Are you wary of Fe?

[Kalach]

The point I was making though, was that you are making too many generalizations. Because you make it sound as though an INFP couldn't possibly lead ... anyone ... successfully. Let alone themselves!

Well yeah, too many generalisations, it's true. Actually what I was trying for was some kind of simple recipe for Protean in dealing with her boss. Perhaps overreached my theoretical expertise.

But hey, here's a question: what's the right thing to say about the role of feeling in the life of an INFP manager?


(And I ask because it totally feels like it's the wrong question to ask, and I'd like an INFP to say so, but I don't know why.)

 

[Thalassa]

I don't feel like this describes me though at my employment, nor would anyone know think I was ... passive. (They laugh when I tell them I am introverted! Really I am!) As a leader I know what the expectations are, so I have consciously worked on developing skills so I have lots of tools in the toolbox (so to speak).

I can appreciate what you are saying re the Fi / Si loop - but only in my personal close relationships. Sometimes if my husband is too facilitating to my emotional state, it gets me stuck there, so I do focus on busting myself out rather than relying on someone else's "help". But I do appreciate his .

The point I was making though, was that you are making too many generalizations. Because you make it sound as though an INFP couldn't possibly lead ... anyone ... successfully. Let alone themselves!

Unless I have completely missed your point, so please expand further so I can appreciate what you are trying to say.



A good point, function order doesn't always seem to fit those neat MBTI models. Myself, I score high in Te and Fe, but does simply mean I have consciously developed these to fit my life situations? Perhaps. Using them does have a higher energy price tag attached. My energizing functions do seem to fit in the Ne / Fi categories.

Just another example I think of how we are learning, growing, developing all the time.

I think I have been definitely socialized into Fe (ha ha) but I do have an instinctive urge to protect weak or helpless things, and I feel a great deal of empathy for those who are truly suffering. Is that Fe or Fi?

I know my Fi makes me more prickly, and I also relate to getting into the "Fi/Si" loop - especially when I was younger! That makes me think that it's my natural preference.

It's also good to see another INFP who doesn't consider themselves extremely passive.

 

[proteanmix]

People ask me "Are you mad? Are you upset?" when I am not at all mad or upset and they won't take my word for it but keep asking. So there's some issue of vibes being felt and mis-interpreted there. It's usually a case of being asked a direct question that makes me say that these people are taking affront to something I am giving off that I am not trying to do.

That may be Fe asking and not assuming your inner emotional state. I don't want to tell you how you should and should not handle things, I understand that people constantly asking you the same question over and over again is annoying and frustrating. But I ask you to not assume they're trying to irritate you. I don't know these people so I can't say what their intentions are. I don't know how to get more direct to a person than to outright ask, "Is Everything OK?" If your forehead looks like thunderclaps and storm clouds, it follows to me that something (unpleasant?) is brewing inside your head. Sometimes I'll remark about it and the person will laugh and say they were just thinking about something and it will smooth over. It may also be the case that when I have such an expression on my face I'm truly turning over something unpleasant in my mind. Since I don't like to assume what people are feeling, I'm back to square one asking "Is Everything OK?" I agree that people need to take the hint of when to back off. Once I realize that's a ordinary mannerism of yours, I cease to ask.

This also depends on how close to me you are. I don't go around inquiring about the emotional states of strangers. I may make mental note ("Oh that cashier looks like she's in a bad mood.") but I don't try to hold an impromptu therapy session.

I have uninvolved myself in many many situations and people over the last few years and I struggle with knowing when to be concerned about someone and when to keep my eyes straight in front of me. I am the type of person who rides the subway watching people and seeing more pain and hardened faces than you would think. I have a high external focus I pay very close attention to other people and if see a repeated pattern of someone consistently looking unsettled and I feel like they'd be receptive to me asking I do ask.

PSS. Your boss has always sounded like a living nightmare to work for. I'd really like to get the whole truth on how she got to be in her position. If she doesn't really manage, how does she avoid having a lot of errors and crisis?

See the thing is, which is what I wonder about when people complain about the ExFJs and FJs in their life, is are they taking the 10 things that annoy them about this person and completely blowing it up to be the whole of their being? No one is trying to stop valid criticism. But the noise of I hate it when Fe does this and Fe does that is all you hear. And like I said already, the complaints aren't even original. It's the same old same old.

About my boss: She has been at my organization for 15 years. If you've been at a place that long, you'll naturally go up the ladder simply by virtue of seniority or being the last man standing. My particular department has been through two turnovers since 2000 (I just started in 2006) and she is the person who's been here the longest and knows the most.

I think she's a decent person and I can handle both her good and her bad qualities. She is not leadership material and she's not a good supervisor. Does that mean I dislike her as a person? No. I feel like I'm capable of separating her personal attributes from her professional ones. Her professional attributes are nightmarish occasionally, but I don't inflate those things to the whole of her person. It often seems to me that people inflate an FJs negative traits (which every person has) to some twisted caricature of the whole person. And then they give some MBTI cliche positive traits to make up for it and I see very little nuanced criticism of Fi (maybe because the second largest type group on the forum is INFP) to balance the criticism of Fe.

I think it's best if both Fe and Fi users realize that there is in fact a communication problem and that it doesn't have to be about how annoying the other funtion is or how people 'abuse' it (though that certainly happens), but in fact misinterpreting each others good intentions.

I'm also quite interested to see how our fav twins overcome this as they deal with this daily. Pink? Jaye? How do you guys keep misunderstandings to a minimum?

Coz personally, I'd love to sort this out. I'd love to find the Stone of Rosetta on this one. I've done some discussing with Jeno about this on my profile, and by trying not to get defensive (though we failed several times and had to clarify our intents to prevent a complete misrepresentation/interpretation of the facts), we at least got some stuff cleared out but I haven't had a chance to with a Fe-dom yet. The thing is, to do this, you have to have some faith and trust and give the other the benefit of the doubt, and even then it's hard, I've noticed.

Still, it would be worth the head aches and frustration I feel.

Well I'm perfectly willing to get down to some real dialogue. I hope I've always communicated that about myself that I want to stop the BS misperceptions about Fe. But I'm most certainly not a one-woman army and I can't battle 10 people claiming this ExFJ is so horrible and treated them so badly, because maybe the ExFJ did. I don't know I'm not there. I don't claim to have a halo floating around my head and I can quite clearly see when I do engage in Bad Fe, I've got a dollop of self-awareness rolling around inside. But if you're going to judge an ExFJ on when they behave badly and broadcast it on the forum as if this is all they do that is completely unbalanced.

And even considering the fact that ExFJs are outnumbered by any other type on this forum by at least 200:1 (I have no clue I made that up!!) ExFJs have very little voice to counteract and explain themselves. How many threads are there asking about the nuances of being an NP or NJ? How many threads do you see here asking nuanced questions to ExFJs or ESxJs?? Most of the time these types are mentioned is to complain, not to get into their psyche and see what makes them tick.

When I see this same stuff repeated over and over again and no one seems to want to reach an understanding of anything they just want to rant I get frustrated because this is not what I believe the point of MBTI is. It seems to bring more division and unenlightenment than anything.

 

[Amargith]

Hence I'm kinda suggesting with my post that we step back, retract our claws, curb our frustration and look for a solution and start by understanding each other first. Ime, relapses are to be expected and parties should give each other the time to explain without getting defensive about being asked for an explanation or about the answer given. Assume the other party wants this as bad as you and ignore the frustration that comes with this type of territory. It's the only way we're going to get anywhere.

 

[sculpting]

Build a rosetta stone:

Start by taking the interactions that Proteo observed. Break each down into steps.

What was the Fi trying to say and what did Fe incorrectly percieve?
If it had been Fi-Fi what would the result have been?

Now do Fe communicating with Fi and Fe-Fe in the same scenario.

Pick like five scenarios and play them this way step by step and identify where the communication errors are.

develop an interpretation algorithm.

 

[Amargith]

^Agreed. And see what common ground you can find within those situations that you can use as a key to unlock the rest.

 

[Thalassa]

Ok, I would like to back away from the bashing, and that includes my part in it. I apologize to anyone I may have directly offended in this thread. So...starting over.

I would just like to explain that perhaps people have negative opinions of Fe because they had extremely bad experiences with it in childhood. I had a relative who would abuse people - oh my god she was horrible to more than one person, and did things I don't want to talk about here - but if a visitor came to the door, or if she was out in public, it was all smiles and "appropriate" behavior. Being around something like that long enough in childhood can give anyone a negative impression of high Fe.

Especially if it's compounded later in life by more "normal" or "healthy" Fe users lecturing and judging me or others for not behaving as they do.

This is just my experience. I am just trying to explain.

 

[sculpting]

yesterday my ex mom-in-law took me to her church.

This woman walks up and says "how are you feeling?" I said "fine". Then she said "No, how are you really feeling?" I stopped and actually paid attention to her. It didnt irritate me as much as make me pay attention to how I felt.

She is super Fi and picked up on the fact that I was not happy having to be there and felt cranky and defensive. It was an interesting observation however she wants to drag my soul to jesus as well, so I had to run quickly at that point.

However I could see this annoying the living shit out of most folks as it was instrusive-not controlling, but invasive of privacy.

 

[sculpting]

^Agreed. And see what common ground you can find within those situations that you can use as a key to unlock the rest.

Can we do this in NF land-I keep losing this particular thread up here in all the subcatagories? Maybe make each scenario a seperate thread for clarity? Then each can get lots of Fi and Fe comments from across the spectrum.

My suggestions:
1) Fi and tertiary Fe miscommunication. It broke my heart a bit.

2) Perhaps dom Fe and Fi-the emo dumping

3) dom Fe-Fi the taking of things too personally, why do we interpret the Fe as being specific to us as indivduals

and lots of other stuff too.

In each most important-Not I hate you and you all suck but instead "This is what I meant to project/convey", and "this is what I perceived you to be conveying" for each scenario.

 

[jenocyde]

I'm very confused - I didn't see any bashing going on, or any reason for anyone to be upset. Is it just me?
It kinda seemed like everyone just wanted to be heard.

 

[Amargith]

I'm very confused - I didn't see any bashing going on, or any reason for anyone to be upset. Is it just me?
It kinda seemed like everyone just wanted to be heard.

Defensiveness is causing some of us not to look at the solution but relive the problem with every story which can turn into a vicious cycle. Though those stories are handy as examples, they are just sitting there and are being countered by other stories, without being used to build something constructive, though some attempts have been made, which I was happy to see. Hence, I was hoping to redirect the attention to that (the way we did when we discussed this topic)

 

[proteanmix]

Build a rosetta stone:

Start by taking the interactions that Proteo observed. Break each down into steps.

What was the Fi trying to say and what did Fe incorrectly percieve?
If it had been Fi-Fi what would the result have been?

Now do Fe communicating with Fi and Fe-Fe in the same scenario.

Pick like five scenarios and play them this way step by step and identify where the communication errors are.

develop an interpretation algorithm.

^Agreed. And see what common ground you can find within those situations that you can use as a key to unlock the rest.

I down for this!

 

[iwakar]

One of the most manipulative people I ever met was an ISTJ. No Fe, and a Si-Te primary.

Figure that one out!




I'm finding it grating and tiresome as well.

OMFG, funny you should say. Had an interesting chat with my ISTJ bud a few weeks ago over beers. HE was in fact going on at length about how he manipulates people into doing what he wants and how they don't even know it. I just marvelled at his in-depth honesty. He swears he doesn't do it to harm, but just to pick up ladies in the dating scene. Wild stuff. Put my Fe abilities to shame hands down.

 

[jenocyde]

Defensiveness is causing some of us not to look at the solution but relive the problem with every story which can turn into a vicious cycle. Though those stories are handy as examples, they are just sitting there and are being countered by other stories, without being used to build something constructive, though some attempts have been made, which I was happy to see. Hence, I was hoping to redirect the attention to that (the way we did when we discussed this topic)

See that's funny because I find the examples extremely helpful. It helps me identify what I would do in those situations, and how others perceive it. I can be very unaware of self at times.

And it's always interesting to me to see how people interact with each other in response to these stories.

But if it's negative to others, by all means, we should stop.

 

[Amargith]

See that's funny because I find the examples extremely helpful. It helps me identify what I would do in those situations, and how others perceive it. I can be very unaware of self at times.

But if it's negative to others, by all means, we should stop.

Oh the examples themselves are useful, it's just the fact that they aren't used to construct a bridge as such, as people are too busy either explaining or venting or defending their function. It's a natural response, but not really helpful in this situation. In fact, you could serve as an example in this case

 

[proteanmix]

Oh the examples themselves are useful, it's just the fact that they aren't used to construct a bridge as such, as people are too busy either explaining or venting or defending their function. It's a natural response, but not really helpful in this situation. In fact, you could serve as an example in this case

I think they are in the sense that we get to see how this plays out in real life. I gave my examples as a rant but also to show that this is what certain bad FP traits look like to me.

 

[jenocyde]

Oh the examples themselves are useful, it's just the fact that they aren't used to construct a bridge as such, as people are too busy either explaining or venting or defending their function. It's a natural response, but not really helpful in this situation. In fact, you could serve as an example in this case

Like I said, I find the venting extremely helpful. It helps me to know what people are complaining about, so I can adjust my behavior - Fe maybe?? I don't want to be the one causing these types of reactions, and if I don't even know that people are reacting this way, then what hope do I have? This doesn't come natural to me.

I don't know what you mean about me being an example. Can you clarify?

 

[Amargith]

I think they are in the sense that we get to see how this plays out in real life. I gave my examples as a rant but also to show that this is what certain bad FP traits look like to me.

And I for one appreciate the insights. Are you interested in hearing why to Fi users some of them feel completely normal and finding out how they were meant to come accross? And after that, of course, I'd love to get the same feedback on your original reaction in the example, so I can learn how to identify this next time and deal with it properly and hence diminish the potential for frustration, aggrevation and miscommunication?

 

[Udog]

Okay, here are my thoughts. As I see it, Fi and Fe process values in a completely different order:

Fi:
1. Internalizes and processes
2. Extroverts to test - highest vulnerability

Fe
1. Extroverts and processes
2. Internalizes to test - highest vulnerability

The basic source of misunderstanding is that when Fi/Fe align (i.e. both extroverting), they are at completely different stages of processing. The strength of one function is the weakness of another, so there's always one party that feels highly vulnerable and off center.

 

[iwakar]

Okay, here are my thoughts. As I see it, Fi and Fe process values in a completely different order:

Fi:
1. Internalizes and processes
2. Extroverts to test - highest vulnerability

Fe
1. Extroverts and processes
2. Internalizes to test - highest vulnerability

The basic source of misunderstanding is that when Fi/Fe align (i.e. both extroverting), they are at completely different stages of processing. The strength of one function is the weakness of another, so there's always one party that feels highly vulnerable and off center.

Bravo you brilliant man.