The Secret World of Every Introverted Myers-Briggs® Personality Type
Have you ever wondered what the inner world of each Myers-Briggs® personality type is really like? While each individual has their own unique thoughts and feelings regardless of their type, there are certain patterns in mental behavior that each type seems to have. Take a look and see if these descriptions match your experience!
See the extroverted edition of this article here!
Not sure what your personality type is? Take our new personality questionnaire here. Or you can take the official MBTI® here.
The Secret World of Every Introverted Myers-Briggs® Personality Type
The ISFJ
Gentle and pragmatic, ISFJs live in a world of impressions and personal meaning. These types want a small corner of the world to call their own. A safe place where they can surround themselves with beauty and comfort. They are drawn to cozy nooks filled with well-worn leather-bound books, flickering candles, and soft blankets. ISFJs see everything they encounter in relationship to how it existed in the past and where it will be in the future. Time never feels long enough to them, but each significant moment is etched into their memory with the haze of magic that only a sentimental mind can bring to life. ISFJs are the caretakers of precious memories and the nurturers who notice when someone needs a cup of hot tea and a listening ear. Their quiet, responsible nature instills comfort in the people who love them.
Read This Next: 10 Things You’ll Relate to if You’re an ISFJ
The ISTJ
Known for being matter-of-fact and logical, ISTJs often have a surprisingly humorous and unique inner world. The way they interpret the world around them is colored by past impressions, memories, and their own very individual perspectives. Highly observant, these individuals notice things that other people miss and are aware of patterns that connect past to present. Their ability to overlay current experiences with lessons and pictures from the past makes them helpful when a solution is needed and nobody can remember what to do. They are also good at predicting what’s likely to happen based on how similar events transpired in the past. ISTJs tend to each have a very strong and selective set of interests and they enjoy being in peace and quiet so that they can immerse themselves in every detail and fact related to their interest. Being in a quiet place without distractions allows them to explore their inner world where they can analyze, reflect on past experiences, and plan for future events.
Read This Next: 5 Strengths of the ISTJ Personality Type
The ISFP
Highly independent and creative, ISFPs want to carve out a space in the world that is all their own. They want to free themselves from peer pressure, external rules, and all that is ordinary and mundane. Highly individualistic, ISFPs create a moral code that they strive to live by in every area of their lives. In every decision they make the goal is to have personal and moral integrity. Authenticity and sincerity are at the core of everything they do and they tend to frown upon people who “play a part” or use manipulative behavior to make their way in the world. What many people may not realize about ISFPs from the outside is just how deeply they feel things and how strong their values really are. On the outside, ISFPs tend to appear laid-back and even unreadable, but on the inside, ISFPs are keenly attuned to how everything affects them. They feel things deeply and even though their outer expression may seem calm they can have fiery emotions burning on the inside. These emotions tend to rise up when they feel that someone is being bullied, marginalized, or manipulated.
Read This Next: 10 Things That Excite the ISFP Personality Type
The ISTP
Intensely observant and logical, ISTPs strive to live in a world free of external pressures and rules. Being independent, honest, and able to use their own judgments to figure out what works is important to them. As pragmatic individuals, ISTPs like to imagine ways to use things to their best potential. They enjoy creating, building, and composing. In their ideal world, they would be free to explore and live by their impulses and instincts, not being subject to management, laws, and oversight. ISTPs often imagine survival scenarios and wish they could live “off the land” so they could survive by virtue of their own ability to find resources, solve concrete problems, and test their steel against the unpredictability of the wild.
Read This Next: 10 Things You Should Never Say to an ISTP
The INFJ
Private and complex, INFJs see things not as they are, but as they most likely will be in the future. Their secret inner world is filled with symbols, impressions, and streams of possibility that fascinate them endlessly. The INFJ mind is rarely bored when outer stimulation is low – the inner world is what drives them. Visions of future potential dance before their mind’s eye and they find themselves sorting through possibilities until they land on the one that seems most likely to come to fruition. They trust their vision, inspiration, and empathy to guide them. Helping others is usually a motivating factor in all of their dreams and ideas – they feel restless with the state of the world and seek to improve it in whatever way they can. This often leads them to work in counseling, religion, or even the arts. While on the outside INFJs appear warm and friendly, they deeply crave quiet alone time in a peaceful environment where they can meditate on future possibilities or ways they can improve the world. It’s often when the world is most still that they have their most powerful insights.
Read This Next: Understanding INFJ “Grip” Stress
The INTJ
Independent and insightful, INTJs enjoy reflecting on scenarios, possibilities, and visions of the future. For these types, the mind is an escape from an over-stimulating, pressure-filled world. Hard workers, INTJs tend to take on many responsibilities, all the while hoping for some time alone to let their mind wander over its many strategies and insights. The secret inner world is a place where knowledge can be “played” with and ideas can be taken apart and viewed from many perspectives. INTJs are usually much more creative than the world gives them credit for, although they may not readily share their creations. In their minds, they can explore entire worlds full of intricate possibilities, characters, and potentialities. They enjoy tinkering with ideas until they find one that is most likely to come to fruition in the future. They are deeply focused on understanding the “grand scheme of things” and seeing underlying patterns. This inner focus on patterns and possibilities gives them epiphanies about the future that can be uncannily accurate and transformational.
Read This Next: 5 Reasons Why You’ll Need an INTJ During a Zombie Apocalypse
The INFP
Gentle and reserved on the outside, vividly imaginative on the inside, INFPs are the quintessential “Idealist” of the Myers-Briggs® community. These types believe in healing the broken and abandoned people or animals in the world. They often find themselves troubled about corruption and persecution, wondering how they can help those less fortunate. When the outer world gets too intrusive and loud, INFPs retreat inside to a world that aligns with their deeply-held values. They long for a kinder place, one where there isn’t deceit, bullying, or preferential treatment. They often imagine stories and scenarios playing out, and through their imagination, they often envision ways they can identify with other people from various walks of life. Their ideas tend to come to life in their creativity; they are often drawn to poetry, artwork, writing, or music. When INFPs bring a piece of their inner world to life in an artistic way it helps remind all of us of what makes us human and the shared qualities and passions that we all have. Through artistic expression or humanitarian work, INFPs put their inner idealism and passion to work to make a positive change in the real world.
Read This Next: 10 Things You’ll Relate to if You’re an INFP
The INTP
Inventive and analytical, INTPs have a detailed, complex inner world. They strive to develop logical explanations for everything that captures their interest. They are constantly fine-tuning their knowledge, sorting concepts and details into finely-tuned mental libraries. Every category is sorted into a more specific category, then re-sorted into an even more specific category. Precision is of the utmost importance to INTPs, and the more knowledge they can attain the better. They are masters at detecting logical fallacies, easily seeing manipulation and logical inconsistencies in the world around them. Unfortunately, this tends to get them labeled as “critical” or “arrogant”, but to the INTP a world without thorough understanding would be a sad one indeed. These types hold themselves to an extremely high inner standard. They feel they must test every idea against a barrage of critiques to see if it can stand on its own two legs. INTPs are often running calculations, theories, and ideas through a series of internal arguments in their mind so that they can find out what’s true in the world.
Read This Next: Here’s Why INFPs and INTPs Get Misunderstood
What Are Your Thoughts?
Want to discover the inner worlds of the extroverted Myers-Briggs® personality types? Stay tuned! We will be posting that article on Tuesday!
Find out more about your personality type in our eBook, Discovering You: Unlocking the Power of Personality Type.
Subscribe to Our Newsletter
Want to discover more about personality type? Get the inside scoop with Susan Storm on all things typological, along with special subscriber freebies, and discounts on new eBooks and courses! Join our newsletter today!
Great article, Susan! I’m wondering if you could give me an analogy to elaborate on the statement “ISFJs see everything they encounter in relationship to how it existed in the past and where it will be in the future.” I have one in my life who I struggle to get along with and am desperately trying to better understand how they see the world. (I’m very much an INTJ.)
I’m not sure how seriously your website takes the name psychology. But psychologists have been working hard for the last 25 years to kill the mbti. It is considered little more than equivalent of the zodiac. It’s fun could be harmful or not. But it has no basis in anything scientific or in anything in line with what is known about neurology and modern psychology.
But it is strangely accurate ????
Travia! ????????????
Well changing the ideas,mindset and opening people mind will definitely take time.just cuz others are fighing it doesn’t mean its not correct.people can’t live without fighting others with no reason????one day everybody were telling Galileo out of his mind. And even had a scientist who had been killed just because I discovered that washing hands can save your life. But look at it now lots of people except what those two were saying
Very detailed article
Where’s the enfp?
In the extraverted article. This is for the introverted types, as it says in the article’s title.
This was awesome ✌✌✌????????
I’m an INTP and I usually use introverted intuition. I don’t know precisely how it happens but it actually works. Do you have an explanation for this?
Go to the link for the next article below the INTP description.
Great article, very interesting to read. I fall under both INTJ and INTP they were both a great read!
INFP
“They often find themselves troubled about corruption and persecution”
Actually, they are more troubled about cowardice. Cowardice…
– …in criminals for chosing parasitic dependence on their fellow man, instead of chosing self-respect.
– …in politicians for chosing pragmatism instead of chosing principles.
-…in themselves for chosing lethargy and sloth over conviction and action.
In general, healthy INFPs, on the inside, are often very, very self-assured people, whose extraverted thinking-function is a rock on which the house of their personality is build. They daydream, it is true, they imagine more ideal worlds. But these worlds are not cozy carnivals, with merry-go-rounds, smiling children, marching bands, and glorious sunlight in splashing fountains. These are worlds where people can be trusted. Worlds where people’s word is their honour. Worlds where people strive to practice the rational virtues of independence, honesty, integrity, productivity, pride.
Healthy INFPs understand the value of values. That’s why they (strive to) live by rational values, and not by irrational values as many people do. That’s also why, mostly, they have rational emotions, and not irrational emotions as many people do.
Far from what many MBTI-sites tend to grasp about the INFP, is that the INFP sees, on the one hand, the weakness in man, and on the other, its own inability to change it. What INFPs learn to understand during their existence on earth, is that their purpose is to be themselves, follow rationally(!) their inner flame, and shine by example.
“Whatever any one does or says, I must be good, just as if the gold, or the emerald, or the purple were always saying this: Whatever any one does or says, I must be emerald and keep my colour.”
(Marcus Aurelius)