Does the INFJ inner life ever shut down?

S

SuperFob

Regular Poster
MBTI
INFJ
Some people get bored because they can't find anything in their external environment to entertain them. Would any of you INFJ's say that your inner lives keep you from ever getting bored? Can you start using your inner life/imagination to entertain yourself with daydreams and new ideas at will? Or do you ever find that your inner life "shuts down," resulting in you getting bored?
 
Heh. I need to find ways to shut it down, sometimes. I'm rarely bored but sometimes I'm ADD and I need to quiet my mind.
 
I find my inner life needs an external activity to make it come to life. So sitting at, reading, watching and playing on the computer is an activity which allows my inner life to work and make it useful, surely. But you may not consider reading, writing or a lone activity to be an external activity. Or at least, most people don't.
 
Mine very rarely shuts down. It's great for keeping my occupied on long trips and such. I do tend to obsesse on one theme for a while though, before moving on to something else. Mine only goes away under extreme stress. This may be why some INFJ's claim they don't dream. That doesn't apply to me, but I've seen this claim by a a few people and hadn't really explored the idea until now. Perhaps all this daydreaming takes the place of the REM sleep dreams for some of us.
 
I don't get bored and do a great job entertaining myself all the time.

I can use imagination at will, in fact that gets me through otherwise boring train rides. I just start imagining the possible life of passengers. That gets me something to write about later, and saves me during long rides.
 
Not really, I can always use it when I want to or need to.
 
I get bored often. I need new things going on all the time to keep my mind busy and thinking. If I don't have enough problems that need tackling (social problems, imaginative exercises, creativity...not math or marital problems) I get bored really quickly. If I'm bored, I'm usually pissed off or in a bad mood.

That being said, my inner-mind almost never shuts up. Really. It's always blabbering away about this or that. The only time I get some peace is when I'm completely involved in an activity.

So maybe I don't get bored. Maybe I keep busy so I can actually silence my inner mind. Maybe my inner mind is psycho?! I dunno.
 
I irritate people because I am pretty much never bored. I can just stare off and entertain myself. I do prefer to be doing something productive at least though. I'm only bored when I'm totally unmotivated to do anything.

w00t post number 2k.
 
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I get bored when I'm with people and were not doing anything. I can't seem to go off on my own and entertain myself if I'm aware of the presence of other people, even when everyone is doing their own thing. When I'm completely alone though, I'm never bored because I can let my mind wander to wherever it pleases.
 
when i became a parent of infants who grew to toddlers (many long years ago) i couldn't hear my inner life very well during that time. re-reading my sporadic journal entries (maybe a couple a year instead of my customary couple a week) they would trail off mid-sentence sometimes. i remember that feeling of not enough psychic space to think deeply. i think that level of attunement to another vulnerable being was very worth it. but it was stressful.

now sometimes i have to remind myself to get a bit more sensory input if i find myself surrounded by too much quiet for too long and think "hmm. i might be getting bored" (a rare thing). just turning on music. or going outside to see what's growing in the yard. or doing a bit of reading. those keep me feeling involved in life.
 
It almost never shuts down for me :( thou when it does I do not actually feel bored. I find it somehow relaxing so I try to enjoy it as much as possible. I cant really control it, but sometimes it could be nice to be able to do so.
 
Mine rarely shuts down as well. I do have to switch gears now and then, though, but I've gotten pretty good at this. I have lots of gears. :)
 
SuperFob said:
Some people get bored because they can't find anything in their external environment to entertain them. Would any of you INFJ's say that your inner lives keep you from ever getting bored? Can you start using your inner life/imagination to entertain yourself with daydreams and new ideas at will? Or do you ever find that your inner life "shuts down," resulting in you getting bored?
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I was actually going to type up a blog post about this. When I'm stimulated by my outside environment, the time I spend inside my head is very minimal. While I was in Egypt, poking around dusty temples and clambering over cliffsides as a very recent example, I was completely plugged into real time. And once that ball started rolling, even mundane and routine activities, such as brushing my teeth or laying out my clothes for the next morning while we were at the hotel, took on a very uncanny Se quality.

Yet, strangely enough, I felt more in tune with myself than I ever have been, even when left to my more intense meditative or imaginative states.

So yes, I would say that my inner life is definitely one of my defense lines against boredom. I need to be constantly stimulated externally with new activities or new environments. The one thing that's the downside to being a Ni dominant (at least in my experience) is constantly living in a state of "been there, done that." Because you unconsciously pick up on patterns so quickly, most of the time, you already have a distant idea of how things are going to turn out and nothing seems much of a surprise anymore. Or perhaps I'm romanticizing it.

In either case, I think that's a pretty interesting insight on your part, SF
 
Questingpoet said:
Perhaps all this daydreaming takes the place of the REM sleep dreams for some of us.
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Seems to be the opposite for me. I've completely lost touch with my inner life, and can't access it during the daytime. The only time I seem to be able to do any imagining or deep thinking is during the precious moments when I'm coming out of REM sleep.
 
Are you kidding, I have a whole other world in here...I can get lost in my head so quick one would think I have left the building...That being said I get Restless...I need to be, do, act...I need to busy my hands while my mind keeps going.

But I can be perfectly happy writing as well...Kills two birds!

I get to exercise that creative mind, and busy my hands.
 
The only time I'm bored is when I'm tired. Sometimes I have insomnia for days at a time, and I get too tired to follow my own thoughts. That's frustrating because I'm too tired to really DO anything. However, even then my inner world is still running, just in a disjointed way.

I remember being in elementary school and wondering what it was like to be bored. My best friend at the time was often bored, but I was always able to entertain myself. I think that's why she liked me; I was never boring to be around because I'd find something for us to do.
 
Mine no. I have problems when people ask me "What was going on?". I have to tell them "Nothing special.", because I can't tell: "So much..but most of that is in my head!" :)
 
I'm bored easily.
 
SuperFob said:
Would you say that you can go to these intense meditative and imaginative states at will?
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The more intense ones are more high maintenance and I need to be in a certain environment, in a certain mood. Otherwise, it doesn't take much for me to zone out and I don't need too strong of a will to do it; just the mere intent and I'm out.

On the other hand, if I concentrate too hard, or if I'm trying to do it for some practical reason (like coming up with a story idea or brainstorming for an essay) for some reason it doesn't happen all that easily.
 
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