[INFJ] When an INFJ doorslams you / cuts you out of their life / breaks off contact

[March]

Yes. This is absolutely correct for me. I don't always know my emotional states. Strong feelings can be confusing--I can interpret them as being something they're not.

*nods* Me too. I CAN know and be aware of my emotional states, but it takes me deciding to do so. In real life, I usually just decide to ignore a wave of emotion, throw all potential actions based on those feelings overboard, and decide based on commitments/prospects. Commitment doesn't follow from intimacy for me, it's the other way around - commitment is what keeps me going through the phases that feel less than intimate, commitment keeps me from throwing my heart at someone's feet just because they said the right thing at the right time, and commitment makes sure I do the actions that keep relationships moving forward towards intimacy again, even though I may not 'feel like' them at that time. On any given day, I may feel 12 different things towards, for instance, my husband (neutral, madly in love, horny, pissed off, frustrated, contented, confused, bored, mischievous), and I'd drive myself crazy if I had to lean on those emotions/thought these emotions had to actually MEAN anything.

I trust my feelings in that they are correct and measured responses to what's going on around and inside me at any given time, but I don't trust that the actions they inspire will get me the things I want and need. I do tend to evaluate and trust aggregates. If on the whole I feel more annoyed with my husband than loved by him, that's worth diving into - is he doing something innocuous that I'm misreading? Am I overfilling my agenda? Is there something more dangerous going on? But otherwise I usually pay more attention to other people's feelings/emotional states than my own.

 

[FemMecha]

But to be perfectly frank, I feel like that INFJs don't know their own emotional states and inclinations as well as they think they do - they can be like Thinkers in this regard. They're such experts in human behaviour but their emotional drives seem rather unconscious for them. It can be hard to get around this because they can have trouble accepting things that exist outside the realm of what they can perceive.

This is a good insight, but it is important to also suggest that the same can be true of the INFP awareness of others' emotional states. In this way there can be interactions between the INFP and INFJ in which no one is really that aware of what is going on inside the INFJ and everyone is focused on what is going on inside the INFP. I have a lot of admiration for the INFP, but I have seen very often a selective empathy in which there is an intensity of awareness and concern in certain contexts and obliviousness in others. If you look even at the Fi/Fe debate threads they focus much more on what's wrong with INFJs and how that makes INFPs feel and how it aligns with their inner constructs. It takes conscious effort to push back and suggest that the INFP also has flaws and limitations on their end of the interaction.

Both Ti/Fi are more organized internally than Ni or Si, and Ti/Fi have a tendency to dismiss external information that doesn't conform to their well built inner constructs of reality. There is a stronger inner decisiveness, conclusiveness about the nature of self and other. Both types tend to see the Si/Ni-dom as decisive and dismissive, but that is at times the result of projection and assumption because it is difficult for a strong Ti/Fi-dom to imagine an internal state which is in flux. I've lived my entire life with either Fi or Ti-doms and this is my impression, but there are certainly exceptions, and I'm willing to consider that I am mistaken. I've had to work through tightly formed assumptions with my living partners about me and it takes a lot of energy and time to break through their certitude about my inner motivations. I still don't think I *know* my mother, my sister, my husband because I experience reality in a state of deep flux.

 

[Eilonwy]

I think learning to be aware of and define our own feelings, along with learning how to talk about them in an open and timely fashion with those who are close to us, is something we need to do if we want those close relationships. And this is doable even though it doesn't FEEL like it at times. I'm not so sure how controllable my own feelings are. I can't stop them from happening, but I can lessen their impact and work through of some of them faster by having laid some groundwork, and by being aware that this is how I'm wired.

 

[Amargith]

*nods* Me too. I CAN know and be aware of my emotional states, but it takes me deciding to do so. In real life, I usually just decide to ignore a wave of emotion, throw all potential actions based on those feelings overboard, and decide based on commitments/prospects. Commitment doesn't follow from intimacy for me, it's the other way around - commitment is what keeps me going through the phases that feel less than intimate, commitment keeps me from throwing my heart at someone's feet just because they said the right thing at the right time, and commitment makes sure I do the actions that keep relationships moving forward towards intimacy again, even though I may not 'feel like' them at that time. On any given day, I may feel 12 different things towards, for instance, my husband (neutral, madly in love, horny, pissed off, frustrated, contented, confused, bored, mischievous), and I'd drive myself crazy if I had to lean on those emotions/thought these emotions had to actually MEAN anything.

I trust my feelings in that they are correct and measured responses to what's going on around and inside me at any given time, but I don't trust that the actions they inspire will get me the things I want and need. I do tend to evaluate and trust aggregates. If on the whole I feel more annoyed with my husband than loved by him, that's worth diving into - is he doing something innocuous that I'm misreading? Am I overfilling my agenda? Is there something more dangerous going on? But otherwise I usually pay more attention to other people's feelings/emotional states than my own.

See, FI does the same, it tests and finds out that following impulses based on raw data like that tends to...be less than productive. But it then maps out a system for 'refining' those emotions into authentic states and feelings that are the follow up of those original raw emotions, which inspire the 'right' actions to take from there onwards. At least, that's how it works for me. And I use the same external data you do in order to filter those emotions into the proper state, so they are logically consistent from raw data to outcome - aka, from start to finish.

In that respect, Intimacy can be refined into Commitment. If that raw data however dries up, the source of that problem has to be found and resolved - while you survive on what you still had left. I need to make sure that the Commitment does not just cannibalise itself but actually is actually fed the proper dose of Intimacy and Passion in there as well. As for the moments where it dries up - those happen -, I'm used to dealing with abundance and draught following each other up, as that is how raw emotions tend to work. It is normal to me, so it does not make me panic as I know that I only have to worry if the draught statistically is way off to normal. I've found it hard to - like NFJs can - regulate the output, intensity and steadfastness, actually.

My guess is that you guys reverse the process; that Commitment inspires you to seek out Passion and Intimacy to complement it - which makes sense as Fe is more about going out and reaching your goals together while Fi is more about understanding and harnessing the raw potential of an individual.

 

[March]

But it then maps out a system for 'refining' those emotions into authentic states and feelings that are the follow up of those original raw emotions, which inspire the 'right' actions to take from there onwards.

Yeah. I wish I could to that better. I CAN, but it takes a lot of time and effort, like taking an entire week off and doing nothing but yoga and journaling and breathing soothing fumes. Every year or so it's worth it, to figure out where my life has gotten off the rails. It does, in the end, inspire a list of actions that feel right, instead of just useful.

People who do that well have my eternal admiration.

If that raw data however dries up, the source of that problem has to be found and resolved - while you survive on what you still had left. I need to make sure that the Commitment does not just cannibalise itself but actually is actually fed the proper dose of Intimacy and Passion in there as well. As for the moments where it dries up - those happen -, I'm used to dealing with abundance and draught following each other up, as that is how raw emotions tend to work. It is normal to me, so it does not make me panic as I know that I only have to worry if the draught statistically is way off to normal. I've found it hard to - like NFJs can - regulate the output, intensity and steadfastness, actually.

Ooh, epiphany!

If my raw data dries up, I tend to pour more of my surplus back into the reservoir. If the mill ever turns without there being any substrate, it starts grinding itself up. Usually what happens is that my main focus on keeping the wheels turning and the lights burning can bridge the drought, and afterwards everything flows freely again. Usually I try to focus the rest of my energy on fixing the problem, but I can't just stop the mechanism completely to free up resources. If the blockage isn't relieved in time and the reservoir runs dry completely, the Commitment starts to cannibalize itself, like you so aptly put it. And when there's nothing left but twisted gears - poof! Doorslam. Or rather: seized engine, no more movement possible.

 

[Eilonwy]

[MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION], I think what might be happening on this forum between the INFPs and INFJs has some basis in the larger picture of society as a whole. Most societies are set up to accommodate a J-type way of thinking and acting, so the P-types have had to learn to adapt and bend from day one. So, I'm guessing that when they have discussions with us J-types, their perspective is that they're just being confronted with more of the same requirements for bending and adapting, while we are left to stay in our comfort zone. While some of them might be missing the INFJ perspective, I don't think that most of them are. They've had to adapt to something similar to it their whole lives.

Imagine trying to tell most S-types what it's like to experience life as an N-type. N's have had to bend and adjust their whole lives, because society also favors the S perspective over the N. N's have spent their whole lives learning and adjusting to an S perspective, so it gets frustrating to have an S-type tell us that we don't understand their side of things.

Or take any "minority" view that's trying to explain itself to the "majority". The same dynamic comes up. Unfortunately, when both sides feel like misunderstood minorities, because in many ways they are, then discussion gets stuck on who is more oppressed and deserving of their views being seen.

When seen from this pov, the INFPs (and other P-types) who have tried over and over again to productively join in these discussions, have shown extraordinary patience and restraint.

 

[FemMecha]

[MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION], I think what might be happening on this forum between the INFPs and INFJs has some basis in the larger picture of society as a whole. Most societies are set up to accommodate a J-type way of thinking and acting, so the P-types have had to learn to adapt and bend from day one. So, I'm guessing that when they have discussions with us J-types, their perspective is that they're just being confronted with more of the same requirements for bending and adapting, while we are left to stay in our comfort zone. While some of them might be missing the INFJ perspective, I don't think that most of them are. They've had to adapt to something similar to it their whole lives.

Imagine trying to tell most S-types what it's like to experience life as an N-type. N's have had to bend and adjust their whole lives, because society also favors the S perspective over the N. N's have spent their whole lives learning and adjusting to an S perspective, so it gets frustrating to have an S-type tell us that we don't understand their side of things.

Or take any "minority" view that's trying to explain itself to the "majority". The same dynamic comes up. Unfortunately, when both sides feel like misunderstood minorities, because in many ways they are, then discussion gets stuck on who is more oppressed and deserving of their views being seen.

When seen from this pov, the INFPs (and other P-types) who have tried over and over again to productively join in these discussions, have shown extraordinary patience and restraint.

This is an excellent post, and I admire people who can be consistently understanding and diplomatic. There is quite a bit of Fi in society including STJs and SFPs which are very prevalent. My ability to negotiate even loving relationships is compromised by Fi and Ti-doms who meant well, but were deeply dismissive of me, and it was actually an INFP who recently pushed me passed the edge of my sanity through dismissal and letting all the shit fall to me. [MENTION=5999]PeaceBaby[/MENTION] made a good point about the external emotional currency that can be associated with Fe, but in my own family there was an inner currency based on need. My Fi-dom mother was very protective and tried to compensate for the external harm done to her children by balancing their power and needs within the home. When my sister had school phobia and took homeschooling, I was attending the public school, but I was required to do house chores and she was not because of her emotional stress. It was also a way to give her more power in the context of the home.

Every Fi/Ti-dom I've lived with has articulated and presented personal needs far stronger than I can, and so my entire framework gets lost in them. They have complete power, complete say over their needs and mine, over their motivations and mine, and I'm rather burnt out. I've seen the same thing happen to ISFJs and possibly even moreso because they cannot create internal escapes like a Ni-dom can. I adore each Fi/Ti-dom, but I've lived my life quite voiceless among them, even though they are kind and compassionate. There is just an assumption of dismissal that they can't see because of a tendency towards projection. Certainly this isn't always the case and it occurs moreso when there is emotional pain and scars inside of them.

I guess what I am saying is that what you say is probably the more accurate in the broader sense, but I decided to push back a bit because of experience. Even if my statement only counts for .0001% of the global truth, I still want to put it out there for consideration.

Society accommodates the Fe and Te dom, and not the Ni dom so much at all. I think these threads are not being constructed correctly at all. It would make more sense to have discussions between INFP and ENFJs in a comparative manner and also between INFJs and ENFPs because those are the ones that form the parallels.

 

[Amargith]

Yeah. I wish I could to that better. I CAN, but it takes a lot of time and effort, like taking an entire week off and doing nothing but yoga and journaling and breathing soothing fumes. Every year or so it's worth it, to figure out where my life has gotten off the rails. It does, in the end, inspire a list of actions that feel right, instead of just useful.

People who do that well have my eternal admiration.



Ooh, epiphany!

If my raw data dries up, I tend to pour more of my surplus back into the reservoir. If the mill ever turns without there being any substrate, it starts grinding itself up. Usually what happens is that my main focus on keeping the wheels turning and the lights burning can bridge the drought, and afterwards everything flows freely again. Usually I try to focus the rest of my energy on fixing the problem, but I can't just stop the mechanism completely to free up resources. If the blockage isn't relieved in time and the reservoir runs dry completely, the Commitment starts to cannibalize itself, like you so aptly put it. And when there's nothing left but twisted gears - poof! Doorslam. Or rather: seized engine, no more movement possible.

ha! Yeah, see, I have no qualms shutting that shit down until Ive figured it out. As I said, I'll only do that after Ive verified that it aint a natural draught, but if it aint working as it is supposed to, I get in there and pull out the guts if I need to. I once told my INTJ - and man, was that unfair towards him but needed - that I needed 2 weeks to know again how I felt about him. I'd gotten in so deep emotionally, into a situation where other peoples emotions had taken over (compare it to no longer hearing the people talking to you but only the bass that is playing so hard it drowns everything else), that I no longer knew what was what. I told him it would take 2 weeks, no more. And I got to work. I locked myself inside, only went to school when I had to and spent two weeks in complete solitude and self-reflection. After that, I was able to give him a crystal clear answer, in every which way he needed to be reassured. He understood. He knows he can count on me to be honest with him as long as he gives me the time and space to find, locate and fix the problem. I also learned to *NEVER* let it get that bad ever again, and installed some alarm valves along the way so I'd be on top of it faster next time.

But yeah, you guys keep the engine going, which accounts for your very enviable ability to keep everyone supplied and for that matter, extending past a romantic relationship, stay in touch with everyone in your network. My...need for cocooning tends to be an obstacle to maintaining a steady network. My INTJ knows that the well might sometimes dry up but it will refill with abundance rather quickly if he leaves me be for a night - something that aint a problem for an introvert, luckily

 

[Starry]

hahaha.


My point, which was directed towards FLD's comments in this thread, specifically that gem "Treat people right..."
You can't just throw-out some made-up saying...some pseudo-adage as if it were scientific fact... And then use it to condemn another person as if the **truth** within the saying itself provides you insight into a situation you otherwise know nothing about.

Likewise, you cannot claim that certain **universal truths** magically only apply to ENTPs. In other words, if you are an INFJ in this thread that was "totally down" with FLD's comments when they were directed towards Mane...please know that according to the law of universal truths...these same comments must apply to you as well...them being universal and all.

So, if for example you've ever been in a relationship where the person totally screwed you over and left your ass <--Please review that history.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Well that's partly the benefit of Ni: it closes itself off to intruding perceptions. Ne basically requires that I let the invaders in and see if I can get along with them.

This is almost certainly nitpicking, but I'm inclined to see it as: Ni is resilient to intruding judgment but gets thrown off by being pummeled with incoming proposed perception (which in a way is still judgment, but it's more about estimating 'what is' than it is about having an opinion about 'what is'). And then, from the sounds of it (not just your post, but from the sounds of when a Fi user posts about it) vice versa for Fi.

In some previous post, you'd mentioned feeling- after yeghor's analogy- like he wasn't giving you enough options. My first thought was, "Why would a person need external permission to internally consider other options? How does that make someone feel like it's not available to come up with something else?" Or in this other post you linked - I just re-read, and had the same what? reaction all over again. The stuff about Fe (or at least, quite a bit of it) that drives people crazy sorta rolls off my back without incident, it can be hard to understand how it affects people so horribly (I believe that it does, I'm just saying it's hard to grasp)- but I do understand it via my experience of Pe and Te, to which I am much less resilient. With Pe especially- it feels like someone is throwing the tip of an iceberg at me, believing they are throwing something small and completely oblivious to this enormous thing it's attached to under the surface. It’s like they think they're tossing 5 lbs of ideas at me, when it's actually 25 to 100 lbs to Ni (some people.....maybe 1,000 lbs). I instantly pick up on inconsistencies and logistical flaws....though I don't know what they are right away, I'll only know there are alarms going off in my head telling me there are important kinks to iron out. ( <- And that, right there, is probably what that ‘extra weight’ is composed of.) Sometimes it takes years to figure out why something stood out to me as significant- like I'll be washing my hair, or pulling a tray of tater tots out of the oven, and BAM! ...I'll suddenly realize why something bothered me months or years prior. This is why I tend to gravitate towards people who know how to shave it down to 10 lbs before they throw it at me- and I feel a strong urge to keep the people who inadvertently and systematically throw 100-1,000 lbs at me (and then get angry when it makes me withdraw/disappear ) at as much of a distance as it takes to maintain my sanity.

Pe can dump a bunch of weight….and then not understand how it’s still there five minutes later for Pi. It can take forever for Pi to sort through that shit, and people who don’t begin to ‘get’ that are generally denied access after a while. Sometimes I think the Fe urge to enforce some external protocol is actually about keeping others’ superfluous cognitive refuse from building up in Pi (introverted perception)- that it’s more about protecting Pi than Pe’ers can even imagine.

I’m going to guess something similar happened with the analogy yeghor gave (or my post that you linked)- it was like 5 lbs of question/judgment that expanded into 50 (yeghor) or 500 (me) lbs of question/judgment (the question itself, and then the consequent questions it raised- about why it seemed ‘off’/leading)? And life is infinitely easier around people who know how to shave off that extra weight and post questions in such a way that aren’t leading, so you can focus on the actual question without a bunch of 'white noise' interfering?

Understand it in what way? What sort of information do you need? Do you mean what the Fe user is specifically doing to make people feel like that? Or what mindset you are in when it's happening?

I did mention more details about this in my last post, but perhaps I didn't explain it well or it wasn't helpful.

Oh the contrary, I've found your posts in this thread very helpful. I'm sorta reluctant to delve into the Fi/Fe-ness (off topic), but your description of your experience of going up against Fe is exactly the kind of thing that helps. (As I've said before) I really don't get much out of 'how to behave' lists because it feels too contrived to me, it's too constricting. The thing that helps me adapt my behavior more than anything is understanding the root of the problem- simply being handed a list of things to do or not to do is too superficial a remedy and it’s too much to memorize.

My hope is that I'll eventually stumble over enough explanations like that (ones that happens to 'click' and make sense to me) here and there that I'll be able to clearly associate certain Fe behaviors as 'equivalents' to the Pe and Te stuff that drives me insane. I've learned though that the way I go about asking for it fails (as you pointed out, in quoting that other thread), so it almost has to be accidental to catch effective Fi descriptions.

***

[MENTION=13502]March[/MENTION], great posts. (And welcome!)

***

But the bolded wasn't really a peculiar turn to take in the discussion because it was basically what the discussion was supposed to be about originally, but that got lost or misinterpreted for various reasons.

I’m not sure exactly where the definition of “doorslam” changed then, because the thread didn’t start with that definition? I believe you that, apparently, at some point that’s what other people here were referring to (exclusively- and the ‘peculiar’ part, to me, seems that the rest of us were just supposed to ‘know’ to completely ignore all the ways in which “doorslam” generally means something broader…..but in fairness, there are a couple people whose posts I can’t handle reading at all, so maybe I missed something). And yeah, if we’re excluding instances from the term “doorslam” where it’s a valid and healthy choice to discontinue interaction….that changes a lot of things. I keep hearing insinuation (whether it’s still there or not) that INFJs only “think” they’re feeling distressed because someone else is overbearing, but the “truth” (the “INFJ blindspot”) is that we simply don’t like information that isn’t flattering and we tell ourselves some story (e.g: about how the other person is “overbearing”) so that we can dismiss the information. <- If absolutely no one here is insinuating that, then yeah, I’ve got the wrong impression.

So could the bolded also be thought of as a blind spot? Because I got the impression that that was also what this thread was trying to address after rereading it: blind spots.

My first thought is that there’s a slight difference, in that defense mechanisms are something that kick in to protect the ego from the stress/pain/fear of feeling unlovable/unacceptable. Whereas I’d think these ‘blind spots” are more about something an entire type (healthy or not) is inclined to have a hard time seeing. But then, each ‘type’ is going to have some common defense mechanisms, so maybe. My point in that, though, was that these blind spots will necessarily only get worse in hostile environments- which is precisely why I feel like this discussion you’re trying to raise in this thread is like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline on it (focusing on the ‘liquid’ quality of it).

Regarding the rest- I’m not going to continue that conversation in this thread. I feel like a lot of the things you’re saying are things I already know. I do know that I’ve already noticed quite a few tendencies in INFJs I know (that have annoyed me), and I have had realizations about seeing these things in myself. I’d see NFJ friends do something, have some theory about why they did it- and it always makes me realize that I know this because it’s something I do too. Discussing it would involve being open about certain insecurities, revealing vulnerabilities and weak spots- all of which I’m capable of. But I do not think it’s a good idea to reveal these things in certain company, in this thread, perhaps even in this forum (until the day when it’s possible to have a discussion and limit the people who can see it). I have my reasons- which I will not list here, if only because it would be unkind- to believe it would fall more on the ‘enabling’ end of the spectrum. I’m not even saying I know I’m right about this- I’m just saying the feeling is too strong to ignore how much of a very real possibility it is.

I think it’s great you’ve had some epiphany- I just don’t think that same epiphany for other INFJs is really hiding around the corner here as much as you seem to think it is? [At least I’m getting the impression you think it is…it feels to me like you’re pushing for others to follow you....in this thread. If I’m wrong about that, I apologize. ]

But to be perfectly frank, I feel like that INFJs don't know their own emotional states and inclinations as well as they think they do - they can be like Thinkers in this regard. They're such experts in human behaviour but their emotional drives seem rather unconscious for them. It can be hard to get around this because they can have trouble accepting things that exist outside the realm of what they can perceive.

I agree that INFJs aren’t anywhere near as focused on labeling/giving much weight to immediate feelings- that generally a pattern has to emerge before feelings stand out as significant (and honestly, even then, we have to make a conscious effort or we'll keep putting it off). I’m curious about the “as well as they think they do” part though- I often feel like refusing certain ‘feeling’ labels here and there gets mistaken as denial, when it's actually more about reluctance to commit to a label (which is directly because I don't know what I'm feeling, immediate feelings (to me) are always just a fraction of a bigger picture- ime, it's a step in the wrong direction to slap a label on it that *might* not be correct). Do you actually know INFJs who do focus on immediate feelings and claim to feel something that isn’t congruent to what you sense, or are you talking about the refusal to allow certain labels being slapped on in the first place? [Granted, I can be clumsy about it- I might say, "I'm not angry" as shorthand/clumsy estimate for "I don't know what I'm feeling, and I don't want to label/talk about it right now." I have gathered from what Fi doms say that they actually resent the "leave it alone" shorthand, and they need the long part to actually be articulated in order to let it go?]

eta: It's worth mentioning, I do tend to form loose opinions myself about how self-aware people seem to be of their feelings- it's just that these opinions aren't formed on their reaction in-the-moment. If someone looks angry and they say, "I'm not angry"- I take that to mean, "It's not available to discuss this with me right now." Whether or not that person is self aware (imo) is more based on what happens after that- do they continue to refuse to acknowledge there was a problem, and do they get passive aggressive instead to take out the anger? ...do they come up to me and say, "Yeah, you know what- that actually is a problem and I'm not comfortable with it." Or sometimes if they continue to refuse to talk about it, I'll simply see that as not especially trusting me enough to talk about it...which is fine....but if they seem to be able to process it appropriately then that is the kind of thing I base opinions of 'self-awareness' on. This urgency to need other people to drop everything and talk about what they're immediately feeling.....I just don't get it *and* I don't give it anywhere near as much weight in the 'self awareness' category.

 

[Southern Kross]

"They don't like presumptions to be made about them, especially if they're wrong not properly justified in terms of cause and effect (Ti)." perhaps? Cause that makes those presumptions seem coming from out of nowhere or for some ulterior motive?

I see. That is an interesting distinction. I will think more on that...

No it wasn't...She's her mother after all...And, yes, definitely...However, she pulled Jena inside her spiral as well when Jena was not old enough to be able to resist that effect...

Given her age, yes she did...She was not yet an adult...Her relationship with her mother was supposed to be adult-child relationship but the dynamic forced her to impose an peer-to-peer relationship on her own mother...She had to act like an adult when she was still a child and needed parenting...

She had to end and get out of the dynamic to be able to decide clearly on how to act...She had to put a barrier between herself and her mother so as to be able to do what she needed to do without feeling guilty (as the mother, having tied her own happiness to the possession of Jena, would inadvertantly keep pulling her strings), as that would, most likely, cause her to give in and revert back into her role the dynamic and enable her mother further...

The mother might even have spent Jena's earnings so as to unconciously render Jena dependent on her (or vice versa) and to impede her capacity to leave her (the mother) behind...

One thing they didn't do was that they could have gone to a therapist to sort out these issues...I don't know if that would have turned out to be fruitful though...

Hi, barging into your conversation.

Is that what doorslamming seems to be about for non-INFJs? Whether something is forgivABLE?

In the case of Jena Malone, I think her mother sounds sweet, clueless, in over her head, and completely lacking in the education, resources and support system that could've alleviated those drawbacks. I think she made predictable human mistakes, and I think she did about as well as most people would have in that situation. Apart from petty acts of jealousy and revenge almost everybody is prone to occasionally, I think she meant well from start to finish.

Still, asking whether what she did is forgivable is like asking me whether Paris is reachable by car. It is, in theory, but at this time my car is completely out of gas and I don't have the money to fill it up.

In that situation, Jena was completely out of cope, and she didn't have the resources to fill up on it. So while nothing her mother had done was unforgivable, she didn't feel able to forgive right there and then and be happy or even productive with her around. You said that they'd reconciled? Jena seems to have been able to fill up on cope, shore up her own support system and resources, and maybe even grown some thicker skin. The doorslam of 'I'm not your daughter!' has probably never gone away completely - I don't see grown-up Jena going to her mother for the kind of advice daughters go to mothers for.

Was what she did the best/strongest/most humane and empathetic thing ever? Probably not. Still, she was out of cope, and that severely limits options. Besides, her cope tank was smaller because she was a kid in extraordinary circumstances, the situation had drained it completely, and it was clear that her mother wasn't going to stop being damaging (no matter how accidentally!) any time soon. Just because someone isn't damaging you out of malice, doesn't mean you have to keep standing in the path of the damage. Getting out of the way gracelessly and causing a bunch of bruises here and there is allowable, IMO.

It is interesting to read INFJ analysis on the article. You both recognise the same factors and reach very similar conclusions as I do (actually, I'm surprised at the degree with which we agree) but those conclusions are achieved in a slightly different angle. If we discussed this in a different manner I could easily see us debating over it as if we had totally opposing views. By that I mean, I could easily see us bickering over the mode of analysis (and the wrong or right way to think about it) while missing the fact that we basically agree. Do you get what I mean? I just wonder if it's better for us to talk in terms of our holistic, resulting views on things, rather than arguing over which is the best path to get there. I mean it is still interesting to discuss those pathways, but I think we have to resist the urge to 'correct' one another and instruct each other on the only 'right' path to take.

I do have so slight variations on your views. I also have this urge to nitpick over some minor things you guys said, but in fact don't matter that much. I doubt it would be of value to bring them up and us debate back and forth over it. It would be arguing over approach rather than result. Anyway, just a thought...

Yes. This is absolutely correct for me. I don't always know my emotional states. Strong feelings can be confusing--I can interpret them as being something they're not. And the ones that feel good can be somewhat addictive in a way. And they attach me to the people I feel them for, sometimes in ways that are against my own good sense. I can see how I could start to blame the other person for "causing" those feelings in me, when they have no idea of what I'm feeling, and I have no idea of why I'm feeling it.

After reading the discussion in this thread, that started after @Zarathustra joined in, I realized that if I commit to relationships based on my feelings, I am most likely making a shaky commitment. I don't know how the other NF-types do it, but they seem to be able to trust their feelings in ways that I can't, or shouldn't. @Amargith's second paragraph here summed it up for me--I don't think I know how to commit based only on intimacy, so I shouldn't. I can't trust my feelings alone to make those decisions for me because I don't have a lot of control over those feelings and they aren't stable. I do need to be more like the Thinkers when it comes to close, intimate relationships.

I also think that perhaps the way I experience my own feelings might work well when it's applied to whole groups of relationships, or non-intimate relationships. I can get a feel for those types of connections, see where problems in those relationships might lie, and look for solutions to those problems. But, all the mirroring and vagueness don't seem to work well when focused towards close, one-on-one relationships. For those, I need to find a different way of relating.

I've come to see that I have to take responsibility for my own feelings, rather than relying on others to take care of them for me. That doesn't mean that others have no responsibility towards me in return, but I think I didn't know in what ways those responsibilities should be shared out, especially in intimate relationships. I can't base my commitments/decisions/judgements solely on what feels good and what feels bad, which I think I have a tendency to do.

Also interesting. I wonder if INFJs just need more emotional structure in general - commitment being just a small part of that. By that I mean that they need emotional stability, and perhaps even, emotional predictability (ie. emotions conform more to expected outcomes - to cause and effect). And they need to surround themselves with people that can provide them that, or adapt to that need. Would you say this is accurate?

I almost never know my emotional state on the spot. I'll sometimes notice there's a disturbance in the force and when I do, I usually try to figure it out but I don't actually have a lot of emotions of my own very often. Or I'm not conscious of having them.

I'm much more often moved by the strong expression of emotion from others than I am moved by my own emotions. Books, movies, TV news easily make me cry. I cry about my own stuff maybe a handful of times a year. Usually I'm hormonal and I'm crying from frustration. If I'm showing overt emotion of my own, there is probably something physically wrong with me weakening my reserves. Sickness, hunger, exhaustion, extremes in temperature. I won't even realize I'm cranky until I encounter another person and realize I'm becoming irritated way out of proportion to the behavior.

That's why I almost never address stuff when it initially upsets me. I don't know what's upsetting me and I don't know if it's that big a deal or if I forgot to eat. A lot of times, by the time I figure it out, it seems pretty silly to bring it up. But if, over time, I start seeing a pattern, then it starts to become a big deal. Or it could become an unconscious negative association like Pavlov's dogs.

*nods* Me too. I CAN know and be aware of my emotional states, but it takes me deciding to do so. In real life, I usually just decide to ignore a wave of emotion, throw all potential actions based on those feelings overboard, and decide based on commitments/prospects. Commitment doesn't follow from intimacy for me, it's the other way around - commitment is what keeps me going through the phases that feel less than intimate, commitment keeps me from throwing my heart at someone's feet just because they said the right thing at the right time, and commitment makes sure I do the actions that keep relationships moving forward towards intimacy again, even though I may not 'feel like' them at that time. On any given day, I may feel 12 different things towards, for instance, my husband (neutral, madly in love, horny, pissed off, frustrated, contented, confused, bored, mischievous), and I'd drive myself crazy if I had to lean on those emotions/thought these emotions had to actually MEAN anything.

I trust my feelings in that they are correct and measured responses to what's going on around and inside me at any given time, but I don't trust that the actions they inspire will get me the things I want and need. I do tend to evaluate and trust aggregates. If on the whole I feel more annoyed with my husband than loved by him, that's worth diving into - is he doing something innocuous that I'm misreading? Am I overfilling my agenda? Is there something more dangerous going on? But otherwise I usually pay more attention to other people's feelings/emotional states than my own.

Based on what you guys (and [MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION]) are saying, it sounds like emotions are in lot more flux with you guys. You seem to get more swept up in them - in the sense that you get caught in the middle of a feeling and can't see the edges of it, to see it in it's entirety and figure out what it is. Is that what it feels like?

March, for me the meaning is everything. It's not always deep and explored in depth. Like what I mentioned earlier, to NFPs emotions are just signs; just facts that point to something. Perhaps it's partly down to the fact that our emotional states are less in flux internally; we can feel the undercurrent or see the through line and for that reason can gain more sense of meaning out of them.

 

[Southern Kross]

This is a good insight, but it is important to also suggest that the same can be true of the INFP awareness of others' emotional states. In this way there can be interactions between the INFP and INFJ in which no one is really that aware of what is going on inside the INFJ and everyone is focused on what is going on inside the INFP. I have a lot of admiration for the INFP, but I have seen very often a selective empathy in which there is an intensity of awareness and concern in certain contexts and obliviousness in others. If you look even at the Fi/Fe debate threads they focus much more on what's wrong with INFJs and how that makes INFPs feel and how it aligns with their inner constructs. It takes conscious effort to push back and suggest that the INFP also has flaws and limitations on their end of the interaction.

I can appreciate that. I wish there was more discussion about INFP flaws, but the way the conversation flows, it keeps coming back to INFJ flaws. I have noted this and been uneasy about it. I never really know what's the cause of it. I'm not sure if the INFPs just spend too much time projecting ideas outward, whether we're more inclined to blame, or if the way INFJs talk about things draws INFPs into discussing them rather than themselves. It upsets me to think that it ends up so one sided, and that it might be the INFPs fault. I will say, like I mentioned earlier about Ne surfing ideas, we just go where the inspiration takes us and we can lose sight of what that chosen direction is communicating to others. The thing is, when there have been threads where INFJs criticised INFPs, I personally experienced less 'inspiration'. It's not that I can't take criticism, it's just that it didn't spark ideas in the same way. It wasn't as interesting and mentally productive, and I have no idea why. Does that make sense?

Both Ti/Fi are more organized internally than Ni or Si, and Ti/Fi have a tendency to dismiss external information that doesn't conform to their well built inner constructs of reality. There is a stronger inner decisiveness, conclusiveness about the nature of self and other. Both types tend to see the Si/Ni-dom as decisive and dismissive, but that is at times the result of projection and assumption because it is difficult for a strong Ti/Fi-dom to imagine an internal state which is in flux. I've lived my entire life with either Fi or Ti-doms and this is my impression, but there are certainly exceptions, and I'm willing to consider that I am mistaken. I've had to work through tightly formed assumptions with my living partners about me and it takes a lot of energy and time to break through their certitude about my inner motivations. I still don't think I *know* my mother, my sister, my husband because I experience reality in a state of deep flux.

Yes, I think this is accurate.

Relating back to the last few posts and what [MENTION=5494]Amargith[/MENTION] said, would you say this is correct:

INFPs - Internally has more consistency, stability and clarity. Externally, more comfortable with flux.
INFJs - Internally more in flux. Externally more comfortable with clarity, consistency and stability.

This is an excellent post, and I admire people who can be consistently understanding and diplomatic. There is quite a bit of Fi in society including STJs and SFPs which are very prevalent. My ability to negotiate even loving relationships is compromised by Fi and Ti-doms who meant well, but were deeply dismissive of me, and it was actually an INFP who recently pushed me passed the edge of my sanity through dismissal and letting all the shit fall to me. PeaceBaby made a good point about the external emotional currency that can be associated with Fe, but in my own family there was an inner currency based on need. My Fi-dom mother was very protective and tried to compensate for the external harm done to her children by balancing their power and needs within the home. When my sister had school phobia and took homeschooling, I was attending the public school, but I was required to do house chores and she was not because of her emotional stress. It was also a way to give her more power in the context of the home.

Every Fi/Ti-dom I've lived with has articulated and presented personal needs far stronger than I can, and so my entire framework gets lost in them. They have complete power, complete say over their needs and mine, over their motivations and mine, and I'm rather burnt out. I've seen the same thing happen to ISFJs and possibly even moreso because they cannot create internal escapes like a Ni-dom can. I adore each Fi/Ti-dom, but I've lived my life quite voiceless among them, even though they are kind and compassionate. There is just an assumption of dismissal that they can't see because of a tendency towards projection. Certainly this isn't always the case and it occurs moreso when there is emotional pain and scars inside of them.

I guess what I am saying is that what you say is probably the more accurate in the broader sense, but I decided to push back a bit because of experience. Even if my statement only counts for .0001% of the global truth, I still want to put it out there for consideration.

Society accommodates the Fe and Te dom, and not the Ni dom so much at all. I think these threads are not being constructed correctly at all. It would make more sense to have discussions between INFP and ENFJs in a comparative manner and also between INFJs and ENFPs because those are the ones that form the parallels.

This is such a fascinating perspective. I never thought of it as having power over others, until recently. I've noticed things my (ISFJ) Mum has said about me and felt kinda uneasy about it. They weren't criticisms, actually they were compliments, but I felt a little ashamed about it. It made me feel aware of how dictatorial my Judgement can inadvertently be. I'm not even sure what to do about it - how to fix that.

 

[cafe]

Based on what you guys (and [MENTION=14857]fia[/MENTION]) are saying, it sounds like emotions are in lot more flux with you guys. You seem to get more swept up in them - in the sense that you get caught in the middle of a feeling and can't see the edges of it, to see it in it's entirety and figure out what it is. Is that what it feels like?

I see emotions as highly transient. I consider them important information. But they have to be analyzed before I know how much weight to give them and where their proper place is.

I also consider unprocessed emotions highly private. I would no sooner whip them out than I would go to the grocery store bare-chested. Only one person gets to see the inner workings.

Maybe that means I won't have any other close and healthy relationships, I don't know. Apparently it's a stalemate. You can't get the relationship without the vulnerability and I'm not comfortable with the vulnerability without the relationship. I'm probably lucky to have the one.

 

[Werebudgie]

Every Fi/Ti-dom I've lived with has articulated and presented personal needs far stronger than I can, and so my ... framework gets lost in them. They have ... power, ... say over their needs and mine, over their motivations and mine, and I'm rather burnt out.... I adore each Fi/Ti-dom, but I've lived my life quite voiceless among them, even though they are kind and compassionate. There is just an assumption of dismissal that they can't see because of a tendency towards projection. Certainly this isn't always the case and it occurs moreso when there is emotional pain and scars inside of them.

As an INFJ in a relationship with an INFP, I find the above quite accurate to my experience with Fi-dom in many ways.

At first I didn't realize what was going on but by now I can sense it for what it is: It feels like this ongoing quietly (subtly) aggressive push push push push and it can be really disorienting and draining for me. The worst of it is when that push if for me to see my own self, my actions, etc through their eyes - a profound disorientation for me.

 

[Southern Kross]

This is almost certainly nitpicking, but I'm inclined to see it as: Ni is resilient to intruding judgment but gets thrown off by being pummeled with incoming proposed perception (which in a way is still judgment, but it's more about estimating 'what is' than it is about having an opinion about 'what is'). And then, from the sounds of it (not just your post, but from the sounds of when a Fi user posts about it) vice versa for Fi.

Yes, I agree with that. So Ni forms a (whole, complete) Perception and then refines from there, much like Fi does with Judgements?

In some previous post, you'd mentioned feeling- after yeghor's analogy- like he wasn't giving you enough options. My first thought was, "Why would a person need external permission to internally consider other options? How does that make someone feel like it's not available to come up with something else?" Or in this other post you linked - I just re-read, and had the same what? reaction all over again. The stuff about Fe (or at least, quite a bit of it) that drives people crazy sorta rolls off my back without incident, it can be hard to understand how it affects people so horribly (I believe that it does, I'm just saying it's hard to grasp)- but I do understand it via my experience of Pe and Te, to which I am much less resilient. With Pe especially- it feels like someone is throwing the tip of an iceberg at me, believing they are throwing something small and completely oblivious to this enormous thing it's attached to under the surface. It’s like they think they're tossing 5 lbs of ideas at me, when it's actually 25 to 100 lbs to Ni (some people.....maybe 1,000 lbs). I instantly pick up on inconsistencies and logistical flaws....though I don't know what they are right away, I'll only know there are alarms going off in my head telling me there are important kinks to iron out. ( <- And that, right there, is probably what that ‘extra weight’ is composed of.) Sometimes it takes years to figure out why something stood out to me as significant- like I'll be washing my hair, or pulling a tray of tater tots out of the oven, and BAM! ...I'll suddenly realize why something bothered me months or years prior. This is why I tend to gravitate towards people who know how to shave it down to 10 lbs before they throw it at me- and I feel a strong urge to keep the people who inadvertently and systematically throw 100-1,000 lbs at me (and then get angry when it makes me withdraw/disappear ) at as much of a distance as it takes to maintain my sanity.

Pe can dump a bunch of weight….and then not understand how it’s still there five minutes later for Pi. It can take forever for Pi to sort through that shit, and people who don’t begin to ‘get’ that are generally denied access after a while. Sometimes I think the Fe urge to enforce some external protocol is actually about keeping others’ superfluous cognitive refuse from building up in Pi (introverted perception)- that it’s more about protecting Pi than Pe’ers can even imagine.

Yeah, but I guess there can be a laziness to all Extroverted functions. For the Introverted functions, it can inadvertently come across like, "here's a bunch of stuff that randomly occurred to me. Let me dump this on you and you go away and figure it all out". Then sometimes immediately afterwards there's a 'test' where they check if you did figure it out, and god help you if you didn't.

Just to nitpick in return, I disagree that Pe is oblivious to the rest of the iceberg (the part below the water) - it's just that we can estimate it entirely so easily that we don't consider it a big deal. It is as light a 5 lbs to us; we just don't know it's so much heavier to other people. I suppose it's more like a rabbit hole to Pi: a black hole going down and down, and who knows how deep or where it could lead to.

I’m going to guess something similar happened with the analogy yeghor gave (or my post that you linked)- it was like 5 lbs of question/judgment that expanded into 50 (yeghor) or 500 (me) lbs of question/judgment (the question itself, and then the consequent questions it raised- about why it seemed ‘off’/leading)? And life is infinitely easier around people who know how to shave off that extra weight and post questions in such a way that aren’t leading, so you can focus on the actual question without a bunch of 'white noise' interfering?

I think that's a valid observation, yes. So you're saying that yeghor limited the scope in order to prevent the interference of other implications or external factors - lightening the "weight" for me so I might answer the question more easily? See to Pe that's much like tying a ribbon around the top of an iceberg and saying that this is all that matters, when there's the rest of the iceberg is still there and is off limits to me. To me, the top part can't float without the bottom part, and I need to know how or why it floats to talk about the top part.

I get what you're saying about why Ni want's to limit the parameters. If you want to talk about one part of the iceberg, that's fine. It's not like I'm against that, it's just hard to wrap my head around it. I suppose, like you say, Ni needs to find a way to limit the scope without being an iceberg-denier, so to speak , and I need to find a way to Ne the rest of the iceberg on my own (ie. perceive it in it's entirety) without smashing down the boundaries of the smaller scope. I must say, analogies and metaphors (despite my complaints about yeghor's ) help me in general. They can set the parameters while giving me chance to mentally fill in the full picture.

So what things do other people do help you to keep the scope small and easy to manage? What things make discussions work well for you?

Oh the contrary, I've found your posts in this thread very helpful. I'm sorta reluctant to delve into the Fi/Fe-ness (off topic), but your description of your experience of going up against Fe is exactly the kind of thing that helps. (As I've said before) I really don't get much out of 'how to behave' lists because it feels too contrived to me, it's too constricting. The thing that helps me adapt my behavior more than anything is understanding the root of the problem- simply being handed a list of things to do or not to do is too superficial a remedy and it’s too much to memorize.

My hope is that I'll eventually stumble over enough explanations like that (ones that happens to 'click' and make sense to me) here and there that I'll be able to clearly associate certain Fe behaviors as 'equivalents' to the Pe and Te stuff that drives me insane. I've learned though that the way I go about asking for it fails (as you pointed out, in quoting that other thread), so it almost has to be accidental to catch effective Fi descriptions.

Oh, good. Yes, I need INFJ stuff drummed into me a bit before it clicks too.

I keep hearing insinuation (whether it’s still there or not) that INFJs only “think” they’re feeling distressed because someone else is overbearing, but the “truth” (the “INFJ blindspot”) is that we simply don’t like information that isn’t flattering and we tell ourselves some story (e.g: about how the other person is “overbearing”) so that we can dismiss the information.

I think that what most people are saying (well, it's what I'm saying), is that it can be both. I personally don't mean to dismiss the feelings of the INFJs involved or to claim their experience of mistreatment isn't real or valid.

I agree that INFJs aren’t anywhere near as focused on labeling/giving much weight to immediate feelings- that generally a pattern has to emerge before feelings stand out as significant (and honestly, even then, we have to make a conscious effort or we'll keep putting it off). I’m curious about the “as well as they think they do” part though- I often feel like refusing certain ‘feeling’ labels here and there gets mistaken as denial, when it's actually more about reluctance to commit to a label (which is directly because I don't know what I'm feeling, immediate feelings (to me) are always just a fraction of a bigger picture- ime, it's a step in the wrong direction to slap a label on it that *might* not be correct). Do you actually know INFJs who do focus on immediate feelings and claim to feel something that isn’t congruent to what you sense, or are you talking about the refusal to allow certain labels being slapped on in the first place? [Granted, I can be clumsy about it- I might say, "I'm not angry" as shorthand/clumsy estimate for "I don't know what I'm feeling, and I don't want to label/talk about it right now." I have gathered from what Fi doms say that they actually resent the "leave it alone" shorthand, and they need the long part to actually be articulated in order to let it go?

I never thought of it as labels - that's interesting.

Hmm. I think what I'm getting at is that INFJs seem to estimate their emotions more Perceptually rather than through the use of Judgement. They may sense something's off, but if someone else addresses the apparent emotion, and the INFJ can't see the cause and effect link, they doubt it and brush it off (or redirect it, claiming it as the a result of something else). It might not be, say, denying that you're angry when you are, it might be that you say, "I'm not angry, I'm just stressed" - or something along those lines. Anyway, considering what we just discussed above I probably shouldn't go into this. This idea is not yet fully formed.

eta: It's worth mentioning, I do tend to form loose opinions myself about how self-aware people seem to be of their feelings- it's just that these opinions aren't formed on their reaction in-the-moment. If someone looks angry and they say, "I'm not angry"- I take that to mean, "It's not available to discuss this with me right now." Whether or not that person is self aware (imo) is more based on what happens after that- do they continue to refuse to acknowledge there was a problem, and do they get passive aggressive instead to take out the anger? ...do they come up to me and say, "Yeah, you know what- that actually is a problem and I'm not comfortable with it." Or sometimes if they continue to refuse to talk about it, I'll simply see that as not especially trusting me enough to talk about it...which is fine....but if they seem to be able to process it appropriately then that is the kind of thing I base opinions of 'self-awareness' on. This urgency to need other people to drop everything and talk about what they're immediately feeling.....I just don't get it *and* I don't give it anywhere near as much weight in the 'self awareness' category.

Actually, I'm not bothered by people saying they don't know what they feel, for the most part. It only bugs me if that emotion is becoming a problem and we're not allowed to talk about it.

Outright denials (or the perception of denial) do really get to me - I know they shouldn't, but they do. I should accept as you do, that it's just that they need time, but the incongruence really bothers me. It's like saying the sky is green and I look up and see it's clearly not - so either you're delusional, or you're brushing me off and think I'm a big enough idiot to believe you. I suppose this is the equivalent of the INFJ annoyance with INFPs seeming to "play stupid" when it comes to intentions.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

So you're saying that yeghor limited the scope in order to prevent the interference of other implications or external factors - lightening the "weight" for me so I might answer the question more easily?

I can't speak for him, but if it were me- it isn't about intentionally limiting the scope, in fact I was trying to make the point that it's really surprising to me that it comes across as putting some limit on the scope at all.

It's sorta like, if I asked someone if they wanted to go grab some dinner, and said, "Do you want to go to Chipotle? Or Noodles & Co?" By asking that, it isn't my intention to imply "AND THOSE ARE THE ONLY TWO ACCEPTABLE ANSWERS!!" It's just that those are two places that come to mind. When I read yeghor's analogy- or if I give one like that myself- it's just that those are the options that come to mind.....it really does surprise me to hear some subtext is added, urging that it's not available to come up with something else. It seems obvious to me that if someone comes up with yet another (and better) option- of course it's available to throw it in the pot.

 

[yeghor]

I can appreciate that. I wish there was more discussion about INFP flaws, but the way the conversation flows, it keeps coming back to INFJ flaws. I have noted this and been uneasy about it. I never really know what's the cause of it. I'm not sure if the INFPs just spend too much time projecting ideas outward, whether we're more inclined to blame, or if the way INFJs talk about things draws INFPs into discussing them rather than themselves. It upsets me to think that it ends up so one sided, and that it might be the INFPs fault. I will say, like I mentioned earlier about Ne surfing ideas, we just go where the inspiration takes us and we can lose sight of what that chosen direction is communicating to others. The thing is, when there have been threads where INFJs criticised INFPs, I personally experienced less 'inspiration'. It's not that I can't take criticism, it's just that it didn't spark ideas in the same way. It wasn't as interesting and mentally productive, and I have no idea why. Does that make sense?

INFPs - Internally has more consistency, stability and clarity. Externally, more comfortable with flux.
INFJs - Internally more in flux. Externally more comfortable with clarity, consistency and stability.

INFJs are relatively more inclined to internalize blame...Fe is always scanning the environment to identify whether people are (dis)pleased with us...It's the gateway to our ego...Any externally generated blame can get through that route and seep into our ego...When that happens we feel that we've been "bad (children?)" accompanied by negative feelings like sadness and pain, which compel us to adjust/modify our ego in line with the issue that caused the blame so that the pain and guilt can subside...

To prevent that gateway being abused, INFJs, in time, start installing filters/checkpoints on the gate so that only sincere/honest/productive expressions of blame/criticism are allowed inside the ego and are taken into consideration...That's where the detection of good and ill intent comes into play...That's why "intent" plays a critical role for the INFJ when interacting with other people and Ni-Ti is always checking "intent" in the background and sets off alarms when inconsistencies are detected (shutting the gateway)...

Therefore, building on your analogy:

INFJs - Less rigid (weak) ego boundaries hence a more malleable ego/sense of self...More susceptible to being hurt by external emotional fluctuations hence more rigid exterior structures/gateways/armor...From outside appears as authoritarian/unyielding...as well as less adaptable

INFP - More rigid (strong) ego boundaries hence a less malleable ego/sense of self...Less susceptible to being hurt by external emotional fluctuations hence less rigid exterior structures/gateways/armor...From outside appears as whimsical/capricous/flighty...as well as more adaptable

The problem here is that as the intimacy of the relationship increases, INFJs start maintaining fewer filters on the gate (All-in attitude), lowering their defenses, which makes them (their ego) more vulnerable to emotional surges from the partner...With each surge INFJs try to adapt (bend over) but if the surges become too frequent or too long they start burning/frying the core/ego, taking it out of service...at which time INFJs close the Fe gate completely (doorslam = All out) so that the ego can heal...At that point, INFJs feel that no matter what they do they cannot please the partner enough to make the surges stop, which to them implies that they are not suitable for each other...

So INFPs' (or Fi-doms'/auxes') way of making themselves more vulnerable may be, based on these descriptions, letting more criticism by the partner seep into their ego (making their ego more malleable for the partner) and trying to consciously regulate the surges...

Yeah, but I guess there can be a laziness to all Extroverted functions. For the Introverted functions, it can inadvertently come across like, "here's a bunch of stuff that randomly occurred to me. Let me dump this on you and you go away and figure it all out". Then sometimes immediately afterwards there's a 'test' where they check if you did figure it out, and god help you if you didn't.

This will not be a positive analogy but, sometimes (when the white noise is too strong) it feels to me like I have been left to picking up the edible pieces out of a vomit...Then, despite the smell and yuckiness, I manage to bring together the, let's say 4, pieces I picked up and make sense of them and show them to the other party to ask them "is this the core of the issue?"..."is this what you were trying to say?"...then, things get more complicated if more vomit comes along in response...A better response could instead be telling me which one of the pieces I picked up are correct and then showing me other pieces that I missed, instead of adding more vomit to the pile...

Your and others' posts do not give the feeling of vomit by the way...they are coming in much more edible forms

I think that's a valid observation, yes. So you're saying that yeghor limited the scope in order to prevent the interference of other implications or external factors - lightening the "weight" for me so I might answer the question more easily? See to Pe that's much like tying a ribbon around the top of an iceberg and saying that this is all that matters, when there's the rest of the iceberg is still there and is off limits to me. To me, the top part can't float without the bottom part, and I need to know how or why it floats to talk about the top part.

To me, it feels like INFP has this fuzzy Fi framework and is trying to scan the entire framework so that INFP can get a focus on and pinpoint where the answer to the issue at hand lies in the framework...

On the other hand, I already have some certain definite parameters of the issue decided in my mind that I believe would serve as cornerstones for the INFP (or any other party) so that the INFP can pin them on his/her Fi-framework and just concentrate on the area lying inbetween rather than making an entire (lengthy) scan of the framework...

So I have been basically limiting the area to be focused (hence shortening evaluation duration) but, OTOH, allowing the INFP to come to his/her own conclusions inside that limited area...This I guess may make INFP (or Fi-dom/aux) uneasy and may seem as I am forcing them to leave certain parts of the framework out of evaluation so may feel to them as being forced/channeled towards a certain conclusion...

Ne, OTOH, may voice out several possibilities and Ni would shoot them down leaving the only viable option (from Ni perspective) alive...This may feel as invalidation to Ne...

I do not know what it takes for INFPs to reduce many possibilities/options in their mind down to a single conclusion...how or do you zoom into the relevant part of the framework to arrive at a single conclusion/decision to your satisfaction regarding any given issue? Back and forth Ne banter?

 

[March]

[MENTION=5871]Southern Kross[/MENTION]

I wouldn't say that I get swept up in emotions. On most days, I'd be surprised if my emotions become more intense than a 4 on a 10-point scale. If they do, that's usually because I go seek them out. It's just that probing them to find out the nuances is a lot of work and I already have so much to do that seems more urgent and important.

It's true that I don't easily see the 'edges' of my emotions, but not in a 'Oh noez! This'll NEVER get better!' way.

Say I pick up traces of sadness and anxiety, which happens to me often. Is that just low blood sugar? And did that arise from eating too little/the wrong stuff/too late/too much/too early? From not enough physical activity, or too much, or the wrong kind? Too little socializing? Too much? The wrong kind? Or is there something wrong in my job? Did I get triggered by that song on the radio? And did it trigger a memory or a bit of guilt that I forgot to send friend X a birthday card? Or did the fleeting reminder of needing to send friend X a birthday card remind me of my other friend who died? Which in turn triggered thoughts of people I haven't heard from in a while? Did my husband shrug me off this morning? Or did I still feel lonely from that scene in last night's movie and was his goodbye perfectly fine in general but just a little too perfunctory for me today? Am I procrastinating on something scary?

Knowing myself, it's usually a combination of at least six of those, and four others I didn't just think of. And in 99% of cases, the emotion will go away by itself or if I do some useful things like eating, exercising, and getting back to work.

Meaning is everything for me too, I'm just not a feelomancer. Give me tea leaves and flights of geese any day. (Or rather: actions and words and little flashes of insight.)

I also don't particularly need emotional stability and predictability. Being with someone who IS emotionally stable and predictable and above a certain level of expressiveness is easier, granted. But I can deal with instability and unpredictability just fine as long as there's good emotional hygiene and a certain level of emotional responsiveness.

Example of emotional hygiene: My IFP friend and IFP mother are both emotionally not on a very even keel (although my also-IFP mother-in-law IS). Their pain is right below the surface, and it's easy to trigger even in innocent conversations about vegetables. When my friend tears up, though, I know that she'll deal with the feeling herself. She'll let me know if there's anything she needs or even wants from me, but it's her feeling and her responsibility. This makes it easy for me to want to help her and to help her in a useful way. When my mother's emotions get triggered, though, she goes: "I I am experiencing a FEELING. Now what are you going to do about it? Huh? HUH?" The former is fine with me, the latter is really hard to deal with because it triggers all my weak points. Same kind of accessible emotions, different reactions.

Example of emotional responsiveness: My ISTJ husband is emotionally on a very even keel and not very expressive. This has the risk of me getting more and more nervous, 'cause I don't get the feedback that comes from expressiveness. But he's very emotionally responsive, so I can come up and get cuddles or a smile or a couple of words about day planning or I can whine to him about something not working out as I want it to and have him respond in a way that shows me he cares. My (no idea about type) ex boss was also very emotionally even-keeled and low-key, but even when I kept my requests to approrpiate work level I could NEVER get as much as a word of reassurance from him. That completely fried my circuits.

 

[PeaceBaby]

As an INFJ in a relationship with an INFP, I find the above quite accurate to my experience with Fi-dom in many ways.

At first I didn't realize what was going on but by now I can sense it for what it is: It feels like this ongoing quietly (subtly) aggressive push push push push and it can be really disorienting and draining for me. The worst of it is when that push is for me to see my own self, my actions, etc through their eyes - a profound disorientation for me.

I am interested to hear more about this. Can you expand on it?

Just to nitpick in return, I disagree that Pe is oblivious to the rest of the iceberg (the part below the water) - it's just that we can estimate it entirely so easily that we don't consider it a big deal. It is as light a 5 lbs to us; we just don't know it's so much heavier to other people. I suppose it's more like a rabbit hole to Pi: a black hole going down and down, and who knows how deep or where it could lead to.

Agreed. It was surprising to me that we had to define doorslam to such a degree of minutia. To me, it seemed obvious that the doorslam was an acceptable option in cases of abuse, etc. I'd already mentally trimmed out the extremes.

I think that's a valid observation, yes. So you're saying that yeghor limited the scope in order to prevent the interference of other implications or external factors - lightening the "weight" for me so I might answer the question more easily? See to Pe that's much like tying a ribbon around the top of an iceberg and saying that this is all that matters, when there's the rest of the iceberg is still there and is off limits to me. To me, the top part can't float without the bottom part, and I need to know how or why it floats to talk about the top part.

I think that Pi in alliance with Je can be quite directive though. It's a shortcut but it comes at a cost of limiting scope to self-serving purpose. Because it does not wish to discuss the off-limit portion, and most people can sense that portions have been intentionally left out, it can seem disingenuous too. Still, I do understand the why. Fleshing out a fully-realized Fi answer takes forever. I've literally spent hours at times looking at every internal space and trying to account for every single variable contained within.

I think that what most people are saying (well, it's what I'm saying), is that it can be both. I personally don't mean to dismiss the feelings of the INFJs involved or to claim their experience of mistreatment isn't real or valid.

Agreed. I see it as a spectrum and it feels unique to me inside each person as I contemplate the energies of all involved.

Outright denials (or the perception of denial) do really get to me - I know they shouldn't, but they do. I should accept as you do, that it's just that they need time, but the incongruence really bothers me. It's like saying the sky is green and I look up and see it's clearly not - so either you're delusional, or you're brushing me off and think I'm a big enough idiot to believe you. I suppose this is the equivalent of the INFJ annoyance with INFPs seeming to "play stupid" when it comes to intentions.

Indeed. By not making an effort to look for the cause, you are affecting my internal landscape with your emotions. You are making the proverbial "white noise" for me and I cannot focus on much else when I sense heavy, strong emotions inside you that are brushed off, patently avoided or denied. All that's necessary is to say, "Yes, I feel something, not sure what" but to have it denied is just difficult since you're sending out all these signals that interfere with the smooth functioning of my feeling-radar.

INFJs are relatively more inclined to internalize blame...Fe is always scanning the environment to identify whether people are (dis)pleased with us...It's the gateway to our ego...Any externally generated blame can get through that route and seep into our ego...

It does seem to me that Fe types get very good though at bouncing blame all around to everyone else, to varying degrees of course.

To prevent that gateway being abused, INFJs, in time, start installing filters/checkpoints on the gate so that only sincere/honest/productive expressions of blame/criticism are allowed inside the ego and are taken into consideration...That's where the detection of good and ill intent comes into play...That's why "intent" plays a critical role for the INFJ when interacting with other people and Ni-Ti is always checking "intent" in the background and sets off alarms when inconsistencies are detected (shutting the gateway)...

And how do you discern intent? Can you flesh that out for me?


As for the rest ... I find it interesting that you feel INFP's are less likely to be hurt. We are frequently injured in an emotionally broken world that doesn't pay much attention to emotional health. We learn that the world really doesn't value emotions like we do from a very young age and we naturally turn to the internal processing of them since we are wired that way. Me personally, I historically have exuded very little negative emotion so that it cannot be used in any way against me or to influence other people into action. I dislike emotions being used as tools.

At the moment though, I feel annoyed discussing things with INFJ's these days. I know some of that impatience leaks through and it makes it harder for you to hear me. But I want to be more true to how I am wired on the forum, so I don't sanitize everything. Oh, I sanitize most of it out. But I want to be heard at least a little bit from that emotional truth perspective.

You just don't see the sanitation happening. I've personally been very hurt on this forum, but you'd never know that from my posts. In fact, when you assumed that I must not have encountered difficult people in my life (from an earlier transaction between us) that was fairly insulting too actually. Not hurtful, just rather invalidating to make that assumption.

So I have been basically limiting the area to be focused (hence shortening evaluation duration) but, OTOH, allowing the INFP to come to his/her own conclusions inside that limited area...This I guess may make INFP (or Fi-dom/aux) uneasy and may seem as I am forcing them to leave certain parts of the framework out of evaluation so may feel to them as being forced/channeled towards a certain conclusion...

You limit the scope to focus on it in an Ni - Fe way. To focus on it in a healthy Fi - Ne way, I need to see the scope as widely as possible.

Ne, OTOH, may voice out several possibilities and Ni would shoot them down leaving the only viable option (from Ni perspective) alive...This may feel as invalidation to Ne...

Well, I think it's more about Fi doing what it needs to do more than anything. When you leave stuff off-limits, it's like asking me to drive the car with one eye closed. You are limiting my perceptive abilities.

I do not know what it takes for INFPs to reduce many possibilities/options in their mind down to a single conclusion...how or do you zoom into the relevant part of the framework to arrive at a single conclusion/decision to your satisfaction regarding any given issue? Back and forth Ne banter?

We often leave Fi judgements as balls in the air until real-life points us in-the-moment to adapt. We have to trust that our Ne will help us adapt.

Knowing myself, it's usually a combination of at least six of those, and four others I didn't just think of. And in 99% of cases, the emotion will go away by itself or if I do some useful things like eating, exercising, and getting back to work.

I liked your post. This is of interest because from my perspective, as an Fi dom, you not paying attention to that emotion is the same as not taking care of your emotional health. If I was around you in real-life (and to a limited degree here on the forum) I would sense your inner emotional construct and will realize you are ignoring it. Now granted, to you it's not pressing and indeed, 80% of it is transient and not of huge import. But when you ignore it, I can sense you're not tending to it and it feels like you have a crying baby in there that you're not paying attention to. (cred to Seymour for the crying baby analogy!)

So, just sharing that so you can see it from my vantage point too. That's the kind of "white noise" that I hear all the time. Like a radio always playing.

 

[FemMecha]

@Southern Cross, thank you for you patience and thoughtfulness in these discussions. I appreciate reading your posts.

I keep hearing insinuation (whether it’s still there or not) that INFJs only “think” they’re feeling distressed because someone else is overbearing, but the “truth” (the “INFJ blindspot”) is that we simply don’t like information that isn’t flattering and we tell ourselves some story (e.g: about how the other person is “overbearing”) so that we can dismiss the information.

You presented this very diplomatically, but I'm tempted to dare someone to say that to me right about now.