Are people suspicious of ENFPs?

The King Of Dreams said:

Many of us ENFPs are so altruistic that people may peg us a "fake" and thus are not trustworthy. When we make one mistake then they are the first ones to say "See?! I knew he/she couldn't be trusted!"

I hate to say it, but you can't please everyone. They are just going to have to discover how great he is on their own.

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avantgardearmy said:

I can see that; people who aren't naturally altruistic won't understand people (ENFPs) who naturally are. But I am a very open and honest, "this is me whether you like it or not" type person, so I've always been seen as very trustworthy.

However, despite how trustworthy I am, I can be a pretty suspicious person. It's like I have a really hard time believing that other people are as upright and honest as I am, especially if they are more private, less direct by nature. (On the other hand, sometimes I'll trust people too quickly, due to my enthusiasm over a common interest or viewpoint, for example.)

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Redwood said:

Anything that requires me being punctual, reliably consistent, and constantly serious will result in me being overlooked. Fair enough, I guess. Those are not my strong points. Still hurts, though, because I take it personally. Hey, I could try!

I've also found that it makes a big difference what personality type we are talking about. Conformists won't trust me, because I'm not a conformist myself. I do follow the major rules, though; I'm not a total anarchist. But they'll just assume that I'm irresponsible altogether, which is not true. Or very serious people will think that, because I inject humour into situations, that I can't be trusted with more serious issues. That's also not true. I take people's problems very seriously, but I just find that my own way of looking at things requires me to see it from all sides--one of which is the funny side. Being funny does not mean you are any less able to solve serious problems. In fact, I find it has the opposite effect and long before serious people are finished debating I've figured out what to do and I'm wondering why they can't see it.

Ironically, people who are "rebels" tend to reject me, because I don't conform to their particular standards of rebellion.

I can get along with pretty much anyone, but I'm never accepted as "one of them". *shrug* I guess I'm not.

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Redwood said:

Anything that requires me being punctual, reliably consistent, and constantly serious will result in me being overlooked. Fair enough, I guess. Those are not my strong points. Still hurts, though, because I take it personally. Hey, I could try!

I've also found that it makes a big difference what personality type we are talking about. Conformists won't trust me, because I'm not a conformist myself. I do follow the major rules, though; I'm not a total anarchist. But they'll just assume that I'm irresponsible altogether, which is not true. Or very serious people will think that, because I inject humour into situations, that I can't be trusted with more serious issues. That's also not true. I take people's problems very seriously, but I just find that my own way of looking at things requires me to see it from all sides--one of which is the funny side. Being funny does not mean you are any less able to solve serious problems. In fact, I find it has the opposite effect and long before serious people are finished debating I've figured out what to do and I'm wondering why they can't see it.

Ironically, people who are "rebels" tend to reject me, because I don't conform to their particular standards of rebellion.

I can get along with pretty much anyone, but I'm never accepted as "one of them". *shrug* I guess I'm not.

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Tridentus said:

i don't know- this sounds an awful lot like something that happened to me in the not so distant past.

but yes, i've seen from observing others that ENFPs can often try far too hard to be funny and liked. thing is as an INFP and someone who can relate to him further than most, you might look into his "soul" and realise what a great person he is, wheras most will look at his personna and believe it to be ingenuine. it may be (as it is from my observations) that he is ingenuine out of the best intentions of being likeable and nice but people won't descriminate when they sense ingenuinety- and to be perfectly honest even though i certainly wouldn't have said so at the time, i feel i did deserve the same judgement from others and now (as i did when younger) i make sure genuinety is my main aim at all times.

some people would've describe me as very confident, in fact i got several people actually tell me that while travelling, but truthfully i was wearing a personna that i was very good at maintaining as a cover-up for insecurity. now as someone who believes only in being myself i'm far more at peace, and even though i may not always seem so externally confident (i still can be, but only when it comes naturally), internally i'm very secure with myself now.

you also have to consider that they could be right and you wrong- just like every other human being in this world you are probably nowhere near as right nowhere near as often as you think, and it's important to constantly doubt everything you think no matter how certain you think you are (especially when relatively young and inexperienced)

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Neverontime said:

Ahh, the personality type is a good point. One situation involved a sensor type reading him from his facial expressions. Which reinforced her opinion because there was a discussion about giving him some money to solve a problem and she noticed him smile at that moment.

When she mentioned this to me I tried to explain it could be due to many reasons, most likely because he was knew money wasn't going to solve the problem. I didn't push it further because I wasn't actually there at the time.

But yes, shows everyone can easily be misinterpreted by different types.

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BlueGiraffe said:

Hmm, I don't believe I become suspicious of healthy ENFP's. I can't say the healthy ENFP's I know are perceived as having alternative motives, but I have known one or two of them to be flagged as too nice too quickly. That flag usually is taken off in a timely manner.

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