[silentanalysis]

Since I don't understand myself, I can hardly expect my family to.

Exactly.

My family seems to be full of extroverts (although none of them have taken the MBTI) and don't seem to understand why I don't want to attend both social and family functions (Thanksgiving at family friends' houses, annual BBQ's, block parties, dances at school, etc.) They don't judge me on it or call me out, but my mother has often asked why I don't want to make any new friends or invite the few close friends that I have over. I strongly dislike the idea of having even close friends hanging around when I could be doing what I want to do distraction free.

My family also doesn't understand my habitual "tearing down" of people (including, but not limited to my family) with objective criticism and sarcastic wit. I've had many conversations with my mother about being kinder with my words and not so critical. I've slowly been getting better at keeping my self-improvement tips to myself instead of badgering already flustered siblings over the way that they decided to plan this, or that.

The worst is my sarcasm, it's been so bad that once I've been banned from speaking in my house. Instead of being grounded from the television or hanging out with friends, my parents have told me that I'm not allowed to speak or else I will be given a substantial amount of paddlings with a spanking stick. Eventually I got bored of not sharing my wit and retorted sarcastically to my mother, which resulted in a very sore bottom.



It could be worse though; at least I have a sister who shares my same dry, morbid humor.

[Dan E]

No, they don't understand me. Luckily, I don't expect them to. But they do put up with me. That's amore!

[Faklubrejle]

No, they don't seem to. But the acceptance and love I get is enough.

My dad respects me for my discipline, inteligence, inquisitiveness and ability to achieve when interested. There are times when he doesn't get my inertia and special types of timidity though. And I think he overestimates the breadth and underestimates the depth of my inquisitiveness. He is most certainly Te-dom and assumes my drive for questios and data is more practical, then simple will to understand.

My mom doesn't either, but she's mapped those 'shadows' in cave analogy through experience well. Being such an overt emotivist, she had to learn how emotionally inert I am (I politely disregard any praise or motivation headed my way; but I get sad, angered or fear things she can't understand); but I don't think she learned how constrctivist I am and I surprise her from time to time. Most of my subjective reasoning seems to be out of reach for her (admittedly), but I am trusted and accepted too.

We've grown too far apart with my brother. Whenever we chat online, my extreme idea focus is interpreted by his Ne-Fi as obvious but strange agitation and anger (he's blind to my neutrality and MUST associate feelings with ideation). I am entertaining myself thinking out loud about the best ways to prepare past on his facebook link to a video of a cook showing one. Then he gets all defensive, twists words and all that 'good stuff'. People always seemed to like him more, and him them too, or something (I didn't suffer any parent-attention-deficit I think, though. They did a good job). Not that I really cared. He is very scatterbrained, undisciplined and has a much more shallow interest about things, but much much wider than me. I think he's ENFP. There's not really anything we can talk about anymore. Except some worldly experience, because he's older and incomparably more adventurous than me, so he has some experience with this imperfect world to share. We live 17km apart, but we only meet when we come ~700km back home to see parents ~4 times a year.

[SocioApathetic]

I've been wondering this question for a while: Does your family understand you? Like, your sense of humor, or your thought process, or anything else that defines you as a person?

No, no, no, and no. I have an ISTJ mother who always thinks she's right, never lets me speak my mind, does not understand my humor, does not understand my love for art, literature or psychology and has attempted to govern every part of my life. When I decided to become an English Literature major at university, my mother did not like that I was "wasting" away my future on "reading stupid books" as she claimed my future lay in either Business or Graphic Design. She was mad at me and would not really look at me for a while after that.

My ESTP brother thinks I am spoiled simply because he is 23 years-old and is already "in the field" and that I (being an academic) have it "too good". My brother did not attend university. Instead he studied film-making for two years and now shoots live-action movies for people. He travels a lot and leads an exciting albeit extroverted life and that's great for him. However, he tries to impose his views on me, criticizing me by calling me a lazy recluse, an isolated and spoiled individual with "too much free time" and "no sense of purpose" in spite of the fact that I am currently working my ass off at university trying to get the grades that will earn me a scholarship for my Masters degree.

Oh, how I dearly enjoy my family.

[tooboku]

Partially. You can't live with a person for that long without at least getting something. The closest one is the ESFJ sister... but not really. She can predict my tendency to troll - what I'm about to say or do - and parts of my sense of humour but that's it. Her best friend, xNFP, seems to naturally be on the same wavelength as me but other than that, no.

My INFP sister, not too sure. She's more introverted than I am. She actually does seem to get what's going on in my head a lot more than my other sister but she's so damn apathetic all the time. Really, the only time I can get her to respond is to ask about her wedding plans or use guilt.

ISTP father, forget it. He's made up this imaginary person that he thinks is me and confuses us all the time. He doesn't even understand me when I use plain English. We stopped playing chess when I went into grade six with the assumption that I would win if we did. We are not on speaking terms.

ESFP mother, also forget it. She tries to but it all goes over her head. Although she was always at the top of her class, she stopped being to help me with my homework at second grade. Up until then she would even make extra homework for me. Effort counts though and even if she sides with my father when we fight, that is something I respect as she explained it to me when I was younger. Of course, she really said that to weaken my resolve and have me submit to my father... but of course, INTJs are too stubborn for that if they have no reason to think they're wrong.

INTP aunt, amongst my "extended" family, I think she gets me the most. She doesn't really try to talk to me much but at least she knows that my gears are arranged differently and knows enough to trust me for certain things whereas everyone else treats me like an aspergers case.

[SophiaScorpia]

I don't think they do.

One of the reasons maybe is I exhibit a different personality when I'm at home and at school. Honestly, I try to hide or suppress my academic/erudite side when I'm at home, I'm quiet, reserved and taciturn. Though at times, I would just gush out of the blue and minutes later, I would be back to my "estranged" behavior. But I show who I really am to my mother, she's the one who knows me really well. But I guess my family is very secretive and reserved. We try to hide it by acting normally just like a normal family do. No matter if they understand me or not, I love them.

[rowerrunner]

No, they don't understand me. Luckily, I don't expect them to. But they do put up with me. That's amore!

That's a good way of putting it. My family is the same way, for the most part.

[hornet]

Shit my family don't even understand themself,
understanding me would take them several years in therapy first.

I'm the one responsible for the understanding around here!

[KittyKraz13]

Me and my ENFP brother get along very well, and he's an unfortunately amazing buffer between me and my ESTJ father. Me and my dad can get along great on a shallow level (humour for example), but there are a lot of deep seeded issues between us. My dad has never understood introversion. Living in a house with extroverts forces me to spend a lot of time around them, so when I do take breaks down in my room I can be gone for 20 something hours without anyone catching a glimpse of me. The worst cases have happened when I overshot my extroversion limits and got sharp tongued. I take this as a sign that I need a break and go into hiding. He unfortunately reads my break as a sign of pouting, immaturity, etc.

He then nit-picks my introversion until he's compiled a list of things to be angry about over it i.e. "I made you dinner but you didn't come up to eat it; you know, if you weren't so picky we wouldn't have this problem" and "you didn't wash the dishes last night; you're so selfish, why can't you pull your load?"

Something that's extremely annoying about him is how angry he gets over our different thought processes. Even if our destination is the same, the difference in route drives him insane. A rather light example is dish washing. He wants the sink filled with warm soapy water, each dish scrubbed to cleanliness, and then he wants them put into the dishwasher. I just put the dishes in the dishwasher. If there's food on them I'll scrub it off, but I don't bother with the filling-the-sink step nor scrubbing dishes that don't have food on them. He says I'm lazy, corner cutting, etc.

One instance was particularly odd seeing as how I was trying to save him time. Our tv lies flat up against our fireplace, and there are entertainment centers on either side of it. Well my dad wanted the PS3 on the mantel leaned up against the entertainment centers, but it wouldn't stay up. He began complaining about having to build more shelfing and such, and instead I offered to fix it. I simply put velcro on the PS3 and the entertainment center so the PS3 could stick to it and stay up without having to build shelving. It's stayed strong for two years now and has never been a problem, and my dad still teases me about it. You can't see the velcro, so I know this time it's certainly not an aesthetic issue. I think it's the principle of hard work or something, I don't know. XD I could probably name off a dozen more instances where my need for saving time clashed with his need for doing things the 'right way.'

He has zero respect for my stance on things. When I was 16 and told him I support gay rights, he freaked out and this led to that and eventually he threatened to send me to a foster home. He is the king of dramatic outcomes.

My brother understands me perfectly though. Our biggest issue comes from the fact that he's almost painfully sensitive, so when I make a remark his way without thinking it can really hurt his feelings.

tl;dr I get along swimmingly with my ENFP brother and not so hotly with my ESTJ father.

[myhotCaffeine]

My mother is an INFJ, my dad is an ESFJ, and my brother is an ISTJ. We all just get along super well in general. My mom is pretty short-tempered and impatient while my dad is super patient, so he calms her down. As for how well they understand me, I don't think any of them do. They just assume that they do, but we gotta bear in mind that understanding someone goes beyond knowing what colour or what kind of food they like. I'm usually very reserved with my thoughts (aren't we all?) but I have never actually felt the need to show my 100% true self to my family - I mean, whatever for? Sure they're not really going to judge you because family is family but is there even a need? It's not fear, it's just.. I don't know. I just do or say whatever is necessary in the house. My thoughts stay with me, always. I guess that's why I'm a locked box to probably everyone. When any of us argue though, it gets pretty bad because all of us are pretty much stubborn and we all want to have the final say..... Shit happens.