Having examined the high EQ challenges of the SP, SJ, and NT, we now address the EQ challenges of the NF. If you are an NF, you know the challenges well. NFs have stronger emotional natures, so it goes without saying that they can experience some stronger challenges than the other temperaments. But let’s look at that positively because a high EQ in the NF is full of wonderful potential for extreme good.
The NF’s High EQ
Lives In and For the Future
If there is one temperament that keeps an eye wide open to the future possibilities, it is the NF. They walk ahead into the future with all six senses (the sixth being intuition) alive and on alert. What might be, should be, could be, or will be activates emotion in almost all scenarios.
Emotional intelligence needs this vigilant watchdog mindset to warn of possible dangers and to expect ahead of time the triggering of the NF’s powerful emotions. In fact, advance notice, often supplied by their intuition, is a key for them in preparing for emotional trauma.
Future possibilities either elate or traumatize the NFs, who always feed their positive emotions with an injection of hope. “Without hope,” one NF wrote, “the people perish,” and it is very true of all temperaments. Actually, emotional intelligence that comes from scanning the future aims at discovering and using hope to lift spirits and feed determination in order to weather any storm.
Nonuse: When focused on the past, NFs tend to find reasons for guilt and self disrespect. Consequently, all hope vanishes and depression enters. Additionally, they cannot focus too intently on the present because it does not hold meaning and significance. Meaning an requires a perspective the present cannot give. They find emotional control only in the hope and faith that the future presents and in the idealism that interprets their future for them. For the NF, a view of the future can spell emotional intelligence.
Overuse: Searching the future for hope can lead to an intense scrutiny of it that the unknown nature of the future can’t sustain without arousing negative emotions. Since all scrutiny of the future results in introspection for the NF, the introspection can initiate troublesome thoughts and feelings.
It is a complex problem to be strong on possibilities, hope, and faith while also strong on introspection with a tendency to think poorly of one’s self. Emotional intelligence often escapes the NF in this mix. Emotional intelligence says to the NF, “Keep all things positive.”
Misuse: Have you ever heard of the phrase “so heavenly minded they are of no earthly use”? This is unfair. But if the future is where they live in fantasy, they can find it hard to keep their feet on the ground — especially the NFs who have a “P” in their profile. The misuse of imagination and fantasy makes them into escapists. With this motivation the NF can quickly become unintelligent.
Passionate, Enthusiastic
This, too, is a double edged sword. First, the positive edge: passion and enthusiasm create positive emotions. Without these the NF feels dead. As a matter of fact, passion makes any emotion stronger. And the power of the NF’s passion is legendary. Passion can overpower negative emotions and keep them safely at bay. Skilled from the frequent use of enthusiasm and passion, the NF develops considerable emotional intelligence from this strength.
However, passion can be all-consuming. Accordingly, when it fades or is overcome by some negative idea, the vacuum it creates sucks all the hope and joy out of the spirit. The NF is left with what feels like inner death. When this happens, all emotional intelligence is lost.
Nonuse: The nonuse of passion effects the same results. For the NF, life is nothing without passion. In fact, all their emotions — even the negative ones (like having no emotion) — are fired to white heat in the NF’s furnace. A high EQ for the NF is (and I repeat) keeping all emotions positive. And no essential ones can be absent.
Overuse: The NF feels that it is not possible to overuse any positive emotion. However, overuse of negative ones often occurs.
Misuse: Being passionate for causes that damage others, even if the idea is needed, brings a loss of personal integrity to the NF and destroys the purity of their noble emotions. The passion of revenge certainly destroys their self-image once they hold themselves accountable for the wrongs. Purity of motive and purpose is emotional intelligence for the NF.
Sensitive
Sensitive sounds like the opposite of emotional intelligence, but only if we are thinking of the damaging, negative emotions that erupt in the NF. Positive emotions that are sensitive to other people’s needs are helpful and intelligent — indicative of a high EQ.
The NF is known for their sensitivity. It breeds giftedness when emotions feed imagination. As a result, the world beyond reason is penetrated and portrayed in art, word, or personal relationship. Emotionally intelligent sensitivity is the use of emotion to enrich lives, whether their own or others. Love, hope, faith, gentleness, goodness: all partner with self-control. And the NF’s highly tuned emotions make each more rewarding. We all want to be the recipients of sensitive, positive emotions.
Nonuse: When the NF loses sensitivity, they feel hard to themselves and others. Furthermore, they can develop anger toward life that dismisses all their assets. A non-sensitive NF is a failure to themselves and a discomfort to others.
Overuse: When too sensitive, they become a threat to themselves as well as others. “Too sensitive” is defined as emotionally reactive to situations that don’t warrant the heat. The NF will typically hate themselves for this and apologize profusely or sink into the mire of inner embarrassment that results in self abuse. They can whip themselves mercilessly and punish their self-esteem. Overuse of sensitivity is nearly always turned inward on themselves.
There is something dark about this introjection. Why they do this is a mystery to others but not to them. They “know” they are not worthy. It follows that the comforting words of others fall on unresponsive ears.
Misuse: Of course, the overuse is a misuse as well. The misuse is to blame themselves for being sensitive and for not redirecting the gift of sensitivity to better and more profitable use. Emotional intelligence sinks to its lowest in the temperament in which it also finds its highest expression.
Resources to Help You:
THE WONDERFUL TRUTH ABOUT EMOTION
Are there such things as intelligent emotions? Intelligently Emotional will argue that there are. And they are the ones we must focus on if we want to know success.
Ray W. Lincoln will show us how understanding the patterns of emotion in our temperament will enable us to manage our emotions effectively. If you long to know how to understand your emotions and the immense power of your feelings, Intelligently Emotional will show you the way. The path to real emotional intelligence requires learning to partner with intelligent emotions.
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Our first and most important task in a world-changing mission is to learn how to think straight (and teach straight thinking) and combat the insurgence of crooked thinking in our culture and in our world today. If we become passive victims of this crooked way of thinking, we promote it. Furthermore, if we remain silent, we also give it credence. In Who Am I?, the reader progresses from how we have become “crooked thinkers” to how to break out of this prison of the mind to become instruments of change for a better world. We do this by recognizing from where we derive our value as humans. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln