Ahh...I see. Umm, what is it like to have this tunnel vision? Does it mean..mentally believing one has all knowledge of the other? As I thought you may have said above..but am not sure..
Does tunnel vision assume both people know, sort of on the table with all there is to know, and so the hurt shouldn't matter because it's inexcusable from both people having this knowledge ( but at the same time its just assumed fantasy by the one person to think that both people have it)?
First of all, I don't think all INFJs have this tunnel vision. In fact, I think the majority of us are especially careful about bouncing reality off of other people for the purpose of NOT treating others this way. And I think that any INFJs who have never personally had to deal with it in another NFJ probably wonder WTH people complain about. Just like all ENTPs aren’t hedonistic, out of control reality dictators- it’s just the select few who are blind (or apathetic) to how their presence in the world negatively affects others, and it’s hard to hear people show up and systematically complain about something you know you don’t do, and probably seems like an exaggeration to anyone who's never personally experienced it. It's just that I *have* dealt with a couple NFJs who do the things that people complain about, so in spite of feeling like something of a traitor, I have to admit I *have* seen it and know what they’re talking about.
It’s never that the hurt shouldn’t matter, it’s that the hurt
doesn’t exist and it’s treating them “like they are stupid†to try to tell them about it. I think they mistake their own experience of the world as all encompassing- so anyone who claims to be experiencing something differently than they experience it themselves is ‘clearly’ mistaken.
I think that Ni can be sort of like a GPS. A GPS device can tell you where you are in relation to other things, what the speed limit is, what kind of restaurants are around the corner and out of view to the naked eye- we ‘notice’ all sorts of information, constantly, about everything going on around us that other people aren’t noticing. And the tunnel vision is when we’re so focused on what that ‘GPS’ is telling us that we don’t believe what’s right in front of us (or rather, we don't believe what others are telling us is right in front of us). I think, for the most part, we're constantly bouncing reality off of others to make sure what we're seeing is accurate- and most of us are reasonable about it. But sometimes a person comes along who doesn't seem to need that reality check to feel secure in the notion that what they're seeing is indisputable.
This^ can be a blind spot for all Js, really- and I think NJs in particular because Ni
is so often right (and deeply, deeply instinctive- a lot of stuff is ‘clear’, though we can’t begin to explain why). It’s like standing if front of a gas station with someone who is arguing that you’re both standing in front of a library (because they’re looking right at their GPS and it clearly says ‘library’- so it seems like it's ‘obviously what you’re both looking at’). And with NFJs, I’ve noticed it can manifest as someone believing that you either aren’t really feeling what you claim to be feeling, or you aren’t feeling it for the reason you claim to be feeling it. It can be maddening to deal with- and hard to believe people can be like that until you've actually had to deal with one.
And the thing is- when it’s correct, it’s really insightful. We have this built in GPS of sorts and have insight into things other people don’t usually see- but it backfires horribly when we stop believing reality checks and when we stop giving other people credit when they’re telling us what their own experience is.
Believing someone else is telling the truth isn’t always an option- INFJs are constantly taking mental notes about people, like there are an infinite amount of sticky notes sitting around in our psyche, and if someone says something which sets off silent alarms it’s almost always because they’re saying or doing something which contradicts something they’ve said or done before- so believing the extent to which others truly know what they’re talking about isn’t a choice. But I personally tend to put things on a ‘judgment pending’ list if I don’t believe someone, and I’m *really* careful about thinking I know more about someone else’s experience than they know themselves because I know it can be an incredibly offensive stance to take.
I think, actually, this is such a touchy subject for a lot of INFJs
because many of us err in the direction of putting too much stuff on that ‘judgment pending’ list- only to see in retrospect that we clearly should not have trusted someone. AND the kind of people who often show up complaining about how we aren't listening to them "because of the tunnel vision" (or whatever- like I said in previous post, their behavior in the forum suggests it's more about them being frustrated because they can't MAKE their INFJ think or feel what they want) are *a lot* like the kind of people we've made the mistake of extending too much credit to in the past. So it's a touchy subject.
edit: And to bring this all back to the op & the example you posted: I can see how this tendency can lead an INFJ to say mean things without believing they're being mean- but as far as the 'testing' itself, I really don't think that's related to INFJness.