# How Do You Strengthen Inferior Se?



## SheWolf (Apr 17, 2015)

Hello! INFJ here! I was just thinking of ways on how I can strengthen my Inferior Se in a HEALTHY way. I know that getting into the inferior too much is likely to leave us unbalanced, but someone who is way out of touch with their inferior function isn't healthy either. Pretty sure that strengthening my Se would help me out. Thanks!


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

I've found that I have to do it through Ni. Basically pass through all the functions in your stack. Trying to use Se in isolation doesn't work and starts to become like the "unhealthy" process. Tying them together is often where I go into that "flow" state Ni is known for. I am not sure how I came across these things to begin with, however I can give some examples. 



Math 
I was good at math in school, as long as I could grasp the concepts intuitively. It made all the memorizing and formulas just a small part of the big picture. (I know that Ni doms aren't necessarily strong here, but I think it's because they haven't "processed" it in the optimal Ni way and get too hung up in the Se part of it). ​ 


Music 
More challenging for me, but trying to learn an instrument via Se vs Ni are very different experiences.​ 


Pretty much anything you enjoy and want to improve at 
If you are internally-motivated to improve, I believe that an Ni dom is going to be using their Ni by default. If you start wanting to improve and become focused on performance and being good at it, rather than doing it because you want to - at least in my experience, this is where Se starts to dominate and I stop really learning and internalizing the thing I'm working on. Ni and Se together will lead to that "in the moment" experience. ​ 



Visualize things before doing them 
Kinda goes with the last point. I don't know about you but personally I look like an idiot when I do stuff and my mind isn't really clear about what my body is supposed to be doing. Ni is all about "visions" so visualization is really important for me. ​​

Meditation/Mindfulness Techniques
Though this is probably a good idea for anyone. Many of them connect you with sensory experience, which too much Ni can remove you from and give that schizoid effect where everything overwhelms you and makes you paranoid, but you aren't even aware of it. Lol.​
​


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## SheWolf (Apr 17, 2015)

ninjahitsawall said:


> I've found that I have to do it through Ni. Basically pass through all the functions in your stack. Trying to use Se in isolation doesn't work and starts to become like the "unhealthy" process. Tying them together is often where I go into that "flow" state Ni is known for. I am not sure how I came across these things to begin with, however I can give some examples.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Haha, I was TERRIBLE at math in school. Really though it was because I had no desire to learn it because it was boring and rote learning is NOT my thing. Funny though, I'm starting over with math in college and I think we will start to reach an agreement with each other


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

SheWolf said:


> Haha, I was TERRIBLE at math in school. Really though it was because I had no desire to learn it because it was boring and rote learning is NOT my thing. Funny though, I'm starting over with math in college and I think we will start to reach an agreement with each other


(I edited my post.. I remembered that last one afterwards). I felt that way about statistics in high school, I thought it was boring as hell. I started enjoying it more in college because it became relevant to my major and it was like, "whoa, you can turn shit that happens in the world into patterns and curves!" haha. It was like the missing ingredient. I don't know what it was with math, I kinda felt like it had no real purpose, but I enjoyed it. It was mostly intellectual masturbation.

I know an INFJ (friend of a friend/ex of a friend, not someone I ever knew too well) who got a math degree at the same school I went to. It seemed like a similar thing because she used to joke about having a "useless degree", so it seems like she majored it in for fun or something, lol.

In fact I've had several experiences like that with topics in college. They were so boring but then since they're taught more abstractly, I started to see patterns and look for trends (like in history, for example) which made it suddenly interesting. :wink: I think there is this bias amongst adults that children are more concrete thinkers, so everything is taught more concretely (Se-heavy) until university level.. or advanced high school level, where it's assumed you can understand abstractions as an "adult". I kinda think that's bullshit but maybe I'm the one being biased by my functions. :laughing:


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## Kintsugi (May 17, 2011)

Hang around some Se-dominants.


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## OtterSocks (Sep 24, 2015)

@ninjahitsawall But math doesn't seem sensing-related? Neither do some other aspects of the stuff you listed. Maybe y'all need an ESxP in this thread.

Try photography for sensing. Questing for beautiful pictures changes how you see the world on the day-to-day; now I'm always on the look out for colours and sunlight. Cooking's another thing, and most physical activity. If you can do extreme sports I'd say you've got it down pat.


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## Valtire (Jan 1, 2014)

Spend time with your polar opposite type. They will constantly bring it to your attention and can easily give you advice on how to use it healthily.


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## KalimofDaybreak (Aug 6, 2015)

The advice given here is good advice, but you need to also remember that Se is totally opposite your preferred perspective on the world. The activities that people are specifying allow you to reach your inferior functions through the middle two (math uses thinking, photography/any visual art would use feeling). As a general rule, anything that engages either middle function (F or T, mostly F since it's preferred) to get to a sensory focus is going to help you use your Se in a positive way. However, _never_ try to access Se directly. That usually works out poorly.


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## Inveniet (Aug 21, 2009)

Ask yourself when you are deep in your Ni visions etc.
What is it that I'm actually tracking?
Then instead of just spending time in your head, go seek out the objects of your abstractions!


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

OtterSocks said:


> @_ninjahitsawall_ But math doesn't seem sensing-related? Neither do some other aspects of the stuff you listed. Maybe y'all need an ESxP in this thread.
> 
> Try photography for sensing. Questing for beautiful pictures changes how you see the world on the day-to-day; now I'm always on the look out for colours and sunlight. Cooking's another thing, and most physical activity. If you can do extreme sports I'd say you've got it down pat.


It uses a lot of extroverted functioning (probably mainly Te and Se) the way education systems are designed, especially the earlier years, in my experience. I had teachers who were sticklers about using rulers to draw straight lines and evenly-spaced graphs, color-coding the graphs, etc. This was possibly one of the more difficult parts of math classes for me in earlier years of school, but it was usually my best subject when it came to grading. :laughing: Even in high school, there was a lot of that, even though the teachers were apparently good enough at drawing straight lines using their brains that they were the exception to their rule. The point of my post was to find ways to integrate Ni -Se by working through the function stack: 



KalimofDaybreak said:


> The advice given here is good advice, but you need to also remember that Se is totally opposite your preferred perspective on the world. The activities that people are specifying allow you to reach your inferior functions through the middle two (math uses thinking, photography/any visual art would use feeling). As a general rule, anything that engages either middle function (F or T, mostly F since it's preferred) to get to a sensory focus is going to help you use your Se in a positive way. However, _never_ try to access Se directly. That usually works out poorly.


This is pretty much what I was trying to get at with my examples. I think it can vary, but I was just listing things that worked for me. And yes, trying to use Se alone doesn't work for me. So I didn't include those things, but it is essentially what I mentioned under the "music" bullet, trying to engage Se directly is very different: It becomes mechanical, my mind detaches from the process and I feel like I'm not even really "present" in myself, just watching my hands move from the outside, if that makes sense... not healthy.


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## Hycocritical truth teller (Aug 29, 2011)

The Perfect Storm said:


> Hang around some Se-dominants.


I just actually wanted to ask her does she wanna hang out hahahhaha


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## Hycocritical truth teller (Aug 29, 2011)

SheWolf said:


> Hello! INFJ here! I was just thinking of ways on how I can strengthen my Inferior Se in a HEALTHY way. I know that getting into the inferior too much is likely to leave us unbalanced, but someone who is way out of touch with their inferior function isn't healthy either. Pretty sure that strengthening my Se would help me out. Thanks!


Think about what makes you feel uncomfortable about Se. But also bear in mind that inferior function is way different than the dominant. That means that things that Se dom do might still be unattractive to you. I, for example, have completely reversed order of functions than you do. Using Ni in your way would probably be troublesome for me.


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## PaladinX (Feb 20, 2013)

Lunges and squats.


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## OtterSocks (Sep 24, 2015)

KalimofDaybreak said:


> The advice given here is good advice, but you need to also remember that Se is totally opposite your preferred perspective on the world. The activities that people are specifying allow you to reach your inferior functions through the middle two (math uses thinking, photography/any visual art would use feeling). As a general rule, anything that engages either middle function (F or T, mostly F since it's preferred) to get to a sensory focus is going to help you use your Se in a positive way. However, _never_ try to access Se directly. That usually works out poorly.


Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Sensing is my tertiary, so.. 



ninjahitsawall said:


> It uses a lot of extroverted functioning (probably mainly Te and Se) the way education systems are designed, especially the earlier years, in my experience. I had teachers who were sticklers about using rulers to draw straight lines and evenly-spaced graphs, color-coding the graphs, etc. This was possibly one of the more difficult parts of math classes for me in earlier years of school, but it was usually my best subject when it came to grading. :laughing: Even in high school, there was a lot of that, even though the teachers were apparently good enough at drawing straight lines using their brains that they were the exception to their rule. The point of my post was to find ways to integrate Ni -Se by working through the function stack:


It seems your conception of math and mine are very different  I was wondering, because I don't get any sensing vibes from differential calculus and linear algebra.


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## Vahyavishdapaya (Sep 2, 2014)

The Perfect Storm said:


> Hang around some Se-dominants.


I try, you know, but all due respect, we find each other boring after some time. I'm not really much of a conversationalist about Se things (I just enjoy doing them, rather than discussing them at length), and vice versa with my Se-dom friends with my Ni things that I would not at all find boring to talk about. So in order to maintain a good friendship we don't really hang out for longer than an hour, sometimes two, at the most. That's about the time we begin to get bored. Maybe its because I am too immature and too demanding of others, maybe it could be because the Se doms I know just happen to be fairly unintelligent people (not saying all of you are! Just the ones I happen to know :frustrating. But it doesn't really work out too well.


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## ninjahitsawall (Feb 1, 2013)

OtterSocks said:


> Oh yeah. Forgot about that. Sensing is my tertiary, so..
> 
> 
> 
> It seems your conception of math and mine are very different  I was wondering, because I don't get any sensing vibes from differential calculus and linear algebra.


Conception? I don't think math is inherently Se-based. I've always experienced most of it internally, when I best understood it. But I think "STEM" things in general are useful for integrating N and S functions. 

Calculus is an example of how college was liberating for me in a way, because you didn't have teachers telling you how to do the assignments, which is sort of a distraction from actually grasping the concept.


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## TrailMix (Apr 27, 2011)

Do what I did. Become BFFs with an ESTP and have a poop-load of fun. Seriously. My best friend is an ESTP and we've learned a lot from each other

But other than that haha...

I honestly believe than an INFJ cannot be happy without Se. Dominant Ni mixed with Fe and Ti IN THAT ORDER creates a very stuck-in-your-head kind of person (especially if your Ti is rather strong).

My Se game has always been stronger than that of other INFJs (it seems) but I think that might be because i spent so much of my youth playing competitive team sports. Because of this, I've always enjoyed being outside and living in the moment when I can put myself in the right state of mind/place/time to do it.

If you're not into sports, try hiking or find an ESTP friend and go out for a crazy night and just see what happens. It taught me a lot about myself and about life.


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