The Soup Test: What Personality Types Reveal Under Vulnerability
This isn’t actually a post about MBTI.
It’s a post about safety, power, truth, and emotional maturity—using personality types as a lens, not a rulebook.
I’m not interested in typology as identity or destiny. I’m interested in behavior under pressure. Especially the kind of pressure that strips away charm, intelligence, ideology, and good intentions.
Everything INFJs care about collapses into three questions:
Are you safe or destabilizing when someone is vulnerable?
Do you value truth over harmony, or comfort over reality?
Do you have power with conscience, or power without attunement?
Type only matters insofar as it predicts how someone answers those questions under stress, intimacy, and responsibility.
This is biased. On purpose.
This is a personal, anecdotal account. I’m an INFJ. I have favorites. I have blind spots. I have more experience with some types than others.
I believe in healthy and unhealthy versions of every type. I also believe multiple realities can exist simultaneously—two people can have the same external experience of someone and walk away with very different internal reactions.
Part of my healing has been learning to care less about offending people and more about telling the truth cleanly.
The Soup Test
When you’re sick, depleted, overwhelmed, or not performing—what does someone do?
That answer tells you more than personality theory ever will.
The Types (Through Vulnerability)
ISTJ
At their worst, ISTJs can be rigid, controlling, and blunt—using logic like a blunt force weapon. They are among the least intuitive types.
At their best, they are deeply loyal, grounding, and committed to family and responsibility. When they respect intuition and work their shadow, they can be surprisingly supportive and insightful.
Soup test: (Goes to work so that you can keep your health insurance)
ISFJ
Sweet, supportive, nurturing, and detail-oriented. They ask many questions that feel irrelevant to me—not because the questions are bad, but because the answers wouldn’t change anything.
They match INFJs in empathy through shared extroverted feeling, which makes them wonderful friends and coaches. Romantically, they can feel overly expectant, needy, or invested before reciprocity is established.
Soup test: (Asks you 20 questions about your symptoms)
INFJ
Deeply perceptive, validating, and accepting. INFJs are the only type that makes me feel fully seen. When the mask drops, the humor is excellent.
Shadow side: invasive emotional monitoring, moralizing, fixing emotions, martyrdom, limerence, overgiving, and relentless psychoanalysis driven by hypervigilance. INFJs often read people without consent and mistake endurance for virtue.
Soup test: (Diagnoses you wrong and based on vibes)
INTJ
Brilliant, efficient, intuitive, charming, devilish, and unsettling. They possess a predatory magnetism and hypnotist energy that can feel intoxicating.
Shadow traits include covert manipulation, status awareness, emotional dismissal, loyalty testing, planning without consent, and treating emotions as inefficiencies. INTJs can be INFJs’ greatest potential partners—but only if they learn attunement. INFJs cannot accommodate INTJs without self-abandonment.
Soup test: (Stays away and checks to see if you're better yet)
ISTP
My favorite sensor and my best dating experiences. Humble, grounding, safe, warm-hearted, and hard to offend.
They are not manipulative and do not fall for seduction or manipulation—they see right through it. They need to speak up emotionally instead of going silent, but their selective empathy makes INFJs feel prioritized and safe.
Soup test: (Brings you soup)
ISFP
Chill, creative, outdoorsy, laid back, and pleasant to be around. Great friends and amazing landlords. Handy, capable, and fun without chaos.
Emotionally difficult to read, with challenges around commitment and clarity.
Soup test: (Invites you on a fun activity that you can't go on)
INFP
Emotionally fluent—like Shazam for feelings. Sensitive, deep, and kindred spirits. Incredible at naming emotions with precision.
They tend to get stuck in feelings and drown in them. Friends, yes. Dating, no—for me.
Soup test: (Names your exact symptoms)
INTP
A wildcard due to limited personal exposure. In theory: intellectually stimulating, less rigid than INTJs, empathetic via inferior Fe, and potentially grounding.
Could be soothing or infuriating depending on maturity.
Soup test: (Takes your tissues to the lab for diagnosis)
ESTP
Charming, exciting, and unsafe (in my experience). Manipulative in an overt, chaotic way. Adrenaline-driven, destabilizing, and thrill-based.
They weaponize extroverted feeling, offering intense flashes of affection that keep you chasing.
Soup test: (Tucks you into bed so they can go out partying)
ESFP
Hilarious, fun, chaotic, exhausting. More superstitious than intuitive. Frequently contradict themselves.
Some of my best stories involve ESFPs.
Soup test: (Force feeds you folk medicine and mysterious potions that don't work)
ENFP
Sunshine in human form. Warm, morally aligned, affectionate, and finds INFJ broodiness endearing.
Can make INFJs feel like the responsible adult—especially ENFP men. Women tend to feel more balanced.
Soup test: (Talks to you on the phone and makes you feel warm and fuzzy)
ENTP
Brilliant, inventive, curious minds. Deep thinkers who also party.
Intense intellectual connection that is often short-lived—not from malice, but novelty-seeking or ADHD energy. Can feel abandoning.
Soup test: (Asks you to bring them soup)
ESTJ
Practical, responsible, emotionally blunt, and tactless. Very low attunement in emotional contexts.
Draining to interact with when vulnerability is required.
Soup test: (Tells you everything you should have done to keep from getting sick)
ESFJ
Heroes in crisis—loyal and reliable when it truly matters.
Day-to-day can be morally rigid, draining, and disrespectful of solitude. Expects others to participate in their moral framework.
Soup test: (Gives you cough drops because your coughing is disturbing the peace)
ENFJ
Generous, expressive, heart-centered leaders.
Can be emotionally manipulative, chameleonic for acceptance, and exhausting in romantic intensity. Excellent bosses.
Soup test: (Feels neglected and asks you to prove that you still love them)
ENTJ
Capable, productive, supportive leaders. Likable and often goofy despite heavy work focus.
Think out loud, love meetings, and show goodwill through action rather than attunement. Their partners often seem genuinely happy.
Soup test: (Makes you laugh. Doesn't volunteer help but follows orders)
Final Truth
This isn’t about boxes.
It’s about watching behavior instead of believing potential.
How someone shows up when you’re vulnerable tells you everything you need to know.
Soup is optional.
Attunement is not.
I’ll be back when I feel like it.
