Well if you're around a lot of friends with a thinking preference then to 'fit in' you might be tapping into your own thinking preference. Ironically, if your desire is to be more relatable to your "T" friends and you 'break out' your T to do that then that's actually Fe all the way.
It's not even necessarily that I want to relate more to them, just that over the years they've rubbed off on me and I may have unconsciously picked up a few of their traits.
I love that you relate to that - I am made very happy by this. It's a difficult thing to see in yourself. And to know you see it tells me a great deal about your awareness.
What they are describing above is 9s version of "Positive Outlook"...and it is because 7 too has a version of this bastard massive obstacle to problem identification and subsequent solutions for transformation and growth...I hope you will trust me when I tell you that half of your battle has already been won.Do not panic-and-hide-modus-operandi-style while doing all you can to stay positive in the spirit of "this too shall pass"... Umm.
"This too shall pass" is dangerous territory imo for any member of the dysfunctional Positive Outlook family to trek... because it shares a border with our homeland "If you ignore the problem it will magically go away." I think you can panic-and-hide all you want all while allowing yourself to be negative. And by never losing sight of the fact that the only way to solve a problem is by solving.
9s have issues with identity that I do not fully understand by do know that they get tripped up by descriptions. Perhaps when you understand this you can explain it to me.
I have noticed that when I become stressed out, I tend to retreat into a childlike state. I start acting like a little kid to avoid my problems. Yeah, the descriptions really bother me. I also relate a lot of it to inferior Ne--when things start changing too much too fast, it overpowers me. The transition from high school to college a few years back was the toughest time in my life. When I wasn't being super negative literally all the time, I was acting like a toddler, whether it be little tantrums or fits, or just resorting to childlike hobbies (coloring books, old TV shows I watched as a kid, etc) as a subconscious way of "fighting" the changes (although I am more aware of it now than I used to be). It hasn't been as bad since I've settled into college, but with all my friends graduating soon and me a year behind them since I took an extra year at community college... I have a feeling it's going to be really bad again soon.
What is it about your Fe that you feel dissatisfied with? Is what your feeling about not being compassionate enough, coming externally, or do you, yourself feel a need to connect more with others? Nevermind any social stigmas of needing to be altruistic. And you may not realize, but perhaps you help others in ways that are less traditional? You don't have to volunteer to still be a helpful person in the community or to your friends and family. I feel that focusing on yourself first, and ensuring you have what you need to be healthy and happy, will then allow you to express yourself outward to others better.
But then again, this is probably just a bias coming from an Fi user...
In any case, I think this thread was a good idea. You saw an issue and you reached out to others for help
Don't shy away now, you'll get to where you want to be in due time.
Well, it's that literally no ISFJ description fits me and it makes me feel like I'm screwed up or broken somehow. Pretty much every single ISFJ description I have ever read paints us out to be docile, nurturing, caretaking, compassionate, caring more about others than ourselves, homemakers, oh and also always female.
On the day to day basis, I'm nothing like this. If you could hear my internal dialogue as I go through my day, you'd be like, "Woah, this is not the type of person that fits my schema for ISFJs." I'm not warm--initially I vibe cold, bored, uninterested. It takes me months if not years to warm up to people, so as you can imagine I have very few friends and have not made any new ones in years. Honestly, I just don't care about other people that much. They're
not on my mind. I always consider how my actions will affect them, etc, but I come first. If someone wants me to do something and I am uncomfortable with it I
won't do it. Over Thanksgiving I was deemed an asshole by my mother's side of the family because I didn't go to visit an extended family member that I couldn't care less about. My grandmother (an ISFJ, coincidentally) nagged at me every single day for a week to come visit, and every single day I told her how insanely busy I was with end-of-the-semester shenanigans. And no, in the end, I
did not go. Wa I so busy that I didn't have an hour? No, I had a little bit of time, of course. But I wanted that time to stay at home and cool down from homework, papers, school etc. and not to go see some family member I don't even care about. Oh, on that note, I'm not family-oriented at all. I care about my 3.5 friends way more than my blood family.
Basically, I'm an exception of pretty much every single ISFJ stereotype. And yet people always talk about ISFJs (and all times) in general, wide terms (because its MBTI, which is about similarities within types) and I never agree with or fit them and it just upsets me. It upsets me because it's like, well everyone else has it
wrong but there's no point in fighting. There's no point arguing with what they think because even if I had the mental energy to correct people/change their minds, it would only be a small handful of the entire MBTI community. It would have no impact. I could turn the corner and have to deal with it all over again with different people. So why even bother?
As for being helpful in the community... I don't even have a community. I don't know any of my neighbors. I don't know anyone outside my family besides my friends, which I can count the number of on my fingers and they all live out of town during the school year and after next semester will graduate and I'll be left alone in school while they start living in the real world and forget about me. But now that's starting to get into my abandonment issues due to past experiences and not Fe so I'm going to skip that for now. I don't go to clubs in school, I go to class and go home, and get pissed/annoyed when people (family, teachers, advisers) try to convince me to join a club or something. It's a waste of time. I just want to go home and do whatever I want, not have yet another uncomfortable obligation on my shoulders.
I didn't actually intend for my reply to this to become another rant fest, ha. I'm not actually as miserable as I just painted myself out to be. I'm not really feeling anything to be honest.
You can bend, you're flexible. But Fi works for that too. I may think the other person is a retard, but I will still accommodate them to be nice.
On the contrary, my mother has described me as being stubborn af and marching to the beat of my own drum from birth to now... But yeah, I'll be accommodating. There's this guy who asks for a piece of paper and a pencil every single fucking day in one of my classes and I always am like yeah sure no problem here. But it pisses me off. After our final exam tomorrow I'm just going to dump that pencil in the trash because even the sight of it fills me with rage. Like, christ, we're in college, we're paying thousands and thousands of dollars to be here, bring your own fucking pencil and paper. Once or twice is fine, but my
god, you know?