On Being Taught The Obvious

[kiwimouse]

Hi.  I haven't posted here before.  I'm an INFP who's highest Jung type feature comes out as N (and consequently lowest feature is S).  This isn't only true in personality tests, this comes out consistently in day to day life.

On the advice of ramsey_sitc I post.

This was a topic I posted to the _infp_ community:I feel like no one ever bothers to tell me about

Comments

[urbeatle]

I think it's kind of amusing that the Ses will go to great lengths explaining some garbage you already figured out based on their first ten or so words, but (as you say) don't explain the "unwritten rules" at all. it really comes down to two groups of people disagreeing on what things need lengthy explanantions and what things do not.

since I'm high on I as well as N and P, I don't interact all that much, especially with Ses, but I know some of the tricks. if you have to explain something, make sure you explain it in terms of physical stuff they would do and the sensory feedback they receive. I should have done that when I was trying to teach my uncle how to use a computer... when listening to them, you might as well use all that extra time they are giving you with empty words to compose a summary of what they said so you can say "oh, so I should do A, B, and C?" -- but make sure you use some of their own words in that summary, so they think they did a great job of explaining it for you to "get" it all so easily. might be a good idea to fall back to tactile descriptions here, too.

[gwyd]

I second the use of concrete stuff in explanations. I teach kids for a living, and a lot of them are not developmentally ready for abstracts. One of my most common tasks is trying to make abstracts accessable to people who are just learning to think that way. I also find the multiple intelligences approach really helps. If you can show pictures, etc. it makes the process much easier for some people.

I generally parrot back the main points of the S-planations, to "make sure I know and you know that I understand." Yeah, it's boring, but it's important to make sure they think you've been listening. It makes them feel valuable and listened to.

[kiwimouse]

Good advice... Argh! Can't they enter our world for once? I'm sorry, I know, complaining doesn't help. Thanks, this should be helpful... if the SJ people around me will have the patience to allow me to think of how to put my words in S ways.

[gwyd]

It's frustrating, I agree.

I'm not sure they can meet us halfway, though. If they could think like us, they'd be us. They are the default, we are the exception.