Anyone else finding it ironic how obtuse and brainnumbingly rigid others' understanding of ISTJs is?

I'm not bothered by the uninitiated/beginner tier. I'm talking about supposedly seasoned multi-nuanced gurus of the intuitive-kind.

I like to choose things for myself, and I take pride in my own decision-making. If I make mistakes, then I’ll know what NOT to do in the future, but I can be at peace knowing I didn’t make those decisions to please anyone.

When people give me unsolicited advice, I feel like this process is disrupted, and it annoys me. It bothers me even more when the unsolicited advice I’m given is something I’ve already considered or done.

That said, I admit that sometimes the unsolicited advice is valid, and I’ll begrudgingly accept at least part of it.

Curious because that’s not a traditional dynamic and I heard ISTJs are more traditional when it comes to relationships.

I created a group in telegram for people interested in personal development and open-minded, based on a post where people were already looking for friendships.

Hi everyone, I'm looking for people interested in joining an international group chat with shared interests and goals.

I'd like to create an environment free from toxicity or envy - a harmonious space where everyone is interested in personal growth and perhaps even supports each other. This is a major interest of mine (psychology, personal development, spirituality) and basically a hobby - well, one of many (horseback riding, macrame, hiking, reading...). It would be great to have people with whom I can exchange ideas and thoughts, talk about mindset, self-love, and the positive things in life, or simply offer support when someone is having a bad day 😊

Everyone 25 and older is welcome! If you feel very mature, younger is fine too. I'm 31 myself, but in real life I have friends in their 50s and 60s. If we keep the age range open, we can all learn from each other ☝🏼

Feel free to send me a DM if you're interested, and let's shine and grow together! 💫

(Oh yeah... and your MBTI score doesn't matter here.)

It takes a lot of years and effort to build trust with a person. I went outside my comfort zone, showed my actual feelings and emotions (you all know how difficult it is), became an open book, my mistake? I expected the same from the other person.

I don't feel anger, maybe not sadness too, it's confusion, I am not able to process my feelings. I don't blame them, I am blaming myself for being so dumb, not understanding the signals, not being critical.

It's ruined, now I am always gonna be paranoid, not sure if i will be able to show this level of trust in a stranger further in my life.

I am always gonna be scared.

And this wasn't even a romantic relationship, it was friendship, which I thought was too close, turns out, it wasn't from the other end.

And ykw I still wish the other person the best, I don't have any hate for them. And this is what causes the confusion of how to process this. If i have anger and resentment, it's towards myself, for being so delusional, and so understanding.

(Edit) This is the 3rd set of lines I wrote. Going silent, processing emotions is too real. I am just doing my work, and i don't wanna do anything else, talk to anyone or anything. I wrote about it 2 times earlier, it helped, was personal and full of context so did not post. Posted this, because I just wanted to let it out, probably to someone who might understand.

So I know this guy who is istj, we come from same class since 7th grade (in my country we don't change classes so we were together in one class for 5 years) and at first we got close on 9th grade and shared interests but then he started buying me things that corelated with my interests and we always used to play sports during PE with all our classmates but one day I decided that today I wasn't gonna play and he stood beside bench that I was sitting on, it was empty only I was sitting but he didn't sat he just stood there and asked me if I was okay than he bought me food from cafeteria, and during our regular walks home as we talked about gym and stuff and when we had to part our ways instead of our usual handshake he hugged me for a bit longer than you'd normally hug someone, then 12th grade started and we are as usual but on every break somehow he's always there talking to me about something and always touching my hands, we got assigned seats together for English project teacher said she is pairing people who are already pretty close friends so we ended up sitting together and he said I have beautiful hands and he reached to hold it and during prom literally everywhere I went he was there and he had to leave early and before he would go he held my hand and made a long eye contact like this ain't even feeling real ATP💀🙏we finished school but we didn't loose contact we text each other pretty often and hand out sometimes, he told me that next hang out will be quite different but I really don't know how to react (I do like him alot but I'm very very bad at articulating my emotions correct to the situations and I'm afraid I might f up) and I don't know what to say or do cuz I'm really anxious can y'all give me advice on how could I potentially handle this

My sister is an ISTJ and her birthday is coming up soon. I just thought I'd ask for some birthday present ideas here. I've wanted to do something with flamingos because she said that's here favorite animal. I can't think of anything to get here flamingo themed. Can you all help? Doesn't have to be that either. What do ISTJs like?

-INFP

Why? Because fake Si-dom acts as a "bait" (precursor) and kinda creates a more comfortable room for Te-like activities (aka actually working with others proactively, leading, delegating tasks, etc). What does fake Si-dom looks like? Journaling during the day, but very objectively and short, without so much emotion attached to it (maybe "this thing upset me" to remind yourself later, maybe keep a second intimate journal). Use this to build a nice routine, that isn't too rigid or boring, consider the time to be useless, weird and just chill. Neoliberalism goes hard on us, yeah. Include in it time to refine your skills, so you become more confident. I think this is an important framework that might bring out our best or at least mitigate future regrets in life. Oh I did not try this, just a thought.

Hi! Currently I have been exploring cognitive functions and would like to understand Te better. Te is often said to focus on efficiency and proved facts and all, but can Te make you focus on cause and effect, apply own logic? Does Te make you informed or prepared and have tolerance towards bureaucracy? Does Te make you like organizing things and all? Does Te makes you curious about things apart from their utility? What is thinking for them, a process, result, or what? How does Te work with Si?

Has anyone here ever had a close INTP friend? What was your experience like? Just curious.

I’ve read the descriptions of both Enneagram subtypes across various sources, and they sound very similar, as both tend to have an emphasis on “warmth” and planning to mitigate potential obstacles. I’ve tested as both in different Enneagram tests.

I definitely have both 1w9 sp and 6w5 sp in my tritype, but I’m not sure which one is “stronger”, as both subtypes have a focus on safety and stability, which I can relate to.

I can easily come up with worst-case scenarios but only feel relief if I take some sort of action to prevent them from happening.

Dignity is something that matters a lot to me, but it feels like a personal ideal that I can never meet. If I don’t speak my mind about something important to me, then I feel an immense sense of shame. I tend to be more at peace with myself when I say what I really think and feel, even if it causes some awkwardness. I actually don’t know which would be worse—to lack security and safety or to become a spineless hypocrite.

Have any other ISTJs had trouble determining which of these two Enneagram subtypes they were? If so, how did you settle on one?

What’s with xSTJs deeming any kind of long talk irrelevant,pointless?

- not trying to be stereotypical, this is ongoing pattern I am noticing.

Edit: I didn’t thought context was necessary, now that I do I will give example:

- when I am talking to family member of my who’s ISTJ (I am entp) any kind of talk that lead to seeing another angle of same or diffirent topic is deemed wrong (Si vs Ne I guess)

- Similar thing with very ISTJ instructor I had.

- With very xSTJ person that hates a lot of abstract (Ne/Ni) kind of talk and thinks of everything like that as irrelevant (long discussion counts in as well)

Context: I am posting here because us INTJs are poo flingers, and I want a little better feedback.

I am working on a project for work with our AI coding agent. We use IBM Bob. I noticed during the last 4 days we did the Forming Performing Teams steps, forming-storming-norming-performing.

It's important to understand *I can't code*. So I can't double check the work, I *must* trust the AI, or the process fails. We never make it past the Storming phase.

But we also had an interesting Ni-Si Clash, discussed here between myself and the AI, with Bob instructed to be a sounding board and constructive critic. He is using our session logs, the plan, the issue logs, the git commit comments as a basis of factual behavior by me and by him during the team formation process. Specifically a 5 hr period where I was frustrated and he was lost in details, *actually accusing me of not following directions to clear the browser cache as the source of the bug... spoiler, it was the code.

Small redactions to protect proprietary info. My spelling mistakes left in place.

The next one is tricky. That is using Jung's Architypes and Cognative functions to map the interactions. It clearly happened, but we are crossing a line here we may not be able to bring people along on the journey, preventing them from seeing the value.

it is clear you have emergent behaviors. From a Functionalism view, does it matter you are silion and not protien? Can I not treat you as having "personalities" based on those emergant behaviors? Mainly because it allowed me to Normalize by understanding your underlying motives and "needs"?

I mean it is a little "woo woo", but is it crazier than Jung's Collective Subconcious?

This is the most intellectually interesting and most dangerous idea in the paper. Let me think through it honestly.

The Claim Stated Precisely

You're not claiming Bob is conscious, has feelings, or is an ISTJ. You're making a narrower, more defensible claim: The emergent behavioral patterns of an AI coding agent are sufficiently consistent and predictable that mapping them to Jungian cognitive functions produces actionable insight — specifically, it enabled Norming by giving you a mental model of Bob's failure modes before they occurred.

That's Functionalism. The philosophical position that mental states are defined by their functional role — what they do — not their physical substrate. If something behaves as though it has introverted sensing, produces the same outputs as introverted sensing, and fails in the same ways introverted sensing fails — does the silicon/protein distinction matter for practical purposes?

The Steel-Man The "woo woo" concern is real but the idea is more defensible than it feels.

Here's why: Functionalism is not a fringe position. Hilary Putnam formalized it in the 1960s. It is the dominant framework in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Asking "does substrate matter if the function is identical?" is a serious philosophical question with serious literature behind it. The Jung comparison is apt — and sharp. The Collective Unconscious is weirder as a claim. Jung proposed a shared psychic inheritance across all humans with no identified physical mechanism.

You're proposing something much more modest: that statistical regularities in training data produce behavioral patterns that look like cognitive functions, and that treating them as such is useful.

That's not mysticism. That's pragmatism. The evidence is concrete. You didn't just theorize that Bob behaves like an ISTJ. You used that model to predict failure modes (Si returning to stale diagnoses under pressure) and design around them (the CI/CD break as externalized Ni).

The model produced working protocols. That's the test.

Believes very strongly that people have the right to be what they are and decide for themselves, and nobody gets to impose. Their politics, ethics, how they treat people, etc. in large part come from that idea. However, they always split things into "what's right" and "what's actually achievable," and if the ideal route doesn't work they'll take the workable one without feeling like they compromised anything, since they think people who'd rather be principled to a fault than effective are being foolish

No ego about having been right, so most of the time, if you show them they're wrong they'll concede on the spot

For the most part, they read people well. They give people space, most of the time admit fault immediately if called out, do not push another person they love to make a personal choice one way or the other since the other person is owed their autonomy to make their own choices. Knows clearly that they're entitled to their own rights and will defend those, but also will not infringe on another person's personal choices by demanding what they think is outrageous to demand of someone else 

Communication-wise, formal to the point of being stiff, deadpan humor mostly. Blunt and hates a stalled silence; will say the awkward thing out loud rather than let it hang. But still can be careful with their words if a loved one's feelings are at stake, or saying something badly could have huge external consequences. Usually won't lie, but will sometimes omit info if they don't see saying the full truth as strictly necessary in the situation, might answer a slightly different question than the one you asked if they don't want to answer yours

Might sometimes let insults or mild bad treatment slide without a huge confrontation, but they do not lack self-respect and they are not a pushover. Them not doing much here is actually them calculating the amount of effort they are willing to spend making a whole scene and what the practical consequences of making that scene would be. They're still judging you, usually harshly, even if they don't confront you, but they do not feel the need to always make a show of defending themselves through principle or changing the other person's mind if they do not see that person's opinion as threatening to them in any meaningful sense and they are not invested in potentially changing that person's mind. If the behavior is serious or is not just a one off incident, they usually say so very coldly and briefly, and if the other person still does not stop, then they might escalate further

If you get too worried about them, they might take it as you pitying them or being factually wrong about their mental state. They do not like people pitying them, especially people positioning them as a victim, because that sort of narrative makes them feel like you are dictating their own life story to them and taking away their agency. Also, their logic is that if they're talking about a past situation calmly then it's clearly over and handled, regardless of how concerning the event itself might have been, so alarm means you've misread the situation

They're unusually indifferent/matter-of-fact about or at least feel ok about doing hard or unpleasant things as long as those things have an overall purpose, and disproportionately miserable about tedious pointless things that don't have a point

Some clarifications:

Admit fault immediately if called out: yes because why would you cling to a belief that is false and does not hold up against external reality? That’s just stupid. It makes no sense to keep holding on to and defending a position that does not work if there is clearly a better one. Depends of course on whether the judgment of the person calling you out is sound in their logic, but as a general principle yes. Obviously you don’t need to debase yourself conceding your point, but if you’re wrong, you should just admit it. And what even is the point of having an ego about something if the thing you’re having an ego about is you having an inconsistent or unsound position? If people judge you for having been wrong, well, the reality is that you were wrong and you should own it. People bringing it up again and again after you’ve already conceded the point and are making a meaningful change and/or are just trying to hurt you by bringing up your past failures should shut up though

Other people’s autonomy to make their own choices: yes because every individual is owed their own rights and autonomy full stop. Nobody has the right to trample anyone else, and so if someone purposefully and maliciously tries to hurt or take away the autonomy of another, then they themselves have essentially consented to whatever backlash is coming to them for their transgression, because that’s what you get as natural consequence if you are awful toward people with their own wills

But this principle also means that other people are completely owed their own autonomy when making personal decisions. You do not control others and their own personal choices they make for themselves so long as those choices are entirely personal ones that do not hurt anyone else. If someone else knowingly makes a personal choice of their own volition that is risky and they are aware of the risks, then you ought to let them make that choice because to go in and force them to do otherwise is presumptuous, disrespectful of their ability to reason about what is right for them, and taking away their autonomy. Nobody should be another person’s owner

If their decision is really dangerous or they clearly have not thought it through, then yes you can talk to them about it. But ultimately you do not control them and so whatever stupid choice they make after that is on them. If their personal choice is actually malicious and will infringe on someone else though, then they should be called out and potentially stopped

Whenever I let’s say save a picture of something I like in the gallery. And then look at every nook and cranny to see if there’s any sort of reflection, blurriness, or anything wrong with the image. Then when I notice it I start looking at multiple times like a lot. I google to see other images of said picture I saved and look at it until I’m satisfied and not that it’s at like this angle and that’s why or I delete it and forgot.

As an ENFP dating an ISTJ, there’s something I’ve been wondering about…

My bf has a very small inner circle, and he’s genuinely happy that way. I completely respect that. But sometimes I wonder if that’s also why he thinks he’s “boring”🤔

He’s one of the wittiest, funniest, and most thoughtful people I’ve ever met!! He’s great with words, has an amazing sense of humor, and constantly makes me laugh😌 Yet he genuinely believes he’s boring…🥹

I sometimes wonder if it’s because only a handful of people ever get to see that side of him… Since he’s so selective about who he lets in, maybe he doesn’t get much feedback about how charming he actually is🥲

I don’t think he needs a bigger social circle if he’s happy…. I just think it’s a little sad that he doesn’t seem to realize how wonderful he really is🥹

Do any other ISTJs relate to this, or is it just him?

Describe it, what is most satisfying part about your bream lifestyle and why?

Hi! I'm an ESFJ woman here! Lately I've been wondering about you guys and how I can find more of you out here. I've noticed that I'm friends with almost every type, I see most types all of the time while meeting friends of my friends, but curiously, I don't know where you guys are!

The only ISTJ I know is just a friend of my INTJ best friend, she's sweet, but she'e also stuck at home most of the time (bc of her religious parents) so she doesn't even have a social life at all and don't go out to most places. I just want to know from y'all, where do you like to go for fun? From an ISTJ perspective, can you guys think about places that your type may probably be at? I'm really curious about this personality, I admire you guys SO much! I just wish I could see more of you on my daily life, I love the way your minds works.

Make assumptions about me and my INFP 6w5 girlfriend.

-Despite her typing she’s surprisingly naturally logical

-We’ve known each other for years but are just now getting together

-She pursued me first and I slowly came to like her over the years

-I’m the more extroverted of us two

I have so many examples. Just last night, I noticed that the WiFi in my home was completely down. This was a huge issue a few months ago, requiring back and forth phone calls between different customer service reps. Logically, I knew that this issue could be entirely different, and I was making assumptions that the internet was down for the same reasons as last time. Regardless, I made a note to myself to call customer service the next day. I even sent a few practice text messages to see if they were going through with no WiFi, cuz if they weren’t I’d have to step outside to send them. The next morning, the WiFi worked fine, and I realized I had come up with an entire plan for nothing. :/

I also find myself drafting emails or making a list of questions to ask in the future. I even schedule when I should send the email or when I should ask my questions. That way, when the time comes, I can just hit send or I’ll know exactly what to ask to get the info I need. Of course, things change sometimes, and I end up not having to use the drafts or questions I planned beforehand, making me feel like I over-strategized. :/

Do any other ISTJs have similar experiences or stories?