How to deal with troubled ISTJ?

[wildeyes]

Hi, fellow INFJs. I'm new here and this is my first thread in this forum, and sorry for a long post.
I'm having problems with my younger brother who I think is an ISTJ. He's in his point of life where he has failed in his career (due to his own decision), and he got extremely withdrawn. In my opinion, he seems to exhibit his Ne grip that he can't concentrate on an idea to follow-through, and strong Fi which is just plain stubborn and weirdly sensitive. It got to the point I could barely communicate with him on a mutual term anymore. The point is, everyone is trying to help him by giving advice, including my parents, but he would get defensive and bounce back others' opinion completely. So everyone just decided to leave him alone, including myself. The thing is he seemed to get worse being by himself and shut off from communicating with others. He became an absolute recluse and a NEET which would be something a healthy ISTJ abhors, and I think it probably tremendously grate on his self-worth. But I don't know what to do about it since he wouldn't even admit that he has a problem, or even listen to my insights without getting closed off internally (that I can always sense). Personally, it gets to the point when he exhibits frequently passive-aggressive behaviors towards me when I ignored him or told him what he should do, and I started to get fed off of him. I can't talk to him. I can't tell him what to do. I can't ignore him. I hate to feel like this since it makes me like everything is my fault (my parents wouldn't do anything and somehow I seemed to unwillingly take the role of the educator of the whole family which I hate). What do you think? Any insights to this mess? Thank you.

 

[Eventhorizon]

Sometimes people just have to work out things on their own.

Why not stop talking to him about what you feel his lacking achievements or qualities are and just hang out?

 

[Joshua Robison]

I don't have any solutions yet. I came here looking for solutions myself because my wife and several family members are ISTJs.
It has been excruciating trying to talk with them. Sometimes I feel like they hate me. But I have noticed two things happening.

1) Just as it is excruciating for me to join in their Si talk about a funny thing someone did yesterday, it is just as hard for them to dabble about with us on topics of future possibilities because as they see it, nobody knows the future so why bother wasting energy.

2) my silly Ni centered brain forgot the second point.

I have started doing something with my wife as an experiment. I found a couple great phone apps that make fake chat dialogues and let you snap them as pictures. I created pictures for each cognitive function and set each one up as a chat friend in the group chat. This way when my wife makes a Si comment about how she felt about something and I have nothing to say, I can let each cognitive function make a comment. I have also included a person in the chat called (Wife's Friend) She is a character who gets angry at the cognitive functions for not responding in a proper ISTJ fashion. This is a recent strategy of mine so I can't report on it yet but if you share my imagination, you will find it as interesting.

It also works for starting conversations with Si or Fi types as well because you can work backwards. We have some Ni thing we want to talk about (I bet microwaving food increases its calorie count.) and you can assign that to a function and allow the ISTJ voice to give the opinion you think they would say. This way you get to say everything your ISFJ mind wants to say and at the end give your brother the comment that he is most likely to relate with.