[Linnifae]

The closed post was interesting to me, so I'd like to try asking something similar (no offense or drama intended!)

What types of occurrences would evoke your sympathy?
Do you think there are benefits to being a "feeler?"

I ask because as an ENFP I'm often envious of the control my ISTP has on his feelings, so effortlessly, where as I am all about emotional intensity. Which for some crazy reason he LIKES this about me. He's never been interested in another "thinker" type, but he can't put into words why he likes that about me, just that he wishes he could be (slightly) more that way(!)

 

[OctoberSkye]

Hi, Linnifae.

I'm like your man. I appreciate when my Ti cooperates with a man's Fi. It brings out a softer side of me. I think it makes me a more well-rounded person. Like, I do things to show I care... putting my partner first when it's in my nature to be pretty damn self-serving... but what I desire is different. I like someone who knows how they feel and can articulate it to me. Emotional intensity and me, it's like opposites attract.

Anyway, to your questions... what would evoke my sympathy? Honestly, not much. Maybe if someone close to me is going through something that I've gone through, I might feel something, but otherwise... I just think, "Sucks to be you." Not meaning to be callous or anything, I'm really not a mean-spirited person, but that sort of thing just doesn't compute.

Benefits to being a feeler? Eh, I suppose people generally like you a lot more.

 

[ThoughtProcess]

The closed post was interesting to me, so I'd like to try asking something similar (no offense or drama intended!)

What types of occurrences would evoke your sympathy?
Do you think there are benefits to being a "feeler?"

I ask because as an ENFP I'm often envious of the control my ISTP has on his feelings, so effortlessly, where as I am all about emotional intensity. Which for some crazy reason he LIKES this about me. He's never been interested in another "thinker" type, but he can't put into words why he likes that about me, just that he wishes he could be (slightly) more that way(!)

Now these are honest questions. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. :happy:

What would evoke sympathy? That really is a difficult question. It usually has to be a situation involving someone close, that I've also been through at some point. For instance, I can sympathize with the child crying over a lost parent but, I can't sympathize with the parent crying over a lost child.

Yes, there certainly are benefits to being a feeler. Being an insensitive asshole doesn't open many doors. Aside from that, I've had to spend a lot of time working in order to play music professionally because while I could play well technically my playing just had no heart/soul/groove/whatever you want to call it that makes women shake their money makers. In the past I was told "I can hear you thinking" and "man, stop worrying about the technique and just groove it". It's been about six years since I made that realization and I still catch myself thinking while playing from time to time. It's difficult shutting the Ti off and letting the Se, Ni, and Fe take over so I can just feel the music and take it where it needs to go. Feeler types definitely have a huge one-up on thinker types when it comes to music, in my opinion.

I love that my wife and I offset one another. I can credit her influence for a lot of the positive changes in my life. I ask her "how do you feel about this" on a regular basis because I truly value the opinion. I might not go with it but, I like hearing it and being able to mull it over. Oh, and yes, the emotion also drives me up the freaking walls at times...to be honest.

 

[Xplosive]

Of course there are benefits to being a feeler ! Umm in like every matter in the field of human dynamics i.e. reading/understanding/empathising with other people.

 

[madhatter]

The closed post was interesting to me, so I'd like to try asking something similar (no offense or drama intended!)

What types of occurrences would evoke your sympathy?
Do you think there are benefits to being a "feeler?"

I ask because as an ENFP I'm often envious of the control my ISTP has on his feelings, so effortlessly, where as I am all about emotional intensity. Which for some crazy reason he LIKES this about me. He's never been interested in another "thinker" type, but he can't put into words why he likes that about me, just that he wishes he could be (slightly) more that way(!)

I'm actually ashamed to say that not much evokes my sympathy either. Say an acquaintance/friend's loved one dies, I think, man, that sucks, but that feeling of sorrow escapes me. To tell you the truth, it makes me feel like a selfish asshole. But like ThoughtProcess, if I have a frame of reference from personal experience, I'm likely to be more sympathetic than usual.

There are benefits to being a Feeler; you can show Thinkers that what their feelings normal and not something to be censored or ignored or scoffed at, and like OctoberSkye said, soften us.

 

[teabiscits]

i actually was asking an honest question and you know from reading these responses it is a little telling why it was assumed that i was being passive aggresive and tryiing to sneakily make a point. i must have inadvertantly hit a nerve. i will admit that linnifea phrased her question alot better than i did and you have to admit it was a fair question to ask since another enfp went to the trouble of asking it a second time.

when i asked do you sort of feel that feeler types are deluded and need to be brought back to reality and be made aware of their shortcomings and just bloody well accept them or does it actually amuse you to see people in pain? i was actually trying to sympathise with the istp mindset. i was wondering if it was only instances where a feeler might be deluding themselves or acting vain or whatever and needing to be brought down a peg or two that would cause an istp to have no sympathy for them or was it more than that.

it's actually one thing that bugs me about my istp that he presumes so much of what my motives are. maybe it is because he is so self serving himself that he just presumes the same of me? that is something i have been wondering about for a very long time.

 

[teabiscits]

I'm actually ashamed to say that not much evokes my sympathy either. Say an acquaintance/friend's loved one dies, I think, man, that sucks, but that feeling of sorrow escapes me. To tell you the truth, it makes me feel like a selfish asshole. But like ThoughtProcess, if I have a frame of reference from personal experience, I'm likely to be more sympathetic than usual.

There are benefits to being a Feeler; you can show Thinkers that what their feelings normal and not something to be censored or ignored or scoffed at, and like OctoberSkye said, soften us.

thank you for your honesty. it takes balls to admit something like that.

 

[jinkies]

I don't know about sympathy, really. Most of the time when something bad happens to a friend, I don't really care about what actually happened - I can't really sympathize with it, even if I can empathize(strictly on the 'understanding' area). I get it, like I can see why they feel the way they do but I can't sit there and cry with them for little to no reason.

When I do comfort a person, it's more out of obligation; as in, it'd be weird if I didn't. And, if I like them enough, I care about how they feel, never mind the incident that caused it. I just can't feel that but generally I'd like the other person to feel good.

 

[Capsicum]

What evokes sympathy in this ISTP?

Someone who has tried their hardest, and yet still failed.

ISTP value competence, and if someone has shown they're competent, and yet still failed, that's enough.

 

[teabiscits]

I'm actually ashamed to say that not much evokes my sympathy either. Say an acquaintance/friend's loved one dies, I think, man, that sucks, but that feeling of sorrow escapes me. To tell you the truth, it makes me feel like a selfish asshole. But like ThoughtProcess, if I have a frame of reference from personal experience, I'm likely to be more sympathetic than usual.

There are benefits to being a Feeler; you can show Thinkers that what their feelings normal and not something to be censored or ignored or scoffed at, and like OctoberSkye said, soften us.

i don't think you should beat yourself up too much and feel like a selfish asshole for not having much sympathy. society needs people with these qualities to meet out justice to those who deserve it.

lets say for instance your father went to the doctor complaining of a sore back. the doctor prescribes him with medication to ease the pain. two weeks later you find him dead. you later learn from the autopsy report that it was the medication that killed him. then you come to learn that the company who made the pills bribed officials in the FDA to speed up drug trials and knowingly allowed a dangerous drug to be available to the public. you find out the names of all those responsible and file a lawsuit against the company and the dirty rotten officials in the FDA. you lose the case because the court is corrupt also and find yourself in serious debt.they go on making pills for all sorts of ailments but under the guise of a different company name and countless more die. you then decide to take matters into your own hands,brush up on your ninja skills and bring them all to justice istp style. now if you could sympathise with the innocent family members of the scumbags who killed your father you might be plagued by guilt for the rest of your life or you may not have the bottle to go through with your revenge plan and those bastards would be free to walk around and keep on killing thousands more innocent people.

sometimes you have to do great evil in order to do good.

 

[Indigo Aria]

I'm actually ashamed to say that not much evokes my sympathy either. Say an acquaintance/friend's loved one dies, I think, man, that sucks, but that feeling of sorrow escapes me. To tell you the truth, it makes me feel like a selfish asshole. But like ThoughtProcess, if I have a frame of reference from personal experience, I'm likely to be more sympathetic than usual.

There are benefits to being a Feeler; you can show Thinkers that what their feelings normal and not something to be censored or ignored or scoffed at, and like OctoberSkye said, soften us.

I'm a pretty solid F, and I have trouble showing emotion in that situation. I can probably force a decent showing of sympathy, but that is just not something I'm wired for. I think its one of the reasons I thought I was an ISTP a while back. But unless I directly knew whoever died, it's hard to make a genuine reaction.

 

[Capsicum]

I'm often envious of the control my ISTP has on his feeling

I am all about emotional intensity. Which for some crazy reason he LIKES this about me. He's never been interested in another "thinker" type, but he can't put into words why he likes that about me, just that he wishes he could be (slightly) more that way(!)

We like it because it's so different from us. Plus, ENFPs see the good in everyone, even the cold hearts of ISTPs. :happy:

Seeing as how most of the posts have been about death, and mine wasn't...

... the father of a woman at work died a while back. Everyone seemed really sorry for her. I had trouble pretending I cared. I kept having to stifle a yawn. How can I feel sad about someone's death when I never even knew them? :mellow:

A friend of mine got attacked a work by some crazy dude and there were fisticuffs. He was upset when he told me. I thought it was pretty funny and laughed in his face... then again I've had crazy people harass me at work and I just laugh them off so it's not like I have a double standard. XD

 

[ZC Carbon]

When a person has lost everything and must take a single footstep to begin a thousand mile journey.

 

[DJArendee]

Benifits of being a feeler? You know how to behave in the early stages of a relationship without getting ulcers trying to figure it out logically. Seriously.

Otherwise, I can be very sympathetic, but only in intense situations that I believe warrant an emotional responses of which I might possibly be familiar with. If you're crying because you tripped on a log in the woods, I'll probably just laugh if can imagine you tripping over a log. I wouldn't expect much sympathy because its not that big a deal. But if your house was broken into, or you were dying, I'd be very sympathetic so long as you showed great fear or anxiety over the issue, or if I felt I'd lose you.

 

[Packey]

I can often feel empathy with another person if they're going through something that's happened to me but it's rare that I ever feel sympathy for someone.

 

[sayalain]

what can envokes my sympathy? people who close to me having someone dear to them passed away. i don't sympathizes much with people out of my circles though. but, yeah, sometimes, i'm really envious with feelers who can express their feelings really well, when i'm battling with myself, thinking if i let out my feelings, i would be condemned for it. sigh.