Relationship Skills: A Quickstart Guide to Temperament Thinking - Feeling

Foreign everyone. And Happy Friday the 13th. We have finally finished yet another week or we're almost there. Welcome to today's presentation. This is part three of four. We're going to continue talking about relationship skills. Specifically, we're going to focus on the dimension of temperament that they call thinking and feeling. I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes. Just like in the other two videos, we're going to go through these sort of bullet point by bullet point and talk about how if you have people of different temperaments in a relationship where you may need to compromise or how you might be able to make that work. So we'll just focus today on thinking versus feeling. And I conceptualize this as where we get our motivation from, whether it's from principles and facts and rules or whether it's from compassion and mercy and harmony and relationships. And as always, most people are not exclusively one or the other. Most people are somewhere in the middle, but they may tend to lean more towards one side or the other. This is one of those dimensions I tend to be kind of 50, 50 on. So, you know, it's difficult to say I'm one side or the other, but that's okay. You know, just recognizing what motivates you and recognizing how to communicate with others who may derive their motivation differently. Let's just get started. Thinkers really prefer words like principles, justice, standards, analysis, fairness, rules. They like documentation, they like operating manuals. They like to go by the rules. And. And that's great. We need people who love to, you know, be lawyers, who love to read through legal briefs, who love to write those manuals that guide our practice. We need those people in life, feeling. People tend to be guided more by words like care, compassion, mercy, intimacy, harmony, devotion. They find motivation in trying to help everybody feel happy and bring everybody together and develop consensus. That is where they are. Now let's think about these two ends of the spectrum. In a business, in a relationship, in life, we need both ends. We need some structure, but we also need to couch that in terms of compassion. If you want to think about it another way, if you're familiar with Linehan's print, tenants of dialectical behavior therapy, Thinking can be thought of sort of as the rational mind. Feeling can be thought of as the emotional mind, sort of. And what we want to do is find the wise mind, find where they intersect, where. Where can they overlap? Yes, we have to have rules, but. But let's look at making those rules to serve the greatest good and enhance compassion and harmony. Thinkers respond most easily to people's thoughts. And when you listen to people talk, people who are thinkers tend to use phrases that do not contain much in the way of feeling words. They don't talk about how depressed they were or how irritated they got. They may talk about how disgusting it was that something happened or, or just kind of go on and you can see that they're upset because of something that happened. But they may not use feeling words. That's okay. It doesn't mean they're not feeling it. When things do not go according to the book, when things do not go according to justice rules, you know, the way things are supposed to go, thinkers tend to get very, very passionate about that. They, you know, feel like that's the right way to go. Feelers respond most easily to people's values. So they may not look as strongly at the rules, but they may look at, okay, how do we solve this problem in a way that it's going to make the most people happy? At the present time, thinkers want objective principles. Feelers want to apply values and ethics from multiple perspectives. They want to stand back and go, okay, how would this make so and so feel? How would this make this other person feel or this other person feel? How is this going to impact this, that and the other thing? So when they're making rules, for example, when they're making policies at work, we'll just stay with work because that's tends to be pretty benign. They want to think about not only how it's going to impact the individual employees, but also how those changes in department A are also going to affect department B and C, how those changes are going to affect the company in general and maybe the revenue. So feelers really want to look at the big picture and see how everything interacts and how intersects and make sure that any changes they make are going to be for the greatest good, for the greatest number. Thinkers value objectivity above sentiment, and feelers value sentiment above objectivity. And I'll give you an example of this. You know, I, when it comes to critters and people too, I tend to be a big softy. And when I was pregnant with our son, you know, we didn't have two nickels to rub together. We were just starting out in life. We already had a couple of dogs and we had just bought a house and, you know, it was, it was tight. I was still in graduate school. My husband was working full time and this dog came walking up to me at work and just the sweetest dog that you could ever hope. You know, I walked and the dog fell Immediately into the heel position. Didn't have a collar on, didn't have a chip. I figured, well, this, this dog is clean. This dog is well fed. This dog, you know, doesn't have a collar. They met, maybe they just had a bath and they got, they escaped. So I called animal control and animal control came and got the dog. Now, mind you, I'm like out to here, pregnant. Animal control came and got the dog. And you know, lo and behold, long story short, nobody claimed the dog. Unfortunately, she was part pit bull. So guess what? They weren't going to even let her go up for adoption. Number one, she was an adult and number two, she was part pit bull. So they were just going to destroy her. Now, I told you, I'm kind of right in the middle on these things. The logical side of me says we can't afford another dog. There's just, there's no way we can make that happen. That is not practical. I'm getting ready to bring another little human into this world. Can't do it right now. And, you know, I talked about it with my husband and you know, he knew that I was calling the pound and he knew that I was really upset that they were just going to destroy her. And anyway, he is the logical one. And I know if I'm going to try to motivate him to do something, a lot of times I want to present the facts and how it makes logical sense. And I had made the logical case that we couldn't afford this dagum dog. Well, you know, being six, seven months pregnant, I was emotional. Anyway, long story short, we adopted the dog. He decided that, you know, he said that I am going to hear about this darn dog for the next 15 years if we don't adopt her. We will figure out a way to make it work. And so we went down and adopted the dog. Now, that was kind of a compromise because objectively, I know in his mind, he was like, there, this is just, we can't afford it right now. It makes no sense to get this dog. But the compassionate side of him, you know, didn't want me to be upset. And also the logical side of him didn't want to hear about it for the next 15 years. So I'm sure that played into it somewhere. But, you know, we can compromise. When he wants to motivate me to do something, instead of presenting all the logical reasons why this, you know, needs to happen or could happen, you know, he will present how it could be in the best interest of the family, you know, how it Would make other people happier. How it would do, you know, this kind of thing. So it's kind of interesting. We work well together because he, he can walk that middle line really well, just like I can. Not all couples, not all relationships are that way. And when I say relationships, I mean at work too. You know, there are times when I, I remember being a middle manager when I would, you know, really struggle because what we needed to do in order to get billing up was just inhumane to do to my staff. And so I, I felt very torn. I could see logically what we needed to do, but I could also see the negative morale impact it would have, and I would have to navigate those things. Thinkers assess reality with a true false lens. They look at it and they say it falls in the true column or it falls in the false column. You know, pretty cut and dry. Feelers tend to assess reality through a good bad lens. This is a good way to go. This is the not so good way to go. And it's just a matter. It's partly semantics, but again, it goes back to are, are you using your heart or are you using your logic to prelim primarily guide your decision making? Thinkers may think that those who are sentimental take things too personally, that, you know, it's not. It makes more sense to do things the logical way. You can write out this plan. You can see very clearly what's going to happen. So it makes sense to follow this path, even if it means that there's going to be some disharmony to begin with. Feelers sometimes think that people who are objective are kind of heartless or insensitive because they don't factor in to the same extent the emotional component. Thinkers may argue both sides of an issue from mental stimulation. Lawyers tend to be excellent thinkers. They tend to be more on the thinker side, whether they're men or women. They tend to be more thinkers. And feelers really prefer to agree with those around them. Not that we would sacrifice our, our values necessarily, but we really try to create harmonious environments where there's not going to be conflict, where we're not going to have to argue or debate about things. We surround ourselves with people who have oftentimes who have similar opinions, similar values. A thinker doesn't necessarily do that, and sometimes they find those environments boring. If everybody agrees with them, they want that mental stimulation of discussing these two different sides. The other thing with thinkers and feelers is how we respond. And it's not on this, on this slide, but I think it's important when A thinker gets upset in general, you know, you can't say anything is 100% of the time when you're talking about humans. It's just not the way it goes. But generally, when thinkers get upset, they don't want to sit down and talk about the F word, and that's feelings. For those of you who aren't following, they want to talk about their thoughts. What are their thoughts? How are they analyzing this situation? And so when a thinker gets upset, you may say, you know, what are your thoughts about this? Or, you know, what's going on in your head? Or it seems like you're really struggling with this issue or, or, you know, mulling this over. You're talking about their thoughts and how cognitively discombobulated or distressed they may, may be experiencing at the moment. Feelers, on the other hand, really need to connect with those emotion words. So, you know, and this is one place where I'm on the feeling side when I get upset. It is most helpful when somebody that I'm interacting with paraphrases how I'm feeling. If they just acknowledge and validate my feelings. Oh, you know, a lot of times that just helps me feel understood and helps me de escalate because I don't feel like I'm going to have to try to explain myself to them. They're, they're, they may not agree with me, but they're validating and acknowledging my feelings as my own and as real to me. And that is so important in de escalation. If you try to get a thinker to talk about their feelings, it's just going to get them more frustrated. If you try to just jump in with problem solving with a feeler, when they're upset, it's just going to make things worse. So it's important when people are upset to understand how they conceptualize problems and address it from that perspective. So you're joining them in their, in their language of problem solving, so to speak, or their language of experience, which, you know, is either cognitive, more cognitive or more emotional, still can be extraordinarily intense. If you've ever been around, lawyers are the best example I can give you because they tend to really like justice and standards and analysis and briefs and all that kind of stuff. And when they see something that they disagree with, they think is wrong, they will get extremely passionate about it. So that is, you know, a great example of how thinkers aren't dispassionate at all. They just tend to process it in a cognitive fashion, whereas feelers tend to process, at least at first, in more of an emotional fashion. In terms of recovery, thinkers need to be aware of, you know, how they process things so they can effectively process it and need to be aware of what they need for motivation, if they need to get motivated to do things in terms of, you know, to go to meetings or to go to support groups or to get plenty of sleep. You know, a lot of people who are in recovery from mental health or addiction issues, you know, they have really crappy sleep habits, so they may need to motivate themselves to get keep a sleep schedule. Let's just give that as an example. A thinker will need to examine all the logical reasons that keeping a sleep schedule is in their best interest for recovery and how it makes sense that if they get sleep, it will help them, you know, stay happier, healthier, sober, whatever it is. Feelers, they also need to keep that sleep schedule. But instead, instead of looking at the logical reasons, they may look at how it's going to improve their relationships and how they interact with others and how they perceive the world. When I'm tired, you know, I tend to be irritable, I tend to be more impatient, I tend to withdraw from other people more. And that's not, you know, supporting harmony and compassion and intimacy, you know, that's counter to the things that are important to me. So as a. From a feeler's perspective, it's important for me to get sleep so I can enhance that harmony in my environment, if that makes sense to you. What questions do y' all have about temperament? You know, any of the dimensions that we've talked about thus far or even, you know, anything else that's on your mind right now? I know there's a lot of stuff going on. There's always a lot of stuff going on in the world, but there is a lot of stress and frustration. And we're also getting ready to come up on holiday season, which is extremely stressful for a lot of people. So I'm interested in what types of things are weighing on your mind right now. Now, tomorrow we're going to be talking about judging and perceiving. And that's really kind of a time management, you know, if you want to just globally describe it as more of a, the, the time management dimension. And that can be a big issue again in recovery at work as well as in relationships. So we'll want to talk about, you know, how do you work with people who are different in terms of their time management style? Alrighty, everybody. Well, you are a quiet group today, but that's okay. We all have quiet days and it is Friday after a really long week. So I do thank you for being with me today. I see we've got about 20 people that are watching right now, and that is super awesome. I am so grateful that that you logged in. Please don't forget to hit the like button. Subscribe and I do check the comments later. So if you, you know, you are distracted and you come back and you still have something that you want to ask, please feel free to do so in the comment section and I will do my best to respond to those comments. Until Monday, y' all have a great weekend. Stay safe. Have do something every single day. Even if it's just for 10 minutes. Do something every single day that makes you happy. And I will see you on Monday.