I have noticed some pretty intense manipulating by an INFJ. It really caught me off-guard too because I hadn't seen it coming. At all.
I'm not dumb, and people say I'm really smart. But my goat was gotten. So many times.
Fortunately, I got away from the 'perpetrator'. But i'd really like to learn and to grasp how I was manipulated so harshly.
Now I've heard INFJ's can manipulate by utilizing their emotions and through their empathy. In your view, and if you had to imagine being manipulative, ( obviously in someone else's shoes), how might you imagine an INFJ goes about doing this to another?
I know it's not your 'thing' to be like this or anything, but I am so curious how I got fooled. For so long.
I'll take the first effort at trying to figure out INFJ manipulation..
I guess it would have to start as a strategy in the mind, which surprises me that an INFJ would value strategy so strongly. I thought feeling was more important, which is also why I didn't suspect I was even being manipulated.
So another part of it I remember is that broad generalizations were used at the start of the friendship, I think, to 'condition' me into going along with believing what's said is true. Just seemingly innocent statements, like 'That guy eats at that restaurant every day.'. Looking back (finally questioning the validity of this, I can know that the guy didn't live in the same town the restaurant was located and cometo think, he works out of his house in another town all day. So therefore it's obviously not true. So many other things were deliberately said, to I think lead me to assume whatever is coming out of the mouth next will be a true statement. After all, INFJs like honesty and why would anyone think therefore that one would be lying?