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[NF] When Fe & Fi Go Awry: The Definitive NF guide to F-ness (Let the Antics Ensue)

William K

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Fe and Fi users would start with the same problems, but come up with quite different solutions.

Perhaps it's like a doctor treating a disease. One doctor might look at the disease by itself and dispense the medication to treat it. While another doctor tries to look at the symptoms and attempts to fix it at that level instead.

One method will be more effective for some diseases, but not for the rest.
 

CrystalViolet

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For me, deciding to act, usually involves an event that could be seen as the straw that broke the camels back. Up until that point, I may have trying to indicate things were less than ideal, and like I said generally for me action involves a cascade of thought processes that tips the balance towards speaking out.
It will start out as some one pointing some thing out, and over a serious of months, if I start to see a pattern forming, I may be tempted to run past some one, to see if they recognise the pattern. If it continues to gain form and I can start pin pointing specific issues that affect other people as well as myself, I may start running it past people who are in a position to sort it out. If I see no action, and/or the issue becomes worse, the balance is dangerously close to tipping. It then only takes one action that seriously affects every one, for me to step up and speak out, like a switch, or match lighting up. Quite often when you see an Fi-dom go into fighting mode, what appears to be like a momentary outburst, has actually been bothering them for weeks, months, even years.
The unfortunate thing is when we are in this mode, it isn't actually our most articulate, for me I'm like the sergant major who been spurred into action, to take control. And that's the thing, I'm doing, no longer thinking, I've selected my action for better or worse.
Sometimes it works....when people haven't been prepared to take responsibility, but it takes a heck of alot to get me there. By that point, I've put my feelers out, checked how the land lies, done my research, I've already spoken with the people that need to spoken with, I don't always think that it's a surprise, (it always appears to be).

I've been told this many a time, I should do my talking before I go into battle, but as far as I'm aware I have done. Is the form of communication that isn't quite right,
or does this boil down to informative vrs directive styles of communication?

I realise I'm back tracking massively, I'm hoping people kinda recognise this pattern, because it kinda confuses me, the critisism of not communicating until I'm in battle commander mode, because for intents and purposes I thought I had.
Plus I was pondering all the ways I could prevent going into patronising mode...
 

PeaceBaby

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Fi thought processes ...

Fe and Fi users would start with the same problems, but come up with quite different solutions. I wonder at what point our thinking starts to diverge, what kinds of other things you take into account that we don't pay as much attention to (Ti is much more detailed that Te which tends to be more practical and works only with what is instead of what ought to be, so I'm assuming Fi also is like that in some sense. I think maybe it factors in the ought rather than only the is.) and how you arrive at your ultimate conclusion or decision to act. I'm wondering what goes into your mix that makes it right for you.

I've been considering this question for a stretch. What makes this challenging is that Fi thought processes are all about feelings. Not emotions. Feelings. That is to say, I have a feeling (value assessment) about probably everything I do and see in my world.

From the moment I wake up until I go to bed, if I pay attention, I could relate to you a value assessment about every aspect of my day. Here on the forums was where I first realized this to be true, and became aware it was not true for most other people.

So, what has that to do with thought processes you may ask ... for myself, it has everything to do with them. Every piece of data that I encounter is first filtered though the Fi lens. Things seem, at the most basic, rudimentary level, right or wrong. The clothes I wear will feel right or wrong, the steps I take along the sidewalk will feel right or wrong, the way the car drives will feel right or wrong ... you get the picture. From this initial discerning, further nuances of values are determined and the causative factors are analyzed. The clothes feel wrong because I'm cold and didn't dress properly for the weather, the steps along the sidewalk feel wrong because there's ice on the sidewalk and I didn't wear boots, the car feels right because the engine is revving smartly ... etc.

These are feelings about objects. People are similar, but there's a great deal more depth.

When it comes to people, they will feel right or wrong to me as well, and I sense their emotional tenor. It's as though they are a radio station and I am tuning into their broadcast. Too many broadcasts and I need to turn my radio volume way down, because their broadcasts are interfering with my ability to pay attention to my own feelings. This ties into previous analogies of the crying child or the barking dog ... my radio is always on, and this is the music I'm tuned into, and I have difficulty tuning it totally out.

With those thoughts in mind ...

Let's look at the work situation. I knew in my brain, intellectually, that climbing on shelving was not the safest task in my work-day. But after I fell, my thought was - "That was bad"! There's the Fi, at the elemental level. Digging deeper, I opened to the awareness that not only could I have been injured ... anyone could be injured doing this. It seemed wrong to me that we were asked to do our job without any provisions for safety. So, in reaction to that value assessment, I problem-solved a number of solutions to the issue (I suppose that's Ne at play) ... safety harnesses, ladders, stock reorganization etc. When I shared the story of what happened, along with possible solutions, to my bosses, and I was directly told nothing would change, I said to myself, "That's wrong!" So, Ne takes over again, and looks at possible solutions to this new problem on top of the first problem. Ne says, go higher up the boss "food chain", talk to coworkers and find allegiance, write a letter etc.

Now, as part of that problem solving process, I was very aware of the people dynamic too, how their reactions felt to me, how "right or wrong" they seemed. I could sense the resistance, the irritation and annoyance - I knew that it would be prudent for me to shut up. Since at that time in my life, I didn't believe someone could get fired for advocating safety, I didn't expect to be, but I knew if I kept pressing, I could get myself into some trouble. But at the same time, to ignore the problems would be wrong. See, that feeling was constantly there; every day I went into work I looked at what I was being asked to do and knew it was wrong ... but every approach I was taking to solve the problem was met with inaction.

Does that help you understand fidelia? It's not so much about how I may have approached any particular person as it had to do with a wrong persisting, a wrong that had an easy fix to make right, and something that already should have been made right.

In those situations, myself, as an individual, become almost irrelevant to the issue ... it's bigger than me, it's a matter of ethical concern that requires ACTION to correct. I feel like a light shining on the problem ... I see it, I cannot ignore it, and I have to help try and make it right.


EDIT: Please be aware that value assessments are not as "black and white" as the words "right and wrong" might suggest. I've used the polarity between the words to (hopefully) clearly illustrate what I mean and enhance understanding.
 

Thalassa

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yeah, that's true. sometimes i just bounce random crazy shit off the top of my head. it's usually pretty hit-or-miss... i think we can be dismissed quickly because of that tendency, too. i have a hard time dealing with very serious people because of this. always serious is just too confining and tedious of a way of life for me. some of the best ideas come from random fuck-ups and impromptu 3 am brainstorms.

Yes...ENFPs...apparently we process externally, we talk or write about things, interact without it being "polished" or ready...because to us it requires this external process for us to think clearly, I don't know that we can do it all inside of our head.

And the SRS CAT stuff bugs me too...I *can* be intense or serious, but I can't be in an environment where I am surrounded by too much seriousness or structure for stretches of time.

I was just deliberating about being ENFP vs. INFP (because I am really not very extroverted) and Ivy pointed out to me that I process things externally, and I also read PeaceBaby's post about how she assigns value to everything...all day long...and yeah...INFPs do that, which can sometimes make them seem more serious or focused.

Although I have strong opinions about certain things, and can get quite intense about particular issues, I simply do not (and do not want to) assign value to everything all day long...I would find that very taxing. I can process through my Ne filter all kinds of things and just accept it or toss it without giving it a particular ethical value. I embrace the absurd.
 

OrangeAppled

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In those situations, myself, as an individual, become almost irrelevant to the issue ... it's bigger than me, it's a matter of ethical concern that requires ACTION to correct. I feel like a light shining on the problem ... I see it, I cannot ignore it, and I have to help try and make it right.

YES!

For a Fi-dom, when you fail to act or speak up on that nagging feeling that something is very wrong, you almost feel like you've failed the UNIVERSE or GOD or some basic force of GOODNESS (yes, I realize that sounds over the top, but the implications can feel that weighty). It's beyond your own needs & situation. You feel compelled to act in the name of a basic ideal, because if you just sit idly by and watch, then you are somewhat responsible for its violation.

Of course, the smaller the violation or lesser the ideal, the easier it is to excuse or not see as urgent - some things aren't worth the hassle. Keeping feelings in perspective helps to not overreact also, and of course, a lot of external info & its implications is considered before the decision to act is put forth.
 

Affably Evil

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Huh! That's really interesting and different! Thank you for those write-ups, it's given me a lot to think about.
 

PeaceBaby

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I was just deliberating about being ENFP vs. INFP (because I am really not very extroverted) and Ivy pointed out to me that I process things externally, and I also read PeaceBaby's post about how she assigns value to everything...all day long...and yeah...INFPs do that, which can sometimes make them seem more serious or focused.

It's as natural as breathing, but just as a point of clarity I don't consciously say those things to myself all day long. Paying attention to your thoughts though, and unwinding the value assessments attached to them, is enlightening.
 

Seymour

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It's as natural as breathing, but just as a point of clarity I don't consciously say those things to myself all day long. Paying attention to your thoughts though, and unwinding the value assessments attached to them, is enlightening.

Totally agree with PeaceBaby on this one. Pretty much every idea, action and person I encounter throughout the day has a Feeling evaluation/tone attached. This is particularly true of my own actions, but everything I encounter has some Feeling tone attached. It's not always about good/bad per se, but may be about evaluations of aesthetics or simply an evaluation of similar/dissimilar. Still, it's pretty much continuous and my emotional reactions feed into those ongoing assessments (although the emotions are only input, not the evaluations themselves).
 

Ivy

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Totally agree with PeaceBaby on this one. Pretty much every idea, action and person I encounter throughout the day has a Feeling evaluation/tone attached. This is particularly true of my own actions, but everything I encounter has some Feeling tone attached. It's not always about good/bad per se, but may be about evaluations of aesthetics or simply an evaluation of similar/dissimilar. Still, it's pretty much continuous and my emotional reactions feed into those ongoing assessments (although the emotions are only input, not the evaluations themselves).

Yes. When it was called "assigning value" it didn't seem familiar to me, but this does. It's like a feed- it's automatic and value-neutral before I analyze it. Pure feeling tones don't have values attached, IME. For me, assigning value would be an extra step on top of this, which is involuntary.
 

OrangeAppled

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Yes. When it was called "assigning value" it didn't seem familiar to me, but this does. It's like a feed- it's automatic and value-neutral before I analyze it. Pure feeling tones don't have values attached, IME. For me, assigning value would be an extra step on top of this, which is involuntary.

Agree....feeling tones can be vague in a sense. There's no value defined in literal terms. I think that's why I say I am "moody". It's not necessarily my emotions, but just a shifting of feeling atmosphere in response to stuff.
 

uumlau

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This is a very instructive thread with respect to how "feelings" actually are "rational judgments." (These are not snarky quotes, I'm just emphasizing the particular usages of the words.)

I've always felt that at a high level, "feeling judgments" were kind of a mental shorthand, in which experience and understanding are recorded for future reference. It's not recorded in anything resembling a "logical manner", yet the judgments are no less true or accurate, thereby.

It's so much more than "feelings" or "values" or "subjectivity."

Indeed, at its best, it is "wisdom."
 

OrangeAppled

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There's no good word for "Feeling". One typology author, JH Van der hoop (Conscious Orientation - old but interesting book), suggests "Sentiment" as an alternative, but it too has connotations of emotion. That doesn't bother me so much as the idea that people will still confuse it directly with emotion.
 

CrystalViolet

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I can see my question isn't going to get answered.
 

Thalassa

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It's as natural as breathing, but just as a point of clarity I don't consciously say those things to myself all day long. Paying attention to your thoughts though, and unwinding the value assessments attached to them, is enlightening.

Oh well I do this...I have periods of introspection where I examine my thoughts and my value assessments ...I think of my Ne as like this magical tool that picks up and sorts out all of these divergent concepts and ideas for me then suddenly it will fall together into a cohesive theory or an ethical question to ponder...or in school as the topic of the next ten page paper I had to write.
 

PeaceBaby

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Totally agree with PeaceBaby on this one. Pretty much every idea, action and person I encounter throughout the day has a Feeling evaluation/tone attached. This is particularly true of my own actions, but everything I encounter has some Feeling tone attached. It's not always about good/bad per se, but may be about evaluations of aesthetics or simply an evaluation of similar/dissimilar. Still, it's pretty much continuous and my emotional reactions feed into those ongoing assessments (although the emotions are only input, not the evaluations themselves).

And this is a nice expansion on my post - it is not just "input" that generates the feelings, it's "output" as well, creating this continuous cycle. What is in the world, and how I act in the world, and how the world reacts to me - none are exempt from value assessment, and it circles around and around.

For example, I can speak to someone, and get a "wrong" feeling about what I said or what I heard, that it wasn't quite the right thing to say, or their reaction to what I said reveals that there may be more to the situation. Since conversations continually generate more feelings in me, I circle 'round, examining and reexamining, digging deeper to assess the origin point of the feelings. Much of this happens in split-second time, so receiving the feelings, reacting appropriately, receiving new input, producing more output, can be very energy depleting.

There's no good word for "Feeling". One typology author, JH Van der hoop (Conscious Orientation - old but interesting book), suggests "Sentiment" as an alternative, but it too has connotations of emotion. That doesn't bother me so much as the idea that people will still confuse it directly with emotion.

I agree with this as well. It's not about emotion, and I think that's a very significant point of confusion. What other words work ... ethics, values ... nothing is quite right.

We need to invent a new word!
 

Totenkindly

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And this is a nice expansion on my post - it is not just "input" that generates the feelings, it's "output" as well, creating this continuous cycle. What is in the world, and how I act in the world, and how the world reacts to me - none are exempt from value assessment, and it circles around and around.

For example, I can speak to someone, and get a "wrong" feeling about what I said or what I heard, that it wasn't quite the right thing to say, or their reaction to what I said reveals that there may be more to the situation. Since conversations continually generate more feelings in me, I circle 'round, examining and reexamining, digging deeper to assess the origin point of the feelings. Much of this happens in split-second time, so receiving the feelings, reacting appropriately, receiving new input, producing more output, can be very energy depleting.

I see a lot of similarity between the two Ji functions, when you explain it like this. It's pretty much the same for me -- every idea, every perception, instinctively gets a "truth" assessment attached (and I can't even quantify it, it's more like a light where it burns more and more brightly the more potentially "true" it is).

Likewise, when someone makes a claim, I immediately get a "feel" about it. I don't have to immediately know what was wrong with it, I just sense immediate incongruence and the degree of it... although the incongruence could be on their part or it could be a mistake in how I was framing things. It's all in-the-moment, intuitive, sort of like realizing the water you are swimming in has dropped a degree in temperature or that perhaps your sense of balance in your inner ear is registering that you're not quite upright.

I then have to parse through it rationally, lickety-split, to see what the sore spot might be. The more experience one gets in examining those feelings, the more patterns one gets stored involving various sorts of errors, the more rapid that process is... sometimes the recognization of what is wrong comes immediately, sometimes it needs more thought.

I'm only stating it here since they ARE both Ji functions, so one would expect them to be related in terms of functioning, and maybe it will convey the idea to other T's of how F is functioning here.
 

Ivy

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I see a lot of similarity between the two Ji functions, when you explain it like this. It's pretty much the same for me -- every idea, every perception, instinctively gets a "truth" assessment attached (and I can't even quantify it, it's more like a light where it burns more and more brightly the more potentially "true" it is).

Likewise, when someone makes a claim, I immediately get a "feel" about it. I don't have to immediately know what was wrong with it, I just sense immediate incongruence and the degree of it... although the incongruence could be on their part or it could be a mistake in how I was framing things. It's all in-the-moment, intuitive, sort of like realizing the water you are swimming in has dropped a degree in temperature or that perhaps your sense of balance in your inner ear is registering that you're not quite upright.

I then have to parse through it rationally, lickety-split, to see what the sore spot might be. The more experience one gets in examining those feelings, the more patterns one gets stored involving various sorts of errors, the more rapid that process is... sometimes the recognization of what is wrong comes immediately, sometimes it needs more thought.

I'm only stating it here since they ARE both Ji functions, so one would expect them to be related in terms of functioning, and maybe it will convey the idea to other T's of how F is functioning here.

I know you're describing Ti but this seems more accurate to me re: how I experience Fi, than what PB describes about constant value assessments in the moment. It's a flash, a gut feeling about something. I really can't think of a better way to describe it than a feeling tone. A feeling tone, for me, doesn't immediately generate a value judgment, though, and that may partly be because I have interrupted that process. I don't take it at face-value because I'm repulsed by certainty and taking one's gut feelings as gospel, partly because I've seen so much of what can happen when people do that and their guts are wrong. So it has to go through a testing prodecure (which, like you say, gets shortened with practice and other times takes longer if I haven't encountered that particular phenomenon yet).

Maybe what I'm describing is what happens when a person is forced to develop inferior Te early in life alongside primary Fi, to keep a runaway Fi in check. I recall making a conscious choice as a young adult to develop my intellect (this was before I knew much about MBTI) because I saw myself as capricious and led by emotion, but was surrounded by capricious people who were led by their emotions too, and they were not leading themselves right IMO.
 

PeaceBaby

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^ A feeling tone, by it's very nature, contains a value assessment, a rational judgement, a sense of "rightness" or "wrongness".

If there wasn't an internal assessment before you felt your "ring of truth" you wouldn't get any "feelings" at all. Do you just get "feelings" and have no idea whether they are good or bad, or what they mean at the time you receive them?

I don't see anything from my previous posts to suggest I take those feelings fully at face value either, or don't critically examine them. Are you getting that impression from any of my posts or are you enhancing the ideas already put forth?
 
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