Anon wrote: Hi! I’ve read a lot of your posts, especially your ones about the inferior functions which was really informative to me. (Thank you!). I am fairly sure that I am an XSTJ type. I was wondering if you could give your insight on which one you think is more likely? I can’t figure out the order of the functions but I think I use Si Te Ne and Fi. Sorry this is kind of long.
For background on my Fi section - I have recently had some problems in a workplace — bullying/unsafe practice/poor management. It escalated and fell apart in a big way (I got screwed over basically lol) and I eventually made the tough decision to leave for my own well-being. I had been involved with the company for 2 years and gave everything I had to that company. It was my dream job and I worked so hard for it. And I worked so hard for my degree too. My friends and family and even colleagues told me it wasn’t my fault and they would’ve quit too and they told me I handled it well. I feel like I defined myself on my work. I was so proud of my … success? I guess. I don’t even know.
This first part I have this sort of recurring issue in my life where something goes wrong at work for example and I start feeling this way when normally i’m fairly level headed and ambitious. I think it’s Fi, and maybe inferior? I thought I was an ISTJ but your description of inferior Fi really landed with me lol.
It’s like I’m having some sort of existential crisis. I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore or maybe I never did. I question everything about myself. I am trying so hard to figure out what matters to me and I can’t. I don’t know where to go in life. I’m so emotional for no reason. I feel embarrassed and ashamed of myself. I’m pushing my friends and family away because I’m embarrassed that I had to leave my job. I’ve isolated myself from everyone. I feel so irritable all the time and I hate it. I feel like I failed.
People close to me have told me I need to stop being so hard on myself but I don’t know how. I feel like I’m wasting my time and my life by being so emotional. It’s so incredibly frustrating. It’s not like me, usually I bounce back and try again but this has really shaken me up. I feel like I should ‘follow my heart’ so I can be happy and fulfilled but I don’t even know what I want and I’m wasting time trying to decide, the more time passes the more restless I feel. I’m so scared of getting old and dying with regrets about the way I’ve lived my life. I think I’m also scared of not being able to make my family proud or make myself proud. I’m so torn and lost. I don’t know how to stop defining myself and my worth on like … working lmao.
More generally, I think I can get stuck in patterns where I worry excessively about my values and who I really am. It happens maybe a couple times a year lmao. But I also think I usually do know my values? There are things I don’t tolerate and have no patience for and like I wouldn’t change my mind on it cos it’s one of my core values. Like, bullying/injustice/unfairness etc. So I don’t know if my Fi is inferior. I have a lot of feelings, I just usually like to avoid them but I’m getting better at dealing with them on a day to day basis, unless something happens like my work drama. I don’t share my feelings with people easily cos I don’t like feeling vulnerable. I know it’s like a necessary part of the human experience though.
When I was in my teens I went to therapy and didn’t cry in therapy for years lol. Every time I almost cried I stopped talking and pushed it down until I could continue. They always told me it’s okay to cry but I always told them I hate crying cos it makes me feel weak. I’ve grown up some since then lol and i know crying or emotion isn’t a weakness. Logically I know that and would never consider someone else weak for crying or expressing emotion. I think it’s a good thing and healthy. Still, I struggle to stop seeing it that way in myself and always beat myself up when I know I shouldn’t. It’s one of my biggest struggles in life. I do cry in front of some people now though hahaha. (And then feel v embarrassed later!) lol.
For Ne, I have a tendency to catastrophize and assume the worst. Like, if one of my family members goes out for a drive and doesn’t text me when I know they should have arrived at the destination by now. I start to think something bad must have happened to them and I start panicking.
It used to be way worse when I was younger and I did it with everything. Car trips, plane rides, being picked up late from school, etc. Maybe that’s just anxiety tho? I tend to prepare for the worst because I don’t like getting caught off guard. I’m known for being a worry-er in my family lol. I worry about everyone. I heard that like imagining multiple worst scenarios for a situation can be low/ inferior Ne.
I think I can use Ne sometimes though. I’m bad at mind mapping and stuff like that, it doesn’t come naturally but I’m good at planning holidays and coming up with ideas of places to go or things to do/see. I get excited about stuff like that, and I like thinking about the future and possibilities of things I could do. I just tend to be more focused on like my life in the here-and-now. And I have to try pretty hard to think in that big expansive mind-map way lol. I sucked at doing mind maps in school.
I think I’m maybe a Si user, because I don’t think I’d even exist without memories. Everything I do and see and experience is for and guided by my memories. Idk though that’s probably true for everyone, do individual people even exist without their memories? it’s like, what makes us unique. There’d be hardly any difference between people if it weren’t for their memories and experiences. Everything i’ve ever done, ever seen, smelled, touched, tasted or heard has made me who I am. I can’t go anywhere without being reminded of the experiences and connections i’ve had before. It’s just intrinsic to who I am. Part of the reason I love music is just the way it can bring you back to an exact moment in time and you can relive it like you’re there. It’s the way I navigate the world I think. I know what to do because i’ve seen it before and if I haven’t then i research to figure out how. I can’t just do things with no preparation.
Te — I think it’s maybe Aux or not dominant because i find it hard to think about how I use it lol, I just do. but idk I’ll try. I rely heavily on data and facts and statistics. I won’t believe anything without proof. I won’t make a claim if I can’t back it up with reliable evidence. I care about efficiency, I like things to be done and done right lol. I often end up doing things myself in group projects and organising the work + delegating tasks to everyone else. When I was studying I organised like all the group work cos otherwise nothing got done lol. And I usually ended up editing and cutting it together at the end so I could make sure it was coherent and looked good.
I like to help my family organise their life admin stuff because I’m good at it. I plan holidays cos I’m good at it, I know how to make a plan that makes sense and works. I research where things are in relation to each other so I can make an itinerary that gets the most done each day with the least amount of time wasted on travelling from A to B etc. I was good at making step by step plans for essay writing at uni and then followed them to get it done. I love writing to do lists for myself and using schedules. I can’t work without a to do list or a schedule lol i write one like every day. Even when I had jobs where I did the same thing every day I wrote a list to keep me on track.
When my friends have their lives falling apart they usually come to me to help them with a game plan lol. Sometimes I do get overwhelmed and stressed, but I feel like in serious crisis situations I’m usually able to put aside any feelings and just get shit done. I’ve had family medical emergencies on my hands before or a loved one getting evicted before and have managed to just go into action mode and deal with the problem first and then feel however i feel about what happened a few days later lmao. Feelings get in the way in situations like that imo and there’s no time for it when shit is hitting the fan. I can be bossy sometimes in moments like that but usually apologise later and people understand that I was just dealing w the problem at hand lol and my bossiness wasn’t personal.
I just thought of an example of what I think is me using Te. There was one time where I was with my mum and brother. Somehow a chemical got spilled on the tiles, was left there overnight and kinda destroyed them. My mum was like absolutely devastated and got so emotional and angry, she was blaming herself and also thinking we would have to spend a lot of money to get it fixed and then regretting buying the house in the first place because it has these tiles haha like she was so upset, my brother was mostly just standing there looking concerned and trying to calm her down. I had no idea how to clean chemicals off that type of of tile nor what to do to fix it when it was destroyed by chemicals.
The most obvious and simple solution to me was to just google what to do and find out. (and part of me was surprised that they hadn’t done it yet lmao). So I did that, found out what kind of tiles they were and how to clean off the chemical without making it worse etc. (checked a few different sources to make sure it was reliable info) And then I told them what I’d read and suggested we try it. And then i told everyone what we needed to get and what we needed to do and the 3 of us got to work lmao. And the tiles looked sooo much better after. Everyone stopped freaking out and it was fine, we ended up having fun cleaning the tiles together lol. And then my mum and brother were like ‘good job!’ and were thanking me. I remember thinking it was kinda silly to thank me for that cos I barely did anything to be thanked for, like I literally couldn’t imagine going about that situation in any other way. it was the only thing to do that made sense.
Anyway ok I’m gonna leave it here. If you read this far thank you so much for your time. I’d be grateful for your opinion but I also understand you get a lot of asks like this so I get it if not! Thanks again!
All type assessment requests must follow the instructions on the contact page carefully. You must answer all the questions from the Function Theory Guide for every function of the two stacks you are comparing. It is especially important to address all the points meticulously when you are comparing two very similar types like ISTJ and ESTJ.
Since you didn't follow the instructions properly, the info you provided isn't enough for me to draw any firm conclusion about your type. The most I can say is that nothing you've brought up makes me doubt ISTJ. What you seem to believe is inferior Fi (grip) isn't very convincing to me so far. You also mention receiving therapy and did not specify the reason, but that would be a very important clue for determining unhealthy aspects of your function use.
About the existential crisis: There's nothing wrong with taking pride in your work. As an individual, you have the freedom to decide how much to value work among all the other things in your life. While it's important to know and honor your values, in the real world, you don't have the time, energy, or resources to value everything equally. There are no perfect decisions, no such thing as "having it all". When you choose one path, other paths become unavailable to you. Practical limitations and constraints force you into valuing some things more than others, and you have to make some difficult trade-offs in order to keep life moving forward.
Every trade-off you make will have its up and down sides. The downside to devoting so much of yourself to career is that you will be prone to feeling some form of devastation when things go wrong in that area of your life. Similarly, the stay-at-home parent who identifies too strongly with being a parent will suffer some form of devastation when the kids grow up and move out. The price of living a life fully engaged with what you're doing is feeling a sense of loss or grief when it inevitably ends.
Every trade-off you make in life has consequences. You might not feel them right away, but they will come eventually. How do you deal with them? There are a variety of possibilities:
"Diversification": Make your trade-offs wisely so that you mitigate the impact of the consequences. For example, don't put all your eggs in one basket. Have other equally valid ways of defining your identity. However, this means spreading yourself more thinly.
"Commitment": Follow through with your decisions to the very end. Take full responsibility for the trade-offs you make, which means fully embracing the consequences incurred. In other words, accept the reality of your situation and keep moving along.
"Change": Perhaps the devastation was a sign that you need to do things differently or make different choices. Enact the change that is required to avoid suffering the same sort of devastation again.
"Reframe": Look at your devastation from various angles. Is there a different way to find meaning in it? For example, perhaps you're blowing the situation out of proportion? The problem wasn't that you failed? The problem was you were working for a company with terrible leadership that did not allow you to flourish? Therefore, the lesson isn't to quit the work and give up your identity, but to quit the company and find a better company that truly appreciates your talent and devotion. Or start your own company with full control over how it operates.
You mention recurring issues with managing feelings and emotions. It seems to stem from a tendency to interpret situations much more negatively than is warranted, which leads you to get trapped in the most negative perspective available. The stubborn refusal to see your experiences differently even when others point out how wrong you are might be indicative of Si+Fi loop. The lack of open-mindedness, in terms of not being able to acknowledge or generate alternative viewpoints, might be indicative of inferior Ne. ESTJs are usually more mentally flexible than that and also much more willing to rationalize away their failures, which doesn't fit with your tendency to feel excessively responsible, embarrassed, and ashamed for everything.
Thus, there is compelling evidence that Te+Ne development is required for getting out of the (Si+Fi) mental trap, which suggests that your extraverted funcitons are the weaker pair. It sounds like the most logical way out of the existential crisis is to take control of your life and start a new chapter, to find a place where you can feel both fulfilled and appreciated. Are you resisting proper use of Te? If so, perhaps you need to reflect on why.
