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[ENFP] ENFP empaths? How is this possible

Lady_X

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that sounds exactly right intp.

and viridian...ughh...watching people either make an ass of them self or be humiliated is horrible! i feel so embarrassed for them! it's so uncomfortable!
 

Laurie

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Only person I ever knew who claimed to be an empath is ISFJ.
 

EcK

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emotions are not internalized states, they are internal states. mirror neurons take whats happening outside and inserting that thing in your head, and making other neurons react to it as if it were happening inside your head, not with someone else. this is exactly what empathy is about.

if someone smiles and your mirror neurons respond to that, you smile, and because you smile, you feel happy. if someone is anxious and your mirror neurons respond to that, your body will start to act as if you were anxious, and because your get an anxious response, you feel anxious. etc etc and this doesent happen only with simplistic things like those examples, especially with people who have high functioning mirror neuron system, those people are able to mimic more complex things, resulting in more accurate mimicing, resulting in more accurate and more "intruding" feelings of mimicry and thus creating more accurate and intruding feelings of empathy

learn the basics and then talk(like i said, use google or go read a book), this is just waste of my time

Yes so you corrected me by saying what I said and modifying your previous statement.. that is, interesting.

edit: yes thanks for the grammar check, I meant internal of course.
 

Thalassa

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Interesting... I do also have that kind of "What if that was me?" reaction whenever horror movies are involved, as well as the instinctive response to scary stuff. That's a big part of why I dislike watching horror films - it kind of feels real, in a way...

Horror movies aren't real. The only thing that really scares me is stuff that's realistic like Zodiac. But even then I'm not so scared I can't watch it, it's just that the Zodiac killer was real, for example.

Still one of my favorite films.




Yeah, detachment towards fiction is something I need to work on, as a college student - not necessarily because I have such strong feelings, but because it makes me a bit uncomfortable to analyze someone else's work like that...

It makes you uncomfortable to analyze someone else's work? Why?



Maybe it was a trigger? Reminded her of past unhealthy relationships, brought up bad memories?

No first she was like "well maybe I see love more like Jane Eyre and you see it more like Wuthering Heights, but I think Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is unhealthy so I don't even want to read it."

And inwardly I'm thinking, "you stupid child, you only read books you can relate to? And are you passive-aggressively insulting me you twat?" Instead I said, "there's more to Wuthering Heights than Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship, and you'll never know that unless you read it."

Then she made some excuse about how she only likes to read certain books that she likes. It's fucking ghey. She's about 30 years old and went to grad school. I think she should grow the fuck up.

We're not really acquainted anymore. Not because of that, though.
 

INTP

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Yes so you corrected me by saying what I said and modifying your previous statement.. that is, interesting.

i didnt modify my last statement, i just explained further since you didnt understand it properly and started crying something
 

EcK

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i didnt modify my last statement, i just explained further since you didnt understand it properly and started crying something

You're funny boy. But no, thats not what you did. Thats not what you ever do. You always use obvious cop out strategies and never address the holes in your data or logic. I hope for you you re not an actual peer reviewed scientist because well. I fear the repeated ridicule would be hard on what is obviously already a quite insecure person. And that is, by the way, how you do ad hominem attacks.

Now I could break down your posts but I fear your delusion of intelligence and biases blind you. Can't be bothered, as you d say.
 

INTP

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You're funny boy. But no, thats not what you did. Thats not what you ever do. You always use obvious cop out strategies and never address the holes in your data or logic.

no thats what you did, you disagreed with me, i explained further, you agreed with me and claimed that i had changed my position, most likely cuz ego tears. show me where i changed my position with this or QQ
 

Lady_X

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Why is it immature to only read or watch things you like?

The point should be about enjoyment... Right?
Why bother if you don't feel emotionally or intellectually stimulated in a way you enjoy?
 

Tiltyred

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I think Wuthering Heights is meant to be disturbing, but I wouldn't reject a book because it's disturbing. I like a certain amount of emotional engagement and I'm fascinated by relationships of any kind. For me personally, though, I have come to respect the damage it does to my mood and general outlook to stay too long with or get too wrapped up in dark things. A movie may not be real, but the ideas behind it are real -- someone wishes to portray torture or evil so much that they go to the time and expense of making a movie of it-- just the fact that someone is so delighted with this stuff or think other people will be that they produce it for mass consumption disturbs me and can depress me off and on for the rest of my life. I can critique with the best of them, I think; I know how to disengage and employ critical analysis -- but movies and literature are strictly free time activities in my life, and my choice is to keep it where my equilibrium is not devastated and I'm later haunted by images I'd prefer not to have seen or imagined. If it's great art, I might venture -- but even then, I might not. It's not good for my mental health. Like I said, if you want that from me, you'd have to pay me. I need more incentive than "it's good to experience different things." I agree with the idea, but for me, I've seen and experienced just about all I care to.

I think I get what you're saying, Marm, about someone who rejects without examining. Maybe it's like my friend from Eritrea who took me to a restaurant serving her native food, which is eaten communally, with the fingers. She was so pleased that I would go there with her. She said other people said No Way as soon as she told them they would not be eating with a knife and fork. I do scorn a provincial mind.
 

Thalassa

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Why is it immature to only read or watch things you like?

The point should be about enjoyment... Right?
Why bother if you don't feel emotionally or intellectually stimulated in a way you enjoy?

It's not a genre she doesn't like, though. She reads Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte...it's not like I was asking her to read horror novels or some sci-fi she wasn't interested in. To me, yes, it seems childish to not be able to detach enough to read critically, and to actually classify a great work like Wuthering Heights (some academics now say it's actually the more mature work than Jane Eyre because it deals with so many levels of human and societal issues, where as in the time it was written it was superficially rejected as being "evil" and "sinful" etc.) based on the relationship between the two characters supposedly being "unhealthy" (WHEN SHE HASN'T EVEN READ THE BOOK) seems very childish to me yes. I wasn't asking her to go outside of her genre, and furthermore, I didn't like that she presumed I only read things that I can relate to, and it made me think she wasn't capable of reading critically. I think it's a great waste if you can't read *about* people/characters you don't relate to, and analyze them critically, or try to understand different viewpoints.
 

Betty Blue

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Despite being an eternal optomist and idealist i am also able to see how fucked up and discriminatory the world is and how that impacts unfairly on individuals. I gets a strong identity probably more in line with the general empathy of the worlds sufferings but feel it strongly with individuals, maybe like vibrations travelling from a macrocosm to a micro (micro being the feelings of an individual). I havn't thought it through, that just seemed to make sense in my head. And no, i'm not a fucking hippie.
 

Lady_X

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Alright alright I think I hear ya... She' s just being closed minded about it?

I know a lot of people judge others in this way. I just don't...

I do wonder why people enjoy watching sick and disturbing things tho...that's more concerning to me than someone unwilling to give something a chance.
 

UniqueMixture

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Why is it immature to only read or watch things you like?

The point should be about enjoyment... Right?
Why bother if you don't feel emotionally or intellectually stimulated in a way you enjoy?

To challenge yourself? To grow. As long as it isn't emotionally/mentally harmful to you of course

Psychologically enjoying an experience is highly correlated to being exposed to it. Like a song on the radio that you may at first hate but later grows on you
 

Thalassa

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I need more incentive than "it's good to experience different things." I agree with the idea, but for me, I've seen and experienced just about all I care to.

Maybe it's my age or my personality or both, but I still want to read about and watch things about people I don't understand. I don't know what happened, but when I was in college, I wanted to start challenging my values, even. I remember writing a paper for one of my classes empathizing with why people in the South choose to be conservative Republicans, though on the surface they seem to represent something that would offend my values, I actually went into depth about the fear of government taking land away from families, as they did in the Appalachians during the 1940's, as well as their culture being challenged. People like their culture and where they come from, and change can represent a threat to their way of life, etc.

I think I've always been this way, though. I read The Stranger more than once, because I wanted to grasp a perfectly amoral person. One of the reasons why I spend so much time on-line arguing with people, too, is that I'm fascinated by the range of people (but then I get annoyed if I see too many of the same "type" - not personality type, but type with that perspective or belief system - and ascertain that what they're saying doesn't have that much depth or solid intellectual defense).

Anyway, when it comes to people who are labelled "sick" or "twisted" I think I would be deficient of proper understanding or empathy myself if I didn't at least try to understand their perspective. This doesn't mean that I don't still think that Ted Bundy should have gotten the death penalty, but it does mean I want to try to understand people like him, and various other people who I cannot relate to.

I want to see what is human about all people, and try to see what their rationale is, even if I utterly disagree with it.
 

Thalassa

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I do wonder why people enjoy watching sick and disturbing things tho...that's more concerning to me than someone unwilling to give something a chance.

It's concerning when people watch it all the time, and that's all they watch, and they seem to get some kind of glee out of watching people being tortured or what have you.

But watching it at all isn't a sign of anything, really. Even the old fairy tales and old religious texts in the Bible contain things like vengeance, violence, incest, etc. People have frankly always been people, and the "darker" side of humanity is a part of who we are, and you can't really understand humanity if you don't try to understand all of it.

Viewing something through our own value system and time period isn't always the way to judge an event or a movement or a work of art.

The girl I'm mentioning is a very intelligent, very educated IxFJ. She's totally Fe and types herself as INFJ. I don't know if she's INFJ or she's actually an ISFJ who feels threatened by new data that challenges what she feels comfortable with aesthetically.
 

Lady_X

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Ughhhh I just responded and lost it somehow.
 

Tiltyred

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See how you feel in another 25 years, Marm, especially if you spend that time hard at it. :) You might be ready to sit back and take her easy for a decade, too.
 

Lady_X

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Anyway... This will be shorter but I don't just watch comedies haha

I often watch movies or documentaries that devestate or disturb me in some way. I enjoy learning about others experiences even if it breaks my heart..

I can get into psychological thrillers or suspense if it's well written and complex and I can become emotionally invested in the characters but if it's torture an disgustingness the whole time. I'll go do something else.
 

Viridian

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Horror movies aren't real. The only thing that really scares me is stuff that's realistic like Zodiac. But even then I'm not so scared I can't watch it, it's just that the Zodiac killer was real, for example.

Still one of my favorite films.

...I wasn't disagreeing with you, Marm. I was describing my subjective experience, since, despite having some rusty cogs in my noggin, I'm aware that Janet Leigh wasn't really stabbed to death in a shower. ;)

Psychological horror can be just as upsetting, though...


It makes you uncomfortable to analyze someone else's work? Why?

I'm still not sure. Maybe I sort of think that dissecating a work of art is like making a negative judgment about it? Or maybe I worry that my interests might be shallow and stupid, deep down, which makes me a shallow and stupid person?

...It's complicated, okay? And convoluted, like many neuroses.

No first she was like "well maybe I see love more like Jane Eyre and you see it more like Wuthering Heights, but I think Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship is unhealthy so I don't even want to read it."

And inwardly I'm thinking, "you stupid child, you only read books you can relate to? And are you passive-aggressively insulting me you twat?" Instead I said, "there's more to Wuthering Heights than Cathy and Heathcliff's relationship, and you'll never know that unless you read it."

Then she made some excuse about how she only likes to read certain books that she likes. It's fucking ghey. She's about 30 years old and went to grad school. I think she should grow the fuck up.

We're not really acquainted anymore. Not because of that, though.

Yeah, I got it. Do you suppose she thought of you as a cynic? :/

Mind you, I find it ironic for someone to talk about being mature and call things "gay" in the same breath. No offense intended, Marm. :biggrin:

I think I get what you're saying, Marm, about someone who rejects without examining. Maybe it's like my friend from Eritrea who took me to a restaurant serving her native food, which is eaten communally, with the fingers. She was so pleased that I would go there with her. She said other people said No Way as soon as she told them they would not be eating with a knife and fork. I do scorn a provincial mind.

Heh, I think I would actually refuse to go to the restaurant as well. I hate eating food with my hands.
 

Thalassa

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[MENTION=12223]Viridian[/MENTION] I said "ghey" not gay. There are subjective perceptions of maturity. Mine may be different from yours. I was told today that reporting people is more mature than fighting ones own battles. I disagree. I have to look at it as pragmatic for staying on the forum though, because Im not feeling the subjective maturity argument.
 
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