Is the ISFJ hard to understand?

Is the ISFJ hard to understand?

Yes, Ned the Piemaker from Pushing Daisies is, in fact, an ISFJ. He makes it into my top five favorite fictional ISFJs that include Captain America, John Watson, and Kevin Ryan from Castle. If anyone is hard to understand, it's Ned!

So, onto the question, is the ISFJ hard to understand? That entirely depends on how well you understand the ISFJ cognitive functions. Because Si is our top function we spend a whole of time living in the past. In fact, if we could wrap ourselves up in physical representations of our memories, then we would. In fact, I sort of do, judging by the classic movie posters on my walls and the unopened Elvis and James Dean collectible dolls on display on my bookcase. They're memories and whenever I see them, I'm reminded of what I love. If you can understand that part of an ISFJ, then you're halfway there. If you can't, it's probably because you're still trying to approach the ISFJ from your perspective instead of trying to see from our perspective.

The downside to Si being our top function is that it affects what we remember. I build associations with rooms and objects and places. If bad things have happened for me at a certain place, or near a certain object, I have a really difficult time coping if someone tries to get me to visit that place or be near that object again. Our fears run very deep and, for the most part, are buried under loads of good memories. That is, until something triggers those bad memories and then it can take days or weeks to recover from the sudden influx of emotion that only Si-Fe users experience on that level. When I'm overwhelmed with fear it's because my Fe doesn't know how to cope with my own emotions and it sends me into a downhill spiral.

And speaking of emotions, yes, the ISFJ can be very hard to understand sometimes. Everything in our lives is pretty much about where we ourselves have been and what memories we've created, or about helping, loving, and serving other people. We don't like self-evaluation (or at least I don't), because it reminds us of our flaws, and we especially dislike huge gushing overflows of our own emotion. When I feel too much, I get tight and tense because I don't know what to do with it and my Ti tells my Fe that I'm being weak by wanting to cry. So, I bottle it up, close down, and turn ice-cold until something forces me to feel and I finally let the emotions out. That's the way an ISFJ is designed, and in some ways, it sucks. Believe me, if you find us hard to understand, we have an even harder time understanding ourselves.

It all boils down to the length of time for the friendship or relationship. You're not going to understand an ISFJ right away, probably because the ISFJ isn't sure what you expect from them. We can be chameleons, changing ourselves to suit the people we're with because we want everyone to be comfortable. That means being genuine is very hard. You're not going to get to know an ISFJ overnight. It's just not going to happen.

The most important thing you can do is understand how the ISFJ ticks. If you stop expecting the wrong things from your ISFJ, then you'll start making progress.