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[INFP] INFPs, Do you detach emotionally in moments of crisis?

Anja

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May 2, 2008
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Hey, heart. You've changed your type. Congratulations! You sure didn't seem like a Jay to me. ;)

Lookit that. Sumpin popped out of my subconscious!

You can write this one off.
 

CrystalViolet

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Emotionally? Yes, though if something still needs to be done I'm better off with out having the emotions in the way. You would say I almost function better in those situations. Things seem clearer...

See, I've thought that myself. There are situations at work especially.
 

Blueberry LaLa

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I am known for being calm and level-headed in a crisis, but I don't consciously turn off my emotions. It's almost like things become clearer for me in a crisis -- maybe that's the survival mode thing? I feel like I understand what needs to be done (for once) and I just do.

Never thought of it in terms of me operating in the shadow ESTJ mode, though, which is an interesting thought.

I always just thought I was good in crisis because I know myself and trust my abilities to get through whatever the problem is.
 

Nonsensical

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When something serious is going down, my whole world it turtned inward..I appear somewhat calm, but inside is a hot boiling pot of churning chaos, that slowly builds up..but no one can see it. It's weird. It's like the scene in Thin Red Line, where one of the soldiers is experiencing a chaotic sense of mind, on the front like, and then goes bezerk..if you know what part I'm talking about. It's dellusional man.
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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This is something I can relate to as being something that happens to me more than the average person. It has come up in relationships and caused confusion because whenever things start getting emotional, I retreat into detachment from my own feelings. Anyone who has lived with me can verify that I don't argue. That is a side effect of what I am talking about. Being able to distance myself from emotions when they could affect my choices and experience has been my best survival strategy for many years. I developed it as a teenager many years ago. It developed as a counterbalance to pain that threatened to overwhelm. When I would slip into deep depression, I would start analyzing a pattern on the wall, or the movement of an insect, or anything. I would still feel the pain, but in tandem with a certain calm. When I see someone else slipping into emotional trauma, I try to help them find that same place of calm and detachment, but a couple times it really backfired. In the end it worked because I had the presence of mind to hear what they were feeling rather than saying and was able to respond in a reassuring way to calm them down as well. In a word, the detachment makes the communication worse until it can switch focus back to the other person's feelings and communicate on that level which I am still working on improving. My mistake comes when I make a concerted effort to communicate more precisely at those times when the emotional person needs absolution and reassurance which imply much broader sweeping statements that everything is alright without being too precise about the breakdown of the ideas.
 

CrystalViolet

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This is something I can relate to as being something that happens to me more than the average person. It has come up in relationships and caused confusion because whenever things start getting emotional, I retreat into detachment from my own feelings. Anyone who has lived with me can verify that I don't argue. That is a side effect of what I am talking about. Being able to distance myself from emotions when they could affect my choices and experience has been my best survival strategy for many years. I developed it as a teenager many years ago. It developed as a counterbalance to pain that threatened to overwhelm. When I would slip into deep depression, I would start analyzing a pattern on the wall, or the movement of an insect, or anything. I would still feel the pain, but in tandem with a certain calm. When I see someone else slipping into emotional trauma, I try to help them find that same place of calm and detachment, but a couple times it really backfired. In the end it worked because I had the presence of mind to hear what they were feeling rather than saying and was able to respond in a reassuring way to calm them down as well. In a word, the detachment makes the communication worse until it can switch focus back to the other person's feelings and communicate on that level which I am still working on improving. My mistake comes when I make a concerted effort to communicate more precisely at those times when the emotional person needs absolution and reassurance which imply much broader sweeping statements that everything is alright without being too precise about the breakdown of the ideas.

I often find words aren't enough in that situation. Unfortunately for me I have a real aversion to touching people, unless they are close to me personally, and even then it's difficult for me. It pains me at times when I know a hug would speak volumes, how ever that is only ever reserved for people who would register the significance, inspite of how awkard a hug it may be.
 

BerberElla

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I often find words aren't enough in that situation. Unfortunately for me I have a real aversion to touching people, unless they are close to me personally, and even then it's difficult for me. It pains me at times when I know a hug would speak volumes, how ever that is only ever reserved for people who would register the significance, inspite of how awkard a hug it may be.

Wow, I am the same. I know how much a hug would help, I struggle inside to offer it, but I freeze and can't do it because I don't like people stepping inside my personal circle unless I am really close to them, and I mean really close. My friend calls me the tree and I call her the tree hugger because I am as stiff as a board when I get hugged and she continues to bombard me with them to try and get me used to it. :doh:

I can also identify with what you said toonia, but it has only happened when the emotional trauma has been so intense, that I have switched off and ceased to argue back, or express my own pain.

It's not even like I am still in pain inside, I just go dead, all the emotions vanish and I can see things differently, sometimes that's not a good thing though. If someone has caused me to shut down like that, it's not going to help their case one bit because they have usually triggered something far too deep in me to ever look at them the same way again.
 

antireconciler

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This is something I can relate to as being something that happens to me more than the average person. It has come up in relationships and caused confusion because whenever things start getting emotional, I retreat into detachment from my own feelings. Anyone who has lived with me can verify that I don't argue. That is a side effect of what I am talking about. Being able to distance myself from emotions when they could affect my choices and experience has been my best survival strategy for many years.

Me too. I might be feeling a lot of pain about something, but there's a strong sense in which I feel too much responsible for my own feelings, that lashing out would be worse to me than holding the feeling inside is. I'll try to handle the situation rationally, and then isolate myself to lick the wound and absorb my feelings. In stronger cases, I might feel like everything is going to shreds and I have to start severing friendships and social bonds to get away. In bad cases in the past, I could start acting robotically and see everyone as just noisy emotional nuisances worth nothing to me. A little trust in others might have served me here.

All this isolation keeps a kind of distance between yourself and your feelings. Lashing out might be foolish, but it does quickly bring you in touch with how you feel. You no sooner start lashing out then it begins to dawn on you that the dark feelings which hurt so much don't really represent you or how you really feel.

On a more positive note, sometimes if something significant happens which may cause others to be stirred up and angered, I can be very calm and take some delight in the resiliency of my mind through the stormy situation. It's a pleasant experience. Where the other detachment and isolation is a method of retreat, this detachment is a product of acceptance.
 

CrystalViolet

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Truth is I'm better with the big things, than I am with small irritations. I'll sit there, bitching and moaning about some back handed comment and I'll mull for days(and maybe get all passive agressive). Lose my job, and every bodies really shocked that I, not only suddenly whirr into action, but that I manage to stay calm and focus until I have something else lined up. Only then can I flake. Some times I wonder if I'm not a better person in a crisis.
 

niki

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yeah I do that too. being calm, a bit 'detached' sometimes.
I can relate as well.
 

briochick

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I think when it's a personal crisis (i.e. I failed my class and will have to be in school yet *another* semester) I don't handle it well at all and can become very emotional, even hysterical. But, if it's an external crisis, (ie. fire, lost in a bad part of chicago, car accident, snakes on the hiking trail) then I'm calm as a cucumber and usually dominant and in control. then, afterwords, when the crisis is totally over, I freak out.
 

penelope

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I'm surprisingly able to. From extreme situations (like spinning out in my car across the freeway) to smaller, personal issues, I'm usually able to keep my head completely clear and focused until I have the situation under control... then I flip out.
 

BlackCat

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Yes I do. It's an instinct.
 

neptunesnet

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Absolutely.

I remember one Sunday morning at church when I was about fourteen the entire church was preparing for an afternoon service that was supposed to persuade teens and kids to learn about the love of Christ and the importance of church and so on and so on. We invited four to five other sister churches in the district (we're A.M.E., btw) for the event, and it was one of the highlights of our year. The program was very light-hearted and, as it persisted, contained an air of comfortable praise amongst the congregation. As it drew towards the end of the service, our reverend asked an acquaintance of hers, who was a spiritual dancer, to come and dance for the program. As I can recall, her performance was absolutely beautiful. It was a technical little piece but was still very moving. At the dance's end the music died down and the dancer's movements slowed as she whirled around and around in tight circles several times as if in deep meditation and eventually fell to her knees weepingly. The pain heard in her cry for spiritual redemption was so clear and piercing. It was such an intimate moment, and I was so shaken by it then that I had faced my back to her and completely shut off my emotions to protect myself from connecting any more deeply with her sorrow than I already had. I remember feeling like such a bad person for detaching myself from the situation, but I was sure if I had welcomed those emotions I would have been sobbing and vulnerable on the floor alongside her.
 
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Liminality

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Sometimes, I guess...I'm not all that sure...It gets hazy in here.

Though there's a difference between detaching and flipping to ESTJ, which I consider more akin to a kind of emotional and ethical dissassociation, except there's no one watching; it's not as if you're locked from behind a sheet of glass. Part of you either switches off, or dies. You're just not there. And yet you are...You 'flip'.

You're still 'you', but it's like you're in a dream...sort've, though reality seems much the same. Like you're a train and you've changed tracks without the faintest notion, or an audience watching a film who don't realize the whole plotting and atmosphere has changed. Sense, truth and reality shift; all the borderlines start bleeding, and fading, and breaking.
 

Faine

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I'm not an INFP, but I always disconnect emotionally in times of crisis or great stress.
It's usually after the event that I might feel emotional, and more often than not it's in private and on my own once everything and everyone else has been sorted.
 
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Clonester

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When I'm in a high pressure or stress situation I get very calm and efficient. I think it's my Te coming into play. Which is great because I face pressure deadlines all the time with my work, so instead of freaking out I keep my cool.
 

hakuna

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I wouldn't say detached exactly, but I would say calm. It's like the intensity of the situation shocks me so that I recover with an odd calm. In times of crisis I find that I can reconnect with ideals and really come through as 'a rock' of calm and understanding. It's not that I'm detaching exactly, but rather I'm used to feeling so many emotions on an every day basis it's almost that I'm used to it on some scale, but when I know something big is going down I pull through and just remain calm. It's almost like a skill in some weird way. Any NFs feel the same?
 

Coeur

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I disconnect emotionally out of:
a. Shock. For example, whenever I found out that someone is dead, it usually takes an hour or so for it to truly sink in.
b. Helplessness. I avoid the situation, as if it will help it go away. [Which it doesn't.]

However, when a 'crisis' occurs between someone I care about and me, I tend to confront it head on. I don't want a relationship to die because of poor communication. I'll put my emotions aside for the sake of 'fairness,' though.

This thread also reminds me of how I reacted when someone tried to break into my house. Now, at the time I was terrified of this very thing happening. However, when I saw the man at the door, I acted instinctively and almost robotically. It's like I knew exactly what needed to be done. Only when he was gone did I start shaking and such.
 
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