ISFJ

You Are an Introverted Sensing Type

You belong to the most practical and realistic of all the introverted personality types. Hard-working, thorough and responsible in all you do, you are a Rock of Gibraltar for your friends, family and co-workers. People can lean on you with good cause: your combination of introversion, sensing and judging forms a mighty foundation of stability and trust. You can be counted on never to undertake any enterprise or relationship impulsively or frivolously, nor forsake it for any but the soundest and most well-documented of reasons.

As an introvert, your internal life is rich and active, ruled by your sensing characteristic. Your outer life is dominated by your judging nature, which, in turn, derives its substance from your eternal data-gathering. You are capable of integrating an enormous number of facts, converting them to highly personal ideas, and relying on this massive psychological "data base" to formulate your plans and take action.

You are a permanent resident of the here-and-now, continually comparing today's data with what you collected yesterday and all the yesterdays before.

On the one hand, that tendency is extremely valuable in shaping a consistent and predictable personality—one which steadfastly avoids introducing any unnecessary change into the routine of a smoothly functioning system. On the other hand, your tendency to view what is in continuity with what has been may limit your vision of what could be.

To be sure, no one would ever call you a visionary, and you wouldn't be happy with the title, anyway. You're frankly distrustful of that world of the possible which intuitive types call home. To you, they seem to be continually "up in the air." And—given your judging nature and your conviction that what you see is what exists—you're rarely shy in letting intuitives know that you don't go along with their dreamy speculations about the world.

Sometimes, in a close personal or working situation with an intuitive sort, it's all you can do to keep from asking: "Where in the world do you get your ideas?"

The answer to that question is the key to understanding the important difference between sensing and intuitive people; for, while you base all of your concepts on information received via your five senses, the intuitive only begins to formulate ideas with sensory observables.

Then the intuitive reaches beyond your reality and uses recollections, imagination and tenuous associations with other ideas, past and present, and—to make this process even less understandable to you—the intuitive does all of this instantly, without the careful reflection that goes into your thought process.

The combination of sensing and judging is at the cornerstone of your personality, your core temperament. Yours is the outlook of the traditionalist: an individual who believes in structure, responsibility and rules for living. That's why we call this temperament the LEGALIST.

You are happiest when living a simple, well-spelled-out life, both at home and at work. You appreciate a predictable environment, and you are both patient and comfortable with routine.

You probably prefer conventional roles within the family. Wife-mother, husband-father, older and younger children, all have particular functions in your mind. You like a harmonious, orderly, home life, emphasizing traditional values, and you feel it is important to transmit these values to your children. You believe in discipline, and you expect reasonable behavior from your children.

Your home is your castle. You want to know where things are and when things will happen. You'd just as soon not have any more change than absolutely necessary, especially rapid change, change which you don't see as necessary, or change which isn't an obvious improvement over familiar patterns.

You value tradition, history and the family as your connection with both the past and the future. Even if your ties with the extended family aren't particularly nurturing or loving ones, the rituals of clan gatherings and family celebrations probably receive your devoted attention.

You value your possessions. Given a choice, you'll spend your money on useful or home-related things: major pieces which will see many years of service. You tend to take care of things (furniture, cars, tools, and such) and you like to see others do likewise. You are unsettled by waste and conspicuous consumption.

You are conservative financially and protective of your and your family's future security. You keep an eye on future comfort, at times to the compromise of present pleasure. You believe in saving, and a credit-card life is an unsettling thought to you. You believe in planning for financial catastrophe.

You may notice a sense of pessimism pervading your view of reality. I know. I know. You call it realism. Nonetheless, you'll probably concede that Murphy, the famous author of Murphy's Law(s) (i.e., "Whatever can go wrong, will, and in the most expensive and disastrous way possible!") was probably a sensing-judging person, not too unlike yourself.

As a general trend throughout all parts of your life, you have a need to feel useful, important to other people. Your sense of obligation and responsibility may well be a driving force, pushing you to take on more and more tasks for the benefit of others.

You use your actions to prove to others and to yourself that you are a worthy and capable human being. The only problem is that you don't really believe it yourself. You may be afflicted by a kind of chronic underestimation of your abilities and talents that often troubles sensing-judging types. You may take yourself for granted.

Although you have an extraordinary capacity for factual knowledge—one so overwhelming that it sets you apart from all the other personality types—you may not regard yourself as particularly exceptional. You have a very realis-tic view of what you can and can't accomplish, and you deal with that selfappraisal merely as another of the myriad facts you handle every day.

Luckily for you, the abilities of introverted sensing people don't escape the attention of others who lack your qualities. People with your talent are "discovered" and often wind up in successful partnerships. It won't surprise you that your ideal partner can be your "missing half"—one of those intuitive characters who frustrates your view of reality!

To describe your personality in nothing but the working world omits one of your most charming qualities, your highly individualistic sense of humor. Granted, your introverted nature is such that you may not always let the world in on your humorous perspective on life, but—when you do—people are surprised to discover that your active "idea factory" is capable of doing the kind of artful association and rearrangement of facts which forms the basis of all good humor.

The combination of sensing and judging arms you with a strong sense of justice, a feeling of right and wrong which other types rarely share. You have strong sense of duty; "shoulds" and "oughts" are important words in your inner vocabulary of motivation.

You expect a great deal from yourself, and you are always judging your own behavior by tough standards. Since you set your goals so high, it's rare that you satisfy your own scrutiny of how you should perform.

It's hard for you to be entirely satisfied with your own accomplishments, no matter how much you achieve. Ironically, you probably don't think as much of your character and accomplishments as those around you do.

You expect performance from others too, but not nearly so much as you demand from yourself. When others don't achieve what you think they should, or when they don't even try, you are disappointed.

You are far more comfortable lending than borrowing, giving than receiving.

Being independent—as in not depending on others—is of paramount importance to you. But, ironically, being independent—as a free spirit, unfettered by responsibility—is virtually impossible for one with your personality characteristics. You have a strong need to be counted on, to feel useful to others. You are almost driven to accept obligation.

Your view of life is so strongly linked to the work ethic that you may feel play must be earned by work. Then, ironically, when you recreate or socialize, you may often find yourself working in that setting, too!

You spend your leisure time doing projects, fixing things, making things. You may put together a party and spend so much time working on it that you don't ever relax. Or— worse yet—you get invited to someone else's house for dinner and insist on helping clean up!

When those with your personality type join organizations, it is only partly to seek out fraternity and social connections. You have probably found that you quickly accept responsibility in any group you join. Look at the bedrock of any organization: officers, founders, chairs of the working committees, and you'll be in the company of others with your super-dependable personality. Yours is the personality that establishes, nurtures and maintains organizations.

Many with your personality structure have a hard time asserting their own personal needs. In the process of taking on more and more responsibility, taking care of more and more people, you may get yourself into a situation in which you feel frankly overwhelmed by your obligations.

Then you may feel resentful. After all, if others just behaved as you do, then you wouldn't have to take on all of these tasks and chores! Guess what happens next in this scenario. In walks someone who asks you to take on another responsibility, and you jump at the chance!

Whoa, slow down! You have a right to say "No." You have a need to say it, too. Learning to be assertive may be the key to freedom for you, liberating some time for rest and relaxation. You deserve it. Take a break and don't feel guilty about it!

Your Auxiliary ProcessWith your dominant process of sensing out of sight, ruling your inner world of thoughts and ideas, control of your outer personality falls to your judging side, guided chiefly by feeling.

Your sensing judging LEGALIST temperament is marked by a keen sense of duty and dedication, and—as a feeling-type person—you'll be most likely to relate this loyalty to other people, rather than to abstract ideas, tasks, or institutions. Your superiors may earn your respect by their title, rank and authority, but your co-workers and colleagues win your loyalty out of affection and gratitude. Other people really matter to you.

You are likely to react strongly to those who do not exhibit your kind of loyalty. You believe that people ought to matter, to you as well as to others. Strongly thinking-type people may strike you as hard-hearted and insensitive.

Selfish types disturb you because they seem to be lacking in a sense of the "common good." In short, people who don't exhibit the caring you do may strike you as basically wrong, and—even if you don't tell them directly— you may think less of them as people and let that affect your behavior toward them.

Wrong: that word brings up the central conflict which you face as an introverted sensing type with your judgment guided by feeling.

On the one hand, you—as all introverts—must nurture your outer personality if you are ever to function in the world comfortably and effectively. In your case, this means cultivating your judging side, aided by feeling. But you must always guard to keep that feeling/judging side of you as a social tool to guide your behavior and solve your problems.

If, instead, you turn your feeling nature into a weapon of judgment and condemnation of others, you'll find yourself estranged from society, grumbling, self-righteous, and feeling unappreciated. Your reflex toward righteous indignation can be your undoing.

A rule of thumb may help you out: judge only stuff, never folks. You pour yourself unselfishly into your relationships with others. You enjoy relationships in which you give more than you get: relationships in which you are truly needed.

When you translate this into your most intimate relationships with your mate and family, it means you may encourage helplessness on others' parts in order to feel important.

In choosing a mate, that aspect of your personality may mean that you gravitate toward people who have problems or conspicuous weaknesses: gambling, alcohol, drugs. You're caring nature feels fulfilled when you can minister to others, but you may wish to focus that drive and ability in your chosen work, rather than bringing it home with you. When marriage turns into a lopsided caretaking relationship, rather than a sharing, mutual commitment, life can be an exhausting and depressing experience.

With friends and co-workers, as well as with family members, you put out more than your share. You produce and provide a lot for those you care for, because you feel you should. You expect a lot from them, in return, because they should. When they don't respond in kind, without being asked, you get disappointed.

You may find that you respond to this situation with hurt and resentment. As an introvert, you're most likely to show your feelings by silence or sulking. Chances are good that you tend to turn these feelings in on yourself, leading to depression or even illness. When you can bear it no longer, your frustration is likely to express itself explosively and destructively.

Sometimes, sensing-judging people fall into a trap of lecturing or criticizing, then forgiving or bailing out the people closest to them.

There's more than a bit of parent in this behavior: loving parent, scolding parent, forgiving parent, back and forth. Your actions may stem from your own strong value system and from truly loving the individual, but the signals can be misread, creating an environment of perpetual criticism.

Sometimes this interaction can have the unwanted effect of creating irresponsibility on the part of the mate or children. After all, what's to be lost? There's no winning, no matter, so why not opt for a good time? Yours is a specific problem with assertive behavior. You need to learn to ask for what you want in a simple, positive, straight-forward way.

You may need to practice a little optimism in your interactions with others. You may need to ask for the things you consider obvious, the things you provide without a request.

Remember, less sensitive types may not sense your needs without being asked or told. You need to believe that you can get what you want and need.

You'll get the best results if you structure your requests around phrases like: "I need...," "I want...," "I would like...," rather than "You don't...," "You used to...," "You ought to...," and "You shouldn't..." The difference may look subtle at the outset, but—in practice—it can mean the difference between an effective message, well-received, and a whining complaint or criticism that misses its target entirely, leaving your need unsatisfied.

You deserve to have your needs met. You deserve to get as much as you give. You deserve to be loved and appreciated for the hard-working, loyal, caring, valuable, reliable person you are. When you truly believe in your own worth, increase your self-esteem, and project that power into the world, you'll get what you need from other people.

The Introverted Sensing Type in the World of Work

Your introverted nature needs peace in order to work most comfortably. Whatever the job, you spend a lot of time thinking before acting, and you're in your element when you find work which gives you plenty of time for contemplation.

You don't mind working long hours on a project without a break, and you take pride and interest in your job, especially if you are kept in touch with the ideas behind your assignments.

You prefer a quiet working environment, and you enjoy working alone. If the telephone never rings, and no one ever intrudes or interrupts your train of thought, all the better. It's natural for you to regard other people as a necessary evil of most work situations. You tend to have trouble communicating fluently, and names and faces seem to slip by you without registering more often than you'd like to admit.

More so than your extraverted co-workers, you pay attention to details and you are conservative in drawing conclusions from your work. Those who make flourishing statements make you anxious, especially if they're referring to your accomplishments.

You trust your senses. You're rooted in the real world, not fantasy, and—in the world of work—that translates to patience with familiar tasks, familiar skills, familiar routine.

You work steadily toward your goal, and—with much greater accuracy than the intuitive sorts—you have a good idea of how long it will take to reach the conclusion of the task at hand.

You are good at precise work, and you seldom make errors of fact. Those with less attention to detail, schedules and precision strike you as unreliable.

While others may thrive on novelty, you are frankly uneasy with new problems until you settle on a sure way to solve them. You may become impatient if work becomes too complicated.

Change not only makes you uneasy, but sometimes disagreeable, as well. You have to admit that you sometimes drag your feet when someone turns the tables on you (new task, new technique, new schedule, new rules) after you were comfortably targeted on your original goal!

When you have to deal with intuitive sorts, you may find it difficult to trust their inspirations and adopt them as a basis for trying out changes. You may want to look at that resistance.

On the one hand, your well-expressed objections to their flights of fancy may help keep them from taking off—and taking you off—on joy rides that lead to nowhere. But, on the other hand, with their ideas and your ability to get things done, you may be able to accomplish great things as a team—if both of you give a little. Your judging tendency will have a major impact on your behavior in the work place. Be aware that your personality type tends to set up psychological blinders, and that they can function both to your advantage and disadvantage.

On the positive side, you are good at filtering out extraneous information, so that you can focus on the critical issues to formulate plans, settle conflicts and wrap up deals with a minimum of delay.

But on the negative side, you may restrict the flow of information too closely to what you consider to be "the essentials," and, by so doing, commit yourself too early to a solution. Worse yet, your tendency to be satisfied with yourself once you have decided on any course of action may make it impossible for you to recognize at an early stage when a mistake in judgment has occurred.

It's not unusual for judging people to find it difficult to interfere with their own plans: to shift gears, to interrupt one project for a more urgent one which emerges.

From time to time, this tendency may rear its head, as you fail to notice new things that need to be done, after you've already set your sights on some other objective.

You value sentiment over logic, in the work place, as in all other aspects of your life.

You are very sensitive to other people's feelings and needs. You praise others' accomplishments, lend a sympathetic ear to their problems, and you try to avoid being the bearer of bad news or criticism.

Your feeling side can make it difficult to be a supervisor. You may care too much about being well liked and respected to be objective and impersonal in appraising others' performance on the job. Reprimanding an employee you like is painful, and the prospect of firing someone, without respect for the personal consequences to the employee's family, would be extremely difficult for you. Even in situations which threaten your sentimental nature less directly, you may often have to battle your tendency to be tactful when the unvarnished truth is needed.

Your need for acceptance may nudge you into acquiescence when your independent judgment is called for. In the effort to get along with others, you may let your decisions be swayed by the group spirit, or by personal considerations which might better be ignored in the interests of impartiality.

You are so keenly aware of others' feelings that the ordinary politics of most business endeavors causes you anguish and concern. Your working ability— attitude as well as efficiency—can be crippled by an obvious office feud. You need harmony to work happily and well with your coworkers.

So, getting more specific, what kinds of career choices are good for people with your personality?

Feeling needed, whether at home or at work, is an important consideration for you, and this aspect of your personality is likely to show itself in your career choice. The key word is service. The ministry, homemaking, medical service or other adjunct-medical professions, teaching, secretarial, clerical, or library work would suit you well.

You will be happiest in an unambiguous job, with well understood expectations, regular hours, and predictable activities.

Your respect for rules may translate into comfort within a bureaucratic or institutional framework. You believe in the stability of organizations which are marked by clear-cut lines of communication, authority, power and status. You are respectful of procedures and policies, and you could function happily and productively in your role at almost any level of an institutional hierarchy.

Bear in mind that work-related stress can be avoided if you try to optimize your own strong points in choosing a work field. A position which makes continual demands on your intuitive-thinking side will frustrate you, exhaust you, and won't let you show your own best side. Make sure that your efforts will be appreciated. You need strokes and you deserve them! SJ