INFP loop

Fi-Si loop

INFPs who are unhealthy and immature, can be overly -sensitive, quick to take offence and insistent that only their views and values are valid. They can be loner, they only allow in their lives people who share the same ideas and values. They think to be better than the rest of the world.

INFPs who share these characteristics hadn’t a healthy childhood or background that helped them to develop and appropriately express their feelings. Usually, they are open-minded and gentle but if they grew up in an unhealthy environment, they would be extremely narrow-minded and they may not be able to develops the supportive functions ( like intuition, sensing or thinking) to balance their feelings and create a healthy mindset.

Ne is important because it helps them to question their beliefs to see if they’re right. It also helps to be open-minded, creative and to see connections and possibilities. An unhealthy Ne means that INFPs will use it to create an idealised image of what the world should be and to form inspirational idea of a perfect future. Unhealthy intuition can make INFPs seem unrealistic, impractical or eccentric. They feel pulled towards an idealistic future but incapable to reach their goals.

The repression of inferior Thinking (Te) is also part of the problem. Te is the “executive function”. It’s focused on productivity thus they can get stuck in a place of speculation without actually doing anything to realise their projects. They can get very frustrated and depressed when they have in idea of the future but no tools to create it.

There are many expressions of an imbalanced/ unhealthy INFP:

1) INFPs can repress their own feelings convincing themselves they’re fine;

2) They start thinking everyone is corrupted and they may see themselves as the only people who know “the truth”.

But not every INFP is like this. Sometimes, they get too focused on the past or stick in particularly bad or embarrassing memories and feeling anxious about them.

They can rely excessively on their experience and discount other people’s experience just because they’re different (this is the Si loop).

The “grip” stress phase.

INFPs who are experiencing chronic or extreme stress may fall into the grip of their inferior function, Extraverted Thinking (Te). When this happens, they don’t feel like they’re truly themselves and they act in weird ways. They can become sarcastic towards others and harshly critical of their perspective or viewpoint. They may seem overly-focused on efficiency and maintaining control of their outer environment.

This is why they could get mistyped as INTJs, ISFJs or INFJs.

This meme sums up everything.

–Stefania