[elissabowden]

I have a horrible time putting my feelings into words. In fact, I'm so confused with the idea of feelings and how I'm really feeling about things, I'm not sure how I feel. So how am I supposed to explain how I'm feeling? I'm so overwhelmed with different feelings about things, I'm not sure if I'm actually feeling a certain way towards something or feeling how I think I should feel. Example:

Other person: How's everything? How are you? And how's work?
Me: Uhh..good. *in head* is it really good? am I stressed? content? should i feel like i don't want to be here? i don't mind being here. at least i have something to do. i do make good money. sitting this long hurts. but am i really good? or is it really good? what is good? is that a feeling? does that mean i'm good with work or how i feel about work? OMG WHAT DO I MEAN?!???

Other person: Oh, that's good. You looked a little confused for a second there.

Me: No, no I'm not *smile...but in my head:* confused? do i look confused? am i confused? am i confused by work? maybe i'm not sure about it right now. maybe i look confused because i'm not sure how i feel about work. how do i feel? am i confused now? am i good? am i good about being confused? maybe i'm not confused at all. maybe i'm just okay. maybe now i'm stressed because i'm not really sure i'm okay or good. how do i really feel right now? how am i really? i'm moving, so should i be stressed or care more? am i happy i'm moving? maybe i should focus. how am i really? UGH i'm so confused now. fuck.

in fact, it continues in my head like this for a while. and then i start to go through why i'm like this: why is my head like this? i'm so scatter brained. it's because i'm a perciever and not a judger. i bet my INFJ sister doesn't do this. i'm all spazzy. it's cause i'm an F. thinkers don't care that much. wtf. do they? maybe they do. maybe i should ask my ENTP friend if they do. he'll think i'm nuts. i think i'm nuts. am i an INFP? or maybe an INTP? maybe ENTP. shit. fuck. shit. damn it. fuck. shit. efffffff.

anyone else like this??? i seriously think i'm just crazy. and should be in the looney bin.

 

[Nasmoe]

I usually don't know how I'm feeling because sometimes I feel like I'm experiencing more than one emotion at a time. Like I could feel content, but I'm also trying to fight a negative feeling that's there but I'm trying to make it not be.
I think it could be that I can go from one emotion to another kind of quick. Like when I was working and something bad would happen I would get stressed out, but as soon as something nice happened I would immediately go back to feeling good and I would kind of see saw like that so by the end of the day I didn't really know how to feel.

 

[nooo]

I used to set down and rehearse my feelings, or how I would explain them. And I used to get upset and not fully sure why. Usually after that I would sit down and try and figure out why that was, a lot of the time I would over analyze and make things worse.

 

[susurration]

So the issue at the core, is your inability to fully access your inner world in a way?

It's not just you, I am similar... I firstly never really can access what's going on inside of my head.... and it's so very interesting that dominant Fi's can have a problem putting thoughts together in their head, along with verbal expression. I don't know about you, but now that I think about it... my stream of thought in it's natural form, is so abstract, and whimsical, to the degree that I very easily forget the world around me in away, and exist in a kind of dream land that I don't wake up from until I become conscious of myself.

Anyway, from Jung's psychological types;

The depth of this feeling can only be guessed–it can never be clearly grasped. It makes people silent and difficult of access; it shrinks back like a violet from the brute nature of the object in order to fill the depths of the subject. It comes out with negative judgments or assumes an air of profound indifference as a means of defence. The primordial images are, of course, just as much ideas as feelings. Fundamental ideas, ideas like God, freedom, and immortality, are just as much feeling values as they are significant ideas. Everything, therefore, that we have said about introverted thinking is equally true of introverted feeling, only here everything is felt while there it was thought. But the very fact that thoughts can generally be expressed more intelligibly than feelings demands a more than ordinary descriptive or artistic ability before the real wealth of this feeling can be even approximately presented or communicated to the world. If subjective thinking can be understood only with difficulty because of its unrelatedness, this is true in even higher degree of subjective feeling. In order to communicate with others, it has to find an external form not only acceptable to itself, but capable of arousing a parallel feeling in them.
Thanks to the relatively great inner (as well as outer) uniformity of human beings, it is actually possible to do this, though the form acceptable to feeling is extraordinarily difficult to find so long as it is still mainly oriented to the fathomless store of primordial images. If, however, feeling is falsified by an egocentric attitude, it at once becomes unsympathetic, because it is then concerned mainly with the ego. It inevitably creates the impression of sentimental self-love, of trying to make itself interesting, and even of morbid self-admiration.
Just as the subjectivized consciousness of the introverted thinker, striving after abstraction to the nth degree, only succeeds in intentisfying a thought process that is in itself empty, the intensification of egocentric feeling only leads to inane transports of feeling for their own sake. This is the mystical, ecstatic stage which opens the way for the extraverted functions that feeling has repressed. Just as introverted thinking is counterbalanced by a primitive feeling, to which objects attach themselves with magical force, introverted feeling is counterbalanced by a primitive thinking, whose concretism and slavery to facts surpass all bounds. Feeling progressively emancipates itself from the object and creates for itself a freedom of action and conscience that is purely subjective, and may even renounce all traditional values. But so much the more does unconscious thinking fall a victim to the power of objective reality.
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I think infps' may be drawn to art and self expression for a very important reason. Not necessarily because infps' value art and creativity; but because it is the only means for us to express everything that goes on inside of us. There is essentially no other satisfying, and appropriate means. Some forms of communication might come close, but not as close as "artistic avenues". I'm not an artist, but my friend got me to do a writing project with him for a year, and I came out of that year, with much clearer thoughts, self confidence, internal clarity, and self knowledge. I did not know myself until I started writing. Free writing in particular. It forces you to think like you write, and write like you think.

 

[Riy]

I go on about this a lot, Not being able to express and explain properly, I always feel like I'm speaking my own language when I do try to explain and it frustrates me a lot. I like to express but I really can't do it in words, probably why I love drawing.