Think of these as:
2. There is a guy, let's call him Adrian. Adrian often has a facial expression like this, Adrian wears clothes like that, Adrian once made a noise like this or that, when someone was talking, also, hey, there is Suzy, whom I can see around Adrian, and I already know Suzy is an X and Y type of person. Sometimes these small elements and details don't become realized in my head - I am only left with one big impression - that Adrian is a douchebag. Or Adrian is a really nice person. Or Adrian is afraid of heights. Or whatever. Basically, it often feels like that even though I realize and know about different information elements, I just... somehow even as I know about them, I forget some of them, or glance over them, and what is stronger in me is the actual final conclusion and impression, and because of that I sometimes have to go back and analyze what lead me to that in the very beginning.
1. Imagine going into a forest, where you find a golden feather (this is the more ambigious part, I guess the Ni), and you start to think, "hm, what is this golden feather?", and then you are like "ah, I used to have a golden bird, when I was small... but why should I think about my childhood right now, why does this golden feather want to remind me of that ?" And then you go down and down, trying to find the connections, or make a coherent structure, until you snap out of that picture, there is no forest anymore and no golden feather. You are left with the what triggered the forest and the golden feather, let's call it situation X, and the childhood association.
So there you go - situation X had to do something with your childhood, and whatever you understood from it, voilá.
3. And sometimes, when I speak to people, they mention something, and it seems there is no even process anywhere, I just immediately have this click - Oh, yes, he does this, because 20 years ago he <insert>, his family was like <insert>, and now he is desperately <insert>. But sometimes it still misses these elements I wrote down for you, until I give a bit of time.*
Basically, the impresson comes first, then the details that would explain the impression.
*Almost like, they are there, I see them, but they are still... in a kind of fog? It can happen to me sometimes, that I am left with impression, and even when somebody explained something to me with the actual elements, I focus so much on the overall impression, that the details are hiding behind this fog, and sometimes I even forget about them.