INFP Introverts: The 64-Color Box

“What can you do about your own personality? After all, you are who you are. Carl Jung said that we are born with a ‘true personality type’ and stuck with it for life. Whether that’s so or not, a personality is a raw thing and therefore a ‘work in progress.’ What we do with it is up to us and will determine the direction and success of our life because our personality largely determines our attitude.

“Regardless of what we start with, over our lifetime our personality can remain immature and become atrophied, or it can mature and grow to reach its potential. Let me give you a simple example. An immature extrovert will continue to use his/her behavioural preferences to elevate her/himself at the expense of others—often by putting others down. On the other hand, a mature extrovert will endeavour to build others up and allow them space to grow and develop, to the advantage of all.

“Similarly, an immature introvert will seek to withdraw, to hide and will become self-absorbed. Conversely, the mature introvert will usually seek to include others and to use his/her own introspection to help others become more self-analytical. Whether extrovert or introvert, the mature personality develops positive attitudes which encompass those around them.” —Adam Le Good

A person may be chronologically-mature, but emotionally-immature. A person may also be intellectually-mature, but emotionally-immature. There is no correlation between chronological age, intellectual age, social age, or emotional age. Just because someone is “grown-up” by chronological age doesn’t mean they are “grown-up” emotionally.

Chronological-maturity and intellectual-maturity combined with emotional-immaturity is not uncommon—and potentially dangerous. A person whose body and mind is adult, but whose emotional development is that of a child can wreak havoc in the lives of others as well as himself.

Your relationships are dependent upon your total emotional development. The best way to understand your relationships is to understand yourself. A relationship is only as well-adjusted as the two participants. The single most important task for any person wishing to improve his relationships is to increase his self-esteem and emotional maturity. To determine the level of your emotional maturity, compare your behavior to the symptoms of emotional immaturity and the characteristics of emotional maturity.

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If you’re like me, you get into disputes with narcissists over their casual dishonesty and cruelty to other people. Trying to reform narcissists by reasoning with them or by appealing to their better nature is about as effective as spitting in the ocean. What you see is what you get: they have no better nature. The fundamental problem here is that narcissists lack empathy.

Lacking empathy is a profound disturbance to the narcissist’s thinking (cognition) and feeling (affectivity). Even when very intelligent, narcissists can’t reason well. They don’t understand the meaning of what people say and they don’t grasp the meaning of the written word either. Because so much of the meaning of anything we say depends on context and affect, narcissists (lacking empathy and thus lacking both context and affect) hear only the words.

Narcissists are generally not candidates for conventional analytical treatment, since psychological analysis is a dialogue and narcissism is a soliloquy.

More often than not, it’s the children and other victims of narcissists who often seek psychotherapy in order to come to terms with the damage suffered at the hands of narcissists.

Continue reading “Narcissistic Personality Disorder: How to Recognize a Narcissist”, “Narcissism 101″

For his first paper, now a classic, Hare had his subjects watch a countdown timer. When it reached zero, they got a “harmless but painful” electric shock while an electrode taped to their fingers measured perspiration. Normal people would start sweating as the countdown proceeded, nervously anticipating the shock. Psychopaths didn’t sweat. They didn’t fear punishment—which, presumably, also holds true outside the laboratory. In Without Conscience, he quotes a psychopathic rapist explaining why he finds it hard to empathize with his victims: “They are frightened, right? But, you see, I don’t really understand it. I’ve been frightened myself, and it wasn’t unpleasant.”

In another Hare study, groups of letters were flashed to volunteers. Some of them were nonsense, some formed real words. The subject’s job was to press a button whenever he recognized a real word, while Hare recorded response time and brain activity. Non-psychopaths respond faster and display more brain activity when processing emotionally loaded words such as “rape” or “cancer” than when they see neutral words such as “tree.” With psychopaths, Hare found no difference. To them, “rape” and “tree” have the same emotional impact—none.

Hare once illustrated this for Nicole Kidman, who had invited him to Hollywood to help her prepare for a role as a psychopath in Malice. How, she wondered, could she show the audience there was something fundamentally wrong with her character?

“I said, ‘Here’s a scene you can use,’” Hare says. “You’re walking down a street and there’s an accident. A car has hit a child in the crosswalk. A crowd of people gather round. You walk up, the child’s lying on the ground and there’s blood running all over the place. You get a little blood on your shoes and you look down and say, ‘Oh shit.’ You look over at the child, kind of interested, but you’re not repelled or horrified. You’re just…interested. Then you look at the mother and you’re really fascinated by the mother, who’s emoting, crying out, doing all these different things. After a few minutes, you turn away and go back to your house. You go into the bathroom and practice mimicking the facial expressions of the mother.” He then pauses and says, “That’s the psychopath: somebody who doesn’t understand what’s going on emotionally, but understands that something important has happened.”

Continue reading “How Can You Tell If Someone is a Psychopath?”, “Psychopaths Among Us”, “The Mask of Sanity”

“Several years ago, I was fortunate to meet a lady named Deborah at a fasting clinic in northern California. I had several conversations with Deborah over the course of a year, and what I remember most about her is that her kindness was amazingly genuine; the feeling for me was that she had spent a lifetime enduring great sadness and suffering, and had done much inner work to identify and strive to live according to her ideals.

“One day, I asked Deborah why she chose to eat her meals alone rather than with other fasting guests. After a beat of silence, she told me that she was getting some negative vibes from another guest, and that she felt that it was best for her resting experience to stay away from that energy. I remember her using the word ‘toxic’ to describe the other guest’s energy—not in a malicious way, but with a thoughtful and observational tone.”

“I’ve learned that to keep my sensitivities open and not get demolished by a world full of negative energy, I need to protect my energy. That’s why I got interested—because I have no desire to shut myself off or to become numb or neutral. I want to stay open to the world, but I also had to learn to protect my energy.”

“Gail had grown up very lonely in an emotionally distant family, with parents who did not freely give their love and relatives who were also cold and distant.”

Continue reading “Alone for the Holidays”

“I have the same problem as Marilyn. We attract people the way honey does bees but they’re generally the wrong kind of people. People who want something from us—if only our energy. We need a period of being alone to become ourselves.” —Montgomery Clift

Empaths not only pick up others’ emotions, they can project emotions that will get picked up by those on the same frequency, as well…

The word “empathy” derives from the Greek words “empatheia” meaning “passion” and “pathein” meaning “to experience, suffer.” According to Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, “Empathy is the action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another of either the past or present without having the feelings, thoughts, and experience fully communicated in an objectively explicit manner.”

As humans, our empathic skills are always turned on—as with all things, we just need to be open to receiving the messages. It’s like a radio; it may be playing, but are you listening?

If you are a healer, you are always adjusting your frequency like an antenna—just as an empath does—to help others. Not all empaths are sympathetic. Empaths feel emotions of others but do not have to feel sympathy for them. Empaths, for the most part, are compassionate though—with a desire to heal and help others.

One can be an empath from childhood. They are called natural empaths who inherit this ability allowing them to experience in higher frequency of awareness. Some people develop their empathic abilities later in life when they are more aware. Most are right-brained in the sense of using the creative intuitive side of the brain—people who use higher frequencies to connect.

Strong empaths must learn how to discern their own emotions from someone else’s.

There are degrees of empathic abilities which vary from empath to empath. Empaths are always sensitive people.

Empaths not only pick up others’ emotions, they can project emotions that will get picked up by those on the same frequency, as well.

We all have certain degrees of empathic abilities. By this I mean we all have the ability to adjust our emotional bodies with that of someone we are close to—especially if there is a love connection. This does not have to be a romantic connection. When you live with someone—or just love them—you can align your emotional body with theirs and feel their pain. The pain can be physical or emotional.

Being empathic means become one with someone or something else. You can connect with plants, animals, just about anything including the universe itself. It is almost a form of remote viewing. You can read emotions and thoughts through vibrational frequency.

Being able to empathize with people often helps you deal with them. You know what to say and do to keep balanced.

Physical Empathy: One can take on the pain of another, especially in the case of twins, their frequencies are often linked.

Emotional Empathy: Most empaths are more attuned to emotions than thoughts. To be an emotional empath is to experience the emotions of others, the positive and negative, pain and suffering and as well as love and compassion.

We become emotional empaths when we watch a film or TV show. We return to soap operas and TV series such as the latest series of reality shows as part of being emotional empaths. Positive people will hope for a positive outcome in the storyline. For negative people it will be the opposite.

Most of us can turn our empathic abilities on and off as we tape in to the frequencies. But, for others, they seem to have no control over what they experience. Those in control embrace the subject and those not in control feel a loss of power and hate it.

Under stress, awareness is heightened as well as empathic abilities. It is best to pause and go back to the emotions you experienced before the negative ones surfaced—then detach.

If you have empathic gifts, you also want to understand and control what is happening to you—to manage your empathic abilities and not become overwhelmed.

The TV series Star Trek had an episode called “The Empath,” about an alien woman with empathic abilities. The lesson in the program was about overcoming one’s fears. Fears paralyze us, which creates more fear.

To increase empathic abilities, you most open the “right side” of your brain, moving the logical mind aside. Begin with something creative—art, listening to music, meditation, yoga, writing for pleasure, being in nature or in the water, etc.

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“INFPs are very aware of social injustice and empathize with the underdog. Their empathy for the underdog and hyper-awareness of social injustice makes them extremely compassionate and nurturing…”*

“A key word for this type is empathy. INFP children will often be the ones to ask their parents why they didn’t give the homeless man spare change, or why that woman is crying.”*

“…the INFP internally feels his or her life intensely. In the relationship arena, this causes them to have a very deep capacity for love and caring which is not frequently found with such intensity in the other types. The INFP does not devote their intense feelings towards just anyone, and are relatively reserved about expressing their inner-most feelings. They reserve their deepest love and caring for a select few who are closest to them.”*

“INFPs have the ability to see good in almost anyone or anything. Even for the most unlovable the INFP is wont to have pity.”*

“The potential ways in which an INFP can irritate others include: avoiding conflict and not giving forthright criticism when it is needed…”*

“INFPs do not like conflict and go to great lengths to avoid it. This trait sometimes makes them appear irrational and illogical.”*

“INFPs seldom confront situations directly, in part because they do not like conflict.”*

“They have unconsciously diminished their presence in order to find a niche in their family and a place in the world. To be seen and heard, they feel they must take care of, or bend around, others.” Read Full Article

“I’m melting! I’m melting. Who would have thought that some little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?!” —Wicked Witch to Dorothy

“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it’s hell.” —Harry Truman

“‘People are afraid of me,’ says [Sandra] Bernhard, when I mention that some people really dislike her. ‘People don’t like the truth. They don’t like to be called on their bullshit. They’d rather be nice. They’d rather hide behind the pretension of being nice and being nice doesn’t really get you anywhere in this world. It’s a cop-out. It always has been. Being nice is bullshit. Being real, being concerned, being passionate, loving, all comes from very strong emotions.’” —Jonathan Van Meter

“Comfort is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being comfortable.” —Swami Vevekananda

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” —Winston Churchill

“Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from both sides.” —Margaret Thatcher

“Every now and then when you’re onstage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It’s a sound you can’t get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you’ve hit them where they live.” —Shelley Winters

“If I was president, I’d get elected on Friday, assassinated on Saturday, and buried on Sunday.” —Wyclef Jean

“I love you and, because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.” —Pietro Aretino

“I’m constantly asked about my life and why I worked in Amsterdam, or lived in Germany, or graduated from high school in Switzerland, or hung out in Africa as a 17 year old kid, or met my soulmate, Steuart. My answer is always the same: ‘Wait and read my book…’ That book has been in the offing for several years now, but I’m always putting it off for one reason or another, until recently. Over the years, I’ve written about 100 pages and am now trying to figure out how to write the book of my life and all the people in it, without ticking off all the ‘famous’ folk that I know by writing what I really think/know about them—not what they want the world to think. The other day I told Steuart I think I have to wait for all these people to die first—or I’ll have to be dead before the book is published to avoid the outrage some of my experiences will evoke. People don’t like the truth. They don’t like to be told they are petty and jealous, especially when they are petty and jealous. But in the words of one of my idols, Sandra Boynton, ‘everyone’s entitled to my opinion’ and so the book will be written. I just have to decide if it’s going to be fiction or not. Maybe a combination, thereof, to really drive my detractors crazy.” —Jane Dewar

Related: Much Ado About Nothing, Are You Invisible?, The Challenge of Setting Boundaries, Bully Online, Thru the Looking Glass

“What I realized was that I had come from several generations of victimized women and abusive men. Though the cast of characters may change, the repetitive cycle of toxic behavior can remain for generations on end. The family drama may look and sound different from generation to generation, but all toxic patterns are remarkably similar in outcome: pain and suffering.

“Maybe the reason you can’t see red flags or pink elephants is because you grew up in a toxic family environment where red flags or pink elephants were the norm. I, personally, couldn’t see the red flags of toxic relationships because I grew up saluting those red flags every day.

“As a matter of fact, I saluted and pledged allegiance to those red flags everyday. I could not see the big pink elephant because the pink elephant was the family pet. I took the pink elephant for walks every day. I fed that pink elephant every day. I cleaned up after the pink elephant that wasn’t house broken. I loved the pink elephant. This was the cycle of toxic behavior that I was involved in.

“I loved my family. I grew up and left home. When I decided to get married, I went looking for a woman who had—red flags and pink elephants. If a woman did not have red flags and pink elephants, I didn’t feel at home with her. How could I marry a woman who didn’t feel like home or family? To me, these red flags and pink elephants weren’t warning signs. These where signs that were leading me home. However, these signs were leading me into the same types of toxic relationships that’ve run in my family from generation to generation.”

—Michael Eaton

Life is a theater, invite your audience carefully. Not everyone can or should (or is healthy enough to) have a front row seat in our lives. There are some people that need to be loved from a distance. It’s amazing what you can accomplish when you let go of, or at least minimize, your time with draining, negative, incompatible, not-going-anywhere relationships/friendships.

Observe the relationships around you. Pay attention. Which ones lift and which ones lean? Which ones encourage and which ones discourage? Which ones are on a path of uphill growth and which ones are going downhill? When you leave certain people, do you feel worse or better? Which ones always have drama, or don’t really understand, know, or appreciate you?

The more you seek quality, respect, growth, peace of mind, love and truth around you, the easier it will become for you to decide who gets to sit in the front row and who should be moved to the balcony of your life. You can’t change the people around you. But you can change the people you’re around.

—Author: Unknown

“Although two well-developed individuals of any type can enjoy a healthy relationship, INFP’s natural partner is the ENFJ, or the ESFJ. INFP’s dominant function of Introverted Feeling is best matched with a partner whose dominant function is Extraverted Feeling. The INFP/ENFJ combination is ideal, because it shares the Sensing way of peceiving, but the INFP/ESFJ combination is also a good match.” Continue reading “INFP Relationships