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[Jungian Cognitive Functions] developing Fi

hilo

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This post is primarily towards those with Fe and lacking Fi in the 4 main functions (not necessarily INTP):

How do you feel about your Fi abilities (yes I realize the irony)?
Have you tried to develop it? How?


Lately this has come up as a huge weak spot for me. Before the entanglements of human relationships, I felt like Ti was my hammer, and every problem was a nail. Now I am really really waking up to the reality that going through life without knowing you you really feel, without a core set of absolutes, well, sucks. When it comes time to make a judgment for which Ti is wholly inappropriate (like, do i want to spend the rest of my life with this person? etc. big stuff), how do you figure out what you are feeling versus what you are trying to rationalize as feeling?

Does this problem even make sense?
 

uumlau

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As an INTP, you should perhaps work on Fe, first. It's more accessible to you. Fi would likely be trickier, just as Fe is the trickiest of the judging functions for me.

Check out this thread. It is also investigating Fi from the point of view of Fe.
 

entropie

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This problem makes a lot of sense yes, but I have no sample solution to it, as in Ti fail.

I had the luck to meet my INFJ and she has an amazing ability to understand what I feel, when I am not even realizing that I feel a thing atm. At the beginning I accused her of making only assumptions but in time when I started to look at myself objectively, I at least understood what she's talking about.

The thing is, at least with me, I am an ultimate victim to my surroundings, while my body and my mind live in a somewhat detached state. Meaning, while I stay stoic in my mind all the time, the body perceives the environment and lets me feel and empathize. For example when my girlfriend is pissed, I get pissed too very quickly without noticing it or if the environment of a restaurant for example is uncomfortable, I get uncomfortable. To me that is the epitome of a dominant perceiver, with the huge problem that I do not notice those changes, cause I dont pay attention to my body but rather think that I am in control.

It is a rather complicated conflinct and I have learned by paying attention to find out more about myself. For example you maybe now those situations in which you suddenly, while watching a movie, burst in tears. You didnt see that coming and then it just happens, stays on for a minute and then is gone. Those are the moments your bodily reactions emerged to that point that you even yourself notices them and if you watch the moments in which that happens you can devise a pattern. I for example found out that I do attach feelings to objects, which lets me appear to be iconoclastic or what's it called. I tend to regulary feel sad about things I for example donated to my sister when she was born and it was not sure if she was going to survive and I donated her a damned doll. That doll broke when she got 14 and I had to cry.

Well, I am probably not helping much, therefore my bottom line advice now: you need to talk about your feelings, in fact you need to talk about them a lot. If you do not have someone to talk, maybe try out a counsellor, they are quite good ( I heard :D ).

I dunno, but what I do know is talking about it, is damn good !
 

JocktheMotie

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Does this problem even make sense?

No it doesn't :cheese:

Which is why it's a tremendous problem for us. Looking forward to some of the responses from some of the older INTPs...and Fluffywolf! Though I think his answer was don't listen to Fi ever, under any circumstances.
 

Asterion

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Meditate, know how you feel inside aswell as how you feel inside.. that's probably Si :doh: . I can do this stuff, it just tends to be easier to think about the feelings of others, rather than my own. Get someone else to help too, particularly someone feelery :)
 

JocktheMotie

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Meditate, know how you feel inside aswell as how you feel inside.. that's probably Si :doh: . I can do this stuff, it just tends to be easier to think about the feelings of others, rather than my own. Get someone else to help too, particularly someone feelery :)

My problem is more along the "I can't use my own feelings or feely opinions in an argument because I don't think they're valid and I can't argue them properly."
 

wolfy

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My problem is more along the "I can't use my own feelings or feely opinions in an argument because I don't think they're valid and I can't argue them properly."

They are valid in that they are yours. You just hammer them through regardless.
 

Asterion

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My problem is more along the "I can't use my own feelings or feely opinions in an argument because I don't think they're valid and I can't argue them properly."

ahhh, I see. Well, most of emotive/feelery actions are presented in a physical way aren't they? For example, the Death Stare!! It's probably a bit easier to display your feelings with action than to translate them into English and speak them at people. Arguing with feeling would probably be a nice skill to work on though, but I think it would be hard to just develop quickly.

add: well (now that I have carefully read the OP), This is what I would define as Fi. For example, an ESFP might engage in combat to protect a friend. I, on the other hand, would try to use some kind of logic, the pros and cons, 'is it worth it?', instead of acting on value alone. Introverts might be differ here though. I'm certain that most religions try to instill you with some of these values. If you read enough books, you'll probably attain quite a few values. Freeman Dyson was probably an INTP, and he faced quite a lot of moral problems, it was quite clear that he had trouble working out where to stand from a logical point of view. As he grew older and gained more wisdom, his views became more refined too. I'm sure this naturally happens to INTPs, so long as you face the problems and don't stuff around too much :)
 

Asterion

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add: well (now that I have carefully read the OP), This is what I would define as Fi. For example, an ESFP might engage in combat to protect a friend. I, on the other hand, would try to use some kind of logic, the pros and cons, 'is it worth it?', instead of acting on value alone. Introverts might be differ here though. I'm certain that most religions try to instill you with some of these values. If you read enough books, you'll probably attain quite a few values. Freeman Dyson was probably an INTP, and he faced quite a lot of moral problems, it was quite clear that he had trouble working out where to stand from a logical point of view. As he grew older and gained more wisdom, his views became more refined too. I'm sure this naturally happens to INTPs, so long as you face the problems and don't stuff around too much :)
 

Lady_X

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curious...without fi how to you come to determine how you feel on such things as capital punishment or abortion?

example me? :)
 

hilo

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curious...without fi how to you come to determine how you feel on such things as capital punishment or abortion?

example me? :)

I think on another thread someone pointed out that you might "think" you have an opinion, then get into a sticky situation and find out how you really feel (one guy bravely exampled that he was anti-abortion up until getting his gf preggers. ha).

Personally, using abortion as an example because it does seem rather polarizing, I used to be anti, thanks to religious up-bringing. Once I lost religiosity, I had no external frame so I became ambivalent (it might be right in some cases, wrong in others). Now I would say I'm pro-choice, because I don't feel wrong about the idea in general. So perhaps that is an Fi-based judgment.

I guess my prevailing assumption has been that I have feelings, but do not know them. Is it valid to say, because I did action X I must feel this way? This seems like using Ti again.


Another thread asked if there were any beliefs you would die for (trying to get at someone's core beliefs). Of course, one of my favorite quotes for years was Russell's "I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong"

Part of my fear of Fi judgments is because (perhaps this is P nature) I am concerned that they are either fickle, or ill-judged. I like person A one minute, the next I don't. I want this outcome, wait, no I don't.
 

hilo

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Meditate, know how you feel inside aswell as how you feel inside.. that's probably Si :doh: . I can do this stuff, it just tends to be easier to think about the feelings of others, rather than my own. Get someone else to help too, particularly someone feelery :)

Meditating - I have been trying this, and I feel like I'm getting closer. But it's SLOW. Holy hell is it slow.
 

Uytuun

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I guess my prevailing assumption has been that I have feelings, but do not know them. Is it valid to say, because I did action X I must feel this way? This seems like using Ti again.

Fi and Ti are a lot alike, really. Fi for me is all about investigating feelings, reactions, emotional states...trying to understand them as thoroughly as you would another subject with Ti. Forming a holistic model of them (that is in touch with other aspects of you, sometimes of other people)...you figure out how you function, your hidden intentions and defence mechanisms etc. etc... I can't really say how I do it, it happens organically...I think Fi has a logic of its own (somehow the word "empathy" pops up as an overarching qualification). There's the actual feeling part of the function (irrational - love, pain...) and then there's the part where it becomes a diagnostic tool...helps you to figure out what you want while taking into account the irrational part. The difficult part is not confusing one for the other so you don't fall into the dogma trap or in a feely Fi-loop.

I dunno in how far you can look at the function in isolation either...
 

JocktheMotie

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curious...without fi how to you come to determine how you feel on such things as capital punishment or abortion?

example me? :)

In both of these situations, I'm personally indifferent. Not for or against. When it comes to say...social policy on these issues I will defer to a more rudimentary Te style of decision making, like "if it works based on some kind of evidence, yes, if it doesn't, no."
 

visaisahero

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I have always thought that I'm really good with almost all functions!

Of course, this is just my inferior Si talking.
 

Lady_X

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In both of these situations, I'm personally indifferent. Not for or against. When it comes to say...social policy on these issues I will defer to a more rudimentary Te style of decision making, like "if it works based on some kind of evidence, yes, if it doesn't, no."

what about if your gf wanted an abortion...how does that processing go...is it a ti approach based on logic?
 

Shimmy

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I don't really have a particular desire or need for Fi.

curious...without fi how to you come to determine how you feel on such things as capital punishment or abortion?

example me? :)

You stick to what makes sense to you. Upbringing, available knowledge, open-mindedness etc. I think the difference is in how you show what you feel.
 

uumlau

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I think on another thread someone pointed out that you might "think" you have an opinion, then get into a sticky situation and find out how you really feel (one guy bravely exampled that he was anti-abortion up until getting his gf preggers. ha).

Personally, using abortion as an example because it does seem rather polarizing, I used to be anti, thanks to religious up-bringing. Once I lost religiosity, I had no external frame so I became ambivalent (it might be right in some cases, wrong in others). Now I would say I'm pro-choice, because I don't feel wrong about the idea in general. So perhaps that is an Fi-based judgment.

I guess my prevailing assumption has been that I have feelings, but do not know them. Is it valid to say, because I did action X I must feel this way? This seems like using Ti again.


Another thread asked if there were any beliefs you would die for (trying to get at someone's core beliefs). Of course, one of my favorite quotes for years was Russell's "I would never die for my beliefs, because I might be wrong"

Part of my fear of Fi judgments is because (perhaps this is P nature) I am concerned that they are either fickle, or ill-judged. I like person A one minute, the next I don't. I want this outcome, wait, no I don't.

The fickleness annoys Fi users, too. However, the fickleness is not Fi. Fi, rather, learns how to process the fickleness into something coherent.


Meditating - I have been trying this, and I feel like I'm getting closer. But it's SLOW. Holy hell is it slow.

Yes, very slow. Fi is slow. The way to focus it is to think in terms of what you really feel, not in terms of what you feel on the surface level.

it's the surface-level feelings that have all of the fickleness, because they seem to react randomly to whatever is right there in front of you, or to whatever is going on in your life. What is really going on is that they're often triggering a deeper truth, in Fi terms. The purpose is to find those deeper truths. Once you know they're there, and what they are, you can shape those truths. This is not the same as controlling feelings, but rather is a case of understanding feelings.

For example, you might feel jealous w/r to someone else getting more attention than you. You feel an instinctive reaction, you are tempted to correct the apparent situation. As an INTP (and me as an INTJ), we usually back off from those feelings and just kind of ignore them. We feel them, they hurt, but rather than process the feeling, we ignore it and choose to apply objectivity to make our choices.

A deeper Fi understanding might note that your emotions really mean that you like someone a lot ... or they might really mean, "Oh, this is just the petty jealousy, where you're bored and want some attention, you don't really like the person."

That is, you learn which emotions are important, by identifying them properly with Fi in the scheme of things.

Fe does the "same thing", except that it uses other people to figure out which emotions are important, by a sophisticated compare/contrast in an "objective" rather than "subjective" manner. The main difference in understanding is that with Fe, you can readily give "because" reasons for why an emotion is good or bad or important or unimportant, but with Fi, you "just know" what an emotion is, but can't really verbalize it without it sounding like random nonsense, but you can sortofkindof say that you "feel strongly" about something and you can't just accept someone else's say-so differently, for example.
 

JocktheMotie

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what about if your gf wanted an abortion...how does that processing go...is it a ti approach based on logic?

The decision for me would be made based on: can we support a child responsibly right now? Do we have the financial means? Is our relationship capable of handling a child at this stage? If we are not ready, why shouldn't we accept that it was a mistake? I would make sure all of these things are considered before we made the choice.

That would be my approach. Be it Ti/Te, rational, irrational, not sure what how it would be classified.
 

Shimmy

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what about if your gf wanted an abortion...how does that processing go...is it a ti approach based on logic?

The decision for me would be made based on: can we support a child responsibly right now? Do we have the financial means? Is our relationship capable of handling a child at this stage? If we are not ready, why shouldn't we accept that it was a mistake? I would make sure all of these things are considered before we made the choice.

That would be my approach. Be it Ti/Te, rational, irrational, not sure what how it would be classified.

This. I just don't see the need to assign values to these things. I wouldn't necessarily like it, but I also wouldn't like it if I had to raise a kid under bad circumstances.
 
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