not live up to your expectations doesn’t necessarily make their intentions any less so.

When I was a kid my father would give me things to compensate for the emotional pain he caused me. He was aware of it but still did it and this was his way of repairing the damage on his own conscious. Of course you can’t really buy an INFJ and it did me nothing, even from a very young age I was aware of the hidden motives of this act. But this is common behavior among people. Like the cliché we see in movies where the guy is cheating on his wife and comes home with expensive jewelry to her in order to make the action fair in his own mind.

The difference is I offer things and myself to others to show them that I appreciate who they are and what they are doing, I ask nothing in return. I genuinely feel that I want to contribute to their happiness because it in turn makes me happy. I feel the most fulfilled when I get to help somebody find their way and this comes natural to me. It’s like when I’m buying a gift to somebody I can spend hours researching and tailoring my gift to suit their interests and needs, because I know this will make them feel special which they are.

Me being this way also brings me pain in my life since I can often see straight through peoples actions and motives. I can see if they are true and if they are I will give them a piece of myself, if not they probably won’t be hearing from me. The truth is of course that most people on this planet is not like us INFJs, which is a reality we have to face sooner or later. However, just because people are not like you, do not value the same things or can not express their love and friendship on the same level, doesn’t mean it’s any less true then your own. With people everything is relative and we are all very individual to the way we express or perceive our love for other people. There is no harm in giving just for the sake of giving. Because if you always expect things in return what you are really doing is just trading your love or friendship. True compassion should be a love not based on your own individual needs.

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The Strange INFJ: Fitting in, Mensa & Giftedness

Thu, 03 Oct 2013 21:02:00 +0000

This blog post is way overdue, been busy again for a period with work, life and everything else in-between. I wasn’t sure what this post would be about, but in the end I just decided I need to vent some thoughts I’ve been having and about what’s been going on in my life. After all, that’s why I started this blog to begin with, to get to put down some of the stuff that’s flooding my mind on a daily basis.

Ever since becoming old enough to understand my surroundings I’ve known I’m different somehow. As a kid growing up I never really felt I fitted in anywhere, and not now as an adult either. However, now I’m old enough to fake it. I did not have many friends when I was a kid and I don’t think connected to anyone at that age either. I had it rough at home and never liked school so I spent most of my time alone by myself doing things I enjoyed. Of course the older I became the more I wanted to belong somewhere. When you start to reach your teens it is also important since high school can be a pretty horrible place to be alone in, with bullying and pressures to confine to an social ladder. I got my fair share of bullying which leaves a mark for life when you grow up. You learn how people work the hard way. Bullying and pressures from my family to act differently made me think there was something wrong with me. That I was stupid, did not matter or my thoughts and ideas where wrong or not worth hearing. It made me afraid to stand up for myself or believe in myself. I became careless of my own health and lacked any self confidence to believe I could ever be happy. I’ve been through many rough patches in my life and I’ve caused myself a lot of pain because I’ve always thought that I was the problem.

Discovering MBTI and finding out about my type, INFJ and being an HSP was the push I needed to realize that the way I was feeling is not wrong and not my fault. A couple of weeks ago I did a Mensa (mensa.com) IQ test. Mensa is a foundation that supports gifted people and the tests they use is one of the only three scientifically validated tests for IQ and are not based on any previous knowledge. I was incredibly nervous attending the test and almost in a bit of a panic at the start, my pulse shooting through the roof. I’ve not done any test in years and I tend to perform bad under pressure when tasks have to be done within a set amount of time. I don’t like being rushed like most introverts. This test was 50 questions that had to be done in 10min max. The reason why I choose to do this test is that I was hoping it would prove something different about myself and help me build on improving my self confidence.

I scored 128 on the test and the maximum score is 131. Which places my score higher then 97% of the rest of the population. I’m convinced that me being a INFJ also contributes to my high test score. I’m still coming to terms with this since I spent most of my childhood being called stupid from my peers. I’m a person that never bragged or tried to act better then anyone else in my whole life, always treated everyone equal. It’s ironic how being gifted and empathic can also cause you so much suffering in life. Drawing from all this self discovery I’ve done in the last year, I have decided that I’m done spending my life trying to be somebody I’m not. Trying to conform to a society and way of living which I do not belong to in the first place. I started therapy half a year ago in hope of being able to get help undoing all the damage done in my childhood and growing up. So far I’m diagnosed GAD (General Anxiety Disorder) and selective social phobia. Yet some days I wonder if these are not just labels that other people give us to explain why we are different from them. More and more I start to think that my personality and traits are more healthy then most people, there just isn’t the proper space for someone like me in todays messed up society.

All I know is I’m done with it. Done trying to blend in with superficial people that will never understand me anyway. It’s no wonder I feel so alienated when half of the people my age only care about how long it’s left until the weekend so they can drink their braincells away. I spent years of my life putting myself in situations which I don’t even enjoy just in order to fit in somewhere. Well maybe I just don’t fit and never will, maybe that is the real deal. Just embrace it because I know there is some greater purpose out there for all of us.

Enough with the ranting, here are some interesting links I suggest you all take a look at. It’s research on giftedness among different MBTI types and more:

http://www.sengifted.org/archives/articles/a-synthesis-of-research-on-psychological-types-of-gifted-adolescents

http://forums.intpcentral.com/showthread.php?22940-IQ-and-Personality

Cheers to belonging in the minority, to being awake in a world that is sleeping.

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INFJ Lifestyles: Peace & Quiet or High Speed Living?

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 12:29:00 +0000

The other day I read about this great company that is currently starting up called Breather. It’s concept is supplying private space in large cities for meetings, working, relaxation or sleeping. In other words to offer peace and quite in the middle of the city. I think it’s a great idea and as an introvert, I sure hope that it turns out a great success since the direction the world is heading right now is not a great one for introverts that want a stress free life.

Even before reading about Breather I had been thinking about the state of the world and how people tend to hide away in their homes. The average American spends something like 34 hours a week watching tv in the safety of their home. Human lives today are controlled by fear, fear of death and health issues. Fear of being alone or growing old, fear of the unknown, crime, war, drugs, not being high enough in the social ladder, rejection etc. Home is a relaxing environment that we can control, something that is based on our own terms. In todays society everything is very intense and moving at a fast pace, where sensory novelty, consumerism and materialism is praised higher then spirituality and peace of mind. Indigenous tribes in parts of the world for example does not need this the same way that we do. A home becomes a shield from our stressful environment where we can recharge.

The irony in this whole concept though is that you could say that it is all based on the premise of fear, we lock ourselves out from the environment which we are in turn feeding and creating ourselves. We value this type of living even though it causes us harm in the end. Since 1991 there has been an 500% increase in the amount of prescriptions written for ADHD. Something that was not a big problem before the era of television and computers. Today children grow up in an environment where they can play games on computers, watching reality tv, eat junk food and where porn is widely available on the internet. Most of these things are shortcuts in life that will give you pleasure. However, the problem lies in the fact that they exploit our natural systems in our brains in a way that in the long term will cause more negative effects then positives. We might gain pleasure but it’s a bit like one step forward two steps back. When you don’t count medicine and higher living standards, I think people was happier before the twentieth century.

According to ABCNews August 24, 2004:

“Nearly a third of American adults have high blood pressure … Just over a decade ago, closer to one in four Americans had high blood pressure, and two decades ago the rate actually was declining. … About 65 million American adults now have high blood pressure 30 percent more than the 50 million who did in the previous decade, according to a report published Monday in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.”

When you put this in perspective like the concept of Breather has done, private space will be even more important in the future since our consumerism and high speed living shows no signs of slowing down. Instead we are making it all worse for ourselves and especially introverts will suffer from this.

I read some interesting articles about the evolution of cancer the other day. Way back before industrialism, pollution and fast food, cancer and tumors was not a very common cause of death. Comparing today to 1900 the statistics for cancer has almost tripled, and the cause of this is obviously our way of living. Yet we continue to evolve this way and you have to ask yourself the question if this is simply the curse of mankind, maybe we are really to smart for our own good.

Breather – Peace & quiet, on-demand

http://breather.com/

Causes of Death 2005 versus 1900

http://stay-healthy-enjoy-life.blogspot.dk/2008/04/causes-of-death-2005-versus-1900.html

Death Rates by Cause of Death, 1900–2005

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0922292.html

Disease Statistics

http://www.msgtruth.org/disease.htm

Your brain on porn

http://www.yourbrainonporn.com/

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first post

Wed, 26 Dec 2012 21:08:00 +0000

So hi and welcome to my blog, first post of many. After starting reading about psychology earlier this year and finding out about MBTI and what type I am, I felt that it explained a lot in my life and gave me answers to many questions I’ve had. I spent a lot of time reading and surfing the web for INFJ related information and after following http://www.infjanonymous.com/ for awhile I got the idea I would like to try my hand at blogging about this as well. I’m as of this post 24 years old, male INFJ, which makes me belong to the extreme minority in the world, approximately 0,5% of the total population. Needless to say I’ve felt different and alone all of my life and have yet to meet anybody I feel is like me.

I’ve taken countless MBTI tests (probably +30) and they all come back as INFJ. I tested ENFJ once and I probably had a very extrovert day that day. My mother is a ENFJ and my father is probably ISFJ or similar, maybe there is something to it with genetics as well. I took some tests that lists the % you scored on other types and the ones that showed up after INFJ was: INFP, INTJ, INTP, ENFJ. No sensor types at all which makes sense since I am highly intuitive.

For a living I do visual effects for movies and tv and I am successful in this. I love my job since it’s highly creative and I have always been good with that kind of work. I would sum my talents up to being creative, have an artistic eye, good at problem solving and at reading people and understanding them. People have called me psychic on many occasions and I often just know stuff before other people do. For example I know if I will get the job or not just from a feeling, if somebody likes me or not or if they are a good person just after meeting them for the first time. I always wondered where this came from and was happy to find out about INFJ’s and that I fit the bill perfectly.

However, there is not all positive stuff from being an INFJ. I would say I have suffered more from it then it have made me happy up to this point in my life. But looking back on recent years it’s been taking a turn for the better and moving in the right direction now in a steady pace. I am glad of who I am now and feel like I know myself better then I ever did. I will continue rambling on about what is on my mind in other posts.

My hope is that this blog might help or interest other INFJ’s and give me a chance to connect to more people like me. It will serve as an outlet for me and hopefully improve my writing skills since this is probably more then I have written in weeks. Thanks for reading, see you next post!

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