(Sorry for the longer-than-usual post. This is a topic I find confusing.)

I'm not so sure it's primarily through talk. I'm not so sure that I get a lot of simple so-called polr hits from Si-doms, either.

What seems to happen is that my entire way of being is misperceived, or correctly perceived but rejected.

With ISFps, it might be what they are neglecting to say that gets me into trouble. They're often polite and expect me to read in between the lines about their problems and the things they wish I were doing differently. I'm not good at reading in between their lines. I tend to take what they say and do at face value. I'm sort of a simpleton in that way. This leads to misunderstandings.

Some of my SEI friends and acquaintances also have enjoyed doing things that horrify me, such as keeping odd pets (that run around and touch me, or the SEIs insist that I touch the pets, like lizards and rats and goats), wearing pajamas in public, smoking lots of dope (I get sick from doing this), looking at pictures of broken and disgusting things, or pictures of boring things, and generally spending many many hours in an incredibly relaxed state. I remember describing to an SEI in chat here how an SEI friend of mine would do things like rub her bare foot all around the leg of a coffee table in a sinuous way that clearly was doing something positive for her internal state. She's a lovely person with a cute foot, but somehow this little action repeated during a long conversation set me deeply on edge. When things like that are constantly in the background, I feel uncertain of myself.

In Si-rich environments, I tend to feel loud and clangorous, and I start to behave even more neurotically than usual. I start to feel clumsy and ungainly, and even to trip and bump into things and make verbal mistakes (this latter being my area of usual strength).

With ISTps, we seem to talk around each other more. They don't respond much to Fe, so everything I say seems to miss the mark. Likewise, they will say things to me that they want me to understand or respond to in ways I just don't. I remember an ISTp in my house once, saying, "I really like the combination of colors you used in this kitchen." It was yellow and gray. My response was that I stumbled into the color combination because I wanted the cabinetry to blend with the stainless steel appliances, but for the room overall not to seem too cool in tone. And he kind of just repeated himself? "Yes, but it's a really good combination of colors." And then I didn't know what to say -- I probably said, "Oh, uh-huh, thanks," and we kind of backed away from each other. Lol -- so awkward. I think he was trying to acknowledge the technical aspects of color, color theory, etc., and I'm not so great in that domain and feel somewhat insecure about it. Therefore, I ignored that he was trying to give me credit for a technical aesthetic choice, and we couldn't really talk then on the terms he intended. (He is a professional designer.) Meh.

I've known two ISTps who after I while I got into outright arguments with, though I would cut these arguments extremely short. One of them accused me of making things up when I explained something about how music rights work in the legal sense (I wasn't making it up, lol, it was absolutely correct and factual), and another ran a store and I'd go in there to buy gifts and such when I needed to give gifts, but she would act like I was wasting my money, since at that time my funds were tight? It was weird - I had to shop somewhere because I had to give certain gifts, and I chose her store, and she acted put out. Sigh.

The bigger issue is just the whole context. I start to feel sick easily from various environmental input and get incredibly tense, and then feel sicker, and then tenser, and it's hard to get that under control. I have to leave places when they have environmental conditions I can't handle, and this makes me look insane to some people. Being able to joke around and to work things through intellectually are both ways of calming myself down, which may be why usually ISFp is a better interpersonal fit for me. ISTp often look at me like an alien when I make jokes, and the nature of my intellectual process seems to exasperate them after a while, so we end up in a stalemate. In both cases, I walk away feeling bad about myself, though, and it doesn't appear that the Si types do feel bad afterward, though I can't know for sure.