Comments on: Thinkers and Feelers

By: Red

Red — Mon, 24 Sep 2012 18:02:31 +0000

What if it was more like,”Sometimes people need their T/F counterpart to understand that damage to people and property has both an objective impact on a situation and a personalized impact on others in the situation.” Even then, I think the discussion has as much to do with how the message is presented, which is what I think your boss was suggesting (run the language by someone else who is the same T/F as the person you are addressing).

By: Jamey Stegmaier

Jamey Stegmaier — Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:49:58 +0000

Emma–I wonder if kids could benefit from knowing about the Myers-Briggs, or if our struggle with identity at early ages would lead us to pigeonhole ourselves into one personality type or another.

That’s very cute that you took a clear T route while your sister too the F route.

By: Emma

Emma — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:46:55 +0000

I am a thinker and my sister is a feeler and I think the root cause of almost every one of the little childhood fights stemmed from that difference! We never got in many real fights, and almost never even argue now, it was just silly childhood stuff, but it really did reflect that. Even to the point of how I wanted to play legos and design structures and she wanted to make the people talk and interact with each other.

By: Jamey Stegmaier

Jamey Stegmaier — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 03:34:03 +0000

Anne–Thanks for your thoughts. In this case, the culprit was a feeler, a high F. I definitely agree that some feelers feel really bad, but I think the other reaction common for high Fs is to get really defensive to cover up their shame. In this case, the person simply denied that any damage had been done.

I would think that given that you’re in the middle, you’d be able to create a socially acceptable response for any situation. It sounds like quite the opposite, though!

By: Anne Riley

Anne Riley — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 18:29:43 +0000

Do you happen to know if the culprit is a thinker or feeler? In my experience, it helps to know that so you can tailor your confrontation to that person. If they are an F, they probably already feel terrible about it and are trying to get up the guts to admit to what they did, or they’re freaking out and trying to figure out how to handle it without having a breakdown. If they’re a T, then they might just not care or might not realize how big a deal it was. So that’s something to consider.

When I took the MB test, I was almost exactly down the middle between T and F. I am extremely rational but also feel things very, very deeply, and those feelings can put up a big fight with my rational side. The result of this, I’ve found, is that I don’t have a very good “socially acceptable” filter. Something will seem perfectly acceptable to me–something I’m going to say to someone, or something I’m going to do–and then when I actually say or do it, NO ONE agrees that it was appropriate. Sometimes I never understand what I actually did wrong.

So, like you, I’ve started running things by several people before I act on them. It really helps!