INFJs are the advocate personality type.
They tend to approach life with an inner vision, thoughtful values, and a quiet, principled
version of humanism.
This helps to guide them in all things
They are rarely content to coast through life, instead, they want to make a meaningful difference.
As advocates, success doesn’t come from money and status for most INFJs.
It comes from seeking fulfillment, helping others and being a force for good wherever
they are.
However, these values are often counterintuitive to our world's seemingly relentless obsession
with sensory pleasures, possessions, and indulgences.
As natural philosophers and idealists, having to exist among such incongruence can leave
many INFJs at odds with the world, incredibly disillusioned and untethered within their
lives.
INFJs need a purpose to live fulfilling lives.
A sense of contributing to something bigger than themselves.
This consciousness of meaning can come in many forms and will be individual to every
INFJ.
The point is then not a purpose of what, but a purpose that is.
So let’s explore What happens when an INFJ loses their purpose.
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INFJs can experience an existential crisis
An existential crisis is a feeling of unease about meaning, choice, and freedom.
For an INFJ, it can be both a necessary experience and a complex phenomenon.
It’s normal for most people to have some fears about love, health, career, and family.
However unlike most people, INFJs also have to grapple with their yearning to make a difference
in the world, and it’s this that can prove to be a particularly uncomfortable awareness
of their own liberty and how life will end for them one day.
INFJs are innate nurtures and protectors.
This can be seen in small ways like when caring for an animal or comforting a loved one.
This need to nurture and protect is even more potent when it comes to the bigger things.
INFJs spend a lot of time thinking about the cruelties and injustice in the world and how
it can be made better.
This is not to say every INFJ is an activist, it's just to say INFJs need to feel like the
sum total of their life is contributing to the betterment of humanity in some way.
INFJs are big picture thinkers and not having a clear vision of a higher purpose can be
acutely despairing.
INFJ can feel like they are drifting through life
INFJs want to feel part of the normal world and feel that they should follow as everyone
else, but the self is often not playing along.
When an INFJ loses their purpose, a sense of drifting through life can settle in.
They can lose perspective and will not be able to figure out why they are doing what
they are doing.
For example, instead of planning out a career, it’s like they drifted along the tides and
eventually found themselves in one.
Or perhaps they had a plan, but lack of follow-through and/or a few of life's hard knocks changed
it, and they just drifted along.
When an INFJ is drifting it means they have lost the perspective to explain their motivations.
To always have a perspective, principle, or guidance, is very important for an INFJ.
Without it, their life will feel meaningless and they can risk falling into depression.
A guiding principle for an INFJ has to be something that fits and makes sense to them,
it has to be good enough.
The problem is, it can sometimes be hard to conceptualize, especially when the whole world
seems content to go one way.
However when INFJs find their guiding light, they can withstand anything...
until of course another doubt invariably creeps in, and they might feel themselves drifting
again.
INFJs need to constantly pull themselves out of the tide, in order to maintain their vision
for purpose.
INFJs can experience an ‘INFJ Career crisis’
On average people spend 1/3 of their lives in some vocation.
For most individuals, work is an important feature in structuring personal and social
identity, so this is probably the reason INFJs experience the greatest struggles when it
comes to their working lives.
It’s actually so common it's been termed ‘the INFJ career crisis’.
INFJ need to feel like their pursuits are having a positive impact in the world, and
that they are spending their talents where it counts.
This can be difficult to achieve, especially in our highly transactional, sometimes cruel
world.
We are so often taught to seek jobs not out of passion or purpose, but the dollar amount
at the end of the day, or to achieve some sort of status and respectability.
Many INFJs end up succumbing to these societal expectations, often forgoing the opportunity
to explore their own personal need for fulfillment, for the sake of fitting in and often also
for survival in a capitalist economy.
As much as INFJs yearn for meaningful careers, they’re also very practical.
They might have a dislike for maths, but they know that roles in insurance or accounting
will pay handsomely.
They are really good at figuring out answers to problems.
So if the problem is, they need to comfortably support themselves and their family, they
know they might need to work at a job that might not feel right, in order to achieve
that.
When an INFJ loses the freedom to do what they love and to execute their vision, they
can find themselves in an INFJ career crisis; where every day feels like groundhog day,
a soul-crushing passing of time where they are not living up to their true INFJ potential.
INFJs can fall into a Ni-Ti Loop
When an INFJ loses their purposes their brains start to put more focus on their dominant
intuition and tertiary thinking functions.
This is known as a Ni-Ti loop.
Their Introverted Intuition (Ni) picks up a thought, observation, or theory, then their
Introverted Thinking (Ti) goes about deconstructing it.
Introverted Intuition (Ni) then picks up something noteworthy from the deconstruction and Introverted
Thinking (Ti) steps in again to further deconstruct, creating a feedback loop.
An INFJ experiencing and Ni-Ti loop will be in a state of analysis paralysis of inward
criticism, or in simpler terms, they will start overthinking everything to death.
Here is an example of it in action;
Introverted Intuition (Ni) says “you need to do something, you have a higher purpose
in life, this is not it”
Then their more reasonable, rational Introverted Thinking (Ti) kicks in “No, no, no, you
have bills to pay; mortgage, insurance, groceries, your kids need a college fund, you can’t
just put all that at risk to go gallivanting on some adventure”
Then another rebuttal from their Introverted Intuition (Ni) “But there needs to be more
to your life.
Imagine how much good you can do in an orphanage in Africa.
Or maybe make the move to Bali and start a blog to help people with healthy living, or
why not write an Eat, Pray, Love type memoir to explore who you are as a person and inspire
the world”.
Then back to their Introverted Thinking (Ti) “How do you seriously think that’s going
to work.
How are you going to afford that?
What about your responsibilities?
You’re just going to leave your friends, your family, your whole life”
This battle of overthinking their purpose and the obstacles that exist can really go
on and on for an eternity… or more accurately the end of their lives.
INFJ's Perfectionism can torture them
As much as INFJs are Idealists they are also perfectionists.
However, for most INFJs, they experience their perfectionism internally, with a militant
desire to organize their thoughts, and a deep belief that their failure to do so, will mean
a loss of control into oblivion.
This differs from our classic understanding of perfectionism where it is more about objective
metrics.
For example; How neat someone's handwriting is or how much someone's color coordinates
their wardrobe.
Traditionally perfectionism is more about how things appear than what someone thinks
of themselves.
This is not to say INFJs don’t care about external appearances such as their grades
or their one-mile personal best because they can and often do care about those things
as well.
They just tend to hold themselves more to internal standards that no one else sees.
This manifests in things like wanting to ‘fix’ an uncomfortable feeling they have.
Such as; not living up to their full potential.
INFJs live so much in their heads in this way, they can feel incredibly misaligned and
tortured over their lack of achieving purpose.
For INFJs purpose often means their reason to get out of bed in the morning, a force
of vitality that can make life worth really living.
It is can mean true meaning, or for our more spiritual INFJs, a calling.
INFJs are rarely satisfied with the peaks that our society tells us to work towards;
the nine to five corner office, the white picket fence, the 2.3 kids, or whatever it
is nowadays.
Most INFJs can find contentment in these things but rarely is it deeply fulfilling as helping
people on a larger scale, or to know that there is some bigger reason they are here
on Earth.
The world makes it incredibly hard for INFJs to find and fulfill their purpose, however
not impossible.
For INFJs that do find purpose, it can be a rite of passage to strength, resilience,
and truly making a difference for the better.
Do you have a purpose?
Are you struggling to find direction in your life?
Please share your thoughts and ideas in the comments.