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[INFP] INFPs, have people ever said you were "out of touch with your emotions"?

Metis

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When I was a little girl of sixteen, a professor was doing "let's all introduce ourselves" and asking people "and how are you feeling right now?"

When he asked me, I didn't know, because frankly I didn't really see anything to be feeling any one way or another about, and I simply had no answer. So I said, "I don't know."

He said ironically, "Well, you're very in touch with your emotions," or something to that effect.

While I hadn't really received comments like that regularly, that was a pretty regular frame of mind for me to be in. It's not that I didn't feel anything; it's just that I didn't go around thinking about it.

I wouldn't agree with his suggestion that I was out of touch with my emotions, though. I just didn't think in terms of how I felt at any given moment, in general.



However, in retrospect, and also upon reflection of more recent and current self-observation, I think I'm driven much more by how I feel about things than not. On tests that ask things like, "Do you base your decisions more on feelings or logic?" -- honestly, feelings are often the logical thing to base decisions on. I mean, do you say, "Well, it's logical to go to Boring Ass Movie because it's cheaper and it's playing at a closer theatre? Or do you say, "Let's go see Awesome Movie even though it's a longer drive and more expensive?" The logical thing to do is either to see the movie you're feeling excited about and interested in, or just stay in or do something else. It would be totally illogical to go see the movie that you think sucks.



My point is, can you be an INFP and not be hyperaware of how you "feel" all the time? What do you think? Just because you're not thinking, "I feel a pale pastel peach shade of ennui right now" or "I feel slightly exuberant with a dash of apprehension," and things like that constantly, it doesn't mean that you're not pretty much fully 100% driven by feelings and values, rather than "well, it just makes sense, logically." I'm pretty sure I am, actually.
 
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I feel indifferent about quite a lot of things. In fact the older I’ve become, the more episodes of indifference I’ve had. I think it’s a stereotype that INFPs are gushing with emotions anyway. These descriptions constantly portray us as barely contained mania in human form. I can’t say I’ve ever felt like a rainbow of feelings waiting to burst forth in an explosion of expression. Yeah no.
 

chickpea

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i think i'm in touch with my emotions, but mostly choose not to share them with others.

i've had a lot of people irl tell me that i am extremely chill, and that they can't imagine me ever getting angry, etc. meanwhile i feel like a crazy person on the inside and have a thousand mood swings per day :shrug:. maybe they're not very perceptive!
 

Metis

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I feel indifferent about quite a lot of things. In fact the older I’ve become, the more episodes of indifference I’ve had. I think it’s a stereotype that INFPs are gushing with emotions anyway. These descriptions constantly portray us as barely contained mania in human form. I can’t say I’ve ever felt like a rainbow of feelings waiting to burst forth in an explosion of expression. Yeah no.

I think the descriptions usually paint you more as very deep, with very nuanced shades of feeling, and aware of them to the point that you see the world through a fog of diverse shades of emotion that most of us don't have access to. As in, "It's not that other types don't feel; it's just that INFPs experience a richer world of emotions." That's the sort of thing I usually see in INFP descriptions.

But you usually would have an answer if someone asked you how you felt? You wouldn't think, "Huh? Am I supposed to be feeling something right now? I didn't think anything important enough to have a feeling about was going on here right now." Or would you? And do you really have a broad range of emotions, or do you default to a few regulars? You don't just sit on the couch and "feel" the way an introverted thinking type might sit and get lost in thought, do you? Like I sometimes imagine, from INFP descriptions, that they're sitting there "feeling". As though feeling in and of itself were an activity, like thinking can be. LOL Or do you...?
 

Metis

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i think i'm in touch with my emotions, but mostly choose not to share them with others.

i've had a lot of people irl tell me that i am extremely chill, and that they can't imagine me ever getting angry, etc. meanwhile i feel like a crazy person on the inside and have a thousand mood swings per day :shrug:. maybe they're not very perceptive!

Thanks chickpea.

:nice:



That sounds like a totally different "inner landscape" from Population: 1.
 

wildmoon

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Personally I've been emotionally aware at times and disconnected at other times.

I think the descriptions of INFPs are extremely misleading - we don't sit around just 'feeling', lol. The MBTI is pretty detached from real psychology and spreads so much misinformation. In actuality, thoughts and emotions are inherently linked. The way the INFP 'feelings' motive actually works goes like this: I'm walking in the park, I see a flower that I like and want to look at, so I go and look at the flower. It's all perfectly logical. I enjoy the flower for a while and then move on. I'm probably more elated by the flower than other types would be, and I suppose that's where the emotion comes into it. That's why I like to spend time alone, because other people might be annoyed when I do that, and it's like, just let me enjoy the damn flower for a moment. It just seems logical to us to do what we want (as long as it's not hurting anybody) y'know?
 
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I think the descriptions usually paint you more as very deep, with very nuanced shades of feeling, and aware of them to the point that you see the world through a fog of diverse shades of emotion that most of us don't have access to. As in, "It's not that other types don't feel; it's just that INFPs experience a richer world of emotions." That's the sort of thing I usually see in INFP descriptions.

But you usually would have an answer if someone asked you how you felt? You wouldn't think, "Huh? Am I supposed to be feeling something right now? I didn't think anything important enough to have a feeling about was going on here right now." Or would you? And do you really have a broad range of emotions, or do you default to a few regulars? You don't just sit on the couch and "feel" the way an introverted thinking type might sit and get lost in thought, do you? Like I sometimes imagine, from INFP descriptions, that they're sitting there "feeling". As though feeling in and of itself were an activity, like thinking can be. LOL Or do you...?
When I was really young I was a raw nerve of feelings. I definitely could tell you in a descriptive fashion exactly what I felt, well descriptive for a child. Perhaps being a man makes it somewhat different because as you rise out of childhood that emotional rawness is tempered by others and yourself consciously and subconsciously. Boys aren’t supposed to cry, boys aren’t supposed to show vulnerabilities of any kind (societies philosophy not necessarily mine). It isn’t just verbally taught, it’s ingrained in you far more frequently through unspoken messages. You watch how the older boys and men act, you watch how your peers act in response and you follow suit.

Anyway, years of that coupled with my own desensitization to most events have left me outwardly indifferent to lots of things and only slightly less indifferent inside. It really depends entirely on subject matter. Certain things still evoke emotions in me but again a lot of those won’t register externally. I hate seeing children hurt and animals and if I really let myself be put in someone else’s shoes I can still empathize. I’m not that conduit of raw emotions that I was as a child.

Sometimes I do just sit and ponder things on the couch in a very clinical and emotionally detached way. Again subject matter determines my settings. I do not sit and bask in an emotion like it’s a thought though. I don’t ponder sadness for instance by wearing it for an hour. I do sometimes find beauty in something that’s sad but I’ll still analyze why I find it so.

Hopefully that makes sense.
 

Metis

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Personally I've been emotionally aware at times and disconnected at other times.

I think the descriptions of INFPs are extremely misleading - we don't sit around just 'feeling', lol. The MBTI is pretty detached from real psychology and spreads so much misinformation. In actuality, thoughts and emotions are inherently linked. The way the INFP 'feelings' motive actually works goes like this: I'm walking in the park, I see a flower that I like and want to look at, so I go and look at the flower. It's all perfectly logical. I enjoy the flower for a while and then move on. I'm probably more elated by the flower than other types would be, and I suppose that's where the emotion comes into it. That's why I like to spend time alone, because other people might be annoyed when I do that, and it's like, just let me enjoy the damn flower for a moment. It just seems logical to us to do what we want (as long as it's not hurting anybody) y'know?

"In actuality, thoughts and emotions are inherently linked." Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Usually I don't "think" one thing and "feel" another.

Usually, when someone asks me how I feel, or how I feel about such-and-such, my answer is more along the lines of "I feel like I should do A instead of B" or something in a motivation-to-action sense, or a motivation to make a particular decision on something. Not "I feel quite touched by the inherent dichotomy of A vs. B, and it brings meaning to life" kind of thing. I hear other people give responses like that all the time, and then they ask me, and I go, "Oh, well, um, I felt like... um..." (I guess in this case, the initial question in the example would have been something like, "How did you feel about the passage we read, or about the show we watched and the characters in it?")

But I knew a guy who would always want to stop and savor the moment. It was really annoying! Not that I don't ever do that. Sometimes I'll want to go check something out and enjoy the smell of the roses or the look of a flower or something; I just don't want someone else dragging me around according to his own spontaneous interests. It feels suffocating.
 

LucieCat

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That's interesting. Well people have strange opinions sometimes. I don't think being out of touch with your feelings is something that comes about because you are not sure how you are feeling.

Then again, one of the many many psychiatrists I was dragged to in my early adolescence claimed I didn't have empathy. Maybe it was because when asked to make up a story, it got really dark. Hey I was just going based off the pictures I was given. I'm an ENFP, and ENFPs are commonly associated with empathy. My parents both thought that was ridiculous. So do I.

Sometimes people come to strange conclusions. Another of these pscychiatrists said I had some sort of learning disability that couldn't be specified. His only evidence was that I was really strong in some areas and then really bad in others, more than one would expect to see. Everyone else who has ever examined me had never thought that or broke it up. It was later flat out dismissed by several people as ridiculous. But I'm pretty sure this dude was a quack anyway, he also destroyed a big part of my self esteem. But that's another story.
 

wildmoon

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"In actuality, thoughts and emotions are inherently linked." Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. Usually I don't "think" one thing and "feel" another.

Usually, when someone asks me how I feel, or how I feel about such-and-such, my answer is more along the lines of "I feel like I should do A instead of B" or something in a motivation-to-action sense, or a motivation to make a particular decision on something. Not "I feel quite touched by the inherent dichotomy of A vs. B, and it brings meaning to life" kind of thing. I hear other people give responses like that all the time, and then they ask me, and I go, "Oh, well, um, I felt like... um..." (I guess in this case, the initial question in the example would have been something like, "How did you feel about the passage we read, or about the show we watched and the characters in it?")

But I knew a guy who would always want to stop and savor the moment. It was really annoying! Not that I don't ever do that. Sometimes I'll want to go check something out and enjoy the smell of the roses or the look of a flower or something; I just don't want someone else dragging me around according to his own spontaneous interests. It feels suffocating.

Yeah, I respond to questions about how I feel with answers about what I think as well. I guess it's a common experience.
Haha! Spontaneous interests are my thing, but I try to reign it in around others unless they're interested too.
 

Metis

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When I was really young I was a raw nerve of feelings. I definitely could tell you in a descriptive fashion exactly what I felt, well descriptive for a child. Perhaps being a man makes it somewhat different because as you rise out of childhood that emotional rawness is tempered by others and yourself consciously and subconsciously. Boys aren’t supposed to cry, boys aren’t supposed to show vulnerabilities of any kind (societies philosophy not necessarily mine). It isn’t just verbally taught, it’s ingrained in you far more frequently through unspoken messages. You watch how the older boys and men act, you watch how your peers act in response and you follow suit.

Anyway, years of that coupled with my own desensitization to most events have left me outwardly indifferent to lots of things and only slightly less indifferent inside. It really depends entirely on subject matter. Certain things still evoke emotions in me but again a lot of those won’t register externally. I hate seeing children hurt and animals and if I really let myself be put in someone else’s shoes I can still empathize. I’m not that conduit of raw emotions that I was as a child.

Sometimes I do just sit and ponder things on the couch in a very clinical and emotionally detached way. Again subject matter determines my settings. I do not sit and bask in an emotion like it’s a thought though. I don’t ponder sadness for instance by wearing it for an hour. I do sometimes find beauty in something that’s sad but I’ll still analyze why I find it so.

Hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah, that makes sense.

Whenever I hear about the "boys grow up being taught not to cry or show vulnerability" thing, I always feel like, on the one hand, that's true for girls or at least for me, from some people, but it's also true that some people expect more of that sort of thing from you. Some people want one thing, and some want another. So I don't know what the fuck people want. Some people want you to get on board with the "emotional tone" that they want to set up for the room. Sometimes that seems fine; other times it seems manipulative. Some want you to feel whatever they feel "in their hearts", i.e., not "in the room". In a way, that can feel very controlling and demanding, if the person often wants to you feel "with" them, even though they probably aren't thinking of it as controlling. And some people are simpler in this regard, and as long as you smile, or even half-smile, and say things with a positive connotation or tone, they don't worry about you, and they don't need anything more from you than that, as far as emotional communication goes. That's why I disagree with some of the INTJs when I read things like, "People are so demanding. Why do they always have to ask how I'm doing?" It's way easier to deal with people who just want to know you're alright and are happy with a simple answer than it is to deal with people who want to control how you feel and what you express.

"I do sometimes find beauty in something that’s sad but I’ll still analyze why I find it so." I find beauty in a lot of things that are sad. I don't really analyze why I find beauty in something, though. I usually just try to learn more about the thing itself, because the fact that I think it's beautiful makes me want to learn more about it. But then again, the fact that I don't find beauty in something, but instead horror, also makes me want to learn more about it, because I can't wrap my mind around it.
 

Metis

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That's interesting. Well people have strange opinions sometimes. I don't think being out of touch with your feelings is something that comes about because you are not sure how you are feeling.

Then again, one of the many many psychiatrists I was dragged to in my early adolescence claimed I didn't have empathy. Maybe it was because when asked to make up a story, it got really dark. Hey I was just going based off the pictures I was given. I'm an ENFP, and ENFPs are commonly associated with empathy. My parents both thought that was ridiculous. So do I.

Sometimes people come to strange conclusions. Another of these pscychiatrists said I had some sort of learning disability that couldn't be specified. His only evidence was that I was really strong in some areas and then really bad in others, more than one would expect to see. Everyone else who has ever examined me had never thought that or broke it up. It was later flat out dismissed by several people as ridiculous. But I'm pretty sure this dude was a quack anyway, he also destroyed a big part of my self esteem. But that's another story.

Had my self-esteem/self-image destroyed in a similar way. Objectified by a lot of fucking weirdos. I was a paycheck.

If they had empathy, they wouldn't objectify you. Especially when you're a kid. If you don't have empathy, don't be a fucking child psychologist. Obviously. If it's a mental sport, then be a mystery writer or something else suitable.

I had that problem too, growing up. It fucked me up. Pulled into the fucking rabbit hole by some weird little men. And women. Whatever.
 
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Yeah, that makes sense.

Whenever I hear about the "boys grow up being taught not to cry or show vulnerability" thing, I always feel like, on the one hand, that's true for girls or at least for me, from some people, but it's also true that some people expect more of that sort of thing from you. Some people want one thing, and some want another. So I don't know what the fuck people want. Some people want you to get on board with the "emotional tone" that they want to set up for the room. Sometimes that seems fine; other times it seems manipulative. Some want you to feel whatever they feel "in their hearts", i.e., not "in the room". In a way, that can feel very controlling and demanding, if the person often wants to you feel "with" them, even though they probably aren't thinking of it as controlling. And some people are simpler in this regard, and as long as you smile, or even half-smile, and say things with a positive connotation or tone, they don't worry about you, and they don't need anything more from you than that, as far as emotional communication goes. That's why I disagree with some of the INTJs when I read things like, "People are so demanding. Why do they always have to ask how I'm doing?" It's way easier to deal with people who just want to know you're alright and are happy with a simple answer than it is to deal with people who want to control how you feel and what you express.

"I do sometimes find beauty in something that’s sad but I’ll still analyze why I find it so." I find beauty in a lot of things that are sad. I don't really analyze why I find beauty in something, though. I usually just try to learn more about the thing itself, because the fact that I think it's beautiful makes me want to learn more about it. But then again, the fact that I don't find beauty in something, but instead horror, also makes me want to learn more about it, because I can't wrap my mind around it.

I analyze it because of the conflicting nature of the emotions being inspired. Something that’s beautiful brings joy in me while something sad obviously creates sadness. So my brain goes hmmm interesting that you should find this sad thing beautiful. Why are some things hauntingly beautiful and other things just haunting? That sort of thing is always going to cause me to be deeply introspective.
 

Metis

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Yeah, I respond to questions about how I feel with answers about what I think as well. I guess it's a common experience.
Haha! Spontaneous interests are my thing, but I try to reign it in around others unless they're interested too.

Hehe.

LOL That's nice of you to accommodate them.
 

Metis

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I analyze it because of the conflicting nature of the emotions being inspired. Something that’s beautiful brings joy in me while something sad obviously creates sadness. So my brain goes hmmm interesting that you should find this sad thing beautiful. Why are some things hauntingly beautiful and other things just haunting? That sort of thing is always going to cause me to be deeply introspective.

Speaking of "hauntingly beautiful" things, I guess I do sit around and "feel" at times. A lot of hauntingly beautiful music will get me into that frame of mind. Leonard Cohen, or a lot of Irish music. Or Scottish, like the one I just posted on a different thread a little bit ago. You can't watch it from this forum, but you can go to youtube and hear it.


I can sit for hours listing to music like this and "feeling" as though it were an action verb.

But it's not a feeling like "melancholy" or "haunted". It's more of a sense of "so this is life", if you can call that a feeling.

I can get swept away by that, though. I'm not going to think, "Why do I feel like this is hauntingly beautiful?" I'm going to drop everything and sit there and daydream until I get it together and put on something less haunting and more annoying, like Madonna, to get me out of the reverie.
 
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I understand. A different way of looking at it or listening to it. The analyst in me has to dissect the reasons behind the feelings. Maybe it’s the e5 in me.
 

bundleofsunshine

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I think the descriptions of INFPs are extremely misleading - we don't sit around just 'feeling', lol.

No, they're not misleading most of the time because most INFPs are that way. Most INFPs are 4s and are very in their feelings. You're a 9 INFP and that means you're likely to be disconnected from them.
 

wildmoon

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No, they're not misleading most of the time because most INFPs are that way. Most INFPs are 4s and are very in their feelings. You're a 9 INFP and that means you're likely to be disconnected from them.

Ah, I see. I don't actually know that much about enneagrams, lol.
So is the idealism and the ~helping people~ stuff all true? That's the main part that I don't connect with.
 

Metis

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No, they're not misleading most of the time because most INFPs are that way. Most INFPs are 4s and are very in their feelings. You're a 9 INFP and that means you're likely to be disconnected from them.

Oh, that's interesting. So there are some INFPs who really do that. As well as some who don't.
 

LucieCat

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Had my self-esteem/self-image destroyed in a similar way. Objectified by a lot of fucking weirdos. I was a paycheck.

If they had empathy, they wouldn't objectify you. Especially when you're a kid. If you don't have empathy, don't be a fucking child psychologist. Obviously. If it's a mental sport, then be a mystery writer or something else suitable.

I had that problem too, growing up. It fucked me up. Pulled into the fucking rabbit hole by some weird little men. And women. Whatever.

True. I'm sorry to hear about your experience, and I hope you've been able to rise above it. Personally, I see the past as the past. It's part of me yet doesn't define me.
There are so many professions where people should just not go into if they hate children. Teaching is a big one (I had two awful teachers— one who basically said I would be a failure and the other who gave me nightmares for about 4/5 Years). So is any sort of healthcare dealing with children. Or really anything where they can be hurt. That sort of stuff stays with people throughout their lives.
 
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