When Good Functions Go Bad

[Questingpoet]

Being well balanced in all your MBTI fuctions makes for a more well-adjusted and well-rounded personality. But do you ever overuse or mis-interpret some of your lesser functions? I would call these anything that are not your two top ones. For INFJ's that would mean anything other than Ni or Fe. I find for myself, that I often let Ne really take the reins and run with things. I am constantly looking for patterns and relationships and I sometimes see things that aren't really there. This is especially true with people and our relationships.

Ne defined is: Ne finds and interprets hidden meanings, using “what if” questions to explore alternatives, allowing multiple possibilities to coexist. This imaginative play weaves together insights and experiences from various sources to form a new whole, which can then become a catalyst to action. Ne allows a person to effortlessly identify complex interrelationships between ideas, people, and things that are often invisible to others.

I think overuse, and less comfort, with my Ne combined with my strong Fe sometimes leads to bad things like me making assumptions about personal relationships (though not nesassarily people themselves) that aren't really correct. I use Ni so effortlessly that I think I can use Ne the same way, but I can't. It gets tangled up with Fe and sometimes derails it. I don't seem to have that trouble with the Ni/Fi combo. Could this be because Ni is a dominant function in me?

So the short question once again here is: Do you have lesser functions that lead you astray because some of your more dominant functions interfere?

 

[Razare]

An INTJ was explaining to me how we do not use Ne, Fi, Te, and Si. I really can't say one way or another on that. Our ability to imagine multiple scenarios and various problems that may arise could be the result of functions we normally possess at play, appearing to act like Ne. It may just be a use of Ni. Maybe the INTJ was full of hot-air, but he seems to know his stuff better than I do.

I've looked into shadow functions some and according to what I read, if we do use those functions that we do not possess, they're not used in a positive way, only negative.

Like Te is the "Trickster" for us. So if we're telling a joke and we manage to stay out of Fe while telling it, we'll have our straight Te face on. Or like Fi for us is a "witch" or defensive mechanism to throw people off our backs should our normal cognitive functions fail. So if someone is really annoying me and pushing my buttons, I might go into an Fi emotional tirade, dripping with sarcasm.

That's how the content I saw explained those other "shadow functions" to me. If they're used, they're not used as part of a healthy INFJ. I don't really get it.


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As for when good functions go bad, we need to look no further than Ni. Ni can go very bad should one not attend to their other functions which are responsible for keeping Ni healthy.

 

[Questingpoet]

Any more thoughts here?

 

[894tt3h9]

I don't know much about each different function, but your original post very accurately describes what I do sometimes. I think I like my Ne get a little out of control and a lot of times I see things that aren't there. Most of the time I snap out of it before I can get too disappointed over connections that don't actually exist. But sometimes it can be really bothersome.

 

[KazeCraven]

I actually think my dominant function is what leads me most astray.

If I get stressed out, or if I really want to know something, I'll get hyperanalytical and try to force whatever I'm looking for out of the system. This leads to a lot of needless nitpicking and narrow-mindedness.

 

[Gaze]

I don't know much about each different function, but your original post very accurately describes what I do sometimes. I think I like my Ne get a little out of control and a lot of times I see things that aren't there. Most of the time I snap out of it before I can get too disappointed over connections that don't actually exist. But sometimes it can be really bothersome.

I actually think my dominant function is what leads me most astray.

If I get stressed out, or if I really want to know something, I'll get hyperanalytical and try to force whatever I'm looking for out of the system. This leads to a lot of needless nitpicking and narrow-mindedness.

Can relate to both.

 

[sulfit]

That actually sounds like Ni is making is a mistake. If you are making connections between things that exist, this is Ni in works, and yes it can try to make connections that aren't there. Ne is an extraverted function that tells you what can be made if you rearrange objects outside of yourself (including people). It creates new patterns by prompting you to influence the world outside to cause rearrangement into being. So instead of seeing connections that aren't there it will prompt you to expand effort to create connections that don't really work.

My stressed out mode seems to be that of ENTP. I have in past tried to make myself on purpose think like one. Instead of analyzing and over-analyzing why is this or how is that, and drifting off, I focused my thought process on coming up with the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing and constantly interacting with environment and the people I was with and not allowing myself to zone out. It was a social situation so I guess the extra stress from that helped.

After about 6 hours of this I was completely wasted. I had to drive back home alone, and I remember leaving their house and walking out on the street and this extreme sense of paranoia just hit me. I felt that there was danger everywhere in my environment and was suddenly felt afraid of everything and seriously thinking that my car is going to crash on the way to my place. This is what I understood as the Ni backlash after I tried to use it in its shadow mode. I forced myself behind the wheel and drove back home. After a few hours it was over and I was able to go to sleep.

I have tried to recreate this experience again and it always goes to the same effect. After I try to invert my intuition to come out and interact with the world outside, relapsing back it will make me feel like I am being flooded by this same world.

 

[Questingpoet]

That actually sounds like Ni is making is a mistake. If you are making connections between things that exist, this is Ni in works, and yes it can try to make connections that aren't there. Ne is an extraverted function that tells you what can be made if you rearrange objects outside of yourself (including people). It creates new patterns by prompting you to influence the world outside to cause rearrangement into being. So instead of seeing connections that aren't there it will prompt you to expand effort to create connections that don't really work.

My stressed out mode seems to be that of ENTP. I have in past tried to make myself on purpose think like one. Instead of analyzing and over-analyzing why is this or how is that, and drifting off, I focused my thought process on coming up with the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing and constantly interacting with environment and the people I was with and not allowing myself to zone out. It was a social situation so I guess the extra stress from that helped.

After about 6 hours of this I was completely wasted. I had to drive back home alone, and I remember leaving their house and walking out on the street and this extreme sense of paranoia just hit me. I felt that there was danger everywhere in my environment and was suddenly felt afraid of everything and seriously thinking that my car is going to crash on the way to my place. This is what I understood as the Ni backlash after I tried to use it in its shadow mode. I forced myself behind the wheel and drove back home. After a few hours it was over and I was able to go to sleep.

I have tried to recreate this experience again and it always goes to the same effect. After I try to invert my intuition to come out and interact with the world outside, relapsing back it will make me feel like I am being flooded by this same world.

Interesting thoughts, thanks for posting. Ni it may be, but that's not how I normally think of my Ni. I usually think of it as more internally focused as it helps me work on problems less connected with people and more connected with my inner world. Problems like puzzles or creatively writing poems. How I use, combine, and re-combine words to come out with the maximum desired affect. Food for thought for me, thanks again.

 

[Lerxst]

I say most of this has to be taken with a grain of salt since a lot is determined by outside influences. My father's an ENTJ kind of a personality - an outgoing, logical "leader" kind of a person.

Most of my family can fit into an NT personality type, I'm one of the only NF's. Basically means I've learned to repress a whole lot of feelings and approach things logically. It was until with age came independence and then the NF started to show through.

So I can tell I'm an INFJ and test have verified it, but my Feeling function is very marginalized compared to most others from what I can tell. So thanks to factors beyond my control while growing up I've had to develop some of those lesser functions to the point where they're almost equal to my primary ones. Now, if both my parents were like my mother, I'd definitely be a straight-forward INFJ type.

 

[Quinlan]

Being well balanced in all your MBTI fuctions makes for a more well-adjusted and well-rounded personality.

That's a pretty big assumption, balanced just means you'll be going round in circles never really decisive about anything.

 

[BlinkandThink]

That's a pretty big assumption, balanced just means you'll be going round in circles never really decisive about anything.

Exactly. When functions are balanced, that doesn't mean competence is balanced ... it means preference is balanced. So the person can have an extremely difficult time deciding what to give priority (I'm saying this from experience).

In an ideal situation, a person would be capable of using all of their functions well, despite their preferences ... so that when one they're less familiar with becomes necessary, they aren't completely screwed.

Right now, I'm trying to strengthen my Te and Si, which are both terrible.

 

[Ecton]

Quest, I relate to that completely. One of the things MBTI has helped me with is not letting myself run away with Ne, as tends to happen when I'm stressed. I totally relate.

 

[Nixie]

I think that the purpose of personality aspects isn't to be balanced. You become unable to differentiate. That whole, to understand light you must know dark otherwise it is all just shades of grey. The inferior function is inferior for a reason and it is Se (if I understand correctly). Basically if the outside sensations bombard too much, it shuts down the dominant (Ni) and in most people the auxilliary function (Te for me and Fe for you feelers). Shut down in that you have a hard time doing something you are usually comfortable doing--like organization or accomplishing tasks (Te)--I suppose examples would be feeling emotional or trapped in an emotional state (Fe).

 

[Nevermore]

I don't know enough about MBTI functions to really comment from that point of view but yes my functions (whatever they may be) do go into orbit occassionally leading me down a garden path. Chronic paranoia is often the result. Being somewhat disconnected from the feelings of others all I've got to go by is facial expression which isn't a great tell to be basing a lot of self image on. So I see something, it triggers a feeling of insecurity within me and within about 30secs I've got a full-scale living large conspiracy on my hands. My Ni is a vast reservoir of imaginative scenario's in which a coworkers tanty over something unrelated to me becomes a plot to ruin my career. Unfortunately I don't have any good conspiracy's so I'm all out of believing that someone is in love with me when they are not. I wish I could create those nice delusions because if nothing else it gives you hope and fleeting good feelings in life.

 

[Tulip]

Do you have lesser functions that lead you astray because some of your more dominant functions interfere?

My Ti and Fi always get interfered by my Ni and Ne. I can do a whole lot of analysis with my Ti, but no matter how logical they are and how much they make sense, when my Ni says otherwise, it can overflow the whole analysis and abandon the logical reasoning and replace it with irrational thoughts. Same with Fi, my Ni also disregards anything my Fi tells me if they crash with each other.

In most cases my Ne will also jump in and tells me there is another interpretation, again my Ti and Fi will usually suffer and my dominant intuiting functions will always take precedence.

This atypical function order of mine sometimes put me into a complete mess...going back and forth and not able to move forward with anything.