So how does Ni-Se intergration work for you?
For me, it's opening myself up to Se and trusting that very grounded sense-based information flow in relation to Ni. As far as I understand it, Ni-Se perception was my default when I was a child. Then I had a physical trauma that disconnected me from my physical self in some ways. Afterwards, I got really really confused and disoriented about WTF was going on around me. Ni is awesome but the Ni landscape is (or appears to be at least) kind of in another realm not acknowledged by the dominant cultural system all around me. I find it hard to relate to the external world here only from Ni.
So with the loss of Se access, I developed Fe-aux to help me understand some of what was going on around me (this time the people layer). It worked, but Fe-valued material can be very harmful for me. Ti developed to counter Fe-aux. The Ni-Fe-Ti dynamic is very draining for me, but I do it and do it. Se, serving Ni, gives me a way to move that's - well, it's gorgeous to me, actually. Pure perception mode.
Se has to serve Ni for it to make sense to me. Truth is, my Ni landscape and the external world here aren't in opposition. Things like ecosystems, interconnected webs of diverse elements etc are all over the place on this planet and that meshes very well with how things work in my Ni landscape. Living in a cultural system that opposes such interconnectedness in cultural and physical ways makes it really hard for me to perceive the underlying physical realities here from Ni perception alone. Opening up to Se in service to Ni allows that. And again, I instinctively did this when I was a child but lost access to the Ni-Se mode.
Hope that describes it okay.
It's partly about keeping it in check. Fi is very instinctual. It's like being hit with the answer without doing the working, or perhaps before you even know what the question is. I think that maturity as a Fi user is in realising that even though you may have the answer, you have to go back and do the working to double-check anyway.
Interesting! It's like the opposite of my struggle - I default to an elaborate process of double checking
too much to the point of unnecessary energy drain (Fe-Ti dynamic), and my development/maturity challenge is to trust my perception (with Se integrated and serving Ni).
And I'm not saying that the Fi insights are wrong;
Hahahahaha! Of course not! (sorry, that is so INFP, or maybe Ji dom, to my perception). Anyway, back to the actual content:
It's like I have an inner Te-dom who is very much unimpressed with airy-fairy, waffley Fi and needs more to be convinced. I have to make this person happy, perhaps even defeat their criticisms, so I can feel secure in my position. If they're not happy, I need to figure out why. Usually it requires refinement or repositioning through Ne-Si information. If the insight is plain wrong (which is not frequent) then I have to make a little Te memo to myself about an exception to the rule. These sorts of memos are counter-intuitive to me, but must be obeyed regardless, because they are there to help overcome my blind-spots.
How do you know that your inner Te-dom (which is really Te-inf) isn't serving Fi by providing selective Te ways for Fi to refuse external critiques and prove to itself that its judgements are correct at their essential core, as Fi seems to assumes nearly always is the case?
(this is a real question)
She's a ISFJ - so you're right we do have Si in common, but you seemed to be speaking of more Fe related factors.
Yes, I just reviewed the context and you're right, it was about individual versus collective. I think Fe gets tangled up with something else in me, and that's why my attention goes to Ni. The way things work in my Ni landscape is intrinsically collective in its underlying physics. This is not the same as Fe at all, but it gets tangled up with Fe in me. Another way to put it would be, because my Ni landscape is intrinsically collective, I chose Fe-aux as my way of making sense of the world around me when I lost access to Ni-Se. Anyway, this is kind of a digression, maybe.
I realise Ni will have a different influence on the conversation, but sharing perceptual information does come naturally to me, and I can appreciate the intuitive leaps of Ni because Fi does a similar thing. Of course, an adjustment is necessary but what I mean to say is that it's not insurmountable.
The "Fi does a similar thing as Ni" comment makes me uncomfortable, and I find myself somewhat resistant to expending the energy to figure out why. It just feels like a projection of your dom function onto mine that might somehow be plausible, but that really isn't accurate. These two functions are REALLY different, despite appearances, IMO.
Yes, exactly. I do wonder if it's harder for FJs to grasp how dispassionate FPs can be about feelings/responses/sensations etc; dispassionate in expressing/discussing it, or in that we can totally commit to the feeling and then completely move on. I have great difficulty in bearing grudges, not because I'm virtuous and forgiving, it's just that after a few hours or days, I'm totally over it. I just stop caring.
I totally see this in my partner.
One of my personal values I've developed (I suppose it's one of those Te memos) is to not unleash when I'm angry. My instincts are screaming at me to tell that person exactly what I think, but the memo reminds me that in a few hours I won't care, it's just irrational nonsense, and/or I may regret it, so it's better not to act on it. It's important to me (over the long term; not in the moment) to figure out what strong feelings are worth expressing and which ones aren't. I'm not saying this works 100% - with people close to me it can be hard to keep to the value. It's possible that your INFP has the same value and gets a bit slack about adhering to it with you too. I guess you have to find the right line between her learning when to hold her tongue and you learning to cope with her criticisms.
She has a double whammy when it comes to anger - not only what you describe, but also she's enneagram 9w8 and 9s are notorious for their anger issues. Before we met, she had learned to suppress it for the most part, but as she has pointed out recently, suppression is a huge energy drain. She hates being angry.
When it comes to me: She has pretty consistently held me responsible for
provoking her anger - so basically her responsibility is limited to not reacting to what she names as "having her buttons pushed" by me). That's a huge nasty problem IMO, the partial displacement of responsibility for her anger from her onto me. I'm taking baby steps with this piece, the first step being trying not to accept and internalize the partial responsibility she assigns to me for her anger.
I find it interesting that anger is an issue for you as well but your enneagram is different. I tended to source her anger much more to the 9 in her than the INFP. [MENTION=5999]PeaceBaby[/MENTION] mentioned my partner's grumpiness on something as possibly somehow related to Te inf in a PM, but your Te seems to be keeping anger in check. Still trying to understand all of this!
The other thing you have to be aware of is that for INFPs (well it is for me, I'm not sure if the others agree), that we have 2 emotional worlds: one temporary and superficial, and one enduring and deep. The two can have little affect on one another and can be completely in contrast with one another too. I can be happy and upbeat in a moment, but that has no impact on a underlying sense of melancholy. So on the surface your partner could seem like she hates you more than anything, but that may have zero reflection on an underlying respect and appreciation of you.
This seems like it could be accurate to my partner; I'll ask her about it if I remember to do so.
Externally it's a very hazy and strange thing. Yeghor described my posts as seeming ethereal (which I was surprised about) but this can be how Ni is to me. Internally, it's even more interesting. It can creep inside my head like tentacles and get into the drivers seat. When I'm really getting its vibe, it feels like it's working my mind in this bizarre back-to-front, inside-out way, but somehow it feels natural and right. That probably doesn't make sense at all, but it's difficult to describe.
I was looking for a description at this level, so this is great! Thank you! Again there's an issue of who's in the driver's seat. What's hard for me to get is how it feels natural and right to you - and the reason this is hard for me to get is that I cansee my INFP responding to most of your description with a push to not allow the tentacles in and certainly not allow such an externally sourced thing to be in the drivers seat for her!
No... it's something different. It's not a matter of information, but of grasping the 'meaning' of that information; I need to grasp the significance of what they're saying in a way that works for me. With Ni it requires both that the Ni user will use the right approach (ie. not force the issue) and that I will let them in my head so to speak.
Hmmmm ... could you give me any concrete examples of what forcing the issue versus not forcing the issue is for you in interaction?
I suppose I also need to stop processing the information NJs offer in Si terms, because with Si information the meaning is much more obvious to me. I need to wait a little longer for the stuff to click, and this requires patience from both parties. I suppose a Te memo may be necessary here.
There's something pinging for me in that - processing in Si terms, needing not to do that. I don't know about other NJs, but as a Ni-dom there's something in that for sure. I don't know what it is yet.
I can start by checking my understanding of Si for an INFP. My partner has described Si as a sort of data-created map, based on accumulated data and related patterns of past experience, that she can use to understand what's going on. Of course, this is my understanding of what she's said to me. Does this seem accurate to you in terms of your Si? If not could you correct me/expand etc?
Yeah it is a bit I guess. I've been told that by others before, in not so many words.
Glad to know I'm not the only one who's said this (*sigh* freaking Fe-aux)
Yeah, that's pretty foolish IMO too. As long as you aren't subtly undermining her views (making her feel the need to defend them), you are well within your rights to call her out on that, even within the bounds of INFP logic. She should accept you views on this and not force the issue, especially seeing as it relates to something as subjective and personal as spirituality. She should know better...
When we first met and were having sustained dialogue as friends only, she kept trying to "get me to see" things that she assessed I needed to see, and she seemed to believe it was for my own good. At the time, for me, it seemed like she hadn't ever met a true peer or something - and that on some layers of interaction instead of reciprocal teaching and learning, she default positioned herself as the one who would teach others. I wondered if she just, for some reason, needed to be
on top in certain kinds of interactions. (this may speak to why I can't see her ever allowing those Ni tentacles into her and especially not into her drivers seat!)
In other ways, she was much more open to learning too, but there was this pretty significant thread of our initial interactions that seemed to me to come from this "being on top/being a teacher/seeing more clearly than others" thing. I really did wonder if she just hadn't previously met anyone who was a true peer before. This "on top" dynamic has shown up in other ways throughout our relationship and at this point, I'm almost viscerally allergic to it even in a very mild form.
Anyway, when I told her where I was coming from with the New Age stuff, she did back off and asked for patience as she learned me and got to know me. But then, there was a subsequent point - a real fight we had - and afterward, as part of the "where do we go from here" phase, I had to articulate some hardcore boundaries and say there are going to be things I will choose not to engage with for my own reasons, and while she accepted those boundaries, I think she also noted something about how such boundaries are strange for someone who wants to know the truth.
Again, there are aspects of how she moves that are much more open and oriented to learning (though she seems to learn via Si, which takes a LONG time and has a huge database to overcome where I don't fit with her existing map).
I suppose that sounds arrogant to say that, but
if you read the thread you would probably agree with me. I even had a INFJ on my side
You could not
pay me to go look at such a thread. *reconsiders* Well, maybe upwards of tens of millions of dollars .... maybe then. Anyway, I know that certain kinds of debates are pretty insane and I-P stuff can really really go there.
Yeah, I can admit that this can be a problem with me.
After I posted my comment, I had this thought: Is it possible that you sometimes apply
to other people the Te standards and processes that
you need to balance your Fi? (I'm thinking: this would be a problem for those who don't need that Te balance given our own different cognitive configuration)?
Not at all. It's helpful
I'm really glad to hear this!