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[ISFJ] Ask an ISFJ

Yama

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All ISFJs are welcome to answer. Please don't let me be the only one because I'm hardly the archetype of an ISFJ.

Questions about making you a sandwich will be aggressively ignored.
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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How do you experience your sense of the past and future? Do you have clarity of memory, nostalgia, dreams about the future? I'm having a little trouble wording my question, but I understand that Si and Ni have time orientations towards past and future, although both plan things out. It may be that Si enables more accurate memory than the other functions, so I was wondering if you experience Si as a strength for memories, etc.
 

Forever

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What about the process of a sandwich?
 

thepink-cloakedninja

Marshmallow Heart
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Do you hold onto grudges? What's your sense of humor like? Do you feel appreciated by the people in your life?
 

Yama

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How do you experience your sense of the past and future? Do you have clarity of memory, nostalgia, dreams about the future? I'm having a little trouble wording my question, but I understand that Si and Ni have time orientations towards past and future, although both plan things out. It may be that Si enables more accurate memory than the other functions, so I was wondering if you experience Si as a strength for memories, etc.

I don't see myself as being fixated on the past, and I definitely don't live in the future. The present is where I reside and focus all of my attention. However, the past has shaped my experience and thus influences my decisions in the present. ("I won't talk to that person because that person was an asshole to me in elementary school.")

Honestly, I have a shitty memory. I remember almost nothing about my childhood. I don't remember what I did last week. After a couple days, everything gets purged from my mind unless it's really important and made an impact on me somehow. What I do remember, though, I remember accurately; I wouldn't say detailed in the visual sense (everything in my imagination looks kind of fuzzy and vague when visualized), just detailed in events. I'm not nostalgic (lower Si imo) as much as I am sentimental (higher Si imo--and which is different from nostalgia). This sentimentality is rather closed off though--well, I am a person am rather closed off--so some people see it and some people don't. My ENFP mother and INTP sister have accused me of "having no sentimentality" because I didn't want to do something I saw as useless (walk when I graduate from college). However, my choice not to walk at graduation is because, from my knowledge of high school graduation, graduation ceremonies as boring as fuck and a waste of time because I don't know anyone at my current school. I don't see this at all as not being sentimental. Basically, nostalgia is like hearing that one song you danced to at prom and having a "moment". Sentimentality is a complete re-experience of past events in the present. Where was I going with this again? Oh yeah, so I'm not nostalgic as much as I am sentimental but unless people are close to me and I've let my barriers down around them (none of you would recognize me irl I'm so different) they don't even see that sentimentality. Sentimentality to me is a very private thing, too.

I don't have any dreams or goals for the future. I don't think about the future at all. The present will lead to the future so I focus on this. If I try to plan out my life it just stresses me out. The plans would just get fucked up anyway when things inevitably come up. I don't even have a vague end goal.

Honestly though, memory, sentimentality and nostalgia are not what Si is; Si is about archetypes. I think I made a post somewhere else about what I mean by that but I'm too lazy to find is so I will just try to re-explain it.

Si creates archetypes from personal experience and compares what it faces in the present to that archetype. This archetype is solid, unchanging, completely static; if archetypes could change or be altered and re-defined, then there is literally no point to there being an archetype. This is why Si doms may have a reputation for being stubborn or "stuck in their ways" depending on the archetype.

For example:

One Si dom's archetype of a chair is a seat that has legs and a back. Imagine this Si dom sees a barstool and someone calls it a chair. They argue with that perosn. No, it's NOT a chair. It doesn't have a back and all chairs have seats, legs, and backs. This item does not qualify as a chair because it does not meet a chair's archetypal qualities.

BUT, unlike Ni (which I think it more about universal archetypes), Si's archetypes, being based completely on past experience, are unique to the individual. One Si type's archetype may not match another's.

Let's imagine the person the Si dom from the argument above was arguing with--the one who called a barstool a chair. Maybe this person is also an Si dom, but their archetype of a chair looks different; to them, a chair need only have a seat and legs. Thus, a barstool qualifies as a chair to them, but not to the first Si dom. And neither of them are going to change their minds about who's right, ever. Because archetypes do not, cannot change, or else they lose all meaning.


...This ended up being longer than I expected. Sorry

What about the process of a sandwich?

Bread. Mayo. Cheese. Lettuce. Bread. Done.

Do you hold onto grudges? What's your sense of humor like? Do you feel appreciated by the people in your life?

I'm really bad at holding grudges. In the heat of the moment I feel like I'm going to have a grudge forever, but end up actually being the one to approach the person who angered me to resolve things, because I don't want to lose them. That is, depending on what they did and how important they are to me.

I have many senses of humor. Stupid humor. Morbid humor. But mostly, inside joke kind of humor. There's a specific humor dynamic between ISxJs that's hard to describe but it's really fun.

And no, no one expresses appreciation to me so if they do appreciate me, I do not know it or feel it. I don't really do anything worth appreciating anyway, not at this point in my life where all I'm doing is going to school and living at home for free.
 

Korvinagor

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Would you say you have an artistic or creative side to you? The idea that intuition is the sole proprietor of creativity is silly to me - apparently, Tolkien was an ISTJ.

Also, why the username 'Yamato Nadeshiko'? It certainly conjures up the stereotype of an ISFJ: demureness and civility hiding a core of steel. Or perhaps that was the point...?
 

Unionruler

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Would you say you have an artistic or creative side to you? The idea that intuition is the sole proprietor of creativity is silly to me - apparently, Tolkien was an ISTJ.
Yes. I:

  • Arrange my own covers of songs I like on piano
  • Create templates and processes for clients as a consultant
  • Co-authored two books in which I had to make up many case studies of problems (beyond 101 level) company directors face
I come from Singapore's education system which stifles creativity and churns out productive conformists. Hence nothing to say that ISFJs can't be creative too.
 

Lady Lazarus

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Do you hold onto grudges? What's your sense of humor like? Do you feel appreciated by the people in your life?

Sometimes. Indescribable. I make them appreciate me.

Would you say you have an artistic or creative side to you? The idea that intuition is the sole proprietor of creativity is silly to me - apparently, Tolkien was an ISTJ.

Also, why the username 'Yamato Nadeshiko'? It certainly conjures up the stereotype of an ISFJ: demureness and civility hiding a core of steel. Or perhaps that was the point...?

Yes. Highlander was taken.
 

Yama

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Also, why the username 'Yamato Nadeshiko'? It certainly conjures up the stereotype of an ISFJ: demureness and civility hiding a core of steel. Or perhaps that was the point...?

Exactly. It's my way of poking fun at the steretypes... because despite being an ISFJ I don't fit that image at all. :p
 

Lloyd

Ain Soph Aur
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How do you react to corny jokes?
 

Norrsken

self murderer
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Questions about making you a sandwich will be aggressively ignored.

/writes in private journal

"u think u kno a bitch but then, smh."

Question: How do you, as an ISFJ, deal with someone taking advantage of your kindness? When is enough, enough?
 

Yama

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Question: How do you, as an ISFJ, deal with someone taking advantage of your kindness? When is enough, enough?

I'm really bad at standing up for myself in situations like these tbh i just put up with it forever and silently bitch about it to my friends and develop a grudge and hate them forever yet i do nothing about it lel

Unless they tried to get me to do something that made me really uncomfortable. I would wriggle out of it somehow.

My problem is, most people don't know I'm upset by them when we're in those kinds of situations because I don't say anything...
 

Unionruler

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Question: How do you, as an ISFJ, deal with someone taking advantage of your kindness? When is enough, enough?
I'm 25 and I clearly have not learnt, even with a wealth of bad experience, how to handle this. I think it might simply be the obverse side of the coin of being ISFJ.

The precursor of being taken advantage of is giving too much--I think it's mostly impossible to convince an ISFJ to give less, especially of the E2 variant. The only plausible adaptation would probably be to forgive quicker and not hold grudges.
 

Siúil a Rúin

when the colors fade
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Si creates archetypes from personal experience and compares what it faces in the present to that archetype. This archetype is solid, unchanging, completely static; if archetypes could change or be altered and re-defined, then there is literally no point to there being an archetype. This is why Si doms may have a reputation for being stubborn or "stuck in their ways" depending on the archetype.

For example:

One Si dom's archetype of a chair is a seat that has legs and a back. Imagine this Si dom sees a barstool and someone calls it a chair. They argue with that perosn. No, it's NOT a chair. It doesn't have a back and all chairs have seats, legs, and backs. This item does not qualify as a chair because it does not meet a chair's archetypal qualities.

BUT, unlike Ni (which I think it more about universal archetypes), Si's archetypes, being based completely on past experience, are unique to the individual. One Si type's archetype may not match another's.

Let's imagine the person the Si dom from the argument above was arguing with--the one who called a barstool a chair. Maybe this person is also an Si dom, but their archetype of a chair looks different; to them, a chair need only have a seat and legs. Thus, a barstool qualifies as a chair to them, but not to the first Si dom. And neither of them are going to change their minds about who's right, ever. Because archetypes do not, cannot change, or else they lose all meaning.
Your entire post was very interesting - I also enjoyed the part about sentimentalism vs. nostalgia. This business about internal archetypes was especially interesting and enlightening to me. It makes a lot of sense.
 

EJCC

The Devil of TypoC
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Question for [MENTION=23583]Yamato Nadeshiko[/MENTION] especially due to the number of ISTJs in his life: How do you see yourself as similar to, and different from, STJs, and what draws you to them? What do you like and dislike most about them?
 

Yama

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Question for [MENTION=23583]Yamato Nadeshiko[/MENTION] especially due to the number of ISTJs in his life: How do you see yourself as similar to, and different from, STJs, and what draws you to them? What do you like and dislike most about them?

Similarities: our way of thinking (the si/ne), our senses of humor, and often our hobbies and interests.

Differences: te/Fe clash. They can be abrasive sometimes and I can be too sensitive. Sometimes they appear to be insensitive to me and sometimes they will see me as having no backbone.
 

thepink-cloakedninja

Marshmallow Heart
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*revives topic* What do you like best about being an ISFJ and what is the hardest aspect of this type?
 

Methylene

Now with more salt.
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How can you discern Si-dom and tert-Si?
 

Unionruler

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*revives topic* What do you like best about being an ISFJ and what is the hardest aspect of this type?
I like never having any sort of identity crisis/quest for keaning in life. The approach of being good and treating people kindly gives me comfort that if hypothetically, the world were tessellations of myself, it would be a good and peaceful place.
The hardest part is being unpopular/taken for granted. I often feel that if I had so much as 1 close friend/partner who more or less replicated my personality, my life would be a lot better. That's easier said then done unfortunately.
 
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