Thank you for this thread. I love reading about other people's thought processes. It gives me so much insight into my own as well as helping me understand others.
I find that my communication skills have changed over the years and also depending on if I'm leaning towards F or T. My thought processes are bouncing around quite a bit at this time, so forgive me if that shows in my writing.
I used to be very non-opinionated--I thought everyone had a valid point--until I realized one day that I had very few solid opinions of my own and decided to form some. This effected how I communicated--before I felt more at ease because I genuinely agreed with just about everyone's way of thinking, or at least their right to their way of thinking. But once I started owning my own opinions, I didn't have the skills to let people know without also hurting their feelings.
As many of you have mentioned, I, too, have to take some time to formulate my thoughts before speaking, especially with people who don't know me very well. I feel that I have to go back to a certain point and explain why I'm thinking what I'm thinking and how I came to my conclusions, and on and on and on. I'm working on not explaining so much. (Probably not doing so well here but, believe me, these are shorter than normal for me--partly because I really shouldn't be online as long as I've been!
) Along those lines, I have trouble capturing my own thoughts sometimes. They flit here and there and I know what they are in a very abstract way, but putting them into words is difficult. Although I can be very logical, a lot of my reasoning is intuitive. I feel like a watered-down NT and a reined-in NF.
I can be very tuned-in to body language at times and can make very accurate assumptions about what people are feeling or underlying meanings in what they're saying. I think this creeps some people out because they don't operate on that level. I have made wrong assumptions, so I tend to check and that's when some people start backing slowly away....
not to mention that infj needs more desperately than infp to explicitly articulate and express its understandings. it is its whole mode of operation, its whole reason for existing, raison d'etre. to symbolize it, to create a meaningful artifact out of it, to congeal it into something powerful that will explode and impact everything around it.
Yes to the above. All-in-all, I feel that I can communicate pretty well with all types on a certain level, but that there's always a deeper level that I want to communicate that just doesn't come across. Some people may not love my style of communicating, but the message usually still gets across adequately. Unsatisfying to me, but then that isn't the point.
Completely OT, but maybe related in some way, I find that when I dream or when I tell someone about something that's happened to me, I see it in my head as if it's a play. In other words, I'm watching myself act out the dream or the event, rather than being in the dream or event.
Hope I haven't rambled too much and that at least some of it is on topic. Thanks for listening!
Edited to add: I don't think in pictures unless I'm recounting or planning an event. Mostly it's stream of consciousness and feelings. And I tend to stray off topic because the topic will start me thinking of something and then that leads to something else and that to something else...like now....