[Salome]

Has it been anyone else's experience that early childhood trauma may have obscured or skewed some responses to MBTI questions?

For me, I question whether my past has reinforced my introverted tendencies. I noted upon completing multiple tests that I sometimes scored much higher I than on other tests. In fact I scored as high as 100 on one test.

I also have noted that there are some areas in which I have a woeful lack of self awareness, possibly because they hinge on matters which I have always shied away from examining. This seems to have resulted in having absolutely no idea of what the appropriate response was.

Finally, I question whether having an environment which does not support the dominant & auxilliary functions (as a very small child) can result in the early developement of tertiary functions as a coping mechanism and whether this is reflected in test results.

Or maybe it is just the P in my INTP which is making me question all of this.

[qwerty123]

any specific examples or more details?

[Salome]

Here are some examples of questions on the tests that have stumped me.

You have good control over your desires & temptations.
You are consistant in your habits
You are more comfortable with the known than the unknown.
You prefer to keep things open and flexible.
You prefer structured enviroments to unstructured ones

All these questions either stumped me altogether or left me telling myself that I would submit two completely different answers depending on whether the question involved dealing with others. Two different tests would ask the same question in slightly different ways and would get the opposite responses. I am quite capable of dealing with other people, and am quite successful at it, however, I tend to not like (or trust) human beings (as opposed to disliking them) and would prefer to have as few interactions with others as possible. 99% of my interactions with others are work related, where I must act in a extroverted fashion. I tend to second guess the answers wondering whether my answer should be my work persona response or my natural inclination. I'm also no longer completely sure of what my natural inclinations are sometimes as I have so few interactions outside of my work.

I'm sorry, I'm sure that this sounds as muddled to you as it does to me.

[rain]

Well it's been documented that any personality type will resemble the negative values of its shadow type (direct opposite) during times of stress.

[Shadowgraphs]

When I was younger, I tended to test as an INxx. This led me to generally disregard the MBTI as inaccurate, since my results would be all over the map. Looking back, I'm almost positive that this was because I was pretty emotionally immature/unbalanced and was much more focused on sorting myself out and trying to develop a baseline level of sanity than on the sorts of activities that would normally characterize an INTJ, such as logical systems, math, science, etc. Thus, I at times acted a lot like an INFP or even INFJ (a lot of my logical reasoning was devoted towards sorting out internal problems and finding people I had something in common with and could trust), although that wasn't a terribly accurate reflection of how my mind worked when I was stable.

I've matured a lot since then, done a lot of introspection, and more or less found ways of resolving the majority of trauma I had been through... which has made me much more of a "pure" INTJ, so to speak. So I guess the short answer is, yes, childhood trauma did throw off the MBTI results for me in a pretty significant way.

[rain]

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When I was younger, I tended to test as an INxx. This led me to generally disregard the MBTI as inaccurate, since my results would be all over the map. Looking back, I'm almost positive that this was because I was pretty emotionally immature/unbalanced and was much more focused on sorting myself out and trying to develop a baseline level of sanity than on the sorts of activities that would normally characterize an INTJ, such as logical systems, math, science, etc. Thus, I at times acted a lot like an INFP or even INFJ (a lot of my logical reasoning was devoted towards sorting out internal problems and finding people I had something in common with and could trust), although that wasn't a terribly accurate reflection of how my mind worked when I was stable. I've matured a lot since then, done a lot of introspection, and more or less found ways of resolving the majority of trauma I had been through... which has made me much more of a "pure" INTJ, so to speak. So I guess the short answer is, yes, childhood trauma did throw off the MBTI results for me in a pretty significant way.

Also depends on which tests you took. Some MBTI tests are extremely inaccurate, imo.

[raz1337]

I was in a depression for 6 1/2 years in which I stayed in my room using my computer and didn't go outside. I quit high school because of it, and became a Diabetic. That's all gone, now, but, going over MBTI is making me wonder how much it affected the development of my functions. I'm beginning to think that I developed the four introverted functions greatly. My tests have come back with high scores on Si, Ni, Ti, and Fi. Understanding how Si works, though, I've come to realize that it's the strongest of the four.

Spending all that time online developed a massive appreciation of the NT way of life without knowing what it was. The computer geared websites are full of NTs. I'm more feminine than a lot of other men, and have a higher appreciation for feeling type things, but I don't necessarily factor feelings into my life. This led me to think about the development of Fi.

[Maja]

No matter what you believe you might be born to genetically, your environment always forms parts of your personalty. Many of the behaviors that you've come to see as "you" have formed in direct response to what you felt you had to be like in order to successfully cope. Good or bad, less or more. There's no way a test by itself is going to be able to tell you if what you answered is due to a coping mechanism. But we all have them. So yes. Like Razz is saying, if you limit yourself to only one outlet for a number of years, of course you are going to be practiced in responding to that outlet. You might even think it's your own response or your normal response when it might not be...imagine the child who acts like their parent, or the blind man who hears better, or the book of philosophy that was written while the author was in jail. You focus on what's around you, but that doesn't mean that's all you have potential for.