Sayaka, I think I might understand you more now.

Just pasting some things down.

Nearly all of the problematic characteristics described above can be attributed in various degrees to the ISFJs internally mapped and abstract view of the world not being successfully coupled to an appropriate level of Extroverted feeling. Without this rational external balance, the ISFJs opposing unconscious functions can wreak havoc upon the order and sense of the ISFJs perceptions and ideas. ISFJs are usually stable, certain, reliable and deft in their approach to life. But if unbalanced, they are likely to treat any point of view other than their own with a kind of cold dismay, and if pressed hard will tend to shut out the existence of problems caused by others differing attitudes and opinions. If the ISFJ does not learn how to deal with the wide range of differing world views they come into contact with, they can find themselves closed into a lonely little corner of the world in which only their own feelings of safety and certainty are maintained. This is a natural survival technique for the extreme ISFJ personality.
The main driver to the ISFJ personality is Introverted Sensing, whose function is to define the properties of and locate and recognise the sometimes abstract and innate qualities of and between the objects of the outer world. If an ISFJ's picture of the world is threatened by external influences, the ISFJ generally tries to shut such new information out of their lives. This is totally natural, and works well to protect the individual psyche from getting hurt. However, the ISFJ who exercises this type of self-protection regularly will become closed within a small and ever decreasing circle of those family and friends who do not actively disturb their increasingly narrow and rigid world view. They will always find justification for their own inappropriate behaviours, and will always find fault with the outside world for problems that they have in their lives. It will be difficult for them to maintain close personal relationships because they will have a negatively polarised and therefore limited ability to communicate outside of the box of their own security needs.
It is not an uncommon tendency for the ISFJ to support their ideas and values by using only the value judgements they make about the world and other peoples behaviour. However, if this tendency is given free reign, the resulting ISFJ personality is too self-centred to be happy or successful. Since the ISFJ's dominant function is Introverted Sensing, they must balance this with an auxiliary Extraverted Feeling function. If the ISFJ uses Extraverted Feeling only to serve the purposes of Introverted Sensing, then the ISFJ is not using Extraversion effectively at all. As a result, the ISFJ does not sufficiently recognise and sympathise with the way feelings effect the behaviour of others in the world to have a good sense of why things happen as they do. They see nothing but their own perspective, and deal with the world only so far as they need to in order to support their perspective. These individuals usually come across as somewhat judgemental and full of fixed and often rather ambiguously polarised ideas about the world. Other people are often surprised by the vehemence of their ideas and are usually unable to understand how they came by them.

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I think the thing is that ISFJs tend to need emotional consistency in our lives, and when it's not there, we start to worry. We like to know that things aren't changing, because when certain things change, it really stresses us out.


When our inferior Ne takes over, we start worrying about all of the negative possibilities. This is especially bad when we don't have access to information. When we don't know something, we'll imagine that the worst case scenario is actually the truth. We do this because we like to be prepared for everything. Things are much less stressful to us when we know that they're coming.

It's extremely stressful for me to be unexpectedly hit with something negative, especially if I have to react quickly. When that happens, I go into panic mode, because I can't adapt to it quickly. So, I always prefer to know when something bad is coming, because that way I can take my time to get ready for it and stretch out my emotions over time.


So, when a bad thing is going to happen, I'd rather know about it as early as possible so I can prepare for it.


So the problem is that if I don't know if something bad is going to happen or not, I'm stuck...I don't know whether to try to prepare for it or not. So my default position is to try to assume that the worst will happen, and to start preparing for it. This is inferior Ne in a nutshell.


However, what the ISFJ Growth link discusses (and a few other MBTI books mention as well), is that as ISFJs, we need to make sure we don't jump to these negative assumptions without any proof. We should only believe negative things if we know for sure that they're coming. Otherwise, we're over-worrying about something that probably won't ever even happen. This has happened to me a number of times.

The past few days have been...alright.

Christmas came and went.  Somehow, I found it upon me sooner than I had expected...I was wrapping gifts last-minute, making deliveries without planning everything out beforehand.  I missed my deadline for E, which was sad.  There's one person I still don't really have a present for, and I don't know if I will.  I found myself remarking that I hadn't really gotten hyped up about Christmas this year, it seemed.  It almost seemed like I was a lot more excited about it a month or two ago, before we actually got here.  I was looking forward to the winter weather, and the holiday spirit, and seeing friends; people like C and B.  I did get to see C and B, actually, which was really really nice.  I'm going to spend some more time with them soon, maybe this weekend or something.  I really want to spend time with them.

I think part of it is just that the sudden burst of cold that we got kind of threw things off balance a bit.  But I think more importantly, I was sort of caught off guard by Christmas actually being here.  And I think that's in big part due to the conflicting feelings I've been having about...well, everything, but Christmas letters specifically.  I wasn't on top of my letters and my presents and everything because I simply didn't know how I was supposed to feel about them.  I'm still not exactly sure about how I'm supposed to feel about it.  Did I do the right thing this year?  I'm not sure.  I think that it's a mistake to go on like I did for all these years and write all of these letters that may be "meaningless" in the end.  I think that's a mistake.  But somehow the way that I did things this year feels so hollow in comparison.

My idol wasn't around for Christmas this year, which I was sad about because I would have liked to spend time with her during it.  But I did get to see her recently, so that was nice, I guess.  I was actually extremely happy to get a letter from K; she is definitely the person who has come through time and time again in thinking of me and writing to me, and that really impresses me.  I almost decided not to send her a letter this year; after all, can we really be considered "friends" anymore if we know so little about each other's lives?  But I wrote to her anyways, remembering how faithful she is in still writing to me, and I got another one this year too.  It's really wonderful.

I had a bit of a revelation about someone today.  Not that ground-breaking, but sort of a realization that helped me attain a bit of closure.  That sort of "realization" moment has happened to me before, when I decided that it was okay for me not to like dancing with a certain person, because I realized exactly what it was about them that made me feel that way, and I was okay with avoiding them because of it.  This time again, I realized something about my relationship with someone, and although it can't change how I feel about them, it sort of puts me at ease knowing that I understand why things became the way that they are now.  And, I guess, knowing that it's not because of a mistake or anything.

I've been spending a lot of time either doing relatively nothing at home, or spending time with my two guy friends (not together).  I finished both Mega Man 10 =and= FEZ this week, which is actually really awesome--it's not very often that I get to actually check games off my list like this.

Family gatherings are becoming a little less tolerable for me, I feel.  It's not anything bad with them; I just find that I can't handle it as well.

My new phone case finally came in!  I'm really happy with it, and so happy that it arrived.  It looks great, and lets me attach my charms to my phone too.  It just feels wonderful having a proper phone, now that I have a Little Twin Stars case and now that I can have charms dangling out of my pocket again.  Phones really don't feel right to me without charms on them; they really really don't.

My room was in disarray...has been in disarray.  I sort of cleaned up a good portion of it, but there's still some stuff that needs to be put away.  The bigger problem is all of the pencil boards, posters, and prints that have been falling off the walls.  I stopped dealing with them and putting them back on, partly because I got overwhelmed and just was busy with other things (no...more like I just got too lazy), but mostly....mostly because I don't really know what to do about it.  I don't mean that in a practical sense, like in "what should I do to fix this problem?".  No, I mean I don't know what to do with my room, and all of the decorations.  I don't know whether I should move out of my current place and just rent a studio all by myself so that I can have a different atmosphere, have a change of pace, have a "sanctuary" to my own again.  I don't know whether I should keep all of my wall decorations on, or start taking them all down and simplify my room decorations to a more normal state.  Or should I reorganize them all, taking some down that aren't important anymore, and taking down the ones that are hard to keep up?  I don't know.

Just like I don't know whether to get highlights either.  I keep talking and talking about it with my friends, but I never reached any decision or conclusion.  I thought I did at one point, when I was like "I've thought about this enough; I think I just need to go and do it.", but my mind still isn't sold on it, and I still don't know what color of highlights I would get.  I might just not end up doing it after all.  I don't know.  I really don't know, I'm sorry.

Today was pretty miserable.  I spent most of the day doing nothing, really.  I did some work, yes, but not that much.  I fed my friend's cats, which was good.  I uploaded the Match Girl OST, and I did OHC.  But the afternoon was totally wasted.  I was just sitting in bed, thinking to myself that I had no idea what to do or how to feel.  I stared at my room and all of the decorations that are falling off the walls, and I just didn't know anything.  And I thought of the Timm[ie] from 2 years ago, that knew himself so well, that was so confident and so peaceful, and so...so awesome.  And I cried, I cried because I have totally lost that, and I don't know what to do, if I can get it back, if I should even get it  back.  I don't even know.

I spent the rest of the afternoon just sort of sitting and lying there feeling pitiful for myself because, you know, that's what I do when I get like that.  I wasn't really depressed, actually--I was just...-sad-.  I guess those two words might not have the same connotations for you as they do for me, but that's a difference that I felt.  The only other real thing I did was read some random things on the MBTI/Myers-Briggs forums.

I'm really sick and tired of this.  I don't know what I want or what I'm supposed to want.

Someday, I hope.  But not today.  today i am simply paralyzed

Someday I'll get myself back again.

Perhaps, the fact that I have this "capacity" for sadness, my "reservoir of tears", the ability to just feel like crying whenever someone holds me; perhaps it means that I have never been truly happy all of this time.  How pathetic.  And when someone else is sad, I would just think selfishly of myself, and how if they need a hug, I can feel better too, because I would get one.  And I would just spend time talking with people, all the while wishing I could burden them with my sadness.  Isn't that all my world is?  Just sadness, and inflicting it upon others.

When was the last time that I was happy?  Was it months ago?  Years ago?  Was it before I left college?  Was it in high school?  Was it before I separated from my mother?

That's a really stupid way of thinking, isn't it?  My world isn't all sadness.  It's dancing, making people smile, writing beautiful music, doing well at my job, learning to make friends, talking about feelings, having nice conversations, writing letters, buying presents, loving cloudy days, reminiscing about stories from marching band, ditching class, cooking, watching anime, loving Cinnamoroll and the Little Twin Stars, and being awesome.  How can I say that my world is full of sadness?  Is my world that short-sighted?  Narrow-minded?

"Who am I?"  Who are YOU?  Who are you, to be reading my blog and judging me, judging me, do you even know how much history is behind my writings here?  Do you even understand what I mean when I say "being Timm[ie]", when I say "sucks dirt", when I say "fickle!"?  I'm stupid.  Stupid, stupid, stupid.

It's crunch time for xmas letters again!  I've got 11 done so far, and hoping to get maybe 9 more or so.  Jeez, 20 is so...so FEW!  It's not really that 20 is a small number or anything, but more that sending out only 20 means that there's going to be so many people who I'm not going to be able to get letters to this year.  It feels really strange...

Just gonna stand there and watch me burn
But that's alright because I like the way it hurts
Just gonna stand there and hear me cry
But that's alright because I love the way you lie
I love the way you lie

Makes me cry every time.

Should I become a Hikikomori?

Isn't everything that I write in here sad?  What if someday I really am truly sad, and need help?  What then?  Wouldn't that just be the same as always?

For once, I actually thought about deleting this post.  I'm afraid.

"The trouble with life is that sometimes it's just like building a sand castle. You spend hours and hours scrounging out every meticulous detail, all the while knowing that the thing will fall apart in the end. Then just as things are just where you want them to be, the winds kick up or the tide comes in and the half the damn thing disappears into the universe. Then you sigh and start piling up the sand again."
--Lewis Hom

This relates to the life crisis I had a little while ago ^^;

Let's embrace everything...not only the smiles, but the cries, too, the feelings of want, the loneliness, guilt, depression, anxiety, stress, happiness, hunger, shyness, courage, admiration, self-deprecation...don't hide any of it.

I'm not sure what to write.  Are words really a good enough way to convey emotions?  I guess that's one of the reasons I should try to learn how to draw.  Don't want to tell a story, just want to paint a picture.  But, how?