#that kneejerk self-doubt is a lot easier to get through. sometimes. people are wrong! to me and my experience. and that's alright

[vaguely-concerned]

my capacity to see a bad fandom take and just blithely say 'okay! I disagree' internally and move on because it's not my responsibility or concern that someone else thinks that has leveled up so tremendously over the years. I haven't quite escaped the pit of misery yet but I think I'm getting there

[mbti-notes]

1/4 / INTP, having trouble communicating with IxFJ boyfriend because we respond differently when stressed. He likes to talk through his problems with me right after they happen as it helps him destress. Im happy to listen but personally like to distract myself from a problem first, solve it when I have a detached view, then talk about it later. This created a rift between us. He has a habit of venting in the car after work, then asking me about my problems.

[con’t: But rehashing difficulties when I haven’t resolved them stresses me worse so I don’t go into detail. Even though I have explained to him that venting does not help me like it helps him, he interprets this as me being secretive, not trusting him with my problems and thinking of him as weak for talking about problems out loud (his words). I have never said or implied this. But though he complains about this, he also doesn’t take me seriously when I ask for help. He said its because “he didn’t think it was urgent because I didn’t look stressed”. It’s true, I am not very expressive, but I know this, so I try to make my requests very clear. Ex: “please help me with these forms due tomorrow, I am under pressure”, but he takes it lightly until I’m stressed to tears, only then does he realize the problem is serious. This also happens when we argue. He says if I look and talk so calm, I must not care, even if I say I’m upset. or when I’m under pressure and trying to distract myself with my hobbies, he assumes I’m wasting time. Am I misinterpreting him or doing something wrong? He only seems to take me seriously after I’m past my breaking point, but I don’t want to be pushed there every time I need to make my needs clear. Do you have advice for communicating with him? Thanks.]

It seems you are trying your best but the message isn’t getting through because he’s prone to making assumptions about you due to projecting his own worldview (i.e. expecting you to be the same as him). Additionally, if auxiliary Fe isn’t well-developed, a person is more likely to misread emotional cues. It is difficult to communicate with someone when you always have to break through the wall of their faulty assumptions. Unless he’s willing to acknowledge this problem and work on it directly, I doubt it will improve on its own. However, there are still aspects of the problem that are well within your power to address.

I was once told about an intp who suffered a devastating loss of a loved one. As you said, intps like to process and solve problems on their own, so everyone around him left him to grieve and process on his own. After some time had passed and he was back on his feet, he complained about how no one stepped up to help him and he felt like he didn’t have any real friends or support. Of course, this was kind of insulting to his friends because they made great efforts to set aside their natural inclination to get involved in order to allow him to do things at his own pace on his own terms. In other words, they were trying to show him that they understood him and respected his natural self-sufficiency, but he perceived it as quite the opposite. He wasn’t able to communicate to them what was really happening and what he really needed from them, so they could only guess at what to do. Hopefully, this simple but very common example illuminates how intps contribute to the problem of being misunderstood. Individuals of every type encounter communication problems that manifest from their own development issues. There are two major stumbling blocks in communication that intps tend to be unaware of due to their development issues:

1) Poor attentiveness to detail (from lack of Si development). Ns don’t like details because oftentimes they don’t have a good grasp of them; they have messy minds in that respect. Therefore, when they communicate, they don’t get detailed enough and they don’t explain well enough. This easily creates an unconscious expectation that other people should be mindreaders who are able to “connect the dots” and fill in everything you haven’t said out loud - this is an unreasonable expectation. You have to accept the fact that different people think differently, otherwise, you’ll always have trouble communicating. You can always work on being more detailed and try to provide fuller explanations. For example, when you say, “I am under pressure”, try to give a FULL STORY, in an ORDERLY fashion from beginning to end, that details exactly why you are under pressure AND what the consequences will be should you fail to meet your goal or remain under too much pressure. Now, if after reading that sentence, your kneejerk reaction is that people are stupid if they can’t understand what being under pressure means, then you are falling into the trap of expecting people to magically know everything that you know about your situation. When you are detailed and give full explanations, people take you more seriously because they have a fuller and deeper understanding of where you’re coming from. In other words, people understand you better when you help them understand. This is especially important when the other person is your functional opposite (i.e. your higher functions are their lower functions). The two of you are speaking different languages, therefore, translation is often necessary.

2) Expressing facts or thoughts rather than feelings (due to lack of Fe development). Ts often don’t understand what it means to express feelings explicitly. Let me play devil’s advocate and interpret your words through an FJs ears: “I am under pressure” is not an expression of feeling but rather a statement of fact. The problem with this statement is that it’s quite common to be under pressure, especially in work-related contexts, and it’s normal to feel under pressure when you have deadlines or a lot on your plate. Furthermore, if I’ve observed you to consistently handle pressure very well most of the time, then “I am under pressure” is no big deal, right? There is nothing in this statement that really conveys abnormal levels of urgency, so the statement doesn’t do enough to make clear your exact emotional state. 

It’s always better to use the word “feel” in your sentence when you want to convey your emotional state, e.g., “I am feeling very stressed right now and I need help” is much more to the point. If you want people to take your emotions seriously, you have to take them seriously enough to convey them effectively via explicit feeling statements. Feeling statements express your urgency but also, more importantly, your vulnerability to pain, and that is what makes it easier for FJs to move quickly from passive sympathizing into active helping. When FJs feel that you are in pain or soon to be in pain, they’ll jump to help you, but they can’t feel it when you don’t express it such that they can feel it. Ts often trip up when talking about feelings because, unconsciously, they don’t want to confront or expose their emotional vulnerability. In masking your feelings behind factual statements, you do your emotional life a disservice and you make it harder for people to know what’s really going on with you. The fact that you are so afraid of “feeling worse” implies an avoidance of that aspect of yourself. If you can’t fully face up to your feelings, how can you express them fully?

FJs, due to higher Fe, predominantly speak through the language of feelings, which means that they understand feelings in terms of how they manifest via face, body, and words, though a mature FJ should be aware that not everyone speaks this language fluently and make adjustments. Remember that FJs won’t be able to gauge your emotional state very well without those cues, and you shouldn’t expect them to, because then you’d be forcing them to speculate and make assumptions, which exacerbates the original problem you’ve described of jumping to conclusions. A blank face and matter-of-fact tone can have multiple possible interpretations, and if that’s what you present to them, it’s not really fair to blame them for guessing it wrong. How can someone know how you feel when there is no agreement or common language to communicate that information? You can’t have it both ways: You can’t say that people should accept your emotional inexpressiveness (and any unwillingness to change it) and then also expect that they should still magically know exactly how you feel. The breakdown of communication is caused by you if that’s the case. 

Communication is a two-way street. Ideally, when opposites communicate, both sides should make an effort to translate themselves well to the other person, and it sounds like many more couple discussions are needed about how to bridge your Ti vs Fe cognitive differences. When the other side isn’t capable of meeting you halfway, then you sometimes have to work twice as hard to make yourself heard. It’s not an insurmountable problem, but it’s hard work to develop the right strategies and put them into practice. It’s worth it, though, because it also helps you with your function growth and development.