OK, I see what you're saying. I think I would say this though: personal values and conscience (Fi) and shared values and consensus (Fe). Both can go horrifically wrong and both can go beautifully right. If the personal value is corrupt, how does it get corrected? If the shared value is corrupt, how does it get corrected?
If the personal value is corrupt, it gets corrected by gentle reflective feedback from others. This would be the use of "I" that your have found to be very self centric in the past. When the first person presents a corrupted personal value, the second goes "well,
I would have done this/felt this/though this instead" The first person doesnt have to respond, but will take the lesson away and consider the other person's take on the situation. For Te doms/auxs often feedback has to be more pointed-"do you realize how this will affect those around you?" There is never a forced change of values as in "You should..." But instead "I would..." This is symmetric to how Ti engages in logic analysis and feedback.
If I respect people who are older than me who are Christians, for example, I would never dream of sharing my thoughts with them on religion like I would do with my close friends or on the Internet, because I know it would be needlessly hurtful.
However, I can see that Fi could be this way too, because they simply have the value of not hurting other people's feelings. SimWorld tried to tell me, in fact, that's what that was...that I was using Fi, and that my motive was "not to hurt people's feelings" vs. "socially correct behavior."
But I do know how to behave correctly, and I'm actually inclined to correct others if I think they're being a total boar. I have a sister who tests ENFP (but I think might actually be ESFP) and her selfish behavior at times makes me want to beat her up. I would never actually beat my sister up, but I sometimes am just staggered at how she will behave. Same with one of my roommates...who I think might be ESFP...she's really sweet, a good person with a good heart, but good lord she really does not think of others in these really weird, inconsiderate ways. It's really frustrating to have to deal with because she's so sweet, and yet is so self-absorbed. And I've really had to manage myself and think of ways to deal with it rather than confronting her head-on and saying what I want to say, because I don't want to hurt her or have bad blood between us, but still like "hey, good lord there's someone sleeping in this room, shut up!"
When young I would obnoxiously debate others on controversial topics. It was obnoxious as hell. At about 22, I cut this out as each personal has the right to believe what they choose to believe-an Fi value I hold dear, even if I dont agree with their position due to my own Fi values. Thus I dont disrupt a social interaction-not due to Fe, but due to Fi.
Fi and Fe may often result in the same behavioral pattern-for very different underlying motivations.
Fi and Fe may often result in drastically different behavioral patterns-for very different underlying motivations.
Fi and Fe may result in drastically different behavioral patterns-for very similar underlying motivations.
Because the underlying motives/worldview/perspectives can be so different, if you want to help others, it can be almost essential to appreciate the complexity of this mess. Sometimes the same solution will work, sometimes it will differ. A generic toolbox can be built but different people need different tools.
What I have seen in this forum, I have never seen IRL. For decades, I spoke with almost 100 new people every day. Zero communication gap. Zero. If there was this massive divide, I sure as heck would have seen it. I hired, trained, and mentored teams of people while also building B2B relationships every single day. In other words, I wore several different hats with comfort.
I dealt with human beings. I didn't deal with Fi and Fe people.
On friday I finished my first Step II consultation. It was with an ENFP I work with. She tested as an ENTJ but verified as an ENFP. She described having anxiety attacks and emotional breakdowns because of her interactions with her boss and coworkers-mostly ESTPs. She then described exactly what the Fi users describe here. I explained how Fe communication differs and why it will feel strange to her. I explained how exchange of social niceties isnt fake, but rather a way of constant maintenance of social interactions. I advised her, when upset, not to avoid and withdraw but to continue in the social exchange. She spoke of not understanding why they always dumped work on her and how they never seem to stop talking but never acting. I explained that Fe interactions will involve evoking change by interactions with people - like a people net that gets tweaked and tugged. We talked about how her approach can be quite complementary once she draws some initial boundaries regarding pushing work back upon others.
It was very rewarding to me, as everything I have been taught here just clicked into place and I could use what I understand to help another person become happier and help them understand that no person is wrong or right, but just different, then give them tools to help navigate those differences.
I suspect that for each MBTI type those tools will differ some-one size doesnt fit all.
It's a typical social gesture to say, "I know how you are feeling", when I suspect most people know deep down they don't. I think it actually means, "I've had similar, generalized negative feelings, and I don't want you to feel badly just like I didn't want to feel badly". This is way different from actually understanding the specific pain of a person.
The gut feeling is that I know what they are feeling. That inside of myself, I am feeling the pain that they feel or I have felt it in the past and can reload it into my current emotional set and relive that pain. So if I see them in pain-I am feeling a physiological attempt at replication of that pain. I would never say this to another person-but that is what is happening inside of me.
So it is generally the case that people aren't going to understand functions that aren't part of their primary four? Si shouldn't expect to understand what Se is, etc.? Does a function have to be experienced in order to be understood? I can see on one level that would definitely be the case. MBTI does create categories that allows groups to stake out territory like iNtuitives who cannot be understood by Sensors, or Thinkers whose reasoning is above Feelers, or Ti is more creative than Te, etc. Sorry to bring up the negative connotations, but they exist in all directions and I don't subscribe to them, but do notice the territorial boundaries they create with inner and outer circles.
These boundaries sadden me, but are very real. We can all learn about other functions on the outside and describe descriptions of those functions. However to be honest, to really understand a function, I suspect you would need to live in that function for awhile. To assume from outside of it that you understand it and and describe it the way a native user does-is horrifically presumptous. If one finds themselves arguing what a function does with a native user of that function, it's best to assume you are wrong.
With Fe users, time and time again on the forum and even in this thread they insist that there really is little difference and that we are all overanalyzing.
Instead I suggest we are using Te. Te allows us, even in the INFPs, to seek to categorize/systemize things. Te is okay with imperfect categorization, a system that may be clumsy at times but works, until we can modify it to make it better. We smooth the bumps with Fi to modify the system for the individual under study. To Fe these categorizations may seem artificial-as Fe seems to seek values/rules that everyone can agree on, so dividing people into clumps suddenly throws the more universal Fe rules into jeopardy.
I suppose it isn't that different from real life, it just has a different vocabulary. I suppose this is drifting off-topic, but labeling does increase a sense of existential isolation in me. What if people never actually comprehend each other? That's a hard question to look into too deeply because it strikes at the heart of existence. It feels like we are all trees that fell in the forest and were never heard.
Jung spoke of this with respect to the P/J divide, but it seems that it could be replicated again and again. He said we project our own internal worldview...and assume the other people see the world the same way. So we all assume we are communicating-when in reality we exist in a state of mutual lifelong miscommunication. It only becomes apparent with very different types-say ESTP and ENFP for instance.
I could see this being especially hard on Fe. It also ties back into highlanders original statement "Just because I dont disagree openly, doesnt mean I agree with the Fe user" Contrast that with Proteanmix's, Pitsleah's and Jag's comments that they rarely see this disagreement in real life-likely because it is just easier for most people to let the lack of communication or disagreement go unmentioned.
i can see what PB is saying about Fe users not seeing to do this as much. i don't think it's so much a part of their conversational flow as it is with Fi users. it seems like a Fi conversation is often like "personal story." "omg! i know what you mean! that reminds me of: personal story." "yes i felt that same way when: personal story." "oh but i actually felt the opposite when: personal story.". a Fe conversation doesn't run that way. there's like... prompting or something. i dunno. it's just not the same OMG ME TOO or NUH UH model. my Fe dom best friend, one of my favorite people in the world, is not like this either. she just doesn't really do emotional connection like i do - she breaks feelings down and starts planning how to address them instead of extrapolating from them. .
I suspect this diff in communication styles may be one of the most valuable clues to how Fe and Fi work differently. They may also be the most important to codify and turn into a toolkit for use. You find chunks of this in communication books, but because it blurs things together, it lacks the resolution to yield effective results.
i think about this too sometimes. but we all do comprehend each other, so much that it's sometimes unbelievable... just being able to share a silence with someone else is kind of an amazing beautiful thing. i think we freak ourselves out by going down the rabbit hole... i do sometimes
the nature of MBTI is analytical... dividing. it breaks things down to make them easier to understand. so it's absolutely true that if we just keep breaking and breaking, there will be nothing left... but at the same time, the building blocks can also help us rebuild the way we want to. i think there's a forest of "humanity" regardless of whether we have MBTI or not... a first kiss or racing your best friend across the kitchen in slippery socks or picking flowers with your grandma... that stuff all transcends type. humans transcend type because humans made type. ultimately it's just a decent way of looking at things, not necessarily a truth at all...
^^beautiful as Te blurs into the reality that Fi understands to be true...
