One of my readers commented on my INFJ vs. INFP article and asked how INFPs can stop other people from taking them for granted. This article is written in response to that question.

Why are INFPs taken for granted?

This has to do with their Fi combined with their Ne auxiliary function. Both functions deal with emptiness. Fi is inner emptiness (or a fullness that can’t be articulated easily) and Ne deals with outer emptiness, like outer space. In total this leads to the INFP being hard to see. Also, in America, INFP is probably the least favored of types due to America being like an ESTP temperament at enneatype 3. Everyone pays attention to this type. It is the typical airheaded girl or guy that is nonetheless like a particularly attractive and shiny surface.

It’s not that INFPs are unattractive either. It’s just that they are so hard to see. In essence, they are the invisible type – invisible inside and out.

Fi is invisible enough by itself. Like a ninja in operation, it often depends on being undetected. INFPs are often the ones that just quietly give of themselves here and there without thinking twice about it. They are genuinely nurturing and affirming of others. Selfless, they don’t expect anything in return when they give. And they often give as a matter of course. At least to their loved ones, those they have developed some degree of rapport and depth of relationship with.

And yet, often these cherished friends and loved ones don’t treat them particularly nice.

I think part of the reason for this is human psychology and the other part is cultural – living in America for example.

I think most people have heard that being nice and genuine doesn’t pay. You gotta be tough, cutthroat, looking out for your own prerogatives. No one cares about you deep inside. If you want to make it in this world, you gotta stand up for yourself. Assert yourself. And even be mean and nasty on occasion.

An INFP is pretty much incapable of being mean. They can grow sullen and withdrawn over many years of abuse but they still will not “kick at the pricks” so to speak. Add to this quality of innate kindness, a certain patience and rather stoical attitude to emotional suffering. This comes from their Si tertiary function. It’s sort of like the “carry on” function. There is no use in getting all riled up about the whole dilemma of mistreatment.

So, this is part of the reason that INFPs are taken for granted. People will come to them instinctively as a place to dump their troubles. Where no one else will listen to them, an INFP will if you get into their good graces, which isn’t that hard. Just show up with a sob story. An INFP feels a natural tenderness and protective instinct to anyone in suffering. If you approach them in a rather soft and undramatic way, you can likely insinuate your way into their good graces.

This doesn’t mean that they take in every stray cat and dog lying in the street. INFP has a natural discrimination and filtering system to keep them away from true dire straits type of people. It is more that the friends that they do have often unconsciously hone in on them as the ones who will accept their emotional garbage and disarray. And to be fair to these INFP friends, INFPs often set themselves up to be in exactly this position. This is a fact of human psychology. If you energetically open yourself up to others as their assuager, they will avail themselves of the assuaging at every opportunity. If you are so selfless as to be everyone’s pillow of comfort, they will take the pillow and forget about the pillow-giver as they drift off into slumber.

Why do people at large treat the most genuinely nice people like shit? Well, I don’t know, but it certainly has something to do with humanity’s present level of evolution. In a more perfect and ideal world, INFPs would be lauded and recognized. I could picture a species of angels that are off the karmic wheel that do nothing but tend to missions of mercy, who out of love and kindness tend thoughtlessly to those in suffering. They succor misery. They throw a healing fire into the hearts of those who lie dying in pain.

So, we have these three things:

Innate invisibility due to functional setup

The reality of human psychology to suck the breast dry

INFPs in the particular temperamental climate of America, which renders them even more invisible

How INFP can stop being taken for granted

Part of the problem I see here is in the particular temperament of American life. In America, we have the conditioning from a young age of having to be somebody. Who are you going to be? What important profession and career are you going to follow that is going to make you viable in the competition for resources and prestige? What skills are you going to develop to make you the fittest in this competition and to take advantage of the boundless opportunities in a free market to better yourself?

To an INFP, bettering themselves doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with being an important person that everyone recognizes and is in awe of. They are quiet people who quietly go about their day pursuing their dreams in little ways.

In little and countless ways they give to those around them. But, if you give, you should take credit for it. That’s the only way to move up in the world. You have to trumpet to the four winds that you provided value. Let people know that you are important and valuable. Honestly, amidst the density of the average American, you have to hit people over the head with your virtues. And when you do, they respect you even more. “Hey, there is real go-getter. Nice. Keep up the good work.” Americans respect people that look after themselves.

And in general, in human psychology at present, people everywhere respect those that command respect. By and large, people will respect whomever can prove they are master. It comes down to the whole “will-to-power” thing Nietzsche was talking about. If you have the power to do it, then who can say nay? People instinctively respect and submit obedience to those who are stronger than them.

It is possible that the INFP, of all the types, is least susceptible to this “might is right” dictum. They might not know it on an intellectual level, but in their hearts, where they live, they know with a stony and unbending clarity. And you know what they think about it? “What a bunch of high-falutin bullshit” is what they think. Yes, it is hard to dupe an INFP with all the flowery rhetoric of the world, all the epic contortions of logic used to justify mass murder and the like. Actually, the best way to dupe them is by an appeal to their sympathies. They are suckers for sob stories and any politician who seems genuine in helping the poor and unfortunate. But they cannot abide any rationale that espouses meanness and cracking the whip down on the dumb herd. They, least of all types, can abide this. But, they often don’t know what to do about it. Unlike, say, the ISFJ, who possessed enough pragmatism and cleverness, in addition to their innate abhorrence of suffering, to effect a slave revolt in morality.

No, INFPs are often in that completely helpless middle position. They know enough but they often can’t formulate it in a way that anyone takes seriously. They have an innate indignance that often backfires on them. They feel strongly and deeply a feeling of absolute rightness and righteousness that, again, is difficult to put into words or simple and elegant formulas that the average herd dweller can understand. Scientific herd dwellers not excluded.

And INFP isn’t like an ISFP who can just as well tell the whole world of science and education to go hang itself and just go live in a marginal condition somewhere. No, INFPs are naturally, upper middle class types. They often inherit an attitude of an innate superiority and a certain elitism that puts them above the dirty street dwellers. INFPs grow up in a sort of bubble and remove from the shit of life. It is often this naivety and lack of experience with these elements at a young age that prevents them from being thrown into the street to make necessity the mother of invention. ISFPs, for example, generally know all about this. They don’t have the same protection of innate moral and ideological superiority as an INFP.

It would probably be bad advice to tell an INFP just to be tougher, stand up for yourself, and to tell the pricks to go to hell. Because they won’t. It seems they aren’t capable of it.

I see more a battle of attrition going on with the INFP, a slow wearing away of those stony rocks. A quiet, and sometimes, quirky insistence on one’s inherent beliefs and morals. Yes, quirkiness, that is the key. See, INFPs have that bedrock strength. They really are quite tough in a way. No one can make them budge off their moral certainty. I mean no one. Nothing can make them change their deep conviction about what they feel is right. You can beat the living shit out of them and they will cry and weep. You can pour on heaps of emotional abuse and psychological torture and they will go to pieces. And then they will reassemble themselves and carry on as if nothing happened. They will forget you and fade you. And themselves and whatever else. Except this conviction that cannot be eradicated. You cannot make an INFP believe anything which they don’t inherently believe. Like during the Inquisition when they would pour boiling metal into your mouth unless you said that you believed in god, the INFP would probably be one of the last to recant. They are some stubborn motherfuckers. Believe this. And not flashy about it either.

So, as an answer to some of the foregoing, I would say it is when they engage their quirkiness, which amounts to their auxiliary extraverted intuition, is where they are going to have the most success in standing out and not being taken for granted. I know I already said that Ne is an invisible function on the outer plane, similar to how Fi is invisible on the inner plane, but, nonetheless (pun?) their Ne will give them an attractive and shining invisibility, if that makes any sense.

You know what? The best way to explain this is to show an instance of it. Go watch the movie Pretty in Pink . Molly Ringwald’s character in that movie (and in real life) is archetypal INFP woman. Watch how she deals with her invisibility amongst all the airheaded and popular girls to land the guy that she has set her eye on. She is patient in her goal. She has an innate sureness about herself mixed with a “going to pieces” emotionalism that she always rebounds from by putting on a positive and self-affirming attitude. She stays true to herself and what she believes and feels. She stands up for herself and her beliefs when her inamorata guy in the movie wants to go to a typical kegger party with all the jocks and popular people. O, also, her inamorata guy is an INFP too (Andrew McCarthy), so it is a particularly good opportunity to see two INFPs of both sexes in action.

So, check it out and let me know what you think.

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