An insightful, empathetic type that loves to explore the depths of the human experience
– INFJs offer a beautiful pairing of heart and wisdom to the world. But life isn’t always easy for the INFJ. Their most powerful gifts can go unnoticed and untapped as they navigate the world
INFJ Kit
Created to help you understand your personality type more deeply
- Not for everyone
- Some people are not meant for the deep dive into personality that this article provides
- Feel free to use this article as a free guide or reference and ignore everything below
Conclusion
INFJs are a rare type. One of their biggest challenges is that their mental processes make them a more esoteric type and thus more difficult to understand. This makes it harder for INFJs to find the right mentors or like-minded people who can help guide them in growth and progress in their lives.
- On the path to growth and maturity, INFJs will encounter unique individual challenges that they may find difficult to articulate to others.
Loops
Loops are any time that we’re being defensive about something
- For INFJs, their loop is introverted because it entails getting stuck in the Perspectives driver and the Accuracy 10 year-old
- The INFJ loop happens when the Harmony copilot gets so overwhelmed that the INFJ tries to find solace in Accuracy
- To shut out these potentially toxic emotions, an INFJ will go into Introverted Thinking, where they don’t have to figure out what’s going on for other people and they don’t have to deal with other people’s bullshit
INFJ Loops and Grips
These are unhealthy states an INFJ can fall into due to acute or prolonged stress or due to over-reliance on their weaker functions.
- Every type has loops and grips, but these are shared among all INFJs.
They’re Always Right About Their Hunches
INFJs are tapped into people. They ‘just know’ why they operate the way they do, and how they experience life as individuals.
- This ability helps them gain insights, hunches, and a sense of “knowingness” about what’s going on for other people.
Harmony and Accuracy
After you develop “Harmony”, your developmental growth path is to have a beautiful simpatico relationship
Hiding out in a low-vibration state
INFJs need time away from the world so that they can recharge
The number-one secret to growth as an INFJ:
Your leverage point is your copilot: Extroverted Feeling or “Harmony”.
- Harmony is how you train yourself to meet your needs and become sensitive to what your needs are and how often to meet them.
- It’s how you recognize the relationships you’re supposed to be having and how to engage with other people in a more assertive way.
The 10 Year-Old Process: Introverted Thinking (Ti) – “Accuracy”
Whereas Harmony focuses on what helps everyone feel good, Accuracy focuses on accuracy
- The data or information being reliable information, regardless of emotions
- What is true and accurate
- An interest in data and technology
- Getting some distance and space from people’s emotional experience
The Body INFJ
This is the “health and wellness INFJ,” interested in things like organic healing, organic foods, naturalistic healing (such as meditation or spirituality), yoga and fitness.
- INFJs struggle with poor health themselves since the body is a blindspot for them because of their unique perception of life and spirituality. This is why some INFJs are drawn to a health-related field.
New-Agey
INFJs are drawn to wonderful, unusual, and off-beat ideas. They tend to be more technology- or science-focused, or very conservative.
- Even the most conservative INFJ has a preposterous side that is often only apparent to those closest to them.
INFJ Cognitive Functions
The mind of an INFJ is wired differently than other types.
- In the Myers-Briggs framework, each type comprises not just the four letters (I-N-F-J) but also four cognitive functions: Introverted Intuition (Ni), Extraverted Feeling (Fe), Introverted Thinking (Ti) “Accuracy,” Extraverted Sensing (Se) “Sensation”
- Each cognitive function plays a different role, and you use each one to a different degree of frequency and ease depending on its place in the stack.
Recap
Our minds employ strategies to help us avoid things that we believe will be too painful to process
- In the long term, these strategies don’t serve us
- Ask yourself: What is the information I’m missing about the human connection, the human component?
- Why am I doing this? Is it because I’m not getting my needs met?
The Head INFJ
The most cerebral subtype and is often mistyped as a Thinker. They have a strong relationship to their thinking element and tend to be attracted to science and tech, or things like programming and coding.
- Head types are more likely to have a conservative bent, compared with the other subtypes, and to stay in more traditional jobs in their given field.
The Three Year-Old Process: Extraverted Sensing (Se) – “Sensation”
The 3 year-old is the most unsophisticated of a person’s cognitive functions. It can often show up as something akin to ‘white-noise’ that a person is vaguely aware of, yet means relatively little to them and is easily ignored.
- Just like an INFJ’s Sensation function shouldn’t be allowed to drive the car, but it absolutely should not be ignored.
Extraverted Feeling (Fe) – “Harmony”
Tapped into how we relate to each other and how we make each other feel
- Focuses on interpersonal dynamics
- Keeps morale up
- Interests in concepts of culture and society’s effect on the individual
Progressive and Conservative Subcategories
Progressive INFJ subtypes are more open to unconventional ideas, pseudoscience, and mystical practices.
- Some INFJs are conservative. Their conservative element is the part of them that wants to fit into the social spectrum and ensure they have a place in society.
One-Sided Relationships
While INFJs are good at understanding people and tuning into their needs, this attentiveness isn’t always reciprocated.
- INFJs often find themselves either giving, or taking too much in relationships, so it’s important to’refocus’ and calibrate often.
If the INFJ sits at a desk for any amount of time, their back should face the wall so they can see any distractions coming
Like INTJs, INFJs find sensory distractions particularly jarring.
- Make sure they are positioned to be able to see incoming distractions.
They’re Impossible to Understand
INFJs can be understood, known, and appreciated for who they are
- They are fully capable of building great intimacy with others
- If the INFJ can create healthy boundaries and vet people carefully before they let things get to that depth of intimacy, then an INFJ is definitely capable of being understood.
In whatever job they choose, they need to make a definitive impact on people
If the INFJ can’t observe how they’re helping people and get that hit of satisfaction for having contributed, then they will quickly become fatigued or frustrated.
- They need to be getting as much in as they’re putting out, which is often a lot.
Can lose themselves in relationships
INFJs can get so focused on making their partners happy that they start to merge with them, forgetting what their own desires, opinions, virtues, and worldviews are independent of their partners’
- They are good at shifting into someone else’s perspective, letting someone else do their thinking for them
The Driver Process: Introverted Intuition (Ni) – “Perspectives”
The driver cognitive function is introverted intuition, or what we call here at Personality Hacker, Perspectives. It’s a process that allows the INFJ to take a third-person perspective into their own mind, noticing how their conscious and unconscious processes are working and forming patterns.
- There are three ways a Perspectives driver shows up: Seeing patterns and over time, the patterns of patterns, Perceiving a set number of ways the mind forms patterns, Relative ease in shifting out of one’s own perspective and into the perspective of someone else, and Applying their knack for pattern-recognition to perceive or forecast long timelines
The Growth Path for the INFJ
Accept, appreciate, and understand how important personal growth is
- You’ll figure out how to better operate your own mental wiring and leverage those talents to make an impact.
- Feel good about your contribution as opposed to being at the receiving end of other people’s psychic garbage
Selfless
They tend to give more credence and attention to the needs of others than to their own needs.
- INFJs often find themselves acting selflessly all of the time… until they no longer can. Then they might show an extreme selfish streak and are capable of putting up major walls to give themselves space.
Losing Themselves to Relationships
INFJs tap into people so well that others’ emotional experience can become more real to them than their own
- Their empathy and concern for others thus become a liability
- They will spend all their energy making sure the significant other, children, parents or influential people in their lives get everything they want and need
A tendency to create one-sided relationships
INFJs believe that nobody will ever understand them as much as they understand the other person.
- Caught in a victim mentality, the INFJ believes that nothing can be done to improve their situation and that they are powerless. INFJs will find the solutions they are looking for once they get more into their extraverted Harmony process.
Get out of a low-morale situation ASAP
Workplace dynamics that involve too much emotional heavy lifting will prove exhausting for INFJs
- A toxic environment, such as a company fraught with conflict, tension, stress, and anxiety or a boss who yells all the time, can damage the internal terrain of an INFJ
Hyper-critical of others
The Ni-Ti loop is problematic because it closes off INFJs from outside information that they need to correct and calibrate their thinking
- What usually results is a critical place where the INFJ looks for reasons to exempt themselves from needing to care about other people and their emotions
Recap
Perspectives and Harmony together create a distinctly empathic type
- Both are interested in human dynamics
- INFJs also have a technical, thinking side to them
- They tend to develop health issues from the neglect of their body
- Good news is, INFJs can learn to integrate body awareness into their daily experience
Purposeful ignorance
Once one knows something, one can’t go back. New insight shifts one’s paradigm and demands a change in habits and lifestyle.
- INFJs will allow themselves to be in a perpetual sensory grip of only taking everything at face-value and only being in the moment.
Burnout
INFJs can run around making sure others get their needs met while ignoring their own
- This can lead to burnout if they neglect their needs for too long
- They come to an unspoken agreement with the rest of the group that they will give readily of themselves, understanding that everyone else in the group will give just as much
Overview of “The Counselor”
INFJs have a heightened awareness of human energies that helps them pick up on the subtlest clues about what’s going on for other people.
- When perceiving an individual to gain insight, they consider the sum total of that person’s story, not just their present behavior. They have an innate ability to adjust how they’show up’ to best resonate with the person/environment they are dealing with.
The Three Types of INFJs
Counselor: The three main styles of the Counselor type
Myers-Briggs framework
You will get good at applying this framework over time.
The Heart INFJ
This is the most artistic, creative, and expressive type of INFJ. They are drawn to the fine arts, design, performance arts, and writing.
- Heart INFJs might use the phrase ‘I see you’ to communicate love, acceptance, and affection.
- They are open to non-traditional forms of health and wellness.
Boundaries
INFJs struggle with setting boundaries
- They have difficulty knowing what their boundaries should be
- Sometimes they don’t have any boundaries and they’re sitting ducks
- Other times they have fortresses put up so that no one can enter
- And other times, they set boundaries, but then start seeing things from so many different vantage points that they end up doubting their own judgment
Integrate 3 year old Sensation
With time, you’ll get better at knowing when to go to Sensation, how often to use it, how to rest into it, and how to know when it’s got you in its grip versus when you’re simply utilizing it the way you’re meant to
Grips
When your 3 year old process, the most immature and unsophisticated part of who you are, has pulled you into itself and won’t let you out
- This happens when your driver process is exhausted or when it keeps trying to solve the problem despite not having the alone time needed
Myths and Stereotypes About INFJs
While stereotypes might be somewhat based in truth, it is ridiculous to superimpose those stereotypes over all INFJs.
Perfectionistic
INFJs believe they can’t do anything right and are self-critical
The INFJ’s Fixation: Fear of Vulnerability
INFJs fear vulnerability
- Their driver process (Introverted Intuition/Ni/Perspectives) is an introverted process, and it is responsible for gathering information
- Anything the INFJ picks up gets stuck inside of them as they ruminate over it
- The fear of vulnerability is also fueled by uncertainty around where or how to form boundaries
- An INFJ leading with Perspectives knows that the information they take in can sometimes be toxic
- A major leverage point for them is to figure out: What kind of boundaries are they going to set up?
- Who will they open themselves up to
Avoidant of Relationships
INFJs may be avoidant of relationships because they don’t have to worry about asserting themselves or trying to navigate through a place where the other person’s pain is their pain.
- It’s quite common for INFJs to go their own way, trying to figure out how to live without a relationship. This suits their desire to not be vulnerable.
