[MBTI General] Do NFJs tend to be the most private types?

[Glycerine]

Oh. Yes.

It should be said however, individual (and even general "type") values vary largely, which will account for the discrepancies in various perspectives on the paradox of INFJ openness/closedness. For example, I've been surprisingly okay with revealing horrific family events with friendly acquaintances when/if the topic were to surface and personal experience would serve the discussion appropriately. (Topic examples that I have quietly shared with a small group of coworkers during a late night pow-wow: My uncle killed himself in our garage when I was 6 years old. My grandfather murdered my grandmother (and my namesake). I ran away from home at 14 and didn't return for 7 years.) All of which is true information that would be revealed MUCH to the horror of my SJ mother if she knew. It isn't that they are "light" topics to me --just that I don't feel they are significantly revelatory about me as an individual, therefore I feel comfortable sharing these facts if they serve my point or goal.

Contrarily, my mother's incessant desire to impress her friends with things like "my daughter wants to teach" and "she's been writing since she was a kid" makes me cringe. For reasons completely incomprehensible to her, I do not want this information shared with just anyone because it reveals my passions, therefore it reveals me --whereas my family debacles feel less personal as they are simply "events" that have shaped the course of my serpentine life.

There are also people who have known me since birth that do not know huge swaths of my life. For example: they would not know that I have survived several serious bouts of suicidal depression, was baptized on my own at 14, decided I was agnostic at 21, was seriously abused for many years by my own mother, or even my favorite song etc --yet I share this information freely with a forum of complete strangers. My choice of self-disclosure is fickle, circumstantially dependent, and purpose-driven whether the listener knows it or not.

For every inch I reveal there remains a mile underground. Ultimately, INFJs spin their own intricate web of values that seems complicated to many but the makers.

This seems to be exactly how I operate as well. Right on! I let people see the tiniest nook of the door to my core but 98% of people never step through it.

 

[Dwigie]

This seems to be exactly how I operate as well. Right on! I let people see the tiniest nook of the door to my core but 98% of people never step through it.

Exactly the same. My mother is indeed horrified.
I tend to want to know everything about people though .

 

[Snow Turtle]

Contrarily, my mother's incessant desire to impress her friends with things like "my daughter wants to teach" and "she's been writing since she was a kid" makes me cringe. For reasons completely incomprehensible to her, I do not want this information shared with just anyone because it reveals my passions, therefore it reveals me --whereas my family debacles feel less personal as they are simply "events" that have shaped the course of my serpentine life.

Awww.

There are also people who have known me since birth that do not know huge swaths of my life. For example: they would not know that I have survived several serious bouts of suicidal depression, was baptized on my own at 14, decided I was agnostic at 21, was seriously abused for many years by my own mother, or even my favorite song etc --yet I share this information freely with a forum of complete strangers. My choice of self-disclosure is fickle, circumstantially dependent, and purpose-driven whether the listener knows it or not.[/B]For every inch I reveal there remains a mile underground. Ultimately, INFJs spin their own intricate web of values that seems complicated to many but the makers.

Mmm. For a period of time I found it extremely strange how that occured, especially when some of the information is withheld from the closest of friends. Yet I'm sure if these people had asked about such thing... I'd at least be willing to inform them. What about yourself?

 

[lane777]

I'm always very private with personal information, even with family and close friends. In the case of every day thoughts and feeling, it has more to do with people not asking enough questions. I'm a very questioning person, so people are opening up to me all the time. Others rarely return the gesture. I need probing to open up, simply because I feel that if someone doesn't ask, they're not interested.

 

[iwakar]

Mmm. For a period of time I found it extremely strange how that occured, especially when some of the information is withheld from the closest of friends. Yet I'm sure if these people had asked about such thing... I'd at least be willing to inform them. What about yourself?

Certainly. But if people do not appear interested in who I am, I do not care to share. On the other hand, if they do seem interested, I will watch them closely to gauge their level of trustworthiness and share the appropriate level of information.

Re: lane777

My boyfriend is an INFP and between the two of us, he is far more likely to withhold his general thoughts and feelings with others whereas I withhold personal goals and dreams or thoughts and feelings I deem inappropriate to disclose.

 

[Cronkle]

I'm not! I'll tell you nearly anything if I trust you, but I definitely have tact.

 

[proteanmix]

Are NFJs feeling there is some sort of premium on being private or not revealing yourself? It's my belief that being misunderstood is partially because of the lack of initiative to make yourself understood or assuming people won't understand you. I don't believe or feel like I am an misunderstood person; I don't even think I encounter people that I feel are difficult to understand. The main ingredients to aretime and openness. It seems like there needs to be an openness or willingness to risk exposing yourself in order to be understood.

There are things about me that I feel someone more similar to me would understand better and I'm pretty good at picking out people who I feel would understand where I'm coming from so I find little need to be private with those people. I'm not the type of person you'll know for years and just find out something about them.

I guess I take it as Obvious that I'm not obligated to reveal myself to anyone. And I'm not offended when that attitude is reflected back at me. Then again, I'm not sure what people consider personal information. I have no problem revealing facts about myself, general information things that aren't secrets and I don't care about people knowing.

OK this is what it comes down to. I already know the people who I want to get to know better and those I don't. I've already thoroughly sussed you out if we come into regular contact and the decision has already been made if you're getting generic responses or something more substantial. Maybe the privacy issue is that the NFJ in question has already decided if you're in or out and if you're out you don't get much.

My feelings on being private are inconsistent, but generally I don't feel like I'm an especially private person.

 

[Glycerine]

Are NFJs feeling there is some sort of premium on being private or not revealing yourself? It's my belief that being misunderstood is partially because of the lack of initiative to make yourself understood or assuming people won't understand you. I don't believe or feel like I am an misunderstood person; I don't even think I encounter people that I feel are difficult to understand. The main ingredients to aretime and openness. It seems like there needs to be an openness or willingness to risk exposing yourself in order to be understood.

There are things about me that I feel someone more similar to me would understand better and I'm pretty good at picking out people who I feel would understand where I'm coming from so I find little need to be private with those people. I'm not the type of person you'll know for years and just find out something about them.

I guess I take it as Obvious that I'm not obligated to reveal myself to anyone. And I'm not offended when that attitude is reflected back at me. Then again, I'm not sure what people consider personal information. I have no problem revealing facts about myself, general information things that aren't secrets and I don't care about people knowing.

OK this is what it comes down to. I already know the people who I want to get to know better and those I don't. I've already thoroughly sussed you out if we come into regular contact and the decision has already been made if you're getting generic responses or something more substantial. Maybe the privacy issue is that the NFJ in question has already decided if you're in or out and if you're out you don't get much.
My feelings on being private are inconsistent, but generally I don't feel like I'm an especially private person.

I wasn't thinking that it was necessarily a good thing to be private. It was just my observation of others and myself. For me personally, it usually takes about 2-3 years to truly open up to someone (to get any real substance from me) Before that, they get generic information that really has no value to me. Then I tend to pull back after awhile. It's just probably more of an individual thing than anything.

 

[anii]

I'm much more private than my spouse, and he's NFJ.

 

[Cronkle]

With close friends I tell everything; I had a conversation last night delineating my sexual history with a trusty INFP, but good luck getting me to say what cereal I like if I don't trust you.

 

[the state i am in]

i think Fe in general is more aware of the situation/context. we will withhold saying something even when we want to more frequently than Fi types. and quite unlike them we almost ALWAYS want to.

i think Fi types tend to reveal themselves at seemingly more random and less socially determined moments than Fe types. perhaps it is more about how they feel right now and if they can hold it in than it is for Fe, which pretty much always feels the need to express itself.

i don't tend to reveal myself that often bc i am extremely aware of the socially appropriate inappropriateness of the occasion, bc the people around me won't understand anyway, and bc i am tired of hearing myself talk talk talk. i do not want to burden other people with my problems unless they can truly help me in a way more significant than giving me a sounding board for my own voice (ie provide some insight, etc), or for just opening the dam and letting me talk myself into coma. it's pretty shitty to make other people listen to you all the time, tho secretly i think that's what i want to do.

Fi types, in my experience, often feel they need to work thru it on their own. they just don't feel the need to share when they won't get anything sent back to them over the net that helps clarify their own feelings, position, etc. it will be translated once, and then they'll have to translate it again before they can use it. and most of the time it's very frustrating bc it doesn't take into account their specific subjective values that are shaping the conflict in the first place.

 

[Cronkle]

^^ I agree; I am super Fe and it totally depends how you phrase it and how you act and what you want to know and for what purpose!

 

[Sniffles]

Yes I can say I'm a very private person. I'm an Introvert afterall.

Although paradoxically, I tend to be more open in private circumstances - especially with very close friends, with whom I've built considerable amounts of trust and intimacy with.

 

[hokie912]

The two INFJs I know well (one of them for 10 years) are both very private. Neither of them volunteers any information. Fortunately I ask a lot of questions and like others here have said, when asked they do open up.

They seem to put up walls, not so much to protect themselves as to protect everyone else. I'm not sure why, maybe because of being introverted, but they believe they need to protect other people from their 'emotional intrusiveness', for want of a better phrase. Or their emotional expressiveness, maybe, I don't know how to describe this. They hold back part of themselves. Their own emotions get tangled up with other people's and they try and avoid that by putting up defensive walls to keep their F contained.

I think there's a little something to this. I've avoided sharing things about myself with people because I worry about how they'll react. If it's something really upsetting, I don't want to make people uncomfortable if I really care about them. So that's half of it. The other half is that I know how important it is to me that they are interested and, hopefully, sympathetic, and I don't think that I would react well if someone minimized something that holds a great deal of emotional importance to me. This goes for communication in general, I think...I'm terrible with maintaining blogs because I worry about not being able to explain the things I feel in a way that will be understood by other people.

Contrarily, my mother's incessant desire to impress her friends with things like "my daughter wants to teach" and "she's been writing since she was a kid" makes me cringe. For reasons completely incomprehensible to her, I do not want this information shared with just anyone because it reveals my passions, therefore it reveals me --whereas my family debacles feel less personal as they are simply "events" that have shaped the course of my serpentine life.

There are also people who have known me since birth that do not know huge swaths of my life. For example: they would not know that I have survived several serious bouts of suicidal depression, was baptized on my own at 14, decided I was agnostic at 21, was seriously abused for many years by my own mother, or even my favorite song etc --yet I share this information freely with a forum of complete strangers. My choice of self-disclosure is fickle, circumstantially dependent, and purpose-driven whether the listener knows it or not.

For every inch I reveal there remains a mile underground. Ultimately, INFJs spin their own intricate web of values that seems complicated to many but the makers.

This really rings true, as well. Even though it's resolved now, some of my closest friends don't know that my father was a drug addict and dealt drugs from our house all throughout the time I was in middle and high school. Part of that is the above-mentioned thing about not wanting to cause other people distress by telling them about this and/or worrying that they won't understand why I lied to them. It took a ton of trust and was emotionally exhausting to tell my best friend about it. As more time passes and I've started to feel a little emotional closure, I've been able to talk about it with people I've met since that time.

It's a frustrating thing being compelled to share, forge emotional connections and be understood but being so hyper-aware of and invested in the listener's emotional response. In extreme cases, it's kind of paralyzing. Sometimes I kind of wish I could just spill my emotional baggage and it just be for me, a catharsis in which I didn't have to consider anyone else's feelings.

 

[mortabunt]

INTP's are the most heavily introverted.