Five Stages of INFP

As INFPs, we live in an internal dream world of our ideals where everything exists the way we think it should be. When reality forces us to wake up, it feels a little like dying.

Elizabeth Kübler-Ross in her book On Death and Dying, wrote that people experience five stages of grief when they are confronted with significant loss like receiving news of terminal illness. As the real world begins crowding into the INFPs idealized world, INFPs realize that we have to let go of the our idealize version of the world. In doing so, we move back and forth through the stages until we wake up.

Stage 1: Denial

“If I can’t make a living doing what I love then I’d rather be dead.”

The denial stage manifests as avoidance of facts. Denial is wanting the Reward without knowing the Rules. Denial is wishful dreaming while refusing to look at how those dreams manifest.

INFPs in denial believe that writing their first book will somehow automagically translate to being able to eat and pay rent as a writer through some series of serendipity. INFPs in denial believe that if the right person was in their life then everything will work out.

INFPs in denial know their desired Reward such as “I want to write books for a living” but can’t answer questions about the Rules such as “do you know how much an average Times bestselling author makes?” They don’t want to know the answer because the answer brings them closer to waking up.