[jakeskye]

As in, what do you think are our biggest flaws in interpersonal contexts/relationships that we should work on?

In the past I have often found myself taking things too personally or believing that something a personal attack when something isn't. Or I found it difficult to take a step back from being immediately offended or upset if someone expresses a different viewpoint on a really important moral issue or fundamental human belief that I hold. If I really care about someone or I'm very close to someone, I've found a tendency to hold them to a fairly high moral/human standard in my head simply because I have a lot of confidence/faith in them. Of course no human being is perfect and holding someone high in your mind often leads to conflict in real life when mistakes are made (on either end).

Of course it's all a work in progress. What do you all think?

 

[odinthor]

Yes, everything you say; plus we need to learn to moderate our intensity, at least with others: We burn people to cinders if we're not careful. We need to set a lower bar in trusting: Yes, we'll get in more trouble if we lower the bar, but the experiences will be good for us. We need to be a little more forward; again, this will get us in more trouble, but the experiences [etc. etc.]. We need to realize that others don't have the sensitivities that we do, and so will make inadvertent trespasses on us, which we need to accept graciously rather than resentfully. We need to realize that what seem like obvious everyday truths to us come across as mystical utterances to others, and so we need to . . . to . . . well, I don't know what we need to do except to learn to say, "Mystical or not, chum, that's the way it is."

 

[Shea]

I know for me, it's just learning how to relax. I have improved with time and practice, but I still struggle with it. When I am able to relax, everything is just fine usually.

 

[dulcinea]

Doesn't that vary a lot from person to person? I find, reading posts by other INFJs, that they deal with interpersonal things somewhat differently than how I would. If you ask my biggest interpersonal flaws, however, I'd say: I can be a bit too withdrawn, when I don't mean to be. My other flaw, may be my flightiness that I may make someone feel overlooked, unintentionally. I think that's about it. Not to say I don't make individual social blunders, but I don't really make a habit of it. I tend to have a pretty good grasp of handling interpersonal relationships. I can be quite tactful, for the most part, and work very hard at keeping a positive atmosphere. Getting to this point, wasn't easy, however, and took a lot of work and practice.

 

[foamonthewaves]

Well, I tend to over analyze everything for ulterior motive and I am always waiting for people to "show their true colors" or just abandon me. In other words: trust issues, an inability to go with the flow, and doubting people's affections for me. I have worked a lot on all of these and gotten them a lot under control, but it's still a daily chore to keep these tendencies tame.

The combination of INFJ and shitty life experiences with people does not make for an initially well-adjusted human being.

 

[Sensational]

Probably just being sure to decipher the difference between warranted advice, and unsolicited advice! I think the NFJs in my life are generally well intended. But I think all of them can accidentally undermine other people or step on their toes while trying to be helpful. It's great you all want to be helpful, maybe just some boundaries with somethings. Something's are valid suggestions to others but something's specifically if no one else is seeking it are things which should be left for people to seek or ask.

And not beating yourselves up over spilt milk.

 

[Shea]

Probably just being sure to decipher the difference between warranted advice, and unsolicited advice! I think the NFJs in my life are generally well intended. But I think all of them can accidentally undermine other people or step on their toes while trying to be helpful. It's great you all want to be helpful, maybe just some boundaries with somethings. Something's are valid suggestions to others but something's specifically if no one else is seeking it are things which should be left for people to seek or ask.

And not beating yourselves up over spilt milk.

That first point is interesting because I generally try to avoid telling other people what to do when possible as I generally have a live and let live philosophy on things, but sometimes I am thrust into a position where that's what I have to do lol. I admit I can be weirdly particular about things and somewhat unintentionally controlling in certain situations though.

Ditto on the other point.

 

[iblameyou]

In my honest opinion? Guarded.

Personally, I believe being guarded is an defense mechanism. I feel it is dishonest and ingenuine to ourselves and others. We don't allow ourselves to grow in a healthy way but we create a false perception of others and self.

 

[Sensational]

That first point is interesting because I generally try to avoid telling other people what to do when possible as I generally have a live and let live philosophy on things, but sometimes I am thrust into a position where that's what I have to do lol. I admit I can be weirdly particular about things and somewhat unintentionally controlling in certain situations though.

Ditto on the other point.

:laughing:

Well my sister/best friend is INFJ not that she represents all of you

So with that I should disclose I have a bias both extremely positive and extremely negative.
I was trying to keep my criticism vague and more just narrowed down but you essentially just touched on what can make me want to chuck a tomato at her head.

She dresses 'helping' up, when sometimes she is just being sort of manic and controlling. So where I specifically come in is really mixed. On one hand I understand she is harder on herself than I can ever be so I go easier on her. But in that process she can set me off because at some point she is just being bossy. I am sitting there like hmm would I like to spill a can of worms or just ignore her today? Don't get me wrong i have my own faults. Just saying it's frustrating because I tend to try and be really chill. I don't like making sour grapes about everything so it's sorta always this line of me ending up exploding on her when she is being way too hands on. And then she retreats and then we feel like shit. Yay fun times. Oh she told me the other day I am scary. :laughing: me: yeah well usually I am pooh bear but if you're going to keep poking me I turn into a grizzly.

 

[Shea]

:laughing:

Well my sister/best friend is INFJ not that she represents all of you

So with that I should disclose I have a bias both extremely positive and extremely negative.
I was trying to keep my criticism vague and more just narrowed down but you essentially just touched on what can make me want to chuck a tomato at her head.

She dresses 'helping' up, when sometimes she is just being sort of manic and controlling. So where I specifically come in is really mixed. On one hand I understand she is harder on herself than I can ever be so I go easier on her. But in that process she can set me off because at some point she is just being bossy. I am sitting there like hmm would I like to spill a can of worms or just ignore her today? Don't get me wrong i have my own faults. Just saying it's frustrating because I tend to try and be really chill. I don't like making sour grapes about everything so it's sorta always this line of me ending up exploding on her when she is being way too hands on. And then she retreats and then we feel like shit. Yay fun times. Oh she told me the other day I am scary. :laughing: me: yeah well usually I am pooh bear but if you're going to keep poking me I turn into a grizzly.

I can totally see that in a sibling dynamic actually. Just out of curiosity though, are you the older sibling or younger sibling? My brother is older and and INTJ, so he tends to be the bossier one, and I've kind of learned to go with it for the most part. My bossiness tends to be restricted to certain group project dynamics or when I am with someone where I have to be more assertive by necessity. I am usually pretty chill as long as I feel my needs are being met.

 

[dulcinea]

Oh wait! a big one I need to work on is impulsiveness. I can express myself very impulsively from time to time and I'm working really hard to reign it in.

 

[Sensational]

I can totally see that in a sibling dynamic actually. Just out of curiosity though, are you the older sibling or younger sibling? My brother is older and and INTJ, so he tends to be the bossier one, and I've kind of learned to go with it for the most part. My bossiness tends to be restricted to certain group project dynamics or when I am with someone where I have to be more assertive by necessity. I am usually pretty chill as long as I feel my needs are being met.

She is very diplomatic with many cases, it's not always negative

I am the eldest
When she was young she had a lot of anxiety so I often avoided the turbulence of situations by just letting her have her way

So interestingly with what you're discussing I am generally more hands off with friends and family (usually not always) but take on leadership roles in like work setting. She has more of a diplomatic work role and can be more reserved there but more so bossy in her personal relationships of friends and family

 

[Shea]

She is very diplomatic with many cases, it's not always

I am the eldest
When she was young she had a lot of anxiety so I often avoided the turbulence of situations by just letting her have her way

So interestingly with what you're discussing I am generally more hands off with friends and family (usually not always) but take on leadership roles in like work setting. She has more of a diplomatic work role and can be more reserved there but more so bossy in her personal relationships of friends and family

Interesting. You handle your sister's anxiety differently than my brother did. My brother rarely let me have my way. When I would have my tantrums and outbursts, he wouldn't just leave me to sulk. He would be confrontational in return to counteract my fits and would pretty much usually win because he was usually more rational and physically stronger if I tried that tactic, which taught me that trying to be domineering and bossy wasn't a very effective strategy for getting along with people, or at least with him when he had a clear advantage. Being a 9, I also am not a fan of confrontation and have always had somewhat a hard time staying calm and rational in the midst of confrontation rather than hulking out. It was good I had sports as an outlet to channel some of my aggression in a healthy manner. It's hard reconciling being a relatively agreeable person yet having strong opinions, so I can oscillate quite a bit between diplomatic and controlling depending on the context. It's the balance between not wanting to be taken advantage of and not wanting to be volatile.

 

[Catwalk]

Stop offering stuff on the job. I do not want to [share] your last nights leftover(s).

 

[Demtrae]

I think I need to open up a little more and learn what's appropiate to say or do. Unless I know someone really well, I am really reserved and don't talk about anything personal, and if I do I sometimes make the other person feel uncomfortable because it's too dark. I think I need to learn to trust others as well and most importantly, learn how to handle my own emotions better. I'd say that I'm quite stable most of the time, but every once in a while I just act impulsively to let everything out I kinda suppressed in the first place, which is obviously not a healthy behavior.

 

[Robotshorts]

Being honest and more forthcoming in trivial conversation.

This applies almost entirely to acquaintances and work colleagues, and the reason it's a problem is because I fear that diving quite deep (standard mode of engagement) into a subject or topic that's been brought up by someone else (usually an obvious non-N-type) will put them off.

As I'm sure many of the other INFJs in this thread do, I hate small-talk - not enough substance, nothing to walk away with - and so when small-talk is afoot, I can't engage on the level at hand; I can of course think of my own way to join in, it's just that I worry that what I want to contribute will totally change the pace/feel because of the sudden depths I've gone to (note: I'm really not trying to emphasize that I'm some 'deep-guy', it's just the literal difference between shallow and deep conversation - everyone has their preference, it's all good). I often stammer and hesitate over my input, because I dilute what I actually want to say so that I can be involved.

In terms of how to work on this, I'd just like to be a bit more confident in the depth I like to dive to in such conversations, but it's just a bit hard when you're worried you're just going to overwhelm the person/group, when they were ultimately just looking for an easy chat.

 

[Severin]

For me, it's consistency. I have the tendency to flit in and out of people's lives, operating under the belief that what I do isn't of much significance. I'm starting to realize more and more recently how wrong I am on that score.

 

[LlamadeusMozart]

I would echo what a lot of other posters said. I am controlling, way too eager to dish out unsolicited advice, overly intense and serious, moody, and a darn good manipulator. Since I'm INFJ, at least I'm pretty self aware.

 

[00Hikaru00]

I think generally INFJs need to lower their guard and let people in. I've been told I was like a mountain of ice in my younger days so I worked to improve my first impressions by smiling more and talking more so that people won't think I hate them. INFJs also need to express their feelings more readily, not bottle them inside and then explode later.

@Sensational,
I think your INFJ sister does that to you because you both have a close relationship as I believe INFJs generally don't dish out advice for just anybody. We're really too much in our heads to be bothered with Tom, Dick and Harry. For me, I don't really bother what my friends do to their lives unless they're close to me and I feel that they keep doing stupid things. I may then be compelled to give them advice, even unsolicited.

I find that ESTPs can be too chilled at times. Perhaps that's why you find your INFJ sister controlling. My ESTJ and ISTJ brothers both often offer me all sorts of advices so this kinda 'control' can actually happen to all types, on different levels.

 

[methodless madness]

I'm actually really glad I found this thread, because I kinda got into a conversation thing today, and I became very interested in my own reaction that I've been thinking about it all day. So what I'm going to say next is probably more of a recluse thing than an INFJ thing, but I imagine this would apply to at least someone out there, someone who may also happen to be an INFJ, so take this with as much or as little merit as you feel it applies to you.

I think a big problem I find in myself is that, being extremely introverted and as reclusive as I am, I find myself talking to...myself a lot. I don't really spend any substantial time with other humans, but I need some sort of interaction, but with my Ni and Ti being the way they are in me, I found my own thoughts as a good source of conversation. The reason for this being I can see multiple lines of logic in my mind, all of them I perceive as equally valid until I address them, so I can actually agree and disagree with myself on just about anything, whether I'm reading a book, or playing a video game, or thinking of some abstract or concrete idea. These agreements and disagreements are solved nigh-instantly, because I can see both lines of logic, both of which I can physically experience, and thus the discrepancy is resolved quickly. This means that these conversations I have with myself are very pleasant, because through picking apart whatever story idea or visual effect or core mechanic of whatever medium I'm experiencing, I can gain new perspectives without external input, without any extensive or unpleasant/poorly thought-out argument.

Then...then comes other people...

I can empathize with another person's feelings, but I cannot, for the life of me, understand another person's logic that runs contrary to my own. This is a recluse thing that has more to do with a lack of interpersonal skills and low charisma speech checks, but whenever I disagree with someone that I view as important, I am abjectly confused at the other person. My brain is going "Wait, what?! You thi-what?! No! That's wrong! I can tell you with absolute certainty that you're wrong! Here is truck loads of evidence as to why you're wrong (that I can't properly convince you with right now, because I'm a dullard)! The writing is on the bloody wall! It's just over there! Turn your head! I'm so disappointed in you for thinking this way...". That, right there, is the monster and the real problem I have when it comes to interacting with other people: I become disappointed in people easily. I'm disappointed in mankind as a whole, but I really feel that strongly with individuals easily when a different line of logic is encountered that offends me in a major capacity. And you probably can guess why I'm thinking this all in my head; it's because I can't experience that other person's logic firsthand the way I can with my own. I'm so used to having conversations with myself that anyone else's logic becomes a foreign landscape to me. There is, however, one healthy effect that this discrepancy causes, and that is I genuinely want to understand the other person's logic. Even if I feel the deepest reaches of my brain that the other person is wrong, I want to have a calm discussion with this other person about why they think the things they think, but being the socially incompetent fool I am, I'm so taken aback in the moment that I don't know how to have that conversation, so I just move on to other topics that I won't scream internally about.

I'm really trying to work on my social skills, but apparently I'm on the autism spectrum, so the mountain I have to climb is a little taller than most, and instead of bringing climbing gear like a normal person, I brought all the gear necessary for a beach party, though I think that's more of a me thing.

Also, I try to be funny a lot around other people because I want to be entertaining, but that requires a lot of conscious effort because there's nothing funny going on in my head, and I don't get other people enough to know what tickles their funny bone. Again, totally a me thing.