Orangey
Blah
- Joined
- Jun 26, 2008
- Messages
- 6,354
- MBTI Type
- ESTP
- Enneagram
- 6w5
Fi was something both parents would push on me as I entered adolescence, but it went over my head. My "Feeling" was more concerned more with the external harmony with others, and they believed harmony should start within, and you should have more of a logical harmony on the outside to get along with people (neatness in appearance, order,etc.) I could never understand this, and it was often aggrivating, and came acrossbto me as pacifying. If others don't respect you, just "respect yourself" and it will all work out.
Thus this came up in their use of Fe, which was Trickster. They were not really concerned with shared values (generally calling society an "insane asylum"), but when I was having problems with people, they appealed to external values, and even overestimated them, as Berens even says. Like suggesting I had trouble getting girls because I would sometimes have wrinkes in my clothes, or because they saw me with my shirt coming untucked sometimes. Yet one girl I liked would hang around with a bummy guy who was dirty from head to toe. I tried to tell them that couldn't be it, but then they appealed to their age and knowledge. So again, it was confusing for them to call society an insane asylum, but then criticize me for not going along with it. But that was their way of trying to motivate me to grow and survive in the world. When they did articulate Ti "principles", they were quite literally, "critical parents".
My parents were exactly like this (ISTJ mom, ISFJ dad). When I was in middle school, they would go on and on about how they felt the system was stupid, and how teachers were morons, and so on. Then, when I showed up with a detention for something silly like chewing gum, they became all rigid about how I shouldn't be blaming anyone else but myself because I had pissed the teacher off (there was no official anti-chewing gum rule).
They do this to my brothers (ENTP & INTP) as well. They would go on and on about how they should be their own people, how they should be individuals and stand up for themselves in the face of everyone else's values (and this would literally come in the form of a lecture). But now that my brothers are teenagers, and one has decided to grow his hair out longer for style while the other has let his grow unruly for lack of caring, my parents harp on them all the time to get it cut. They've even threatened to cut it themselves. In all fairness, though, this pressure comes more from my ISFJ dad than my ISTJ mom...which I think may reflect more of a homophobic tendency than a type related difference.