If you’re an ENFP, your intrusive thoughts probably make you smile one minute and wince the next. Yet you joke about them more than any Feeling type and are more likely to act on them than others.
What’s Coming Up
- Key Takeaways
- ENFPs Rarely Keep an Intrusive Thought Quiet
- What Kind of Intrusive Thoughts Do ENFPs Have?
- Do ENFPs Act on Their Intrusive Thoughts?
- The Harder Side of ENFP Intrusive Thoughts
- A Mind with Range
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Further Reading
Key Takeaways
- ENFPs are unusually good at finding the humor in a bizarre intrusive thought. Among Feeling personalities, who usually take these thoughts to heart, that lightness stands out.
- Few types act on an intrusive thought as readily as ENFPs, but the results usually let them down. They often sense it won’t be worth it but go ahead regardless.
- For all their outward humor, ENFPs are the Extraverts most prone to harsh self-talk. Critical thoughts arrive often, and can be distracting.
- An ENFP can be both amused by their mind and full of self-doubt at once. This seemingly contradictory relationship with their inner world is completely normal for this personality type, and nothing about it needs fixing or explaining away.
ENFPs Rarely Keep an Intrusive Thought Quiet
People with the ENFP personality type (Campaigners) – who have the Extraverted, Intuitive, Feeling, and Prospecting traits – rarely keep their inner life quiet.
Our “Intrusive Thoughts” survey, which gathered responses from across all personality types, turned up a few findings about ENFPs that, at first glance, don’t seem to fit together. They laughed at their intrusive thoughts more than any other Feeling personality type and acted on them more than almost anyone. But they also experienced more self-critical thoughts than any other Extravert.
It’s tempting to name one side the real ENFP and the other a front, but the data shows us that all can be simultaneously true.
What Kind of Intrusive Thoughts Do ENFPs Have?
ENFP intrusive thoughts trend to the absurd. Some 46% of ENFPs said ludicrous ones came up often for them, the second-highest rate of all 16 personality types.
How often are your intrusive thoughts of a ludicrous nature (e.g., the urge to utter a bizarre comment or do an absurd dance in public, etc.)?
Source: Intrusive Thoughts
Their Intuitive side, always chasing what-ifs, is prone to inventing far-fetched scenarios. Their Prospecting side – open, flexible, and happy to entertain options – tends to let those scenarios run wild in their mind rather than shutting them down. What do you do with a random thought like “announce something ridiculous and dramatic in this quiet waiting room”? Many ENFPs enjoy the spontaneous fun that some of their intrusive thoughts inspire, if only as an internal experience.
In our survey, 57% of ENFPs said their intrusive thoughts often amused them, the highest rate of any Feeling personality type.
That’s a real departure from other Feeling types. Feeling personalities – who weigh experiences against personal values more than cold logic – usually find intrusive thoughts hard to shrug off, because the thoughts seem to mean something. ENFPs are more likely to treat many of their strange thoughts less like something to judge and more like something to enjoy.
Do ENFPs Act on Their Intrusive Thoughts?
According to our survey data, more ENFPs acted on their intrusive thoughts than almost any other personality type. Some 56% said they’d done it at least once, the fourth-highest rate in the survey.
Acting on an intrusive thought is rarely dramatic. For an ENFP, it tends to look like:
- blurting out the random idea they had
- saying the joke that was probably somewhat inappropriate for the setting
- sending the text or email they’d been advised to sleep on
- making an impulsive purchase then inventing a reason for it
- switching up the plan, the haircut, or the hobby on short notice
Do ENFPs find it worth it to act on their impulsive thoughts? Usually not, according to the data. Of the ENFPs who admitted to acting on an intrusive thought, only 35% found it fulfilling.
Does that stop people with this personality type from acting on some of their intrusive thoughts in the future? That’s a conclusion that doesn’t show up in the data, but knowing this personality type – probably not.
The Harder Side of ENFP Intrusive Thoughts
Half of ENFPs (50%) also said self-critical intrusive thoughts – the kind that might sound like you’re behind, you’re too much, or you wasted that chance – strike often. That’s the highest rate of any Extraverted personality type.
How often are your intrusive thoughts of a self-critical nature (e.g., feeling like a loser, the urge to quit, etc.)?
Source: Intrusive Thoughts
That number sits oddly next to the 57% who said their intrusive thoughts often amused them. The same openness that lets a ridiculous thought register as funny can let a cruel one register as true. Plenty of ENFPs are delighted by their mind one minute and quietly hurt by it the next.
The thoughts can strain their attention, too. Some 62% of ENFPs said intrusive thoughts frequently and significantly distracted them from what mattered, the third-highest rate of the 16 personality types.
What ENFPs rarely do is carry any of that privately. As Extraverted personalities, they are more likely to work things out in the open, and about a third said they regularly talk about their intrusive thoughts with other people, self-criticism and all.
A Mind with Range
The same wiring drives both sides of the ENFP tendencies around their intrusive thoughts – a quick, associative imagination that keeps producing odd material, and a set of personal values that decides what that material means. The same process behind a joke can also produce a cutting judgment instead.
For ENFPs, talking helps. Describing their intrusive thoughts out loud tends to take some of their sting away – and ENFPs reach for that outlet more than most.
So if you’re an ENFP, what you’ve got is a mind that runs fast in more than one direction at once. The impulse to say all of it out loud, jokes and self-criticism alike, is one of the better things you do with it.
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