r/ISTJ

I had a thought about an ISTJ character I'm writing, how would they handle certain undeniable truth that in a year if they do not uproot their entire life and forget who they are entirely and that if any traces of their past remains, they are destined for a horrible inescapable fate? If you were told to completely forget about your past identity, routines, beliefs and ideals and transform yourself into someone completely unrecognisable by the end.

How would an ISTJ handle news like that no matter how many times you verify you know this outcome to be true? What do you think you can forget easily and what do you think is hard? What would stress you out the most? Would that even be possible? I'm curious to see how this would work for Si doms.

An ISTJ I’ve been texting daily randomly FaceTimed me and said my texts were “so different” and that he wanted to make sure I was real 😂

I genuinely can’t tell if that’s an ISTJ compliment, curiosity, or subtle concern LOL. I didn’t ask directly what he meant.

When you guys give compliments, are they usually subtle like that?

I’m an INFP, and I think my whole life I’ve been perceived as kinda quirky/weird haha. It’s been interesting watching the contrast between my rambly Ne style communication and his much more grounded, sincere communication style. I love to talk to ISTJ types, you guys are comforting to talk to. ☺️

Hey everyone, I’m an ESTP-T currently in a relationship with an ISTJ, and I’m trying to better understand your perspective on texting. I’ve noticed she tends to:

send short / to-the-point replies not text much throughout the day not really match energy (even when I’m more expressive)

From my side, I naturally:

send longer texts or voice memos try to keep conversation going sometimes overthink when replies feel dry or short and get anxiety from that

I’m not trying to change her, I just want to understand what it actually means from an ISTJ perspective.

That is, bad by even average ISTJ standards.

Both can be black and white in their approach to things, but what type would you say is more black and white in their approach and which side can be in the gray area at times about certain things? If you had to bring up examples and cognitive functions too?

For those who don’t know, the big three in astrology are your Sun sign, Moon sign, and your Ascendant/Rising sign.

E.G. Mine are: Gemini Sun, Sagittarius Moon, and Cancer Rising.

If you don’t know what they are, you can get them here: https://horoscopes.astro-seek.com/#birthchart

You do need an accurate time and place of birth to calculate your chart.

OuO

I like pop music and rock.

Life is going decent, I have a decent job, with a great work environment and not a bad wlb, good enough pay, i give time to my family, I have a few close friends and things are stable. I should be happy, shouldn't I? And I am for a bit, but I see people earning way more, doing great in career/academia and i feel like, have i settled for average? During school I was like an exceptional kid, teachers/parents all used to be hyped up about me, my studies/career, but it all faded away slowly.

I know everyone has a different path in life, different experiences, different destinations, and I am the one telling this to others when other people cry about comparing others (great) life with theirs (they think miserable). I earn good enough for a fresher, most of my friends/people around me, earn less than what I invest every month, and I am not boasting about it, I am very grateful for it, and I have worked really hard and gone through a lot of shit to get here. But then I see people earning double than me, working at a bigger organisation, living luxuriously, having a great romantic relationship, and then I feel I failed. I know it's a good motivation to work hard and be there, but the feeling becomes of failure more than motivation most of the time.

I have been trying to fuel this feeling towards working for a better career/personality, but I tend to keep losing momentum, the thoughts of being a failure creeps in and I just go in a spiral for a day or two.

I might not have worded correctly what I feel, but yeah, some sort of this.

Do any of you deal with something like this too? How do you tackle it?

I know MBTI cannot really tell you which types are the best / worst in terms of communication and relationships, but honestly I can relate to Fe / Si blindness, etc.

I was friends with a guy who I believed was an ENFJ, and at first it worked out. We were joking around, and he was basically the more social one. Disclaimer, I'm not saying all ENFJs are like that, we were pretty young, and I also had some confidence issues or setting boundaries. He said he was an introvert but was still social with pretty much everybody. (It made me kind of jealous too, I can't lie) He would almost always talk in friends groups I didn't know, and I just had to sit here and wait. Whenever I was feeling down or annoyed, he would always try to cheer me up, which just made me uncomfortable and smile nervously. He had a habit of being weirdly caring but in a parent way? Sometimes it was even a little creepy because just because I don't smile doesn't mean I'm being annoyed. The moment we didn't talk to eachother anymore was when I complained about him looking happier when he was with more extroverted people (Fe blindness because I can't just personally switch my 'personality' with different people, or just very subtly) and he said he felt more himself with me. But I didn't feel myself with him. I thought that he was fake most of the time, and didn't truly care about me. I made mistakes too like not being honest enough about my boundaries, and was almost exhausted trying to keep up with his pace. I think it would have worked out if both of us tried to work on the communication part. Forgot to mention that he said I was too closed-off. I took it personally because I was just tired with him back then but now I know why he said that. I don't know why but I couldn't bring myself to fully trust him. Also, his way of pleasing straight up rude people, or people he insulted in the past behind their backs made me feel like he was hypocritical. He didn't care about his health, and once said "i'm only getting help if i'm bleeding really bad." He should have cared about his own health instead of asking everyone else if they're okay.

I feel afraid of talking to a girl or woman and I guess this is normal but it's been years I haven't managed to make any conversation with any female in my life. I never felt the confidence to talk to someone face to face, though talking to a stranger isn't a very good idea where I live but I'm not only talking about strangers but also the people who I know in general whom I could talk and get close to. this is the reason why nobody really knows about me. sometimes I think it's because of my appearance that makes me feel insecure to talk to them but it can't be always that right? I also find myself waiting for others to start talking but it never happened. so what it can be?

So I did my mbti test on the internet (the very first website after searching “mbti test”) and I got ISTP a few times, and twice in a row a few months ago. But after looking at the description, it really didn’t resonate with me, especially me being a builder and calm under pressure. The only thing it got right was that I choose logic, practicality and realism over emotional approach. After doing some research, they said that I fit more to be an ISTJ

My personality:

1. I am the opposite of calm under pressure. Whenever there is pressure, I lose confidence easily. Whenever I do a mistake and people scold me, get mad at me, or point out that what I did was wrong/bad I get easily dejected and emotional.
2. I like having a solid plan rather than improvising. I like it when I need to follow things step-by-step. But when things go wrong, I don’t know what to do.
3. I prefer logic, realistic approach rather than the emotional sides of things.
4. I love doing things with my own time, but I also enjoy the company of others.
5. I am quiet and like to observe people, but sometimes I am talkative.

Though I am perceived as quiet, introverted and nonchalant by my peers.

1. Social energy: Sometimes I get drained sometimes I do not. Depends highly on my mood, the people whom I talk to, and occasion.

I'm aware of how dry my mouth is because I got an unknown cut on the side of my tongue that hurts when I drink water, and it disturbs my function. Even eating is torture. Why, body why?

Despite millions of years of evolution, how can we still accidentally bite our tongue even when eating at a 'casual' pace? And then the bitten place swells up and becomes minor ulcers.

This post is me trying to relate how attuned we are to bodily sensations that this little thing can ruin our experience as a whole, ugh.

What are your icks about the state of your body that you can't just ignore?

ISTJ loop initiated by touch starvation.

The Experience
I just experienced (as I have 2 or more times before) a very intense loop. It started as I was feeling extremely touch starved. Once a month or two I tend to have a few hours when I’m in my bedroom alone where I will feel an intense need for touch to the point where I actually start feeling an increasing ache in my shoulder and no matter how much I squirm around, squeeze my body or use blankets or pillows, I cannot get rid of the feeling.

Looping Begins
This at times leads me to a point where I’m spiraling in my head sometimes researching reasons why I feel the way I do or trying to find others who have experienced it. Mentally I get to this point of just focusing so much on how I’m feeling - thinking I’m stupid for feeling it (or that it’s fake) - but then pointlessly focusing and researching more into it - and the loop repeats to the point where I almost feel like crying but never do of course.

Solution Looping (got there in the end)
I found ways to mitigate the feeling but it’s like I wanted it to all stop but at the same time I didn’t or couldn’t get myself to actually stop it. After awhile of this I read somthing that told me to start with breathing and thankfully that te action I believe is what took me out of it. Now I’m fine and don’t feel intensely touch starved but it tends to happen every month or two like crazy.

Conclusion
Sorry for the essay. I couldn’t find anyone who had a similar experience so I thought I’d share it in case some ISTJ or someone else would feel validated by someone else’s experiences. (Though idk why I give a crap about validation, seems purely illogical lol)

"Hi, I am someone who constantly tries to anticipate future dangers because I experienced an earthquake in the past. I am quite certain that I am an ISTJ, and I believe my Enneagram type is 6w5. However, due to this constant urge to foresee threats and the glorification of INTJ-style behaviors on Instagram, I started acting like an INTJ all the time. This bothers me immensely, yet I can’t seem to stop myself.

By telling people things like 'routines are bad, they rot the brain,' I started acting more impulsively and independently, but instead of feeling calm, I became even more stressed. Lately, I’ve started rebuilding a routine for myself, and I’m beginning to settle down, but I’m still constantly performing risk assessments. This is especially true regarding AI; I’m 19 years old, I have to choose a career path, and the uncertainty of what the future holds makes me extremely anxious.

I want to ask: Has anyone else experienced a situation like this? If so, how did you resolve it?"

I’m currently an apprentice in road construction and maintenance.

It's funny cuz my Fi makes me feel things deeply sometimes, even though I'm slow to reveal it to people I haven't come to trust yet. But when I have tried to explain how I feel to counselors or therapists, they say I sound logical, analytical, or descriptive. Like just today, I showed my counselor a script for a personal project of mine. She said it was good, but she couldn’t see much of my personality in it.

At the same time, I recognize that intellectualizing my feelings has helped me distance myself from my past traumas in order to move forward.

Can any other ISTJ's relate?

I see it a lot in this sub even. We love just kinda stating our observations. And it's different than the way some other people do it. If an istj bothers to share their observations with you, they've already gone over them and weeded out the ones that aren't interesting or relevant. The issue is...relevant to what? Lol. It's like we're gathering evidence but we don't know what the crime is yet. And isn't it interesting how we know what observations/details/information is the most important or interesting when we don't even really usually have a clear hypothesis that it might be for? It's almost like, I know if I gave all this data to someone else, surely they would have a hunch about it. Me? Oh no... hunches aren't my thing. We really would make good detectives because we're so unbiased... anyhoo...just an istj not making a point ✌️ take it easy, friends