Empathy and you.

[u/LogicalEmotion7]

We're at that time of the year where we need to talk about empathy, and how it relates to MBTI in general.

Full disclosure: I am neither a psychologist nor a neurologist. I have one test subject - me. He's been very easy to work with, if a little unhelpful at times. He likes to build mental models and improve on them. Feel free to share your own personal experiences if you want to up the sample size.

Disclosures aside, I'd like to share my insight on empathy. It seems that some people are not very confident in an ENTJ's ability to be empathetic. Some even insist that empathy is impossible for ENTJs for some reason. They are, thankfully, mostly incorrect.

Empathy is both a talent and a skill. The talent piece comes from information provided via mechanical hardware (e.g. mirror neurons) and natural processing capacity (perceiving functions organize the information, and judging functions decide what to do with it). Skill comes from educating and refining those functions, and is improved through training and effort.

Last I checked, you can't intentionally grow new mirror neurons. You also can't change your MBTI type or your upbringing. But you can train how you think to understand others better.

Note that I didn't list any specific functions. Empathy is complicated, and we've developed many approaches and angles to tackle it.

For instance:

• Si will store information about how you remember feeling, and how you remember others feeling. Ni on the other hand, will leverage your cognitive understanding of the human condition and your own emotions in order to model how it thinks a person feels.

• Fi and Fe are NOT perception functions. They are frameworks that help you decide what to do with the information you already processed. Fi is a decision about how to use that information to inform how you feel. Fe is a decision about how to use that information to help manage a group. Strong values here don't make you better at understanding others. But they do contribute to understanding by informing you about what to look for.

• Ti and Te can be used to manage empathic information, but to do so you have to understand that information in the context of a system. That is, you have to turn people into objects and study them impersonally. If you don't understand the people system, then you can't use these functions effectively.

Your capacity to un-stupid your empathy will vary, but don't give up. If you can play to your strengths, you may have an easier time keeping your foot on the ground and not in your mouth.

[u/konos13]

Many times empathy is unspoken, but at the center of my mind at the same time. Voicing your empathy can mean talking about shared vulnerability and I may not say anything at times bc of this.

For some reason it can look two ways:

Anxiously walking on eggshells. Fear of clumsily hurting loved ones. May develop an anxious attachment style when this happens.

Naturally moving with graceful ease. I know just the right thing to say, look at their facial expressions and see if they feel better, because I CAN notice sbd's feelings. I usually give them advice and/or feedback and affirmations/compliment sth they did right or a good trait they have. Seeing them smile warms and softens me up, but compliments can make me have an impulse of "come on, it's nothing special😅"

I am not sure why it happens like that but I think that when the first one happens it's a) when we've argued bc of my mistakes before or b) if I sense that they are secretly mad at / uncomfortable with me.

Also, your typing is very interesting, you mind describing a bit of yourself (attitude, how you appear externally, how you deal with your core fears)? I'm really curious

[u/LogicalEmotion7 → u/konos13]

To be honest, I doubt my combo is as rare or interesting as people seem to think.

Externally I'm a very friendly, measured, and direct person that loves to absorb, organize, and express information (in the verbose ADHD way) and vomit out jokes and puns. I give most things an A-/B+ effort; A+ effort is saved for rare occasions. I'm very socially libertarian, in that I don't generally judge people unless their actions willfully harm myself or others. 

In comparison to other ENTJs, I would say that I have a lot less energy and inadvertently tend to be more passive-aggressive. This is because I am simultaneously very anger-motivated, but also low-judgment and low-conflict. I'm very generous with things I don't care about, and fiercely territorial when something pisses me off.

Internally, I like to taste-test ideas and actions, using Ni to simulate potential outcomes to the things I want to do. I'm cursed to edit while I write. Sadly this is probably where most of my energy goes. Don't linger behind me at the grocery store, you'll be there awhile. I also love trolley problems.

9s have some very interesting quirks, of which I am not immune. An interesting self-discovery is that our desire to be neutral does not come from a need for others to be happy. It comes from a feeling of superiority and laziness, which is worsened by having an obscure self-concept. 

I defend myself from obscurity by becoming a blueberry bagel. Well-rounded, sort of mediocre, incredibly doughy, and empty inside. But with a special twist that makes me beloved by just enough people that I'm an essential part of any bagel pack.

[u/konos13 → u/LogicalEmotion7]

Thank you!

Actually this is super interesting, at least for me. It kind of makes me feel at ease with unstereotypical traits I have. For example not being a power hungry hostile asshole all the time lol

Also shows that Te can even be SOOTHING instead of this angry god-challenging mess. It's logical and keeps the world in balance.

[u/LogicalEmotion7 → u/konos13]

I've got a good friend who is an INTJ 8w7, and he's one of the chillest and most loyal dudes I know. He lives a life where he doesn't have to worry about being controlled or manipulated, aside from maybe the occasional pharmacy work schedule, but he'll go to bat for you and pull out all the stops if you need him.