INFJs are one of the rarest personality types, making up only around 1-3% of the population. They are known for being idealistic, insightful, and emotionally intense. Many INFJs report feeling emotions more deeply than others, crying frequently, and struggling with highly sensitive natures.
There are a few key reasons why INFJs may be more prone to crying than other personality types:
1. INFJs are extremely empathetic
A core part of the INFJ personality is their high degree of empathy. Empathy is the ability to deeply understand and relate to the emotions of others. INFJs have a unique skill for tuning into other people’s emotions and feelings.
This high degree of empathy means that INFJs often “absorb” the emotions of other people as if they were their own. When someone around them is sad, angry, or distressed, the INFJ feels those emotions too. This can easily lead to tears as the INFJ processes not only their own emotions but the emotions of those around them.
2. INFJs experience emotions very intensely
INFJs not only feel emotions deeply but also experience emotions extremely intensely. This is due to the way their brains are wired.
Studies have shown that INFJs have high levels of dopamine and serotonin transporters in their brains. These neurotransmitters control pleasure, motivation, and feelings. With lots of these transporters, emotions flood the INFJ brain powerfully and rapidly. Joy is euphoric, anger combustive, sadness devastating.
This intensity of emotion means that when the INFJ feels something strongly, it can easily bring them to tears, even if they are feeling happy or gratified.
3. INFJs are idealistic and have high standards
Part of the INFJ personality is a strong idealism and desire to make the world a better place. INFJs envision a world where humanity lives up to its potential for compassion and goodness.
However, the harsher realities of the world often fall far short of the INFJ’s high ideals. They see pain, injustice, struggle, and human failings around them on a daily basis. The gap between how they believe the world “should” be and how it is can be immense.
Feeling constantly at odds with the way things are versus their vision for the future takes an emotional toll on idealistic INFJs. It’s easy for them to become saddened and disheartened by the state of the world, driving them to tears.
4. INFJs tend to bottle up emotions
While INFJs feel emotions intensely, they often keep a great deal of those emotions to themselves. INFJs are private, sensitive people who don’t always feel comfortable expressing their feelings to others.
Keeping emotions bottled up tends to make those feelings build up over time. Eventually, even small triggers can cause the INFJ’s emotions to boil over in a flood of tears.
Releasing these pent-up emotions may be cathartic for the INFJ. But it can be confusing for those around them who don’t understand the torrent of emotion they’ve kept inside for so long.
5. INFJs suffer from mental exhaustion
INFJs are deep, complex people who think and feel a great deal. Their rich inner worlds and constant analysis of emotions can become mentally exhausting for them.
When INFJs get stuck in a loop of overthinking, become overwhelmed by too much sensory input, or spread themselves too thin caring for others, it can spur mental fatigue, anxiety, and eventually tears.
Crying can act as an emotional release valve which “resets” the INFJ when they have become too mentally tired or emotionally drained.
6. Many INFJs are HSPs (highly sensitive persons)
A significant number of INFJs identify as HSPs or “highly sensitive persons”. HSPs process sensory information extremely deeply. Lights, sounds, smells, even other’s moods can easily become overwhelming.
Being constantly flooded with sensory overload leaves HSPs feeling raw and vulnerable. Many report crying frequently as an emotional release from the hyper-stimulating world around them.
As sensitive processors of enormous amounts of information, INFJs require plenty of downtime and solitary activities to decompress. Without this, they can quickly become tearful from sheer emotional exhaustion.
7. INFJs may have had traumatic childhoods
Unfortunately, many INFJs experienced turbulent, unstable, or outright traumatic childhoods. Research indicates a higher incidence of conditions like emotional neglect, abuse, or enmeshment in families with an INFJ child.
Painful early life experiences wire the brain to be more reactive. Unresolved trauma and insecure attachment lay the foundations for emotional volatility and frequent tearfulness later in life. INFJs may cry easily due to these deep psychological wounds from their past.
8. INFJs tend to have turbulent emotions
Those with the INFJ personality type tend to experience not only intense but also turbulent, rapidly fluctuating emotions. Their moods can change on a dime, plunging quickly from joyful to despairing.
These turbulent emotions are part of the INFJ’s idealistic yet melancholy temperament. But such intense “ups and downs” also increase the likelihood of frequent tearfulness in response to the dramatic emotional shifts.
9. Crying helps the INFJ process emotions
For the highly sensitive and deeply feeling INFJ, crying is often a tool to help process through powerful emotions. Tears act as an emotional release valve to express and move through feelings that have become bottled up or too intense to contain.
INFJs may unconsciously create opportunities to cry as a way to purge their system of overwhelming emotions. After a good cry, they tend to feel calmer and more centered.
10. INFJs cry easily when moved
INFJs have a unique capacity to be powerfully moved by the arts, nature, beauty, and acts of human nobility or kindness. Music, poetry, dance, and film tend to evoke potent emotions in INFJs.
Even observing compassion, moral courage, a job well done, or the innocence of a child can stir up deep feelings and sentimental tears. The tendency to become misty-eyed when moved by the goodness of humanity runs strong in INFJs.
11. Crying is cathartic for the stressed INFJ
INFJs often take on far too many responsibilities for others and stretch themselves too thin. People naturally turn to them for advice, empathy, and help with problems. But rarely does anyone ask how the INFJ is coping.
Holding themselves to impossibly high standards drains INFJs’ energy over time. They almost never voice their own needs or limitations. Eventually, the internal stress hits a boiling point, and the overburdened INFJ breaks down in tears.
Crying offers a release from their pent-up anxiety and discouragement. Afterward, the INFJ tends to feel cleansed and ready to pick themselves back up again.
12. Loneliness and isolation bring INFJs to tears
INFJs crave authentic connection and deep bonds with others. Unfortunately, their complex natures make it challenging to find relationships where they truly feel “seen” and understood.
Walking through life feeling constantly misunderstood leaves INFJs prone to profound loneliness. Their isolation, and longing for kinship and belonging often manifest in melancholy tears.
13. Disappointment drops INFJs into despair
INFJs feel optimism about people, possibilities, and the future. But when things don’t work out the way they’d imagined, they take it hard. Failed relationships, dreams that didn’t come to fruition, and hopes that got crushed hurt on a soul-deep level.
Grappling with the pain of disappointment plunges idealistic INFJs into periods of despair. Their dejection about the way things turned out often surfaces in the form of despondent tears.
14. The state of the world brings the empathic INFJ to tears
As idealists with a global perspective, INFJs ache over the state of humanity. They see all too clearly the suffering, destruction, and moral failings plaguing our world.
The emotional weight of poverty, violence, ignorance, corruption, and environmental devastation feels intensely personal to the empathic INFJ. The pain and problems of the world weigh heavy on their sensitive souls. It’s enough to bring any INFJ to tears.
15. Transitions are trying for the INFJ
INFJs like time to reflect, process their feelings, and proceed thoughtfully before making major life changes. But sometimes transitions are forced upon them before they feel ready.
Big shifts like job changes, moves, deaths or endings of relationships can blindside the introspective INFJ. Navigating unwelcome transitions often leads to weeping, as the emotional foundations of the INFJ’s world shake and rupture.
16. Criticism cuts the tender INFJ deep
INFJs work extremely hard to understand others and meet their needs. So when someone criticizes them – rightly or wrongly – it goes right to the heart.
The sensitive souls of INFJs ache to do what is expected of them and make others happy. They take criticism, rejection or disappoint from loved ones as signals of personal failure, even when that’s untrue.
Thoughtless critique easily wounds the thin-skinned INFJ, reducing them to tears in the blink of an eye. They feel the sting of disapproval acutely.
Conclusion
In summary, INFJs cry frequently because they experience emotions in a uniquely deep and turbulent manner. Their extreme empathy, idealism, loneliness, and sensitivity coalesce into a tempestuous inner landscape where tears come often.
But crying serves a purpose for the feeling-oriented INFJ. It releases emotion, reduces stress, and restores balance after inner turmoil. Tears are the INFJ’s soul purging itself of poison in order to stay tender, compassionate and in tune with the human condition.