[MBTI General] "Turning yourself off", can you do it?

[HotpinkHeatwave]

I'm not sure if this is an ENFP thing, or an NF thing, or an every type thing.

I have a very hard time trusting people. I have few close friends, but A LOT of acquaintances.

The people I do trust, are people I've known for a very long time. Family, childhood friends, etc.

But -

When someone hurts me deeply enough, I am able to "turn myself off" towards them.

Suddenly, all love/liking I had for them just goes away, and I just feel cold or slightly bitter. I want nothing to do with them, I basically cast them away.

I've done this many times, more commonly with friends/boyfriends than family.

Is this an ENFP thing? NF thing? Every type thing?

 

[mmhmm]

I'm not sure if this is an ENFP thing, or an NF thing, or an every type thing.

I have a very hard time trusting people. I have few close friends, but A LOT of acquaintances.

The people I do trust, are people I've known for a very long time. Family, childhood friends, etc.

But -

When someone hurts me deeply enough, I am able to "turn myself off" towards them.

Suddenly, all love/liking I had for them just goes away, and I just feel cold or slightly bitter. I want nothing to do with them, I basically cast them away.

I've done this many times, more commonly with friends/boyfriends than family.

Is this an ENFP thing? NF thing? Every type thing?

i think it's a normal reaction for anybody who has been
hurt, to not want to be around the person who hurts them.

so for enfps, when we "turn ourselves off" we're basically
going against the grain of what we normally do. in our normal
state we're constantly taking in new information, but if we've
decided "alright, this guy is an ass, i don't want to be around
him' we've decided to not take in anymore information about
this person/situation/issue right? so we're just left with all the
stuff about how we feel/what we think about that issue which
just kinda 'stews' in our head.

and we're not stew people. because when were focusing on
the same thing over and over + not bringing in any
more information (because we've decided already: no more)
we aren't being ourselves (turning off) and it's like all the
lovely jubbly bits about us kinda dissapear, because for us,
there's nothing joyful or light or fun about stewing. and it
bums us out.

it happens to me too. it makes me feel like a deflated balloon.

 

[skylights]

Yeah, it probably hits us hard because it's so dramatically different from our usual way of being.

I feel this way about a few people. It fades over time, mostly, in terms of heated anger, but the desire to never associate with them again is still strong.

 

[Santosha]

It is rare for me to want to shut the door on any person, thing or possibility because I seem to always sense a value or potential value in it, even if at the moment it pisses me off. For me to close the door on someone I have to find no value for extensive periods of time which is difficult. Even when I am hurt I tend to weigh up the good vs the bad. I don't know if this is really healthy or effective but I think for me atleast, some of this stems back to being raised by parents with substance abuse issues. I really feel for people who had messed up parents in this way and I feel for myself. This dynamic does create people who are far more conditioned to tolerate things like inconsistency, lies, saying one thing then doing another, loving you at one time and then being abusive or hurtful the next. Reconditioning yourself to understand acceptable and unacceptable behavior is very difficult to overcome, and something I am constantly working on.

However, I will say that when I finally do cut someone out.. it is etched in the stones of eternity. I don't want to see them, hear from them OR hear about them, regardless of how much time passes. If I come across them in a social situation or publicly they are entirely ignored regardless of social awkwardness. If friends or family attempt to talk me out of my decision anything they have to say is shut down. It really takes me a lot to get to this point though.

 

[Qlip]

I've 'door slammed' one person. For me to be able to do this, I eventually had to understand that 1) I tried everything possible to resolve the issues 2) Contact with her made my life invariably worse and never better. I took many years of turmoil (my entire life) before figuring that out. I wish I could figure out another way to deal with it, but everytime I try to reassess the issue I just see an infinitely tall and blank mental wall.

 

[31january]

I haven't managed to do it yet, though maybe i should. I can't seem to give up on the idea that there's still potential in people, especially if their behaviour is inconsistent (i.e. sometimes cold, other times very friendly). It's gets to a point that i may sometimes devote more thought to the least worthwhile relationships as i try to "save" them, while sort of neglecting more stable ones bleh.

 

[King sns]

Occasionally I can do this. I can become quite nasty towards people, tend to know exactly which buttons to press to really hurt people if I have to, and then can coldly throw them out like a piece of trash. Takes a real (perceived) offense on their part for me to do this. And I have to care about them first. Then I just let it go and forget them fast.

 

[Stanton Moore]

Think about Auschwitz. If that doesn't work YOU'RE A MONSTER

 

[highlander]

I can think can think of one person and they weren't a tremendously significant person in my life. I trusted him and he severely let me down. I think he may have had substance abuse issues. He ended up embezzling several thousand dollars years later to support his drug habit.

 

[sculpting]

I totally do this.

Most notably with my ENFP mom and ESFP sister. I can sit and watch my ENFP mom cry her eyes out and feel nothing but slight annoyance at her. This sounds really terrible, huh?

Throughout my childhood I would watch my mother behave irresponsibly, repeat the same stupid, self centered patterns over and over again and endlessly get stuck in her own history. Whenever she would be confronted with the results of her actions, rather than address how she got there, understand how her actions contribute and then rationally plan a different approach in the future based on this information, she would whine and cry and beg for help form others to bail her out of her messes. Typically these others were whatever man happened to be around at the moment.

My sister follows many of the same patterns.

Each has used my emotions over many, many years to get money or help. For a long time i would give in, to the tune of thousands of dollars, just to watch them repeat thier same behaviors.

Throughout my childhood my mom was endlessly wailing, crying, moaning and spewing her emotions everywhere around her. Being a little enfp in this mess was extremely difficult, as her emotions would reverberate off of mine and I was always extremely anxious and overwhelmed.

Nowdays when I am around my mom I feel nothing inside but vague coldness-I cant feel emotions. Since she makes me feel this way and I dont like it, I try and avoid her as much possible.

On a very negative note, as a result of watching this behavior my whole life, I tend to be very suspecious of people's attempts to emotionally influence me as it always seems to have some ulterior motive. Instead I interact with most people a bit more at arm's length and I really do push others to be responsible for thier own actions and be willing to analyze thier own behavior and choices.

 

[Ness]

I'm not sure if this is an ENFP thing, or an NF thing, or an every type thing.

I have a very hard time trusting people. I have few close friends, but A LOT of acquaintances.

The people I do trust, are people I've known for a very long time. Family, childhood friends, etc.

But -

When someone hurts me deeply enough, I am able to "turn myself off" towards them.

Suddenly, all love/liking I had for them just goes away, and I just feel cold or slightly bitter. I want nothing to do with them, I basically cast them away.

I've done this many times, more commonly with friends/boyfriends than family.

Is this an ENFP thing? NF thing? Every type thing?

I can do this. If I have a logical reason not then I will just apear cold and distant. I have to be carful not to do it to much as I find easy. I think the reason is than many people who were very close to me have died, from an early age, I also left my home country and moved away from everything I know when I was 16, Im able to deal with loss a little to easily. I just imagine the person who has hurt me had died. A little fucked up