Applying MBTI for Insights into Asian Immigrant Parenting

This video goes over how MBTI can be used to understand immigrant parents.

DON'T FORGET TO CHECK OUT OTHER VIDEOS FROM THESE LOVELY LADIES!

Growing up in an Asian Household as an Intuitive with Crystal Duan | Type Talks E26

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[JoyceMeng]

I tried to bring out more Fi for this video, as Jon appreciates realness. Hopefully, that helped shine a clearer light on Asian family dynamics (or at least our experiences with it). Thanks a bunch for letting us share so openly about our lives – I totally enjoyed our chat!

[CatGee]

I just wanted to say that I started out listening to this video an African American female enfp, comparing my experience. Then something in me said no, stop...hold this space for your Asian brother and sisters and let it be theirs alone. I'm so glad that I did bc I've been so enlightened by each story, and I'm literally wiping away tears. I do not pity any of you bc I know that's not what these beautiful lives stand to represent, but I do see you all much clearer than I ever could have possibly before. Also, we are so much more alike than our differences. My heart just began to crumble when my sweet Joyce began to speak. I've been a silent spectator of mbti now for a couple of years after having to go no contact from my entire Fe narcissistic family that crushed my Fi. So all of you feel like part of my chosen family, and it does hurt me to think of either of you being undervalued. Thank you for sharing, educating, and being vulnerable. Having this deeper look into another cultures struggle is life changing, and I vow to meet this offering with compassion. Luv you all, virtual hugs.🫶🏾🙋🏾‍♀️

[kimbomeyer]

INTJ Asian female here. Surrounded by dozens of XSXJ’s… my toddler, childhood, and adolescent years were a living hell. Bullied, picked on, ostracized, and constantly belittled. As well as being physically abuse (scars on my scalp to prove it) and purposefully starved, I ran away when I was 17 to live with a few of my teachers.

Fortunately, I was granted a national scholarship as well as local scholarships for my strong academic record, community volunteer record, supporting myself independently, and for overcoming adversity at the same time.

Following the scholarships, my story made the news. My family, even after I had ran away, were enraged that the public was made aware of what happened behind closed doors. They labeled me the most evil person on earth and sent me death threats.

Over 1 decade free from them and living an amazing life. Treating my children as their own real humans. Not as an extension of myself. Nothing but good reasoning and logical frameworks for what is right and fair in my household.

Ps. I’m married to ENFP 💛

[questinpodcast]

"There's no benefit to your honesty." I feel you Jon, that was definitely the reality of managing a relationship with authorian parenting!

Joyce made such a good point that Asian culture is harsh "in the name of love" and totally screws up our images of love versus the American approach of "let me uplift you to your potential."

Crystal perfectly summarized the generation of immigrant parents are a time-capsule of a very twisted time.

Overall, such an interesting conversation. Thank you so much for sharing this!! I have actually thought about type and parents SOOOO much. Sharing or not sharing cognitive functions really determines the range of ability to be able to connect deeply with someone and feel freely understood. All MBTI lovers probably can't help but try to make sense of childhood trauma with the lens with this psychological framework to explain the unbearable differences in understanding.

[SohamHamsah]

Thank you for giving voice to the issue of no boundaries. My Chinese mother once walked into the bathroom while I was showering to lecture me on which shampoo and conditioner to use. This happened to me as an adult. Overall, the impact on me is feeling misunderstood because the people around me just don't get the immigrant experience and the challenges I face. It also feels very isolating to basically have to parent myself and as an adult try to learn to take care of my own inner child. My parents do not love me, they are incapable of loving me, and there's a constant sense of not belonging and not having a "home". The two-faced nature of Chinese parents has put me in situations where my friends, who have met my parents briefly, believe my parents are so nice and cannot reconcile this image with my horror stories of the fact that my parents are physically and emotionally abusive. Chinese parents are absolutely horrible for telling their children that they owe them for receiving basic care as a child. Being at a family gathering where the interaction is so superficial felt so surreal, I'm surrounded by people but there is no interest in actually getting to know me as a person. I totally agree that Asian people are some of the most racist people in the world. Thank you so much for bringing light to this complicated topic.

[lubicara]

Thanks to all three of you for bringing up such a great and rare content.

[rawnoob]

Wow, I feel super guilty, cuz my Asian (I'm South Asian) parents were super kind and understanding, and I was mostly the one who had all the bad behavior. All of you totally deserved amazing parents and I'm so sorry that you all didn't get that. I'm glad you all have found chosen family. Great job highlighting how growing up with immigrant parents who aren't fluent with the local language can thrust you into a caretaker role as a child; I didn't think about that experience cuz my parents grew up with English, so they were able to fit in relatively easily into American social circles, and I didn't have to bear the responsibilities that you 3 when growing up.

[jocelynleung]

Lovely convo, a lot of resonance with my personal experience.

An observation, it seems that immigrant kids are very deeply impacted by their mothers. Joyce and Crystal talked primarily about their moms. My friends have noted “you always talk about your mom, never about your dad.”

Not sure if it’s a mother-daughter thing, or if guys experience this too?

[nameza]

I went to an international school and was around a bunch of Asians but not their parents, and this video was like click click click. My friend complaining about her in laws eating her food, my roommate who struggled with money bc she lost confidence in learning when her mom was always crtizied for how she was doing it in the leaning process, my old bf who while only 1/4 korean would bail his parents out of financial trouble as a college student, and my friend who referred to my Afro-latino friend as the one with the "nappy hair".
You guys go deeper into the layers and nuances, though. John's decision to not live at home also resonated with me too.

[NugrahaNedi]

Wow, cool! I want to watch this after I finish work. Can't wait to get off work, excited to watch you all Asians together.

[jcolemanor]

Thanks for this. It was an interesting view of a life that I dont relate to, but working with people who are the first generation to the country I was born in I find this fascinating.

[deneilleedwardbelleza]

The rawness 👌 💯, hoping to see more of this with different type combinations.

[hollistantang]

Interesting video.. that reminds me to my dad that loves good reputation as "good person", " people person" but always sacrifices his family's happiness.. We were mostly taught to put others before us, and somehow that annoyed the hell out of me. And that is also another source of conflicts between me & my brothers against my dad...
It is just annoying like hell.. Why can't he stop caring what others think and live with his own life?

[amaya_lis]

Hey Jon! Thanks for the video! I love that this was made! I enjoyed this! It’s fruitful My parents and ancestors are Hmong that have similar history with yours. Thanks again!

[getreadywithmemamma]

Oh Gawd. Thank you Joyce for bringing this to my feed. As you know my father is/was since he is 82 a Thai Physician and an ENTJ. He was partial jungle and fancy Asian haha. If they find the right opportunities NTJ’s can be born raised by anyone and find a way to succeed haha. Oh the shame…. My mother was also a white Irish German Catholic and my Gosh the shame was real growing up. It gets even weirder if you have parents from both worlds and both were in the medical field so to me I was so so confused haha. That took decades. ENFP brain too so oh dear. Haha I don’t celebrate anything anymore but I used to know how to cook and speak so much of my Thai culture but then I just let my Ne Fi take over and the it was different having an intuitive father. He saw ahead and purposefully married a white American woman to help us adjust. It was a lot of processing his trauma though and then now my hubs and kiddos are blonde so it’s a lot of things. Oh for sure, typology and even my faith and just everything in adulthood was shaped from those origins. Having an ISFJ mother and an ENTJ with of course the lectures and respect and insults, but my mother was very opposite, even though she was an S. My Dad was also very funny and could be sweet, very intuitive, there was that. It was good for an ENFP but my adulthood with INFJ hubs has been very different. I used to have to call the hubs when we were dating and I was visiting Thailand and my brain hurt from not discussing abstract concepts except with my father, or having possible husbands thrown my way. Except my father told me to not get married haha and he lives in a very abstract world and studying psychiatry at first when he came here. My twenties were all social justice focused with Brad. Haha wow. Well, I will say that dating outside of your race while of course bringing more differences to work through, there was so much healing for me there too.

[RaidenShogun..]

I live in Malaysia and my Chinese neighbours were hitting them and screaming at them for not knowing how to do math question. My mom and I would sometimes peek though the window to watch them get abused. Fortunately, the maid of that house called the police and the police gave them a warning.

I am grateful that my parents don’t harm me that way, but I still don’t feel loved. They would go in to my room and take away my clothes because I wore it for too long and it needs washing although i already told them not to enter my room. One of them wants to maintain order and instruct me to put this bottle at the EXACT place and more instructions.

But it’s a good thing they aren’t so strict with my education because I am already very strict on it myself and I would see what grades to get next and work on it. We do get in some fights and they threatened to take my education away (which is shocking).

I am a *very* picky eater and they would have to adjust to what restaurant I want to eat at which I am grateful for.

They have this idea of paying back them after they raised me which I felt was very controlling as if I don’t have a choice. I know I am a good person and I would but I really don’t like it when I’m forced to.

That is my experience with Asian parents.

[Elodie_N_INTJ_Analyzes]

It is super interesting. I am not Asian & not immigrant, but .. Joyce completely revealed me 😆 It's crazy I had the same experiences as her :
_"you have to listen to your elders, not talk back to your elders"
_"Because we get criticism in a lot of things that we do, we are afraid to take risks..."
_"A lot of Asian people don't think mental health exist" ➔ It's the same in France, they think mental health, anxiety, depression don't exist. That we should just stop worry, and don't think. Or see psychology as something very negative.
I think it's more they are afraid of the unknown.
_The parents were more respectful/consideration/love for strangers than with their children.
I talked about it with an INTP, and we think it's because Fe above Si (for ESFJ), and probably Se above Si (for ESFP).
The family members enter into Si, and the other people enter into Fe or Se. And we got traumatized by that.

I am amazed how 2 differents cultures, are not very differents. Or maybe it was just the same pattern behavior of unhealthy sensors toward intuitives.

You all nailed it well : We have to leave the unhealthy places, for our health, follow our own path, find our family.
Thank you for sharing your wonderful minds. 🥰

[AbsoluteZero]

A lot has been talked about the nature of collectivism, but a lot of the “collectivist” cultures are actually very good at masking selfishness and can be MORE selfish when it comes to how individuals relate to each other. In these cultures, you are not taught to value your own personhood and individuality, so you’re not taught to see that same sense of personhood and individuality in others. TRUE collectivism, to me, must and can only have individualistic and individual-affirming foundations. I’m Chinese-Canadian, INFP, who’s equally fluent in both languages and I will try to give a bit more of a cultural context as I understand it. So basically, Confucius was a maverick for his day. Nobody took him seriously as everyone in his day and age was thinking about how to kill each other and take over each other’s land. Nobody wanted to listen to his ideas of how people should get along, which in his view, meant knowing hierarchies and going back to the “old ways” and old rites that he saw every “proper person” should know. Basically, he didn’t deny the existence of a “self”, but it was in relation to your role and how you were perceived by others, rather than an independently affirming and self-justifying sense of identity as something that no one should be able to take from you.

Another very influential, just as if not arguably more influential in practice, was Legalism, founded by a philosopher called Han Feizi. Legalism differed from Confucianism in the way that it saw man’s nature as fundamentally bad and in need of harsh rules and punishment in order to restrain it. This stood in opposition to Confucianism which fundamentally believed that man’s nature was good and could become better by being taught the right way to behave and playing one’s role. In theory, at least, Confucianism also advocated for reciprocal relations. While the authority figures in a household, and the ruler of a nation was given a lot of power to exercise their will, the “subordinates”, whether the kids or the subjects, could also keep them in check if they were doing bad things or not acting in the best interests of the collective unit. That, as one can imagine, didn’t really go down well with the feudal rulers that plagued China for thousands of years and are still plaguing China in the form of the current government (which, for all intents and purposes, is another dynasty).

So, in essence, Chinese political philosophy has essentially been a duality where Confucianism is the carrot and Legalism is the stick, but Confucian thought in itself is already rigidly hierarchical and punishing towards any pursuit of individual free will and independent self-concept. Furthermore, Confucius had a largely ambivalent or even apathetic attitude towards anything spiritual or metaphysical, when asked by one of his disciples Confucius basically told that disciple not to care about such matters. That, I feel, plays into the highly pragmatic and materialistic nature of Chinese (although not limited to) society, even Chinese religious beliefs tend to be highly transactional in nature.

Enter the modern age and all the upheaval China (and Taiwan) experienced in the face of new, Western ideologies that the rulers tried to impose on the people. Mao’s Marxist-Leninism and Chiang Kai-Shek’s own brand of personalized authoritarian rule (that drew from a mix of traditional and Western industrialist ideas) in the mainland and later Taiwan. The influx of Western commodities and Western culture has also added an often contentious dynamism to the psychological landscape of wider Chinese culture.

I feel that a lot of Chinese people today are confused. Old ways die hard, but they also lack the underlying foundations to truly harmonize and synthesize the essence of Greco-Roman and Humanist thought, and especially capitalism, that has been the engine behind Western cultures because their own cultural roots are so different.

So it’s a double bind for many Chinese people where their value system is essentially a mish-mash and an abomination. Traditionally merchants were seen as the scum of the earth by the Confucian scholar class, but with modernity people realized capital meant purchasing power which meant societal face and prestige, in a society where others’ perception of you as someone doing well for themselves is basically everything. Everything else be damned.

South Korea spends more on luxury goods per capita than many Western countries, and if not for the fact that China’s a developing country, I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot more people in China developed sudden wealth syndrome and started buying the crap out of things. What’s ridiculous to me is, they have so little actual knowledge of the things they own and don’t care about the history or concept behind the design. They just want to look good to others. I can respect someone (to an extent) who likes nice stuff once in a while but knows what they’re getting, I can’t respect someone who is obsessed with status symbols and derives most or all of their identity from the things they own.

I’m highly uncomfortable with many of the ultra-pragmatic aspects of Chinese / Asian culture, which I believe you have sufficiently elaborated on. What a sad way to be. Even if money does buy happiness, my happiness on my own terms has nothing to do with needing this kind of social affirmation. And if people give me affirmation because of this, I’d rather not have those people in my life to begin with.

My mom, to be fair, has started “liberalizing” and “democratizing” her views on mental health after my diagnosis of depression and anxiety, as well as seeing some people around her become depressed and anxious. Still, it’s taken her 55 years of her life and she still often makes comments along the lines of “people these days are too fragile.” Which to me, is the most nonsensical thing of all for someone to say because our parents’ generation have A LOT of mentally fucked up people due to their circumstances and the environment they were raised in. They’re vehemently in denial of their own trauma and fragility, while taking out that denial on the next generation through gaslighting and unfair criticism.

I do feel overall, so much of what society is built upon is by assuming people’s resilience (really, apathy) to “just take a bit more.” Putting up with toxic people and environments is made out to be a virtue, where we are gaslighted by others and gaslight ourselves into thinking it’s a noble cause and a “test of character”, when all it ready does is to devastate our well-being. I feel the world would be a better place if our fundamental fragility and sensitivity was taken as the basis, and that we are told it’s OK not to pretend we’re OK.

But then I also sense a lot of this “tough it out” sentiment in the dominant Anglo-Saxon-Germanic culture (s) as well. I feel like I am very different from the “mainstream” white culture as well, where it overly emphasizes independence, the pioneer spirit and going your own way without relying on any help as being equally difficult and toxic for me to accept.

Both sets of cultures, have more in common than one originally assumes. They value achievement and attainment, “doing” over “being.” “You are what you do”, “you are what you show.” The US-China rivalry I feel is not just because of an established superpower seeing a potential new superpower as a threat, it is that both the Anglo-Saxon dominated culture of the US, and the Confucian-Legalist culture of China, see being #1 and outward projection of one’s accomplishment and influence as the top priority, rather than a more laid-back way of seeing the world. China traditionally saw itself as the “Middle Kingdom”, the pinnacle of civilization. So does the US. Despite what they say, neither are content really being mere members of a community of nation-states but to ensure their own takes on what the civilized world should look like become the standard for everyone else to revolve around.

And I have major incompatibilities when it comes to both cultures. A very interesting point that was brought up is how accepting a lot of the conditioning that makes one a Sensor is a survival mechanism in itself, when it comes to dealing with oppressive authority. Basically, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down and a Chinese saying that goes “the bird that pops its head out, is the one that gets shot.” Get nice things and go to places, as long as you aren’t questioning authority when it comes to the bigger issues or the “need” to be ruled in such a way. This social contract of sorts has more or less been at the core of Chinese politics since ancient times. The CCP is just one in a long line of regimes that has made this the axis of which their social design is based upon. In a weird way, the Cultural Revolution and how much it emphasized an ideal (albeit a highly destructive and twisted one) was an anomaly. The Chinese regime in its current form is more akin to the dynasties of old in how it views its grip over the people.

Except that even the justification for its rule in terms of economic growth has been largely eroded. I’m concerned that it will increasingly turn to nationalism and a causes belli, if push comes to shove, to divert attention externally. China in its current iteration is a menace, not the least to none other than its own citizenry. A sick and broken entity with more interesting times ahead.

[_Thunderball_]

Interesting video. First of all sorry to Joyce, everytime I see someone type themselves as INFJ I assume they're mistyped so throughout the video I've been trying to look for clues. 49:26 Would've never expected a high Fe user to say that, also never seen an Fe preferenced person to reason, they either try to sway/manipulate or they laugh it off.

Crystal is super interesting, definitely presents pretty clearly as INFP/ENFP. I hear a lot about the struggle they have with figuring out their place in life, trauma and grips with mental health in general. 40:45 Yeah that's a super Fi thing. The next thing she talks about (rooting her beliefs) I just think it's a spectrum of how developed your Ti is compared to Fi. I dont think your moral compass being adaptable to your experience is a bad thing either.

Question to Jon that is not really related to this video: I've noticed from what you're talked about yourself that you might have a pretty strong preference for Ne. You talked about being able to make up stuff on the spot in a bar when being out with your ESFP friend, you talk how your inner world is very vibrant and colorful, and also obviously you did a video on ADHD, which is essentially an Ne thing. Have you ever thought that you might be a high Ne-user, or have someone ever mistype you for one?