Maayan
02-11-2009, 10:43 AM
But, to be fair, I know absolutely zilch about SP's, I always assumed that they were the "wild childs" of the MBTI and didn't merit any more thought (not trying to be mean, just honest!). Totally off topic, but what's it like to be an SP? Feel free to explain to me in a PM so as not to ruin your post ;)
I started writing a reply to this post (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), and it got long enough to merit a new thread. I like talking about myself. Ask away.
Warning: Serious Angst Ahead. :)
Being an ESFP facilitates the development of certain traits and coping mechanisms -- both beneficial and detrimental.
Usually, when I talk to other people out loud, I'm reacting to them and trying to get myself going; unless their energy naturally flows into mine, at which point it's like plugging myself into a charger, but that's a very rare occurrence. Toastmasters-style monologues are instinctual; my mind selects scripts to load based on the person's reaction and then coasts by until it's needed again. Other times, I'll just be myself. I'm bubbly, happy and enthusiastic. I really want to connect to interesting people; I want these people to notice me in order to make that connection possible. I have no qualms about going up to someone, flashing a toothy smile at them and telling them that I think that they're cool, just because I do. It makes sense to me to learn from a person by talking to them. I love the sound of my own voice far too much. A friend once joked that I'm both blessed and cursed in that my professors will always remember me. It's very important for me to be in an aesthetic and stimulating environment -- not because I'm shallow, but because it makes a significant difference in my mood -- which is funny, because I'm a very disorganized and scatterbrained person. I love being desired, pampered and spoiled. I love the satisfaction of planting seeds of intrigue in someone who fascinates me and whom I want to have closer to me. I'm rather egocentric, aren't I? Often times when I'm writing, my transient feelings are overlain on my thoughts, which are mixed in with deceptive thoughts as well as valid ones. It's all very confusing. It's easy for me to get caught up in an emotion and lose my train of thought.
I've got horrible personal issues, too, especially where coping mechanisms and mental health are concerned. I just described a pretty rosy view of myself. If I may flatter myself, I'm also more NT-leaning than the average ESFP. Except for my home life, I've selected NT-centric environments since I was a child. If anything, I even depended on those functions as a child (setting me up for years of frustration after I "lost" the ability). It is my intense desire to regain those abilities in full. Where intellectual pursuits are concerned -- which are the stuff of life for me -- being an SF is difficult for me in that I'm limited by the intellect and the empathy of my immediate company. It's acutely frustrating when I want or need to pull towards NT mode, but can't, for whatever reason ("I can't solve this simple problem because I haven't had enough coffee, really" mode). With enough willpower, I can force myself to switch gears pretty convincingly, though never to the extent that I seek. Over the summer, for example, I happily spent nearly all of my waking hours -- and most of my sleeping hours -- intensely studying Kant and the history of Scientific Epistemology for an essay. (The night after handing in the essay, I screamed in my sleep while having a nightmare about Bosch's monstrosities. It was great.) I often sense that my mind is tightly folded in ways that don't make sense and doing things that I don't want it to be doing, and sometimes it's hard to coax it into relaxing; usually, I'm fighting against myself and making myself more tense without realizing it. Most of the time, I'm not even aware that there's a problem.
I can also tell you what it's like for me to be an Introverted Intuitive.
On the tail end of my last LSD trip, I left my friend's apartment to attend a special fancy dinner at the most posh restaurant in town. I didn't have time to get dressed up or wear make-up, so I threw on my most flattering sweater and a pearl necklace, and trusted that I'd be able to compensate with my figure and my personality. At first, my shadow and my dominant functions worked together like a flexible and finely-tuned machine. My Ni made it sinfully easy to plan my moves several steps in advance, and my well-trained Se worked from this data with ease; I even had enough "free cycles" left over to chew on several threads of personal thought while I was doing all of this. I was in increased control of my own mind. To know that my mind wasn't even running anywhere near full capacity gave me an intoxicating feeling of power over myself. I loved it. (This is why I want to kick people who tell me that I'm never going to be able to hack my mind to the extent where I'm able to experience this degree of awareness while sober, or worse, those who tell me to get over myself without qualifying the statement. I don't have a good defense mechanism for personal criticism. It's like poison to me.)
Then, my Ni took over. I became very selective about the information that I took in -- I came out of my shell once to listen to one friend do a hilarious and intriguing imitation of Dr. Tran, and then forced myself out again just long enough to burst into a few random exclamations so to appease my friends, who were a little irritated with me for sitting in silence and staring intently at nothing in particular. (I did that a lot as a child. I got teased for it quite a bit.) I felt a little melancholy at being so spoiled at that moment, and vaguely sad that it would ultimately be transient on many levels. What to do? I could choose to focus on our rich physical surroundings and experience them on a whole new level -- I could peer into a painting and see the scene unfold, even watching the people in the painting come to life. Or, I could close myself off from the outside world altogether and sink into the incredible playground of my own mind. I fantasized vividly that I had to choose between one or the other, and savoured the angst of turning away from this world of incredible riches and abandoning everything I'd known for my adult life, while stepping into the world that had I had given up, even though it was where I felt truly at home. "I choose the Introverted plane. Can I make that choice? I want to make that choice." I played through the moment over and over again. I mused, in delighted horror, that I'd made the fully conscious decision to abandon the Introverted plane many times before. I vaguely remembered being convinced that it was bad to have my head in the clouds all day. When I came back down to reality, people would laugh in relief. One day, I couldn't go back to my special place at all. I told myself that I'd imagined the whole thing and that there was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and move on. Or something. The memories were vague and polluted with angst.
I could barely taste my food.
I don't want to depend on a drug to satisfy this desire to perceive the world on my own terms. That's a crippling view of life.
EDIT: Wow. That was pretty arrogant and melodramatic. We can get pretty tied up with ourselves in the heat of the moment.
I started writing a reply to this post (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 2 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.), and it got long enough to merit a new thread. I like talking about myself. Ask away.
Warning: Serious Angst Ahead. :)
Being an ESFP facilitates the development of certain traits and coping mechanisms -- both beneficial and detrimental.
Usually, when I talk to other people out loud, I'm reacting to them and trying to get myself going; unless their energy naturally flows into mine, at which point it's like plugging myself into a charger, but that's a very rare occurrence. Toastmasters-style monologues are instinctual; my mind selects scripts to load based on the person's reaction and then coasts by until it's needed again. Other times, I'll just be myself. I'm bubbly, happy and enthusiastic. I really want to connect to interesting people; I want these people to notice me in order to make that connection possible. I have no qualms about going up to someone, flashing a toothy smile at them and telling them that I think that they're cool, just because I do. It makes sense to me to learn from a person by talking to them. I love the sound of my own voice far too much. A friend once joked that I'm both blessed and cursed in that my professors will always remember me. It's very important for me to be in an aesthetic and stimulating environment -- not because I'm shallow, but because it makes a significant difference in my mood -- which is funny, because I'm a very disorganized and scatterbrained person. I love being desired, pampered and spoiled. I love the satisfaction of planting seeds of intrigue in someone who fascinates me and whom I want to have closer to me. I'm rather egocentric, aren't I? Often times when I'm writing, my transient feelings are overlain on my thoughts, which are mixed in with deceptive thoughts as well as valid ones. It's all very confusing. It's easy for me to get caught up in an emotion and lose my train of thought.
I've got horrible personal issues, too, especially where coping mechanisms and mental health are concerned. I just described a pretty rosy view of myself. If I may flatter myself, I'm also more NT-leaning than the average ESFP. Except for my home life, I've selected NT-centric environments since I was a child. If anything, I even depended on those functions as a child (setting me up for years of frustration after I "lost" the ability). It is my intense desire to regain those abilities in full. Where intellectual pursuits are concerned -- which are the stuff of life for me -- being an SF is difficult for me in that I'm limited by the intellect and the empathy of my immediate company. It's acutely frustrating when I want or need to pull towards NT mode, but can't, for whatever reason ("I can't solve this simple problem because I haven't had enough coffee, really" mode). With enough willpower, I can force myself to switch gears pretty convincingly, though never to the extent that I seek. Over the summer, for example, I happily spent nearly all of my waking hours -- and most of my sleeping hours -- intensely studying Kant and the history of Scientific Epistemology for an essay. (The night after handing in the essay, I screamed in my sleep while having a nightmare about Bosch's monstrosities. It was great.) I often sense that my mind is tightly folded in ways that don't make sense and doing things that I don't want it to be doing, and sometimes it's hard to coax it into relaxing; usually, I'm fighting against myself and making myself more tense without realizing it. Most of the time, I'm not even aware that there's a problem.
I can also tell you what it's like for me to be an Introverted Intuitive.
On the tail end of my last LSD trip, I left my friend's apartment to attend a special fancy dinner at the most posh restaurant in town. I didn't have time to get dressed up or wear make-up, so I threw on my most flattering sweater and a pearl necklace, and trusted that I'd be able to compensate with my figure and my personality. At first, my shadow and my dominant functions worked together like a flexible and finely-tuned machine. My Ni made it sinfully easy to plan my moves several steps in advance, and my well-trained Se worked from this data with ease; I even had enough "free cycles" left over to chew on several threads of personal thought while I was doing all of this. I was in increased control of my own mind. To know that my mind wasn't even running anywhere near full capacity gave me an intoxicating feeling of power over myself. I loved it. (This is why I want to kick people who tell me that I'm never going to be able to hack my mind to the extent where I'm able to experience this degree of awareness while sober, or worse, those who tell me to get over myself without qualifying the statement. I don't have a good defense mechanism for personal criticism. It's like poison to me.)
Then, my Ni took over. I became very selective about the information that I took in -- I came out of my shell once to listen to one friend do a hilarious and intriguing imitation of Dr. Tran, and then forced myself out again just long enough to burst into a few random exclamations so to appease my friends, who were a little irritated with me for sitting in silence and staring intently at nothing in particular. (I did that a lot as a child. I got teased for it quite a bit.) I felt a little melancholy at being so spoiled at that moment, and vaguely sad that it would ultimately be transient on many levels. What to do? I could choose to focus on our rich physical surroundings and experience them on a whole new level -- I could peer into a painting and see the scene unfold, even watching the people in the painting come to life. Or, I could close myself off from the outside world altogether and sink into the incredible playground of my own mind. I fantasized vividly that I had to choose between one or the other, and savoured the angst of turning away from this world of incredible riches and abandoning everything I'd known for my adult life, while stepping into the world that had I had given up, even though it was where I felt truly at home. "I choose the Introverted plane. Can I make that choice? I want to make that choice." I played through the moment over and over again. I mused, in delighted horror, that I'd made the fully conscious decision to abandon the Introverted plane many times before. I vaguely remembered being convinced that it was bad to have my head in the clouds all day. When I came back down to reality, people would laugh in relief. One day, I couldn't go back to my special place at all. I told myself that I'd imagined the whole thing and that there was nothing left to do but pick up the pieces and move on. Or something. The memories were vague and polluted with angst.
I could barely taste my food.
I don't want to depend on a drug to satisfy this desire to perceive the world on my own terms. That's a crippling view of life.
EDIT: Wow. That was pretty arrogant and melodramatic. We can get pretty tied up with ourselves in the heat of the moment.