i'm on board with what hel has contributed. to me, as an e4, much of my challenge comes from how
obsessed i can become with deciding upon whether or not i am broken... even if, in more lucid moments, i also recogne the way in which such an idea completely dissolves into nothing and everything all at once, a deeper sense of experience and identity that cannot be reduced to such a label. yet, in my own experience, the sensitivity and the speed of the DROP cannot really be described. just like having to rescue a child on a super thin sheet of ice.
as for the jump you see, i see "institutionalization" as "locked up." looking at the basic history of insane asylums and the way that process continues to represent the core attitudes we in society have towards "mental illness," makes that threat seem like an act of violence (one which i'm not even really personally offended by, but which if i were in a different place and was more part of the situation, i would easily be triggered by, bc it seems like an attack, an attempt to define my reality instead of listening to me or approaching me with any curiosity (the mental component of empathy). the feeling of being invaded by violence with the very real fears and self-doubts just mix and create a volatile solution.
i do think, too, that like T types can get hooked on facts, Fe types at least can get hooked on meanings/gestures. and sometimes it does feel like fp/tj /ALL types can deny intent when the motivational energy seems quite obvious. it's harder for me to believe that the meaning is accidental, when to me it's less accidental and more subconscious/part of a reaction.
with that said, when we react and get equally hooked on ONLY MEANING MATTERS, we often lose sight of that other way of putting the situation in context and just paraphrasing, "WUR sounds a bit angry" (ie it's about the other person too, so i don't need to take this personally). that attempt at committing to my own objective context, some Ti story sense, is the primary resource i have for steadying out what is happening. when i do my best, i actually go back and review the interaction more closely, instead of just allowing myself to jump to conclusions without really examining the flow. doing the Fi thing is even more challenging, bc it's both against the grain, like Ti, but also then flipping the script, focusing on internal history. definitely not a strength. my best way of listening is getting myself really steadied physically and then allowing myself to use the meaning as clues to finally test things internally with my own kind of model of emotions/needs. it wasn't until a couple of years ago, however, where needs became part of my vocabulary. and i really couldn't get thru the first couple of superficial layers with myself to really offer empathy. i mean, hell, we start out using ideas outside in the world that we test emotionally based on what we think the best world would be like (would this be good for me to be/be part of?). going backwards against the grain to learn what our deepest needs are, and to be able to offer a way of listening from that place, is a huge challenge. i really truly feel like the only reason i have any sense of it at all is that i was explicitly TAUGHT it by nfps. the ongoing presence of my infp 9w1 mom probably helps, but i also have tons of empathy fails, precipitated quite frequently based on how shitty i can be at actually empathizing with myself, cleaning myself off on the inside from emotional reactions, and staying focused on how to proceed.
in the end tho, healthy boundaries are just really challenging for some people. and that outgassing is part of what motivates some of the most sensitive people to just climb into their bubbles and shrivel away.
ps one major disagreement--entjs are sooooooooo about reading between the lines.
they're just better than us at controlling them. they are masters of assumption, who are so fast with them that they can actually do real shit. the idea that Te can't be sneaky or have/act on behalf of ulterior motives doesn't hold true for me, even if i can imagine the hyperliteral quality of some of the estjs i know providing alternative evidence. bluntness and strategy can coexist (i almost linked to Mark Cuban's twitter feed, hehe, but a better example would be louis ck). i think the anti-Te sentiment some Fe types feel is that Te can just take over and we can feel helpless to defeat it, because if we don't know how to interject or feel like we can ask to be heard on our own terms, it really can just SKIP us and
what we can contribute when it is deciding what is considers to be important. like swords vs nerf footballs, when we were actually looking to play a team sport in the first place.
