INFJ –> ENFP

By vickyjo, on September 7th, 2010

A client just sent me a fascinating commendation about his experience of identifying his best-fit type through my programs.

Here are his words:

Ever since my college years, over several decades, I was typed consistently by the MBTI as an INTJ – what certain people call the “Scientist” type. This was reinforced both by my love of and skill in natural science on the one hand and the encouragement of everyone around me in that ability. Over that long period of time, I came to think of myself in such terms (or more often, as a “scientist-artist”, since both the sciences and the humanities play so strong a part in my interests and talents). Yet in hindsight there was much wrong with that assessment, and over the years I kept running into subtle counter-indications – yet I had no way of clarifying the picture to my satisfaction.

A few years ago I began investigating the subject of personality type more closely, and in the process I ran into Robin Wiley’s personal INTJ site and Vicky Jo Varner’s INFJ site. While I admired much about Robin’s site, verbally and aesthetically it didn’t “match” me on a deep level. Vicky Jo’s did, strongly. That, plus her suggestion that one might well be mistyped, struck a chord in me, and for that and other reasons, I started wondering if I was actually an INFJ rather than an INTJ. I looked up her Type Insights site and the programs offered thereon, and decided to call her for a free consultation.

Vicky Jo suggested that I was neither INTJ nor INFJ, but was probably either ENFP or possibly ESFP. I found this quite a challenge to my self-image. I decided (thanks to that and other lines of research I’d been doing on my own) that half-measures were no longer enough, and that I needed careful guidance through her complete program.

Learning that my fundamental temperament was not Theorist but Catalyst was a surprise, but not revolutionary to me. An earlier assessment had shown that I basically split the difference between the two; it was a matter of learning which I really preferred (which preference, in hindsight, had actually been strongly suppressed in social contexts). It was when dealing with interaction styles that I began to balk, as I felt that I understood how I dealt with people naturally already. But I stuck with Vicky Jo anyway, knowing that I’d learn much of value regardless. And in the process, I learned the totally unexpected: in the very process of describing how I preferred to interact, I was actually showing that I preferred to interact in another way – and Vicky Jo caught me doing it and pointed it out. That revelation stopped me cold, for it literally challenged the whole framework about how I thought about myself. But there it was: further review of interaction styles, plus cognitive dynamics, plus John Beebe’s archetypes, plus guided exploration of those archetypes as my mind symbolized them, all pointed without question to my “core type” being ENFP, not INFJ. And in time, all this led me to understand why and in what ways I took on the role of an INFJ or even an INTJ in various social and other contexts.

I go into such detail to point out how very easily one can be deceived – both self-deceived and deceived by the world around oneself, not to overlook the limitations of instruments such as the MBTI – as to what one’s personality type really is. What roles one takes on in context and what roles one develops can distort one’s “core type,” the personal paradigm in which one operates the most naturally and easily, almost beyond recognition without skilled outside guidance. And one can be misled by one’s wishes to be something other than what one is. This can happen in several ways. One is the hope of being rare and special, which is what INFJs (for example) are often described as being. But as for me, I wouldn’t trade being an ENFP for anything in the world – now that I understand that is basically how I’m designed to operate. ENFPs ARE rare and special (really, like everyone else). They have strengths and weaknesses (again, like everyone else). They do have a disproportionate influence in the modern world, for good and for evil. But one of the side benefits of my explorations with Vicky Jo is discovering the incredible power of ENFP thinking when rightly guided. I only wish I had known this when I was three decades younger. My life would’ve been very, very different.

So this leads me to two things in closing. First, my time spent with Vicky Jo’s program is one of the very best investments I’ve ever made. It is eminently worth it to have that caliber of professional guidance, and to follow through on it regardless of what one might think of the results at the moment. To get one’s type “right” and understand what that really implies can be one of the most life-changing experiences there is, especially if one’s long been mistyped as I’ve been. On the other hand, to get one’s type “wrong” can cause subtle yet far-reaching damage to one’s self-image and one’s life. I went through three decades of that and I would urge anyone studying this subject to learn from my example.

Second, patience in these matters is its own reward. Sometimes what one is at the “core” isn’t completely evident until all the data is in. I think that caution applies specifically to ENFPs, who (at the risk of overgeneralization) can find themselves “sincere, but sincerely wrong” all too easily. I would say to any ENFP or possible ENFP: on any subject, not just type, be sure to double- and triple-check both your facts and your assumptions, and then check them again, even when you don’t think you need to! And sometimes that requires outside, expert opinion.

-John Wheeler
The Chronicles of Johanan Rakkav

http://rakkav.wordpress.com

I love love love my clients!

And it’s true — a lot of them do come to me mis-typed.

As Jung said, ““One is always in the dark about one’s own personality. One needs others to get to know oneself.”

I have some programs on the drawing board to help people navigate a process to get their best-fit pattern sorted out because I think it’s sooo important to get it right. When we don’t get that part right, the whole enterprise is somewhat useless.

Kudos to John for trusting me, and sticking with it until he found his true psychological home!
Love you, Sunshine!