True Growth of Extroverted Feeling & Introverted Feeling

Extroverted Feeling (Fe) and Introverted (Fi) exists within everyone. One of these two will be dominant within a person as one of the first four in their cognitive function line, while the other will be in the recess of their unconscious. As we grow older, every person will likely develop and exercise Fe and Fi in more mature ways. However, as we come to identify with those specific emotions, it influences our perception of the world more than we realize. To reach true growth of our individual selves, we must be able to see past the bias of our primary cognitive function line. This means being consciously aware of how we are prone to think and pushing our thinking boundaries beyond what our impulse feelings would tell us. This will be explained further.

The natural state of Introverted Feeling (Fi) is experiencing a depth of emotion. This way of processing in the world directly relates to how the Fi user feels about something. This level of depth is usually reserved for few people. A more dominant Fi user often has a concern with the genuine expression of their emotions and are more selective of it’s use.

The natural state of Extroverted Feeling (Fe) channels actions and words for influencing others as a wave of outward emotion. It is an ‘expansive’ function extending it’s attention to many people. An Fe user usually finds it easier to “fake” emotions and influence others with their show of it. A more dominant Fe user tends to use their skills more freely.

Fe users will care for a breadth of people, often showing a great concern with society and it’s core values. This can lead them to be caring of many people in general but it can potentially lead to superficial valuations of people and also with the Fe users own interpretation of the world. The Fe user is more prone to becoming lost in the values of society without giving internal thought to the user’s own values and interpretations. The crowd’s opinion is usually given more weight over the individual.

On the other end, because Fi “cares” more in-depth, they tend to be selective. However, this comes at the cost of a rigid “us vs other” mentality. The Fi user becomes too identified with their interpretations of their “in-group” and may be relatively heartless to those on the outside that they don’t deem important. They may get attached to the values of their in-group without consideration into the implications of overall society, potentially leading to extremist tendencies.

What we can see here is a difference in objectives between the natural state of these two cognitive functions. Both the users of Fe and Fi are severely lacking in the LESSONS that the other function can teach.

Fi users would benefit from broadening it’s range of acceptance for all. Fe users growth goal would be to find individual depth within it’s acceptance of society’s norms and people.

This must be done consciously, as our natural inclinations will be to follow the bias of our naturally dominant cognitive functions. By opening ourselves up in this way, we surpass our internal limitations towards something potentially greater than we would have otherwise achieved.