How to Understand The INFJ Personality Type: Part 1

The INFJ personality type makes up only 1-3 percent of the population and is considered to be the rarest of the 16 MBTI personality types. Are you an INFJ or someone who has an INFJ in your life? Here are 8 tips to help you better understand the INFJ personality type.

1. Accept that you will never really understand the INFJ.

If it were possible for anyone to 100% understand an INFJ an INFJ would have written a book on it by now. Unfortunately, the closest thing we have is this blog. The truth is, even INFJs can’t completely understand ourselves, so we don’t expect you to understand us. But we can tell when you’re trying, and that means a lot.

2. Listen to what your INFJ is not saying.

You know the quote that says “the quietest people have the loudest minds”? That couldn’t be more true for the INFJ. The quieter we are, the more we probably have on our mind. We want friends and partners who understand that, will want to talk to us about it, and most importantly, listen.

3. Know that INFJs really aren’t that serious.

Yes, we have a lot on our minds. Yes, we can be sensitive. Yes, we sometimes partake in serious discussions and debates. But we’re happiest when we can just be playful, carefree, and weird with someone who accepts that side of us.

4. If you’re not happy, your INFJ is not happy.

If someone we love is upset, we take on their feelings as our own. We’re extremely empathetic. Sometimes even the sadness in the eyes of the checkout clerk at the grocery store is enough to dampen our mood for the rest of the day. This is a quality that makes INFJs different from a lot of other types. We value people who understand this and don’t take every mood shift personally. It’s just hard when you feel what everyone else is feeling all the time.

5. INFJs can be stubborn.

INFJs hate conflict and try to avoid it as much as possible, but if you hit the right nerve we will jump in and defend our opinions and values to the death. Later we will probably quietly try to understand your perspective (because we’re always trying to understand everything about everyone) and that might even cause us to agree with you a little, but we won’t tell you that. 😉

6. INFJs can forgive, but we never forget.

If you hurt us and then apologize, we may forgive you and give you a second chance. But we’ll never forget the pain we felt and we will be cautious around you for awhile afterward.

7. INFJs are experts at hiding their feelings.

We tend to bottle a lot up inside, so on the outside, everything appears completely fine. Even the most intuitive types (except perhaps other INFJs) can’t typically tell when an INFJ is upset. We like this and hate this about ourselves.

8. INFJs feel a lot of responsibility, always.

We want to make sure everyone is happy, but we also want to listen to your problems. We need to make sure everything on a project goes right, but we also need to make sure everyone working on the project gets a say in what is happening. We need to make sure we get there on time, but don’t want to make anyone upset by rushing them. We are internal perfectionists and put a lot of pressure on ourselves. But we don’t come across as a typical type A personality because those type of people stress people out and we don’t want to stress anyone out. So we just keep our perfectionism to ourselves and it drives us a little crazy.

Keep reading: How To Understand the INFJ Personality Type: Part 2.