A sense of ?

[proteanmix]

This is from my ISTP coworker. I've been working on her steadily for over a year. She's just now beginning to open up.

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From: ***
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:31 PM
To: ***
Subject: RE: Thankx!

LOL so true so true Thankx again!

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From: ***
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:26 PM
To: ***
Subject: RE: Thankx!

If only you knew how I sit and talk and talk and talk and talk to my mother about my life. Even I (who doesn’t always realize when I’ve been talking too much) say, damn! Ive been going for about two hours! And she just nods and smiles.
So don’t worry about it. We all need to vent, especially when it’s in a trying time.

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From: ***
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:23 PM
To: ***
Subject: Thankx!

Oh I just wanted to say thank you for listening to my long winded talk about my life…I must be down b/c I was running my mouth like 70mph lol…but I really appreciate the time you had for me…I haven’t really talked about my issues w/ anybody in a long long time…I thought was becoming so redundant. But it does feel good to talk to somebody; somebody you can trust w/ your thoughts & sometimes can relate to. Thankx!!!

Anyway, I like this woman as a person. She's one of those people that I absolutely know if we were in high school together we would've moved in different (opposing) crowds but now that we're adults things are different. I think she's moving into her Tertiary Ni which makes it easy to talk to her although since she's in a bad spot it's the paranoid Ni and not natural and unstressed tertiary Ni.

I must say in the same way people feel satisfied by climbing a mountain, seeing their children off to college without severely psychologically maiming them, or maybe sexual conquest, I feel the same sense of accomplishment by getting someone who I know typically does not share to share with me. I don't go for easy targets. LOL, "targets" sounds so cold. What is this I feel anyways? I wonder if my heart is in the right place. I will say that I believe most of the time it is but this satisfaction makes me wonder.

I don't know, I like bringing people to an emotional precipice. Oddly, I don't like getting their myself, it feels weird. Maybe some people like it, it makes them feel alive. Which is where the strange detachment comes in. Like once I get them there I start zoning out, no clue where I'm going but the trip was great :hi:

I don't know if it's some sort of power or ego trip? I enjoy helping people, but this feeling concerns me because my help isn't purely altruistic. But altruism is impossible so maybe I should just be eh about it.

When I first started this blog I called it "Breaking the Fourth Wall" I thought to myself, 'what's keeping me from you and you from me? what's between us?' So then I was trying to be navelgazy but that utterly failed because that's not how I operate. The deeper I spiral within myself the more depressed I get. I reach externally for meaning, maybe 90/10 maybe 51/49 but it's a well that I draw from outside of myself.

And gotdammit that's OK! At least I'm looking for it. It's big ass universe out there! You can go infinitely in or infinitely out. Does not matter which direction you go as long as you're going.

 

[Guest]

I must say in the same way people feel satisfied by climbing a mountain, seeing their children off to college without severely psychologically maiming them, or maybe sexual conquest, I feel the same sense of accomplishment by getting someone who I know typically does not share to share with me. I don't go for easy targets. LOL, "targets" sounds so cold. What is this I feel anyways? I wonder if my heart is in the right place. I will say that I believe most of the time it is but this satisfaction makes me wonder.

I don't know, I like bringing people to an emotional precipice. Oddly, I don't like getting their myself, it feels weird. Maybe some people like it, it makes them feel alive. Which is where the strange detachment comes in. Like once I get them there I start zoning out, no clue where I'm going but the trip was great

I think the important thing is what you do once you get to that point of opening up someone. I believe there is negligence involved with bringing someone to a place of exposure and leaving them in the dust. I am not saying you are doing that, I'm simply saying it's something of which to be careful.

I know that I have had similar conquests in other areas of relationships, and once I reach the point of victory, I'm on to the next thing. This is something I have to be very mindful of because people can get hurt in the process.

 

[Mycroft]

Proteanmix, while self-knowledge can be uncomfortable at times, that you have it will no doubt spare you serious life mistakes.

People who lack self-knowledge end up throwing everything into the closet and then doing their very best to pretend the mess in the closet doesn't exist; the "flight from oneself" can't go on forever - the things I've seen people do for the sake of easing the tension, so to speak, have not always been pleasant to watch.

In really bad cases, you get people who won't acknowledge the contents of their own psyche and won't acknowledge that their actions are the result of the dismissal of these contents.

 

[Mycroft]

Also, reflecting upon this further:

Extraverted Feeling is your dominant function; it's perfectly natural that you would want to try to bring out your favored function in others.

INXJs enjoy bringing out passion and inner vision in others; ESXPs enjoy getting others to take things less seriously and enjoy the moment; EXTJs like seeing people take initiative and responsibility for their actions. Just to cite a few examples off of the top of my head!

For every one of us, our dominant function is, obviously, our most well-developed; as a result, we see the function, we experience the function, in a highly-developed, nuanced manner.

While causing others for whom Extraverted Feeling is a rarely- or under-used function to approach it may cause them to feel a bit like they are at a "precipice", as you put it, for you, someone who uses this function adeptly, there is no reason or need for you to feel that way; you are perfectly comfortable with the function!

So long as your efforts are genuinely improving people's lives (and it sounds to me that you are careful to keep an eye out for this), I don't see any reason for you to doubt yourself over it.