[Fe] Developing Fe

[Kalach]

I'm not defining what your experience is. I'm simply pointing out that Fe isn't necessarily "truly empathetic" and that Fi vs. Fe isn't selfish vs. selfless. I sometimes wonder if people with Fi think they have Fe because they think of themselves as as more "other focused."

I'm gonna go with "Fe is empathetic, frequently truly so". I'm taking it for granted that people with Fe actually do have feelings. Thus, one must ask, feelings about what? Why, feelings DIRECTLY about stuff "out there". No intermediate step. Technically, they don't need the "if that were me" step. Instead they get the feelings directly from what happens out there.

And before any Fi user jumps up and says we do that too, we don't. Our locus of feeling is inside. Their locus is outside. Our order and harmony is inside. Theirs is outside. They're not satisfied because they contributed to a harmonious environment, instead a harmonious environment is happy.

It's a fine technical point to make, and the language easily obscures it, but there it is. Fe users recognise actual feeling value inhering immediately in outside acts--body language, choice of expression, and so on--where Fi users recognise feeling flowing from outside acts. They are all together, we are all separate. They act to harmonise environments, we act to harmonise ourselves.

And yes, everyone can use the same language to describe what they do. And they're still describing different things.

Focus, people. Focus.



It is presumably only difficult to understand because it amounts to the seemingly preposterous claim that Fe encompasses the whole world, whereas Fi lays claim only to you.

But it does allow us to say that Fe users are able to make decisions about right and wrong above and beyond the social graces. They are able to bring their own judgment to what is and isn't good community.

 

[Billy]

Kalach good points, I was trying to describe something similar I think. For me my feelings tend to need an outside factor to work for me. My primary mode of being is rather cool and emotionless, but quickly gets emotional when I am around other people, and not because of me feeling something about them, but that their feelings get into me and change my mood. I don't see someone hurt and say hmm they're hurt, this makes me feel sad. Its more like, "oh my god why is that person hurting? While just feeling what I see them feeling. Which is the hurt, which can be alarming for me because I can be fine 1 second, see someone in an emotional state and immediately connect to that state and become that state without knowing why. It sneaks up on me without me being able to explain why. Its actually quite tiresome after a while and its one of the predominant reasons I tend to seek solitude, Its exhausting to go through a gambit of emotions that I shouldn't be feeling because they have nothing to do with me, but are just reflections of the people around me. I do have internal feelings of my own, but they're much weaker and much smaller then my Fe based feelings. I can definitely feel a difference in them.

 

[Charmed Justice]

Kalach good points, I was trying to describe something similar I think. For me my feelings tend to need an outside factor to work for me. My primary mode of being is rather cool and emotionless, but quickly gets emotional when I am around other people, and not because of me feeling something about them, but that their feelings get into me and change my mood. I don't see someone hurt and say hmm they're hurt, this makes me feel sad. Its more like, "oh my god why is that person hurting? While just feeling what I see them feeling. Which is the hurt, which can be alarming for me because I can be fine 1 second, see someone in an emotional state and immediately connect to that state and become that state without knowing why. It sneaks up on me without me being able to explain why. Its actually quite tiresome after a while and its one of the predominant reasons I tend to seek solitude, Its exhausting to go through a gambit of emotions that I shouldn't be feeling because they have nothing to do with me, but are just reflections of the people around me. I do have internal feelings of my own, but they're much weaker and much smaller then my Fe based feelings. I can definitely feel a difference in them.

The bolded is exactly how I am, and I am surely no INFJ. I thought that just had to do with having a high EQ, not necessary Fe versus Fi.

 

[Thalassa]

The bolded is exactly how I am, and I am surely no INFJ. I thought that just had to do with having a high EQ, not necessary Fe versus Fi.

What I'm wondering is does Billy actually imagine that Fi users look at hurting people and think, "Hmm that person is hurting, that makes me feel sad."

I also relate to going through other people's emotions and feeling exhausted from it. I relate to starting to cry a little when someone else is sad and not knowing exactly why.

I also "mirror" people and shift myself to the point of even mimicking the speech patterns of others. When my sister was having a miscarriage, I was the only person of me, my mother, and my other sister who understood that she just wanted us to be quiet, while my mom and sister were actually being noisy and selfish running around trying to "help" and just stressing her out more in her time of pain.

I'm not sure how much of this would be Fe.

 

[Thalassa]

I'm gonna go with "Fe is empathetic, frequently truly so". I'm taking it for granted that people with Fe actually do have feelings. Thus, one must ask, feelings about what? Why, feelings DIRECTLY about stuff "out there". No intermediate step. Technically, they don't need the "if that were me" step. Instead they get the feelings directly from what happens out there.

And before any Fi user jumps up and says we do that too, we don't. Our locus of feeling is inside. Their locus is outside. Our order and harmony is inside. Theirs is outside. They're not satisfied because they contributed to a harmonious environment, instead a harmonious environment is happy.

It's a fine technical point to make, and the language easily obscures it, but there it is. Fe users recognise actual feeling value inhering immediately in outside acts--body language, choice of expression, and so on--where Fi users recognise feeling flowing from outside acts. They are all together, we are all separate. They act to harmonise environments, we act to harmonise ourselves.

And yes, everyone can use the same language to describe what they do. And they're still describing different things.

Focus, people. Focus.



It is presumably only difficult to understand because it amounts to the seemingly preposterous claim that Fe encompasses the whole world, whereas Fi lays claim only to you.

But it does allow us to say that Fe users are able to make decisions about right and wrong above and beyond the social graces. They are able to bring their own judgment to what is and isn't good community.

Your Fi is tertiary, therefore it's experienced a bit differently than people with primary or auxillary Fi.

Just like my tertiary Si is nothing like an SJ would experience it.

 

[Kalach]

But mah Ni is dominatorical so I can do theory gooder.

And y'all are forgetting that whatever the F is doing, the T, the N and the S are doing stuff too. So, pure Fi doesn't give one rat's ass about other people, but no person has pure Fi, they have it in conjunction with other functions, both perceiving and judgment. So, an ENFP will get flooded by other people's feelings (if they recognise them) via Ne because that's what Ne does when it's attuned to F, and the same for an INFP, and SPs get it via Se+Ni, and so on and on.

But the FJs and the TPs get it mainlined, straight in through a judgment function, Fe. Their judgment tells them, stabbing their hearts directly, uninterpreted, what is right and wrong in the landscape.

I suppose, anyway.

 

[Thalassa]

But mah Ni is dominatorical so I can do theory gooder.

And y'all are forgetting that whatever the F is doing, the T, the N and the S are doing stuff too. So, pure Fi doesn't give one rat's ass about other people, but no person has pure Fi, they have it in conjunction with other functions, both perceiving and judgment. So, an ENFP will get flooded by other people's feelings (if they recognise them) via Ne because that's what Ne does when it's attuned to F, and the same for an INFP, and SPs get it via Se+Ni, and so on and on.

But the FJs and the TPs get it mainlined, straight in through a judgment function, Fe. Their judgment tells them, stabbing their hearts directly, uninterpreted, what is right and wrong in the landscape.

I suppose, anyway.

I think it's possible that Fs actually get this mainlined, and Ts are just able to filter it out better, whether they have Fi or Fe. That's why you think Fi needs Te to even do something for other people, and why an ENTP might think that Fe only serves a "means to an ends" purpose to pacify other people to shut up.

 

[Billy]

But mah Ni is dominatorical so I can do theory gooder.

And y'all are forgetting that whatever the F is doing, the T, the N and the S are doing stuff too. So, pure Fi doesn't give one rat's ass about other people, but no person has pure Fi, they have it in conjunction with other functions, both perceiving and judgment. So, an ENFP will get flooded by other people's feelings (if they recognise them) via Ne because that's what Ne does when it's attuned to F, and the same for an INFP, and SPs get it via Se+Ni, and so on and on.

But the FJs and the TPs get it mainlined, straight in through a judgment function, Fe. Their judgment tells them, stabbing their hearts directly, uninterpreted, what is right and wrong in theod landscape.

I suppose, anyway.

Good points again, sort of like how someone who uses Ni, Fe, and Ti can make a pseudo Te.

 

[Thalassa]

Good points again, sort of like how someone who uses Ni, Fe, and Ti can make a pseudo Te.

Or how someone with Ni Te Fi can make pseudo Fe.

 

[Billy]

Or how someone with Ni Te Fi can make pseudo Fe.

Yes.

 

[proteanmix]

So fun to watch Fe-ers and Fi-ers duke it out for who's the most exquisitely sensitive.

 

[Thalassa]

So fun to watch Fe-ers and Fi-ers duke it out for who's the most exquisitely sensitive.

It's the F version of T's competing for who is smarter or more educated and informed.

How embarrassing.

 

[Bamboo]

And y'all are forgetting that whatever the F is doing, the T, the N and the S are doing stuff too. So, pure Fi doesn't give one rat's ass about other people, but no person has pure Fi, they have it in conjunction with other functions, both perceiving and judgment. So, an ENFP will get flooded by other people's feelings (if they recognise them) via Ne because that's what Ne does when it's attuned to F, and the same for an INFP, and SPs get it via Se+Ni, and so on and on.

But the FJs and the TPs get it mainlined, straight in through a judgment function, Fe. Their judgment tells them, stabbing their hearts directly, uninterpreted, what is right and wrong in the landscape.

I suppose, anyway.

(ISTP)...The last paragraph seems essentially correct, although it might just be confirmation bias. I mean, putting down all this MBTI stuff, that happens to other people...right?

Otherwise, everything else seems consistent and in-line with theory.

 

[DiscoBiscuit]

Developing Fe

I'm still having a hard time with it. Thats why I'm trying to find an INFJ or ENFJ.

 

[Thalassa]

(ISTP)...The last paragraph seems essentially correct, although it might just be confirmation bias. I mean, putting down all this MBTI stuff, that happens to other people...right?

Otherwise, everything else seems consistent and in-line with theory.

I seriously think that Fs get it mainlined and Ts don't, which is why Ts can be so rational and keep their distance despite their own Fe or Fi. Of course they have it, but it's filtered enough that they can be "protected" from it with their logic.

I seriously think it's F/T more than Fi/Fe.

 

[Synarch]

Te should be oppositional to Fe, though, correct?

 

[Thalassa]

Te should be oppositional to Fe, though, correct?

In reality, would it be? I have high Fi and I'm not opposed to Ti. In fact theoretically speaking my Ti is probably more developed than my Te.

Therefore, I don't think that a TJ would necessarily not be able to develop Fe or value it highly.

 

[Kalach]

I think it's possible that Fs actually get this mainlined, and Ts are just able to filter it out better, whether they have Fi or Fe. That's why you think Fi needs Te to even do something for other people, and why an ENTP might think that Fe only serves a "means to an ends" purpose to pacify other people to shut up.

Eh, you sensitive types. Not seeing the theory for the tears.

Fi literally makes no decisions whatsoever about anything outside of itself. It literally cannot. However, in conjunction with perceptions of current events (Nx/Sx), and details of truths and available processes (Te), it will pop out an answer about what YOU know to be right and wrong. And this will probably be an enduring decision drawn from wider truths of feeling. And then the rest of the person joins in with details of what you're going to do about it. That Fi provided the core value is not the same as saying Fi decided the action.

Switch it around for Fe users and see what it looks like:

Fe assigns literally immediate values of good and bad to whatever goes on outside of the person.


I don't suppose any of this means, say, that y'all big sensitive crybabies have different reaction times to other people being unhappy. Who knows who would win the empathy Olympics, it might come down to high speed stopwatches. Indeed it means that y'all are all big sensitive crybabies, and you're sensitive to different aspects of the same thing. Saying so doesn't stop you being sensitive. Refusing to say so might stop the other side being allowed to say so in your presence. (Which seems to happen a lot here.)




And Ni+Te+Fi can mimic Fe if the person is really, really, really motivated to turn themselves inside out because the Ni+Te would still show up as impersonal and the Fi still looks selfish. Now, Ne+Fi on the other hand, that might pull it off.

 

[Synarch]

Does this make Fi users extremely subjective?

 

[Billy]

In reality, would it be? I have high Fi and I'm not opposed to Ti. In fact theoretically speaking my Ti is probably more developed than my Te.

Therefore, I don't think that a TJ would necessarily not be able to develop Fe or value it highly.

It might also be psuedo and situational. I have no Te that I know of realistically, but I do things with a Psuedo Te when my Ni, Fe, and Ti combine. But it wont work on things like data or numbers, only in social groups that deal with me being a strategist with relationships and people and being able to find mutual benefits and such in a semi logical way. But the way I arrive at the Te is sort of convoluted and it didn't start happening until my late 20s when I had been consumed by Ni and Fe for a long time. But they say it takes 10 years to master a function naturally, if that's the case I am moving into Ti territory from Ni/Fe territory and when they act in tandem I get Te.