Wait, this looks familiar...thats the NeSi relationship that we have as well. That typical fear and the thousands of what ifs that go through your head as you try and make sense of a group of people and the way you are 'supposed' to act, without getting torn to shreds. And the pull and push you feel to connect with others, yet not get slammed. (though that connecting is perhaps more Fi)
It's funny, though; as time goes on, more and more I realize that there's nothing wrong with just staying quiet. No one will think badly of me for it. I'll just know to speak when it's time for me to speak.
I never knew that ENTPs were so powerdriven. I mean...the Ne sort of..hides that fact coz it makes them look playful. But from this Id say you are almost more driven than NTJs
Well, everyone's different
Yess, this I also recognise. I play by the same rules, but a different game! You push it too far to make the other uncomfortable. So..you aim to straddle the perfect line between one upping them, and calling their bluff and hurting their feelings? To show how not vulnerable you are? And for that matter, reinforce the walls afterwards? Kind of like physical sparring...
Well, it's playfighting, as you mention. The goal is to push it so far that it becomes ridiculous, and you just collapse laughing. Eventually, someone's going to look or say something silly, and everyone takes humor in that. It's the same with deadpan humor; the whole time, I'm waiting for the other person to figure out that I'm being totally unserious, and laugh at the absurdity of it.
It's like playing a game of tag - you try hard, but you've got to be careful not to push the other person down.
I play that same game with Fi. I get too close too intimately on purpose, and see if the other will accept my dare to do the same. The first one to blush or flush and withdraw loses. Emotional boundaries and how much emotional intensity you can handle basically, mixed with a game of 'chicken'. It can be incredibly fun when you trigger blissful emotions in each other. I guess with you, the pay off is feeling intelligent and powerful? Outsmarting as such? Isnt that a win-lose situation though? Someone always has got to lose? Or is it possible to reach that perfect balance of status quo and feel powerful still?
Hopefully, I learn something, or get the other person to consider something from a perspective not previously seen.
The best is when the status quo remains, the other person still disagrees, but notes that it's hard to argue, because your position is well-thought out. The payoff is that the other person respects your abilities, and you theirs, building mutual self-esteem.
The chicken game is fun too, but it's sometimes tricky to know if the other person's willing to play along.
Im not quite sure as to how you cause the other, in your game, to feel uncomfortable. Id be interested to see the mechanics
Either challenging their idea, saying something intentionally offensive but non-seriously, making fun of a slight flaw of theirs, acting like I'm a deranged fanatic of something mundane, sexualizing the conversation for fun, and so on. Going outside established social norms.
Oh hon..yeah, that sounds terribly lonely, almost like growing up in a war-zone. And actually somewhat familiar as well. I just escaped into fantasy worlds though, daydreams, fiction, tv...anything to get me to experience intense blissfull emotions and get me out of reality
That was the disheartening part - even with a strong imagination, I still felt the difference between reality and fantasy, and fantasy just didn't give me the same response, unless I could act it out somehow. Of course, that got less and less socially acceptable the older I grew, and it still did not feel real. Video games used to do that for me, too, until I played so many that there were few novel experiences, and gameplay flaws became more glaring. What I craved was genuine social connection with others, but the home life made me terrified of it, and left me prone to some bad habits, like excessive judgmentality.
That's how I know I'm an extrovert, even though I can act introverted at times. The external world is what's real, and what brings the juice from the beginning. The internal model is just a conception of the external world that I can manipulate in ways unavailable to me in the outside world.
Well..my experience teaches me actually that showing that you are hurting me, and being clear about that, as well as asking them to stop seems to work like blood on a shark. They perceive it as weakness and push even harder to make the kill. This is irl experience, mind you. One of the entps I know has matured a bit, but I can tell that when I do plead with him to stop, he gets aggrevated, and it costs him an incredible amount of energy to transform that energy into detachment and the ability to 'laugh it away' as to respect my request. The other...well..from what I can pick up, I think it is the mere sight of 'vulnerability' that seems to piss him off and make him incredibly scared. Like seeing my vulnerability makes his suddenly clear for the entire world to see as well, and he cant help but try and destroy that, to hide it from the world.
That's familiar. I have experienced another's vulnerability as viscerally disgusting before, and it can trigger attacking impulses. Thinking about it, at a certain level of vulnerability, the person's behavior becomes "pitiful," so to speak, and it seems like the person is trying to evince high levels of empathy from me. This seems terribly manipulative to me. It's even more the case when it's as a result of poorly thought out decisions on the part of the other person. Case in point - when I worked at this pizza place, there was this one middle-aged woman who worked the register. Single mom, trying to scrape by, she had a hard existence, no doubt. However, near the end of her shift, she would always get antsy about leaving early, so she could "get to school," especially when there was a long line of customers. The neediness began to grate, since I had my own things I was dealing with, and you didn't see me constantly pestering about it (instead, I'd be chronically dysthymic and drink too much). At the point, though, that I found out that "school" was one of those for-profit universities (largely a scam designed to prey on the hopes of the lower classes), that's when the impulse to attack set in. Even though I know it was a warped perspective, it seemed like she was trying to be as pathetic as possible, just to go make an even more pathetic choice. The feeling is
where's your goddamn pride?
I also don't necessarily know if the refusing to stop after you ask would arise from that vulnerability, though. Sometimes, when I'm on a roll and heated, there's just a lot of righteous indignation built up there. So, if you were to ask me to stop, that angers me further, because I'm thinking "why should I be the one to stop when you're the one who started this in the first place?" There's nothing rational about this; it's simply that there's anger that needs to be burned off somehow.
Your second friend there brings up a different scenario in my mind - when I am trying to suppress a strong emotion because it seems unhelpful to me at the time, but the other person does not do so as well, so the empathic response makes it even harder to suppress one's own emotional state. The difficulty of self-control is frightening in this circumstance, and to reestablish self-control, it seems like the obstacle to that control must be dealt with. Again, the issues are familiar: power and control.
The only way Ive found to stop the latter was to overload his system emotionally by putting a mirror in front of him and his vulnerabilities and basically...shred him to pieces before he shreds me to pieces. Not one of my finer moments and not something I wanna do ever again.
It might be more effective to simply leave in those circumstances.
Ive seen this on forums as well, where entps, especially when there is a crowd watching, will go in for the kill, ignoring pleas to stop, almost encouraged by them in fact, perhaps due to fear of being perceived as weak? I dunno..Ive also seen where the crowd cheers them on and they go for the kill to entertain the crowd and feed their own ego.
I'm not sure I can relate without more detail about the particular events.
in private, and once you get some rapport going with them, I find that your suggestion is very much valid, though it will cause them frustration and awkwardness to witness my vulnerability and having to stop at all, when they were just getting started, I find. And it always somewhat makes them retreat behind their walls again..presumably for my own protection?
I will clam up to try and process the emotion, and get myself under control. I'm now finding in that circumstance, after a bit, it's now easier to explain why what just happened bothered me so much. Having space for self-control is critical, however.
Mmm..or do you mean collateral damage as in...bigger picture damage? Group damage as such? Calling you on the fact that you are breaching Fe-protocol?
Aka 'you are making a scene', 'You are better than this'?
A combination. Getting someone else caught up in the mess who has no relation to it, or someone mentioning that I'm looking like a fool can break the cycle.