edited a few times, sorry if you caught me before editing. it's come off more intense than i intended, trying to fix that. also as a giant wall of text, trying to fix that one too
I can't believe you thought the MIL was being "cruel" by
venting given that you would actually say this to someone. Why is it necessary to call the person names instead of just "I can't deal with you in my life, goodbye"? It looks to me like you're "venting" to the actual person!!
I can understand you saying "step 5" (sort of), and I can understand you saying the MIL is cruel. I seriously can't understand the same person doing both, though.
fidelia said:
the above stuff from O seems harsher to me than venting privately with someone who will not pass it on. It seems much more conclusive that the person in question is a bad person, rather than that their behaviour is bad, but could be amended.
i think some of the difference is that you're saying it to that person's face and not behind their back. at least when it's to their face it's private and they can defend themself. when it's behind their back, it's defaming them to other people, and they don't have any opportunity to explain their behavior from their own perspective.
why speaking behind someone's back seems instinctually offensive to an FP
even though i have come to a point in my life where i have a trusted friend to vent to, and i do err to the side of checking with a trusted person when i am not sure how to proceed with someone, it still seems a bit disingenuous to talk about someone else, even if it's with good intent. when i check in with you guys here it seems totally okay because it's very anonymous, no one is getting bad impressions of themselves created. but when it's not anonymous, there's no real guarantee that a person you confide in won't pass it on... you just happen to trust them... but that falls through sometimes, and that could create so much pain coming from people who don't even know what they're talking about, who don't know the whole story. in the situation orobas described, she does know the whole story. and if the judgment is wrong, the other person can argue against it. that's the Te aspect, i think, it's almost a challenge in some ways. a posit. "you're this, unless you prove it otherwise."
there's no fair opportunity for that sort of forum when you talk behind someone else's back. it's like holding court without the defendant being allowed to be there, just prosecutor and jury. we hope the jury will see fairly and give good feedback, but it's still sort of unfair to the defendant, who doesn't even have any idea court is taking place. and of course the prosecutor is also the judge, so that's kind of messy too... the Fi method is more like keep your opinions to yourself until the person's behavior becomes unacceptable (it's actively harming someone), at which point you just confront them, either in private with them or in a public forum, but what really matters to it being fair is that they have the opportunity to defend themselves. i imagine this is highly uncomfortable for Fe users, but it is generally a fast and clean method of resolution between two FPs, or an FP and a TJ.
why Fe-style judgment seems instinctually repelling to me
i do understand why the language i use in argument really sucks and can hurt others, and how my style of confrontation can be confusing when there has been little prior warning and suddenly there is a huge angry explosion. i also have grown to a point where i see why bouncing my judgments off others is important, though i probably do not do it as gracefully as i should, not nearly as much so as a Fe dom or aux.
however, i still am not totally convinced that telling someone what you think of them is usually more harmful than spreading negative talk about them. you still think the same thing regardless... and how much harder is it going to be for that person to change when people around them think that they are like that? this Fe perspective really confuses me on an instinctual level, if i don't try hard to change my immediate cognition patterns. my instinct says - why not just talk to them directly? are you just afraid of a reaction from them? i mean that's really how Fe comes off sometimes, kind of cowardly. not saying Fe users are cowardly, but that's kind of how the behavior reads to Fi sometimes. like the Fe user is afraid to stand up to the other person so they talk about the accused behind their backs, where that person can't hurt them. instead, they build up a group of people who see their side of the story while turning them against the person they dislike, and finally they bring the issue to light only when they feel safely bolstered by the people around them. and then you wonder why an accused FP lashes out!
obviously this is not what i think of Fe users, but
how it feels sometimes. how the other perspective can seem equally, if not more, damaging.
i know that's not how it feels to you guys, and thanks to many of the wonderful members on this form, z buck and fidelia included, i am making leaps and bounds in understanding the other perspective, but for those who are taken aback, please try to understand from our side of the equation too. you're like
; to us but we feel the same way.
why ENFPs say mean things when they yell
it's crucial to note that Fi users don't tend to voice our judgments until we think it is
really important - until we think we absolutely need to say something because someone is getting very seriously hurt. i think this ties into the harsher language that we may tend to use when we lash out - it's like a dam letting out! which is not good, but at least it's rational.
still, in some ways i don't find "you're a fucking piece of trash" as serious as FJ guilt trips or directives. it's wording that conveys a lot of hurt emotion but not a lot of meaning, while FJ wording, as i experience it, tends to summarily tell you exactly how you are depraved, why the FJ is so much better than you, how you have hurt the FJ so badly, and basically all the other reasons you ought to just go throw yourself over a bridge. just call me a piece of trash and let me yell at you some, it's a whole lot easier to deal with. is that odd? it's almost like protective wording, in a way. i'm sure to some of you this will sound like WTF but i mean that. it's a crap argument, it allows you to speak emotion and vent emotion without really wounding the other person in a place that matters. if i wanted to say something awful, i would say how you're just messed up because your dad never loved you, or something that could really tear down a person. i dunno, even the wording orobas used in step 5 isn't nearly as bad as it could be. i mean, look, "Have some pride in yourself and quite being a fucking scavenger" - have some pride in yourself. she's
supporting the person even as she yells at them. obviously she hasn't completely given up on this person, obviously she thinks that this person has the
ability to be a good person. asking why someone thinks it's okay to be a parasite... i mean, it's kind of a valid question. saying the other person is lazy, not that big of a deal, they can fix that. i don't understand how expressing these things to someone is possibly more harmful than cutting them down behind their back, when they can't argue back...
i do think it's also immensely important to note that we don't have Fe to create distance with, so ENFPs end up pushing with spiteful Fi and a barrage of Te. we don't have the advantage of being able to wall off our mental space with Fe and introvert into Ni - we
have to continue to be receptive to our environments because they are our primary source of information (unless we are expected to change type overnight). so an explosive argument like that really is just a GET THE HELL AWAY STOP IT PLEASE NOW. our judgment requires introverting the Feeling around us, so we are introverting all that negativity that has been building - you can see how it would be very painful to experience something like this, and why we might react in an explosive sort of manner once we deem it appropriate to finally speak. and why it's so fast and intense. i assume this is also why NFPs seem to have a quicker "recovery" time than NFJs after an argument - we lack the ability to block off our environments, so it'd be logical for us to want to reconcile with the exterior as soon as possible.
actually, i imagine this difference in our ability to create distance could explain a whole host of factors. will be interesting to think about.
why Fi judgment is really not final
i don't know if all Fi users believe this, but i have an enduring belief in the baseline goodness of all people, so even if someone has chosen to be a certain harmful way, that does not mean that they cannot change. hopefully it would. unless they've done something so terribly unforgivable that you just can't look back (i don't really know what that would entail personally), in all likelihood, your judgment is going to change. huxley pointed it out on another thread, that NFPs are rarely, if ever, really "done" with someone. i'm not sure why this "final judgment" seems so bad, it's just a conclusion at the time. it can change if circumstances change? and consider how that conditional was worded -
if you do this, you are that. how do you stop being that? stop doing this. it's the same thing as Fe judging behavior, really. we just see it from a perspective of underlying moral principles.
that's why this:
if you dont take the initiative to feed and clothe them, you are a piece of trash
is a conditional statement.
afterword
ideally, i think we would speak to others' faces (like Fi) when we are concerned, ahead of things getting to be too much for us to handle (like Fe), and we would not share too much judgment (like Fi), and we would not use harsh wording (like Fe).
all in all i honestly don't think Fi and Fe are that different, we just conceptualize things very differently and end up starting at different places, which makes the processes look so different and makes rifts between us. but at the end of the day both sides are just interested in taking care of people.
Nothing bad/wrong./etc. just...
