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[INFJ] INFJ, inner life a little too rich?

littledarling

New member
Joined
Aug 28, 2008
Messages
78
MBTI Type
INFJ
I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.
 

JocktheMotie

Habitual Fi LineStepper
Joined
Nov 20, 2008
Messages
8,491
I can actually relate to this. People often ask me why I spend so much time in my own little world, and I reply with "because my own little world is much more exciting than this one."

I'm typically more concerned and more interested in what if than what is, and as such the worlds and realities I create are something I always get lost in.
 

StoryOfMyLife

New member
Joined
Oct 27, 2008
Messages
619
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4w5
I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.


I tend to do this. My mind is constantly moving. If I appear to be 'zoning out', it's fairly safe to assume that I'm either thinking very heavily on something, or I am 'seeing' some kind of elaborate story unfold in my imagination.

I don't do it purposely, either. It seems to be triggered whenever some interesting seed of thought or possibility is offered to me, or whenever I've suddenly become very entangled or enamored with something new. My latest obsessions will often times become the object of my day-dreams. It doesn't stop there, either. I dream about these fantasies while I sleep as well. Sadly, it seems to have put me off on settling for 'the norm' when it comes to reality. Some things just don't appeal to me as exciting enough and why bother when I can simply close my eyes or stare off into space and create an alternate 'reality' just by thinking about it? Nevertheless, sometimes this is so very frustrating...
 

penelope

New member
Joined
Nov 17, 2008
Messages
249
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INxJ
Haha, it's very true for me. In fact, my friends have a name for that "look" on my face when I wander off... it's called "Kelly World."

I often find myself laughing at the things I come up with in my head. Example... I'm walking on campus and see an open sewer top, and I imagine the TMNT jumping out and being like, "hey, got pizza?" and I'd be like, "no, but I could totally go for some" and they'd be like "radical" and I'd be like "tubular." And we'd go get pizza. Meanwhile, Shredder comes out another sewer hole and plots to destroy our pizza plan, but decides instead to torment me, so he follows me around campus and finds out where myc ar is, and then slices my tires.

I mean, that's normal. And it happens within seconds. And if I'm not talking, my head is wandering into places like that. All the time.

I quite like it, actually. I think it's what helps me being an introvert... I'm much happier in my own head than deal with the real stuff.
 

Lauren Ashley

Revelation
Joined
Aug 19, 2008
Messages
3,067
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4
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sx/sp
It seems to be triggered whenever some interesting seed of thought or possibility is offered to me, or whenever I've suddenly become very entangled or enamored with something new. My latest obsessions will often times become the object of my day-dreams. It doesn't stop there, either. I dream about these fantasies while I sleep as well. Sadly, it seems to have put me off on settling for 'the norm' when it comes to reality. Some things just don't appeal to me as exciting enough and why bother when I can simply close my eyes or stare off into space and create an alternate 'reality' just by thinking about it? Nevertheless, sometimes this is so very frustrating...

Ditto.

I'm always imagining something; I live in my head. Indeed, my fantasies are much better than reality. Unfortunately, when you're a J, duty calls...
 

penelope

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Nov 17, 2008
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249
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Unfortunately, when you're a J, duty calls...

Yep. I can snap out of it as easily as I snap into it. I agree, though. NFs I'm sure are guilty of this, but the xNFJs are able to keep our feet on the ground while daydreaming, at least.
 

StoryOfMyLife

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Yep. I can snap out of it as easily as I snap into it. I agree, though. NFs I'm sure are guilty of this, but the xNFJs are able to keep our feet on the ground while daydreaming, at least.


Yep, feet firmly on the ground while my head is in the clouds. That seems pretty accurate. I've been accused several times of not 'listening' to somebody, while more often than not, I can very well repeat back everything they've just said to me. During my daydreams or fantasies, I can usually keep an ear open to what my friends are talking about. I just can't react to both simultaneously and so they think I'm not paying any attention at all. :blush:
 

LadyJaye

Scream down the boulevard
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Nov 6, 2007
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It must be an NF thing, because I'm almost constantly living in my head. I'm dialogging with myself, and with other people I know, but in my head. It's like I have to go there and hide for a little while, if my outer world is making heavy demands of me, so I can reboot.

It concerns me how much more enchanting my inner world is than my outer world. I want to stay connected to my environment, but sometimes it's really difficult. Even worse when I'm thinking about spiritual connections with others - I could dwell on those all day.
 

SoAndSo

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Nov 16, 2008
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187
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I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.

I had this exact conversation with an ENFJ the other day. I could have written this post word for word.
 

Athenian200

Protocol Droid
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Jul 1, 2007
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8,828
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My inner world is actually kind of dead and repetitive a lot of the time. I WISH I had an imagination that went in enough directions for me to even come up with something interesting from the details I'm exposed to everyday.

I'm still content in my inner world most of the time, but it can get so... stale sometimes, and especially when I contrast it with the worlds of people like you.
 

Tiltyred

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Does anybody have prophetic daydreams in this manner? A couple of times a random scene would come into my head and I would play it out in my imagination as described above, and the next day, it would happen. At the huge risk of sounding looney, sometimes it's worth paying attention to the stories you're telling yourself.

How about visualizations that are so strong they're almost real? I don't get this often, but for example I was out with my then-boyfriend and the waitress passed by, and he craned his neck to stare at her. When he looked at me again, I saw a wrecking ball hit him right upside the head. It was so sudden and so vivid, it made me laugh aloud.

I think in pictures.
 

SoAndSo

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I get visions that are often prophetic and other times just informational. These visions have a different feel to me than my typical daydream so I don't group them into the same category in my head. I love when I get them since they are few and far between.
 

Domino

ENFJ In Chains
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Nov 5, 2007
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I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.


Yikes. That's me too! :(

Staying grounded would be IMPOSSIBLE for me if I didn't live with an ENFP and an ESTJ. My mother was watching "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" a few nights ago. I found myself REALLY relating to the magic wardrobe and to Lucy, and something about it depressed me, caused me to recoil. I asked Mom, "Do you experience this sort of disillusionment?"

Mom: "That these things aren't real?"

Me: "Yes."

Mom: "No. Because I would never believe in such a wardrobe. Honey, you live so much in your head, and I live 'down here', grounded. I wouldn't be disappointed because I would never have invested my hope and belief in such a thing."

It's kneejerk - I can't NOT believe in magic. And good luck dragons. And theme music that plays as you walk down the street.
 

Nyota

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Nov 13, 2008
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I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.

This happens to me a lot, and it seems like it does for many fellow infjs. I started reading a lot about my Enneagram, and found that 4s (especially 4w5s) tend to live in this "fantasy world."
"4s are emotionally centered and spend much of their lives immersed in their internal mental landscapes, where they feel free to cultivate and analyse their feelings." (found here:Enneagram Type 4 - The Individualist)
It all seems to make more sense now. We, as infjs, have such intense feelings, it is often easy to immerse ourselves into such a world where our mind can wonder.
 

Nat

New member
Joined
Nov 29, 2008
Messages
66
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INFJ
I recently spoke with a fellow INFJ who could relate very well to my constant imagination. I know most INFJ's have an abundance of creative thought, but I wonder what this actually looks like. I find myself constantly "daydreaming", or creating wildly fictacious stories whenever my mind wanders. It's not something I consciously decide to do. Sometimes while in the company of others I will imagine the conversation going a completely different direction. I also tend to create conversations with people I know. I imagine exactly what would be said, felt, thought...and I play it over in my mind, adding and subtracting certain scenes. I have been known to confuse actual conversations with made-up ones, and have on occasion felt I had a much deeper relationship with someone than what actually was.
I've noticed that some of the people I know in real life are actually much more fascinating in my imagination. I build people up in my mind, and am often disapointed when I spend real time with them. Mostly I enjoy my strong ideality and ability to fabricate fantasy so easily, but I can also see how easy it might be to get too wrapped up in my own world and shut others out. Is this something other INFJ's struggle with? Or any other type? Staying grounded. Sometimes I think that my make-believe life is much more appealing than real life, but I know that in order to make real life interesting I need to spend more time in it.

:yes: I can relate to a lot of that post. I find myself doing it a lot when I'm bored or want some sort of distraction from whatever it is I'm doing.
 

StoryOfMyLife

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Oct 27, 2008
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I totally have theme music.


Oooh yes! Theme music is a necessity of life. :) At least mine.


In relation to the idea of magic and such existing, there is SO much that I wish were real or true, or that I'd come across just to make life as exciting as it could be, as it is in my own mind. Time-travel has always been in my interests, so currently I'm fabricating day-dreams of coming across The Doctor and hitching a ride with him on the TARDIS so we could go just anywhere. [Honestly. Just yesterday, at work, I saw a customer who resembled David Tennant's Doctor enough for me to think, for a split-second, "Oh my gosh, YES!" only to be sorely disappointed :blush:].

Magic, time-travel, gateways into other worlds or dimensions such as the Wardrobe into Narnia, and books or films or TV shows which revolve around such things only do to feed my obsession and need for this kind of thing. Gives me new material, too, for the stories I can write in my head. :)
 

Kyrielle

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Apr 26, 2007
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Yikes. That's me too! :(

Staying grounded would be IMPOSSIBLE for me if I didn't live with an ENFP and an ESTJ. My mother was watching "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" a few nights ago. I found myself REALLY relating to the magic wardrobe and to Lucy, and something about it depressed me, caused me to recoil. I asked Mom, "Do you experience this sort of disillusionment?"

Mom: "That these things aren't real?"

Me: "Yes."

Mom: "No. Because I would never believe in such a wardrobe. Honey, you live so much in your head, and I live 'down here', grounded. I wouldn't be disappointed because I would never have invested my hope and belief in such a thing."

It's kneejerk - I can't NOT believe in magic. And good luck dragons. And theme music that plays as you walk down the street.

:( That kinda makes me a sad panda hearing that. I have had that happen with Narnia (the books anyway) as well. It was...a little too "perfect" or "easy" perhaps.

And yes. Theme music that you could hear outside your headphones/head would be awesome! Especially if it was generated by your movements/thoughts and sychronised with daily life. *is filled with glee at the thought*

I've also had my mother say similar things to me. Except she's just a little bit more likely to believe in it just for a moment or two. But that is one of her chief complaints about me--being too much "in my head".
 
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