Differentiating between INFP, ISFJ, and INFJ
Hello all! I’ve been struggling to find my type for years at this point, or even to identify which axes I’m on, and I’m trying to remedy that. I suspect I’m most likely IXFJ or INFP, but I could also potentially see myself being INTP or ISFP. I sometimes feel like I exclusively have introverted functions/j
I struggle a lot with the particular kind of self description that typing requires for a couple of different reasons. Firstly, for any one thing I could say about myself, I could likely say something seemingly opposite and have it be equally true; I don’t know which trait I should communicate and which one I should discard, because, in my mind, they’re wrapped up together as characteristics that describe me without true contradiction. Questions from external sources suffer from a similar problem, but are just less within my control (two conceptually identical questions might have two technically different implications that inform how I respond differently, for example). Secondly, I have very painfully obvious biases that, consciously or subconsciously, inform both how I describe myself and present myself; I can do my best to be neutral and true, but the fact is that I want to have certain functions more than others, and, given that I can’t discern which traits I should express to begin with, my attempts will most likely not be successful. I think this is true for all people to some degree, but I’ve historically struggled with identity, masking, and bias more than other people have seemed to, which makes reflection and communication difficult.
With all that in mind, I’m just going to talk about each function and my relationships to them on an individual basis to try and give a more well-rounded picture of what I’m about. I hope that’s alright!
Se: I can’t tell what my relationship with Se is. I do enjoy some tactile activities, and I’ve been described as observant, but I’ve also been described as clumsy and unaware and “off in my own world”, so I’m unsure if “observant” was really referencing physical reality as much as it was in reference to people and concepts. I’m awful at eye-spy, for example. I am good at art, though, and have decent spatial reasoning - I’m consistently told that I’m physically stronger than I look, and that I have talent that if I just put effort into, I could get really good at certain physical activities. I like music a lot, and get swept up in it easily, although that often leads me into my imagination, so I’m not sure how much of that is really se. As I get older and better at art, I’m beginning to have more appreciation for beauty, but it was never something that came naturally to me, and I don’t care much about my own or other people’s looks outside of using them as compliments/to make people more comfortable (I dress very sloppy, partially because I’m lazy as shit and don’t think anyone in my town really cares too much what I wear to the grocery store (people dress weird where I’m from), and partially to try and help others feel less pressure to perform perfectly/let them know I won’t judge them. If I genuinely think someone will care/be affected poorly by my appearance, I’ll up my game, but again, my town is really weird in terms of clothes and when I dress up it’s usually a means to an end). I’m also awful at tracking time and my physical body in general.
Si: My relationship with Si is also confusing, probably because of a couple mental conditions. On one hand, I’m incredibly detail oriented and perfectionistic, I like rituals and routines (ocd and autism at play here), and I’m very aware of very specific bodily functions and sensations (again, the ocd kind of impacts this - I monitor my heart rate and chest area a lot because I have a phobia, and I’m very aware of any symptoms I could exhibit that could imply cardiac disfunction). On the other hand, I need variation within routine (adhd + autism), can be profoundly unaware of bodily needs (not knowing if I’m hungry, thirsty, or hot/cold, kind of having a sense of something is wrong but not automatically understanding it, etc.) and I have an awful memory. At the same time though, I have a difficult time distracting myself from pain and am very sensitive to it - except when I’m not, and I easily forget I’m feeling anything at all. Both are true at different times. Sometimes I’m more sensitive to non-phobia-related internal conditions than others as well, and I have been improving at my memory lately! Kind of! Ish! Anyways. I’m not good at seeing something and knowing whether or not it’s changed since the last time I looked at all, but I do sometimes dislike something until it becomes more familiar (some of my favorite songs I was kinda meh on at first, but then I kept listening over and over again until I realized I liked them a lot. I sometimes like listening to the same song on repeat for hours until it loses how it hits and becomes unlistenable for the next month).
Ne: Ne is interesting. It’s one of those functions I really admire in others, at least in the way I’ve seen them use it, but have a difficult time using myself - I find high Ne users are usually quite witty and creative. While I can see different possibilities and can do brainstorming and art, it’s never been my talent, and is something I’ve had to work to develop (or, try to, at least - no clue how successful I’ve been). I come up with stories a lot of times (I always have, it’s one of the great joys of life), but usually focus in on one particular point of the story, be it a scene or a theme, and have a hard time focusing on more than one thing at a time (although I can expand sometimes as well - depends on who I’m with and what we’re talking about whether or not expansion feels natural). I take a lot of inspiration from others as well, and a lot of my plots - or, well, the one plot I have - is rather Frankensteined. One of the reasons I’ll never publish my story is because some pieces would probably just be downright plagiarism lol 😅 it’s also just kind of a hot mess of various things I’ve added on to put my characters through over the years, and way too much is happening. Additionally, if I have an idea, I’m usually pretty set on it. I’ve been described as “the most stubborn person I’ve ever met” by my family - it’s not that I can’t conceptualize other options, there’s just usually one I think is significantly more nuanced or correct compared to the rest. I absolutely can talk in hypotheticals, though, and can get frustrated when people refuse to engage with the “what if” because they’re to centered in “what is” - it feels intentionally obtuse. Simultaneously, though, I can get frustrated with people who engage with theoretics when reality is needed because the theoretical focus is causing people to suffer in reality.
Ni: I can’t tell if my Ni is really good or really bad/unhealthy. I get a lot of epiphanies and always have - I don’t think through a lot manually, and find doing so incredibly tedious, because most things just come to me automatically. I feel fairly lost when I don’t have a gut feeling to at least act as a starting place for any thought or search - my first impulse after not having an inference is usually to try and spark an inference by throwing shit at the wall and seeing if anything gives me an idea/happens to work. If something doesn’t sit right, I have a really hard time going with it, and will usually search for something wrong with it because I don’t trust it - often I find something wrong, but, sometimes I will have a very disconcerting situation where I have to go with something even if it feels wrong because I can’t think of/find anything objectively wrong. I will become incredibly paranoid about it in that case, and can never trust it (hence the ocd and compulsive checking everything that “feels wrong” in any sense). It’s lead to a situation where I really want to trust my intuition, and do in certain cases, but that I’m so paranoid about being wrong that many things either come with copious caveats (things that could impact others/their perception of me) or no trust at all (things that matter too much to me to risk being wrong about, even when I know for a fact I’m right - my ocd, basically). I have very particular ideas about things and have a hard time going with anything else when I know I’m correct on an intuitive level (hence the “most stubborn person I’ve ever met” comments, along with accusations of black and white thinking - again, it’s not that I don’t understand other perspectives, it’s just that one is usually far more correct compared to others). I also think in vibes a lot - I don’t ever claim to understand something unless I get the gist of it, not just its technical working parts, because it truly feels like I don’t understand until the gestalt sets in (although I’d also prefer to understand the technical working parts and the details, admittedly, because I find it fun and reassuring - and I might not claim to understand something ever in case it has adverse effects/I am wrong). Additionally, I’m not a good planner, and like to have an idea of where things are headed without having any specifics set in stone (unless the specifics matter/could have a negative impact if not accounted for, in which case I’ll grin and bear the torture of sitting down and thinking things through manually when a solution doesn’t automatically come to me).
Fe: First of all, I really, really care what people think of me. I try not to, and can somewhat disconnect from it when needed, but the analysis of what people perceive me as is never not going on under the surface. I feel fairly constantly aware of it to some level, even if I’m able to ignore it/tell myself it doesn’t matter, and I remember being kind of a sponge for other people’s emotions for quite a while when I was younger (and still am for larger social groups lowkey, but I’m better at keeping more distant now and not letting other people impact me quite as much). Having said that, I was kind of odd in terms of my Fe/Fi as a kid? I’m going to talk a lot about when I was a child here because my feeling function is something I really struggle to discern as an adult. I don’t have a clear, unbiased picture of how I engage with this stuff anymore, to be honest, but I figure if type doesn’t change with age, then my childhood behaviors should count for something. I didn’t care what other kids thought of me because I thought I was better than them to some level (which I feel bad about now, of course) - but, simultaneously, I did care for them deeply and would always do what I thought would help them out. I’m told I would always inevitably notice when someone was crying, no matter how far away they were/whether or not I knew anything about them, and would go out of my way every time to approach them and help them feel better because seeing them cry felt awful. I would also go out of my way to lecture other kids if I felt they were doing something wrong - I actually hated doing this because it would always result in hurt feelings and social discord, which I felt deep in my soul, so I’m not exactly sure why I did it (I have a couple theories, but nothing simple enough to explain here feels right), but regardless I felt some sort of need to. I don’t do this now because it only hurts people and never actually works to improve the situation, of course, and I also just don’t usually care as much as I did then, but back then it was a thing, and I was a huge know it all lol. Anyways. I was pretty acutely aware of people and emotions and social dynamics for an autistic kid, and was described as very “diplomatic” (you do this and I do that and that’s how it should be because then we both win and get to feel good - I was kind of bossy as well because I truly thought I was right lol). I deeply cared what older kids and adults thought of me, though, because I both cared about them and viewed them as above me (because they were smarter/more experienced/provided much needed stability/safety in exchange for control and I was kind of a sycophant).
Fi: I have always had deeply held principles and morals, although I’m not sure if these come from within or from an external source. I was raised conservative Christian in a very secular, leftist area, so there wasn’t any real way for me to truly conform or rebel in terms of morality because anything I could have believed would have both fit me in and ostracized me in different situations, and I struggled to grapple with that. I did still have some unequivocally internal principles, though: I was honest to a fault, not because I sought to hurt people, but because I was taught that lying was wrong and telling the truth generally protected me and gave me rapport with people I wanted to be liked by. I wanted to do the right thing and to be myself so deeply and to be liked for it, although I did have a hard time sticking to my opinions if other people disagreed unless they were truly and deeply engrained/someone I trusted had told me that they were correct and therefore I had an outside source to confirm my thoughts (again, I trusted just about any adult over just about any kid, and didn’t take what people my age had to say very seriously, so I had no problem arguing for my perspective if an adult had claimed it was true. I was a bit gullible if I didn’t have a trusted source to back me up, though, and still can be [it’s just now that the trusted sources aren’t random people, but like. Actual journals and studies lmfao]). Anyways. I valued honesty and authenticity a lot, and I wanted to be myself a lot, but I also really cared what others thought of me and manually reshaped myself into what I thought other people would like several times throughout my life to the point that I no longer know who I am/would be without that reshaping. I don’t care about authenticity at this point as much as I used to because I’ve come to the conclusion that most other people don’t truly care either, and I’m kind of a liar if it will act as social lubricant. I want to know who I am and have my own principles, and to be different and moral, and I absolutely succeed in some respects, but I really struggle in others.
Te: I’m so awful with Te I almost have nothing to say. I’m terrible at almost anything in this sphere: organization, planning, efficiency, maintaining control, anything that has to do with putting logic into actionable steps. I’m horrible at it because I really kind of view it as useless for me? Like, I admire it in others, and I do see its value absolutely, but I’m too unmotivated to actually be put in a situation where I’d have to practice it. I’m good at school and always got straight A’s, I do like spreadsheets because they act as a reference point when I forget about stuff, and I’m good at research and finding reliable data, but that’s about it. I have to rely on other sources of motivation to look for efficiency over meticulous accuracy (usually social things, I hate disappointing people, or fear of physical harm).
Ti: I’m a lot better with Ti than Te, at least subjectively. I like categories and getting a full picture of the world, and I automatically systemize things to understand them. I like thinking through things, and making sure my mental models are accurate, even if it has no practical purpose, and have historically been known to go down rabbit holes to expand and refine my mental models. I see viewing everything as data to be analyzed and put through models, and viewing reality through this lens, as a very fun way of looking at the world, and a very nice way of understanding it. It also makes it easier to detach from the personal, more emotional aspect of the world, which I sometimes desperately need for my own personal energy reserves, and as a way to clear my head and see things more logically. It can be annoying or helpful when I’m trying to have a more emotional moment where I just let myself be kind of delusional and my brain automatically tells me that my reaction or perspective does not make sense. This was true for me when I was younger as well (I was emotional as a kid, but I could always be reasoned with - even while crying, I wasn’t ever truly so swept up in my emotions that I couldn’t see reason). It can be kind of annoying when trying to learn, though - I don’t always have the time or resources to make a whole model of something in my head, and having to abandon the thought of understanding something wholly for the sake of time feels wrong and disappointing, although I can do it for practicality and if I get unmotivated enough.
Sorry for the excessively long post, but if you made it, thank you so much for reading through. I’d love to hear what you think if you have any thoughts, and I hope you’re having a wonderful day/night!