@ Jennifer - lol! the stereotypical male is totally ESTP
I think it's fine to say how things look from your perspective, skylights. Just explain the thought processes in doing so and what you react to best. At the risk of sounding can-opener-ish, I do much better when I at least understand the process that gets people to different points in their thinking/decision making and I become much more tolerant and flexible. (Incidentally, in other dealings, I feel more secure when I know roughly what to expect from the other person next. I don't need to control their behaviour, so much as be able to have a reasonable prediction of what it might be).
this is good to know.
though... i feel kind of bad to tell you this, but... uh... i don't really know how i'm going to behave.
it's the P thing, i guess, you just kinda take things as they come. i don't know if i a strong P can tell you with huge reliability their upcoming pattern of behavior. i think that the best thing is to understand our thought process, because theoretically as Ji we should have fairly steady patterns of internal cognition. and ask us to pay careful attention, if there's something you really need us to be aware about.
I was finding the same thing as you today, trying to post without using words like productive, solution, results, behaviour, actions, clarifying etc all the time! I realized what a tendancy I have to focus on the words people are saying, their ideas, the thoughts expressed and compliment them, rather than assuring the person themselves of their value to me. It still seems foreign to me, as a compliment about what I say or identification with it is felt as being validation of myself. I just assume the other person is aware that we have mutual respect if I am engaging in detailed conversation with them.
well, and i imagine most of the time that is true. i'm fascinated by the extent to which i've realized some people listen to my words and not my other cues, though. i recently was speaking with my (INTP) dad and thinking that i think that i need to listen to his exact words more, and ignore his emotional projection more, while he needs to pay attention to my emotional projection more, and my exact wording less. to me, if there is a negative emotional projection towards me while someone's talking, it's like they're giving me the finger while talking and trying to ignore that is not only hard, but it seems counterintuitive. it's going to take a while to learn how to devote most of my cognitive energy into attending fully to words instead of partially to emotions as well. it's like pulling something out of context... and Fi
reads context.
so when someone is complimenting your work, do you see it more as like a compliment just of your work? and then you are proud of your work, so that makes you feel good? if someone were to do what i talk about below in response to William K about giving a little like "hey the idea of your paper is great, just wanted to help you fix it", does that come off as okay to you, or is that really odd?
You expressed concern though at appearing self-centred to us. Rather than replacing what seems natural to you, think more along the lines of adding. After you state things about your own experience, ask what it looks like from their perspective. That conveys interest in them.
that works for me. i think the question of what it's like for you is always in my mind, but i assume that if you want to share it, you will. now it is more evident that i should make it clear that i want to hear it.
I think we all can feel when the other person is holding something back (even Fe users). I see better now why it bothers Fi users as much as it does. My main concern when someone holds something back is how it is impacting our relationship, if it's something bad that the person feels about me (remember, we expect others to probe us for answers if they really care, so we do the same!) or if it is keeping us from taking action that will ameliorate the situation. Fi often will state conjecture about why we are not saying everything as if it is fact. That is usually what I react to the worst. It adds to the emotional noise I am attempting to bleed off so that I can talk about what's going on (if there is something). It also makes me feel like the person really doesn't understand me at all. They are also delusionally insisting that they do understand me and will help me, taking on a teachery kind of tone that feels patronizing, yet misinformed. It raises my hackles, kind of like Fe insisting that it knows the one best way for YOU to interact with others, and trying to impose that on you, when it really knows nothing about why you choose to act as you do, understand you sufficiently or what is best for you ultimately.
ah yeah, i see how that would be really annoying. it's like a different way of imposing, but in truth both of us are really just guessing and going by what we hope to be most accurate, because we need that basis to use our preferred functions. perhaps what we need to do is work harder to engage the others. Ti can have same teachery tone, too. like it sounds like you think you understand everything that i'm doing, but i'm really acting on a totally different plane of reasoning. it's been interesting that, now that i'm more aware of this, i've been seeing it from Fi users in the forums. i think that perhaps to us it more naturally reads as "this is my opinion", because probably we conjecture like that too. but yeah, it can come off condescending.
Okay, thank you, that helps. Is there anything that really helps to convince you that there's no need for the alarm, we can go ahead and hit the snooze button?
maybe trying to think of a reason why i'm mistakenly reading, and trying to downplay it for me? i mean, it's possible that i'm just failing, but like, with my dad, he's often frustrated with work or some other project, and it comes off when he speaks. if he could try to make an effort to speak less roughly and decisively (when he is upset he tends to make negative blanket statements) when he speaks with me, that would be really helpful to me. his emoting is so intense to me, it feels like a river rushing around me. it would be so hard to ignore it. but helping redirect that river so it doesn't all come right at me would be very helpful. this is true for my Fe dom mom, too, though. we both feel his emoting very strongly, though i think for her she falls into the trap of taking it personally much less. and even just something like, yeah, "i'm a little tired, so maybe that's why your reading is off" is helpful. we seek to understand the discrepancy that we feel...
i suspect it's hard to just totally dismiss it because we use a baseline consistency to measure everything against... it's a subjective function... so when that consistency is not present, it's hard to judge everything else. evidence that you're not feeling that way is rather helpful, too, to counteract the evidence that i am picking up on that is pointing a different direction. otherwise i feel like i'm measuring something that you insist is 9 inches but i keep getting 12 inches. i might trust you deeply in "matters of the heart", but factually, i still have this suspicion that in this one case, maybe i am right and it's going to end up biting me in the butt. of course, you're probably measuring it against things in the external environment (Fe) or for a different unit (Ti), so that's our issue. that, or curvature of spacetime (aka my ruler is fucked up because i am tired), or i really just need a new ruler.
I write research papers in my work and it gets reviewed anonymously. And when I get something critical of what I write, I tend to "read between the lines" and think the reviewer doesn't like me and is calling me an idiot, when they are really trying to help me improve my paper.
dittooooo. not research paper reviews for me, but someone correcting your work. and really, all it would take to reverse that idea is a "hey, nice article. i found some errors but i'm impressed by the amount of time you put into this and i think the points you're getting at are really valuable, so i'm going to tear this to pieces to help you make it better". and to some people probably the fact that they took the time to write the review should give silent testimony to that, but without concrete evidence, i really don't know why i should believe that. maybe they just felt like nitpicking something that day and mine was top of the pile, or maybe they just hate me. only words can tell.
and, on top of that, how do i know that i can trust their work if i'm wondering if they are just doing it to antagonize me? i think that really gets me sometimes. occasionally two NTPs i know well really just do like to antagonize people because they like watching their reactions (they have each
told me this), and then they get upset when i don't trust them when they are critiquing me! but if i don't know your intentions are good, i don't see very much of a reason to trust your behavior. whereas my Fe dom friend can see a behavior more objectively in terms of how useful to her it is, instead of worrying so much about whether to trust it or not. it is what it is regardless of the initial intention. i am trying to learn this.
any tips?
That frustration is almost never expressed to the person I'm frustrated with--because I'm still at the point where I don't really know how I feel about something, and I'm trying to make sense of it. (Talking to the person involved would only cloud my perceptions.) But it's not anger. Internally, it's often something like calm but confused. Maybe sometimes hurt by another party.
I remember venting like that to an xNFP who was not a tremendously close friend, but who was kind of in my "circle" at the time, and she told one of our mutual friends later that I was "just so angry," and she didn't know how to calm me down. It's situations like these that confirm my desire to vent with someone who does understand my emotional state in times like these, and won't try to insist I'm angry when I'm not. Someone who will listen to my words instead of trying to read my emotional state. I was so far from angry in that situation it wasn't even funny. But this chick was also not a tremendously secure person, anyway. But that's the kind of thing I'm talking about.
this is very valuable to know, that you may actually feel calm inside when frustrated even though your external behavior might seem a little more heated than normal. for me, frustration is all about internal heat, and i want to fix that ASAP because it throws everything inside of me off. i need the cooling to come from the external world.
and yeah, plus NFPs don't really tend to be the most secure people on the planet anyway. i feel kind of bad for her. she may have been picking up on this frustration on some level and freaking out because she thought you wanted her help and she was totally failing.
Now that I'm typing all this out, it might be that I mostly get irritated by people who aren't close to me trying to tell me how I feel. I will cut close friends some slack on that account--though I might tell them I don't want to talk about it if I don't feel like doing an emotional biopsy at the moment.
lol! "emotional biopsy." makes sense. carries the sense of intrusion that i think i'm beginning to understand. for me, i WANT to get that emotion out, so someone asking me to open up is awesome. but if there's not really a huge amount of chaos inside because of that emotion... then there's no need.
what's people's normal reaction to saying you don't want to talk about it?
^ Yeah, I analyze like crazy also.
This part below also sounds like enneagram 9 Fi much more than e4 Fi....
I feel it is almost opposite for me as a 4w5 - I tend to make decisions geared towards maintaining authenticity, which can make me put them off so as not to disrupt external harmony needlessly.
Fi-s desire for harmony causes them to make choices geared toward pleasing others rather than themselves. Thus their hesitancy to make choices is a fear that they will sacrifice their authenticity by putting others first. Feeling thus pressured, they may withdraw from others to protect their sense of Self, but this also creates a feeling of loneliness and isolation. They may also not be aware of their withdrawal and feel rejected
it's hard for me to resonate with this as it's written... i do feel a push-pull though... it's not really "authenticity" - i don't think i'll be not being myself if i make some choice - but it's more like i fear rejecting something that is deeply meaningful - that reminds me of someone important, or something like that. i feel like i'm betraying them if i choose the other thing, even if the other thing is more pleasant to me for some reason. like if i'm stuck between red and green, suddenly it becomes a decision between mom's favorite color and dad's. and that's very upsetting to me, since i love both of them deeply. or between fire and forest... i like both at different times. sometimes i'm not even sure which option i like more, and that's
really confusing. it becomes very difficult to choose not because i fear not being myself, but because of all the associations i carry with me. i fear making a decision that will devalue someone or something by not choosing it. and the bigger the decision, the harder it gets. and i fail to see a clear pattern of what i'm deciding based on as connected to how happy i end up with that decision. i really need to figure this out.
do any other Fi-ers (haha, fire) ever feel that way? possibly i am crazy
I've also thought of the basic concept of Fi not seeking to affect or be affected, but to simply gauge according to its inner ideal and react when necessary, or on the occasions when something hits on an ideal (positively or negatively).
maybe it's that i'm e3, but i seek to affect and be affected. i do not want to put anyone on a course that is not true to themselves, though. that is what i have a problem with some people, usually Fe people, doing... i think sometimes they don't think about the desires of other people and just guide them where they think those people should be going for the overall good. i'm good at helping people get where they want to go, but i want to know where they want to go first, even if it's not in harmony with the overall pattern. of course i think the person in question should try to be smooth about what they want to do, but if they want to rebel, that's kind of okay with me. sometimes things need a good shaking up so the things underneath come to the surface.
how do Fe-ers feel about this?
Morgan Le Fay said:
I'm wondering if this is a key difference: do Extraverted Feelers have to publically emote in order to understand/experience what they are feeling? (Much like Extraverted Thinkers say they have to talk in order to know what they think or Ne-doms need to brainstorm...?) Is this why it's so important that your listeners mirror back what you are feeling "accurately"?
that's a fascinating idea. if this is true, it would make a lot of sense in the way extraverted Feelers come off to me when they don't always mean to. actually though Ne is pretty internal, as far as i'm away i don't need to project it - it's the Te for me that's very external. extraverted Perceiving just reads things that are external, it doesn't need to be discussed to work.
fidelia said:
At this point, our relationship cannot not handle my complete honesty, even if I am not trying to be hurtful.
sorry, i'm totally butting into yall's conversation but i figured it was fair game since it was a public post... fidelia, i'm still not sure i understand this sentiment. it's been expressed by others too - this "you wouldn't be able to handle me" - and i don't understand it. what is there to see that is without question going to overpower the other person? it really does sound, and i am totally sure you do not intend this, that you see yourself as infinitely more complex, heavy, deep, important, etc. than the rest of us, and that you will only deign to allow them us in once we've gone through your initiatory rites. why not just be up front about it? people handle a lot of very difficult things in life. are you really so grand, and are we all really so incompetent, as to not be able to bear what you actually think? i don't think you think like that at all, so i am wondering what it could be instead.
Morgan Le Fay said:
Such people fail to comprehend the toxic effects of offloading their feelings onto others.
YES. this is such an important point, and perhaps this is somewhat of the source of all the empathy-sympathy drama. i think that seeing another person in a less-than-good state is painful to all of us, but for an introverted Feeler, we
introvert the feeling. it actively hurts us, which in part causes me to be so freaked out and impulsive and blow-uppy when another person and i are in conflict. i've got all this negative stuff coming into me and i feel like i have no way of stopping it - hence the Te hammer. for an extraverted Feeler, you are very, very good at seeing and understanding and relating with the other's pain, and you can feel your own pain for their state, but you do not have to adopt that pain as your own to understand it. we do - and to some extent this gives us an insider view, but to another, it means that we sacrifice the ability to block off ourselves.
