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[ENFP] Common ENFP issues

Lady_X

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I'm really sad that I don't "get" this at all. If everyone didn't chime in about how relatable this was, I'd assume you were just making stuff up.:newwink:

I don't think visually/spatially at all, so maybe that's why.

i do but i'm quite certain i am not as aware of it as he/she is. i very much relate to the weight of energy...which may be something else entirely... but calm to me feels like slow thick moving water...nervous feels bubbly and sporadic, happy feel expansive and both weighted and light...like smooth and effortless movement...etc etc...
 

Forever_Jung

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i do but i'm quite certain i am not as aware of it as he/she is. i very much relate to the weight of energy...which may be something else entirely... but calm to me feels like slow thick moving water...nervous feels bubbly and sporadic, happy feel expansive and both weighted and light...like smooth and effortless movement...etc etc...

That is fascinating to me! I tend to experience emotions as buzzing gnats that I swat away while I try to concentrate.

*Turns in ENFP card*
 

Lady_X

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pretty sure the infp bf can't relate. think we've had this discussion before and he had no idea what i was talking about.
 

Lady_X

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haha!! the whole idea of it "is" sort of bizarre but i've talked to others who totally feel energy in the same way....funny i wonder if it's related to sxness at all and it's not what thistlyperson was talking about??
 

thistlechaser

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haha!! the whole idea of it "is" sort of bizarre but i've talked to others who totally feel energy in the same way....funny i wonder if it's related to sxness at all and it's not what thistlyperson was talking about??


:) Thistlyperson. i wonder if you might be onto something. it'd be a curious sort of poll to start. we could at least find out if its correlated.

to all the othet responses I've yet to reply to, i reall appreciate the positive feedback and reassurances that i don't have brain damage. :)
There's a lot left to say, but only so much i can do from my phone until i get to dip my feet in the interwebs again soon
 

Coriolis

Si vis pacem, para bellum
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INFPs are good for INTJs like that. You guys don't tell us what to think, you ask questions, and the questions that you ask are the answers.
Interesting. I have an INFP friend who says I do the same for him: ask the right questions, so he can pull out the answers he already has but doesn't realize/cannot access. He also speaks of how we are often two sides of the same coin, or looking at the situation from opposite directions, but essentially viewing the same thing.
 

grey_beard

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Interesting. I have an INFP friend who says I do the same for him: ask the right questions, so he can pull out the answers he already has but doesn't realize/cannot access. He also speaks of how we are often two sides of the same coin, or looking at the situation from opposite directions, but essentially viewing the same thing.
[MENTION=9811]Coriolis[/MENTION] -- I've had the same experience with an INFP co-worker: I move like a rook or queen on the chessboard, whereas they are more like a pawn riding a drunken knight.
But just d@mn if we don't end up at the same point...
 

thistlechaser

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It all relates; it isn't meaningless. It's just difficult to articulate

It's doing not-doing. Another way to put it is that it's just a way of looking at the world, where that which is not obvious to most people is obvious to oneself, but the price one pays for such insight is that that which is obvious to most people isn't obvious to oneself.


INFPs are good for INTJs like that. You guys don't tell us what to think, you ask questions, and the questions that you ask are the answers.

I'm serious. Remember Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy? The answer is 42. The answer is useless. You need the right question! You guys ask the right questions.


Doing not-doing. :) I love this. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other night about some of the rapid-fire metaphors I had appearing in my head during our conversation. He's an INXP and was very frustrated with me and my inability to say things in terms that made any sense to him. As he said, "You aren't defining what you're variables are before you give these tangential descriptions, so how am I supposed to know what we're talking about?" I wasn't very happy about the interruption, and told him I'd just stop talking about it, then. For whatever reason, we both kept pushing at the disagreement to see if there was a solution. We both got pretty upset, but eventually he ended up figuring out where he thought my issue was. I was incredibly stubborn over the idea of defining "terms" in the first place. Words seem so far removed from the pictures I see, and a name seems limiting. I told him so. We ended up discussing form vs. emptiness and I told him that I tend to think of words as being pretty arbitrary, not like pictures or descriptions of associations.

It ended up devolving into a conversation about my childhood, frustrations about structure, and unwillingness to use names--my name, other people's names, in favor of calling them whatever function they are to me. I've renamed a lot of people to names that I feel better suit their relationship to me. I abhore standard pet names. But this is farther removed from my 4ish "wanting to be an individual" about everything. I just genuinely can't see how names can really sum a person or myself or anything up.

He seemed confident in his conclusion when he told me that he thinks I am attached to emptiness. That where a lot of people get hung up getting attached to form, that getting attached to emptiness is just as much of a problem, but a less common one. I've been thinking a lot about that, recently. About my reluctance to conform to any structure, and how everything seems arbitrary and interchangeable most of the time. I've been called a reductionist before, or something like a mereological nihilist. I don't feel like those quite fit, though, given that I do find a lot of things to have personal meaning and shared meaning between myself, other people, and other things.

Your Tao Te Ching quote resonated very much with me, I'd like to read the rest of that. Do you have any other suggestions?

I feel like I can relate a lot to things being obvious to other people but not to me, whereas I'm the one stuck reading between the lines and seeing outlines of what *isn't* there, rather than what is.

This works most of the time, but once in a while you end up saying, "WTF!" when it doesn't work out, and the ENTJ is like, "I didn't say there weren't any risks."
Hahaha. Indeed! I am very hesitant to take their advice for this very reason! The risks are not worth it to me. I'd rather bear the cost of keeping my friends than cut them out and lose them. This ends up with a lot of garbage and drama for me to sort through, but I guess I don't mind that so much.


Sorta-kinda.

It isn't ordered. It's just that the conclusions are always ordered. Ni is always synthesizing things, putting ideas together to come up with new ideas. The new ideas are never wholly original, but they're great shortcuts to get to the next new idea.

Understanding Ni as being oriented around "solving problems" is essential. Ni (INTJ or INFJ) is the quintessential troubleshooter.
I think this is the hardest part for me to grasp. My Ne, I feel like I come up with things that are wholly original. My ideas tend to end up with a lot of abstractions of concepts or combinations of my insights of 2 or more concepts put together. I asked my formerly-mentioned INTJ friend who plays minecraft if he has several thoughts at once or one thought at a time in succession. He responded that he's always having several thoughts at once in succession. I'm still having trouble picturing that. He stays pretty busy, even when he's being lazy. If he's vegging out--he's working on something. Even when he's depressed, he's always moving and doing something. I feel like when I've noticed myself in a similar state, I tend to start a lot of things and then give up on ever finishing them. Maybe this is because I use Ne vs Ni? I'm not sure why I'm having such a hard time understanding the difference.


Your inferior, as an INFP. Oh, wait, now you're xNFP? OK, maybe ENFP is correct.


Actually, NFP Te works great. The only problem you guys have with Te is that you HATE (with your Fi) what it tells you to do. If you are flustered because you have 20 obligations but can only meet 5 of them, Te tells you to prioritize, while Fi tells you that all of them are important. In my experience, it isn't clutter in the NFP mind, it's just a reluctance to admit trade-offs. Fi wants its cake and to eat it, too.

Haha. Yea, XNFP now. Haven't been able to figure out which one, I guess being a IEE-Ne dominant makes me a contradictory thing. Still trying to figure out my rhythm of extroversion and introversion. It seems to go in stages over the course of a few days, depending on my energy levels. I see it in terms of farming/pollinating and then gathering. When I'm farming or "pollinating," I'm putting my ideas out in the world, interacting with 20-30 people a day to see how my ideas and perceptions change, talking to a lot of people about my life, their life, my dreams, their dreams, and any new concepts I've been focusing on for that day or the few days prior. When I get tired of that and have reached a point where I'm not getting returns, I sleep and change pace. When I'm "gathering," I tend to focus more on record-keeping, journaling, taking pictures, organizing my things, cleaning, coming to conclusions. It seems like any time I try to mix these activities in the same part of the day, I have trouble keeping track of it all.



My INTJ grandmother died a year or so back at the age of 101. When speaking to guests in her hostess mode, she would say things like, "If you need anything, please tell me. I can show you how you can do without it."
As per quoting my grandmother above, the simplicity comes from accepting the obvious and working from there. As long as you're working from truth, your conclusions will be simple (if not easy). If you're working from desires, your conclusions (if you reach any) will either be really complex, or simply asking for your wishes to be fulfilled without any intervening steps.

E.g.,
[video]http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/151040/the-underpants-business[/video]

You're grandmother sounds like she was a funny lady! That's a good way to think about it. As an idealist, I feel so often that I'm always working from my desires. Even when I try to be objective, it's usually for some cause or another that I personally ascribe to. "Working from truth," and the simplicity involved in that are two very foreign concepts to me.

I'm really sad that I don't "get" this at all. If everyone didn't chime in about how relatable this was, I'd assume you were just making stuff up.:newwink:

I don't think visually/spatially at all, so maybe that's why.
Haha thanks! :D It's nice to hear that this happens to other people, because sometimes I worry that my brain is just making things up!

first off, i just need to join the chorus of ENFPs who relate to this titanic compartment imagery @<a href="http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/members/thistlechaser/" target="_blank">thistlechaser</a> so beautifully constructed. it seems like you're a fairly new member, and i just want to say, i already appreciate your presence and contribution here.

*hopes she has a few spare compartments in there*

Aw, thank you! :) I'm hanging in there. Trying to get my life back on track after a few really, really bad errors in judgment that made me have to drop my classes last semester, lose my job, and almost lose my apartment. Still working on saving the apartment. There's been a lot of stuff I've had to reflect on recently, and one of those is to really be mindful of how much of myself and my energy I'm spreading too thin. I used to not care, figuring that I could sleep it off the next day if I used too much energy one day. Now, I have a chronic illness and a lot of responsibility and I can't afford to sleep all day or call in sick to work constantly. I was convinced to begin taking better care of myself begrudgingly at first, mad that the rest of the world didn't care about me as much as I cared about it. But now that I've gotten into the habit of it, I've been able to see the utility in keeping up with my own compartments and taking care of them.

I love this analogy as well as your idea of visualization.

I am always running way too fast into life, as ENFPs are stereotyped to do. I think everything is great. I have that, "everything will be fine" attitude running around the world. Eventually a compartment or two will feel up, or as I visualize it, a piece of my heart will become tired. But its ok! I still have plenty left! Unfortunately, by the time we've reached the critical point, it's too late.

I've never thought about how much I visualize feelings, interactions, time, etc... I need to think about this. Thanks for the brain tease. :)

You're welcome! :) I really enjoy making my perceptions into pictures like this. When I'm ignoring things and blocking them out, I tend to have an "everything will be fine" attitude, myself. It's hard not to max out on my contributions to things when I dream so big! I don't know if you have a lot of ideas that you want to fulfill, but I tend to struggle a lot with having *too many* hobbies, or too many ideas for how to solve problems. So many that I can never implement them. I daydream about having a team of people who I can assign tasks to who will carry out the mundane parts of my ideas. I wonder if I could ever rent a team... :D

i do but i'm quite certain i am not as aware of it as he/she is. i very much relate to the weight of energy...which may be something else entirely... but calm to me feels like slow thick moving water...nervous feels bubbly and sporadic, happy feel expansive and both weighted and light...like smooth and effortless movement...etc etc...

This definitely relates a lot to my visualizations. I feel the weight/color/texture first, then the pictures come. Calm to me feels like feathers and fluffy things, nervous feels like electric zaps of a shorted wire or a tesla coil, happy feels like orange juice and chocolate--a singing feeling in my belly, it's interesting. When I try to visualize a bigger relational concept, like how it feels to have certain ideas, or how a group of people interact, or how ideas combine, *that's* when it tends to start taking shapes. The texture or color of the shapes are informed by my feelings, and the structure or backbone of the shape tends to be in whatever pattern I start recognizing. I learned this when I started doing weekly art therapy and having to do a journal of an "emotion capture" for the moment I was journaling. I'd spend about 15-30 min drawing something quickly to show what emotion I was feeling. It's amazing going back and looking at them, because I remember exactly the feelings, even if I don't know what was going on at the time I made the drawing.

Through explaining those pictures, I feel it has gotten easier for me to explain to people my thoughts. I tend to pay attention to my emotional color palate and to what shapes I'm drawing in my mind to help me describe a concept to someone. These were not tools I was aware of having until after I'd had about 6 months of practice with them.

For example, I was explaining the history of the fall of Rome and the emergence of the Byzantine Empire to my mom a couple of weeks ago. My INXP friend and I had scoured wikipedia to piece together the part of the story that my world civ book was leaving out. For whatever reason, without having the foundation of that transitional period, I couldn't for the life of me bring myself to read anything about Byzantium turning into Constantinople, it's as if I had no framework to hang the new information on and everything was just swimming. So, through about 2 hours of investigation, I finally worked out a map. My map looked like a braid. The confusing part of Byzantium is that at the end of the Roman Empire, there was a tetragarchy. That means that there were 4 rulers at once. A few of them killed other ones, then switched from East Rome to West Rome and back again. These lines criss-crossed and interwove more tightly after I was able to work out the individual motivations of each "strand." The colors I feel about it are a lot of greens and reds. Bright, opposing colors and a lot of feelings of ownership and vying for control. The energy of the time feels frenetic.

But that's not what I remember when I try to think of that day. When I started describing it to my mom, I remember my interwoven map shape. It looked like a fishbone braid, with one side sending a small bit of its strands to overlap with a small bit of strands from the other side. Golden strands, full of dreams of royalty and control. Constantine came out of a lot of warring and interchange of four sides. And it's beautiful! Such a beautiful shape made, I wish that someone had taught me this shape in school!

My mom was nice enough to let me ramble on about it, and so I was able to really color in all the details and outline very darkly and brightly the details and colors of the motivations of the strands/people, and their factions. When I think back on it, now. I get a golden/shimmery fishbone braid that I can feel myself petting or stroking, like braiding someone's hair who has very long, golden strands. I tend to really like imagining touching my ideas in this way pretty frequently.

What's been even more interesting to me than discovering that I turn ideas into pictures, is that it also works the other way--I also turn shapes into ideas! When I look at patterns on a wall, I remember ideas I've had that resemble those patterns. I worked selling dog food last summer and fall, was in and out of a lot of different Petcos and Petsmarts. One Petsmart in particular had this awesome back store room that was barely used at all. It had 30-40 ft ceilings and was as long as the width of the store. Only about 1/16 of it in one corner was being used. On the opposite wall, there were a bunch of snaking cables going in and out and up and down and all over the place. I would sometimes get so caught up in looking at them, and how calm and a part of something I felt when I looked at them, I could hardly keep from being late back from my breaks. Even now, though I don't work there anymore, I sometimes want to stop by with my camera and ask them if I can take pics of that wall, because looking at it is about as close to having a religious experience as I get. I felt such a sense of belonging in that wall. With each set of wires and pipes going up and out along the ceiling in a different direction. Groupings going to one part of the store, other groupings going to another. And I just felt so much a part of the activity and the electricity running through the wires. Thinking back on it, I realize that the shape of those wires, and what they contained and provided, tended to bring up a lot of associated "shapes" of the interactions of people and the systems that they form in day-to-day life. I tend to see us all as interwoves wires, crocheted blankets, braided hair, tapestries. I like feeling my strings tugged this way or that way by other people. It's a very visceral feeling that has colors, textures, and shapes. Do you feel anything like that?
 

chubber

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When ever I get close to an ENFP, I always get this impression from them.

NvOb7FL.gif


Then when I start doing some fact checking, this happens.

34xg6yq.jpg


Ambiverts? :shrug:
 

hjgbujhghg

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When ever I get I get close to an ENFP, I always get this impression from them.

NvOb7FL.gif


Then when I start doing some fact checking, this happens.

34xg6yq.jpg


Ambiverts? :shrug:

Haha! I love this! :D
 

chubber

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As per quoting my grandmother above, the simplicity comes from accepting the obvious and working from there. As long as you're working from truth, your conclusions will be simple (if not easy). If you're working from desires, your conclusions (if you reach any) will either be really complex, or simply asking for your wishes to be fulfilled without any intervening steps.

I wonder if this is the reason why INTJs only dig deeper (focus on details) when the object presents a fascination, because they want to build on the core/the truth of what it really is and then simplicity will show it self. :thinking:
 

Olm the Water King

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ENFPs always seemed like the type I'd want to date the most, followed by ENFJs.

But now I've discovered socionics and according to that theory, my ideal match is actually the ESTJ. Now I'm confused.
 

AzulEyes

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NTs are good for ENFPs.
 

Qlip

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NTs are good for ENFPs.

It's good to have experience with all kinds of people, but IMO, it's best to strive for some functional inner completeness without needing to rely on others.
 

AzulEyes

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Not to derail - but I'm liking the new "LIKE" function!
WOOT
WOOT

Yeah- we shouldn't need others. But I have loved being taken care of in my relationships. It's fun for him and for me. :) And why not?
:smile::wubbie:
 
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People never believe me about my "wild times" and they get mad, when I don't tell them about them because they think i'm lying, and when I tell my stories they still think i'm lying. I have no fear when it comes to social situations (besides workplaces, and people I am crushin on but sssh) I come off so goofy and silly, and even when I explain it this way I still look a douchebag. EVERYTHING I DO I LOOK LIKE I TRY TOO HARD. I love talking and sharing, and trying to relate to people so when I can't talk about my experiences I get really upset :( I know this all sounds so stupid. I personally think a reason I do so many crazy things, is because I want to prove people wrong, and I always get the opposite result. I have no problem with humility, and vulnerability. but when people doubt my life choices, and think I lie... it genuinely bothers me. And I am fully aware, I'm jeopardizing my self worth/self esteem, by throwing myself into the shark tank. But I also wouldn't want to live my life constricted. I don't brag about my accomplishments, I recognize them, I'm not humble, I really can't be at this point in my life because I don't understand how I came to accomplish things, I'm always trying to relate and I can here and there, but it just hurts me I feel so alone.

I'm so annoying
 

Again_Chloe

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My common issues are (i will read the thread after i write my part to be less influenced :) )

People usually want more from me than I want from them (sometimes its the opposite). so - ppl usually think because i give them some attention that i want to be best friends or something, i feel guilt often that things are not mutual in the same amount. I like so many ppl but they often like me more than i do them, which is unpleasant (except that it also feeds my ego of course) but makes me feel misunderstood. because if i dont want to hang all the time with some people they take it personally. but i want to hang with many different people and its not that i dont like some, but i just dont like to be ''tied down''..

when i have a problem, like health issues - i have huge health issues - nobody believes me. bcause i am happy go lucky and loud and assertive, they dont believe it. just because i spend weekends out doesnt mean i function 24/7, they dont see me at my lowest and nobody thinks i suffer, because i joke a lot -its my coping style - they think i have no problems. they are very wrong, just bc i am humorous doesnt mean i am not going thru apsolute hell

problem with guys is explained very well in enneagram 7 sexual variant, i get so fascinated with someone that i start making plans and dreams about our future etc, so different guy - different lifestyle for myself, i am always th same at the core but i just adapt to new idea and get so fascinated with new lifestyle ... like lately i hooked up with one activist/famous /rocker, then i was so into that idea, beore that it was someone different... then i was into that. huge dreamer

i intellectualize absolutely everything. i use brain to analyze everything and my Jungian analyst was sure i am NT, but nope, of course not i am extremely emotional. its that i have power if i know something, i know i can always beat someone in intellectual debate and it feeds me to get new info. i dont ever stick to anything so of course it doesnt help my career.
 

five sounds

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[MENTION=22962]Again_Chloe[/MENTION], welcome!
 
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