but I hope it did.
Not an ISTJ but I'll answer anyway: I don't think it's type-related. I think that if you had an awesome childhood -- or a bad one -- you'll remember it as such as soon as you're old/mature enough to put things into perspective.
I remember my childhood as being happy and fun, and that's because 1) I had cool parents and 2) I have a good personality for only-child-hood (i.e. I wasn't lonely due to not having a constant companion of roughly my age). And I do tend to represent it that way. I feel like both ESTJs and ISTJs are too straightforward to consider consistently representing things as worse than they were, but I dunno.
Are the instances with ISTJs that you have in mind joking-type situations? i.e. ISTJs bringing up negative childhood things as an example of dark humor? Because I think xxTJs in general are prone towards that -- not necessarily with childhoods but with sad or upsetting things presented lightly. It's a good way to talk about your feelings without actually talking about your feelings, you know?
Not sure if that helped at all
Hm.
Well, the ISTJs I know don't suffer from chronic pain; closest I can think of is that one of them is prone towards ear infections -- but then again my ESFP friend gets pneumonia every year and I think the level of misery in each of those is comparable. So I dunno about correlations between those things and type. If I end up having chronic pain it'll be from Rheumatoid Arthritis, which I will have gotten from my INFJ mother.
Hm.
As for pessimism: that makes sense. Not that ISTJs are pessimistic -- they would probably say that they're realists -- but both INTJs and ISTJs often come across as that, to me. Cynics. And I probably come across that way too, to a lesser extent. I think it has to do with having high standards, and being all too aware that most things don't fit those high standards. If the ISTJ you know was remembering his childhood negatively to you, the thought process was definitely "I know what a happy childhood should be, and my childhood didn't fit those criteria -- therefore it was an unhappy childhood". And if the ISTJ comes across as cynical/pessimistic regarding anything else, it'll be from the same thought process: "From my experience, this doesn't work out the way it hypothetically should, so it probably won't this time either." Si to the max.
)
Possibly -- or, like I mentioned before, he was emphasizing the bad for humor. Or, actually, another thing that STJs do is forget to acknowledge things that they consider "normal". He may have only been talking about the things that were bad because they stood out to him as being bad -- the rest he took for granted. Normal means the machine is running smoothly -- not more smoothly than usual, which would be the only time it deserves praise. He would probably praise his childhood if it were unusually happy -- which is why I praise mine so highly, since I'm surrounded by people who have much worse relationships with their parents than I do and than I always have.
Wow -- I've never met a glass-half-full INTJ before! That's pretty cool. One of my closer INTJ friends, although she only says very glowing things about her childhood, sometimes talks about the bad things for laughs -- e.g. her dysfunctional family. And she wonders why I make judgments about her family -- seriously, if all you talk about is how they messed you up, why should I think they're good parents?
(On an unrelated note, he once shot himself in the foot practicing the quick draw in his basement.
That's awesome! (Well not for him in the immediate aftermath, but I'll bet you all had a good laugh about it once he stopped being embarrassed!)
