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[INFP] INFPs incessant need to help others

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

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I hope you don't mind this (if you do get a moderator to delete or merge the thread) but I really wanted to give some input on this discussion, but it's in a private section. I have a friend who I think is an INFP and I think I've noticed how this works in her.

I don't think INFPs necessarily have this trait, which is traditionally more Fe, but it all depends. I think if one of an INFPs main values is the peace and the happiness of others (which it often is), this can lead them to behave in a manner similar to Fe, where they try to achieve their values by helping people and if they fail to create happiness, they have failed in this value and often feel guilty about it. I have noticed this in her attitude, but a major difference is that I think INFPs tend to be less situation based in their pleasing of others. They are likely to have a desire to create happiness and harmony, but will sometimes go against this when it contradicts their other values, and look in a more big-picture sort of way to achieve this rather than in individual situations.

This is my take on this from experience, but please correct me if you find it different.
 

Onceajoan

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Good idea to expand this beyond the NF private forum. Hope you get a bunch of responses. I'll check back later.
 

Hopelandic

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I hope you don't mind this (if you do get a moderator to delete or merge the thread) but I really wanted to give some input on this discussion, but it's in a private section. I have a friend who I think is an INFP and I think I've noticed how this works in her.

I don't think INFPs necessarily have this trait, which is traditionally more Fe, but it all depends. I think if one of an INFPs main values is the peace and the happiness of others (which it often is), this can lead them to behave in a manner similar to Fe, where they try to achieve their values by helping people and if they fail to create happiness, they have failed in this value and often feel guilty about it. I have noticed this in her attitude, but a major difference is that I think INFPs tend to be less situation based in their pleasing of others. They are likely to have a desire to create happiness and harmony, but will sometimes go against this when it contradicts their other values, and look in a more big-picture sort of way to achieve this rather than in individual situations.

This is my take on this from experience, but please correct me if you find it different.

I find it unnecessary to channel all "accommodating" behaviour into Fe. A lot of infp fours and perhaps some nines will probably come in and say that don't attempt to help people out that much. I see many infps' of these enneagram types on forums such as this say they don't like the infp "nice, loving person" stereotype. You can't really extend attitudes into the realm of behaviour. You can look at probable scenarios and liklihoods (especially based on external trends) but if you got a large enough sample size here, you'd probably get a whole range of motivations as to why some infps' are prone to being incredibly "helpful" or less inclined to do this.

I have problems with people pleasing, and that is just my own personal experience. I don't have a martyr complex, and I expect nothing back but respect for what I do for people. I don't just look out for me. I can definitely go past my own self preservation to help people. My values aren't do or die/black or white. Of course I care about other people and wish to help them through things. I think what is noticable with Fi-doms, is that the warmth really comes through when they really care about you.

I don't care because I -should-, I care because of empathy, because I- choose- to care. I care because I imagine your pain, I relate to your pain, and I draw on my own experiences and what I know, to help solve problems. To help relate. I'm a high empath, and I cannot stand around not helping when I see a need.
 

OrangeAppled

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Seems like an e9 INFP, if anything (they have a need to keep peace, which might become proactive). I don't relate to it. I can be helpful to people, but in less direct ways. I tend to help people with emotional problems, or to help them in figuring out their internal state & how to deal with feelings. They have to come to me though, or be open about wanting input. I don't like to stick my nose in people's business, to the point where I've been accused of disinterest or not caring (which is not true either).

I tend to feel that happiness is very individual, and it cannot be created for someone. You can maybe help them realize how to create their own happiness & support their steps towards it. So in short, yes, I think it's a Fe thing, and if it's manifested in INFPs ever, it's not something I can really relate to enough to explain. Not in the way I'm understanding it anyway.

Jung basically said that Fi resists affecting & being affected. In a way, it's much more reactive than proactive, responding more to violations than going on the offense. The implementation of Fi ideals tends to be done though example & expression in indirect forms (ie. art, spirituality), more so than trying to affect other people's individual states.

Their outward demeanor is harmonious and inconspicuous, giving an impression of pleasing repose, or of sympathetic response, with no desire to affect others, to impress, influence, or change them in any way.

But the underlying, real object of this feeling is only dimly divined by the normal type herself. It may express itself in a secret religiosity anxiously shielded from profane eyes, or in intimate poetic forms that are kept equally safeguarded from profane eyes, not without the secret ambition of displaying some superiority over the other person by this means.
 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

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I find it unnecessary to channel all "accommodating" behaviour into Fe. A lot of infp fours and perhaps some nines will probably come in and say that don't attempt to help people out that much. I see many infps' of these enneagram types on forums such as this say they don't like the infp "nice, loving person" stereotype. You can't really extend attitudes into the realm of behaviour. You can look at probable scenarios and liklihoods (especially based on external trends) but if you got a large enough sample size here, you'd probably get a whole range of motivations as to why some infps' are prone to being incredibly "helpful" or less inclined to do this.

Yeah, I don't trust the stereotype either, because there isn't actually anything in Fi that says you have to sympsthise or anything. Like I said, it's possible for an INFP to be sympathetic and need to help others, but not necessarily the case. My INFP friend isn't the typical lovey-dovey INFP, but she stands up for what she believes in and devotes herself to a cause when she has one. She sometimes plants trees to help the environment or goes out of her way to help someone, but in everyday life she is casual, unromantic and cynical.
 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

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Jung basically said that Fi resists affecting & being affected. In a way, it's much more reactive than proactive, responding more to violations than going on the offense. The implementation of Fi ideals tends to be done though example & expression in indirect forms (ie. art, spirituality), more so than trying to affect other people's individual states.

Could you please link me to the Jung function definitions? I have been unable to find them.
 

Hopelandic

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Seems like an e9 INFP, if anything (they have a need to keep peace, which might become proactive). I don't relate to it. I can be helpful to people, but in less direct ways. I tend to help people with emotional problems, or to help them in figuring out their internal state & how to deal with feelings. They have to come to me though, or be open about wanting input. I don't like to stick my nose in people's business, to the point where I've been accused of disinterest or not caring (which is not true either).

I tend to feel that happiness is very individual, and it cannot be created for someone. You can maybe help them realize how to create their own happiness & support their steps towards it. So in short, yes, I think it's a Fe thing, and if it's manifested in INFPs ever, it's not something I can really relate to enough to explain. Not in the way I'm understanding it anyway.

Jung basically said that Fi resists affecting & being affected. In a way, it's much more reactive than proactive, responding more to violations than going on the offense. The implementation of Fi ideals tends to be done though example & expression in indirect forms (ie. art, spirituality), more so than trying to affect other people's individual states.

I would say it's more of a compliant thing (karen horney's compliant types i.e. 2 and 6) rather than four or nine. Four's, fives and nine's tend to be conscious of boundaries and being overwhelmed. They are the 'withdrawn' types who do not want to be influenced. I think infp six's or two's add a spanner into the works (more likely to desire to be helpful), as opposed to the 4's, 5's and 9's. Although 9's can definitely be self effacing in their helping of others and sacrifice a lot.

http://www.scribd.com/doc/24795883/Our-Inner-Conflicts-Karen-Horney

To be honest in regards to 'people pleasing', I think there will be some infps' out there like me who do like to help people and actively do so (although I don't do it excessively). Then there are others who aren't inclined to 'reach out' in this manner. Part of this comes from experience and personal history.
 

skylights

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Yeah, I don't trust the stereotype either, because there isn't actually anything in Fi that says you have to sympsthise or anything.

hm, i'm not sure that's true. given the nature of Fi as a people-oriented function, i would say that it's very likely that to see suffering in the world causes your friend a great deal of internal suffering, even though she may maintain a cynical exterior persona.

like you were getting at, much of what may be happening is that she may tend to conceptualize that suffering on a much broader level due to Ne-Fi interaction, which causes it to be a more diffuse issue in her mind, and less about a single person - thus transforming into a broad cause instead of a one-on-one case that merits much individual attention. plus, Fe users tend to act given people issues, just like Te users given logical issues - whereas Fi and Ti users tend to reflect and question. i think Fi users have the same desire to help as Fe users, but we often are less active about helping because we don't want to impose upon the other person - we don't want to hurt them by accident by trying to help them in a way that isn't what they really want or need.

that isn't to say, though, that someone couldn't have a truly bizarre Fi "internal compass" and believe in something odd - like physical suffering being part of a spiritual life journey and therefore a good thing and not something that people should try to run from - though in that case it would probably hurt them to see others trying to run from suffering. i do think that Fi by nature empathizes, because the way it checks internal consistency is to run everything through oneself. i'm not sure Fi could work at all if it couldn't empathize. that doesn't mean one agrees with the issue, necessarily, or wants to do anything about it, but one still does run that situation through their mind and recreates that place of pain to understand it.

to be honest, i think "incessant need to help others" is simply an F trait, and on many levels a simply human trait.
 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

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hm, i'm not sure that's true. given the nature of Fi as a people-oriented function, i would say that it's very likely that to see suffering in the world causes your friend a great deal of internal suffering, even though she may maintain a cynical exterior persona.

like you were getting at, much of what may be happening is that she may tend to conceptualize that suffering on a much broader level due to Ne-Fi interaction, which causes it to be a more diffuse issue in her mind, and less about a single person - thus transforming into a broad cause instead of a one-on-one case that merits much individual attention. plus, Fe users tend to act given people issues, just like Te users given logical issues - whereas Fi and Ti users tend to reflect and question. i think Fi users have the same desire to help as Fe users, but we often are less active about helping because we don't want to impose upon the other person - we don't want to hurt them by accident by trying to help them in a way that isn't what they really want or need.

that isn't to say, though, that someone couldn't have a truly bizarre Fi "internal compass" and believe in something odd - like physical suffering being part of a spiritual life journey and therefore a good thing and not something that people should try to run from - though in that case it would probably hurt them to see others trying to run from suffering. i do think that Fi by nature empathizes, because the way it checks internal consistency is to run everything through oneself. i'm not sure Fi could work at all if it couldn't empathize. that doesn't mean one agrees with the issue, necessarily, or wants to do anything about it, but one still does run that situation through their mind and recreates that place of pain to understand it.

to be honest, i think "incessant need to help others" is simply an F trait, and on many levels a simply human trait.

I think I used the wrong word. I mean to more like empathise, to feel the need to please others in a general context. Hm... explaining awfully... like sometimes an Fi user will be very uncooperative and selfish seeming because they are followig their own personal values, rather than externally validated ones. This is normally an unhealthy trait to have, where they will put no importance on others feelings and only their own. And on a different level I also meant it in a situational context, where Fi users aren't necessarily going to be all perfectly gregarious and loving around other people. Not to say that they were necessarily mean or anything. just that they aren't all like this.

i309404040_53219_5.jpg


And yes, most humans like to help others to at least some degree.
 

Eckhart

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If I can help and people want my help, then I usually like to help, it makes me happy mostly. But otherwise I am not too obsessed with helping others. People who don't want my help I won't force myself on, and when it is something I cannot do something about (or don't want to, for whatever reason) then I won't do unreasonable things either. So I don't know if that is really so typical for INFPs.
 

Hopelandic

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If I can help and people want my help, then I usually like to help, it makes me happy mostly. But otherwise I am not too obsessed with helping others. People who don't want my help I won't force myself on, and when it is something I cannot do something about (or don't want to, for whatever reason) then I won't do unreasonable things either. So I don't know if that is really so typical for INFPs.

Yeah, that's something I'm very intuned with... I don't pressure people with help. I offer information and resources. Someone to listen rather than to JUDGE and give advice all the time. I am very aware of peoples boundaries (and my own) so I don't push people to do anything. I think it depends how the op defines "helping people" and what constitutes as an incessant need. If I see a need I act on it (usually in a small way) but I don't go out and create needs in other people or look for holes I have to fill. I don't look down on people as having to need by help; I think every body is strong in their own right, they just need help seeing that. If ever I help a person, its to help them help themselves. Sometimes people just need someone to talk with. I consider listening to someone helping, and I will do that whenever someone approaches me.

In regards to the Fi. Values are the end product. "Values" = a very simplistic notion of Fi. It goes much beyond 'people' and 'emotions' and 'what I want'. They may be part of the equation, but the mechanism is much more of a complex system.
 

Adasta

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My INFP friend isn't the typical lovey-dovey INFP, but she stands up for what she believes in and devotes herself to a cause when she has one. She sometimes plants trees to help the environment or goes out of her way to help someone, but in everyday life she is casual, unromantic and cynical.

I think I'm quite similar in this regard. Sometimes I feel like I can empathise with a person and therefore understand their needs somewhat, but not in a very "lovey-dovey" way. This isn't people-pleasing in the sense that I want to help someone because it looks like they need help; rather, i think "S/he seems like a nice person and I can help them out quite easily. Why don't I just help them and then we'll both be happy?".

As a mild digression which may offer some insight into your INFP friend:

I have a sort of reverence for trees. It's mainly because I see them as giving so much and asking so little. I mean, it's not like man has to care for a forest, for example, in an active sense (unless it's endangered by our actions): forests have been around for ages (literally). Yet we keep destroying them, even though we know they are integral to our eco-system. I find it all a bit bizarre and counter-intuitive.

This sort of view also extends to animals. When people see a spider and try to kill it, it always bothers me, even though I am not the biggest fan of spiders myself. I often say "Leave him alone - he's just trying to get on with his life like we are". This seems bizarre to some people because they think I am anthropomorphising the spider. This is incorrect; it's merely that I see it as something that exists in the same way as I do which is going through its own "life", if you will. I suppose it's a "live and let live" sort of viewpoint.
 

Mr. Sherlock Holmes

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This sort of view also extends to animals. When people see a spider and try to kill it, it always bothers me, even though I am not the biggest fan of spiders myself. I often say "Leave him alone - he's just trying to get on with his life like we are". This seems bizarre to some people because they think I am anthropomorphising the spider. This is incorrect; it's merely that I see it as something that exists in the same way as I do which is going through its own "life", if you will. I suppose it's a "live and let live" sort of viewpoint.

I don't want to spark to much of an argument, you can have your view, but I kill spiders if they are in an unnatural environment like my home because firstly they don't have sentience as their brains are very simplistic and poorly developed and also killing them causes little harm to the ecosystem as there's always plenty of spiders to go around, they don't come up in my house too often and they serve little purpose in that environment. Also they can bite you.
 
R

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I think the OP is largely right. (The only thing I would change is to take "incessant" out of the title.)

Everyone apparently has some kind of urge to help; look at all the different personality types appearing on this message board and occasionally helping others with advice and encouragement. A lot of what we do here is for our own gratification and entertainment, of course. But I'm occasionally favorably surprised when a supposedly "tough" personality type takes up a cause or contributes on someone else's behalf.

On the other hand, I suppose it can be said that Fi gives INFPs a certain genius or astuteness about helping. That's not to say that we do in fact help others; just we probably have a talent for it when we decide to do it.

As for me, I don't consider myself a very helpful or charitable person. But I do occasionally help others. When I help others, I have usually followed one of those flow charts for coming to a decision: Do I have the time for this? Yes. Do I have the resources for this? Yes. Will helping out here negatively affect me and mine by diverting resources unproductively? No. And so on.

IOW, I see Fi as a deeply layered maze of competing values. And any particular situation requiring charity will go through a testing period to see if the charitable impulse is overridden by some higher or superior consideration. (And it frequently is overridden.)

I should also mention that the considerations and values embedded in my Fi sometimes surprise even me. For example, I certainly feel empathy on a regular basis, but it's quickly overridden by the thought that I can only give so much to others and that the bulk of my resources must undoubtedly be channeled toward me and mine. On the other hand, empathy with an underdog or with a lone individual not enjoying the same basic benefits or advantages as everyone else can weigh heavily in favor of charity, much more so than many other kinds of charity.

Also, something that OrangeAppled quoted from Jung struck me: "[...]not without the secret ambition of displaying some superiority over the other person by this means." That's definitely one of the weights in favor of giving charity; frankly, I have to admit that I do like showing (to myself and to others) that I'm in a position (financially or in some other way) to give charity. When I parade my charity in this manner I figure that it's a harmless vice, and I pay for the privilege. If I give a little charity and gain a favorable reputation in the process, everyone wins. :)

In other words, INTPs would make no bones about the fact that they like to prove their intellectual superiority over others; frankly, as an INFP, I can be pretty competitive about proving my charitable talents--my ability to "be there" for someone when others can't. :)

So in that sense, I agree with the OP. Fi can give me a number of predispositions toward charity, from an ability to empathize and more quickly spot possible targets of charity, to a weird system of values that may encourage charitable giving even when the values may not themselves be particularly admirable values. And then finally there's the nature of Fi that gives us INFPs a bit of a reputation as natural psychologists; it may in fact make us more sophisticated about picking targets in real need and applying our limited charitable resources in an efficient or effective manner. Behind the fluffy exterior may in fact lie a keen-eyed and discerning philanthropist. :)
 

Adasta

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I don't want to spark to much of an argument, you can have your view, but I kill spiders if they are in an unnatural environment like my home because firstly they don't have sentience as their brains are very simplistic and poorly developed and also killing them causes little harm to the ecosystem as there's always plenty of spiders to go around, they don't come up in my house too often and they serve little purpose in that environment. Also they can bite you.

I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords

NB. I am aware spiders are not insects...
 

Stanton Moore

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I think empathy is intrinsic to the INFP type. Any INFP who is cynical, withdrawn, angry, etc, has probably exerienced something that makes them suppress it. Shyness and fear of embarrassment can get in the way too.
I agree that INFP's can see farther into others than most, and when combined with an empathetic nature, this a formula for someone who helps others. It's the little traumas and fears from the past that hold us up from being more open about it.
 

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The insistent need to be incessant in helping others sounds so draining...
 

skylights

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I think I used the wrong word. I mean to more like empathise, to feel the need to please others in a general context. Hm... explaining awfully... like sometimes an Fi user will be very uncooperative and selfish seeming because they are followig their own personal values, rather than externally validated ones. This is normally an unhealthy trait to have, where they will put no importance on others feelings and only their own. And on a different level I also meant it in a situational context, where Fi users aren't necessarily going to be all perfectly gregarious and loving around other people. Not to say that they were necessarily mean or anything. just that they aren't all like this.

daww. cute picture. i agree with you on all this. sorry about the misinterpretation :yes:

I have a sort of reverence for trees.

me too :)

i like spiders well enough and try to save them when i can. especially because, around here, they eat mosquitoes, and that's really nice. on the other hand, if it looks like one of the especially poisonous species, i stomp that motherfucker out. :2ar15:

sorry spidies. my life comes before yours :(
 
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