[ESFP] Puzzled by my ESFP friend

[King sns]

I still say the woman is psycho!

I'll pass the buck as usual and say she's an ESFJ or... an ENFP ..

or something totally unrelated.
I refuse to be associated with such weirdos.

 

[Jeffster]

I still say the woman is psycho!

I'll pass the buck as usual and say she's an ESFJ or... an ENFP ..

or something totally unrelated.
I refuse to be associated with such weirdos.

YEAH WEIRDOS

Actually, I related a lot to the description.

I don't understand what's wrong with not having something to add when someone says something "deep and meaningful." I also cry at emotional scenes too, even when I know they're manipulating my emotions on purpose, I still cry. I did it again yesterday watching College Gameday when they did the story about the LSU player whose dad died of cancer 20 years ago.

I'm also stubborn and opinionated, though I do try to keep an open mind, i know I am cynical and quickly dismissive of things I have heard a lot before.

I don't burst into tears if someone asks me to take a test but if it's a boring subject, I'm not gonna do it.

So, I didn't find the initial description of this person very extreme or puzzling at all and then people are like "OMG HOW COULD YOU BE HER FRIEND? WHAT A PSYCHO!"

Plus, she's still in HIGH SCHOOL. High school students all have dramatic mood swings don't they? Pretty much anyone I ever knew did.

 

[Eowyn]

Ohhh! So that's why my brother had the reaction he did when we tried to explain that his feelings of self-doubt weren't based in reality...

 

[OrangeAppled]

Yes, this sounds like all the unhealthy ESFPs I know, although even more to an extreme. Basically, her Fi is out of whack. My older sister is an ESFP and she can be absolutely maddening at times to me. Her Fi is really foreign to me, despite being raised in the same home with the same values. Working with Se in the aux-position, it just takes on a different form.

Some examples...

My sister has the SP attitude of not wanting to be judged and living for fun, and so she gets annoyed with people she sees as uptight and restrictive, yet she is one of the most opinionated, judgmental, stubborn people I know. It's even more frustrating when she has no real basis for her feelings. She has been known to say, "I don't care, that's what I think", as a refute to logical arguments against her opinions, especially when coming from a person much more informed on the subject. I agree with sunshinebrighter, re-evaluating her opinions is too much work, and sometimes too scary.

My ESFP sister also trusts her own experience over anything. Her anecdotes define the world, despite concrete proof that they are not the rule. We clash when my Fi values expand globally and theoretically and hers stay confined to her personal, actual experience. She will even deny my personal, actual experience, because she only trusts what she experiences for herself .
This means you cannot tell her anything. She has to screw her own life up before she can see what everyone else was warning her about, and until she does that, she will just dismiss everything everyone says. She's short-sighted and cannot see the future problems with her current behavior. All that matters is how she feels in the moment, and this has caused her a lot of pain and heartbreak.

She also dislikes most anything that is conceptual, theoretical, symbolic, or abstract. My sister is smart - it is not that she cannot grasp it, but she sees no value in it. She writes people off who like these things as pretentious and trying too hard to be "deep". Sure, no one likes a faux intellectual, but she takes it to the other extreme sometimes.

On the other hand, I have a good ESFP friend who is not this narrow-minded and stubborn at all. It's really a matter of how good of a handle they have on their Fi.

 

[Coeur]

This means you cannot tell her anything. She has to screw her own life up before she can see what everyone else was warning her about, and until she does that, she will just dismiss everything everyone says. She's short-sighted and cannot see the future problems with her current behavior. All that matters is how she feels in the moment, and this has caused her a lot of pain and heartbreak.

Fortunately, what she values would prevent her from screwing up her life. She's very conservative. Everything you've said makes sense, though. I don't try to change her at all; I just accept it for what it is.

I still say the woman is psycho!

Nah. She isn't disturbed. However, her father is EXTREMELY immature and moody. He yells at her family a lot, for very small reasons. There was this one time where he was flipping when we were all out at dinner. [Remember that I'm there as a guest.. and that we're in public... and he still acts out.. yeah..] This reaaallly upsets her, understandably. Any issues she has, I would link to that.

I guess the summary of everything you guys have said is:
1. She's extremely emotionally sensitive.
2. She goes for what is practical.
3. She goes off of personal experience.

I'd agree with all of that. I'm hoping that understanding her better will make me more tolerant. She can rub me the wrong way sometimes. Usually it has to do with close-minded or baseless behavior. We don't see eye to eye on a lot of stuff. She thinks that I overthink too much; I think that she needs to think more. Things that move me on an emotional level bore her. Etc. Some traits that drive me crazy on one spectrum are much appreciated on the other. For example, if you need someone to be loyal, she's definitely there.

And I guess that if I'm irritated that she never responds to deep stuff, I should just stop opening up to her. XD I mainly do so because she's one of my best friends, but I'll have to talk to other people. It just gets REALLY annoying after awhile when the one response you get to anything is: "wow." >_>