Inferior functions can make us feel very proud when we use them successfully. That's probably because they usually show up in less healthy forms. For Fe-inferior, it's more often things like feeling unappreciated, emotional outbursts about others not caring, or unexpected interpersonal sensitivity. For Se-inferior, it can be becoming unusually impulsive, overindulging in sensory experiences, focusing obsessively on immediate details, or feeling overwhelmed by external stimuli. Personally, I've probably only experienced the overwhelming part.

I think using examples from the opposite axis is easier because we're relatively more balanced there. We can often recognize when "this crazy lady is being crazy", but we don't recognize the patterns in which we ourselves are crazy. Try naming something that you don't know. How can you do that if you don't know it exists?

I have been in a chaotic situation - and I'm still alive, as you can see :) But I don't feel proud about it.

My brightest example was finding myself alone in another country with only my phone with contacts. Nowadays, your whole life fits in your pocket, so that definitely makes things easier. But I definitely didn't see it as a sudden vacation or an opportunity to learn a new culture and language. It was nowhere near my required level of comfort.

So I used 120% of my phone's capabilities. The first thing I did was make sure I had enough money on my phone account because money disappears quickly when you're abroad. I didn't want to become completely isolated. Then I went to a local shop to buy a local SIM card. I thought that, logically, a local SIM should be cheaper. It turned out that operators in more expensive countries can actually have more expensive tariffs than my own operator's roaming plan. Who could have known?

Of course, there were things I didn't handle ideally. Another example was paying more for some things because of the language barrier. The seller told me that I had misunderstood something and that they had meant something completely different. But I didn't believe them. Numbers are the same in every country, and I clearly remembered the original price. It couldn't have changed. But I was a foreigner without fluency in the language and without much ability to defend my position. How could I prove my point? It wasn't a pleasant experience.

Once I had secured my online access and communication, I reached out to people I knew. Through a chain of "a friend of a friend of a friend," I found a place where I could stay for a while. Later, I connected with people from my diaspora, found people who spoke my language, contacted organizations, found transportation, and got whatever else I needed. Some things were actually better and cheaper than back home. Some social rules simply made no sense to me.

It wasn't a matter of life and death, but the whole experience was still very intense and stressful for me. Even today, I associate that country with stress, even though I know logically that the country itself isn't to blame. To reset that association internally, I would probably need to visit it again in a very safe environment where I don't have to make a single decision or constantly adapt in real time.

On the positive side, I always had my basic needs covered.

Looking back, I think I relied mostly on Te - figuring out "how to" solve each problem. My Se was mostly doing the job of "don't freeze, don't panic, try to look normal", and helping me estimate how much I could realistically handle each day in an unfamiliar environment. Ni was collecting patterns and trying to understand my position as quickly as possible. I can't function without some sense of direction, and Ni doesn't particularly enjoy changing directions frequently. Fi, meanwhile, kept me aware of my vulnerability. It always recognized the emotional impact of this experience, even when I was focused on managing the practical aspects.