# Being too careful/cautious and Ni



## Benja (Jan 26, 2012)

I've noticed that I'm extremely cautious/careful before taking a new action and I think it is due to my preference for Ni.

Would you agree that Ni could have this effect?

It's as if my Se picks up on an opportunity briefly and for the next month I'm sitting in my head considering every different possible outcome of taking or not taking said opportunity. I guess this could be a strength, but it's freaking paralyzing as well, as if I need an alarm that goes off after a certain amount of time to kick my ass into action.

It's sort of like being too open minded, yet too closed minded at the same time. 

I need to balance it, but whose to say how careful one should be... 

Thoughts?


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## tangosthenes (Oct 29, 2011)

It sort of depends on the nature of the opportunity. Is this an opportunity that will further you in life somehow, or is it just a random aside that you can take or not take without any major effect on what you want for yourself?

In the event that it is an opportunity that furthers you in life, it is probably good that you are sitting with it for so long. However, you need to be projecting this possibility into the world as you are considering its implications. If you never move past stage one, you will spend too much time doing essentially nothing, and doing something that you may not remember causing it to be lost in the long-run.

However, if it is just something you want to do in general, then it really doesn't matter. Think about it all you want, but ultimately the choice is due to other variables. In this situation, I would try to stop taking myself so seriously and just get out and take advantage of the opportunity.


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Benja said:


> I've noticed that I'm extremely cautious/careful before taking a new action and I think it is due to my preference for Ni.
> 
> Would you agree that Ni could have this effect?
> 
> ...


Of course Ni can do this, if one is only perceiving the world instead of being a part of it.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Just sounds like introversion in general (rejection of adapting to the outside world on it's terms). I don't think introverted intuition would lead to this (in fact, Jung analyst Marie Von Franz speaks of these types as being prone to spontaneity and randomness in how they deal with the outside world due to inferior Se!). In fact, a lot of what you're calling "intuition" sounds like thinking to me - intuition tends to quickly arrive at perception answers which would make taking action very quick and instinctive.


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> Just sounds like introversion in general (rejection of adapting to the outside world on it's terms). I don't think introverted intuition would lead to this (in fact, Jung analyst Marie Von Franz speaks of these types as being prone to spontaneity and randomness in how they deal with the outside world due to inferior Se!). In fact, a lot of what you're calling "intuition" sounds like thinking to me - intuition tends to quickly arrive at perception answers which would make taking action very quick and instinctive.


I disagree. Ni dominant people are going to tend to spend more time considering an idea than acting on the idea, but when they do act, it will be with an air that seems both decisive and out of context. This is not to say that if you're cautious you must be Ni dominant, but I do think it's fair to associate Ni dominance with a pattern of "inactivity" interrupted with sporadic bursts of action that an outsider might characterize as random.

If you think about the Ni-Se axis, this pattern follows naturally from NiSe values. The primary way that Ni dominant people think and deal with issues is by extracting an idea from the situation, discarding the "unnecessary" context, and re-framing the idea at hand. "Sure it looks that way from this angle, but what if we consider it this way? What if the true nature of what we're talking about is actually X, not Y? Or maybe it's a synthesis of X and Y, sprinkled with a touch of Z!" When confronted with problems, the Ni perspective will be to re-frame the problem. This is in contrast to the Se perspective, which values actions and sensory experiences that are liberated from past contexts. An Ni dominant person will rely on their ability to re-frame and re-analyze until they take (or are forced to take) the Se perspective. An Ni dominant person who doesn't take the Se perspective unless forced to might seem monastic, sedate, and overly cautious, but characterized by sporadic outbursts of "directionless", "rash", or "uncontrolled" action in times of stress.

Again, other configurations of cognitive perspectives may produce similar outside behavior, but being "overly cautious" is certainly a fair prediction of Ni dominant individuals, based on the theory.


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## Pirate (Jan 2, 2013)

I've (INTJ) been told I alternate between being way overcautious and "impulsively doing the logical thing." If I can relate the situation to past situations (even very contextualy different past situations) then I make "snap" decisions based on a logic I'm not consciously aware of unless I stop and look back. Thats my Ni. Overcaution comes into play when I can't use Ni because I don't have anything to relate the new experience to. I have to examine every angle and consciously attempt to manually reason my way to the conclusion instead of Ni just giving it to me. In short, I'd guess overcaution in Ni doms is due to the Ni dominance, but its the inability to rely on the Ni dominance in said situation and instead being forced to rely on a lower function (Se for the INTJ) that is actually the cause. (note that I'm speaking from personal experience and reflection, there is a chance I'm way off base)


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## myjazz (Feb 17, 2010)

Pirate said:


> I've (INTJ) been told I alternate between being way overcautious and "impulsively doing the logical thing." If I can relate the situation to past situations (even very contextualy different past situations) then I make "snap" decisions based on a logic I'm not consciously aware of unless I stop and look back. Thats my Ni. Overcaution comes into play when I can't use Ni because I don't have anything to relate the new experience to. I have to examine every angle and consciously attempt to manually reason my way to the conclusion instead of Ni just giving it to me. In short, I'd guess overcaution in Ni doms is due to the Ni dominance, but its the inability to rely on the Ni dominance in said situation and instead being forced to rely on a lower function (Se for the INTJ) that is actually the cause. (note that I'm speaking from personal experience and reflection, there is a chance I'm way off base)


Sounds like Si


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

In Ni doms, being overly careful would come from inferior Se (feeling accident-prone for no reason (or sort of personal reasons at the core), etc.).


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## Scelerat (Oct 21, 2012)

From my observation ISTJs seem to suffer from much the same problem. Could it be linked to Je combined with a dominant perceiving function?


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## Donovan (Nov 3, 2009)

Scelerat said:


> From my observation ISTJs seem to suffer from much the same problem. Could it be linked to Je combined with a dominant perceiving function?


this is what i've been thinking (after hearing someone say that only Si-doms could be an enn. 6, which is characterized by anxiety). to me, i think if the psyche has been arranged in a fashion to where the inferior is the cause of the anxiety, then it would make sense if Pe-inferiors to have some sort of fear surrounding their view of the external world, whether it be a "what could happen" scenario, or by a general sense of feeling overwhelmed, subdued, or just a fearfulness of what the outer world appears to be.


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## Herp (Nov 25, 2010)

If anything, I'd say it's the shaky grasp on the Pe inferior.

Being ISTJ, I can agree with @Scelerat observations.


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## elixare (Aug 26, 2010)

Benja said:


> I've noticed that I'm extremely cautious/careful before taking a new action and I think it is due to my preference for Ni.
> 
> Would you agree that Ni could have this effect?
> 
> ...


Could be Ni. Could also be enneagram type 5/type 6.


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## Abraxas (May 28, 2011)

Being "cautious and careful" transcends the scope of any one function - this is true - as well as the Enneagram. But, your OP doesn't sound like you really wanted to know about that. It sounded to me like you wanted to know more about how the cognitive functions work, in particular Ni. I hope my description helps.

Being a Ni-dom is like spending most of your time distracted by the archetypal images in your head, which you are constantly shaping into various forms, and in doing so, gaining an insight into a hypothetical situation. With extroverted judgment, you start to use this gift to play around with facts by liberating them from their immediate context and applying them in a symbolic way to try and manifest or represent the archetypal images generated by your subconscious, but the emphasis - if you are a Ni-dom - is still on the _playing around with the facts_ versus applying them.

It takes maturity to get to the point where to start to differentiate your extroverted judgment enough that it no longer drains or bothers you to engage the world on its own terms. You start to actively participate and feel like part of life, instead of being defensive all the time or passive aggressive and just "playing along" so to speak. Instead of using Ni to deconstruct everything and thus fall into nihilism, you go beyond the nihilism to achieve a state of total freedom in which you can imagine yourself to be anything you want and then visualize the means to manifest it. But this takes a real personal effort that not all Ni-doms show, and so many, if not most that I've personally seen here and elsewhere, tend to never get that far, and instead they get stuck halfway there, somewhere in the, "okay, I need to take this seriously - but I'd rather not have too," phase of avoiding obligation and shifting blame onto others or being overly critical of others while rationalizing away the flaws in oneself.

When a Ni-dom decides they are ready, they can begin to imagine their own existence within the "language" of their auxiliary extroverted judgment. With Te, they focus on trying to conceptualize new facts out of old ones by pulling them out of their immediate objective context and abstracting them out with introverted intuition to see what they are really made of. This "abstraction" process is done automatically by the subconscious, and so the results "appear" to intuitive perception the same way objects appear to the physical senses. When you look at a "door", you recognize a door. It is the same with intuition. With Ni-dominant however, you spend so much time intoxicated by this kind of perception that you begin to recognize the _universal transparency of facts, and the objective absence of any kind of metaphysical certitude about anything._ This ultimate kind of extreme skepticism is what being a Ni-dom is all about, and when you leverage that kind of perception against facts, the so-called "facts" take on a completely different meaning and purpose.

Facts are no longer about being objectively wrong or right, but about what objectively "works" and what doesn't. With Ni-Te, "truth" is just a convention assigned to proper reasoning, and "facts" don't need to describe objective forms (inferior Se), instead, facts can describe abstract _functions_. In this sense, everything is understood via its objective application, the real results that it produces, and how it produces them. For instance, when I think of a hammer, I'm not really thinking of a real object that one can physically perceive. Instead, I'm thinking of what it is that a hammer _does - the intuitive archetype of the hammer_. And in that sense, what actually constitutes a hammer in reality, that is, whatever is _in fact_ a "hammer," is just _whatever__ can do what a hammer does._

To put a spin on this without losing momentum, now try to imagine that same kind of mentality with Fe. Form is a matter of function, but now instead of impersonal _things_ we're talking about emotions, so Ni is caught up in the act of perceiving the abstract practical essence of cultural values and people's feelings. "What is anger _for_?" This is the kind of very practical, yet intuitive and abstract kind of question that I find myself asking all the time, for example. But this can be applied in very immediate and concrete ways. For instance, I am in a situation where I am making an ethical judgment about what's going on. Someone got upset, and I'm trying to decide if I think they were right to get upset in case I ought to take their side. On the one hand, I immediately I outwardly know what most people would consider the "right" answer based on my experience with extroverted feeling judgment, and I might just take the easy route and not think too much about it and side with that.

Values takes the place of facts, so just as one can go on a crusade researching new facts in one sense, one can do the same thing with values - and this is what I am trying to describe myself doing here. Yet, because I am Ni-dominant, there is the sense that, whatever the value happens to be - however it is that most people would emotionally react to something - isn't just a matter of circumstance and facts about biology - it's about what people really truly desire with all their heart, _deep down inside._ Whatever that is doesn't necessarily have to make sense or be logical, but for me it must be _acknowledged._ Most of the time I am contemplating this and trying to decide what this insight means in terms of a purpose for my own life.


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## JungyesMBTIno (Jul 22, 2011)

Wrong. Ni domiance is not really a person being distracted by archetypal images - that isn't type. Frankly, I would think someone who organizes experiences internally would be more careful/cautious outwardly (Si doms) than someone who just takes the outer world at face value for doing stuff (Se, definitely inferior Se).


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## Teybo (Sep 25, 2012)

JungyesMBTIno said:


> Wrong. Ni domiance is not really a person being distracted by archetypal images - that isn't type. Frankly, I would think someone who organizes experiences internally would be more careful/cautious outwardly (Si doms) than someone who just takes the outer world at face value for doing stuff (Se, definitely inferior Se).


Are you suggesting that Ni-dominants do not organize experiences internally?


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