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[ENTP] Ask an ENTP!

Phoenix

New member
Joined
Jul 31, 2011
Messages
328
MBTI Type
XNTX
Enneagram
1w2
Instinctual Variant
sx/sp
:thinking: This post sounds like something I couldve written...I blame the shared sx, but you also..you show a need to get to know people without a need to maintain control. At least here. Which is a sharp contrast to OMTs post. Do you relate to the stuff he has written?

Not as much. I think a lot of his answers seem to have a strong cp 6-fix flavour --- something that I can't relate to as much --- especially the parts about being initially suspicious and less trusting and taking the time to open up. I'm the sort who goes all in when I get a chance but also play along with the other person. I analyse and predict what they would like and give it to them, while being true to myself. I dig deep to bring out already existing facets of my personality and bring them to the fore that would get the other person to like me [I think the w3 is what's at work here].

At the same time, what I've done over the years is both consciously and unconsciously developed my Fe/Si to encompass all the positive social behaviours associated with them. Things like minding my P's and Q's ... becoming much less likely to engage in conflict .. choosing my battles wisely .. and working towards maintaining group/community harmony as opposed to spreading discord [which is something I used to do when I was in my early 20's]. It's what people like .. so why not give it to them .. especially the people whom I like and find deserving to see that part of my personality.

I believe that it shows so much so that I mostly seem like an so/sp ExFJ - until and unless I go out of my way to show my most preferred behaviour, which is something that comes out in private chats.

I'm also highly dependent on my moods. I can go hot/cold quickly with the same person depending on whether I want to get close to them or not. In fact, one of my ENFJ friends IRL said that the only reason why she stuck with me was because the first time I met her, I was extremely nice [mostly Fe], and the second time she met me, I cut her down to size to the point where she hated me for a few months before deciding to try to get at that Fe which she connected with. Ironically, in her case, I have repelled her every effort to get close to me because her company doesn't do much for me. But I also don't block her out of my life completely because my Fe won't allow a complete door-slamming which would just be stupid on my part.

This is a repeated pattern of behaviour. Just two days ago I called a friend to reconnect after losing touch with her for a year and she said "Do you have any idea how much you hurt me by disappearing?" And I was like ... but I didn't think you cared that I wasn't there. I couldn't even understand why she would be hurt till I asked someone to explain it to me. I seem to do this a lot.

The initial bonding experience depends on the other person and me trying to conform to their expectations. It's a projection of the best parts of me [again w3], but with slight mentions of my flaws just to let them know that there's more depth to my personality than shows. Then it's usually up to the other person how they respond and I take it from there. I play it by ear for the most part and not go into Ne tangents of where I would like the relationship to go, or what I'd like to happen. I was more likely to do this in the past. Now, I think I'm much more Se-like in taking things one conversation at the time and slowly building up to something as opposed to jumping the gun and going in all guns blazing having an end goal in mind.

I've been able to develop better and more stable relationships with this approach. That said, I always do toss a curveball just to keep things interesting. Things like disappearing for long periods .. dropping in unexpectedly ... doing something nice totally out of the blue ... just to let my presence be felt.
 

jcloudz

Yup
Joined
Nov 5, 2009
Messages
1,525
MBTI Type
Istj
how does it make you feel when you see someone putting another person down? what is your reaction when its occurring in front of you?
 

onemoretime

Dreaming the life
Joined
Jun 29, 2009
Messages
4,455
MBTI Type
3h50
Wait, this looks familiar...thats the NeSi relationship that we have as well. That typical fear and the thousands of what ifs that go through your head as you try and make sense of a group of people and the way you are 'supposed' to act, without getting torn to shreds. And the pull and push you feel to connect with others, yet not get slammed. (though that connecting is perhaps more Fi)

It's funny, though; as time goes on, more and more I realize that there's nothing wrong with just staying quiet. No one will think badly of me for it. I'll just know to speak when it's time for me to speak.

I never knew that ENTPs were so powerdriven. I mean...the Ne sort of..hides that fact coz it makes them look playful. But from this Id say you are almost more driven than NTJs :thinking:

Well, everyone's different :)

Yess, this I also recognise. I play by the same rules, but a different game! You push it too far to make the other uncomfortable. So..you aim to straddle the perfect line between one upping them, and calling their bluff and hurting their feelings? To show how not vulnerable you are? And for that matter, reinforce the walls afterwards? Kind of like physical sparring...

Well, it's playfighting, as you mention. The goal is to push it so far that it becomes ridiculous, and you just collapse laughing. Eventually, someone's going to look or say something silly, and everyone takes humor in that. It's the same with deadpan humor; the whole time, I'm waiting for the other person to figure out that I'm being totally unserious, and laugh at the absurdity of it.

It's like playing a game of tag - you try hard, but you've got to be careful not to push the other person down.

I play that same game with Fi. I get too close too intimately on purpose, and see if the other will accept my dare to do the same. The first one to blush or flush and withdraw loses. Emotional boundaries and how much emotional intensity you can handle basically, mixed with a game of 'chicken'. It can be incredibly fun when you trigger blissful emotions in each other. I guess with you, the pay off is feeling intelligent and powerful? Outsmarting as such? Isnt that a win-lose situation though? Someone always has got to lose? Or is it possible to reach that perfect balance of status quo and feel powerful still?

Hopefully, I learn something, or get the other person to consider something from a perspective not previously seen.

The best is when the status quo remains, the other person still disagrees, but notes that it's hard to argue, because your position is well-thought out. The payoff is that the other person respects your abilities, and you theirs, building mutual self-esteem.

The chicken game is fun too, but it's sometimes tricky to know if the other person's willing to play along.

Im not quite sure as to how you cause the other, in your game, to feel uncomfortable. Id be interested to see the mechanics :)

Either challenging their idea, saying something intentionally offensive but non-seriously, making fun of a slight flaw of theirs, acting like I'm a deranged fanatic of something mundane, sexualizing the conversation for fun, and so on. Going outside established social norms.

Oh hon..yeah, that sounds terribly lonely, almost like growing up in a war-zone. And actually somewhat familiar as well. I just escaped into fantasy worlds though, daydreams, fiction, tv...anything to get me to experience intense blissfull emotions and get me out of reality :)

That was the disheartening part - even with a strong imagination, I still felt the difference between reality and fantasy, and fantasy just didn't give me the same response, unless I could act it out somehow. Of course, that got less and less socially acceptable the older I grew, and it still did not feel real. Video games used to do that for me, too, until I played so many that there were few novel experiences, and gameplay flaws became more glaring. What I craved was genuine social connection with others, but the home life made me terrified of it, and left me prone to some bad habits, like excessive judgmentality.

That's how I know I'm an extrovert, even though I can act introverted at times. The external world is what's real, and what brings the juice from the beginning. The internal model is just a conception of the external world that I can manipulate in ways unavailable to me in the outside world.

Well..my experience teaches me actually that showing that you are hurting me, and being clear about that, as well as asking them to stop seems to work like blood on a shark. They perceive it as weakness and push even harder to make the kill. This is irl experience, mind you. One of the entps I know has matured a bit, but I can tell that when I do plead with him to stop, he gets aggrevated, and it costs him an incredible amount of energy to transform that energy into detachment and the ability to 'laugh it away' as to respect my request. The other...well..from what I can pick up, I think it is the mere sight of 'vulnerability' that seems to piss him off and make him incredibly scared. Like seeing my vulnerability makes his suddenly clear for the entire world to see as well, and he cant help but try and destroy that, to hide it from the world.

That's familiar. I have experienced another's vulnerability as viscerally disgusting before, and it can trigger attacking impulses. Thinking about it, at a certain level of vulnerability, the person's behavior becomes "pitiful," so to speak, and it seems like the person is trying to evince high levels of empathy from me. This seems terribly manipulative to me. It's even more the case when it's as a result of poorly thought out decisions on the part of the other person. Case in point - when I worked at this pizza place, there was this one middle-aged woman who worked the register. Single mom, trying to scrape by, she had a hard existence, no doubt. However, near the end of her shift, she would always get antsy about leaving early, so she could "get to school," especially when there was a long line of customers. The neediness began to grate, since I had my own things I was dealing with, and you didn't see me constantly pestering about it (instead, I'd be chronically dysthymic and drink too much). At the point, though, that I found out that "school" was one of those for-profit universities (largely a scam designed to prey on the hopes of the lower classes), that's when the impulse to attack set in. Even though I know it was a warped perspective, it seemed like she was trying to be as pathetic as possible, just to go make an even more pathetic choice. The feeling is where's your goddamn pride?

I also don't necessarily know if the refusing to stop after you ask would arise from that vulnerability, though. Sometimes, when I'm on a roll and heated, there's just a lot of righteous indignation built up there. So, if you were to ask me to stop, that angers me further, because I'm thinking "why should I be the one to stop when you're the one who started this in the first place?" There's nothing rational about this; it's simply that there's anger that needs to be burned off somehow.

Your second friend there brings up a different scenario in my mind - when I am trying to suppress a strong emotion because it seems unhelpful to me at the time, but the other person does not do so as well, so the empathic response makes it even harder to suppress one's own emotional state. The difficulty of self-control is frightening in this circumstance, and to reestablish self-control, it seems like the obstacle to that control must be dealt with. Again, the issues are familiar: power and control.

The only way Ive found to stop the latter was to overload his system emotionally by putting a mirror in front of him and his vulnerabilities and basically...shred him to pieces before he shreds me to pieces. Not one of my finer moments and not something I wanna do ever again.

It might be more effective to simply leave in those circumstances.

Ive seen this on forums as well, where entps, especially when there is a crowd watching, will go in for the kill, ignoring pleas to stop, almost encouraged by them in fact, perhaps due to fear of being perceived as weak? I dunno..Ive also seen where the crowd cheers them on and they go for the kill to entertain the crowd and feed their own ego.

I'm not sure I can relate without more detail about the particular events.

in private, and once you get some rapport going with them, I find that your suggestion is very much valid, though it will cause them frustration and awkwardness to witness my vulnerability and having to stop at all, when they were just getting started, I find. And it always somewhat makes them retreat behind their walls again..presumably for my own protection? :shrug:

I will clam up to try and process the emotion, and get myself under control. I'm now finding in that circumstance, after a bit, it's now easier to explain why what just happened bothered me so much. Having space for self-control is critical, however.

Mmm..or do you mean collateral damage as in...bigger picture damage? Group damage as such? Calling you on the fact that you are breaching Fe-protocol?

Aka 'you are making a scene', 'You are better than this'?

A combination. Getting someone else caught up in the mess who has no relation to it, or someone mentioning that I'm looking like a fool can break the cycle.
 

Amargith

Hotel California
Joined
Nov 5, 2008
Messages
14,717
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
4dw
Instinctual Variant
sx/so
It's funny, though; as time goes on, more and more I realize that there's nothing wrong with just staying quiet. No one will think badly of me for it. I'll just know to speak when it's time for me to speak.

Yeah, I discovered the same thing..but that pent up energy sometimes is hard to contain, and makes it hard to remain silent :D
Well, it's playfighting, as you mention. The goal is to push it so far that it becomes ridiculous, and you just collapse laughing. Eventually, someone's going to look or say something silly, and everyone takes humor in that. It's the same with deadpan humor; the whole time, I'm waiting for the other person to figure out that I'm being totally unserious, and laugh at the absurdity of it.

It's like playing a game of tag - you try hard, but you've got to be careful not to push the other person down.

Hopefully, I learn something, or get the other person to consider something from a perspective not previously seen.

The best is when the status quo remains, the other person still disagrees, but notes that it's hard to argue, because your position is well-thought out. The payoff is that the other person respects your abilities, and you theirs, building mutual self-esteem.

The chicken game is fun too, but it's sometimes tricky to know if the other person's willing to play along.
Either challenging their idea, saying something intentionally offensive but non-seriously, making fun of a slight flaw of theirs, acting like I'm a deranged fanatic of something mundane, sexualizing the conversation for fun, and so on. Going outside established social norms.

Its odd how similar my type of game is..and yet I couldnt grasp this one. Ti blindspot I guess :thinking:




That was the disheartening part - even with a strong imagination, I still felt the difference between reality and fantasy, and fantasy just didn't give me the same response, unless I could act it out somehow. Of course, that got less and less socially acceptable the older I grew, and it still did not feel real. Video games used to do that for me, too, until I played so many that there were few novel experiences, and gameplay flaws became more glaring. What I craved was genuine social connection with others, but the home life made me terrified of it, and left me prone to some bad habits, like excessive judgmentality.

...which led you to address the world from behind a barbed wire fence. It is interesting how we can have such similar experiences and even responses, and yet react so fundamentally different. It truly is like two sides of a coin.
That's how I know I'm an extrovert, even though I can act introverted at times. The external world is what's real, and what brings the juice from the beginning. The internal model is just a conception of the external world that I can manipulate in ways unavailable to me in the outside world.

And you need to test drive it in that world in order for it to have any validity. I feel ya on that as well. I was like that when I was younger..nowadays, not so much anymore.

That's familiar. I have experienced another's vulnerability as viscerally disgusting before, and it can trigger attacking impulses. Thinking about it, at a certain level of vulnerability, the person's behavior becomes "pitiful," so to speak, and it seems like the person is trying to evince high levels of empathy from me. This seems terribly manipulative to me. It's even more the case when it's as a result of poorly thought out decisions on the part of the other person. Case in point - when I worked at this pizza place, there was this one middle-aged woman who worked the register. Single mom, trying to scrape by, she had a hard existence, no doubt. However, near the end of her shift, she would always get antsy about leaving early, so she could "get to school," especially when there was a long line of customers. The neediness began to grate, since I had my own things I was dealing with, and you didn't see me constantly pestering about it (instead, I'd be chronically dysthymic and drink too much). At the point, though, that I found out that "school" was one of those for-profit universities (largely a scam designed to prey on the hopes of the lower classes), that's when the impulse to attack set in. Even though I know it was a warped perspective, it seemed like she was trying to be as pathetic as possible, just to go make an even more pathetic choice. The feeling is where's your goddamn pride?

I also don't necessarily know if the refusing to stop after you ask would arise from that vulnerability, though. Sometimes, when I'm on a roll and heated, there's just a lot of righteous indignation built up there. So, if you were to ask me to stop, that angers me further, because I'm thinking "why should I be the one to stop when you're the one who started this in the first place?" There's nothing rational about this; it's simply that there's anger that needs to be burned off somehow.

Your second friend there brings up a different scenario in my mind - when I am trying to suppress a strong emotion because it seems unhelpful to me at the time, but the other person does not do so as well, so the empathic response makes it even harder to suppress one's own emotional state. The difficulty of self-control is frightening in this circumstance, and to reestablish self-control, it seems like the obstacle to that control must be dealt with. Again, the issues are familiar: power and control.

And this is where we are soooo different. i refuse to struggle for control on this. I want the chips to fall where they may as you will. Coz even if Im standing in ruins, at least I ll be standing there, not alone, but with someone who knows what its like. You. And together we will rebuild. It hurts though when that other person isnt exactly up for that solution :laugh:

And I would pity the woman and try to help her soothe her anxiety as I wouldnt want to trade lives with her and bear the burdens she bears every day..I dont know how i would be able to. So if I could help her on her way, in a small way, that would be something I find rewarding. I can see why you would consider her frustrating, as she does give all the power in her life away, something you value. I think you took from your past the lesson that nobody is going to save you so youd better well do it yourself. And perhaps that is what you tried to pass on to her.

Though your way of viewing the world is very independent, and you will no doubt make it through life..it sounds lonely to me. Perhaps you view me as too codependent on the people around me but..although my past circumstances were somewhat comparable to yours, I refused to learn the lesson you did, I guess. Though I got it stuffed down my throat repeatedly. i didnt want to live in a world where I would be *that* alone. So I believed. And hoped. And refused to lose hope, and to accept that the way I viewed the world was impossible, as I was told. And I refused to inflict the pain that I so hated to have inflicted upon myself by others, even if those others inflicted it upon me first. I couldnt bear the thought of it. My ENTP brother often pummelled me for that, as I was bullied all the way through school and it pained him to see me do nothing about it. :laugh:

And I do understand *now*, that that was his way of caring, of trying to teach me how to survive and how to take care of myself.


It might be more effective to simply leave in those circumstances.

Sadly, that wasnt an option as it was my father who caused those circumstances. Walking away from him never did me any good. Believe me, I tried, for 20 years.

I will clam up to try and process the emotion, and get myself under control. I'm now finding in that circumstance, after a bit, it's now easier to explain why what just happened bothered me so much. Having space for self-control is critical, however.

Mmmm...do you ever trust anyone enough to just...let it go, be emotionally raw with them and know that they will not flinch or even mind? Or do you always, regardless of how intimate you are with the other person, prefer to regain your control first?

A combination. Getting someone else caught up in the mess who has no relation to it, or someone mentioning that I'm looking like a fool can break the cycle.

So that is why ENTPs will consistently tell you those things in a fight. Thanks, I will keep this in mind :)
 
W

WALMART

Guest
how does it make you feel when you see someone putting another person down? what is your reaction when its occurring in front of you?


For me, it is a call to arms. Id like to think of myself good at absolving situations.
 

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
THE GREAT ONE. :laugh:

There actually used to be a thread on PerC that said something to the effect of "What types tend do be the worst forum trolls"? ENTP and INTP were pretty much tied, and ISTP came after that in the rankings. I found it hilarious.
 
G

Ginkgo

Guest
There actually used to be a thread on PerC that said something to the effect of "What types tend do be the worst forum trolls"? ENTP and INTP were pretty much tied, and ISTP came after that in the rankings. I found it hilarious.

Yeah, I made a thread almost verbatim on this forum a couple years back and the results were similar. Patience of steel is necessary to endure trolling at times.
 

The Great One

New member
Joined
Apr 27, 2012
Messages
3,439
MBTI Type
ENTP
Enneagram
6w7
Yeah, I made a thread almost verbatim on this forum a couple years back and the results were similar. Patience of steel is necessary to endure trolling at times.

Well the mods got sick and tired of my shit on PerC. I've been careful not to really troll on this site.
 

Nocapszy

no clinkz 'til brooklyn
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
4,517
MBTI Type
ENTP
ok, guys. i'm throwing my hat into the ring - cappie is here to answer questions.

you can ask me about beef jerky, turkey jerky... any kind of jerky you can think of!
 

Swivelinglight

Permabanned
Joined
Aug 5, 2010
Messages
1,070
That would explain why it's one of the only ways you express yourself.

Hmmm.

I don't know if you have or have not taken some logic classes. However, that sounds like some good logic to me!


ok, guys. i'm throwing my hat into the ring - cappie is here to answer questions.

you can ask me about beef jerky, turkey jerky... any kind of jerky you can think of!

How's brahmin jerky to u?
 

Nocapszy

no clinkz 'til brooklyn
Joined
Jun 29, 2007
Messages
4,517
MBTI Type
ENTP
How's brahmin jerky to u?

brahmin is a rare variety, not available [legally] in the united states of america.
when i road tripped to canada i managed to pick up a [overpriced] baggy and let me tell you: it stinks!
नो गूद फ़्रिएन्द! [no good, friend!]
a very sandy mouthfeel and too much curry in the aftertaste.
i did enjoy the hilarious popsicle/fortune-cookie style joke slip at the bottom of the baggy, "वह्य दीद द हिन्दु वोर्शिपेर क्रोस द रोअद? तो एस्चपे द जेर्क्य कोन्नोइस्सेउर्!" [why did the hindu worshipper cross the road? to escape the jerky connoisseur!"

overall, including the joke, i'd give it 2.2 yoga sutras out of 5.
 
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