INFP

     One of the greatest things about the MBTI is its ability to connect you to things you didn't realize or notice about yourself. Over the course of my studies of it, it has brought me to many realizations. I have had a number recently.

     Another one of the greatest things about the MBTI is that it can also really help with understanding other people. However, trying to understand others who are very different from you can be very difficult without their help, even if you have written material intended to explain your differences to work from.

     When attempting to explain the differences between attitudes in my last Myers-Briggs-related post, I became frustrated with a couple of the functions, Thinking in particular. This is because Thinking is my inferior (4th) function. Now I can explain how I think, but when it comes to the opposite attitude, I'm lost. So I've decided to focus what I know.

I'm an INFP: Introverted, iNtuiting (before Sensing), Feeling (before Thinking), Perceiving. Personality pages will call us things like "healers", "idealists", and "dreamers". Another personality theorist named Keirsey grouped the 16 MBTI types into four categories, and gave each an adjective name. According to his system, we're Healers and we fall into the Idealist category. 

Some people call us jerks.

     This makes sense. Because our dominant function is Introverted Feeling or Fi, we are very in tune with our own emotions but not always so much with the emotions of others. However, this doesn't mean we can't or don't care about or empathize with others. It just starts with us rather than them. If we have experienced something similar to someone, we connect to them through that feeling. We care very deeply about the things and people that/who are most important to us and constantly weigh the values of everything. Given that Fi is an introverted trait, it is often very good for us to be alone with our feelings and we may not share them unless we feel it necessary. Another pattern I've begun to see in some introverted functions is that they are not easy to communicate. Parts of my mental world are understood and stored in colors, textures, and other feeling-tones. It takes my Thinking function to communicate them understandably.

     In comparison to Fe (extroverted feeling), our abilities to interact well with and accurately perceive the feelings of others are more consciously developed than they are for Fe types, especially as children. Dominant and auxiliary functions are said to be the first to develop. When I first read about Fe, I immediately thought about how cool it would be to have. Fe allows you to pick up on other people's feelings nearly unconsciously. There have been times when I've felt broken because I've been unable to emotionally connect with someone I cared about in a time of their need. When I am able to deeply empathize with someone, it's a wonderful feeling, even if it's still bittersweet. Luckily for INFPs, Fe is our first shadow function, and likely to be experienced most of that group.

     An INFP's auxiliary function is Extroverted iNtuiting, or Ne. I haven't looked into this one much, but it's probably why I enjoy literature as much as I do. It also contributes to a love of ideas and brainstorming. Please pardon me for not discussing it.

     Our tertiary function, Extroverted Sensing or Si has been described as being like an expanded memory. It works to find commonalities between experiences. This can be especially helpful when paired with other functions, and/or especially hurtful when paired with Fi specifically. In the MBTI/INFP community this is referred to at the Fi-Si Loop. This is how it works: we feel something, Si kicks in and reminds us of a time we've feel the same or similar, and that feeling can compound and either empower us or bring us to a deeper low. That's by no means the only way Fi and Si combine though. Sometimes a negative feeling that I haven't felt in a long time will come over me in reaction to something that does not initially seem to directly correlate to the last time I felt it, I use Si to find as many connections as possible, and then use Te to contemplate the exact cause of the feeling so that it can be avoided in the future. Particularly negative Fi-Si loops can greatly hinder our lives if we don't develop skills to break out.

     Extroverted Thinking or Te is our inferior function. This doesn't mean much except that it is used last and not as developed as other functions. Te focuses on organization. When I think about things, I know the process I go through. I converse with myself in my head. Hearing my own and/or others' thoughts spurs new patterns and ideas. I enjoy the connections between things and sometimes use Ne to build novel ones. My ENTJ friend whose dominant function is Te is constantly analyzing systems, building graphs to express new discoveries, and seeking out people to discuss ideas with. He and I have great interactions as I bring out his inferior Fi and he brings out my Te. I and other INFPs have found that when we don't have someone else to bounce ideas off of, recording ourselves on video and watching it afterward can help us organize our thoughts even more effectively than just speaking them to ourselves.

     A Ti-dominant individual helped clarify some things for me today in regards to his dominant function. He does not converse with himself in his thoughts. As my Fi is so difficult to explain sometimes, so is his Ti. Some Ti folk have a terrible time having to show their work in math or other related areas as it is counter-intuitive to their process. For them, things just click. For INFPs, and likely a few other Te types, attempting to use Ti is incredibly draining.

I may continue to post on these topics and others in the future. Please comment if you have questions, comments, links of interest, or punny jokes.

Draw From Memory

     There wasn't a star left, she'd watched deep red clouds drift between her and the last one. Oaks above the pit she lay in rose naked and grey, quaking stiffly in intermittent wind. She watched them for a while, then unfocused her vision and listened to the wind. There two branches touched, there a leaf turned, there something fragile broke, a chorus, another and another. Visible breath rose from her sleepily until ground level and an unraveling sweep northeast. The earth beneath her contrasted nicely with the air and she drank their watercolor-bleeding happily.

     She sat up and climbed out of the ovular pit. A clearing of tall, yellow grass surrounded her, encircled by forest of both deciduous and evergreen towers. Another clearing could be seen through the trees ahead of her to the north. "Too long," she thought as her mass's attraction downward broke ice under her feet. They crunched ahead steadily then greeted undergrowth, swaying fronds, brushing bushes, snapping twigs, arching over roots, and compressing moss. Most large bodies loomed solid and grey here, light like marble in the reddish glow, seeming to hold the air in their architecture when all was still enough. But others stood soft in dark, deep green, warm somehow in their shade, full in little sharp lines or frond-like mats. There were places about their trunks she could imagine hiding and curves high in their branches she imagined sleeping, though most really couldn't hold her.
     Her feet paced steadily again out into a large field. A single tree stood about seventy yards of sagging grass away and smooth, distant hills lined the horizon. The wind continued, dancing down to earth at times near then far. Continuing, she watched it press down on the surface of the meadow, changing shapes and casting new shadows despite the freeze. In a particular dip she caught a sliver of something ahead to her left. Pace escalated. She only now realized how tense she'd been. Stretching as much as she could in flow of momentum, she caught up to her destination, registered it, and ran in. She grinned as "drops" from an icy stream splashed up into her face. "You could fly," something told her, but as everything within her seemed set to, she did not. Yards beyond, she slowed and leaned back to face the clouds and followed their swirling with her eyes. Her body slowly lowered to a sitting position, then further, hands trailing dirt and grass lovingly. Eyes moved on calmly waiting for the break.
     Rolling red dispersed into bright fluorescence. She squinted and sat up. They were moving hundreds of miles per hour, but it didn't feel like anything. "Still four months?" she asked a nearby shipmate jokingly.
     "Yup," he replied.
     "Alright."

Cognitive Functions

(Finally)
     My interest in this subject just hasn't died yet. About four or five months ago I told a new friend how I was a bit disappointed that I knew his type and had memorized his functions because there were little things that he'd do or say that would cause me to think things like, "Oh, that's his extroverted feeling." I thought maybe my natural perceptions of him might somehow change negatively because I consciously labeled him in these ways as I was getting to know him. There's a balance to be found between structured analysis and simple, intuitive experience.
     Continuing from my first post, there are 8 cognitive functions that make up the 16 MBTI types. Of these functions, there are four ...functions, and two "attitudes". Attitude is the -version of a function, introversion or extroversion. I haven't found a term for "function" (the one with attitude, there are 8 of them) that would differentiate it from "function" (without attitude, there are 4) yet, so please bear with me. It should make sense anyway. The four functions (sans attitude) are Feeling, Intuition, Sensing, and Thinking.
Here are the eight functions:
     Extroverted Feeling (Fe)
     "seeks social connections and creates harmonious interactions through considerate, enthusiastic, and charming behavior... responds to the explicit (and implicit) wants of others, and may even create an internal conflict between ... own needs and the desire to meet the needs of others"
     Introverted Feeling (Fi)
     "filters information based on interpretations of worth, forming judgments according to criteria that are often intangible... constantly balances an internal set of values such as harmony and authenticity... attuned to subtle distinctions... innately senses what is true and what is false in a situation"
     Extroverted Intuition (Ne)
     "finds and interprets hidden meanings, using “what if” questions to explore alternatives, allowing multiple possibilities to coexist... weaves together insights and experiences from various sources to form a new whole, which can then become a catalyst to action"
     Introverted Intuition (Ni)
     "attracted to symbolic actions or devices... synthesizes seeming paradoxes to create the previously unimagined... realizations come with a certainty that demands action to fulfill a new vision of the future, solutions that may include complex systems or universal truths"
     Extroverted Sensing (Se)
     "focuses on the experiences and sensations of the immediate, physical world... with an acute awareness of the present surroundings... brings relevant facts and details to the forefront and may lead to spontaneous action"
     Introverted Sensing (Si)
     "collects data in the present moment and compares it with past experiences, a process that sometimes evokes the feelings associated with memory... seeking to protect what is familiar, draws upon history to form goals and expectations about what will happen in the future"
     Extroverted Thinking (Te)
     "organizes and schedules ideas and the environment to ensure the efficient, productive pursuit of objectives... seeks logical explanations for actions, events, and conclusions, looking for faulty reasoning and lapses in sequence"
     Introverted Thinking (Ti)
     "seeks precision, such as the exact word to express an idea... notices the minute distinctions that define the essence of things, then analyzes and classifies them... examines all sides of an issue, looking to solve problems while minimizing effort and risk... uses models to root out logical inconsistency"

I'm sure it's a lot to take in if you're new to all this. Another way of looking at this is that if a function's attitude is extroverted, it's focused externally and if it's introverted, it's focused internally. To my understanding,
     introverted feeling focuses on values whereas extroverted feeling focuses on harmony,
     introverted intuition accumulates ideas to snap into a whole while extroverted intuition gathers ideas to weave into one
     introverted sensing focuses on finding patterns between experiences while extroverted sensing focuses on molding present ones,
     and introverted thinking focuses on collecting information while extroverted thinking focuses on organizing it.

     After my initial discomfort with it, I've come to really enjoy trying to figure out which functions people in my life use most, and through that, their type. It's difficult sometimes though because, really, none of us only use four. We use all eight. Order is what determines type. The first four functions cover all the bases non-attitude function-wise, but after that come shadow functions. I've read that these often come out under stress, perhaps as a last-ditch attempt to deal with life when the first four don't seem to be working well enough. Their appearances are often temporary and sometimes very negative, but occasionally they stay long enough to be learned and move into daily life, displacing another function. I have a friend who says his type changed when his dad came down with a serious illness.
     Shadow functions appear in the same order as the others. So say you intuit, think, feel, then sense, in that order, your shadow functions will follow that order. If your first (dominant) function is Introverted Sensing, your fifth is Extroverted Sensing.

There's so much to this system, I'm still not particularly well-versed in it. For further reading, here's a good site I found recently: www.cognitiveprocesses.com
And this YouTube channel I just found a few minutes ago: www.youtube.com/channel/UCWWwQlDFnYbX_dgDP8lJ09A
Wikipedia has decent pages for this too, with lots of sources listed.