Wow, really related to this podcast as a fellow ENFJ, 30 Y.O, who is also going through grief after losing my mum last year and also on the journey of divorce. Yep...I didn't feel my own feelings with my mum, I ran around looking after my whole family, I didn't cry so much or even take time to take it in. I'm still learning my emotions are as valid as anyone elses, it's ok to feel them and put myself on the same level of care as others. Journaling is amazing! I'm learning to stop and breath and check in with myself daily. I acknowledge and accept and embrace my feelings and show myself compassion. I listen to my inner critic, embrace her, and every part of myself. It's helping me so much, and I'm learning my own values. Some days it's hard to show up for myself, especially if it leads to uncomfortable conversations or disagreeing with someone...but my relationships are getting better than ever! Authenticity is respected as much as people pleasing x
Thank you Bridgette! You are clearly a mature, healthy ENFJ and it’s great to see. I know I’m an unhealthy ENFJ. It’s difficult going around as a male with lead Fe. It’s not “socially appropriate” for a man to be emotional so I was told. As a result, I tend to push down those emotions as much as I can. This lead to my eating addiction (via Se) where the act of pushing down food would push down the emotions. I lost my aunt in and when I went home for the funeral, all I wanted to do was express my grief with those in my family but everyone was expressing the grief in their own way and alone. This forced me to push down the overwhelming emotions I was feeling (which included eating after the funeral) until I was able to slip away when I called my wife and she had to deal with the dam releasing. I’m learning to deal with my demons and this inspires me to keep working. Thank you!
The distinction is between self-criticism/self-doubt and questioning judgements made about social norms/judgements and what they mean for our identities is the tension between Fe and Fi. I struggle with this too as an INFJ. I take things very personally because of self-critical Fi. To build insight and self-compassion, we need to value ourselves and our identities that might conflict with social norms or what we believe others are judging us on. We have a lot to learn from INPs through their Fi and more optimistic versions of Ne than we have. We jump to negative conclusions about ourselves when there is uncertainty and those self-critical conclusions are what we need to question. Fe can help us fit in, but we need to get to know our Fi to truly belong.
I am an ENFJ, and I also relate very much to not attending to my own emotional health. But as an assertive type, I never thought of myself as not doing the internal work. I thought I was. I was injured and paralyzed in a car accident in 1999. And for twenty-three years, I never dealt with those emotions in a healthy way. I was just so focused on being strong for my family, and being there for my friends that I didn't realize I was pushing down my own grief and pain until it manifested as, like, physical anxiety that almost killed me. I think it is also hard as an ENFJ to ask for help, especially emotionally because we are so used to and focused on giving that emotional support to others. And even asking for help for physical things is very difficult, and I have to do it constantly because I am disabled, but I reframe it in my mind as helping others because I'm giving them the chance to do something good.
ENFJ here. I can relate to Bridgette's growth journey to a scary level. 😆 I also had a huge changing event in my life that caused me to start questioning everything. I found personality hacker podcast not long after and have been taking to heart their teachings and suggestions since then and it has genuinely changed my life for the better. I hope I can participate in a live event at some point in the near future.
As an ENFJ, at times when I’m in a solid mental place and able to reflect on myself, looking into the depths of my emotions is like walking on top of a crystal clear lake. I can remain on the surface and see all the things going on below the surface and if I want I can reach in, pluck something out and address it. But when things are not so good, that crystal clear lake is frozen over and I don’t know where the weak spots are. And when I inevitably crack the surface and fall thru, sometimes you can get stuck underneath. And even tho you’re writhing in the deep internally, I still can rarely bring myself to ask someone for help or to be there for me. And those are scary times, and can subconsciously keep that little motor going in the background to keep me from pondering. Sort of like your computers ‘system idle’ process that takes up 95% of your CPU.
Another wonderful interview! Thank you so much for these, Joel and Antonia, they're so so great. Really going deep into the nuance, real experience of real people, way beyond the very theoretical and simplified descriptions that are unfortunately so widespread. And thank you Bridget, being so open and so courageous having this conversation.
“You’re really able to integrate that grief experience”…. “Yeah I remember back when I was playing volleyball”. This right here!! This is my problem too. We’re always jumping to a past anecdote, that seems to out of left field to express our new understanding of a completely different present experience, to demonstrate how it has altered our future perspective. It’s hard for people to follow me I think, because of this trait. And it’s something I’ve become consciously aware of and insecure about (thanks INFJ! 😬). Not knowing other ENFJ’s, it’s hard for me to get my head around why I do that, I often learn to consciously understand my behaviour by witnessing my traits in others, and coming to terms with the how and why of the behaviour, after it has been pointed out to, but this particular trait I don’t see in others. Well with the exception of a couple of ENFP’s, but they just jump all around the time line of their life history and future and then get lost in some story that seems completely unrelated and completely forget what they’d started talking about in the first place, so it’s not the same. This interview is fantastic!
Posture of humility is key to interior work… my go to phrase to get me to ask questions about my assumptions and automatic internal “ software” is to say to myself “I give up the right to be right even if I think I’m right”.
Wow, really related to this podcast as a fellow ENFJ, 30 Y.O, who is also going through grief after losing my mum last year and also on the journey of divorce. Yep...I didn't feel my own feelings with my mum, I ran around looking after my whole family, I didn't cry so much or even take time to take it in. I'm still learning my emotions are as valid as anyone elses, it's ok to feel them and put myself on the same level of care as others. Journaling is amazing! I'm learning to stop and breath and check in with myself daily. I acknowledge and accept and embrace my feelings and show myself compassion. I listen to my inner critic, embrace her, and every part of myself. It's helping me so much, and I'm learning my own values. Some days it's hard to show up for myself, especially if it leads to uncomfortable conversations or disagreeing with someone...but my relationships are getting better than ever! Authenticity is respected as much as people pleasing x
Thank you Bridgette! You are clearly a mature, healthy ENFJ and it’s great to see. I know I’m an unhealthy ENFJ. It’s difficult going around as a male with lead Fe. It’s not “socially appropriate” for a man to be emotional so I was told. As a result, I tend to push down those emotions as much as I can. This lead to my eating addiction (via Se) where the act of pushing down food would push down the emotions. I lost my aunt in and when I went home for the funeral, all I wanted to do was express my grief with those in my family but everyone was expressing the grief in their own way and alone. This forced me to push down the overwhelming emotions I was feeling (which included eating after the funeral) until I was able to slip away when I called my wife and she had to deal with the dam releasing. I’m learning to deal with my demons and this inspires me to keep working. Thank you!
The distinction is between self-criticism/self-doubt and questioning judgements made about social norms/judgements and what they mean for our identities is the tension between Fe and Fi. I struggle with this too as an INFJ. I take things very personally because of self-critical Fi. To build insight and self-compassion, we need to value ourselves and our identities that might conflict with social norms or what we believe others are judging us on. We have a lot to learn from INPs through their Fi and more optimistic versions of Ne than we have. We jump to negative conclusions about ourselves when there is uncertainty and those self-critical conclusions are what we need to question. Fe can help us fit in, but we need to get to know our Fi to truly belong.
I am an ENFJ, and I also relate very much to not attending to my own emotional health. But as an assertive type, I never thought of myself as not doing the internal work. I thought I was. I was injured and paralyzed in a car accident in 1999. And for twenty-three years, I never dealt with those emotions in a healthy way. I was just so focused on being strong for my family, and being there for my friends that I didn't realize I was pushing down my own grief and pain until it manifested as, like, physical anxiety that almost killed me.
I think it is also hard as an ENFJ to ask for help, especially emotionally because we are so used to and focused on giving that emotional support to others. And even asking for help for physical things is very difficult, and I have to do it constantly because I am disabled, but I reframe it in my mind as helping others because I'm giving them the chance to do something good.
ENFJ here. I can relate to Bridgette's growth journey to a scary level. 😆
I also had a huge changing event in my life that caused me to start questioning everything. I found personality hacker podcast not long after and have been taking to heart their teachings and suggestions since then and it has genuinely changed my life for the better.
I hope I can participate in a live event at some point in the near future.
As an ENFJ, at times when I’m in a solid mental place and able to reflect on myself, looking into the depths of my emotions is like walking on top of a crystal clear lake. I can remain on the surface and see all the things going on below the surface and if I want I can reach in, pluck something out and address it. But when things are not so good, that crystal clear lake is frozen over and I don’t know where the weak spots are. And when I inevitably crack the surface and fall thru, sometimes you can get stuck underneath. And even tho you’re writhing in the deep internally, I still can rarely bring myself to ask someone for help or to be there for me. And those are scary times, and can subconsciously keep that little motor going in the background to keep me from pondering. Sort of like your computers ‘system idle’ process that takes up 95% of your CPU.
The part about rationalizing emotion and having the language for it, but not actually feeling it… so accurate!
Warmth and build rapport to get to the core of people motivated to safe place to talk .
Enfj. The Cinderella of all types.......
And also the first intuitive
Yey..
These guys make almost everyone feel good about themselves
Another wonderful interview!
Thank you so much for these, Joel and Antonia, they're so so great. Really going deep into the nuance, real experience of real people, way beyond the very theoretical and simplified descriptions that are unfortunately so widespread.
And thank you Bridget, being so open and so courageous having this conversation.
“You’re really able to integrate that grief experience”….
“Yeah I remember back when I was playing volleyball”. This right here!! This is my problem too.
We’re always jumping to a past anecdote, that seems to out of left field to express our new understanding of a completely different present experience, to demonstrate how it has altered our future perspective. It’s hard for people to follow me I think, because of this trait. And it’s something I’ve become consciously aware of and insecure about (thanks INFJ! 😬). Not knowing other ENFJ’s, it’s hard for me to get my head around why I do that, I often learn to consciously understand my behaviour by witnessing my traits in others, and coming to terms with the how and why of the behaviour, after it has been pointed out to, but this particular trait I don’t see in others. Well with the exception of a couple of ENFP’s, but they just jump all around the time line of their life history and future and then get lost in some story that seems completely unrelated and completely forget what they’d started talking about in the first place, so it’s not the same.
This interview is fantastic!
So good. I’m an INFP dating an ENFJ.
Posture of humility is key to interior work… my go to phrase to get me to ask questions about my assumptions and automatic internal “ software” is to say to myself “I give up the right to be right even if I think I’m right”.