INFJs and INFPs and the Pain of Not Being Seen

Both INFJs and INFPs have extremely strong intuition, which means that we can easily see behind the masks that other people wear. It’s common for us to meet a person and within one or two minutes have a relatively decent idea of their temperament, their style of expression, even their motivations.

This ability to see deeply into people can be a blessing and a curse. Some people love this quality in us, and they seek us out for counseling because we feel like a safe space for them. Others are repelled by our talent for seeing beyond the appearance of things, because they have things to hide.

But no matter how people react to our strong intuitive ability, one thing remains the same. Although we are very aware that we can see other people in all their complexity, we are also very aware that they don’t see us.

The experience of not being seen is not something that only INFJs and INFPs experience, of course. We live in a culture where not very many people are able to see the other people around them, whether those other people are their family and friends, or strangers on the internet. Most people, it would seem, quickly and almost effortlessly judge others by their religious views, or political affiliation, or even just the way they physically look.

So, this reality of not-being-seen is a phenomenon that stretches far and wide in our world today, and just about everyone experiences it. We see it in almost any online exchange. Both parties are so involved in their own viewpoint that the other party has become something like an inanimate object to them, a simulated challenge that has materialized so that they can have something to argue with. The difference for INFJs and INFPs is that part of our natural energy expression is to see all viewpoints, and almost nothing in the world is an inanimate object.

This results in the same situation happening over and over again. We interact with a person who is a complete and complicated person to us. We endeavor to understand their thoughts and feelings. We imagine ourselves in their life position. We contemplate what might light them up or shut them down. We think about ways that we could help them further their own potential.

But, almost every time, the favor is not returned.

Because when we do venture to share our real feelings or our real opinions, we are frequently met with disapproval or judgment from other people. The “seeing all points of view” thing isn’t really popular these days, and so we are made to feel less than if we speak up and advocate for looking at all different sides of an issue. When we try to calmly state what we think or feel to someone else, we often end up regretting that we tried to express anything to them at all.

And this is why most of us INFJs and INFPs find so many of our relationships to be extremely dissatisfying.

This is how I felt as an INFJ for most of my life. I always wanted to think bigger, think outside the box, and think in a way that balanced intuition with logic. These were qualities that I admired in great thinkers like Plato, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Hermann Hesse, and I wanted to emulate that approach in my own thinking. But when I tried to enter into any kind of exchange of ideas with the other people in my life, I ended up feeling nothing but misunderstood and alienated.

It would have been okay if others had disagreed with my thoughts and opinions, but it wasn’t just disagreement I was dealing with. It was a fundamental inability of the other person to see me, and a resistance from the other person to even attempting to understand me on a deeper level that I could actually feel. By the time I was a teenager, it was apparent to me that most other people simply weren’t interested in getting to know me, because what really interested them was reinforcing and defending their own ego.

This was where the pain of not being seen happened. It was painful that I could see the other person, that I cared enough to try to see them, and that I could also feel that they didn’t care enough to try to see me. As much as I knew it wasn’t about me, it still hurt because it still felt like a rejection. And it was a rejection, truthfully, even if it wasn’t personal. Whenever we forego doing the work of seeing individuals as individuals and instead choose to see them as representatives of a group, or worse, a peripheral object in our reality without any actual feelings, the individual suffering this treatment is going to feel rejected, there is no way around it.

I struggled with this for many years, until I was able to resolve it within myself. My way of resolving it was to let go. I let go of trying to connect deeply with many of my family members and my friends. I let go of trying to express my deepest feelings to the people who happened to be around me in my physical environment. I channeled this energy into my writing instead, and that’s when everything changed. I told the truth on the page and I shared all my wild ideas through my pen. I started publishing my books and focusing on my creative life, a place where I could truly be myself and express what I needed to be.

This is where INFJs and INFPs will find the nourishment we crave through being seen — in our creative life. Whether it’s writing, painting, dancing, or studying mysticism, archetypes, or philosophy, these are the realms where we can show up as our true selves, with all our deep layers, and we can find a sense of sustenance for our soul.

The key is to first let go of everyone you already know doesn’t see you, and focus on the work of seeing yourself.

I talk about these kinds of topics for INFJs and INFPs every week in my email newsletter, and if you have a question about personality type, personal growth, or any other kind of wondering about life in general, you can send it my way and I’ll add it to my list of questions to be answered. You can sign up for my email newsletter here, and you can send your questions to lauren@laurensapala.com.