As an INFJ, when I receive an Ni insight, it is generally of a non-verbal, symbolic nature. It is often very right-brained and it gives me this gestalt insight. It is as if this insight comes to me in this large block or chunk. It is highly raw and often gets right to the point. But even as it gets to the point, it is still very holistic and is often hard to break down. By its nature, it is very symbolic and taps into some very intuitive archetypes that can often come from the collective unconscious. It may have a narrative that I cannot fully articulate, but that I can feel quite viscerally.
It is my Ti that aims to put language to my insights. And to do that, it often feels like I am taking an axe and chopping away at that block of insight until I can find just the right words to articulate my thoughts. Since my Ti is my tertiary function, which simply doesn’t have the same adeptness level as my dominant Ni, there are times when I will struggle to find the proper articulations necessary to verbalize the idea. It is often a hit or miss proposition.
When I can capture a certain truth, using primarily Ni with a backup of Ti, it usually is something non-verbal that I can just so readily vibe that it is in alignment with something either true, good, or beautiful. Ni simply knows the essence of these three qualities, and when something external taps into these states, something inside me simply goes ‘Uh Huh!’ with this sense of inner rightness. While Ti certainly taps into this assessment of the truth, especially when something makes logical sense, it is Ni that simply reaches a state of unwavering gnosis. So when I am learning something and arrive at a point where I just GET IT, it is Ni that is involved with this process. However, because of this, Ni feels amorphous. What makes this really challenging is that it is very hard to justify the rightness of an Ni-derived truth. It is hard to take truth and to thin-slice it in a way that is fully explainable or articulable to the outside world. To people who want all truths and all data to be verifiable, this can be a daunting task because it involves chopping up that Ni chunk after all.
As a result of everything that I’ve just described, I strongly suspect that Ni-dominants can sometimes become stuck with the innate challenge of explaining, justifying, or articulating a deep symbolic truth. To other types, they may be able to attain the language to do this. Even to Ni-doms, ever so often, they can succeed at articulating these ideas. However, at other times, they are at a loss for words, since thin-slicing gestalts is not always attainable. I tend to think that many Ni dominants will lean more towards writing than speaking, because in writing, they have the advantage of having time on their side to hopefully find some novel context (or canvass) by which they can create some mode of explaining their insights. But even then, it can sometimes take months to years to fully describe a vision in all its splendid details (in ways that Si users might be more able to encapsulate).
With all this being said, Ni is likely the cognitive function most interested in addressing some of the most panoramic and big-picture archetypal themes that exist. It is the pleasure of the Ni user to deal in paradigm-changing domains and to influence these areas in notable ways. So because these types will often think about grand concepts and themes, it is not uncommon for the grandness of these themes to be quite challenging to language in a highly detailed way. This might appear frustrating at times for such an individual, as I’m sure that they would love to be able to concretely explain every archetypal and symbolic understanding that they encounter. However, undoubtedly, this pales in comparison to the Ni-user abandoning the complex for the sake of only dealing with highly routinized or simplified objects. They want and crave to grapple with the complexities of life. To do so carries the utmost sense of meaning and purpose. For this sake, with all its payoffs and drawbacks, Ni-users would gladly say that grappling with the complex is well worth it!
