[MBTI General] Possible explination of INFJ's and Ni at their worst.

[nightning]

If I tried to control others I would feel like I had no right to expect others to accept me for me...because clearly I'm not accepting them for them!!

That! pretty much sums up my feeling of controlling others.

And seriously....I also think it's kinda ludicrous for me to think that there's only one way of living out your life and interacting with people and the world (and from my observations, this clearly isn't the case!! This is often why I think I have so much trouble picking out my 'life path' as I call it...because I can see so many possibilities)...so it actually kinda makes me happy these days to talk to people who are rather different from myself.

*nods some more* I found that I really enjoy talking to people with very different experience and approaches to life than myself. I usually come away from the interaction learning something new. At the same time, I'm amazed at the things we have in common despite being so different. A lot of compare and contrast goes on in my mind.

Ni feels "unworldly" to me, but its one of my shadow functions. I've heard various INFPs say that Ni seems this way, but I've never heard an INFJ say this. I'm thinking you mean something different than an INFP's sense of Ni as mystical/visionary.

By "unworldly", do you simply mean without external context?

Somewhat. The world around us is structured... full of ties, obligations, expectations and conventions. There are standard ways of looking at things... schema for how you should think. Ni doesn't care about any of that. I called it "unworldly" in the sense that it takes the outside perspective. It acknowledges the traditional POVs but at the same time recognize that it's not the only way of looking at things. To do so is like stepping beyond the current context. Not without external context... but to include that along with some other ones. I really don't see it as being mystical/visionary in any way. It's more like I'm trying to describe something with a poor set of vocabularies. A simple instinctive process made complicated by my inability to properly explain it. Perhaps another INFJ can try.

Do you think that an INFJ who gets stuck in either extreme is using their shadow Fi?

I'm not sure if it applies in every case... but sometimes I think my extreme believes are caused by the witch Fi. It's rather childish thinking back. Something along the lines of "Other people don't care, so why should I?" I felt like destroying hours and hours of hard work I put in.