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[MBTI General] NFP Under Stress

R

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First, INFPs:

Here’s how an unstressed INFP in charge of people will operate: Put everyone to work on just one or two big projects, there’s no hurry or pressure to push those projects through to completion, the INFP enjoys Ne-ing the projects: brainstorming, lots of discussion. So things move slowly, if at all.

By comparison, here is how a stressed-out INFP in charge of people operates: Acts like ESTJ sergeant, starts kicking ass to get lots of projects pushed through quickly, is disgusted with time-wasting Ne-ing and brainstorming--just get the damned thing done! Cut corners if need be, the main thing is to unclog the pipeline and get all these projects finished and move on to the next batch until the backlog is addressed.

Now, ENFPs:

Unstressed ENFP in charge of people: Lots of irons in the fire, enjoying juggling lots of projects simultaneously, no problem about cutting corners or being creative on a project; no harm if things are done a little half-assed; the main thing is to Fi each project and find an essential principle and address that principle above all.

Stressed-out ENFP in charge of people: Turns into an ISTJ super-cop, nit-picking everything and insisting that everything be done “by the book.” All of a sudden the flow of projects slows down, multi-tasking is not allowed, everyone works on a single project and the ENFP boss oversees to make sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed. No more Fi-ing the projects and letting their progress be determined by their essential principle; Fi is just a distraction. Now the focus is on eliminating half-assed, incomplete work; the focus is on oversight and procedure and doing things properly and to completion.

To sum up: The most obvious difference between INFPs and ENFPs (in my personal experience): When unstressed INFP bosses become stressed, projects that were moving slowly through the pipeline suddenly begin moving quickly due to the INFP’s drill-sergeant attitude: just get it done as fast as possible and then move on to the next project. The reverse occurs when unstressed ENFP bosses become stressed: Things that moved quickly suddenly slow down due to the stressed ENFP boss’s hyperfocus on oversight and attention to detail.

[...] when things get really stressful (as they have been lately) I can't sleep. My mind goes ape-shit over all the things I need to do. All my unfinished projects. Where is my direction? How do I decide what priorities have greater weight? Etc. THe only relief that I find is when I get out of my mind and start doing shit. This usually involves staying up late to clean, organize, do laundry, prepare for things I wont have time to do later in the week. I make charts and lists of how many hours I'm going to work, what my paychecks should be, what bills will be paid off, what days I will do certain chores, my goals, what days I plan to meet up with friends I've pushed off for too long, (Do I stick to these things, not always.) Sleep when I die becomes my motto.

When it’s just myself (INFP) alone late at night trying to deal with stress, I sometimes do what Huxley described when stressed. Again, I do it in the same ESTJ spirit as described earlier: I feel like I’ve let personal projects get stacked up, and now it’s time to quit Ne-ing them (stop all the brainstorming/daydreaming) and just start pushing them through the pipeline willy-nilly. Don't worry about the fine points; just get it done and move on to the next one. Just start multi-tasking and cranking out projects like a madman until the backlog is addressed.

As I grow older, OTOH, I’ll handle a period of late-night stress by focusing on just one seemingly intractable problem and trying to cut through all the clutter around it and find some neat organizational principle that will help break the logjam. I’m pretty much up to date on routine projects, so I don’t need to do a lot of multi-tasking and cleaning; nowadays it’s more about tackling a single difficult tangle (a marital conflict or something like that) and trying to slash through it with a single stroke like a Gordian knot, with the emphasis on finding a solid organization principle to use as my blade.

I suppose an ENFP might go through a phase of prioritizing and organizing their life under stress, such as Huxley described above, but I suspect it would emphasize more of an ISTJ hyper-focus on details and doing things by the book, i.e., doing things to completion, as opposed to multi-tasking lots of projects at once and being half-assed about them. (Just guessing here--I don’t know how an ENFP deals with late-night stress when alone.)
 

skylights

i love
Joined
Jul 6, 2010
Messages
7,756
MBTI Type
INFP
Enneagram
6w7
Instinctual Variant
so/sx
^ nice post! all that stuff about ENFP really rings true for me. as a leader i like to see lots of things going on at once, lots of creativity, and i don't mind if a couple by-the-book corners are skirted as long as we're getting to the heart of what needs to be done. you sneaked into the other office and used their copier? did you get caught? no? awesome. nice work. i hope you grabbed some paper to refill our copier while you were at it. when i get overtired or upset, i get nitpicky and complain about rules not being followed. i think it bothers me that people don't know the rules more than whether or not they adhere to them, because i could get in trouble if they're stupid about breaking them. it's like:

break rules < follow rules < break rules intelligently

I suppose an ENFP might go through a phase of prioritizing and organizing their life under stress, such as Huxley described above, but I suspect it would emphasize more of an ISTJ hyper-focus on details and doing things by the book, i.e., doing things to completion, as opposed to multi-tasking lots of projects at once and being half-assed about them. (Just guessing here--I don’t know how an ENFP deals with late-night stress when alone.)

well, you know how you talked about clearing the clutter around one problem? for me it's more like getting all the little details into order. getting my ducks in a row, tying up all the loose ends that i haven't been paying attention to. i clean out my email inbox, send some letters, buy online some things that i've been meaning to buy, clear out under my bed, etc. it doesn't have much to do with the main problems at hand, usually, but it's about getting my general life-area organized, the things that i've let slip because i usually have 10 other things going on at once. so for me a productive night will be like having a checklist of 10 little things to do, knocking them all out, and then cleaning everything up. i have a penchant for cleaning, actually. i enjoy it.
 

Forever_Jung

Active member
Joined
May 23, 2009
Messages
2,644
MBTI Type
ESFJ
I find that with my Fi, the inner ideal is so important, that when I try to put it into action with my weak Te, it often falls short, and I get very disenfranchised and cynical, at least for a while. Reality is like a battering ram at the castle gates of my ideals, and sometimes the barbarians break through and take over temporarily. Pretty soon my kingdom becomes a land of cruel and shallow pragmatism, and I become very critical and bitter. If other Fi-doms are anything like me, being deeply wounded can make you act uncharacteristically nasty and judgmental.

Bob Dylan, for example, a famous ISFP, wrote many hit songs that were basically bitter put-down rants vomited over music. "Like A Rolling Stone" is the most famous, and "Idiot Wind" written as his marriage was fallen apart had a verse that went: "You hurt the ones that I love best/And cover up the truth with lies/one day you'll be in the ditch/flies buzzing around your eyes/blood on your saddle".
 

Thalassa

Permabanned
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May 3, 2009
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25,183
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ISFP
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6w7
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sx
I don't see those as "bitter put-down rants" I see them as authentic expressions of emotions most human beings experience. It's important for society to acknowledge all feelings, including pain and rage, through art.

So I'm not going to call this uncharacteristically nasty and judgemental, I'm going to call it a difference in Fi values. I agree with Bob Dylan. I think art is about revealing all sides of human nature without making it politically correct, to depict reality in its rawest form, and to make people think and feel.
 

luminous beam

♪♫♪♫♪♫
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Feb 12, 2008
Messages
744
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INFP
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2w3
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sx/so
I think that as a softer NF that is under chronic stress all the time, their sweet innocent selves eventually wear off. After being used, hurt or unappreciated all the time you start to lose hope, become bitter and resentful, jaded amd cynical. Even arriving to the point of emotional detachment.
 

Forever_Jung

Active member
Joined
May 23, 2009
Messages
2,644
MBTI Type
ESFJ
I don't see those as "bitter put-down rants" I see them as authentic expressions of emotions most human beings experience. It's important for society to acknowledge all feelings, including pain and rage, through art.

So I'm not going to call this uncharacteristically nasty and judgemental, I'm going to call it a difference in Fi values. I agree with Bob Dylan. I think art is about revealing all sides of human nature without making it politically correct, to depict reality in its rawest form, and to make people think and feel.

I wasn't trying to come across like that...I love the songs and feel them, but they certainly are "put-down" songs.

"Yes, I wish that for just one time
You could stand inside my shoes
You’d know what a drag it is
To see you" (Positively 4th Street)

"You're an idiot babe, it's wonder that you still know how to breathe" (Idiot Wind)

A lot of his best songs were kind of these "revenge songs". Take "When the Ship Comes In": According to Joan Baez, Dylan wrote it in one night as a response to some indifferent treatment he had received by the staff of a hotel where Baez was staying during a concert tour, "He wrote it that night" she said, "...took him exactly one evening to write it...I couldn't believe it, to get back at those idiots so fast." Al Kooper, who worked with him on Highway 61 Revisited, always said Bob Dylan was the king of the nasty song, and I always just interpreted this behaviour as the usually subdued and sensitive Bob Dylan took all his hatred and hurt and shaped the bitterness into something interesting, rather than letting it eat him up inside. Maybe I'm guilty of assuming my feelings about the song match his, but it's so easy to do with Dylan.

I don't really disagree with most of what you said though, I just want to explain myself more clearly :)
 

Little Linguist

Striving for balance
Joined
Jun 23, 2008
Messages
6,880
MBTI Type
xNFP
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
First, INFPs:

Here’s how an unstressed INFP in charge of people will operate: Put everyone to work on just one or two big projects, there’s no hurry or pressure to push those projects through to completion, the INFP enjoys Ne-ing the projects: brainstorming, lots of discussion. So things move slowly, if at all.

By comparison, here is how a stressed-out INFP in charge of people operates: Acts like ESTJ sergeant, starts kicking ass to get lots of projects pushed through quickly, is disgusted with time-wasting Ne-ing and brainstorming--just get the damned thing done! Cut corners if need be, the main thing is to unclog the pipeline and get all these projects finished and move on to the next batch until the backlog is addressed.

Now, ENFPs:

Unstressed ENFP in charge of people: Lots of irons in the fire, enjoying juggling lots of projects simultaneously, no problem about cutting corners or being creative on a project; no harm if things are done a little half-assed; the main thing is to Fi each project and find an essential principle and address that principle above all.

Stressed-out ENFP in charge of people: Turns into an ISTJ super-cop, nit-picking everything and insisting that everything be done “by the book.” All of a sudden the flow of projects slows down, multi-tasking is not allowed, everyone works on a single project and the ENFP boss oversees to make sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed. No more Fi-ing the projects and letting their progress be determined by their essential principle; Fi is just a distraction. Now the focus is on eliminating half-assed, incomplete work; the focus is on oversight and procedure and doing things properly and to completion.

To sum up: The most obvious difference between INFPs and ENFPs (in my personal experience): When unstressed INFP bosses become stressed, projects that were moving slowly through the pipeline suddenly begin moving quickly due to the INFP’s drill-sergeant attitude: just get it done as fast as possible and then move on to the next project. The reverse occurs when unstressed ENFP bosses become stressed: Things that moved quickly suddenly slow down due to the stressed ENFP boss’s hyperfocus on oversight and attention to detail.



When it’s just myself (INFP) alone late at night trying to deal with stress, I sometimes do what Huxley described when stressed. Again, I do it in the same ESTJ spirit as described earlier: I feel like I’ve let personal projects get stacked up, and now it’s time to quit Ne-ing them (stop all the brainstorming/daydreaming) and just start pushing them through the pipeline willy-nilly. Don't worry about the fine points; just get it done and move on to the next one. Just start multi-tasking and cranking out projects like a madman until the backlog is addressed.

As I grow older, OTOH, I’ll handle a period of late-night stress by focusing on just one seemingly intractable problem and trying to cut through all the clutter around it and find some neat organizational principle that will help break the logjam. I’m pretty much up to date on routine projects, so I don’t need to do a lot of multi-tasking and cleaning; nowadays it’s more about tackling a single difficult tangle (a marital conflict or something like that) and trying to slash through it with a single stroke like a Gordian knot, with the emphasis on finding a solid organization principle to use as my blade.

I suppose an ENFP might go through a phase of prioritizing and organizing their life under stress, such as Huxley described above, but I suspect it would emphasize more of an ISTJ hyper-focus on details and doing things by the book, i.e., doing things to completion, as opposed to multi-tasking lots of projects at once and being half-assed about them. (Just guessing here--I don’t know how an ENFP deals with late-night stress when alone.)

Fascinating post, but according to this, I would be more of an INFP. Although, okay, sometimes I act like an ISTJ super-cop, too when stressed.
 

rexadelic

New member
Joined
Aug 30, 2011
Messages
7
MBTI Type
ENFP
Typically I shut down completely (if it's true stress and not simply a small amount of pressure that pushes me to be better). I don't do any of the things I need to get done, like housework or schoolwork, and I don't talk to people at all. I stay holed up in my room and cry and usually have at least one anxiety attack.
 

rexadelic

New member
Joined
Aug 30, 2011
Messages
7
MBTI Type
ENFP
Unstressed ENFP in charge of people: Lots of irons in the fire, enjoying juggling lots of projects simultaneously, no problem about cutting corners or being creative on a project; no harm if things are done a little half-assed; the main thing is to Fi each project and find an essential principle and address that principle above all.

Stressed-out ENFP in charge of people: Turns into an ISTJ super-cop, nit-picking everything and insisting that everything be done “by the book.” All of a sudden the flow of projects slows down, multi-tasking is not allowed, everyone works on a single project and the ENFP boss oversees to make sure every i was dotted and every t was crossed. No more Fi-ing the projects and letting their progress be determined by their essential principle; Fi is just a distraction. Now the focus is on eliminating half-assed, incomplete work; the focus is on oversight and procedure and doing things properly and to completion.

To sum up: The most obvious difference between INFPs and ENFPs (in my personal experience): When unstressed INFP bosses become stressed, projects that were moving slowly through the pipeline suddenly begin moving quickly due to the INFP’s drill-sergeant attitude: just get it done as fast as possible and then move on to the next project. The reverse occurs when unstressed ENFP bosses become stressed: Things that moved quickly suddenly slow down due to the stressed ENFP boss’s hyperfocus on oversight and attention to detail.
This is absolutely true for me.
 

Elfboy

Certified Sausage Smoker
Joined
Nov 26, 2008
Messages
9,625
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
5w4
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
I'm kinda like this under stress :(

 
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