Fe – INFJ Ramblings https://infjramblings.com Life in an overactive mind Sun, 04 Nov 2018 06:00:16 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.26 INFJ Functions: Introverted Intuition, Observation and Ni https://infjramblings.com/2013/08/observation-and-ni.html https://infjramblings.com/2013/08/observation-and-ni.html#comments Thu, 15 Aug 2013 07:53:00 +0000 http://infjramblings.com/?p=16 As an INFJ having an inferior Se function and lacking a Si function, I always felt like INFJs see the world through a different set of eyes then other people. Most people are largely dependent on their senses and observe the world in detail through their vision, smell, touch and hearing. They take in all […]

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]]> INFJ Functions: Introverted Intuition, Observation and Ni openphotonet_DSCF1461_2-300x300 INFJ & MBTI As an INFJ having an inferior Se function and lacking a Si function, I always felt like INFJs see the world through a different set of eyes then other people. Most people are largely dependent on their senses and observe the world in detail through their vision, smell, touch and hearing. They take in all the sensory details about their surroundings and are quick with observing changes. Intuitive’s and especially Ni dominants take in their surroundings in a different matter. We see the external in it’s whole, it feeds our intuition with sensory data which sort out the hidden meanings  and details than can be hidden from the normal senses. Our inferior Se function feeds our Ni information and often we are not conscious of everything we see because our Ni sorts out the important parts in an unconscious process.

The perk of our Ni is that it gives us unique insights from our senses in connecting the dots between what is going on in front off us and behind the scenes. We might be slow in analyzing what is going on in our environment consciously, but we see things for what they really are and not only how they appear to us. This is the beauty of Ni, which is why it can be very hard to lie or trick an Ni dominant personality since we look past what our senses tells us and connect to the core of things.

Taking in all of this information can be exhausting and because we operate in such a fashion always, we might need more alone time then other types of introverted personalities. This unique way of analyzing the external is why INFJs can be such good psychologists or artists. Not only do we have the power to emphatically see things from the same angle as other people, we can also see it from angles others cannot. Ni is the reason why symbolism appeal to us so much. Symbols are something that can appear in one way but mean something entirely different, which is basically how our Ni operates in understanding things from our senses.

Many times in my life I’ve been suggested to have psychic abilities when I have been able to predict actions of people or what they feel about things. For example being in a bar I can always tell who is interested in who, if a guy is trying to hit on a girl and will succeed or not. Just recently a friend of mine made a bet with me that his friend was going home with this girl from the bar. He was hitting on her the whole evening and they where talking and kissing. I did not know any off them that well. I told him that she would not go home with him, my intuition was telling me that something was off. They left the bar together and my friend was convinced that he had won the bet. About 30 minutes later she came back to the bar alone and joined us again, getting a last drink and calling a cab. The guy left alone.

This kind of observations comes naturally to me but when it is concerning how I act myself, it is much harder. I think the reason we can be so expressive with emotions and what we think sometimes (our Fe, extroverted feeling function), is to balance up our nature of understandings others. We understanding others but others not understanding us is not a very balanced nature of being. We naturally don’t like lying or not acting genuine and we have a knack for sensing when others do this. To me this feels like observing a clear evolutionary pattern that nature have evolved in us INFJs, which shows that all our functions are there for a reason and to reinforce our way of functioning with other beings.

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]]> https://infjramblings.com/2013/08/observation-and-ni.html/feed 2 INFJ Social Skills: Surviving in Your Social Life https://infjramblings.com/2013/08/infj-interpersonal-skills.html https://infjramblings.com/2013/08/infj-interpersonal-skills.html#comments Sun, 04 Aug 2013 14:29:00 +0000 http://infjramblings.com/?p=20 One of the core talents of INFJs is our interpersonal skills. We are good at getting people to like us and at keeping harmony in the social environment around us. I never realized these things about myself until discovering my personality type and reading about it. I simply thought that most people function like I […]

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]]> INFJ Social Skills: Surviving in Your Social Life CH0000A152-300x168 INFJ & MBTI One of the core talents of INFJs is our interpersonal skills. We are good at getting people to like us and at keeping harmony in the social environment around us. I never realized these things about myself until discovering my personality type and reading about it. I simply thought that most people function like I do. A perfect example of my INFJness in practice is when sitting around a table talking to people. In this situation I want to have eye contact and at some point address everybody around the table personally, in order to make them feel important and included. If somebody is silent to long and I sense that they might feel excluded, I always find a way to address them to push them back in to the conversation. This even happens unconsciously for me and I just do it without thinking. Another thing is that sometimes I let people be wrong in order for them to feel good about themselves. Like when somebody wants to tell you a story which it turns out you have already heard. I don’t want to tell them that, since people get excited entertaining each other. They might tell it to you wrong or inaccurate and instead of pointing it out to them I let it go since there is no reason to argue or give remarks on such minor things.

One of the reasons we focus on keeping harmony in the social realm around us has to do with the nature of our auxiliary function Fe (Extroverted feeling). The nature of Fe is to express our emotions outward, applying what’s inside us to the outside world. This is the reason why INFJs occasionally can get very irritated, angry and complaining when we don’t feel harmony on the inside. Or the opposite when people around us are very happy, which in turn feeds our Fe and makes us even happier. I read an article awhile ago and in it they mentioned this as the ‘oil on fire’ effect. Whatever feelings burns inside us gets intensified from equal feelings from the outside world, i.e. pouring oil on the fire ignites it more. Of course this is both a good and a bad thing for an INFJ as it can be a source of anxiety and overloading us with feelings.

A problem with being and INFJ sometimes is that I can doubt that other people like me or enjoy my company. This in turn make me try even harder and give more to people around me. Often however we can end up being taken advantage of when we put ourselves in such situations. It all has to do with self confidence and being highly idealistic often comes with having a not very balanced self esteem. It is not that we don’t value ourselves, it is that we often value others higher because we care about them. The reality in it all is that even though we feel so different and are different, people often tend to like us even though we think that they don’t. Sometimes after interacting with a lot of people, I can realize that I did better then I felt I did at the time. I can remember so many times people and even complete strangers, opened up to me and talked about things most would not without knowing each other better. How mentally unstable, mentally ill and people that are hurting tend to be drawn to me in some magical way. Among a group they often feel most comfortable talking to me because I never judge them like other people do.

It is because people are insecure about themselves and even though they might not understand it consciously, unconsciously they feel that you can see past their imperfections and understand them and who they really are on the inside. Sometimes this might have the opposite effect with shallow people, maybe they sense that we see past their persona and know that there actually is nothing else there besides fear and insecurities

The core of it all is that we want to bring social harmony to our outside world and the people in it because it also fuels us and makes us feel better about ourselves in the end. However, when other people feel bad, we feel bad. I would go so far as to say that we have one of the purest forms of empathy. We can feel exactly what other people feel and therefore we can relate and understand people, even at times better than they can understand themselves. INFJs are deep, caring and kind people at heart. We see and feel so much of the world and it affects us in such a way that it’s highly unlikely for us to ever want to hurt other people. We want to help them because helping them is in turn also  helping ourselves.

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