Understanding Others through MBTI

bolognamacaroni

bolognamacaroni

Community Member
MBTI
INFJ
Enneagram
5w4
How has MBTI helped you understand and communicate with friends, family, and significant others?
 
It's helped me gain some perspective into how their minds work, how they receive and process information and emotions, This is invaluable for relationships with personalities that clash and also to help people in general get to know one another on deeper levels.
 
Me: infj
Mother: enfp (I think)
Father: entj (I think)
Brother: entp (I think)

It has helped a lot with my family. I am closest to my mother who is also an intuitive feeler. We are the two in the family with the most empathy. I get along with my brother when we discuss intellectual subjects that he is comfortable with as he is very intelligent but not that emotionally mature. The only thing I really have in common with my father is we are neat. Otherwise I can't really relate to him. Is there anyone familiar with all the types who can shed additional light on the dynamics in my family just based on our types? I am older than my brother and my parents are divorced. I have a very different relationship with each of them. None of them get me, but my mother really tries. Plus it's also interesting to note that I was the only introvert in my family, for better and for worse. It forced me to be assertive if I wanted to be heard. Any insight would be much appreciated. I wonder how typical/expected the relationships within my family are based on type.
 
It hasn't really helped me very much. I guess understanding the whole introvert/need to recharge thing has been good for me. Also, having a grasp on the severity of my J is good so that I know when to give it a rest and be less severe to people I care about or hope to connect with.
 
Hasn't understanding the distinction between F and T helped you understand how people can make completely different decisions in completely different ways when presented with the same situation? It has for me. Empaths and Narcissists are as different as dogs and cats.
 
I find it useful to understand what is important or annoying to others or how to reword things so they are better received. A great example is when my ISFJ friend asked me to explain how to set up a small business (as I have one). After I explained she went nuts at me and got upset. Confused by her response I asked on an ISFJ forum what I had said wrong. They pointed out my explanation was too abstract and futuristic and didn't focus on practical tasks so it would sound to my friend like I just making up some mumbojumbo. So now when she wants to know how to do something I list out the practical steps in order and don't speculate about future things. On the flip side she knows that endless details about how much money she saved in a sale drives me nuts! :)
 
Misadventure said:
This is invaluable for relationships with personalities that clash and also to help people in general get to know one another on deeper levels.
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Completely agree with this. I think the majority of my relationships (friends, family members, and SOs included) have had the potential to crash and burn at various stages of our relationship. Understanding their cognitive process and how that affects their communication has been invaluable to me.
 
dang said:
Me: infj
Mother: enfp (I think)
Father: entj (I think)
Brother: entp (I think)

It has helped a lot with my family. I am closest to my mother who is also an intuitive feeler. We are the two in the family with the most empathy. I get along with my brother when we discuss intellectual subjects that he is comfortable with as he is very intelligent but not that emotionally mature. The only thing I really have in common with my father is we are neat. Otherwise I can't really relate to him. Is there anyone familiar with all the types who can shed additional light on the dynamics in my family just based on our types? I am older than my brother and my parents are divorced. I have a very different relationship with each of them. None of them get me, but my mother really tries. Plus it's also interesting to note that I was the only introvert in my family, for better and for worse. It forced me to be assertive if I wanted to be heard. Any insight would be much appreciated. I wonder how typical/expected the relationships within my family are based on type.
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MBTI has also helped me understand my family dynamics and has strengthened the individual relationships I have with my parents and siblings immensely. I believe it can be an invaluable tool used to understand someone else's perspective and to meet them half way.

I think the best advice I can give you is to continue to use MBTI as a tool to understand yourself, so it can aid in your own personal development. It's incredibly helpful to understand others; it's more important to understand yourself.

I encourage you to deepen your knowledge of MBTI theory, specifically around cognitive functions and see how that might change your perspective on your family's types. Once you can say with some certainly what types your family are, do some research on those types to understand the best ways to interact with them.
 
But don't you think knowing someone's type can minimize the extent to which you perceive and treat them like the unique, complex individual that they are? To me it's a matter of existential authenticity. I don' want to label myself as an infj (even though I do sometimes for brevity's sake) but would prefer to claim that I share many of the infj qualities. You may think it is just a matter of semantics, but I think it gets to the route of identity and self-understanding. That's why I sort of have a love-hate relationship with mbti. It's a useful tool, but it can also be classified as pseudo-science. Although it is much better than astrology (don't get me started).
 
dang said:
But don't you think knowing someone's type can minimize the extent to which you perceive and treat them like the unique, complex individual that they are?
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Yes, but only if you allow it to. Individuals are indeed beyond a set of type descriptions and generalities. Anyone's personal life experiences, circumstances, age, etc play a part of who they are and how they behave and interact with others as an individual, regardless of their type, gender, religion, or any other group/label they indentify with.

That doesn't affect the notion that individuals use a set of preferred cognitive preferences to perceive and make judgements on data, and that understanding your own and someone else's thought process will help your communication and interactions with them in general.

dang said:
That's why I sort of have a love-hate relationship with mbti. It's a useful tool, but it can also be classified as pseudo-science. Although it is much better than astrology (don't get me started).
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Psychology is generally considered a soft science, and respectfully so, since it's approach is applying the scientific method to something intangible (and mostly immeasurable) like human thought and cognition.
 
Honestly I do not think its helped me understand anyone better with exception of myself.
I mean, you dont know what you dont know. How can you put yourself into the shoes of a feeling person when you dont understand the feeling in the first place?
Maybe more tolerance and understanding that people can see the world in a vastly different way.
 
I had an INTJ bf years ago who introduced me to mbti. I told him that I wanted to understand him and he sent me a link to an INTJ personality profile page. So I think he is the only person who it has helped me understand... And that was because he took it very seriously and was kind of predictable in that regard. Not to say that he wasn't complex, but he had an idea of who he was and how he wanted to be seen. I understood the gist of him through that description, or at least what it meant to him. It was a starting point, maybe. Everyone else in my life who is oblivious to mbti has been/is a walking contradiction.
 
Eventhorizon said:
Honestly I do not think its helped me understand anyone better with exception of myself... Maybe more tolerance and understanding that people can see the world in a vastly different way.
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I don't think you can ask for much more beyond understanding of your self and tolerance of others. If that's all you've learned from MBTI I think you're in good shape.
 
I have found it to be real eye-opener recently. I discovered my mother is INFP (Mediator) and my father is ISFJ (Defender). I also asked my group of old school friends to take the test and we all have different personalities, which wasn't surprising. We have the Debater, Entertainer, Mediator, Protagonist, and myself. I've had so many "aha" moments. The way they've behaved in the past and how we've failed to get along on occasions seems to make sense now! I've always felt misunderstood in my friend group so, hopefully, this has encouraged them to learn about INFJ. I feel like I have an understanding of them all now, and I can stop judging them so harshly. The process has literally brought me to tears, particularly reading about INFJ and our interactions with other personalities and the world in general. I'm sure that what I've learnt will be a big help to me in the future.

I have one negative opinion about it, however. I have been dating a douche bag and allowing him to treat me badly because he told me he was an INTJ! I was using his MBTI as an excuse, and continued to see him longer than I should have done. I'll have to be wary of this in the future.

I have also enjoyed learning about Enneagram personality types. I feel it provides more depth to personality, as it further divides the MBTI types. Although, they are rather more negative than the MBTIs! I came out as 6w5 (the Loyalist) and it's made me realise why I've been feeling stagnant in life (work and relationships). Apparently we struggle to trust others and are reluctant to take risks!
 
I had never understood why some people seemed so superficial and obsessed with arbitrary rules. MBTI, when I was introduced to it by an INTJ friend, revolutionised my understanding of SJ and SP types, and helped me not to think of many people as stupid. I just appreciate that they are focused on things I'm not focused on.
 
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