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[Fi] For weary Fi-users

Lauren

New member
Joined
Dec 7, 2008
Messages
255
MBTI Type
INFP
It gets easier with practice... People usually hurt you because of their own shit, not yours.

Agreed. Though I sympathize with getting tired of over-sensitivity. I've found that objectivity and humor helps. I've realized that the problem isn't mine with most people but with their own shit, as you say.
 

William K

Uniqueorn
Joined
Aug 13, 2009
Messages
986
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
4w5
Fi scares the sh** out of me, because i know i am like this and it makes me feel so friggin lonely and out of place. how do you guys deal with it... i don't know... i wish i wasn't as difficult as i am. i am totally over-sensitive.

Well, it's a matter of perspective. Who is to say that you are over-sensitive and not that the rest of the world is not sensitive enough? As long as you recognize your sensitivity and don't let it overwhelm you, think of it as an advantage (instead of a burden) that you have over most people.

I would recommend reading Elaine Aron's "The Highly Sensitive Person"
 

yvonne

A passer by
Joined
Mar 1, 2010
Messages
534
MBTI Type
INfP
Enneagram
5w4
thanks :) i really like this place. helps to get it out sometimes, you know.. and have people responding and actually understanding what you're talking about. :)

s alright. :)

i like your signature william k.
 

Laurie

Was E.laur
Joined
Jan 3, 2009
Messages
6,072
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
7w6
i believe my fi is expressed first through empathy and compassion...i don't think it's selfish. i think it places value on the self...mine and yours. the right to ones true self...the right to be authentic and genuine and demanding you and others be accepted for that. i think it's the refusal of mob mentality...i think it gives you courage to stand up for others if you perceive their basic human rights of being treated fairly and with compassion are being violated.

^:wubbie:

Fi doesn't follow the herd just because it's a herd.

Although, I have to say I'm not a weary Fi user. I'm excited to now know what Fi is and how it explains how I feel, it doesn't change anything about me by labeling it Fi. It's awesome.
 

pyramid

New member
Joined
Feb 21, 2010
Messages
101
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
9w1
thanks :) i really like this place. helps to get it out sometimes, you know.. and have people responding and actually understanding what you're talking about. :)

s alright. :)

i like your signature william k.

+1
 

Amargith

Hotel California
Joined
Nov 5, 2008
Messages
14,717
MBTI Type
ENFP
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4dw
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
I found this post to be very enlightening so I asked Uumlau if I could post it in the thread itself:

On your "weary Fi users thread" since it not only excludes SFPs, but also NTJs ...

Fi is selfish, but what people often don't realize is that Ti is just as selfish. For shorthand, let us call the entities that Fi processes "feelings" and the entities that Ti processes "ideas."

Fi users predominantly use Te, and Ti users predominantly use Fe. So Fi is selfish about feelings, but unselfish about ideas. Ti is selfish about ideas, but not selfish about feelings.

For Fi users, it's about what I feel, what I feel, what I feel. For Ti users, it's all about what I think, what I think, what I think.

Fe/Ti tries to communicate with Fi, but can get stuck on this selfishness crosstalk. Fe's feelings are shared: feelings are precisely how you connect with other people. If you're not sharing your feelings, if you do not adjust your feelings to accomodate others, you're being selfish. But remember, this is all because Fe is a primary communication tool: by hiding one's own feelings, by not adjusting one's own feelings in response to others, of course it looks selfish to Fe.

However, the same thing is true between Te and Ti. When I talk with someone using Te, there is a free flow of ideas. The ideas change and alter on the fly, we work together to develop new ideas, to share ideas. We connect and communicate via ideas. Enter the Ti user, who alternately seems like a brick wall, black hole, or source of technically correct and accurate but useless and noncommunicative information (think Microsoft Technical Support). With Te, I can't tell a Ti user a damn thing. I present ideas to the Ti user, who only procedes to pick them apart, accuse me of being inconsistant or incomplete or shallow. In the meantime, I hardly get any clue what the Ti user thinks. I get no "hooks" with which to show him where he might have some bad assumptions. He rejects my ideas based on his bad assumptions, and keeps on saying things like, "I don't understand how that could be true," and leaving me without a clue on which stupid idea he has in his head that makes him possibly think it couldn't be true. Why? Because he has to figure it all out for himself, selfish bastard. He can't trust even for a moment that I might be correct.

Thing is, though, that's just my impression. What really goes on is that he is self-doubting. He is unsure. But it's Ti, so he doesn't express it. He's Ti, so he has a lot of trouble expressing his confusion. If his ideas are wrong, then there is something seriously wrong with him, and he's going to take a long time to refigure them out.

Now, reverse that, and that's how Fe/Ti views us. Their feelings aren't shallow, they just feel that way to us. They share and develop feelings together, with other people as a means of connecting, and Fi users refuse that connection, which hurts them. We reject their feelings (because we feel they're "forcing them on us"), and that hurts them. We wish them happiness and all sorts of abstract positive things, but we don't respond to their particular feelings, which hurts them.

I think that Fe arrives at certain kinds of spiritual understanding faster than Fi. The understanding is shallower, perhaps, but it is no less true, and it is more than Fi immediately understands. However, when Fi arrives at the same understanding, it is much deeper, more thoroughly understood, and implies other truths of which Fe is not immediately aware. I base this off of the Te/Ti analogy: I understand what is true much faster your typical Ti user, which is great for problem solving, but the Ti user will develop a level of understanding I will rarely reach (I'm strong in Ti, but I use it to delve into particular topics, and only up to the point where I have enough info to go into Te mode again).

The big difference between the Fi and Ti cases, though, is that Ti can eventually be translated into objective truth, through real life examples where experiment vindicates theory. Fi truths can't be proven, they can only be discovered for oneself. I can share a pic of hands holding a sun, and explain how that shows me so many truths about life, but other people either "get it" or not.

So it really isn't selfishness, on the part of Ti or Fi. Selfishness is solely an issue of maturity, and this forum in particular has a bad habit of blaming immature behavior on types. The type only gives a basic indication of how immaturity will typically be expressed, it isn't the source of the immaturity.
 

CrystalViolet

lab rat extraordinaire
Joined
Oct 24, 2008
Messages
2,152
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XNFP
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5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
Fi....It's so hard to describe for other people at times, and especially what it means to me.
I guess it's the fire in ma belly. It's what keeps me going long after I should have given up. It can be a curse, and it can be a blessing. It's what makes me uncomprimising to the point of being a brick wall. It's what makes me all gooey and soft for those that I love.
It's like liquid mercury....a burning sun...the warm sea, ever changable and hard to grasp.
It's like an impressionist painting, the colour and form make a hazy picture. I can't always put into language what it is I feel, it's a little too intense at times.
What this means to me, I have no idea. It just is. I can't shut it off, I'm not sure I would if I had the option to be honest. If you can't feel pain, how do you know you are still alive? If you don't feel happiness, what motivates you in the dark times.
Some times I think there is disrespect for Fi, because in some ways it comes across as a primal, and viseral function, which is about lack of control...but I wish I could remember the quote, I think made by George Washington, about the sons of farmers becoming peots. Hunters and gathers, even nation builders and pioneers didn't have the time to sit down and write poetry....it's only when society is in place, and infrastructure is firmly established, do the artists, and the writers etc have a secure place in society, that is when society is evolved enough to support such endevours. I'm noting these pursuits aren't solely the domain of Fi users, but we are drawn to them.
 

Seymour

Vaguely Precise
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Sep 22, 2009
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1,579
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sx/so
First of all, I'd like to apologize in advance that most of this will be Fi (and more tentatively, Ti) from an Ne perspective. While I feel that I can occasionally peer over the fence into Thinking territory, I remain pretty Sensing challenged. This also re-iterates a lot of what others have said, but I was trying to gather up various thoughts into a single post.

How Fi is like Ti

To paraphrase Jung "everything that is true of Ti is true of Fi, substituting Thinking for Feeling." It may be hard for Ti-users to fully appreciate, but I think there is a lot of truth there.

Both Ti and Fi tend to work from universal principles, tending to ignore surrounding prevailing standards. For Ti, those principles are founded in logical objectivity (although in terms of one's own theoretical system). For Fi, those principles are based on ethics, humanity and aesthetics (not that Ti lacks aesthetics). Neither Ti nor Fi place much emphasis on status or authority. In fact, both try to find the universal in the essence of the specific.

Both Ti and Fi value staying true to the essence of things. In Ti's case, it emphasizes staying true to things with logical consistency and precision. Fi demands staying true to things on the level of feelings, ethics and/or aesthetics.

Fi values staying true to one's self, one's nature, and the universal qualities of humanity. Ti values staying true to logical principles, precision and conceptual elegance.

Fi and Ti both tend to stand up for the importance of the specific reality. Fe and Te care more about general organizing principles applied consistently (and often externally), while Fi and Ti both are about adjusting understanding precisely in order to capture the underlying essence of the individual case.

Ti does have some advantages over Fi, since it is, in part, objective. Thinking, whether introverted or extraverted, more easily allows for external evaluation and validation. Logical theories and concepts can be detached from the people involved, and be both perceived and weighed for truth. Feeling doesn't have same objective measures.

The Nature of Fi

Jung states (Psychological Types, p387), "It is extremely difficult to give an intellectual account of the introverted feeling process, or even an approximate description of it, although the peculiar nature of this kind of feeling is very noticeable once one has become aware of it." Fi tends to elude verbal and logical descriptions, much to the frustration of both the Fi-user and his or her audience. This also hampers Fi-users in debate, since they are not always able to clearly explain and defend their deep understanding of the issue at hand.

Jung continues, "Conversely, with the introverted feeling type, feeling attains an abstract and universal character and can establish universal and permanent values." Introverted feeling forms principles based on those things that bind all of us together as human beings. It tends to respect the personhood, values and moral agency of the individual.

Introverted Feeling is also about harmonizing one thing to another. Actions should be harmonized with principles, deeper purposes and aesthetics. One's daily life should harmonize with one's underlying values. One person can harmonize with the feelings of another to better understand them. Fi can be rather exacting in this respect, leading to an kind of uncompromising and demanding perfectionism.

Fi is the judging function closest to the unconscious, so tends to communicate by means of feelings and primordial images.

Fi imparts value judgements before logical understanding. Therefore Fi-doms may understand something as essential, important and right long before they can defend why that is the case.

More Jung on Fi

Jung is refreshingly negative about aspects of Fi—none of the MBTI-style affirmation for him! He writes:
Jung p387 said:
[Introverted Feeling] is a feeling which seems to devalue the object and it therefore manifests itself for the most part negatively. The existence of positive feeling can be inferred only indirectly. Its aim is not to adjust itself to the object, but to subordinate it in an unconscious effort to realize the underlying images.

In a sense, introverted feeling wants to find the archetype that lies beneath, that captures the deeper essence. It seeks to relate the specific to the universal within.

Later on page 387 he says "[Fi] comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defence." He continues:

Jung p387-388 said:
The primordial images are, of course, just as much ideas as feelings. Fundamental ideas, ideas like God, freedom, and immortality, are just as much feeling-values as they are significant ideas. Everything, therefore, that we have said about introverted thinking is equally true of introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought. But the very fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic ability before the real wealth of this feeling can even be approximately presented or communicated to the world. If subjective thinking [Ti] can be understood only with difficulty because of unrelatedness, this is true in even higher degree of subjective feeling [Fi]. In order to communicate to others, it has to find an external form not only acceptable to itself, but capable of arousing a parallel feeling in them. Thanks to the relatively great inner (as well as outer) uniformity of human beings, it is actually possible to do this, though the form acceptable to feeling is extraordinarily difficult to find so long as it is still mainly oriented to the fathomless store of primordial images. If, however, feeling is falsified by an egocentric attitude, it at once becomes unsympathetic, because it i then concerned mainly with the ego. It inevitably creates the impression of sentimental self-love, of trying to make itself interesting, and even of morbid self-admiration.

Later, he says of Fi-doms (as OrangeAppled likes to quote):

Jung p389 said:
Their [Fi-doms] outward demeanor is harmonious, inconspicuous, giving an impression of pleasing repose, or of sympathetic response, with no desire to to affect others, to impress, influence, or change them in any way. If this outward aspect is more pronounced, it arouses a suspicion of indifference and coldness, which may actually turn into a disregard for the comfort and well-being of others. [...] With the normal type, however, this only happens when the influence of the object is too strong. The feeling of harmony, therefore, lasts only so long as the object goes its own moderate way and makes no attempt to cross the other's path. There is little effort to respond to the real emotions of the other person; they are more often damped down and rebuffed, or cooled off by native value judgment. Although there is a constant readiness for peaceful and harmonious co-existence, strangers are shown no touch of amiability, no gleam of responsive warmth, but are met with apparent indifference or a repelling coldness. [....]

And a bit later:

Jung p390 said:
Since this type appears cold and reserved, it might seem on a superficial view that such women have no feelings at all. But this would be quite wrong; the truth is, their feelings are intensive rather than extensive. They develop in depth. [...] an intensive sympathy, being shut off from every means of expression, acquires a passionate depth that comprises a whole world of misery and simply gets benumbed. It may perhaps break out in some extravagant form and lead to an astounding act of an almost heroic character, quite unrelated either to the subject herself or to the object that provoked the outburst. To the outside world, or to the blind eyes of the extravert, this intensive sympathy may look like coldness, because usually it does nothing visible, and an extraverted consciousness is unable to believe in invisible forces.


Fi Subjectively

Subjectively, introverted feeling tends to grant an awareness of one's own emotional state, and tends to give continual feedback in real time. Emotions are not themselves to the total of Fi judgments, but serve as valuable input to them. Fi provokes one to continually ask questions like: Is what I'm perceiving good/bad? Is this action consistent with how I feel and who I am? Is this policy consistent with our values as a company? Would I want to be treated that way if it were me?

Fi also tends to lead to continual fine tuning and adjustment. One not only adjusts one's own actions to both one's values and the situation, but one also adjusts ones understanding of others and the world as new input arrives.

Fi principles often tend to emphasize the value of each person and his or her perspective. Typical Fi values often include things like "every person deserves to be treated with respect," and "each person's viewpoint has value." Fi-users tend to value being honest, genuine and authentic over following social convention (this is not to say they are always blunt or direct). This emphasis on being authentic sometimes leads to clashes with Fe values.

Fi-users, like Ti users, can be seen as selfish: both tend to follow internal standards, so externally they may be found inconsistent or lacking. Because both Ti and Fi are highly personalized, they both can be prone to rationalization of selfish behavior (not that Te and Fe are entirely immune to this).

At it best, Fi tends to impart a kind of holistic moral resonance to one's actions and one's life. Life is lived in such a way that it reflects a deep, symbolic understanding of the world and oneself.

It is difficult to detach an Fi-dom's values from the person. In fact, Fi-doms tend to feel personally attacked when their values are attacked or criticized. Therefore, when criticizing an Fi-dom it is important to emphasis one's good intent and to give the Fi-dom time to process the critique before demanding a response.

Fi and Emotional Awareness

Excuse this series of metaphors, but I'm trying to capture what my subjective awareness of emotional state is like as I go through my day.

I feel like my emotions are ever-present companions as I go through my day. In some ways it's like going through one's day with a pet or a child at one's side. My emotions are aware of things I might consciously miss, but I can see their reactions and take them into account. I have a great deal of influence over them, but they are not under my direct conscious control. At times, they become unruly and I momentarily lose control of them. In such cases, I can't help but put everything else aside and attend to them and see to their needs (even when it irritates me to have to do so). They deepen my experience, moment to moment, as though I get to see events through a second pair of eyes. They have wisdom and perception (of a sort), but their insight doesn't always match up with my conscious one. That doesn't mean their insights should be ignored or dismissed.

My control over them is highly influential but indirect. In a way, it is like how I imagine piloting a blimp or dirigible would be. I have controls that allow me a great deal of influence, but external conditions can override my influence and cause me to lose direct control. Even the controls I manipulate directly may cause me to overcompensate and re-correcting is finicky and time consuming. Still, I know them well and they are trustworthy in normal circumstances.
 

Heart&Brain

New member
Joined
Mar 29, 2009
Messages
217
MBTI Type
ENFP
(...) Introverted Feeling is also about harmonizing one thing to another. Actions should be harmonized with principles, deeper purposes and aesthetics. One's daily life should harmonize with one's underlying values. One person can harmonize with the feelings of another to better understand them. Fi can be rather exacting in this respect, leading to an kind of uncompromising and demanding perfectionism.

Fi is the judging function closest to the unconscious, so tends to communicate by means of feelings and primordial images.

Fi imparts value judgements before logical understanding. Therefore Fi-doms may understand something as essential, important and right long before they can defend why that is the case. (...)

I liked the entire post a lot, Seymour. Fi is such a complex function and so much more than having or expressing common human emotions.

Right now, I'm interested in how other xNFPs relate to the above quote.

I know it as both enthusiasm and scepticism. In the first case, a feeling that an insight starts to materialise, come together and resonate with a lot of other concerns and feelings. I think of this 'harmonising' or inner 'resonance' as a nearly irrefutable sense of partial insights being *right*, not contradicting or excluding eachother, but actually helping other basic insights getting deeper and fuller. It's a feeling of 'blessedness' (says the atheist... :doh: :cheese: ), of witnessing importance, being offered a connection with the whole world (seen under this one aspect). There's no words, sentences, rules or propositions at first, it's more like a promise of a universal quality. The feeling doesn't present the content exactly, so I will have to investigate and try to put some words on it, analyse it while staying true to the original feeling.

What I end up saying out loud (translating via Ne and Te? should, ideally, give the same basic 'eureka' as the initial, wordless signal. Fi is like the spontaneous 'tag' that makes something stand out and demand to be taken further care of, being integrated and analysed.


The opposite feeling, the 'bad tag', I sometimes call a "shit-detector".

It's the same 'procedure' in that I'll feel something very strongly - caution, hurt, anger, disbelief, outrage, sadness, ickyness, fear, worry...
It's a clear and strong feeling that's hard to ignore, but before knowing what it means, I'll have to focus inside myself. It's like the 'tag', the wordless burning feeling, is telling me something is wrong, that the whole "world" of things resonating and enforcing each other is falling apart if what's provoking this feeling is accepted as right and good. It must not be accepted, something doesn't add up, something I'm exposed to is dangerous or wrong or decieving.
"Being exposed to" can be all sorts of experiences: a behaviour or choice of my own that feels inexplicably 'off', a relation to someone or between other people that feels troubled, a theoretical insight that I fear will lead to bad conclusions if accepted, an innocent remark that has a hostile subtext, a novel, a painting or a play that feels fake and unconvincing, a new person that has a shallow or fake vibe.
The bullshit detector is like an instant alarm going off that something is deadwrong: that somebody is untrustworth, that a conclusion cannot be right, that a behaviour is fake or that a statement is hypocrite. But some analytical work needs to be done to find out what's wrong. But when I analyse, I find there is nearly always good reason behind the gut feeling.

I was wondering: Initially I don't know what is going on, and being Ne-dom and distractable by new inputs and ideas and connections I can unfortunately ignore the alarm at times. If it's serious, I'd have to attend to it eventually. Being Fi-doms, would that be easier for you INFPs to take the alarm-feeling serious and identify the reason for it?


Another thing I notice as quite strong about this 'noticing if things add up (Eureka!) or not (Bullshit!) is that it feels different from and much more fundamental than just being personal taste.

I mean, it's not just that *I* don't like a person or an ideology. It is more a feeling that there is objective disconnection or disharmony or inconsistency between what the person says and what they actually do, or between how they present themselves while lacking the responses that would follow IF they were indeed what they claimed. (Like the catholic church claiming moral superiority while protecting criminal child abusers for instance. < But: That sentense is not what I *think* at first. At first I just *feel* intensely sad and disgusted and outraged in a more profound manner than when I read about a single case of a disturbed man abusing a child. After analysis, like the sentence about catholicism, I may explain the cause of the feeling to others and self, as an *objective* cause, not just my 'taste'. But it begins with a feeling, a bullshit-alarm.)

What do you think about this Fi-claim of - I don't know what to call it - insight in universal or objective incoherence within a specific subject? Like having noticed a real contradiction in a person, an ethical theory, a piece of art, a political program, claiming to *be* something they simultaneously demonstrate they "Fi-logically" simply cannot be. That it'll fall apart, lacking deeper consistency.

I'm curious to the difference in Fi-aux and Fi-dom with respect to this. I imagine INFPs are much more picky, observant and less 'naive' than ENFPs, while ENFPs may overrule an inner warning for the sake of curiousity and potentiality or simply just to make something happen?
 

Stanton Moore

morose bourgeoisie
Joined
Mar 4, 2009
Messages
3,900
MBTI Type
INFP
One thing I am sure of - Fi, in my conscious awareness, has nothing to do with emotion. It is, for me, a part of cognition. Emotion can inform through those functions that gather, and emotion can arise as a result of Fi judgement, but Fi is not part of my emotional awareness or experience.


cheers,
Ian

This is my 'feeling' about it too. I would add that I consider it a meta-analytical function. It takes data and mines it for trends, then compares it to past experiences of similar things to get an over all picture of the item at hand. No emotion involved.
I don't think it has anything to do with ethics, morality or compassion. Not by itself. The vast majority of people share the same basic ethical values, so to attribute such things to a single function strikes me as illogical (translation: It doesn't 'feel' true to me).
 

OrangeAppled

Sugar Hiccup
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Mar 20, 2009
Messages
7,626
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sp/sx
I feel like my emotions are ever-present companions as I go through my day. In some ways it's like going through one's day with a pet or a child at one's side. My emotions are aware of things I might consciously miss, but I can see their reactions and take them into account. I have a great deal of influence over them, but they are not under my direct conscious control. At times, they become unruly and I momentarily lose control of them. In such cases, I can't help but put everything else aside and attend to them and see to their needs (even when it irritates me to have to do so). They deepen my experience, moment to moment, as though I get to see events through a second pair of eyes. They have wisdom and perception (of a sort), but their insight doesn't always match up with my conscious one. That doesn't mean their insights should be ignored or dismissed.

My control over them is highly influential but indirect. In a way, it is like how I imagine piloting a blimp or dirigible would be. I have controls that allow me a great deal of influence, but external conditions can override my influence and cause me to lose direct control. Even the controls I manipulate directly may cause me to overcompensate and re-correcting is finicky and time consuming. Still, I know them well and they are trustworthy in normal circumstances.

I like this a lot (I like the whole post actually). I like illustration of the relationship of Fi-doms to their emotions as that of a parent & child or a owner & their pet :D.
 

Avocado

Permabanned
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3,794
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I STILL question Fi vs Ti at times, but then again, making decisions based on logical consistency could still be an Fi value…

Plus, I'm socially awkward and WANT to be good.
 

Feline

New member
Joined
Jul 15, 2014
Messages
57
I am aware that I would be adding another post in a long string of INFP posts. Probably everything I could say has already been said. Fi is that function all of us Fi-Te folks prefer. Lots of interest in ethics.
 
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