45 Struggles All ENFP Personalities Face

Myers-Briggs 101

The lovable ENFP shines light into our lives. The ENFP naturally brings enthusiasm into the conversation. All personalities have their struggles — even those that are full of rainbows, dinosaurs, flying horses, and sugar mountains.

The ENFP personality is guided by extroversion, intuition, feeling, and perception. Its functions are, in dominant order: (1) extroverted intuition, (2) introverted feeling, (3) extroverted thinking, and (4) introverted sensing.

The Struggle Is Real, but We Love You

1. Sometimes people don’t realize that the ENFP gets sad. There’s a deeper more introspective side to them, and it can be really hard to share.

2. Growing up was challenging. As a child, the ENFP is full of ideas, imagination, and they want to express all of it. Unfortunately, their parents might not have been graced with NF. Parents may have lacked knowing how to raise their open-minded and wild child. They gave them the structure they needed but not the spontaneity.

3. You love most people, but some people honestly do rub you the wrong way. It can be cumbersome to direct them away from you. Your personality is contagious, so it lures people to you… even people you don’t like.

4. Some people may be confused as to whether you’re being friendly or flirtatious. Lots of people don’t get as much attention or affection sent toward them as an ENFP will naturally give.

5. You’re open to trying things and sometimes this leads to poor or insane decisions. You need people around you that are spontaneous and open to experimenting with your wild, outlandish ideas. You also need someone who can tell you when something might be a bad idea. You need someone who straddles both sides, or else you get frustrated.

6. As much of a party animal as you can be, settling down is one of your highest priorities. A romantic partner is ideal to send all your social vibes toward. Your friends and party crew might not understand the change of direction.

7. When you really understand something, it frustrates you to no end when someone is arguing against it. You may repeat the same point over and over in hopes that the other person will understand. This will end up being futile.

8. Structure may irritate you to no end. You might find that there’s no point to simple things. This can lead to some eclectic choices that others don’t understand.

9. You’re open with your body and its functions — and may just really want to be naked. Your openness might shock people, and you may do very inappropriate things.

10. The ENFP loves people so much that the things that get in the way of loving people become boring. The ENFP isn’t known for being practical and on top of mundane things.

11. Boredom is the ENFP’s bane. The easiest way to make an ENFP forfeit is to make things painfully boring.

12. The ENFP has a high level of loyalty. The personality hates breakups intensely because of conflict, breaking their loyalty, and they love to dote and be doted on.

13. Once an ENFP needs to cut ties, they’ll move on faster than the speed of light. It may confuse past lovers how fast an ENFP can move on, as if they’re not bothered at all by the breakup.

14. The ENFP can be so passionate about something that they take over the entire conversation. They like to be the ringleader. It can be hard to get a word in edgewise.

15. The ENFP can struggle with their introverted sides getting stuck in a dreaded Fi-Si loop. They’ll be incredibly inward with their feelings, but unsure what to do in this processing state.

16. There’s always more to know for the ENFP. There’s a never-ending amount of knowledge to be found. It can be difficult to express all the ideas coming to the brain of an ENFP. There’s a strong need to find someone who can talk through 3,452 topics in one 30 minute conversation.

17. As a powerful loving idea machine, sometimes the ENFP can get lost without a visionary who can plan out all the details with them. The ENFP can get lost in their own madness. They have tangled thoughts.

18. The ENFP is a lion on the surface and a total guppy in the center. It can be difficult switching from being mighty to a romantic, soft kitten.

19. The ENFP is 100% idiosyncratic. Sometimes the ENFP has their own language, philosophical concepts, and abstract mode of communication… it can be hard for others to understand them.

20. The ENFP hates when people stick by certain rules just because they’re rules. The ENFP wants the world to improve, for there to be connectivity, and not for things to be stuck. They hate antiquated rules.

21. If the ENFP isn’t careful, they’ll give away their entire bank account. Then they’ll get rid of their house, their clothes, everything — and they’ll spend all their time wandering the planet. It sounds cool, but it can be difficult jumping from having everything to no belongings.

22. The ENFP has a really hard time censoring themselves. They want to be nice to you, but man — they want to call you out on your ridiculousness and laugh about it.

23. The ENFP desires family and would prefer to spend more time with their loved ones than their job. This can make it difficult to get things done. This can occasionally cause the ENFP to be too dependent on their spouse, and in turn, let their spouse walk all over them and baby them.

24. The ENFP has a wonderful childlike spirit — they can connect with kids and animals magically. However, if they have to discipline kids, it can be confusing because they’ll switch too quickly from sweet child-rearing best buddy to total fascist dictator. They have to be conscious of how they’re coming off in their parenting style — or else their teenager will completely disconnect from them. Which would murder an ENFP.

25. The ENFP has hyperactive intelligence; they may not make sense to other temperaments who view intelligence differently. The ENFP has a great work ethic, but they get bored easily. Their homework isn’t going to look identical to their peers. The ENFP will get it right, but also add a touch of humor. It’s complicated. The ENFP is a perfectionist, but they’re also bored with bland efforts at education.

26. The ENFP sometimes really, really needs a bath. They can get so lost in their ideas, schedule, and social world that certain hygiene, house chores, and financial tasks can fall to the wayside.

27. The ENFP will carry every last one of us home on their back. They’ll make sure we’re all taken care of — but then the ENFP will collapse or go mental from not taking care of themselves.

28. The ENFP has great disdain for some people and structures. They’ll half pay attention while plotting how they can make something far better, far more interesting, far more in touch with the reality they want to see. This can cause an ENFP to tune out on important details.

29. Speaking of details — ENFP is a big picture kind of guy. He sees things globally in an instant. Going over every last detail will put the ENFP into a stupor. Read them something with lots of details, like a manual, and you’ll get them ready for bed.

30. Sometimes they’re a little too open-minded and have a hard time hearing how their ideas could hurt someone. It’s really hard to redirect an ENFP who is set on a certain objective. They’re goal-oriented, but sometimes their brain misfires for something so painfully dumb that it’s hysterical.

31. The ENFP can sometimes be freakishly weird and push some people away — others might enjoy the outlandish costumes, social games, and black magic spells that come out of nowhere. Others might run.

32. The ENFP falls in love hard. Either accept them, or they’ll move on because they don’t want to waste their powerful energy on someone who doesn’t care. They fall in love hard… and this can make them set on pleasing someone so much that they start to ignore other parts of their life.

33. The ENFP needs to be careful of who they date, so they’re not taken advantage of. The ENFP can be smothering, and some personalities don’t get that. ENFP should strive to find those who are either intuitive or emotionally driven. An INFJ will suit a lot of these needs, and INTJ may be too cold for the ENFP at times but does work wonderfully.

34. The ENFP needs an audience. Don’t put an ENFP on an island. They’ll befriend all the animals, volleyballs, and coconuts to the point of extreme personification.

35. The ENFP has a brilliant BS detector, which can allow them to be the perfect devil’s advocate.

36. ENFP has impatience for someone trying to initially figure themselves out emotionally. If they’re not jumping into the river with you, the ENFP sniffs something is awry and runs away to another castle in the clouds.

37. The ENFP has to really be careful in a job interview to not scratch their butt, burp, fart, or do something gross. They have to put in more effort to be sophisticated and compromise on comfortability.

38. The ENFP will keep working until it’s right. They want it right. Practice makes perfect! Do it again! AGAIN! They’re goal-oriented, but this can get relentless.

39. The ENFP would marry someone in an instant. They may not see the point of a long engagement or planning out an intricate wedding. They just want to do it — and this may endanger their relationship with their partner or newfound interest.

40. The ENFP may suffer from insomnia. Their mind is always digging into the heels of the universe. They can’t fall asleep because they need to know what neuroscientists have to say about kangaroo brains.

41. Sometimes… they forget all sense of decorum. “What do you mean right now is a bad time to throw water balloons? It’s 3 AM. This is perfect. Get out of bed.”

42. They should strive to let their darker, more internal side out. This side is much more impressive than they realize and it speaks to people. Try your hand at poetry, theater, and public speaking.

43. The ENFP will have the strangest things that cause them to be stubborn. “But I want those pumpkins aligned this way. It’s sentimental to me!”

44. They may struggle to find someone who will have the same enthusiasm for a rather peculiar story — like why a group of neighbors working together for three days finally got a cat out of a tree.

45. The ENFP doesn’t have enough time to be on stage, to have an audience, to perform, to champion, and to look deeply into the most beautiful person in the room. There’s too much structure and bureaucracy in the way. Always. (They really want to be Romeo chasing after their Juliet.)

*** *** ***

Originally published: https://owlcation.com/humanities/45-Struggles-all-ENFP-Personalities-Face