ESFJ mom and INFJ daughter

[Rosslyn]

Lately I've been these conversations with my mom about my anxieties and such. My mom keeps telling me I have control issues when I tell her that I feel drive to change things when I see they could be better. It's my perfectionist qualities combined with my need to help others. I don't know how to explain to her that I am a much deeper and more complex person than she realizes and that I feel that I'm here to improve things. She thinks she sees me so clearly, but I think she has a hard time seeing past the daughter she thinks I am.

She has attributed some of my weaknesses to her parenting. I think this is partly true. I also think I repressed my Fe as a child in response to what I felt was neglect. She wasn't the best mother, almost obsessively paranoid that I would turn out like her (pregnant at a young age and doing drugs). I wasn't that daughter. Her personality break down said that hyper-viligent was more appropriate than paranoid, but I was a fantastic child and teenager.

I just don't understand my mom most of the time. She is also bipolar, a compulsive liar and if some of her stories are true (and I can tell that SOME of them have to be), then she was abused as a child. I have no doubt that my mom is a broken woman, but how much is her personality and how much is a result of her past (I also acknowledge that some of it is both)? She was also an abusive mother at times. I don't really know what to think.

 

[aerosol]

My mom is also ESFJ.

I can relate to "I don't know how to explain to her that I am a much deeper and more complex person than she realizes and that I feel that I'm here to improve things. She thinks she sees me so clearly, but I think she has a hard time seeing past the daughter she thinks I am."

 

[jyrffw54]

I consider my stepmom my mother, but she is ESXJ.

She doesn't understand me wanting to change things around the house, or for better words, make them more flexible so that everyone is happy. She was super-emotionally abusive to me and extremely paranoid about pretty much everything. She, to this day, still gets angry when I don't show the "appropriate" emotion for the moment. And she never wants to take responsibility for her mistakes.

I don't think she has any idea who I am

 

[bickelz]

I think my mom is either esfp or enfp, not really sure.

This sounds a bit like my dad though but he repressed me for different reasons other than for me to be a better person than him.