I’ve been doing a lot of research over the last couple days into the 8 functions of INFJ. I have definitely been able to solidify that my type is INFJ.
My dominate function is absolutely Ni. I have often self described my ability to read people & predict certain scenarios as my “God-given giftâ€. It is at the core of my personality and what I lean on the most in my everyday navigation through life. I’m a vivid dreamer and actually have a journal of lengthy documented dreams that I will go over and analyze in order to try to understand what messages my subconscious is trying to relay that my conscious mind is missing. I’ve been pretty successful in this and it’s really fun for me to try to solve the puzzle and then finally understand how my dreams relate to my reality.
My auxiliary function of Fe is very accurate still. I think I do get mistaken as an attempted extrovert because in large group settings, I try to maintain a cheery appearance and engaging in order to cultivate good feelings. But I am usually not comfortable socializing amongst a group and this leaves me feeling like I’m not being truly authentic. My husband says I could be an actor with how well I turn certain social behaviors on and off. With the people closest to me, I express more of my grievances in private and take on a more negative tone. Even the victim or self pity role. But I find a lot of relief in expressing my feelings. I think because I lack supportive companionship (outside of my husband) I feel isolated and therefore depressed. I give a lot of myself to others and spend very little time on myself. I think this is creating an unhealthy cycle because I often assume that my outreach to others will garner me meaningful friendships and support systems in exchange, but it rarely does. Because my Fe is so strong and I want to maintain harmony in relationships, I have a difficult time saying no to things and then I end up internally regretting it later. I fight a lot of internal battles on whether or not I’m abandoning my Ni for the sake of pleasing others with Fe.
Now, with my Ti - this is where I feel like confusion comes into play. My husband has tested as an ISTJ before but recently when I started my journey back into personality psychology, he too retook the test and got ISTP. Obviously, that would make Ti his dominate function. I believe that is pretty fitting for him and because of his Ti and Se strengths, this has caused me (in a people pleasing manner) to maybe strengthen those functions for myself because I have tried adapting to his way of thinking in order to maintain harmony in our relationship. Tell me if you believe I’m wrong here - but some of the issues that have caused turmoil in our relationship is his lack of giving. Naturally, I enjoy being generous. Sometimes I probably am too generous, I can agree with him on that, but he believes that he should not HAVE to give anything to anyone, because no one has GIVEN to him. He feels like he needs to be compensated for his time and knowledge and he has pushed this mentality on me. Therefore, I think maybe I’ve been leaning more on my Ti and Se functions in an attempt to be on the same level as him and those are not naturally dominate functions to my personality therefore creating a lot of confusion about who I truly am. I think I need more balance here.
I was reading that because INFJs are perfectionistic of themselves that our Fe allows us to more easily forgive the shortcomings of others but not allow ourselves the same grace because “we know betterâ€. I believe this is me to a T. I do not allow myself any grace. I believe I have been living too in my shadow functions. Making my existence very troubled right now. I think my Opposing Role function (Ne) is causing me to lash out and become angry due to certain stressors. I think I have a heightened Fi maybe due to the maternal narcissism I experienced as a child. Constantly critical of myself, not able to achieve enough success and constantly doubting my worthiness. I think when I have become exhausted or burnt out with Fe, I unknowingly allow Fi to take control. This becomes destructive for me because I can then project my own criticisms onto others. Like with my husband. If he doesn’t meet my standards for doing something a certain way, I will verbally berate him and then suffer regret and shame from acting so poorly. This is where I felt my controlling and brash communicative nature was taking charge in my personality.
My demon function is really showing it’s ugly head too. I am always negatively reflecting on the past and revisiting scenarios in my head that I wish I would have handled differently. I fixate a lot on my childhood and my mother. I believe I’ve not been practicing good control of my primary functions and have allowed these shadow functions to have too much influence.
I am so incredibly thankful for finding this forum and learning that there is more to our personality makeup than just the surface traits of a MBTI personality label. Understanding the cognitive functions will allow me to start to recover from my own confusion and criticism. I am going to be focusing on strengthening my primary functions and I feel optimistic and happy about essentially taking off this heavy coat of deception and living the most authentic version of myself I can be.
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