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In this episode, Joel and Antonia compare how feelers and thinkers experience feelings and talk about which type is more emotional.
In this podcast you’ll find:
- Are feelers more emotional than thinkers? The online buzz surrounding this question.
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What’s the difference between experiencing emotions and using a feeling function to make decisions?
- Carl Jung’s definitions around feeling emotions in the body
- The degree of separation between feeling the emotion and making the decision for feelers.
- Thinkers – what’s the difference between thought and a thinking function?
- Is there a greater gap between our thoughts and thinking function than there is between our emotions and our feeling function?
- Joel’s experience as a feeler – does he feel more emotional than thinkers?
- Antonia’s experience with thoughts and feelings as a Accuracy (Ti) user.
- The pendulum swing – how the world has shifted from over-valuing thinking to over-valuing feeling.
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The myth that all feelings should be acted upon – why it’s important to develop a mature relationship with your feelings.
- How feeling types can be cavalier with emotional data
- Some differences between Authenticy (Fi) and Harmony (Fe)
- How emotions motivate thinkers.
- How we’re wired to be intrinsically rewarded for using our preferred functions.
- What does it look like when a feeler has well-developed emotional intelligence?
- What are emotional “triggers”?
- Looking at SpongeBob SquarePants as an example of personal agency.
- Why feelers make their best decisions based on emotional criteria – and how, ironically, they can appear less emotional when they do this.
- Some thoughts on the intellectualization of emotions.
- Why we need to process feelings of guilt and shame.
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22 comments
Hello! I love your podcast and all your materials.
I know this is an older episode, but I just heard it, and I felt (ha ha!) compelled to respond. Specifically, I was so grateful to Joel for his comment about how we always seem to be trying to “discipline” feeling, but that we don’t have analogues for this for thinking functions. I totally agree, and I believe it’s because, although we may be moving in a “feeler” direction to some extent, our culture is 100% based on Thinking – more specifically, Te. This is even something Antonia has mentioned, that we have a “love affair” with Te.
So if I were to say the first way that Thinking functions can be undisciplined, I would point to people like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk (and all the other wannabe versions of them). They are so focused on “how do we accomplish X task and be productive” that they steamroll not only their loved ones and families, not only their employees, but literally our entire culture to get the outcome they want – whatever the cost. Corporate culture generally could be described as “undisciplined Te,” certainly Te that is hardcore repressing Fi in order to be “productive” at the cost of everything else. The recent “great resignation” is a response to us becoming more aware of this and forcing corporations to “discipline” their Te with Fi and Fe (and, perhaps even better, with better Ne/Se/Ni/Si – such as getting better information about what actually gets results, which includes happy people!!).
So that is one version of undisciplined thinking.
The other, which I think will be more controversial, is internet commenting. A LOT of people, including some in these comments, act like trolling and “emotional”-seeming internet comments must come from Feeling functions. I would disagree. What I see very often in internet trolling and internet anger, etc., is undisciplined Ti.
The thing about Ti is that if you feed it good information (through Ne or Se or whatever), its logic leads to correct conclusions. But if you feed it bad information AND/OR you have an unconscious (lower function stack!) emotional commitment to a belief, Ti will “logic” its way to an incorrect conclusion. So if Ti is not working with the perceiving functions, its premises will be incorrect – but it will be incredibly, stubbornly sure of its “logic” and sure that therefore its conclusions MUST be true.
But with Ti, as even Antonia has said, the logic can only lead to correct conclusions if the premises are true. So what I see with a lot of angry-sounding internet commenters who make ridiculous claims is that they are totally sure of their “logic,” but their premises and “facts” are simply false. And because they have an unacknowledged, inferior, invisible (to them) emotional commitment to those facts, they use Ti like a weapon rather than a scalpel.
And yes, as a Feeler, I do also (like Joel) have an emotional response to the sense that we are constantly told to “discipline” Feeling functions, whereas I also see undisciplined Thinking everywhere, but because “logic” and “productivity” are seen as absolute goods, we simply don’t see their downsides as much. OR, if we see a downside (such as angry internet commenting), we immediately go, “Oh, that’s Feelers being emotional again!!” instead of seeing how a function like Ti can irrationally commit to its own thinking just like a feeler can commit to their own feelings – or how an inferior feeling commitment can “hide” behind undisciplined Thinking.
Sorry for the long rant; my experience is that we need to discipline ALL the functions, but that we as a culture are often blind to undisciplined thinking or even confuse undisciplined thinking with feeling. In fact, perhaps that’s the main point: what we see as “feeling” IS actually, in many cases, actually undisciplined thinking.
It was taught to my brother and I while growing up to “temper your heart with your mind, and your mind with your heart”. The logic being, to not make a decision solely on either impersonal data points (irrefutable/immutable info/facts) or entirely personal data points (emotions, feelings, others perceptions), but to use both for best results. Interestingly, this advice came from our INTJ mother, as using solely emotions/the gut feelings/reactions or logic based of facts, can result in more frequently terrible decisions in all fields of life and negatively impact those you care about.
Well, thinkers tend to have a fear of feelings and emotions and that will leak out. That is why there is a preference. Certain cognitive functions flow and are natural and create a preference for us. Yet, feelings are the most informative and life enriching data out there. …. imo. Knowing what you want, what path in life you should take, how to be your best self…comes from feelings. And honestly, feelings are not bad for us. Being aware of our feelings is not bad for us. It may seem like that on a superficial level to thinkers. It is the most underrated skill. I know Antonia was a big proponent of radical honesty. You cannot have radical honesty without awareness of your feelings.
Being more aware of your feelings is a preference for Fi dominants. I’m always amused when thinkers have highly emotional reactions and then say they don’t have feelings. They are obviously repressing their feelings. However, even those who are very aware of their feelings can suppress them. Whether or not you are a “thinker” or a “feeler” in MBTI has to do with preferences, not ability. Although, I do think different skills arise when we prefer to approach things a certain way over and over.
And… I don’t think the decisions of feelers are more emotional. I don’t think you can make a decision if you are apathetic. When people are apathetic, their response can be “I don’t care”.
It can be hard to know exactly what consequences can come from a decision. So, the only way to decide is to know yourself and what you want, what you value by way of your feelings. For instance, if someone says their favorite color is blue, the reason why could be that they love the color and it’s calming (and use some emojis or smile and get excited), or they could say, the light that reflects off objects at a wavelength at 450 nm hits their retina and sends signals to their brain that produces more serotonin than the light that reflects off at 650 nm. Haha! Just kidding, I don’t know anyone who would talk like that but I think it’s a good metaphor for how feelers or thinkers can express a feeling preference either via the feeling tract or thinking tract.
I also 100% agree that we are not responsible for the feelings of others. We are 100% responsible for our own feelings. When we take responsibility for our feelings, we take responsibility for our life and meeting our needs. That is not an excuse to treat people poorly, because we all have a need for connection. Yet, we are not required to meet someone’s needs on demand or to get our needs met on demand. We can fulfill our lives by having many ways to meet needs and that is taking responsibility for our feelings. Because the feelings that arise from met needs versus unmet needs are quite different!
Anyone can feel what they feel, because everyone feels what they feel! Once an emotion is felt, it lives even if you suppress and repress it. I think when people get all bent out of shape with the idea that anyone can feel what they feel is when judgments arise out of the feelings. If instead, we see our feelings as a clue to our needs, then feelings are just indicators of how well we are meeting our needs. And if we are “disappointed by someone”, it is because we relied on them to meet our needs and now we are disappointed. However, they did not disappoint us. The unmet need gives us the feeling of disappointment.
Hey Brock,
Neat insight! You brought up an idea in my head and I was curious to hear your (and/or other people’s) thoughts. This is kind of just spitballing new thoughts here.
I wonder if a Ti-user is more likely to be cavalier with thoughts than a Te-user. If the average Ti-user is spending a lot of time with those thoughts themselves, while the average Te-user is usually directing those thoughts to a cause of some sort (cause with a very loose meaning, not at all just social causes), then I could see how a Te-user might be a little more intentional of the direction of those thoughts, thus being a little more conservative with them (conservative NOT as in a political ideology) than a Ti-user.
I can see this same pattern on the feeling side for me personally and a few of the people around me, and I was about to explore that idea here. Then I remembered what they mentioned in the podcast — that sometimes Fe-users can be a little cavalier, or rather, a little too confident, with relationships. That made me start to wonder if Te-users can be a little (let’s use that word again) cavalier with either projects or their ability to get stuff done.
Just throwing some ideas out.
William