[MBTI General] Parental Influence of Personality

[Crescent Fresh]

My mother has the biggest impact on my personality in a negitive way.
Much of the pain in my childhood was given by my mother.
She never showed much love to me. She had a hard time controlling her anger, and gives cutting criticisms to me. Even as a kid, I was always yelled, being cursed, and shouted at. It made me guard my feelings carefully and not very open emotionally to people unless I really trust them.

You have my endless sympathy right there. Your experience reminds me of my best friend, except for his mother constantly guilt-tripping him (even ask him to die together with her through her high-wired emotional explosion) ever since she found out his Dad was having an affair with another women.

I sometimes wonder if having a complicated upbringing in one's childhood may have a huge factor with subconscious emotional manipulation. I've seen quite a few common traits from people who were raised from a dysfunctional environment. Just a thought.

 

[mmhmm]

Now I wonder how much your parents have exerted their influence on you?

immensely, i'm one of those kids that think they
won the parental lottery. even more so when i
was old enough to realise they're just human.

simply put, my mother (esfj) taught me how to dream
and my father (istj) taught me how to find my way back
down to earth whenever i wanted to float away.

 

[Such Irony]

My mom's an xSFJ and I think that's had alot of influence on my INTP manifests itself. I have times where I wonder if I'm actually an ISFJ with well developed NT. I think due to my mothers influence I've learned to develop Fe and Si to a greater extent than is seen in a lot of INTPs. On the minus side, I was raised to think it wasn't good to question authority and its better to blend in than to stand out as well as to always say and do the polite thing even if its a great inconvenience to yourself. I've had to learn to undo some of the programming I received.

 

[BAJ]

/I didn't read the thread yet, but I intend to. I for a while there, I wasn't sure I wanted to read this one...or comment.

My father was somewhat of an alcoholic, rage-aholic sort of ISTJ type. He wrote operations manuals for chemical refineries, and I think his objective was to make me into who he planned, through ridicule, criticism, shaming and such. He would deride me in front of others. His sense of humor was to do things like tell you Tabasco sauce was catch up. I could go on, of course.

Suffice it to say that he never said a positive thing to me until I was about 28 years old, and it didn't matter if I did well in school, became and Eagle Scout, or whatever else. The focus was always on not meeting the bar, and if you met that bar, it was raised during the night.

This left me with a virtually bottomless need (desire) for approval, validation, acceptance, love, and other things from authority figures. I became some hypersensitive emotional wreck. Of course, I'm 40 now, and not 17. At age 17 had my first hospitalization for depression. Now it's been subjected to catharsis, and of course by now I have a wide variety of mystical powers. After my first hospitalization, I took my parents (dragged them) to "Dead Poets Society", since my father is like the father in the movie. He mellowed. Nowadays, he's much more mellowed and humbled, and he knows if he says something too tactless, that I'll leave.

Oh, my mom has the guilt trip thing too.

 

[mrcockburn]

I forgot to say, my father is an ENTP my mother is an EXFP and my bro is an ENFP (we all grew up in the same house/s). I do also have an INTP sister and i suspect another ENFP brother (not certain about him though) who i did spend a lot of time with but did not live with.
AND I LOVE THEM ALL!

All those P's, no J's! Sounds chaotic.

More pleasant than a single ENTJ raising only one ENTJ though. Some intense headbutting there.

Although it seems like a family full of SJs get along better than even two NJs.

 

[iwakar]

Hrm. Their influence is enormous, as was birth order (I'm the oldest).

My mother was a tough, abusive, hot/cold pugilist (traumatized ESFJ) that taught me the necessity of defending one's self against bullies (including her) and didn't learn to say I love you till I was in my twenties. My father (INTP) was geographically/emotionally distant/passive (however, he was very liberal with the hugs and kisses when around), indifferent in general to his children, and when attentive --inadvertently critical and unsupportive. I was always drawn to my father however, despite his negligence... him being the lesser of two evils I suppose. He never struck me or deliberately harmed me in any way and that critical difference between my parents allowed for our relationship to improve over the years at a faster rate. We have learned to appreciate one another's perspective, but given his inability to recognize and apologize for past wrongs and his continued marriage to an insecure manipulator, our relationship will always remain just out of reach of fulfilling. Progress with my mother has been and will remain much, much slower, but we have made some strides.

My mother and father are bizarre representations of war and peace to me and my life has been an exercise in walking the right side of the line at the right time. I suppose they've taught me the importance of BALANCE in life by representing what happens when you do not achieve it.

 

[sculpting]

My family is filled with crazy people. I should include myself, although I find it quite funny, because if you dont laugh, you cry.

My mom is an enfp who was abused very badly as a child-physically, sexually and emotionally. She ran away at 15 and got married. She carries a lot of diagnosis, takes lots of meds, but about every three years she chunks it all and goes on an alcoholic or meth induced binge. OTC and presciption drugs just dont seem to do the trick....

She has been married 9 times. (You can laugh, it's okay, I certainly do. ) We are all taking bets on double digits, so were quite excited when she dumped husband number 9, an ISTJ, a few years back and moved in with this entp guy, but no go, she got back with number 9. Did I mention she dumped number 7, a sweet ISFP for the ENTP brother of number 9? You cant make this stuff up. I went to 12 schools in 12 years. i left home at 16 and moved in with an older friend as i couldnt handle my sister stealing cars and having sex with guys in her bedroom while I tried to sleep. Not to mention smoking dope with my mom.

My childhood was filled with excitement when she would dump a husband as that meant we got move to a new house, a new school or maybe, if we were really lucky, live with my ENFP grandmom for a bit. It turns out relationships are hard. Relationships are REALLY hard if you are completely emotionally unstable and prone to drug and alcohol abuse. I would happily play under the table with my ponies while she screamed and fought with my grandmom, her current husband, or her brothers. We had lots of family therapy together, although it doesnt seem to have worked very well on her or my sister, or even me i guess.

My dad died when very small and the limited exposure to his mostly FJ family was hard as it felt like they looked down upon us. I just sort of knew they didnt understand.

My mom's husbands and boyfriends would come and go. The first one I recall was the ESFP who would drink and then beat her bloody. Then their were the fights with the INTJ and him either not feeding us or forcing us to eat giant meals due to his control freak nature. We lived in a nice house though. There was also the incident where he got in a fist fight with my uncles and they through a cinder block through our front window. After that, I recall going hungry as she was so fucked up on coke, she couldnt make us burgers-that was her ESFP boyfriend Guy. ISFP husband was nice until he tried to kiss my sister, granted after our mom ran off with another man and left her with the guy. Dont feel bad, my ESFP sister stole several thousand dollars from him and left him as co-signer on a car loan that got repo-ed. Actually two car loans. He didnt seem to pick up on the pattern...

Um,so, yes your family can totally influence how you grow and develop. I started off shy, but never really learned normal social skills as we moved so often that I was always the new kid. I just gave up after awhile and became introverted and detached from the whole mess and would loose myself in books or my own imagination and exploration.

My mom and sis are exceptionally emotionally manipulative. I have listened to them wail for hours and cry about things as they ask me for money. I cant cry. I really have a hard time crying myself. pain yes, but tears are so very rare.

In addition I, as you might imagine, didnt trust men very much, or place much value in the sanctity of marraige, thus was driven to develop Te very strongly-I knew I needed to be independent so that i would not get caught in the trap of reliance upon others that my mom was in. Responsibility, work ethic, self reliance and an extreme aversion to depending upon others are the bumpy scars I carry as a result. In order to cope with the overwhelming emotional, manipulative environment I became extremely concealed in my emotions-they are mine. I cut off the other people around me as a child, as I would have gone batty, feeling their screaming pain. I also detest emotional manipulation. Oddly I realize that when I am badly hurt, I will appear to be emotionally manipulative, inadvertantly, by sharing my pain. It sickens me in some sense.

However now, when I do allow myself to feel others pain, I am extremely sensitive and hyperaware of it, highly sensitive person style. I am also very sensitive to emotional pain when I choose to share myself with others, far too sensitive.

Oddly ^^ this all sounds really bad, but if anybody asked how my childhood was, I'd just say pretty normal, if I didnt stop to think on it...I guess I always think of kids who have it so much worse, like my cousins, so I almost seem blessed in some sense.

 

[CrystalViolet]

I've spoken about my narcissist mother, not so much about my alcoholic and abusive father, whom my mother left when I was six.
There are other factors which I believe shaped my personality as well, such as being deaf until I was 4-41/2(which accounts for the intuitive aspects of my personality),and immigrating to NZ from the UK. I do think personality is inherent in the individual, but I think my abilities such as reading body language well (saved me from a few beatings, or lessened the severity) were definitely honed in my childhood.
Reading some of this stuff kinda makes me feel better about my childhood (no offense to y'all) and makes me wonder how some of us make to adulthood, as functioning adults.
My dad was actually caring towards us kids, a bit of a crim though, and truly horrible as it sounds my mother would have driven the patient of souls to voilence, being no respecter of boundries. My family broke the day my sister died, I think. My father wasn't voilent up until that point.