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[NT] NTs, how did you distance yourself from emotion?

Thalassa

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I'm not sure what this even means. In English, it sounds like you want advice on how to deal with anger and unhappiness.

If you're unhappy, then you probably need to acknowledge your feelings, so you can do what makes you happy. And if someone makes you angry, kill them.

:devil:

:laugh:
 

Fecal McAngry

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It's not that hard actually.
The issue is learning how to do it. Once you reach a certain level of self observation you will begin to realize that you can actually see your thoughts at the initial level.

meaning, you can see your thoughts before you become attached to them. Usually what happens is-

Some external event stimulates our senses (the 5 senses)
A thought arises
We get attached to that thought
We begin to think it's the reality (we begin to assume the worst)
An emotion emerges
We get attached to that emotion

And if the thought was an angry though
the emotion is an angry emotion.

Very well said. Interestingly, as an INFP I've found acting very useful in helping me control emotional responses IRL. Acting, after all, involves among other things creating authentic emotional responses to imaginary circumstances, so it does familiarize oneself with the ability to summon at will, and dissipate at will, joy, grief, anger etc. as well as intertwined physical responses...
 

sofmarhof

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I don't understand why you wound want to. I have never made a conscious effort to distance myself from emotions.
 

SerengetiBetty

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not making decisions with your feelings isn't the same thing as not having feelings. i don't distance myself from my feelings at all,i just logically decide what to do with them

for instance if i'm angry at someone i could a) be inefficient and throw something at them or b) be efficient and call them a jerk and tell them why
 

EcK

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Fe has caused me more trouble that its worth and i can rarely access Fi when I need it (i.e. music composition or other creative outlets). instead Fi appears in forms of anger and depression at the least convenient times (as if there is ever a convenient time to be angry or depressed).

NTs, specifically INTJs, how do you (or did you) distance yourself from your feelings? I've read that INTJs distance themselves from their emotions at a young age. NTs, is there a ritual that one must perform in order to achieve this state of mind?

You talk about it like it's a war, one doesn't need to 'distance him/herself from emotion' if there's no conflicts to begin with. It's all about the fact that correct logic always goes by the same rules and people who adopt more relative kinds of rationality -such as Fe or more so irrational functions such as Fi (yeah i'm sorry you won't make me say that internalizing something based on how you feel about it is rational! :D) are bound to end up having to deal with internal conflicts brought up by relative lack of internal coherence.

Yeah so anyway, I notice feelings and integrate them into the rest of my thinking process 99.99% of the time, there's no conflict.
 

Thalassa

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My two cents is that it can make you nuts, especially if you're an F. I can only speak from experience, but I've tried (at an earlier point in my life, not now) to stuff my feelings and live in my tertiary Te get-things-done-bulldozer-accomplishment mode, and eventually my Fi caught up with me and that is not pretty. Disasterous, actually. There has to be a balance, no matter what your type is, but especially if you're an F I think it can make you sick in the long run.
 

Gamine

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I think that distancing yourself from emotions sounds like way way too much work. Energy that could be used for making a sandwich or napping should not be wasted on that. Instead, I recommend owning and taking responsibility for your emotions. You are human, and the parts that might suck the most about it (emotions, gross!!) are the most defining and beautifully challenging parts.

You will never learn if you never challenge yourself to admit the things you try hardest to ignore. Your emotions could lead to preferences in decision making that lead to a greater subjective rationality.
 

thisGuy

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i can know im gonna emote before i do

so, when i feel like, i can actually decide whether or not to show my true feelings...guess i get that from having NeTi > Fe
 

InvisibleJim

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I cant remember how I distanced myself from emotions; however they still crop up occassionally. Its very important I keep a few NFs around to help me sort through what I'm feeling so I dont trip over myself.
 

Virtual ghost

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I think that a better question would be how do we actaully connect with emotions.


As for myself. Well this is my natural state so I don't feel a need to sympatize with people. I help them if I can but I tend not to use emotions in such a situations.
Actually the more emotional you are the bigger are chances that I will not be.

Of course this got me into alot of trouble over the years but I can't help myself. For example I can be in a room full of depressed people without turning into one of them.
I can also sit at a table with 10 people for 4 hours and not saying a single word all this time. What is not because I can't say anything. But because I am not interested in discussion because of emotional exchange. Basicly it all comes down to how you look at people.
 

_Violence_

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Of course we feel emotion. But what defines the dominant Ti function, I believe, is our ability to detach ourselves from the emotion, and to analyze the situation to make the rational choice or take the logical course of action.

There have been many moments of great anger in me, people I wanted to just beat the shit out of and could have done so without any emotional guilt/regret/sadness, but the LOGICAL choice of course is to not act on those anger-driven impulses. By making the rational choice I have then avoided mountains of of potential legal trouble, while at the same time not altering perceptions of me by my acquaintances.

Having people view you as an emotionally unstable freak with anger and control issues is a very, very bad thing indeed.

So in my above examples, avoiding physical confrontation is not based on kindness or any sort of moral standards, but rather self preservation, in a way.

The last time I let my emotions get the better of me (getting revenge on someone) I did get "what I want," but at the same time provoked an unforeseen reaction has caused me a lot of setbacks, emotionally and financially.

Use your head to get what you need, not what you want.
 

slowriot

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I dont think emotions are all bad I like them in small dosis.

I generally feel the emotion, then detach from it in order to find a principle/moral stand point to derive something from it. I might be more of a NF with this way of thinking to some. But I do believe Im an INTP and think that I have a more developed Fe function than most INTPs.

I think especially for introverted NTs that emotional security from their parents as they have grown up is a much stronger need for developing into reasonably "balanced" individuals as they get older.

I can see that in my self, as I get more emotional reactions Ive never been exposed to before, the emotional security and morals I got from my feeler parent has given me a good balance to get exposed to other emotional reactions. (I can be a kid when I feel emotions Im not used to, so with a feeler parent in my life.......)
 

Totenkindly

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Thank you everyone for your insight up to this point. I am starting to wonder if I am becoming one of those "dark" INFJs?
Mua ha ha ha -- YESSSSS yESSssssSS feel the power flow THROUGH you...! Give into your emotions!

Until recently, I was never really in touch with my emotional state. As a child, my stepfather (INTP) used to make fun of me for being too sensitive, but I eventually earned his respect by analyzing his viewpoints on things and pointing out faults in his rationalizations. Growing up, I assumed that it made logical sense to help others in need if one had the ability to do so (regardless of wanting to help or not... perhaps this was influenced by religious upbringing).

Sometimes it's really hard to tease out what influence religious upbringing has on personality. I think I also acquired the same feeling, to be altruistic, to hold myself back, and want to help others at least in part because I was taught it was the right thing to do... but it's caused issues too.

This brings me to another question. Can Te emulate Fe? For example, doesn't it make logical sense to use socially appropriate behavior when in a social situation? If one has the ability to assist someone, shouldn't he/she assist that person? Or does Fe start to act like Te when "burned out"?

I don't know if the functions can be teased apart so easily, enough then for one to "emulate" the other. They're really only constructs anyway, created in the hopes that by deconstructing the personality we can better understand it.

I know ISFJs who are excellent at Te style work -- organizing, filing, detail-sifting, putting things in proper places. They are driven to their degree of diligence by their commitment to the group they are part of. So in this sense "Fe" results in practical external impersonal behavior which is normally seen as "Te" but... honestly... it's more than they are both just Je functions. J functions want to coalesce ideas (Ji) or things/events/externals (Je). They bring closure. With Fe'ers, the primary consideration seems to be the impact on the group and the commitments; with Te'ers, it's more the impact on the success/perfection of the action itself (impersonal); but both can look very much the same or be channeled in the same ways.

I know I have described the Ji angle similarly -- how Ti can emulate Fi and vice versa, depending on how well the Fi values align with the sort of value set/conclusions the Ti gleans from the natural environment. This sort of meshes with your question above about Te emulating Fe... you just have to remember that the two can lead to the same activity but they tend to "feel" different to observers, depending. The dynamic is different somehow, the individual engagement often feels different, even if the overall act was the same.
 

_Violence_

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I don't think functions can work completely independent of one another...

And they are all applied simultaneously.

While some are dominant and something else completely dwarfed... but they still exist.
 

Serendipity

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Thank you everyone for your insight up to this point. I am starting to wonder if I am becoming one of those "dark" INFJs?

Until recently, I was never really in touch with my emotional state. As a child, my stepfather (INTP) used to make fun of me for being too sensitive, but I eventually earned his respect by analyzing his viewpoints on things and pointing out faults in his rationalizations. Growing up, I assumed that it made logical sense to help others in need if one had the ability to do so (regardless of wanting to help or not... perhaps this was influenced by religious upbringing).

Dark Infjs? o_O
(woot! I asked a question without even using the SEARCH button. How Terrible! Obvious leech! Almost troll? :devil:)

'nough about that.
When it hits, it hits with a force 10 times the initial response. Very undesirable.

Seems I got nothing to say other than: I've had a similiar upbringing minus the religious bit. I've also been very detached, to say the least and I find myself growing more and more - whenever I manage to tap into how I feel about things. Or maybe not.

It's still easier to just look at the emotions - even though I'd probably not have taken the trip to slovenia nor keep the wrongful approach to life by trying to be honest.
Irrational values For The Win.
 

Lemonade

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I think I am starting to get a better understanding of how functions work in general. Jennifer and _Violence_ have summed up the missing piece in a way. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Functions are like an 8 song play list. All of them are available to listen to, but the user selects the songs he/she wants to listen to. The songs with the greatest number of "plays" are the play list favorites (preferred functions). This does not meant that the other songs on the play list aren't used, but instead, played less often.

Reading the posts so far, I think I have a much better understanding of how NTs deal with emotion. It isn't a matter of ignoring them, but rather a matter of managing them. As marmalade.sunrise mentioned, bottling feelings is more or less the reason why I was so bent on wanting to discard them.

As Antisocial One mentioned, its about how one connects with his/her feelings. What are healthy ways that allow NTs to connect with their feelings? Was there ever a time when something hit your Fi directly (positive or negative) before clearing your other functions?
 

capricorn009

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That used to be me, but less so since I got older. People used to tell me things like not
to bother going for what you want because you might not succeed, but they'd turn aro-
und and tell me if I didn't like what I was already doing to change it. As a result I grew
into an adult that genuinely trusted few people...well maybe a few more than that, but
most of the people I trusted went on their own misadventures and that, I see them from
time to time but that's about it...as a result I have few people that have stayed around
long enough to develop any real kind of closeness with. But it's better that way I guess
it's better to have people that actually do care about you be here, there and everywhe-
re than have people around all the time that treat you like crap. Why I will do everyth-
ing in my power to make my goals happen but not at the expense of other people.
 

tinkerbell

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What are healthy ways that allow NTs to connect with their feelings? Was there ever a time when something hit your Fi directly (positive or negative) before clearing your other functions?

It's not a question of conneting to your feelings you are fully connected all the time, it's just not how you make decisions.

In a smaltzy way I cry at the drop of a hat to the TV/films that touch me, or if I hear things that move me.... infact there is a cheesy 80s movie I watch if I want a good cry.

My N plays heavily into how I decision make, I can try and make a purely emotional decision, but my N will simple not leave me alone, I will toss and turn at night knowing I've made a poor choice.

Occationally in my life I've had to sign contracts, sometimes I've been pressured into do so - and gone alogn with someone elses perspective... without question I always end up cancelling this type of control if I can, because I've not chosen it... if used my emotional need to please and ignored the logic.

When I've made good choices when my logic and emo side join up then it's so much easier to deal with the decision.
 

Virtual ghost

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As Antisocial One mentioned, its about how one connects with his/her feelings. What are healthy ways that allow NTs to connect with their feelings? Was there ever a time when something hit your Fi directly (positive or negative) before clearing your other functions? [/FONT]


Probably it did happen on a few occations but I don't remember them.
But this is not how I deal with things. Which is because my Fi is underdeveloped. (on tests it is my 7th function)
So you shouldn't take me as a standard.


The healthy way to connect with feelings in my opinion is when it comes naturally to you.
 
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