Great thread...I'd love to see how people answer this.
TBH, over the 4+ years I've been posting on MBTI forums it's basically come down to whenever I read threads of NFs describing their emotions I automatically skim three notches of bombastic intensity off of the top to even make it translatable to what my comparably emotionless ass can relate to. Few emotions seem measured, taken in stride or like they fit the situation. There is no Goldilocks experience. It's the highest peaks, they lowest trenches, the coldest winter, the hottest summer, the most desolate desert, the most claustrophobic crowding. Everything is extreme and intense.
If a relationship dissolves if you're not in mourning for three years minimum, you didn't really love them.
If an emotion doesn't tear through your body like Montezuma's Revenge it wasn't real.
If you're not emitting potent empathy (and the lesser but still virtuous sympathy) pheromones from every pore of your body and crying blood tears over all the pain and sorrow in the world.
If you're not psychically reading the emotions of others, predicting their needs, and getting strangers to cry on your shoulder so you can soothe and comfort them and more importantly, egotrip.
If you're not completely embroiled in your own secret pain or deep emotional trauma that no one else can understand.
The reason why I find this highly distasteful is because it's an incredibly arrogant attitude. The same way NTs can be intellectually arrogant, I find NFs can be emotionally arrogant in the same way. If no one or very few people feel things the way you do, how do you even relate to others? There's no common ground. I'm purposely being flippant in tone but if everything is happening on another emotional plane to NFs than us regular folks and our regular emotions inhabit a different universe, the hope for translation and meaningful communication is tragic. Also, a surprising amount of NFs are afraid to open up to others and I find this rooted in the erroneous belief that no one can understand their emotions so the comfort, solace, and connection with others (if'n that's what you want) has no chance to develop.
I understand that people are at different places along the spectrum of emotional intelligence and maturity: someone may view me as immature, I view someone as immature and so on. But I've come to view it as a lack of experience and yes, sometimes a lack of ability but it doesn't fall along typological lines when I make this determination.
I was recently talking to a friend about the fact that by 18 she had lost both of her parents to cancer and how's she's felt older than her peers her whole life because of what happened to her between 13-18 (she's now 30). When her friends were out looking for prom dresses she was emptying a bedpan for her mother. She says she's always felt a keen sense of mortality and she's factored that into all of her life decisions. Her maturity doesn't come from her type, it comes from her life. I suppose it's possible to feel that way without experiencing a similar situation, but I know an intellectual and theoretical understanding of something is often insufficient when rubber meets road.
It seems to me that NFJs and NFPs are in some silly competition to see who's the most exquisitely sensitive. I think this is why any discussions about Fe and Fi get destroyed with NFPs and NFJs duking it out for some Feeling prize. I don't see this between SFPs and SFJs and more generally SFs on MBTI forums. I'm basing my observations on the various MBTI forums because I no longer try to type people in real life unless I have sustained, high-interaction contact with them.
And in the end, never really having to do anything about all these torrid emotions and lofty ideas coursing through the NF body, but to merely feel them is enough. It's weird because you hear all this love for humanity and desire to self-actualize and help others along and yet I often wonder how or if the people saying these things actually funnel this into anything tangible. It's just the idea of these things but not the doing of these things which makes it all empty, pie in the sky words. It's incomplete.
I feel bad for the way SFs are discussed on the forum, they're made to seem like emotional adolescents, while NFs are automatically granted the rights of fully mature adults. I think it lessens SF participation and insight...even look at where this thread is placed: in the NF section. (btw I'm going to move it.) Any discussions about Fe and Fi are typically placed in the NF section, people are more likely to ask specific questions to NFs rather than first seeing if anyone else experiences the same and then trying to cull possible type specific strains from general responses. Of course if you ask "[NF type] do you feel sad when someone dies?" and uh, yeah, you can figure out the rest. :rolli:
Usual disclaimer: these are my observations. Please skim three notches of bombastic emotional intensity off the top.
