Greetings!
I'm just wondering if anyone has ever felt overwhelmed by Se?
I know it's inferior function for INFJ, but I also want to know how other types can become so good at it (and maybe learn a bit from them).
As INFJ, I'm comfortable with concept and 'big picture'. But I'm soo overwhelmed with names, terms or dates. It's not like I can't remember it. But it's just feel like slamming cake on my face and slowly digest it. If you give me all the details at once, I automatically filter out one or two important things that I can remember.
Sometimes doing a lot at once is also stressful. I think I'm doing better now, but it seems I can't compete with those with Se dom. I wonder how they do it?
A way to get a handle on how Se works is to look at fast moving, in-the-moment experiences - these are of course not the only ones, but they do make it easier to see and understand. Think of driving on a busy motorway, or in a busy town centre where your attention is constantly having to be given to what's going on instantaneously around you, or think of looking for a friend you had arranged to meet in a busy over-crowded train station in the middle of rush hour traffic. Fast moving computer games can put similar demands on us, particularly before we become familiar with a particular game.
I start to space out after I've driven for over an hour and a half on a long journey, and need to stop somewhere reasonably quiet and take a break - when I say spaced out, I mean that I stop processing what's going on around me to some extent, start to feel unreal. It's the same in crowded places with lots of noise - I start to feel spaced out and unreal after a while.
I think that introversion coupled with Ni is quite complex - in many ways we may avoid people as much because they overwhelm our Se as that we dislike company some of the time. I also get into trouble with Se if I'm doing something complex, particularly practical things, because my attention goes entirely into what I'm doing overall and I forget that there's a tree or the sharp edge of a ladder in the way. I'm hopeless at anything that requires intense concentration and skilled physical coordination in the moment - watching a skilled craftsman at work carving a piece of wood always amazes me because I just can't focus my attention and my actions with such precision in that kind of way.
As INxJs one of the problems we face is that Ni isn't understood and accepted by many people - in fact our dominant function is actually the frightening inferior for a very large number of folks out there. Few of us have had parents or teachers who have taught us how to use it or value it when we were children and adolescents. That means that we tend to use a combination of our secondary and tertiary functions to relate to the world, leaving our Ni to work by itself in the dark. You can very often see this problem in the forum, where Ni folks can jump too quickly to judgement on something when they should really give their Ni chance to assimilate it, unfettered by premature choices and filtering. What our intuition gives us is deep, non-judgemental insight, if only we let it have a chance. It's easy to envy the rapid in-the-moment life experience of the Se dominant folks and they can have a rich and rewarding life, but they lack the penetrating understanding that Ni can give, which lights up the world in ways that they can never access in the same way, and with the same fluency.
Consciously feed your Ni - with all kinds of things. Integrated learning, yes, but random ideas too, and visual and musical images - and lots of different people (at a safe distance maybe lol) - do it deliberately as food for your mind, not necessarily with any other purpose than that. Then watch as your mind starts to connect things together in ways that are unexpected, to build networks of meaning between these things, and how it uses some of them to express a complex idea or feeling in delightful new ways - maybe not expressed just in words but in images or choices of music too.
Otherwise, Se is a great source of pleasure for me. If I'm disengaged from the notion of how things "should be" I can just immerse myself in the sensory pleasure without reservation
Nature is great >> 100% agree with you
For INxJs, our Se is the function that gives us access to our unconscious minds. That means that if we let it, Se can be filled with a glow of mystery that enchants the world around us - it won't happen if we are overwhelmed by sensory input, but if we are relaxed and under no pressure we can experience things in a deep, precious way. Relaxing away from people in the great Se outdoors is a wonderful experience for us.
It's possible to bring Ni and Se together into a partnership dance - I take a lot of photos, and each time I compose a picture and press the shutter, it's a lovely blend of Ni and Se that makes the shot. These are not necessarily slowly thought out compositions either, but many are shots in fast moving circumstances where the two functions work almost instantaneously together.
