[ENFP] ENFP and being judged/judging others

[Lily flower]

I have an ENFP who is a great friend. I would say one of her only faults is that she is very judgmental of other people, and she also feels judged personally even if someone has an opinion that is not directly related to her. Is this a normal ENFP thing? Is there some way to state my opinions about things, while not making them seem like they are judgments about her?

 

[Starry]

I find that I am suspicious of things like ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in others…and can be judgmental of groups that possess those things when I feel they are taken for granted or abused (if another’s power/privilege infringes on the rights of others). But I would never consider myself a person that is judgmental of individuals. In fact, I believe ENFPs are known for their acceptance of others…their desire to ‘live and let live’.

I want to say that your friend is not the norm when it comes to ENFPs but perhaps I’m wrong. What kind of judgment are you talking about?

 

[mujigay]

ENFPs I know are far more likely to pratice reverse-judgementalism, I suppose. They will not tolerate those who judge things percieved to be out of the ordinary.

 

[alcea rosea]

I would say your friend has a low self-asteem no matter of her type. She might be protecting herself (being easily offended, judging herself easily).

 

[Lily flower]

I find that I am suspicious of things like ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in others…and can be judgmental of groups that possess those things when I feel they are taken for granted or abused (if another’s power/privilege infringes on the rights of others). But I would never consider myself a person that is judgmental of individuals. In fact, I believe ENFPs are known for their acceptance of others…their desire to ‘live and let live’.

I want to say that your friend is not the norm when it comes to ENFPs but perhaps I’m wrong. What kind of judgment are you talking about?

It's usually judgments about other parents - they aren't teaching their children to behave, they are letting their chidren be immoral, or things like - I suspect that person is cheating someone.

 

[SilkRoad]

Sounds a little bit like my friend who is probably ENFP. Could it be a sort of thinking aloud/tossing ideas around thing? It may not be a fixed opinion on the person.

My friend is more likely to say harsh things about others than I am, and sometimes to fall out with people dramatically, but she also makes up with people and forgives them a lot more easily than I do. I'm less likely to say judgmental things about specific people (though I can be pretty judgmental about groups sometimes, I admit), or to be harsh, or to have dramatic arguments and fall out with them. However, IF I get to that stage, there is probably no turning back; ie. my bad opinion of the person is likely to stay bad, or I might never want them in my life again.

My friend also takes things much more personally than I do - things which I would really just see as small and be inclined to let go. She can get very upset over a perceived slight which in many cases almost certainly had nothing to do with her at all. However, she also gets over those things fairly easily, in a lot of cases (though not all.)

 

[Elfboy]

you'd think an ENFP 7w8 would be a pretty non-judgmental person, but under stress I am a judgmental little bitch. stress 1 + STJ shadow functions + Ne/Te loop topped off by wing 8 = potential for VERY judgmental person under stress.

 

[mmhmm]

i have a tendency to judge people quickly.
though it's based on just whatever i've
observed thus far, so the judgments i pass
aren't always correct.

but when i see things and am sure of it, but
not a lot/none of other people have seen it yet...
they tend to think i'm being judgmental at first,
but i have an endless supply of "i told you so's"
(this is like... one of the biggest recurring themes
in my life when interacting with others. )

when i actually feel judged, it's mostly because
i'm being denied something. like if someone
blocks, or stops me based on their
judgement/good intentions/whatever. it makes
me feel very isolated and unsupported. especially
if it's people that are close to me. it's because if
i tell somebody about it, it's because i want to
share it with somebody, not because i need
a greenlight.

and that's why i don't even understand why they try
to stop me. it's not like they've ever managed to
stop me from doing anything i wanted. ever.
not even my parents when i was little. i'll always
find a way around it. always.

 

[King sns]

ENFPs I know are far more likely to pratice reverse-judgementalism, I suppose. They will not tolerate those who judge things percieved to be out of the ordinary.

Yeah well prejudice against reverse judgementalism is just intolerant and wrong!

 

[Zarathustra]

I have an ENFP who is a great friend. I would say one of her only faults is that she is very judgmental of other people, and she also feels judged personally even if someone has an opinion that is not directly related to her. Is this a normal ENFP thing?

Yes.

On the first part: they are way more judgmental than they realize (see below).

On the second: because Fi is so high, everything goes back to them, which is why they feel like they're being judged.

Is there some way to state my opinions about things, while not making them seem like they are judgments about her?

No.

E(N)FPs think everything is about them.

I find that I am suspicious of things like ‘power’ and ‘privilege’ in others…and can be judgmental of groups that possess those things when I feel they are taken for granted or abused (if another’s power/privilege infringes on the rights of others). But I would never consider myself a person that is judgmental of individuals. In fact, I believe ENFPs are known for their acceptance of others…their desire to ‘live and let live’.

I want to say that your friend is not the norm when it comes to ENFPs but perhaps I’m wrong. What kind of judgment are you talking about?

You are probably a lot more judgmental than you realize.

Not in the usual sense, but in an ENFP kinda way (kinda like you described).

You won't think of it as being "judgmental", but it is, just in its own way.

ENFPs I know are far more likely to pratice reverse-judgementalism, I suppose. They will not tolerate those who judge things percieved to be out of the ordinary.

This.

I would say your friend has a low self-asteem no matter of her type. She might be protecting herself (being easily offended, judging herself easily).

Could somewhat be the case, but could very much be other things as well.

Knowing the OP's posting history, I'd give the friend the benefit of the doubt.

Yeah well prejudice against reverse judgementalism is just intolerant and wrong!

:girlpower:

 

[Glycerine]

In some ways, my ENFP sis is much more judgmental than me, the ENFJ pertaining to her values. She's rammed her values down my throat countless times. On the other hand, I am much more judgmental on how things should be. I would say I am more tolerant to different opinions than my own but she's more open to new things.

 

[ceecee]

It's usually judgments about other parents - they aren't teaching their children to behave, they are letting their chidren be immoral, or things like - I suspect that person is cheating someone.

I don't even know that this is judging. This is more like someone who just likes drama or churchgoing gossip - mostly directed at the immoral comment. I couldn't consider this type of person a great friend though, she could easily see you as immoral or a terrible parent or anything she feels is outside her tiny box of acceptable behavior. Or reverse-judgementalism as someone mentioned.

 

[sculpting]

I have an ENFP who is a great friend. I would say one of her only faults is that she is very judgmental of other people, and she also feels judged personally even if someone has an opinion that is not directly related to her. Is this a normal ENFP thing? Is there some way to state my opinions about things, while not making them seem like they are judgments about her?

Z mostly is correct.

one note on this comment "someone has an opinion that is not directly related to her".

I have seen an Fe/Fi communication issue pop up here-just on the off chance it is what you are seeing.

FJ: generic comment about a part of society at large (which hapens to pertain to the Fi user as a person in that part)
FP: offense at the judgement being directed to them (since they were in the designated group)
FJ: It's not all about you honey
FP: baffled as it WAS about them as they were part of the group called out.

an example between me and an enfj:

me: I explained how I received some grants due to being a single mom in college as part of a longer conversation

enfj: Single moms are so irresponsible and get rewarded by taking grant money from others

me: Are you saying I am irresponsible? (truley baffled)

enfj: no, it isnt about you.

me: But I am a single mom who received grants and you just said single moms who received grants are irresponsible

There is a weird communication break that happens here. If you did just call me irresponsible, I think that judgment is inaccurate and would like to address why you felt that way.

 

[skylights]

^ oro beat me to it.

i used to think my ENFJ bff was significantly more judgmental than i but she's actually more lax in some ways. we just judge on different terms. she's more concerned with behavior and i'm more concerned with values and meaning behind behavior. she also tends more to look at systems and group interactions, whereas i'm more focused on individual character.

for example, she's criticized my behavior before, and i've gotten offended because she's said it's "childish" or the like. then she would explain that she means my behavior is childish - it's a label that comes and goes depending on how i'm acting. for me, if i say someone is childish, i mean that person is childish. to me, if my behavior is called childish, that's a reflection on who i am, not what i'm doing (because, after all, the person generates the behavior). i do more longterm character judgment - and i think this is the difference between Fe/Se in ENFJs and Fi/Si in ENFPs. NFJs will apply behavior-based present-term criticism, but also let the judgment go as things change. NFP judgment seems to be more of a judgment on the lasting, internal qualities of a person.

so i could see how someone who tends not to judge like that could find that more harsh... but to me sometimes NFJ judgment seems too harsh because people, all people, just screw up from time to time - the idea of always being watched and judged on every tiny little thing you do makes me very uncomfortable... whereas i feel like character judgment is more of a big-picture thing. (just for the record i don't believe in "bad" or "immoral" people... so...)

as for personal judgment - yes, that's normal, i think. FP has the outlook of internal Feeling analysis, so we are always applying things to ourselves and seeing how they are weighted. i get offended when other ENFPs are knocked because i am an ENFP too... we share internal qualities and therefore an insult to one ENFP is an insult to all ENFPs. i suppose that could seem like a very me-centered outlook, but in truth it makes you more connected to others - we are all human; we are all alive; we all suffer - things like that. it helps create that big Oneness ENFPs are always going on about.

what kind of thing would you say that she could get potentially offended at? if it's a comment about a group, make sure it's not a group that includes her...

 

[sculpting]

Skylights do you think this could be generalized as a Je verses Ji thing? Exteneded to include Te as well as Fe?

I totally resonate with the notion of a more longterm, harsher judgement, rather than a momentary, short term judgement...

Fe used this way seems more like a nudge, a course correction, rather than a judgement on the innate core of the individual. However, given my own style of long, term, harsher judgement-I hear the Fe nudge as being more...intensive and hurtful? than it is intended to actually be?? Me projecting my communication style I suspect. interesting thoughts to think over...

 

[skylights]

Skylights do you think this could be generalized as a Je verses Ji thing? Exteneded to include Te as well as Fe?

yeah definitely. in particular because when i'm assessing a system (T) i just want to fix in the moment things, really - temporal external things - i don't so much do the Ti system-level analysis thing. like weighting the qualities of the system as a whole. i just want to tweak it, so it works. i assume Fe works the same especially if led by Ni or Si. tweaking to get back on track for the Ni vision / Si ideal.

I totally resonate with the notion of a more longterm, harsher judgement, rather than a momentary, short term judgement...

Fe used this way seems more like a nudge, a course correction, rather than a judgement on the innate core of the individual. However, given my own style of long, term, harsher judgement-I hear the Fe nudge as being more...intensive and hurtful? than it is intended to actually be?? Me projecting my communication style I suspect. interesting thoughts to think over...

me too... Fe judgment seems to hurt more, for whatever reason. Fi judgment is like, oh, okay, well, i should think about that. Fe judgment can feel... constraining? like it denies the internal person.

though as i say all this i recognize that most of the time i agree with the judgments of the Fe doms around me (for those who don't know... i collect ExFJs )... but when it comes to judgments between us, that gets hard. plus sometimes the Fe judgment seems unnecessarily small - funny because silk said the same thing about her probably ENFP friend's judgments. i guess we just see certain things as being less / more important than each other.

It's usually judgments about other parents - they aren't teaching their children to behave, they are letting their chidren be immoral, or things like - I suspect that person is cheating someone.

with the parents and children thing, i always feel like it's disturbing to see parents who aren't helping their kids learn to be good people because that can really mess them up for life. i remember watching some dad whose son was picking up some things he dropped in a hallway and the dad grabbed him and told him to stop, and called for a maintenance person instead... i was horrified... what does that teach the child? don't clean up after yourself, you're not responsible for your own things, maintenance people exist just to clean up your mess, it's okay to put your burdens on other people, etc...

the cheating thing may be Ne/Fi recognition of someone seeming shady, which can happen. i think INFPs are better at it, but it's the Fi authenticity thing... like their behavior doesn't match up with the rest of their person...

actually now that i think about it [MENTION=10423]Lily flower[/MENTION] your friend sounds like an ENFP leaning a bit Fi heavy - being a bit meddling (the 2nd function theoretically being the one which we use to connect to others) - nitpicking values, etc... engage her Ne and/or Te and she'll likely back off some... so basically dive into ideas (sharing Ni thoughts will work well) or just be very, very objective...

E(N)FPs think everything is about them.

everything is about us, Z, because we are all connected... but it's okay, everything is about you, too.

you should know this by now

 

[SilkRoad]

Z mostly is correct.

one note on this comment "someone has an opinion that is not directly related to her".

I have seen an Fe/Fi communication issue pop up here-just on the off chance it is what you are seeing.

FJ: generic comment about a part of society at large (which hapens to pertain to the Fi user as a person in that part)
FP: offense at the judgement being directed to them (since they were in the designated group)
FJ: It's not all about you honey
FP: baffled as it WAS about them as they were part of the group called out.

an example between me and an enfj:

me: I explained how I received some grants due to being a single mom in college as part of a longer conversation

enfj: Single moms are so irresponsible and get rewarded by taking grant money from others

me: Are you saying I am irresponsible? (truley baffled)

enfj: no, it isnt about you.

me: But I am a single mom who received grants and you just said single moms who received grants are irresponsible

There is a weird communication break that happens here. If you did just call me irresponsible, I think that judgment is inaccurate and would like to address why you felt that way.

YES...this sounds very familiar with discussions between me (FJ) and (at times) FPs.

Although, I might try to be more diplomatic. I would probably say "MANY single moms are so irresponsible." Which I think is more diplomatic, but would probably still result in exactly the same communication problems between us!


EDIT: For example: My xNFP friend is in a bit of a bind currently as she rather precipitately married a guy from another country who can't easily emigrate to this one. There is a language requirement for him to get a visa, even as the spouse of a citizen of this country, and he speaks very little English. My friend is totally pissed off about this and keeps going on about how the law is racist. I don't agree that it's racist, so I've said things like "In principle I agree with this law, and I can understand why it's been implemented. However, I can understand that it has a really major impact and can sometimes prove to be kind of unfair." She doesn't like this much. I suspect that she is hearing it as "you deserve to be in this situation and the law is always 100% right, and even though it's racist I agree with it" which is not what I am saying. But I'm not going to compromise what I think to make her feel better, so...

(In case that sounds totally unsympathetic; she's ended up in situations like this a lot, over several years I've known her, and I guess I'm suffering from compassion fatigue...)

 

[skylights]

well i'm blathering on anyway so i'm just going to continue

anyway silk yeahh to me this:

"In principle I agree with this law, and I can understand why it's been implemented. However, I can understand that it has a really major impact and can sometimes prove to be kind of unfair."

essentially translates to:

"i can see that this is causing a lot of problems in your life but that's not really important enough to reconsider the law."

plus the carefulness of the way you've worded it would make me feel a little uncomfortable... always happens with me and ENFJ bff. it makes me feel like she's trying to put distance between the two of us, which i feel acutely and makes me less trusting of her. i know to Fe that's just what makes sense, but to Fi, we feel the way it's worded...

anyway odd as it probably seems sometimes it'd probably be easier to just hear "i don't think it's a racist law - that has nothing to do with race, it's to do with language and being able to read and comply with federal documentation, and it's your own fault you two are in this bind because the law was pre-existent to your marriage, not vice versa."

i mean, you can't really argue with the Te logic

 

[SilkRoad]

well i'm blathering on anyway so i'm just going to continue

anyway silk yeahh to me this:



essentially translates to:

"i can see that this is causing a lot of problems in your life but that's not really important enough to reconsider the law."

plus the carefulness of the way you've worded it would make me feel a little uncomfortable... always happens with me and ENFJ bff. it makes me feel like she's trying to put distance between the two of us, which i feel acutely and makes me less trusting of her. i know to Fe that's just what makes sense, but to Fi, we feel the way it's worded...

anyway odd as it probably seems sometimes it'd probably be easier to just hear "i don't think it's a racist law - that has nothing to do with race, it's to do with language and being able to read and comply with federal documentation, and it's your own fault you two are in this bind because the law was pre-existent to your marriage, not vice versa."

i mean, you can't really argue with the Te logic

Well...to be very honest, I probably am trying to put a bit of distance. There has been a lot of drama, she has had a lot of (in many cases self-inflicted) problems, there was a bit of a blow to our mutual trust late last year around when she married the guy (ie. she knew I wouldn't have approved of the way things went down, but she planned a trip AND asked me for financial and other forms of help while keeping me in the dark about what was really going on, etc.) So even if that's how it's coming across - and I can totally understand how it would - I don't really regret it.

Your suggestion for the "Te logic" response - well, she does recognize and acknowledge that she got herself into this situation. I guess partly because of that I don't feel I need to force it down her throat, and I suspect that's how it would come across. A lot of the time I just end up saying "uh huh uh huh" and nodding along but some things demand more of a response. She thinks it's a racist law because the guy is from the Middle East, and people from other European Union countries can come here without a language requirement. But that's because this is a European Union country. Politically this is just how it is. Then she says "oh, Polish people come here and they can't speak English and they mooch off the system!" Uh, racist? Most of the Polish people I know speak good English and work hard, but anyway..............

Basically, you have to know the whole back story to really get this. She kind of thinks the world revolves around the Middle East and people from there. I guess I get annoyed partly because I don't think she would care about this "racist" law in the slightest if it didn't affect her and her husband from this particular part of the world. But she's written to her local government representative and made it sound like she's on a crusade for justice in general. I don't see it that way.

I feel sometimes with her as though she is operating on a form of logic that is completely internal to her and which is therefore never going to make sense to me. She'll say things like "I know this is wrong [I think she means "Fe wrong", effectively] but I have to do it anyway, because it's right for me ["Fi right"?]. And she probably thinks I'm inflexible or something. No wonder we get frustrated with each other.

 

[skylights]

[MENTION=7063]SilkRoad[/MENTION]

sorry, wasn't trying to suggest that's how you should talk to her. was just trying to give an example for lily flower for how to speak in a Te manner that's judgmental but really wouldn't offend an ENFP at a Feeling level.

she sounds like she has adopted an issue and is kind of letting everything go to hell around it... can't say that's really something foreign to me

I feel sometimes with her as though she is operating on a form of logic that is completely internal to her and which is therefore never going to make sense to me. She'll say things like "I know this is wrong [I think she means "Fe wrong", effectively] but I have to do it anyway, because it's right for me ["Fi right"?]. And she probably thinks I'm inflexible or something. No wonder we get frustrated with each other.

i bet you're totally right... i think we forget how "quiet"/hidden our Fi is, too. i know my best friend gets frustrated with me about that.