generally most of the typoC INFJs who know me know that is far from the case, thankfully there are more INFJs here then the scope of this little forum club.
actually, just in the last two years i've seen them get "provoked" by:
- a guy who got lied too and cheated on by an INFJ
- then me
- then another guy who had all his possessions stolen by an INFJ
- then a chick who got abandoned mid pregnancy by an INFJ
- then like 17 "malicious voters" in a little poll where the INFJs looked bad
- then another guy who just got cheated (hint: he usually fetishes them).
- and apparently like half a dozen of INFPs who've known INFJs
out of those i am just the one who wasn't scared away - they were getting "provoked" before me and will be getting "provoked" after me.
...and yes they genuinely interpret anyone saying anything bad about an INFJ as provoking them. but that doesn't make it sane:
can you imagine that whenever you heard about someone losing loved ones in car accidents due to drunk driving, the first thing on your mind would be the possible negative implication it would have on you if you or a lot of your friends claim to have done it in the past? can you imagine then looking at people straight in the eye and interpreting their talk about their losses and/or attempts to understand related behavior and patterns as a provocation? thinking of people's deaths, handicaps and injuries as manipulative attack about you and your friends as honorable drinkers that they just must retaliate and defend their friends from? and yet, right here that is exactly what they do - reacting to any negative experiences about INFJs as a personal attack about INFJs, in their heads THAT is the provocation - they do it all the fucking time, and they truly believe they are being provoked, that people are coming here putting themselves completely out there in full vulnerability one after the other for the sole purpose of "going after them" and making other INFJs - meaning them - feel bad about themselves!
"oh no, more life experiences about INFJs?
more people who maliciously bring horrible claims?
more stories of destructive behaviors about an INFJ?
clearly this is all about how it might reflect on us!
and now INFJs are under attack! again!
...charge!"
^ THAT is the pattern.
hurt people are often not in a good position to avoid hurting others, in part because they are already likely to be emotionally overdrawn. when you can give nothing, it's difficult to relate without hurting others because you are struggling to relate to yourself in a positive way. you have nothing to give YOURSELF, so there's no source of empathy that you can utilize when you need it to move through and beyond hurtful things triggered in you through your experience of someone else. i just think this is a more relevant description for the conflicts that have occurred than anything else, certainly than anything jungian type related.
with that said, and for what it's worth, i've seen nfps generally, and this isn't true in all specifics, be better at getting in contact with the hurt of others in a way that can help them avoid taking it personally. especially those who really mature their skills, and they, in my estimation, do have a pretty substantial headstart in this regard (altho some infjs, like 21%, are obviously really, really great at this. it's probably not crazy to say that oftentimes our relationships with nfps are a big catalyst in this, and something that can change our lives forever). it's something i appreciate. e4s of all types, however, generally have more challenge, due to self-shaming tendencies (as can those types connected to e1 who have frequent flare-ups, that react by purporting a kind of superiority and higher standard in order to cut others down). this e4 aspect clearly includes myself, and is a category whose identification with i am deeply, inextricably connected to, because it feels like me, good and bad. i know i am often unskillful at balancing myself, absorbing blows, and just being good at staying connected to my own truth. i can readily admit this. while i am working on it, i also know i need to ask for help from others for support, because this kind of emotional learning is not easy, and it does not happen overnight.
i also know that i am a very sensitive person and need a somewhat gentle, gracious touch when giving me feedback about the range of things i am likely to take personally. this can be seen as demanding, but it can also be seen as realistic, and simply the result of finally accepting where i am at, not through laziness but through empathy with myself. i am a mercurial e4, and i have come a long way and will continue to get better, but i still know where i am at right now. this e4 path, i also trust, from sharing stories and experiences and clearly observable patterns, generally leads to challenges with mood regulation. moreover, when dealing with that, it's important to recognize that long-term emotional needs are rarely things that we can simply outwork. what we need in some sense has to be received as a gift, which complicates matters, even if we improve our means of more constructively making something out of those gifts and doing work to attract, open ourselves up to, and share them. i know that i need this much, much more when i am struggling to balance myself, and when i am losing contact with myself and, in turn, losing contact with others who share appreciation with me. shame, for e4s at least, is a kind of implosion that makes it difficult to wake up from. depression is the result. no one is at their best in this state, and blame is all too easy. and to be realistic, it is probably those of us who are in a hypersensitive, inflexible state who most react (read: overreact) to baiting statements that, especially with the context over the long haul, read to me something like "more incontrovertible evidence that infjs are destructive, psychopathic assholes." especially when combined, so proximally, with the huge generalizations that follow. i think those who are in a more balanced place just realize that they have to pick their battles and sometimes they just have to choose to turn off fox news. i know, despite feeling baited (and you may have too), i have personally gained a lot from your perspective. i think your carefully written sign-off is incredibly insightful, and after the initial wariness of embracing that, i see that connecting to someone else's reality in their own terms as much as you can is so fundamental for not only recognizing what is possible but also for helping you anchor your commitment to ultimately deciding what is true for you (at least enough to commit to, to fully act upon with the whole of yourself). i only mention this latter part to illustrate that i have tried to listen to what you have said.
i don't know exactly what you've been through, or what fia or anyone else has been through, which is certainly evidence for one of my difficulties: social obliviousness. i know i don't have the experience, with kids involved, and i don't know what it would feel like to have my rights taken away for what seemed like not only irrelevant factors but a clear attempt to be hurtful. there's nothing i can really offer other than i am trying to hear you. i certainly can't offer sense that makes the pain go away, nor can i accepting that wrong or granting your interpretation a supraordinate status really mean anything. however, i do know what it feels like to experience spite, and i also know what it feels like to experience that moment of digging in and just being overwhelmed with "FUCK THAT!" i am not very good at forgiveness, even tho i am beginning to see how quickly the alternative compounds. i know what it is like to have a relationship end (multiple times) because, in large part, the difficulty of forgiveness, and the compounding of its opposite, debt. i also know what it feels like to realize after the fact that you did not see how you were affecting someone else, and i know how it feels to want to avoid that feeling and try to instead rationalize it, understand it, analyze it, whatever i can do to just not really recognize that only through being fully present for this will i have an opportunity to better understand my own and others needs, and how they relate to each other and to themselves in all of their gory complexity, and how moving past just offering myself up as sacrifice is less loving than empathizing with myself and with the other, because if i do so, i will care, because i will in some inextricable sense be with them too (and that this is part of the choice that you do when you take responsibility, not just for a level of behaviors but for the work of the heart). i also know how it feels when someone else doesn't seem to have any realization that they are triggering something that hurts you, or that even worse their sense of having any connection with you is just severed and they simply see you as bad bc something is triggered in them. i know how repulsively ugly everything begins to feel to me when i become embroiled in that. i am offering my experience because it in some sense might relate to both of yours. so many of these pieces are universal, and connect us, if we allow them to.
i also know that i will live a more fulfilling life if i commit to fully practicing the realization that no one has more responsibility to deal with the effects of the past for me than me, regardless of whether or not they were my fault. as long as i keep playing the "whose fault" game, the longer i choose to not hear what i really need, and the result is that i can also not hear what anyone else really needs either. it's just a fact-overloading, lawyery, railroading game. controlling right, controlling the definition of the other person. while it may feel like others resist simply because they need to be in control of their self-image, they also deserve the space and privacy to relate to their own self-images themselves (which for Fe and Ti in concert can be way, way challenging). it's a personal thing, and if we don't protect that, we all lose. helping others save face, sometimes, isn't simply choosing the cowardly, ineffectual path. sometimes it's more of a sign that you are really committing to helping and just being there through the long-term path. that you accept where they are at, and will give them the space to be what they are. i make no qualms in saying that this kind of perspective is not what has been natural to me, but that i think it articulates some of why pristine Fi is so damned necessary for all of us to practice, rather than controlling how we define each other's intentions. to only do the latter is already kind of the death of relationship. it's definitely the death of love.*
* which doesn't have to be some miraculous, abstract thing, and can simply mean that through sharing intelligently, we can heal ourselves, we can become more intelligently connected, fulfilled, whole.
). What I mean is, if you want to rant about something and find support, acceptance and a listening ear, you should be able to do so in a safe zone with people understanding that. That also means you forfeit the right of actually investigating that claim, experience, or rant as an objective truth. You can do that later - many people seem to go through a process of first purging, then feeling understood, and because of that being able to understand the other side as well and then have a need to debate in what way this takes place and why, so it is a natural progression. At that point, one could start a new thread, once one is ready for such a place. Once you go to phase two, it is best to use curiosity and detachment and an open mind to research it, to keep miscommunication, escalation and heated arguments flying everywhere - in other words, there the safe haven will not extend in order to prevent platforming and spreading personal opinions as truths. 
Only in the beginning when people are still adjusting to the new format.
Hilarious!!
'
