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The more patterns the INFP begins to recognize in his or her experience of various emotions, the more concrete steps they are able to take towards regulating them.
I can’t process how I’m feeling while on the job or I’d be a wreck 24/7. So I schedule an hour each night to decompress, journal out my feelings about the day and have a good, long cry if I need one. Knowing that I’m going to give my emotions space to breath later on allows me to temporarily put them aside in the moment.
By viewing their emotional experiences through the lens of extroverted thinking, the INFP is able to validate the way they’re feeling without immediately indulging in it.
Learning to re-frame your weaknesses as opportunities for self-improvement.
Openly advocating for yourself and your work using any means available to you.
Scheduling periods of time to devote to reflection and self-care when you are under stress.
Breaking long-term goals down into a series of short...
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The key for the INFP’s return to health is for them to start small.
Taking deliberate care of your physical health–eating balanced meals and getting regular exercise.
Keeping track of the goals you’ve been accomplishing and celebrating your progress as you go.
Deliberately engaging in activities that you’ve historically enjoyed, even if you aren’t feeling enthused about them at the time.
This type has a tendency to neglect their physical health when they are feeling emotionally out of whack, which takes a corresponding toll on their mental health.
By setting up a routine that optimizes their physical well being and encourages the advancement of their goals, the INFP is setting themselves up for a somewhat boring but nonetheless effective return to health.
Welcoming creativity and self-expression back into your life with confidence. Allowing yourself to experience the full weight of your emotions, whether they are positive and joyous or negative and disappointing. Trusting that you are psychologically capable of pulling yourself out of periods of pain and despair, should you encounter them again. Learning to navigate the emotional ‘middle
ground’ that exists between extreme joy and extreme emptiness. Reaching out to loved ones to repair relationships that have suffered as a result of your grip experience. Opening yourself up to others about the struggles you’ve been encountering and accepting emotional support. Ceasing to beat yourself up over your ‘flaws’–and instead using them to form a framework for self-improvement. Reconnecting with your values and ideals–and, with the help of extroverted thinking, taking definitive action to work toward your vision of a better, more authentic ‘you.’
INFPs take their friendships incredibly seriously. Because these types often feel misunderstood growing up, it is a true treasure for the INFP to find friends–at any stage of their lives–who see and accept them for who they truly are.
They are likely to invest heavily in these friendships, valuing them the way many other types value only romantic relationships.
Because the INFP treasures their friendships so dearly, they are likely to maintain only a handful of close friends at any given point in time. This type is likely to be friendly to everyone they meet, but only strive to maintain close relationships with those whom they feel a deep connection with.
The INFP takes true joy in helping their friends sort through their emotions, which is something their friends tend to appreciate immensely.
Friends of the INFP may be familiar with their tendency to disappear for days at a time when they need space to sort through their feelings and thoughts.
Because these types are naturally inclined to see the best in others, they have a tendency to idealize their relationships or put their partners on a pedestal.
The INFP needs a great deal of time to reflect and recharge, and they appreciate having a partner who can hold his or her own while the INFP is taking time to themselves.
Perhaps the single most important component of a relationship for the INFP is to find someone whom they can be their authentic selves around–without any restraint or apology.
To the INFP, a long, analytical conversation is a borderline erotic experience.
The INFP may be open-ended in their thoughts and artistic passions but when it comes to their relationships they want something stable, genuine and long lasting.
The INFP doesn’t intend to make any compromises when it comes to who they are at the core–and so they need to find a partner who supports and accepts them as they are.
INFPs displayed a strong preference for quality time as a love language, followed by words of affirmation and physical touch.
It may get to the point where the INFP becomes so caught up in their fantasies that they withdraw from taking action on the reality of the situation–because there’s no way reality could possibly measure up to the relationship they’ve been enjoying in their head.
Fantasies aside, the INFP may also be slow to take action on a budding relationship because they want things to happen authentically.
As a rule, INFPs almost always see the best in the people they love.
Perhaps the single greatest hurdle the INFP must overcome when it comes to falling and staying in love is their tendency to fall in love with a person’s potential, rather than their reality.
The INFP needs to be conscious of their tendency to idealize partners in order to approach the relationship healthily.
When the INFP’s conflict aversion is paired with his or her tendency to idealize their partners, this can quickly become a recipe for disaster. Rather than holding their partners accountable for bad behavior, the INFP may find themselves formulating excuses on the other person’s behalf.
The INFP is particularly adept at seeing things from others point of view–and though this makes them conflict-avoidant by nature, it is also, ironically, a skill that makes them excellent at handling conflict evenly and fairly.
At their best, INFPs are fiercely individualistic in nature. They maintain a high degree of self-awareness, take a keen interest in their own creative projects and they are skilled at balancing the relationship they have with themselves with the relationships they hold with others. But at their worst, INFPs can be guilty of searching for a sense of identity inside other people–fusing themselves with a lover or partner in order to fill their inner emptiness.
The INFP needs to be conscious about his or her tendency to invest too much of their identity into the relationship. By taking a healthy amount of alone time to check in with themselves, work on projects that are separate from the relationship and otherwise nurture their unique personal identity, the INFP is able to maintain a strong and meaningful connection with themselves–which helps them to approach their relationship with a high degree of consciousness, self-awareness and assertiveness.
Even though they often don’t want to admit it to themselves, INFPs tend to have an intuitive sense of when a relationship ought to come to an end.
I still love the people I’ve loved, even if I cross the street to avoid them. -Uma Thurman
When facing a particularly harsh parting of ways, the INFP may fall into the grip of their inferior introverted thinking–criticizing themselves for everything that went wrong in the relationship and convincing themselves that they’ll never find someone else they’ll be happy with again.
One party cannot possibly give enough to make up for the other party’s lack of investment. In order for a relationship to thrive, both parties have to give it 100%.
INFPs make for warm, nurturing, and endlessly supportive parents. Since they are intuitively in tune with the needs of others,
This type values harmony incredibly highly and almost never wants to enter into a conflict unless they see absolutely no way around it.
I think we have a tendency as INFPs to believe that we can single-handedly fix or save everyone we invest ourselves in. But that is a dangerous belief. It took me years as a counselor to finally come to accept that people change if and when they’re ready to–no sooner and no later.
Self-care needs to be a priority. (I ask myself), am I living a life where I’m putting my own oxygen mask on first? Or am I exhausting myself by putting other people’s needs ahead of my own?
You would never tell your BFF she was selfish for wanting to get rid of a toxic friend or end a relationship or leave a job that didn’t serve her. You aren’t selfish for wanting a good life either.
At the end of the day I tell myself this: Healthy people are always going to respect your need for boundaries. It’s only toxic people who won’t.
The easiest boundaries to cross are the ones that aren’t firmly laid out. If you want to spend less time around a toxic person, decide exactly how hours per week you are willing to spend interacting with them. And then hold yourself firmly to that quota.
Remember that it’s ultimately up to you to maintain the boundaries you’ve set–toxic people are almost always going to try to cross them.
