[Anathae]

I joined this forum to try and find out why I never feel
deeply or when I do I cant understand it. It is nonsensical to me
outside of the biological definition. I tend to force my
emotional side on here. Typically? Under real life
circumstances? I am a hard nut to crack and can be
very ENTP esq. Years of trying to understand emotions
have taught me how I should act in normal parlance
with emotional people. It is more learned then natural.

Is that a southern draw I read? I used to live in the south (Texas).
Great place. Its no Canada to be sure but heck of place.



yeahhhhh lucky me.... .. . . . I jest...I do enjoy her culture.


German and an ESFJ. Thats a fucking trip. I know.. I am living it.
Talk about regimented. Effin Christ.

Haha, you caught me out. North Carolina born and raised

FUNNY YOU MENTION Canada. Boyfriend wants to move their ASAP

And he has the exact same issue with emotions. He literally cannot feel them. I tried teaching him how to meditate to feel them, but he came up with nothing.

As a life coach, I use this meditation ALL THE TIME with clients to get them in touch with their emotions.
And it just straight didn't work on him.

Fortunately, he respects emotional arguments, and emotions in general, so he's always a sweetheart if I'm upset
And I'm an INFJ so I'm borderline psychic anyway, so I can usually just tell him what he's feeling


I swear, ENTPs are one of the most curious types I have ever come across.

Do you have ADHD, or any of the variants on attention disorders?

[FueledByEvil]

Haha, you caught me out. North Carolina born and raised

Interesting. Some of the biggest suppliers at my work are in Hickory/Raleigh.
Small world.

FUNNY YOU MENTION Canada. Boyfriend wants to move their ASAP

To be honest. Our socialized health care may do you a world of good.

And he has the exact same issue with emotions. He literally cannot feel them. I tried teaching him how to meditate to feel them, but he came up with nothing.

Although I do believe that I have less emotional reactions to items in my
life I think this is more an effect of dismissing them instantly as appose to
not actually having them. I have them. Indeed if emotional range was
actually truncated for certain types/amplified for others? We could
physically measure that. Making typing people a sure fire thing.

Fortunately, he respects emotional arguments, and emotions in general, so he's always a sweetheart if I'm upset
And I'm an INFJ so I'm borderline psychic anyway, so I can usually just tell him what he's feeling

Bingo. That is my go to. My ESFJ's and the ENFP's in my life.
For me to actually figure out what I am feeling and put
a word to it? I need to compare my physical symptoms
with my own past experiences as well as others. Then I use
consensus as to what I am actually feeling. The more that
happens the easier it is to just know what I am feeling. Based
solely off that database I have acquired.

Do you have ADHD, or any of the variants on attention disorders?

Nope. I was listed as gifted and slightly hyperactive.
Translation: I have sense(of some sort), good memory and moving slow is for sloths.

I never understood why hyperactive was listed as a bad thing
to be rectified. It seems like it would be better to be hyperactive
to me. I mean...assuming you are not tard rushing headlong
and making mistake after mistake of the same type.

[Count Bunniculla]

I don't want to upset the social-emotional atmosphere. I need it to be upbeat at all times. If other people bring up their problems, I will cheer them up, give them advice, whatever I need to do to 'fix' it so the atmosphere goes back to being upbeat. But I don't want to be the one putting all that negative energy out there. I don't know if other people even feel it the way that I do, but nonetheless, I feel like it's my responsibility.

I have to read through the other posts above when I have more time as they might provide a lot more detail to what you said above, but I have experienced EXACTLY this with the ESFJ I knew. She told me the same exact thing, but I want to know the root cause of it all, if I may. Why do you need it to be upbeat all the time (which includes making it upbeat and not being the one to cause it to go sour)? Why do you feel it is your responsibility? Don't mean to be so prying, but I am genuinely interested in the deep whys of this.

[WraithOfNightmare]

Interesting insights from both of you and it's the first time I've received such coherent responses about these questions I've wanted to ask about your type. Thanks a lot. I guess it's undeniable that our minds do work in some fundamentally different ways, and that to be perfectly honest with myself I don't think I'd be able to fully understand / come to grips with your far more externally focused way of life (and vice versa).

@Suntide I need to think a bit more about your response to my first question, I'll have to think about some examples. Well being an N you can guess how challenging it can be for us to come up with concrete, easily explainable examples because we tend to focus a lot more on the general feelings / observations / vibes / musings lol, but thanks for taking the time to respond to my post.

I think what's important for an ESFJ, as @SummerRoads mentioned, is to have someone in their lives that can support them when they're down and give them clarity on what they really want, how they really feel, and to tell them that not only is it OK to not be focused on people and the world all the time / most of the time, that having a strong sense of self-identity and the ability to not let emotional vampires drain too much of your energy is important for a well-balanced life.

I admit that in the past I've often let people get the better of me and drain me more than what should have been acceptable because I also cared too much and really wanted to live up to my kindness and compassion and not being part of this increasingly cold, uncaring world. So I guess I've also fallen into "savior" mode though I'd say for some slightly different reasons than you guys. For me it was a combination of general compassion driven by a deeper desire to not be one of "those" people who'd turn their eye away from suffering. I tried hard to convince myself that helping these people whom I thought were in need without any ulterior motives was good for my personal "karma", to put it one way, and a statement of making a stand against a world I perceive to be harsh and cruel.

As for listening to an ESFJ's troubles and worries without any judgmental attitude, I admit I'm very much guilty of being far more judgmental than I might appear to be. I might listen and nod, but deep inside me there's a constant processing of how the content of the other person is telling me fits into my internal framework of beliefs, what I would / could have done (which may come out, in the end, as part of or all of my advice), and I am trying to "map" the person in a general sense. It's hard for me to just take isolated incidents as, well, isolated incidents, because my mind starts thinking about the broader implications and patterns that are being demonstrated. So, I am FAR from being able to embody love and compassion because there's just too much subjectivity and the personal element involved. As for how this might specifically apply to an INFP-ESFJ dynamic, i fully admit that my first instinct when reacting to an ESFJ telling me about their "people troubles" is to question them on why they care so much when I (note, I) feel those people would not be worth their time and energy (when the reality is I don't think those people would be worth MY time and energy).

This is where the Fi-Si dynamic comes into play for me. My Fi relates my internal framework of values reinforced and processed using my Si, to form what I see as a comprehensive yet very imposing model of how I think they should respond without taking into account the full extent of their circumstances, inherent personality / character differences, needs etc. I'd be much more likely to tell them one way or another: "Then stop caring so much, focus on a few people and stop trying to cater to others all the time. It exhausts you and you may not get generosity reciprocated." The way I see it is that 99% of people are like you see them, they see you, you exchange glances and probably never see each other again. So why bother with all the social norms and caring so much about these people whom you may never encounter again? Even if they think poorly of you, it's none of your business because you should spend time around people who appreciate your quirks from the beginning. Of course I am not saying it's okay to simply be unreasonable and heartless (though oftentimes I come off as unintentionally rude / strange / whatever), but I believe in individuality and being selective with your social interactions, to make YOU the prize that others should seek (as long as "being yourself" is generally a good kind of self) rather than always trying to cater to other people's standards. You raise people to yours, well, at least in an intellectual / philosophical / spiritual / emotional NF sense to me, or perhaps more intellectual / deductive to an NT.

When I was younger and in a more abusive situation than today, I desperately sought social interaction and opened up myself to ALL kinds of people. Well, unsurprisingly, that got me nowhere and now that I'm much more developed and aware I've come to realize that my true mode of interaction with people is being as good as possible but selective.

Hopefully this will give you guys insight as to the limitations of NF with Fi (ENFP and INFP) and why we sometimes behave the way we do. You guys are so much better at practical stuff than we are, a lot of times I wish I could help someone do something but I don't know where the hell to start. Solving practical issues is extremely draining for me. I also wish I had more of a musical / artistic / literary / creative side but thinking / wondering about things comes far more easily to me than actually creating something lol

At heart I feel both our types want to help people rather than turn a blind eye to their suffering. When someone comes to me with their troubles I can't help but view it as possibly / likely the start of a deeper existential crisis for them, when the fact is they may simply be going through a bit of a low period or roller coaster phase that's not necessarily the questioning of the values / norms / beliefs they already hold. I also tend to give advice of the philosophical nature (and I can ramble on a lot and tend to imagine "worst case scenarios") because of this bias towards thinking people's problems are often existential / philosophical in nature, if you want practical solutions of immediacy that's where my wisdom quickly falls apart lol.

My inner world is very important to me. It's like a high ground where I can retreat, observe, recollect, and reshuffle how I see the world and engage (or not) with the world. A big part of its purpose is to be "blast resistant" for lack of better words, it's meant to be a source of vitality, something to turn to that reaffirms an inherent goodness of the way I am when faced with adversity and pressure to change from the outside world. Affirmations from the few people I've let into my life (the ones I get along best with are, unsurprisingly, fellow Ns) add to this internal "armor" that I wear.

It's a kind of entrenched defensive position with an argumentative mode when I feel it's necessary, a kind of fortress-building self-protection that devotes almost all of my mental and emotional resources to self-preservation while reducing my "offensive" capabilities when it comes to actually engaging with / learning about different parts of life and the world. It's worked well for me during my years of being abused.

Not all types have it as "easy" as the more common types, though we all have our share of joys and struggles. ESFJ's devotion towards a fairly large "scope" when it comes to people, and its concern for the "greater good", may lead to some people-related / self versus external expectations struggles that might be difficult because so much of ESFJ's identity is derived externally. A type like INFP, on the other hand, can mitigate or eradicate these struggles due to a combination of having a far lesser need for social acceptance / social engagement along with a far more developed blast resistant inner core, though at the cost of some benefits that come more naturally to the ESFJ. ESFJ is far more acutely observant in a physical sense and has a very practical brand of wisdom when the situation calls for workable solutions, while INFP's wisdom / brand of observance is more general and applies to areas such as insight into human behavior, human nature, deeper problems etc.

INFP can be so consumed by the quest for deeper meaning, for continually striving towards perfection in people and the world that I sometimes envy your ability to just see things as they are and appreciate the beauty in the little things and the appreciation of people.

[Suntide]

@Bunniculla Don't worry, I don't see it as prying at all! I'd be happy to expand on my answer.

My inner world can't be calm and stable unless the world around me is also calm and stable. I feel the 'social mood' of the room pretty intensely, even when I'm not actively involved in it (such as two strangers in a store that I have nothing to do with getting in a fight about something). I really want my inner world to stay at its 'equilibrium' and to do so I need the social mood to be comfortable to match it. Most other people either can't sense it the way I do or simply aren't affected by it that much, so I take it upon myself to balance it out when possible (or remove myself from the situation if it's not something I can do anything about, like the 'strangers fighting in a store' example). So, in a sense, it kind of is selfishly motivated (for me at least, I can't speak for anyone else) because at its core, it can be watered down to "I want everyone else to be upbeat so that I can feel upbeat" but the effect of that benefits other people in the process, which is great.

@WraithOfNightmare Yeah no problem! I made my best attempt at doing it the 'abstract way' haha. Take your time thinking up any examples if you want me to expand more on it (I'll be pretty busy this weekend anyway :p)

Yep emotional vampires can easily take advantage of people who have trouble with conflict or disappointing others. Typically when I vent about things to others, I'm more looking to just vent than to get advice unless I ask for advice (but I don't know if that makes it better or worse for you lol!!) but when others vent to me I usually feel compelled to give some kind of advice, lol. As for 'caring less'--god that's a lesson a lot of SFJs need to learn, and I think part of it comes with age as we sort of become more wisend and more comfortable asserting ourselves. It's definitely a learned skill for many of us and not something that comes naturally, because we don't like 'being rude' to other people and to a lot of us, 'saying no' means 'being rude.' But that's a really slippery slope that lets us get taken advantage of really easily, but we get fed up with it and we start learning.

I wish I could will myself into caring less what others think of me, but people liking me is, for whatever reason, my like #1 priority lmao. Personally I just can't mentally or emotionally handle being seen in a negative light by others, it makes my self worth just plummet. I'm a little better at seeing more of my self worth internally rather than externally compared to a few years ago, but I still have a loooong way to go. One way I like to describe this mindset is: "If every single person in the entire world thinks I'm a shitty person except for myself, they must be the ones who are right because my self perception must be clouded and I am outnumbered." Because of that I feel more naturally inclined to pleasing others' perceptions of me than my own. It can be pretty tiring sometimes.

Oh and I thought of another thing earlier today that I wanted to mention that might help you out with ESFJs (or perhaps SJs in general) in the future!! I've noticed (with myself at least) that when people try to introduce new ideas or concepts to me (such as, perhaps, changing my behavior regarding social norms, or getting me to consider alternative methods of doing something) my initial reaction is almost always resistance. My brain is wired in a way where it always wants to defend and uphold what it already knows rather than throw it all in the garbage for something different, and the more insistent someone is when they try to get me to change, the more resistant I am to it. The best way to get me to consider a different viewpoint is to introduce it very, very gradually, and from a neutral, practical perspective. Give me some time to sit on it and think about it by myself, and perhaps I will end up being the one coming to you to learn more about it!! But try and 'force' it on me or make me feel like I am 'bad/wrong' for being the way I currently am automatically puts me on the defensive. My sister is an INTP and I have noticed when I clash with her, it's usually over things like this!!

For example, someone saying to me "You need to stop doing that because it's morally wrong" will put me in auto-defense mode. I take it personally, even if it's not meant to be a personal attack. It's like saying "You are a bad immoral person for doing this thing that you might not even have known is harmful before I said this just now." However if it were phrased more neutrally, such as "I think it's possible that some people would interpret what you're doing as hurtful to them and they would probably appreciate it if you would consider trying it this other way" I'm much more open to hearing them out.

Hopefully this helps you understand some more about ESFJ mindsets a little more!!