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[NF] emotional coping strategies

mochajava

New member
Joined
Jul 28, 2010
Messages
475
MBTI Type
INFJ
skylights: i'm really not a fan of hanging out in negative emotion. it had more to do with life being a bitch sometimes, but the realization that ignoring your problems (or... bulldozing them over?) isn't going to fix everything. if you're not careful, you'll just end up repressing and postponing pain.

This is a good way of describing a healthy way of dealing with emotions, intense or not. It's worth going back and re-reading skylights whole post here.

marmalade.sunrise Yeah people want love, affection, and acceptance. Goddamn them.

So much gold in this thread; I just thought I'd point it out again.

I think our culture isn't very emotion friendly. Many people are going through something big, and I mean BIG (deaths, responsibility for an elder family member, breaking up with an SO they moved to be with) but it's just below the surface. I don't know how many times people tell me, "you are SO TOGETHER, how do you do it?" and it's just because I am careful where I express my emotions. I think the reason I express this (perhaps excessive) caution is because of our culture and how unacceptable the full range of emotions is.

OrangeAppled How do you know you really understand their emotional state? What if it is more complicated than it appears on the surface? What if they are trying out more solutions than you see? Often, we don't know the whole story behind a person's low state. Assuming we do simply trivializes their feelings & makes them feel worse. Now they don't just have the original issue to deal with, but the idea that they are wrong for feeling at all.
Exactly! What's harder than being in a low state? Feeling bad for being in a low state. And guess what? That idea will prolong being in the low state...
 

LotsOfHeart

New member
Joined
Feb 14, 2009
Messages
298
MBTI Type
INFJ
Enneagram
4
For me, when something goes wrong I can sometimes go berserk. I try to cope any way possible; talking with someone about it, spending time alone, etc. The most productive thing I probably do is thinking about the positives of it, or just realizing that I'm not the only one who has had to deal with the problem.

Then again, just because someone else has a problem doesn't mean you should too. Because they probably have strengths you don't have. So if you share their problems along with your own then you really have problems. Sometimes I used to have survivor guilt; if I did better than someone else at something I'd oddly feel guilty. That's bullsh*t. I hate that about myself.

I think you have to be able to take responsibility and sometimes actually not take it. Granted, most of our individual problems are probably our fault, but sometimes I work really hard at something and don't see results when others don't work and get results. I'm sure there's probably some of that in my favor too, although not as much. But that's okay, I've learned to accept I have to work harder than a lot of people I know to succeed. That's fine by me, it just means I'm in greater control of my actions and my success.
 

Blown Ghost

New member
Joined
Aug 16, 2010
Messages
279
MBTI Type
ESFP
I don't really get why things that are in your head are supposed to be small problems comparing to things that are outside your head. I've always seen it the other way around...

Yes I'm sure you have. Why do you think I made this thread?

The reason why 'in the head' are small problems (or actually, no problem at all) is because they are the only thing you can truly do something about. The things outside your head will involve a varying number of criteria to change, your thoughts you can change as you please. Same reason in response to the rest of the responses here.

Actually, I don't want to argue about the workings of this because there really isn't a counter-argument here. Let's talk about what we can do about it, and by that I mean what we can do for people who don't understand this (case in point--we can't control them so it becomes an actual challenge/problem whether you choose to view it optimistically or pessimistically).
 

nolla

Senor Membrane
Joined
May 22, 2008
Messages
3,166
MBTI Type
INFP
your thoughts you can change as you please.

WOW! :shock: That's heavy!

I basically agree with the idea that you can't easily change the outside situation, but to say that I could change the thoughts as I please is really not my experience at all! I don't even know where my thoughts come from or what initiates them... I have nothing on them. And if an external situation cannot be changed, then it internalizes because I'll need to adapt to it. I would even guess that a person with relatively good means to control external environment would have less internal problems because they would be fixed before internalized.

I understand you don't want to argue, but can you explain further? It's interesting, since that's a radically different view of the issue. The way I've seen my ESFP friends deal with problems has always been a puzzle for me.
 

ExAstrisSpes

New member
Joined
Aug 11, 2010
Messages
337
MBTI Type
ENFJ
I think it's keeping-your-crap-together while dealing with emotional problems at the same time. If you're already to the point where your emotions are overwhelming you, it's hard to step back and take an objective look at what's going on.

Yoga really helps with that. There's something about a *really* good yoga session that unkinks whatever emotional thread that I'm working on or struggling through at the time (even though I might not know about it). Even if I don't get to the point where I cry (which is an amazing emotional release, one that I don't actually do all that often), I certainly feel better and ready to face the world again.

Even when dealing with a lot of stress I try to tell myself that in a couple weeks it's going to be over with or handled and there will be other things stressing me out. That sometimes helps. But not as much as yoga.
 

niffer

New member
Joined
Apr 26, 2007
Messages
1,217
MBTI Type
ENfP
Enneagram
8w9
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
It takes a while for people to recover from the initial shock of their situation enough to be able to objectively assess it. The most others can offer is support and advice and people will come to in their own time. It's part of learning from the experience.
 
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