I am an INFP.
If you read that sentence and asked, “You’re a what?” you probably aren’t alone. According to the Myers-Briggs personality test, there are sixteen different personalities. These are always made up by a combination of four different letters. Each of the four letters has two different choices.
The first letter in the Myers-Briggs personalities can be either an I or an E. The I stands for Introvert and the E stands for Extrovert. The second letter can be S or N. The S stands for Sensing and the N stands for Intuitive. The third letter can be an F or a T. The F stands for Feeling and the T stands for Thinking. The fourth letter can be a P or a J. The P stands for Perceiving and the J stands for Judging.
This makes me an Introverted Intuitive Feeling Perceiving person. First of all, I’m an introvert. In layman’s terms, I’m shy. This means that I don’t like talking to crowds or being forced to share my feelings. I’m more comfortable typing words onto a screen or writing them on paper and having people read what I wrote. I’m usually comfortable talking to people who have first written me letters and e-mails and I, them. I can sometimes be comfortable with people that I’ve known for a long time. However, I’m rarely comfortable around new people. I can sometimes connect with a new person through an interest such as literature, music or ministry, but it can be difficult. Other times, I can connect with other people because they are also introverts. If I’m in a crowd, you are going to find me with the other introverts that happen to be in the crowd unless I am already friends with one of the extroverts that is there.
Rather than going letter-by-letter and explaining each point, I’m now going to explain being a “feeling” person. This simply means that I easily rely on my emotions to guide many of my actions. People tend to think otherwise because I’m intelligent. Yes, that is true and yes that is part of who I am and is important to me. However, I am very focused on my emotions. I get hurt easily. I fall in love easily. However, this also means that I focus on the emotions of others. I worry about hurting their emotions. I want others to be happy even if I’m not. It also means that I can worry about one certain situation sometimes for months.
When a person is a “feeling” person, a typical thing is to be able to give inanimate objects a personality. I can easily give stuffed animals or children’s toys personalities. I can pick up a toy and it’ll suddenly become alive. It’s a lot like in “The Velveteen Rabbit” where the toys talk about becoming real. Toys, to a “feeling” person are real. In fact, any object can become “real.”
I still have stuffed animals that meant a lot to me as a child. There are tons of memories attached to them. The ones that especially mean a lot were those that were given as gifts for various reasons. Then, out of those, the really special ones were the ones given to me when I was in the hospital. Each of these toys even have a name and I still call them by that name. This is normal for a “feeling” person.
This also means that I often focus on my inadequacies. I’m also not good at accepting compliments and worry often that people won’t like what I’ve written or done. When I do receive a compliment, I just smile politely while blushing and turning away from the person. Sometimes I am able to mutter a small “thanks.” It’s never easy.
The reason I skipped “intuitive” is because I feel that intuitive and perceiving easily go together. I can often sense the way people are feeling. I may write a poem completely based on somebody else’s feelings. They will then ask me, “How did you do that?” I can never answer this question. In fact, I never know how I did it. I know that I just sensed something from them and wrote about that feeling and the situation if I knew it. I’ve never suffered with struggles of self-injury. However, I have written poems that cover this topic. While I worry about offending those who have struggled with SI, I tend to get compliments from them.
I also often have feelings about a person – if they are good or will cause trouble. I can often sense if a person likes me or doesn’t like me. However, I also tend to second guess these feelings. It’s part of my not wanting to hurt the other person’s feelings in any way.
If I had paid attention to these feelings the very first time I had met Robert, I probably would’ve saved myself from much heartache. However, I didn’t heed the original feelings, went with being the completely nice person, and let myself fall for him about three months later. If I wrote out the situation when I had those feelings, there’s no reason for me to have had them. Being the nice person made sense.
I currently struggle with these first intuitive feelings when meeting people all the time. I hate being rude and ignoring a person. I also hate assuming that somebody likes me in any way, even though I can often sense that a person does. Sometimes this makes me want to be closer to a person. Other times, it makes me want to stay away from the person. I never want to be wrong in either situation, so I go with the more logical explanation in my mind. It once again has to do with not wanting to upset that other person.
The intuitive and perceiving person, when also a feeling person, is often a writer. For example, I can sit for hours or a few hours for some days simply contemplating what it might be like to be an old-fashioned lamp. I’ll wonder what it’s like to feel the heat from the electricity and the light. I can wonder what it feels like to have to stand all day long. These are completely normal thoughts for an INFP. Then, those thoughts are the things that are written down into poems and stories.
While being an INFP is wonderful for being creative, it’s not always the most wonderful thing for being confident. That, however, is not the biggest problem. INFPs are greatly misunderstood. The INFP is supposedly the rarest type of Myers-Briggs personalities. It is estimated that INFPs make up only 1% to 2% of any given population. This can make it extremely hard to meet other INFPs. In fact, even with seven other types of Myers-Briggs personalities being a combination that makes a person an Introvert, introverts are estimated to make up only about 10% of any population. The only way to be certain to gather introverts together is to make sure one has a huge introverts convention. While this sounds like a great idea in theory, it’s not likely. Introverts are completely content to sit at home, read, and do whatever they do to be creative.
So, where are you bound to find INFPs? Of course, there’s the typical answer of “at home.” You can find them writing, sitting away from the crowd and reading or sometimes you can even find them with a small group of friends or at a concert. However, you probably are not going to find them at any huge party or being wild.
When it comes to professions, INFPs can be everywhere. Of course, there are always the typical professions of writer and artist. While intensely shy, INFPs are often great at mentoring and caring about others. So, counseling and ministry occupations are common. Then, another seemingly odd profession is that of actor or actress. While the INFP doesn’t like to be in front of people and he or she can get nervous in front of a crowd, an acting job allows the INFP to be somebody that he or she is not. The INFP is able to hide behind the character.
So, while being an INFP can be something that a person enjoys, it is also something that can cause a lot of stress in life.
