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[ESFJ] Ask an ESFJ too!

Chaotic Harmony

New member
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
1,436
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
9w1
Instinctual Variant
sx
According to this site our natural compatibly is with ISFP or INFP. Seriously though, as long as you and your SO are "healthy types" then any type can work!

I still have both plus two great-grandmothers. I was lucky though, I was born in a generationally young family and thus had both grandmothers, both grandfathers, great-grandmothers, two great-grandfathers, and two great-great-grandparents. I have a picture that has 5 generations of males from back when I was little - even my dad is jealous.

I'm totally jealous... At 28 I've only got my grandma on my mom's side left. Grandpa on my dad's side died when I was 3 years old. My grandpa on my mom's side died when I was 18. My grandma on my dad's side died when I was 23.... My grandpa on my mom's side was 89 years old though, would have been 90 if he'd of hung on for another month... So he lived a pretty long life.
 

Chaotic Harmony

New member
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
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1,436
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ENFP
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sx
What does an unhealthy ESFJ look like?

Hmm... I would guess they would easily be jealous, manipulative, and controlling... I know when I'm feeling pretty depressed or upset I can become really controlling of everything around me. And I used to be an incredibly jealous person when I wasn't sure where my relationship was heading...
 

Tamske

Writing...
Joined
Oct 22, 2009
Messages
1,764
MBTI Type
ENTP
Is jealousy your worst sin, or do you have worse?
 

Chaotic Harmony

New member
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Jul 13, 2009
Messages
1,436
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sx
Is jealousy your worst sin, or do you have worse?

I think my worst is my need to be in control of everything. I really only get jealous when I don't feel comfortable in a relationship or when I don't fully trust the person I'm with. I've never had a jealous moment with my fiance. He's made it very clear from day one that he's just as into me as I am to him... However, I constantly catch myself trying to control almost every situation I'm in. :blush: I am pretty sure I was trying to run a departmental meeting the other day and I'm just an assistant. :doh:
 

Saslou

New member
Joined
Feb 1, 2009
Messages
4,910
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ESFJ
Is jealousy your worst sin, or do you have worse?

Impatient and impulsive :angry: Meditation is helping me ground myself though so hopefully a positive outlook is forecast for the future.
 

Chaotic Harmony

New member
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
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MBTI Type
ENFP
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sx
Impatient and impulsive :angry: Meditation is helping me ground myself though so hopefully a positive outlook is forecast for the future.

Ugh, I'm getting better with my impulses thankfully... Impatience, not so much... Definitely not a virtue I possess....

A friend of mine keeps telling me I need to get into meditation!
 

Saslou

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Feb 1, 2009
Messages
4,910
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ESFJ
I couldn't understand at first how to calm myself and even brought a CD. It was actually a book that asked me to do small exercises and it just came naturally. If you had of seen me 2 months ago to today, you'd be surprised with the difference.

Give it a try.

I even have a buddhist mantra that i mutter to myself at work when i feel myself getting stressed .. Nam myoho renge kyo. It works for some reason.

Buddhism - Nam-myoho-renge-kyo - SGI UK Website
Just incase your interested :D
 

Chaotic Harmony

New member
Joined
Jul 13, 2009
Messages
1,436
MBTI Type
ENFP
Enneagram
9w1
Instinctual Variant
sx
I couldn't understand at first how to calm myself and even brought a CD. It was actually a book that asked me to do small exercises and it just came naturally. If you had of seen me 2 months ago to today, you'd be surprised with the difference.

Give it a try.

I even have a buddhist mantra that i mutter to myself at work when i feel myself getting stressed .. Nam myoho renge kyo. It works for some reason.

Buddhism - Nam-myoho-renge-kyo - SGI UK Website
Just incase your interested :D

Ahh, my friend said mantras are what work for her. She said it's the concentrating on the mantra that slows her thoughts and makes meditation easier.
 

pure_mercury

Order Now!
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
Messages
6,946
MBTI Type
ESFJ
I couldn't understand at first how to calm myself and even brought a CD. It was actually a book that asked me to do small exercises and it just came naturally. If you had of seen me 2 months ago to today, you'd be surprised with the difference.

Give it a try.

I even have a buddhist mantra that i mutter to myself at work when i feel myself getting stressed .. Nam myoho renge kyo. It works for some reason.

Buddhism - Nam-myoho-renge-kyo - SGI UK Website
Just incase your interested :D

An acquaintance of mine is a Nichiren Buddhist, and he says that is an extremely powerful mantra.
 

Chaotic Harmony

New member
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Jul 13, 2009
Messages
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ENFP
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sx
I have a question for the other ESFJs.... Do you ever get feelings that you just can't shake? And, are you usually right about these feelings? It seems like every time I get a feeling about something, I just can't shake it... And then later that day, week, or month that feeling actually happens... Just wondered if anyone else experienced this...
 

lolol

Permabanned
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May 27, 2010
Messages
45
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:)
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10
I have a question for the other ESFJs.... Do you ever get feelings that you just can't shake? And, are you usually right about these feelings? It seems like every time I get a feeling about something, I just can't shake it... And then later that day, week, or month that feeling actually happens... Just wondered if anyone else experienced this...

When the feelings concern people yeah, I generally rely on my hunches about people because I find myself really sensitive to social dynamics and a lot of the time I will get particular feelings about people and it will bug me for quite a while until I take the time to decipher those feelings (why do I feel so hostile to this particular person, what is it about them that makes me feel so on edge...questions like that) will I actually take action about it.

For example my friend was going out with this guy and I just had this feeling that he was up to no good. In his defense he had not done anything to warrant those feelings at all at the time, he was nice and polite and treated her right, but still I was suspicious...it wasn't until a month or so had passed did I realize that this man was actually cheating on his fiance with my friend. Then I realized that the whole reason why I had all this antipathy towards him was because he was so shady, he would never invite her to his apartment, he would take he as far as to other cities on their dates and although she always attributed that to his sense of adventure I felt differently.

But the one flaw I have seen in myself is that I am often afraid of creating negative feelings within my envrionment (with my friends and family) that I will often keep these negative feelings to myself and my suspicions to myself until I gather enough evidence and make sure my feelings are backed up with logic.
 

Saslou

New member
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Feb 1, 2009
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4,910
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ESFJ
I have a question for the other ESFJs.... Do you ever get feelings that you just can't shake? And, are you usually right about these feelings? It seems like every time I get a feeling about something, I just can't shake it... And then later that day, week, or month that feeling actually happens... Just wondered if anyone else experienced this...

Yes and Yes .. For me, its like i am getting prepared for an event that i am unaware of, having no time scale or further details .. That can be frustrating. Lol

With people, i get the feeling if i know they are bullshitting me but then i am paying attention to tone of voice, body language etc and unless you are bloody good at lying, i'll spot it.
 

Saslou

New member
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Feb 1, 2009
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ESFJ
An acquaintance of mine is a Nichiren Buddhist, and he says that is an extremely powerful mantra.

Thats good to know .. It's hold some kind of power, i am aware of that. I am not able to articulate myself in such a way to explain how it makes me feel and the place it puts me in. It's a positive/uplifting experience though.
 

runvardh

にゃん
Joined
Jun 23, 2007
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8,541
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INFP
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6w7
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sx/so
I have a question for the other ESFJs.... Do you ever get feelings that you just can't shake? And, are you usually right about these feelings? It seems like every time I get a feeling about something, I just can't shake it... And then later that day, week, or month that feeling actually happens... Just wondered if anyone else experienced this...

I find many Fs, when they're in tune with the people around them, have a habit of doing this. I don't have this exact thing happen, but I have something similar. I have what almost seems like a 6 second precog of a breaking situation where I'll see it in my mind then I'll see it in real time. It's this abilty that has saved me from lots of issues with other people while growing up, especially my mother.
 

Chaotic Harmony

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Thanks! I figured all Fs had a little bit of that sense about other people... I was curious if ESFJs processed that sense differently than others, and runvardh's response tells me that it is slightly different for other types. :)

I know what you mean lolol... I've had the gut feeling that someone is up to no good...but without proof how do you tell your friend without them getting upset... So I just keep it to myself... And then when it all comes out in the end, it's like, well I was right...but can't say anything because my friend will either think I'm full of it, or be upset that I didn't tell them... Even though they probably would have thought I was crazy for telling them...:rolli:
 

Aquarelle

Starcrossed Seafarer
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Jun 16, 2010
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I'm thrilled to see this thread. My mom and my son are both ESFJ's and I have struggles!

Here is one:

How do I get them to not worry about trivial shit that most likely wont even begin to matter? How can I get them to look a the big picture and not be so consumed with the details that it ruins everything? Seriously, they both do it all the time!

They get worked up over things that probably won't ever happen. It's like they get worried and instantly go from happy to pessimist. Then it's almost impossible to get them to look at the big picture.

MY ESFJ husband does this too. He gets suuuper crabby about trivial little things that go wrong. Like the other day when I got home, I could tell he was in a bad mood, so I asked him what was wrong (which I sometimes think is a bad idea, because it seems like talking about it just makes him get fired up again). Well, so he tells me something like the following: he drove down to get his car washed and the car was was closed, somebody was driving slow in front of him, and he bought a coffee but the barista didn't do a good job making it and it didn't taste great. (Those probably aren't the real events from that day - to me sometimes the things that make him mad seem sooo trivial that I can't even remember them later - but I know he has gotten disproportionately pissed off because of all of the above at one time or another).

Now... okay, those things are all mildly annoying, yes. I get that. And the fact that they all happened on one day would compound the annoyingness, definitely. But for me, I'd just be like, "Well, it won't hurt my car to be dirty for a few more days, the slow person in front of my probably really only added 5 minutes to my driving time, and yeah I wasted $3 on bad coffee, but some people can't even afford to buy FOOD, much less fancy coffee, so I guess I can't complain too much." And I would think to myself, "Okay, I am feeling annoyed right now, but in a month or even a week, will I even remember this anymore? No, I won't. It completely does not matter in the long run, so no sense in getting upset about it." In other words, I would put things in PERSPECTIVE. I used to try to talk my husband down by saying things like, "I know this is annoying, but look at the big picture: does it really matter? Is it really worth getting angry over? And what does getting angry accomplish, besides making YOU feel worse? The slow driver, for example, doesn't feel bad or realize that they shouldn't go 20 in a 30MPH zone. Your anger only punishes you (and sometimes me!)." Well, that didn't work so well. If I sense that he's in a receptive enough mood, or maybe after he's calmed down, I still try and tell him things like that to get him to think about it, but now usually when he gets upset about the little things, I just try to say vague but sympathetic things like, "Yeah, that sucks," and "I'm sorry, Love," even though it's touch for me to say things like that because it feels insincere to me when I really couldn't care less that he couldn't get his car washed. ;)

So, after that long-winded story... ESFJs, especially males... am I doing the right thing? Is there something I could do differently? If I come home and feel that he's in a bad mood (because of course I can tell, even when he tries to hide it), should I just pretend I don't notice, or is it better if I ask about it, even if reliving it makes revs up his anger again?

(To be fair - he's gotten a lot better about this over the past few years. And he used to misdirect his anger at me a lot, but he hardly ever does that anymore. These are the two aspects of his personality that are the hardest for me to deal with, and he knows that, so he's really trying to work on it. And in turn, I'm working on not taking things personally and trying not to be oversensitive. :D.)
 

Bri

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Jan 5, 2010
Messages
106
MBTI Type
INTJ
How do ESFJs cope with being in a rut?
 
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