Why Do INFJs Tend To Hate Phone Calls? (7 Reasons To Remember Before Calling)

Considering how few phone calls INFJs tend to take, it’s a miracle that INFJs have a phone at all!

It's sad to say as an INFJ male myself, that there have been many complaints throughout my (love) relationships about my lack of phone time!

The INFJ is one of the 16 Myers-Briggs personality types, making up roughly 1-2 percent of the population.

“INFJ” is an acronym which stands for Introversion (I), Intuition (N), Feeling (F) and Judging (J).

These four core characteristics describe the cognitive functions INFJs use the most to navigate through life.

What is it exactly about phone calls that INFJs dislike? Let’s unpack 7 reasons why!

7 Reasons Why INFJs Tend To Hate Phone Calls

1. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they occur randomly

INFJs tend to be structured beings, who have their set daily routines.

By implementing routines strategically, they hope to establish order, predictability, efficiency and a sense of control in the midst of the daily chaos.

Absolutely essential if you strive to achieve great things in life (like INFJs often do)!

Also helpful ways to mitigate daily stresses.

Most likely, INFJs will use a color coordinated daily schedule for outlining most of their daily activities to manage expectations and enhance productivity.

Unless there's a pre-planned phone call registered in that schedule, INFJs aren’t expecting one nor are they open to receiving one.

The nature of phone calls has it that they’re always coming in at random when you are at the receiving end.

INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they occur randomly which messes with the INFJ’s routines, schedule and sense of predictability.

This can lead to stress. To an INFJ therefore it’s never a good time to be receiving a random phone call.

Unless they reserved time in their schedule to talk to you on the phone, they most likely won’t pick up.

2. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they are disruptive

INFJs spend most of their time in solitude.

Whether it is to recover from an overwhelming day at work, or getting into the slow paced long steady focussed groove much needed for deep thought and creative expression, the INFJ’s indulgence in solitude is of critical importance.

Incoming phone calls disrupt the INFJ’s self-nurturing state achieved through immense amounts of solitude and that’s why INFJs tend to hate phone calls so much.

It takes a significant amount of time for INFJs to fall into that relaxed focussed and meditative state from which they draw inspiration for whatever they dream of manifesting in this world.

The notion of needing to drop everything they’re doing just to answer the phone call is annoying to them.

More so, getting influenced by other people’s energy again via the phone after taking considerable amounts of time to reconnect with their own energy is also a tedious prospect to the INFJ.

3. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they make INFJs self-conscious

As social chameleons, INFJs are very much focussed on energetic shape shifting to match their energy with that of anyone they’re interacting with, all in the name of social harmony.

Extraverted Feeling (Fe) is the powerful cognitive function responsible for the INFJ’s natural gift to maintain that social harmony.

When INFJs are alone they recover from the overstimulating social interactions they’ve had.

Since the INFJ’s focus on the emotional well-being of others activates automatically whenever someone else is around, INFJs need to be alone to shut down their Extraverted Feeling (Fe) function which is responsible for that.

Extraverted Feeling (Fe) drives the INFJ’s focus to shift from the internal (thoughts, feelings and intuition) to the external, meaning the people and social atmosphere around them.

When the INFJ’s Extraverted Feeling (Fe) is taken offline through self-isolation, they regain their inner focus needed to restore their own energy and sense of themselves.

Photo by Shvets Productions on Pexels

Answering an unexpected phone call may force the sudden reactivation of Extraverted Feeling (Fe), because the INFJ is now interacting with someone again.

But, since it often takes a bit of time to warm up that social mode and smoothly match somebody else’s energy, it can be very awkward for the INFJ to witness the dissonance between their own internal focus and the external social mask that’s coming on again to deal with the phone call, but isn’t fitting properly yet.

This may lead to self-consciousness around the INFJ’s own tone of voice, sentence structure and awkward silences within the conversation.

Not getting feedback from somebody’s facial expressions also makes it harder to gauge how the person is reacting to whatever the INFJ is saying.

This feeds into the INFJ’s self-consciousness. INFJs tend to have a third person view of themselves in their mind’s eye as they’re always analyzing their own behavior on a microscopic level.

But, this may lead to debilitating self-consciousness because now there’s always somebody critically watching them.

INFJs tend to hate phone calls because the INFJ’s painful self-consciousness can get easily triggered by unexpectedly talking on the phone.

4. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they make INFJs feel objectified

Of course a phone call every now and then wouldn’t necessarily faze an INFJ.

However, when people willy-nilly call the INFJ for small or relatively insignificant things this quickly turns into a problem.

When people frequently and haphazardly call the INFJ via the phone for their own convenience and with disregard for the INFJ’s time and boundaries, INFJs will start to resent it.

The INFJ regards its time as precious, because all the high quality things they aspire to do take time and deep focus.

If it’s one thing we all don’t have much of, it’s time.

INFJs generally don’t have time to chit chat or just make some small talk on the phone.

But here is that colleague, manager, family member, friend or call-center agent that thinks they can just blow up our phones for every little thing like we’re just a tool or an object waiting to be used.

Going back and forth with a manager on the phone a few times for dumb little questions feels to the INFJ that they’re being taken hostage by someone who just wants to feel important.

Unfortunately, many people feel entitled to everyone’s attention these days and are almost offended when you don’t pick up your phone or don’t text back within a few hours.

It’s almost expected for our attention to be on demand.

Luckily, INFJs don’t tend to get a lot of phone calls, because they’ve trained all the people from the very beginning to not call them by not picking up.

5. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they can be very time consuming

Often someone will call you for a specific reason.

For example, they’ll need some specific information or deliver a message.

But, after doing so, they will ask about a lot of other things now that they’ve got you on the phone anyway.

Or they’ll make some more small talk after they’ve got what they called for, because they think a phone call is supposed to last at least a few minutes so that it felt like a significant phone call despite the 90% of fluff conversation.

Or they call you because they’re feeling bored and now also waste your time.

Or they just don’t know how to end the phone call so it keeps dragging on awkwardly.

INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because they know conversations on the phone always last longer than expected, which makes them very time consuming.

Also phone calls are often very inefficient.

When the phone rings the person that’s being called has now to drop everything they’re doing.

Photo by Anna Shvets on Pexels

If it’s specific information that’s being delivered, the person receiving the call needs to write it down somewhere too if it’s hard to memorize.

By sending that information via text it would be far more efficient, because now none of those extra actions were needed.

INFJs have a thing for efficiency when it comes to things they don’t want to spend a lot of time on.

Unfortunately, most phone calls aren’t conducive to that.

6. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because of their shallow communication quality

The stereotypical image of the private and reclusive INFJ gave rise to the misconception that INFJs don’t like interacting with others at all.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

An important prerequisite for INFJs to engage in social interaction is that they foresee the interaction will be of high quality.

Meaning, authentic, honest, deep and refreshing conversations.

Non-verbal communication is a huge part of that, since at least around 70% of communication is non-verbal.

INFJs will always choose meeting up in person with the people they trust and value to have conversations in 3D instead of phone calls.

Seeing someone’s facial expression, reading their body language, feeling their emotions, sitting in each other's energy, being able to touch and connect via eye contact.

An INFJ can hang in the currents of deep heart to heart conversations forever like a bird.

Phone calls, however, offer only 2D conversations via voice, which make it a shallow communication quality.

Since INFJs have a distaste for shallow communication they rather not pick up the phone to avoid as much of that as possible.

7. INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because of how much people have them in public spaces

People speaking loudly on the phone in public spaces is a serious pet peeve of the INFJ.

Whether it’s in public transport, the mall, the long line at the airport, the supermarket or the doctor’s office, people nowadays don’t care where they have loud phone calls in the middle of a witnessing audience.

Cell phones have drastically blurred the lines between private and public.

The second hand small talk phone calls that INFJs are unwillingly subjected to in these public spaces can make their blood boil.

How did this person think anybody would want to hear her blurt her nonsense to a friend via the phone while being on the bus at 07:00 AM?

INFJs tend to hate phone calls, because the lack of social etiquette and empathy of others who make you unwillingly part of their dumb phone conversations in public about why their co-worker sucks are absolutely appalling.