if you’re familiar with the myers briggs test, you’re familiar with the “thinker” and the “feeler.” i’m definitely a thinker. a thinker with empathy, but a thinker nonetheless.
sometimes i wish i had a little more “feeler” in me, but i think i’ve gotten used to the fact i don’t. it’s easy for me to envy those who do feel…who are moved by things so simply…i sometimes even catch myself thinking, “seriously? what is wrong with me…why can’t i feel the way she’s feeling…am i just emotionally blunted or what?”
it can be a very confusing place.
in the last week, we’ve been faced with things we’ve never seen/heard/smelled/touched/tasted. things that are heartbreaking. things that aren’t fair. things that are beautiful. things full of joy.
and…can i be honest with you? i am having a difficult time processing a lot of it.
the “thinker” in me has no idea what to do. what “feeler” i do have has certainly been pushed to her limits, as things have been burned into my soul for the rest of my life.
but really? i don’t get too fired up about anything. i can be passionate, but not overtly. i pretty much stay even-steven, taking things as they come and as they go. have i always been like this? for the most part, yes.
is my heart lazy? afraid?
or do i just not function in that way?
and is that okay?
in a few hours, we leave africa. and i know africa will never leave me.
but i think it’s somewhere stuck between my heart and my head.
and i just don’t know what to do with it.
Comments
32 responses to “the thinker and the feeler [aside: a processing post]”
anne,
maybe you shouldn’t try to process it all right now. in doing so you may miss a chance to process in the context of your daily life surrounded by people who need to hear, see, feel, touch, taste and smell such scenes. if you allow it to process for the rest of your life, you will draw many others into picture and the kingdom impact will be far greater.
just a thought.
I can relate. COMPLETELY! I’ve been a heavy thinker for most of my life. Two years ago, I retook the Myers-Briggs and my T had moved to a very slight F. I often wonder why I don’t feel more. When people are moved to tears, why am I not? And when I do deeply feel, it seems to be at the most ridiculous things.
Anne – I’ve led Myers Briggs training courses for awhile now and (congratulations!) you’re experiencing a personality type crisis! Don’t worry – it’s not a true emergency – just what I believe is scientists’ way of explaining what happens when ‘who we are’ is confronted with something so out of the ordinary to our typical life we are forced to reassess the way we view ourselves in light of all we know and value. Very exciting! Enjoy making sense of it all over the next few months!! Thank you for sharing this beautiful trip with us all.
I’m a INTJ, it can be difficult at times but it helps me to understand how others process things too. It’s also nice to know that God made me this way for a reason! Hang in there!
You little sweetheart, you. It is perfectly wonderful that you are the way you are. But, it’s also amazing that God is pulling on the heart strings that you didn’t know you have.
We need thinkers. We need feelers. We also need feelers who think and thinkers who feel.
I wouldn’t change a think about you :) I can’t wait to sit with you for an hour or seven as you process through some of the things you’ve experienced.
Having read a book called “Strong Willed Child or Dreamer” to better understand my unclassifiable daughter, I truly believe you are a dreamer. Enormously creative and paradoxically meticulous. The authors have added a 3rd dimension to the standard profiles. If you get the chance, check out that book.
For years, the littlest things would bring about strong emotion and the big ticket items brought nothing. I refused to cry because if I did, I would be useless for about an hour and I didn’t want to take the time. Now and then, I get private and let it out. It helps avoid the triggers of the little things later. Loving your story of Linet. Feel free to feel her in any number of dimensions without having to reason with any of it.
I wonder if Jesus startled himself weeping at Lazarus’ death? He knew what he was going to do to resolve their pain but still had to deal with the moment. Hmm.
Hey Anne-
I have been on 5 missions trips with my church and our structure for short term trips requires a “follow-up” or “reentry” meeting. I don’t know if Compassion has provided your team with resources for reentry, but I have a ton of resources I would love to share with you. What you are feeling is perfectly normal, and I have some scripture-based resources that can help guide you and your team toward integrating this experience into your life back home. Please email me or contact me if you would like to make use of these resources. Its free, its just what our missions ministry has created to help team process their experiences.
Praying for you all-
AnnieLaurie
Anne, here’s my two cents. I’m of the opinion that although someone is labeled either a “thinker” or a “feeler,” deep down everyone’s a feeler. It’s just a matter of how you express it.
I came home from my first Compassion trip [to Haiti] not having cried the whole time. I was on a team full of men and was the only one who hadn’t cried. It bothered me that I felt so “cold-hearted.” But the truth was, I was as profoundly affected as they were. I just processed and expressed it differently.
So my advice to you is to give it time. Allow yourself to process everything you’ve experienced in whatever way you do that best … even if that’s completely differently than everyone else on your trip.
And thanks for being so open on your blog about what you’re experiencing. That, in itself, is a way to process.
you’ll never be able to fully process it, but that’s ok. feel what you can. i think the “thinker” in you processes the “feeler” through your writer. perhaps i’m wrong, but that’s what i’ve gathered from our years of friendship. spend time journaling when you get home, blog what you feel is appropriate and leave the rest for yourself to remember this experience. never forget. relive it. and continue to make a difference with it. you already have. although my own & different experience, as someone who’s seen it/smelled it/tasted it/touched it/heard it, love to talk to you and help you process as well. i love you.
I’ve been reading all the bloggers – as best I could fit it in this week – each of you had a different similar experience. There doesn’t have to be an immediate summation of all this – I’ve been wondering what the NEXT letter from your sponsored children will be like – now that they know you and have touched you. You’ll have the fingerprints of this trip on you for the rest of your life – don’t have to have Carlos’s tattoos to be marked by Jesus.
My therapist continued to not accept the fact that I was a “thinker” and not emotional. After a couple of years of therapy and my 28 days of inpatient I finally understood her. Thinking and feeling are in two different head spaces and when one chooses to think you immediatly turn off your emotions. “Thinking” can be used by one to escape feelings. I bet that you are much deeper of a feeler than you understand.
Sometimes we need to be willing to sit in the uncomfortable and that sometimes means letting ourselves feel, and not think or blog about it.
i think you’ll feel fine after a while, anne jackson. you process internally and that is so okay. journal it. Africa is WAY too big to understand intellectually and wrap up into a neat package so i don’t feel like you should even try. you’ve been blessed with a wonderful experience. i’m happy for you. john in colorado.
…from a life-long thinker, who also happens to be fairly emotionally intelligent :), I can assure you that there’s not a thing wrong with you. Thinkers don’t “lack feeling,” and being a thinker certainly doesn’t mean you “don’t feel.” It simply describes a way of processing information…and that’s okay. The key is to allow yourself to process it all – all the emotions and the logic (or lack thereof) that you’re taking in…and you’ll be fine. :)
I can completely relate to your description of yourself and have had those same feelings and thoughts at times. For some reason, that must be how God made us. He will guide you in processing this, I’m sure.
I think the “Thinker” w/ empathy is a great place to be. It will allow you to process all of your Africa experiences: today, tomm. and forever. What is your personality type?
If I had to guess, I would say ESTJ!
Totally understand! Not that whole thinker feeler stuff but what you are feeling. Sometimes I know I should feel some sort of compassion or other emotion but I just cant feel it. Things usually start to hit me a day or two after they happen
Anne,
One thing I know is this, “be comfortable in your own skin.” In short be you! It’s amazing what we discover on the journey.
I’ve wrestled with the same conundrum for most of my adult life. God just seems to need those who are not caught up in the emotion of a moment, often to balance the heart-felt, but sometimes ill-advised passionate reactions of some. No doubt you will find that God will use you and your God-given temperment to bring discernment and insight to your team, and your arena of faith, in ways that others cannot.
I’ve found it best to not analyze myself. Just to do what the Spirit says i’m to do in the moment. I can’t talk myself out of doing something or acting a certain way just by saying “oh well i’m a thinker and not feeler” or vice versa
anne, i understand all of that.
i also fully believe that your Father will move it the rest of the way if you truly want Him to break your heart wide open.
thanks so much for taking us on this journey!
Used to beat myself up on the thinker/feeler thing. Are’t we as Christians supposed to be massive feelers, have empathy, compassion, etc? Jesus was a feeler no doubt. But he was also a real thinker, duh!!
I’ve always beleved that thinkers put into action what feeler’s feel. We need both and the hybrid type, too.
You’re on emotional and physical overload and are in a highly exhausted, reflective place at this time – good for you!
You can use your feeler to get the thinker going to accomplish stuff when you get back to OK.
I have experienced similar “stuck in between my head and my heart” kind of moments and seasons in life over the last couple of years. For me it has occurred in regards to church-planting and the urban poor.
It all began in my mind as an intellectual pursuit filled with facts and stats. Over time it has sunk from my head to my heart and messed me up all the way down in the most beautiful way possible.
It seems that matters of the mind can be crowded out and pushed aside by new info and facts. But matters of the heart and soul never leave. The heart and soul grows and expands causing us to be the best version of us possible.
I’ve never been to Africa but I think I know what you’re talking about. It’s the same kind of feeling I get when I watch documentaries about Darfur or read stories about the tragedies of the sex trade.
Sometimes it’s all pretty overwhelming. Maybe the answer isn’t to try to “figure it out” but to let it pierce us so deeply that it changes the way we view the world.
I’m sure you’re never going to see things the same way again.
Brad Ruggles
http://www.bradruggles.com
i love you forever.
anne,
thanks for letting us in on this conversation you’re having. i think it’s obvious that you’re in just the right spot right now.
I myself am a “feeler” I feel things very intensely. This does not make me not a thinker but sometimes the feeler in me can take over realistic thinking. I think its great that you are more of a thinker. I myself would prefer to be a thinker over a feeler…..sometimes. Sometimes I feel blessed that when someone presents an emotional issue to me that God has allowed me to feel their situation as if it were my own, and other times being able to feel that way makes me want to give the who Feeler in me away…..possibly on ebay?? haha
Empathy isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. You keep getting “vibes” from people you care about, and wondering if you should do something about it, or why the other people around them aren’t picking up these vibes and doing something about “it” so you don’t feel you have to or should…actually most of the time empathy just sucks.
Ann, if this is a first time experience for you, it takes a while to “unpack” all that you are experiencing and feeling. I would encourage you not to make or take any earth shattering, major decisions until you’ve been back at least a month. As an African living in the US let me share one more thing with you, You think of the lives that African’s live as being hard and “unfair” but that is because you have a basis of comparison. They have never lived or experienced the American lifestyle and they are content with what they have. The greatest gift you give to them is to share the love of Christ from a place of deep conviction and caring.
Thanks everyone for your thoughts. I’m actually not experiencing the typical “re-entry” (the “I hate America” kind) – I’m probably just exhausted and am having problems processing anything…feeling or thinking.
I had some weird reentry when I came back from Scotland of all places. The spiritual poverty there broke my heart.
Wow. I can definitely relate. I feel like I am more in between a feeler and a thinker. I spend way too much time thinking, but I feel alot pretty easily too. It can be confusing at times.
You leaving africa reminds me of my leaving the LA Dreamcenter. A rough place for sure, but probably not like your experiences in Africa, but it was one of the hardest things I ever had to do, after all I had seen/heard/smelt/tasted and experienced.
yet another reason we could be sisters. except empathy is my number 34 (last) on the strengths finder. so i feel you … my thinker makes me feel almost inhuman sometimes.
sincerely,
ENTJ.
Ben…I really loved your words bro. Anne, I love the way you live and think, so whatever you do, don’t allow that to change.