How to Understand the INFJ Brain

How to understand the INFJ brain is a problem for most personality types who are not INFJ personality types and also INFJs themselves. This is why the INFJ personality type usually has big problems with others over miscommunication.

INFJs don’t open up easily, and when they do open up and explain their views to other people, most often the other party reacts with confusion, or even might react with a blank look on their face, which is disconcerting to the INFJ. Sometimes the other party doesn’t even seem to be listening, and it’s obvious they have checked out of the conversation. Many times, the other party does not even later remember what the INFJ said!

Sometimes this is because the other person is dysfunctional, but it often happens because the INFJ personality type thinks differently than other people. Most other personality types think in a straight line, which means they think in terms of cause-and-effect. They consider one thing at a time, or only a few things at a time. This is very different than the way that the INFJ personality type thinks.

INFJ personality types do not think in a straight line. INFJ personality types are intuitive, and so they use web-based thinking. All intuitive types do this, but the size of the INFJ thought web is much larger than all other types, so when INFJs communicate, they are not communicating one thing at a time in order of cause and effect. Instead, they are attempting to present the entire full picture of their web-based thinking to the other party. They present the key points that link the whole web together.

If the INFJ were presenting this visually, it would make more sense to other people who are not web-based thinkers. But with no visual, to others it sounds like the INFJ is talking about random things that are not connected.

Subscribe to Lauren’s newsletter!
https://laurensapala.com/newsletter/