My Personal Experience as an INFP

How My Past Defined Me

Image by Roman Grac

The Intuitive Leap

In my last few INFP articles I realize I’ve been taking intuitive leaps in my writing about INFP strengths without properly explaining how I got there. I fell into the typical INFP trap of overvaluing my experience. I jumped to conclusions based on that subjective internal experience. I’ve written about how INFP’s cognitive stack has an advantage over most other types when it comes to happiness, contentment, and self-actualization. These articles gave too much credit to cognitive functions without giving due credit to the familial, cultural, philosophical, and spiritual ideas and systems that played a major positive role in my journey. My background is probably more positive than what most INFPs have experienced.

Our cognitive stack is the right tool for the job but it’s no guarantee

While my INFP cognitive stack has been essential in leveraging these beliefs and systems I realize one’s cognitive stack alone doesn’t ensure a path to peace. That being stated I credit my extroverted intuition and extroverted thinking with having the desire to consume books, podcasts, documentaries, sermons, social media interactions, and movies voraciously. So when I say my INFP cognitive stack predisposed me for happiness, contentment, and self-actualization I stand by it, but it still hinges on consuming and filtering down a mountain of ideas to proper and true conclusions. My main point in other articles is that the INFP cognitive stack gives us a default setting which has a thirst for meaning, purpose, and peace. Many readers have pushed back that this hasn’t been their experience or that I misunderstand the functions. My leap caused confusion that the functions in and of themselves accomplish peace and fulfillment and just being an INFP is enough. In reality, the functions just point us in the right direction and give us the capacity, they don’t do the work for us. Thirst for knowledge alone isn’t enough, truth must be found, grasped, and applied to truly be at peace.

My INFP Experience is Rare

I take for granted how rare my upbringing was. My Dad is an ESTJ and my mom is an ESFJ and I was home educated from 1st through 12th grade along with my older ISTJ and ISTP brothers back in the 80s and 90s when it was an oddity. In some respects my childhood was ideal for an INFP as homeschooling gave me a very unstructured free form way to learn unhindered by the stress of constant extroverting that traditional schools require. Even though ESxJ parents might not be ideal for an INFP, to their credit they allowed me to have considerable freedom and agency so I had room to be myself. They applied structure in the right areas though as they helped me develop work ethic and encouraged personal responsibility early on. However, the biggest impact was simply having the basic need met of stable married parents who were present and involved in my life as well as demonstrating how to live as real imperfect Christians. I sometimes forget how few people my age (let alone INFPs) have had a similar upbringing as me. From an MBTI perspective it’s also probably uncommon for an INFP to be raised by a fairly healthy ESTJ and ESFJ. I understood early on that my personality was significantly different than the rest of my family, but it wasn’t a painful issue. They gave me room to be an INFP while at the same time exposing me to the grounding practicality of introverted sensors, the social exposure of extrovert feelers, and the structure of extroverted thinkers. Overall, my family helped me develop my lower functions and made me more comfortable with them as I could see almost all the cognitive functions in action every day. My family had every function represented in someone’s top two except for introverted intuition.

My One Complaint

The only real complaint I have is that I think my parents could have nurtured and tailored better fitting career aspirations in me, especially considering they took on the role of my teachers. While they weren’t dogmatic in forcing any career on me and would support me in almost any endeavor, I still soaked up their practicality and downplayed my natural intuitive inclinations. Looking back, I wished they’d have recognized and helped me develop my unique skills and interests in preparation for college paths. For instance, they had me skip a year of high school to help build our house under the guise of learning life skills and construction. This was great for my ISTP and ISTJ brothers but it was a great disservice to me academically. I was 15 and wanting to go to college while my brothers were late teens and already committing to trade work. I still went to college on schedule (with my dad footing the bill) and got a degree in finance and later a master’s in information systems. My main motivation for college and sticking to a finance degree was that I hated trade work and wanted a desk job. In the end it worked out, and I have a great career, but I know I left a lot of potential on the table academically.

Conclusion

I give all that background to show that my path as an INFP was full of influences that forced me to develop lower functions, from having ESxJ parents, to building a house, to majoring in finance. That background, along with my extroverted intuition (Ne) and extroverted thinking (Te) devouring information to find truth and apply it to my life is what has brought me peace. Maybe one of these days I’ll write about the specific things I learned and applied to my life, but for now, I’m going to file it under my cognitive stack (FiNe SiTe) and encourage other INFPs to develop those functions with the hope they find truth.

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