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INFPs and indecision

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#1 ·
Might INFPs be the most indecisive type?

I know that as an introverted feeler, my inferior function is extroverted thinking, which is central to deciding things, implementing them, and in general, being in active, effective person.

These days I find myself about to make a major life decision and it isn't easy to know what is right, and how things will turn out. I find myself quite naturally sinking into myself and looking for a value I can stand by, something that can invigorate me to tolerate any of the anxieties and difficulties on whichever path I choose, but such a value is hard to come by.

Often, when the difficulties of one path become clear to me, I tend to be overwhelmed by those and forget the advantages of that path, or the difficulties of the other path. Life sometimes feels like Edvard Munch's painting - the Scream.

I know that whatever I decide, I am going to survive - even if sometimes it feels otherwise - and have a richer life as a result of the decisions I made.

I know that my friends - an INFJ, an ESFP, two ESFJs, an ESTP, an ENFP - these would have an easier time deciding, especially the ESFJs and the ESTP. They would just pick one option and stick to it, and if it goes wrong, they would mend it if they can. Else, they would just live with it and work on coming to terms with the regret.

I get some inspiration from Existentialist writings - Paul Tillich, Rollo May, Martin Buber, etc. The anxiety of making a decision reminds one of the absurdity of your situation, where one decision could set off the trajectory of your life on two entirely different paths. It is not just absurd, it also reminds one of the fragility of one's life, if it can be propelled into such different directions by a mere decision - a decision that is controlled by economic, social, and unconscious psychological forces that you do not have much control over. The very fragility of my life gives me the impetus to affirm my being. By reminding me of how close non-being is, it impels me to assert my being, in whatever decision I make. I particularly like Rollo May's definition of anxiety - 'anxiety is the experience of being asserting itself against the threat of non-being'.

My therapist thinks of this as mere intellectualization meant to ward off my true feelings, but I don't think it is.




Are other INFPs so indecisive? What helps you make a decision?
 
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#2 ·
Yes, yes, with an extra side of yes.

I don't like making decisions especially when by doing so I am deciding against doing choosing other possibilities. Also, I think we can feel pressured by others to make logical decisions when we like to make decisions out of our intuition and feeling. It's important for us to embrace the way we process and form our values even though our thinking friends may look down on this at first glance. Taking time to use our introverted feeling function to process and form what is most important to us enables us to form a firm ground from which to jump. If I don't take this time to form my values using my Fi, I am so flighty and impulsive and I don't have substantial platform from which to make a decision. If you're going to take a leap, you want to have a firm rock from which to jump, not something shifting and insubstantial. Making decisions is the leap. Your accepted and established values are the rock. If I don't take time alone to go inward into my Fi world and examine what's really there and whether I approve of the way I am actually functioning as a person, then I'll never be able to form a solid rock from which to make decisions for myself and I'll inevitably be looking to others to make decisions for me. Taking time to examine my Fi world and rearrange or reaffirm things as important to me helps me make decisions that I feel good about and are in reality usually good decisions.
 
#3 ·
I am very indecisive, there is some paradox or saying that goes like, "a donkey is placed in a room equal distances from two piles of grain. He can't decide which way to go and starves to death." Sometimes it's hard to weigh out a decision and it makes me really antsy if they both seem equal or if they are decisions that seem like they have a lot of phantom bad consequences, like life decisions.

I've learned to deal with it for equal decisions by letting my impulse decide, or rationalizing about purchases and experiences like "Yeah I have the money/time to do this, and the consequences might be inconceivably different than the other choice but also not inherently bad". Sometimes you just have to shut the mind off and choose, and care less. Your enjoyment will be better for it. Also, you could just ask someone to make the decision. If you hate their decision, you know there is a voice in you that actually made up its mind already. They say the same with coin tosses, when it's in the air and you imagine which face you want to see, that is the decision you actually wanted.
 
#5 ·
Sometimes you just have to shut the mind off and choose, and care less. Your enjoyment will be better for it. Also, you could just ask someone to make the decision. If you hate their decision, you know there is a voice in you that actually made up its mind already. They say the same with coin tosses, when it's in the air and you imagine which face you want to see, that is the decision you actually wanted.
well, often you know what you deeply want, but you aren't sure if that is just a sentimental choice that you will regret later. sometimes being practical is better for your own long term happiness.
 
#4 ·
These days I find myself about to make a major life decision and it isn't easy to know what is right, and how things will turn out. I find myself quite naturally sinking into myself and looking for a value I can stand by, something that can invigorate me to tolerate any of the anxieties and difficulties on whichever path I choose, but such a value is hard to come by.
There isn't anything wrong with being indecisive other than it will hinder you at times. I am an obsessive compulsive planner, I mean the shit goes through naturally without me doing anything. I'll sit there and run through all possible futures and what I will most likely do in any future always seeking the optimum. I have a plan A, B, C, and maybe even more. The messed up thing is its fun for me, lol. A lot of the stuff you have before you is semi predictable so you can use that to your advantage, difficulties make the adventure anyhow and often you find the perception of them to be worse than they actually are.
 
#7 ·
I'm indecisive in some senses. I'm stubborn, so once I make a decision I firmly stick to it. It's just MAKING those decisions that are hard for me, especially trivial ones because I feel like I can't weight out the advantages and disadvantages of the situation. Hopefully I'll get over it, but yes, I'm very bad at making decisions.
 
#8 ·
I have in the past made decisions by rolling dice when i couldnt reach a decision myself. Not something id reccomend doing but i'll probably do it again at some point

i also have the stereotypical infp procrastination issue
 
#9 ·
Sometimes. I like to keep my options open. Yesterday morning I couldn't decide which Keurig coffee cup flavor I was in the mood for so I had husband choose what's in right hand or left. Sometimes tho, you just try to get me to change my mind on something. It ain't happening.
 
#10 ·
I am so indecisive that when I took some strengths test thing I basically got that one of my strengths was ... I forget what it was called, but it was basically being able to see all of the possibilities in any given situation (iow, the opposite of being decisive).

I am indecisive on all levels. I have a hard time deciding even little things, like other people have mentioned, such as what I want to eat for breakfast or where I want to go for dinner. Of course, part of my indecisiveness over little things is that they often affect people besides me (like if I'm going out to eat with some friends). I could honestly be happy eating just about anywhere, so why should I choose someplace that someone else isn't going to like? But it drives my friends and family crazy. If it is an INFP thing, I would be very happy to tell them that it's just a part of who I am, and if they're going to get annoyed with me for that then they might as well be annoyed with the way I laugh (which is fine ... I think).

Anyway, I'm also massively indecisive on large matters as well. What do I want to do with my life? Should I go back to school? Is this relationship right for me? Which is where problems begin to arise.

I always just assumed that most of my difficulties lay in the fact that I could see so many different possibilities and that so many different options appealed to me. I've always been good at arguing both sides of a point to the degree where I no longer know which one I agree with. But I like your explanation about extroverted thinking (though I'm only maybe 60/40 feeling/thinking, so I don't know what effect that would have). Because not only am I poor at making decisions, but I also second guess my decisions once they've been made (and usually it's just pure time that forces me to decide). I'm also very bad at implementing decisions even if I've made them in my mind.
 
#11 ·
Yes. I don't like to make a decision until I feel like I have all the information I can possibly have in order to make a good one.

Hen again, I'm so indecisive that clothes shopping is the WORST. You have a budget and have to decide which of the things you tried on you're actually going to buy?? It's horrifying. And I can't chalk that up to information :)
 
#12 ·
A lot of my decision making is made on whether it is worth it.
For example, today I wanted to buy a fizzy drink. I went to a shop and the price was more expensive than it should be. So i decided to go to another shop close by and see if it was cheaper. I found it cheaper. But then I felt like having water instead. So i went to the water bottles and saw that one 500ml water bottle was 44p and one 2L water bottle of the same brand was 49p. So I thought it is definetly worth the money to get the 2L one because its 4 times the size but only 1/9th the price! But then I thought I wouldnt want to carry that massive bottle all around so finally opted for the 500ml one.

Quite indecisive I know but I do eventually get there!

Also when it comes to more weightier matters in life I just close my eyes and ask myself the question. And go with what it says.
 
#13 ·
Extremely indecisive, and I'm in my 30s now... still the same way. I am also attracted to existentialist writings, it really puts a harder burden on oneself.
I think it is just the Ne doing this, along with the extreme Fi weighing/valuing/considering the almost unlimited choices, Fi also is constantly searching for "the meaning of life" and "who will I be" virtually all day every single day.
My entire attraction to the readings of philosophy was almost entirely in the branch of ethics, i.e. finding a purpose.
There is almost no decision that isn't weighed, from picking a college class, choosing what company to work for, or choosing where this orange came from and whether you want to support these particular orange growers.
I also converted to linux one time... not for software purposes, but for pure ethical purposes as I didn't want to be involved with commercial use of software...I've also been vegan. I've quit Not For Profit organizations because I felt their cause just wasn't good enough, where others thing even working for a not for profit is akin to a life of poverty.
I've been a bit more balanced now, but those type of things still resonate with me. Having a subjective value system which largely differs from the rest of the society will always be hard, unless you are in a closed off society or subculture with a bunch of other individualists.


That being said, I've tried to make my career to keep it as open as possible of possible future avenues.

A lifetime of decisions eventually start to curve into a meaningful path, it's finding that path which is hard.

I think the ENFP in this regard is very similar to the INFP... they see all the decisions and are more open for committing to them and only later check them with their Fi. Where as the INFP might know the same options, but be more paralyzed to actually act on them.

I know what I want to do, but I am also aware of the very real possibility that my idealist wants mean possible failure... Therefore for any "job" I don't like to focus my skills on just one job or skill set.
 
#15 ·
Kaif Mahmood , Thank you for this thread. I'm currently fighting with this very same issue, and thoughts you wrote could have easily came out from my own keyboard. Freedom, while it's a beautiful and empowering thing, it brings us the terrible responsibility of our choices and as it seems, for us INFPs, overanalyzing of different kind of scenarios how be perceive that how things could come as.

I'm currently torn between two choices, which one is emotionally good, whereas other is rationally good. I'm in a situation, where I could choose between starting a study new profession in new school at autumn. It would interest me much, as I've had this fantasy about starting a whole new, better life, with possible new friends and lovers. I've saved relatively good amount of money for this scenario, and I could get by with student's loan they give by state. I know one female INFP from that city.. she is rather beatiful case, and we have chemistry and.. well, you can see. Some possible love interest. But there is another option.

I live now in a small town, town of my childhood. I work here, and get paid relatively well in my job. However, I don't find this job interesting. It exhaust me, but I could push it through if I would choose it. This is however, a stable choice, as I could work here for a year and go to seek my wanderlust after a year, and this would allow me to save money so much that I wouldn't have no economic problems with living.

I feel like Henry in the Herman Hesse's book of Steppenwolfe, torn between excitement of bohemian living and comfort of bourgoise. My rational side screams that STAY WITH YOUR JOB while by emotional side wants to already experience life in somewhere else. I've been switching with both sides, yet found no real comfort in neither scenarios. At least, I have two great options, instead of two bad options. But this indecision is terribly stressing me out already. Can I put a price tag on a possible love interest, which is only possible but yet not even sure? Is anything ever sure?
 
#16 ·
No, I can not make decisions. I’m constantly swung between my emotions and my rational thoughts. The one day I’m excitingly convinced of something with my whole heart, the next day (hour even) I could slap myself in the face for being such a fool to even think about it. All I want is just some objectivity, but my mind is not made for that, it’s chaos or nothing. It’s driving me insane.
I find myself at a point where I have to make a decision in life, but I have no idea where to look. It feels like the whole world is one big weight on my shoulders, but then, if I start to analyse this massive weight it seems that it is nothing but air.. There’s just nothing there for me. So I decided the only 'solution' is to pack my stuff and travel around, not out of ‘joy’ nor even ‘to see the world’, but in the idle hope to find what I’m looking for. I have no idea what that is. I feel excited about it, but on the other hand I feel like I’m failing in life.. I wish I had the opportunity to doubt between two things:)
 
#20 ·
Why do people keep ascribing stupid labels to INFPS, most of which can be said about any if not all mbti types. I'm not a stack of dumb functions I'm a person and if it weren't for idiots online that propagate these dumb claims we'd be enjoying and discussing the actual benefit of mbti. Rather than arguing back and forth what we aren't.
 
#21 ·
How we make any decision amidst conflicting and equally weighted motives is a curious reality. A tip is that we intervene into our own decision making by introducing some means for making one decision or another.
 

https://www.marxists.org/archive/vygotsky/works/1931/self-control.htm
William James, in analyzing the voluntary act, turns to the daily act of getting up. Upon waking, a person knows, on the one hand, that he must get up and, on the other hand, that he would like to sleep a little longer. A conflict of motives develops. The two motives alternate, appear in consciousness, and replace each other. James believed that it is most characteristic that at the instant of vacillation, for the person, the moment of transition to action, the moment of decision, passes unnoticed. It is as if it had not happened at all. Suddenly, one of the motives, as if nudged, squeezes out the competitor and almost automatically results in a selection. Suddenly I find myself getting up – this is one way of putting it.

The elusiveness of this most important moment in the voluntary act can be explained by the fact that its mechanism is internal. The auxiliary motive in this case is not sufficiently distinct and clear. A typical, developed voluntary act in the same situation exhibits the following three instants: (1) I must get up (motive), (2) I don’t want to get up (motive), (3) counting to oneself: one, two, three (auxiliary motive) and (4) at the count of three, rising. This is the introduction of an auxiliary motive, creating a situation from within that makes me get up. This is completely similar to saying to a child, “Now, one, two, three – drink your medicine.” This is will in the true sense of the word. In the example of getting up, I got up at the signal “three” (conditioned reflex), but I, myself, through a signal and a connection with it, got up, that is, I controlled my behavior through an auxiliary stimulus or an auxiliary motive. We find the mechanism itself, that is, controlling oneself through auxiliary stimuli, in experimental and clinical studies of the will.

K. Lewin did experimental studies on the formation and execution of so-called intentional acts. He came to this conclusion: intention itself is a volitional act that creates situations that make it possible for a man to subject himself subsequently to the action of external stimuli so that carrying out the intended act is not at all voluntary, but is an act purely of the conditioned-reflex order. I decide to drop a letter in the mailbox and for this reason I remember an appropriate connection between the mailbox and my action. This and only this is the essence of intention. I created a certain connection that will subsequently act automatically in the manner of a natural need. Lewin calls this a quasi-need. Now I must go out into the street – and the first mailbox will automatically make me carry out the whole operation of mailing the letter.

Thus, a study of intention compels a conclusion that seems paradoxical at first glance – specifically, intention is a typical process of controlling one’s own behavior by creating appropriate situations and connections, but executing it is a process that is completely independent of will and takes place automatically. In this way, the paradox of the will consists in that the will creates involuntary acts. However, even here there is a great difference between executing an intended action that is seemingly dictated by the newly created need and a simple habit.

Lewin explains voluntary action with the same example of the mailbox. Of course, if in the given case the conditioned connection simply called a habit in a conditioned reflex, we would have to expect that the second, third, etc., mailbox would be an even stronger reminder of mailing the letter. Moreover, the created apparatus stops acting as soon as the need for which it was created is satisfied. Here the process of the voluntary action is reminiscent of the course of the ordinary instinctive reaction. Lewin does not fully appreciate the essential difference between voluntary and involuntary actions evident in his experiment.

As his experiments have shown, human behavior that does not have a specific intention is subject to the power of the situation. Every thing requires some kind of action, elicits, excites, actualizes some kind of reaction. The typical behavior of a person waiting in an empty room with nothing to do is characterized mainly by the fact that he is at the mercy of the environment. Intention is also based on creating an action in response to a direct need of things or, as Lewin says, coming out of the surrounding field. The intention to mail the letter creates a situation in which the first mailbox acquires the capability of determining our behavior, but in addition, with intention, an essential change in the person’s behavior occurs. The person, using the power of things or stimuli, controls his own behavior through them, grouping them, putting them together, sorting them. In other words, the great uniqueness of the will consists of man having no power over his own behavior other than the power that things have over his behavior. But man subjects to himself the power of things over behavior, makes them serve his own purposes and controls that power as he wants. He changes the environment with his external activity and in this way affects his own behavior, subjecting it to his own authority.

That in Lewin’s experiments we are actually speaking of such control of oneself through stimuli is easy to see from his example. The subject is asked to wait for a long time and to no purpose in an empty room. She vacillates – to leave or to continue waiting, a conflict of motives occurs. She looks at her watch; this only reinforces one of the motives, specifically, it is time to go, it is already late. Until now the subject was exclusively at the mercy of the motives, but now she begins to control her own behavior. The watch instantly constituted a stimulus that acquires the significance of an auxiliary motive. The subject decides “When the hands of the watch reach a certain position, I will get up and leave.” Consequently, she closes a conditioned connection between the position of the hands and her leaving; she decides to leave through the hands of the watch and she acts in response to external stimuli, in other words, she introduces an auxiliary motive similar to the dice or the count “one, two, three” for getting up. In this example, it is very easy to see how a change in the functional role of the stimulus, its conversion to an auxiliary motive, occurs.
As such, the decision making is distinct from the act that later on follows.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Will_(philosophy)
Most of the time man does not do what he wills, but what he has willed. Through his decisions, he always gives himself only a certain direction, in which he then moves until the next moment of reflection. We do not will continuously, we only will intermittently, piece by piece. We thus save ourselves from willing: principle of the economy of the will.
And its an interesting thing in which we may well resolve some ambivalence without changing the situation at all except our intent.
So for example in Rick and Morty, the mother, Beth experiences an ambivalence of staying with her family at the cost of her felt lost career ambitions.
When Rick gives her an opportunity to leave and put a identical clone of her in her place, she has to really decide what to do rather than contemplate it. She decides to stay with her family and her resentment over having not taken another path is resolved because she commits her intention to the life she has as worthwhile to pursue.
We are forever going down certain paths and increasingly foreclosing others, but we must ultimately do something and not waste away in indecision, so if we do anything we should really commit ourselves to it, to wholly accept the decision we make even if later on we might even revise/regret it.
Which isn't a point for haphazard decision making that doesn't consider an issue, but quite often, no amount of analysis can really prompt one to decide. We see on here how many people look to others for information to ultimately decide for them what they should do when there is a point where there is no amount of information will tip the scale except to take the risk on the unknown future consequences and hope for the best.
 
#22 ·
I like to make slow and highly informed decisions, maybe some would get impatient with that but the quality of my decisions themselves are usually worth the wait. The adjective "decisive" should take that into consideration, it shouldn't be only about speed.
 
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