Why Are You So Quiet?

If you’re an INFP, you might be familiar with the question: Why are you so quiet? 

Receiving this feedback from friends, colleagues, partners, or family members can feel like poison to your mental health. It did for me growing up. And I can only appreciate now, in midlife, why that was happening so much.

So why do people ask many of us INFPs this question?

We can start by looking at some of the conditions INFPs grow up in:

• Men dominate the world: Men hold 80% of Parliamentary seats and most high-office positions, epitomised by global leaders such as Emmanuel Macron, Lê Minh Hưng, and Volodymyr Zelensky. Societal expectations suggest that to be a man is to be dominant, and being dominant usually means being the loudest, most charismatic, and talkative person in every room. INFPs do not do that. And so they go against normal expectations of men. 

• There are more extroverts around: INFPs are often clever, quirky, kind, and creative. But to feel what we feel, we need to live mostly in our hearts and our heads. When the world is at least 60% extroverted—and extroverts want to be around other people (usually other extroverts)—we can't help but stand out by comparison. And since extroverts are so used to spending their time with other extroverts, they can easily assume that how they are is ‘the norm’. When they meet a quieter, more supportive, and less dominant person, living in an intellectual paradise in their mind, they can feel uncomfortable. And they can wonder why we’re not at least trying to be more like them.

• We have huge inner worlds: Being sensitive dreamers with very deep feelings and thoughts isn’t something many other types relate to. Fi is our dominant function, so we’re predominantly experiencing the world in profound ways. To others, that can make us seem slow, quiet, odd, or even difficult when their extroverted minds move faster, with verbal fluency, thriving on energy and action. 

• INFPs tend to focus on holistic thinking: INFPs usually excel at bigger-picture, conceptual, and systems thinking. We are great at taking ‘everything in’, from emotional tones, feelings, and colours, to minor details and atmospheric vibes before fitting it all together in a big-picture concept. Having a propensity to absorb so much of the world and make connections can make us seem quiet because we’re using so much energy to assimilate and to process. But by staying quiet to listen and observe, we get to add to our holistic understanding and develop stronger emotional intelligence. 

• Sometimes, life makes us that way: As sensitive feelers, life can affect us more than other people. Others may find it easier to brush off feelings, compartmentalize traumas, reject criticisms, and push through negative feedback. But if we’ve faced pain and difficulties, which almost all of us have, we can go into our proverbial shells and stay there to sort through our feelings. And these periods of deep internal reflection can make others wonder if we’re really okay.

In general, people who ask us why we’re so quiet tend to feel uncomfortable with silence, and wonder what we could be thinking. They can assume that quietness means we are less capable, dumb, boring, or too spaced out in daydreams to pay attention (and sometimes the latter is true!)

But what those people could never understand is that there was a vast, vibrant universe exploding in my mind, hidden by a quiet exterior. A place full of wild, magical, and inspiring ideas, thoughts, and feelings they might never experience. And while all those extroverts love to live in the moment, boosting their dopamine levels from their life-and-soul-of-the-party charisma, they are missing out on the amazing internal universes I hold in my mind. And carrying a huge storage system of imagination can lead to incredible creativity across multiple fields such as game and UX design, music production, acting, fiction, poetry, and film, using levels of empathy that other more talkative types might never attain.

And the way I have survived this common complaint is to remind myself that being an INFP gives me the chance to develop strong enough emotional intelligence to know that it would not be smart, clever, or kind to ask a domineering, loquacious, and obnoxious person the question: Why are you so loud?