I just saw that Qlip responded indicating it is an 'Ne thing'...and that is exactly what I was going to say. [MENTION=3]MacGuffin[/MENTION] saw this right off the bat...I think he writes about it in post #2. And it is something that Z Buck McFate and I were discussing in a different thread.
If we can't nail-down 'internal reality' (example: how someone in our aquaintance feels about us) we become anxious...sometimes extremely so...because it prevents/blocks us from doing what we do best...exploring external possibilites. It is something that ends up being very distracting. If you are an Ni dom...you may recognize its opposite. If you are unable to nail-down 'external reality'...if there are too many phone calls...too many engagements...too many interruptions...this might make you feel distracted and overwhelmed because it blocks you from doing what you do naturally...exploring internal possiblities.
I very much like this description^^. I think Ne feeds us all the data, useful or not and it is just too fragmentary and filled with possibilities to be able to pull out what is actually going on from an Fi perspective. I think ENFP Ne paranoia is actually very common and doesnt mean you are broken in anyway or have defective Fi or need drugs. To the OP, I think this is where Te becomes extremely handy as an initial objective tool to self monitor behavior. When you note becoming wound up and agitated, when you find yourself going "Well I bet he really was meaning [insert evil, nefarious behavior]" stop and just name it for what it is. "oh, haha, I am doing the crazy paranoia thing again". Then you dismiss it as irrelevant and recognize it is likely to be incredibly untrue and somewhat doomsday in nature and reassess how you feel in a few days about the sitiuation before acting.
As for people just not liking you, it is really hard for me to handle as well. Te saves the day as it allows me to dismiss it or them, so I dont have to feel hurt, a trick learned long ago.. However, when open to hurt, it does hurt. To open your heart and be accepting of so many others in the world, endlessly forgiving and caring, to feel thier pain and hurt and to want to reach out, to hold them, to protect them-then have them be cruel or vindictive in turn is very painful.
I think part of what our mind does-it uses Ne to capture fragmentary versions of the other person, molds, imprints upon our consciousness to capture a fuzzy snapshot of them. To be able to take this snapshot requires allowing our NeFi to mold around them, but in doing so, we are actually allowing them to shape our inner world some-allowing them inside of us. In doing so we can then compare the fuzzy snapshot to our past understanding of this person, other people, other times and assess what is different, and how to mold-all done almost subconsciously of course..
When we do this, if they reject us or hurt us, we dont have any protective barriers in place, thus they actually kinda fuck up our internal core a great deal....as since we allowed them to become part of us, when they reject us, we actually reject ourselves??? This sounds weird, but feels like the right way to describe it.
I dont agree with [MENTION=3]MacGuffin[/MENTION] that it is weak or poor Fi, as this classifies things as broken, and every young enfp cant be broken. Rather I would say it is young Fi being heavily influenced by Ne. As we age and gain self confidence, we become better at identifying the actual Possibilities with Ne, blocking the truley obnoxious with Te, and then having a stonrg sense of our own internal self worth, how we value and feel about ourselves with Fi grounded in Si, so that when we do choose to be vulnerable, to allow ourselves to mirror and reflect the other, to allow them to become part of us so we can understand them, if they choose to reject us, it isnt as destablizing to our core, although still a bit hurtful.
I would argue the reason the INFPs dont quite get the magnitude of this intense paranoia as the enfps, is that they can alter thier perceptive mode to be more Si in nature, thus blocking a lot of the incoming Ne possibilities? (could be rephrased more eloquently) Basically, they can choose to judge themselves on previously gathered FiSi data on how they feel about themselves, and more easily ignore the input of those around them. I also notice they tend to be able to more easily dismiss negative judgements agsint them, via Fi judgment against the other person. shutting the door so to speak.
Nardi did capture some sense of this when he described watching the brains of folks who lead with a judging function verses a perceiving function. There was a very marked split in how the two use frontal lobe. He also decsribed that people who tend to favor the Cheif Judge part of the frontal lobe,(dominant Ti, Te, Fi, or Fe) are more capable of ignoring information that they disagree with, thus allowing for less suceptibility to depression. Interesting book.