NF Communication style

[Gaze]

NFs, how would you describe your communication style?

Do you agree with the description below:

Idealist Communication
NFs are extremely sensitive to subtleties in gestures and metaphoric behavior not always visible to other types. He is also vulnerable to adding dimensions to communications which are not always shared or perceived by the commonly found SJs and the SPs. However these added dimensions are understood by the NTs and playful discussions about abstract ideas are found when NFs and NTs are lucky enough to find each other.

The zeal to connect disparate ideas is why the Idealist communication is often laced with metaphors, ascribing features to people and things that belong to other people and things - animate or inanimate, visible or invisible. NF's have no trouble saying this person is a devil, or that one is an angel. It isn't that the first person acts like a devil, he is one; and the other person doesn't simply have the attributes of an angel, she is one. And the sun smiles at us, a corporation is grasping, a train roars, and love is a rose. In just this way Gandi described his search for what he called "Absolute Truth": "The little fleeting glimpses...I have been able to have or Truth can hardley convey an idea of the indescribable lustre of Truth, a million times more intense than that of the sun we daily see with our eyes."
Beyond the vivid metaphor, Gandhi also shows the Idealists' charming habit of overstatement, quite the opposite of the Conceptualist's penchant for understatement. Idealist expression is rich in hyperbole and exaggeration, and at the same time short on gradation. NF's do not say they are "somewhat" interested in an idea, or dissatisfied "in some degree" with a person's behavior; they are totally fascinated or "completely" disgusted, "perfectly" delighted, or "absolutely" appalled.
While they tend to ignore degrees of gradation, Idealists are highly sensitive to the nuances of communication that qualify messages, the body language, facial expressions, and voice inflections which, quite often, the other character types are not even aware of. And NF's are so sensitive to subtleties of spoken language, finding implications and insinuations in the slightest remark. One consequence of this hypersensitivity is that now and then NF's make mistakes in attributing meanings to communications that are not intended by the senders.
Idealists are naturally inductive in their thought and speech, which is to say that they move quickly from the part to the whole, from a few particulars to sweeping generalizations, from the smallest sign of something to its entirety. With their focus on the unseen potentials, on the not visible and the not yet, Idealists show an extraordinary sensitivity to hints of things, mere suggestions, inklings, intimations, symbols. To be sure, such inductive inferences, requiring what is called the "intuitive leap", can be astonishing to others, especially in cases of mind reading and extra-sensory perception. At the very least, Idealists are the best suited of all the types to read between the lines, or to have a sixth sense about people, and they do indeeed follow theirr hunches, heed their feelings, and insist they "just know" what people are really up to, or what they really mean. Even with complicated issues NF's need hear only the first words of an explanation to feel they understand the subject fully, jumping from telling details to larger meanings.
http://www.davidmarkley.com/personality/idealist.htm

 

[Nitesteamer]

For me, in vebal communication, it is common for me to assemble statements in such a way that concreteness is often laced with metaphor, and intuitive jumps between ideas(that seem obvious to me). Later, if I think about what I said...minus the jumps... I realize that the listener could have easily interpreted the thing I said in a way that I did not intend.

People who rush me when I'm talking, only end up with a choppy sentence fragment. This benefits no one.

 

[justeccentricnotinsane]

Overstatement and exaggeration I am very much guilty of. I'm not sure whether or not I talk in metaphor. I tend to take metaphoric tangents or explain things using unrelated matter. For example, I may use a model created in the field of linguistics to explain a concept that is normally thought of to be scientific if I think it is a good way of making it clearer for other people. I tend to talk around a subject, finding it difficult to say one absolute statement without being aware that it is constantly related to many other things that inform it and on which it informs. I see everything (EVERYTHING) as symbiotic which means I see the world in flux and motion but static. I see the world as if it is in constant vertical motion but no horizontal motion, if that makes sense. I tend to describe the way elements inform each other, moving vertically rather than horizontally. So if I am explaining something I do not say it in a cause and effect way. I start with the concept or underlying principle and then I move upwards to matters informed by this principle and how those matters essentially inform the principal itself. Though I will be decisive in my opinion and the weighting on what I see as important. So I will make an absolute statement followed by a disclaimer.

My communicative style is direct and informing. I tend to "teach" when I am talking to others, though I do not mean it to come across this way. I have decided against the words "preach" and "lecture" because these would imply me taking a position above others to set them right. This is not how it works. It is simply that I make apparently unequivocal statements that do not seem to have room for movement and I say them with great certainty (because I do not see other possibilities at the time, they need to come from the outside, usually). I am aware that the system of things is symbiotic and that what I say is multifaceted, so the disclaimer tends to be an "of course...this is also correct...and this also feeds into it...and this is also a factor" BUT assert that there is only one definite consequence.

So I sound direct (bossy sometimes), informing and very certain when I speak. I do use metaphors in some ways though I don't tend to notice myself using them unless someone points it out, so that really slips me by and I wouldn't be able to comment on it. Far from being creative, however, I would say that the way i speak is rather matter of fact. I am creative in that I am artistic, but I do not say "creative things", except that I may personify things - for instance, in everyday conversation I may call a cupboard "stout", which would usually be an adjective reserved for people, and sounds more like the description you would find in a novel. I also tend to give a lot of examples of the same thing - some metaphoric, some just empirical - to get my point across. But I wouldn't say I have any kind of a spiritual, metaphorical sense about me.

The adjective I use the most is by far "interesting". I find everything around me "interesting". But I'm not sure I speak as if "they are the devil", but that's confused me because it's brought something in from a spiritual realm that would never occur to me. I don't do religious symbolism because I haven't been exposed to it in my direct life, being surrounded by atheist ideas from birth and religion does not make its way into British schools very much.

I do tend to see nuances everywhere and attempt to qualify as I go along to ensure I am using the correct words to pin things down as accurately as possible. But I also do that other thing mentioned of being offended when others don't - but more often than not I know whether they mean it that way or not and 95 per cent of the time I readily translate.

So in summary:
- direct
- certain
- abrupt
- thorough rather than concise
- forgot to put this but occasionally begin with an abstract idea then have to work backwards to reality in my explanation to others.

 

[Razare]

I think overstatement applies to ENFJ, INFJ, and INFP's... I'll assume it applies to ENFP's as well but I don't know enough of them to say. So it seems to fit.

How it's done differs among NFJ's and NFP's, I think. NFP's take certain things too seriously which conflict with their core values, and from my perspective they might overstate the importance of that violation. Yet, I'll have a global morality which if violated, I get just as huffy about, thus leading to overstatements to make my point.

NFP's and NFJ's have different perspectives on "what people are really up to". NFJ's seek to understand that person's perspective, NFP's seek to feel that person's perspective (if possible, it's difficult if they lack similar experiences in their life to sympathize with).

 

[Gaze]

I do relate to the intuitive jumps in understanding where I'll pick up on something but assume that everyone else sees it only to find that I have to break down my train of thought and explain it step by step to help them see the connections or lines of reasoning.