[teddy564339]

Again, I know types are very related to the cognitive functions rather than just the four letters, but I still see a lot of connections and commonalities across people of the four preferences.

I still have a hard time exactly wording or figuring out the differences between thinkers and feelers, and there have been some interesting discussions about this recently.

I've heard two things about thinkers vs. feelers, both which are related but not exactly the same thing. The first is that feelers tend to use emotions to make decisions, whereas thinkers use logic. The second is that feelers put the focus on personal relationships before objective logic when making decisions, whereas thinkers do the opposite.

It seems like most people think the second one is the more accurate one. For example, I think a thinker and a feeler can be just as likely to trust their emotions in a moment...the more logical decision may be to exercise properly, the emotional decision may be to be lazy. This can be true of all 16 types.

Nonetheless, even when using the second definition, there are still a lot of these situations where a person may ask themselves: "Do I trust my heart or do I trust my head?" I think most of the time when we ask ourselves that question, we're referring to a situation involving other people, not just our own individual choices.

So I'm curious to hear exactly how feelers believe they use their logic. Obviously feelers are capable of using logic. Certainly there are situations where logic coincides very well with feelings as well. But when the two are at odds, there certainly are going to be differences between feelers and thinkers as well, and I'd like to hear how feelers feel about their logic. Thinkers are certainly welcome to chime in too, but I think hearing it firsthand from feelers gives some more personal insight.


For me, I think I usually tend to remember the situations where I chose my heart and I usually feel good about them and that they were the right decision. This may be my own biased memory, it's hard to say...perhaps there's more of a balance, I just don't remember it that way.

I guess it's just the decisions where I've hurt people stick with me, and stick out in my mind, much more than the ones where I made a faulty logical choice.

The other thing that kills me sometimes is that sometimes I'll make the more logical choice at the time, but I didn't have all of the facts. I later realize that if I had just trusted my heart, then the information I didn't know would have shown why it was the right choice.


At the same time though, I don't ignore my logic either. It's obviously important, and I hate the feeling of being stupid, or closed-minded, or just stubborn to listening to other people's objective perspectives. It's just that I honestly can't do it all of the time without feeling horrible. Sometimes my emotions just overtake me and dictate my life...it's a constant force.


That's all I'll say for now...I may be inspired to add more when I heard about it more from other feelers.

[letsride]

I've found that I miss out on certain opportunities when I've failed to use logic in the past, so I'm still working on incorporating it into my decisions. It can be a dog-eat-dog world, and in certain situations, I've learned it doesn't pay off to use my heart.

It's interesting, though, the more I practice using logic, the more comfortable I become with it. Especially when I'm surrounded by people who operate this way most of the time. Sometimes I'll say something that sounds a bit blunt (compared to my usual self, anyway), and people around me are shocked! It is by no means anywhere near the level of bluntness that they use on a daily basis, but they're just not used to hearing me be so "harsh", I guess.

In general, though, I find it very easy to use my heart to make decisions, and using logic is still a work in progress.

[susurration]

Just to add some info...

"'Feeling is the name for the psychic process essential to this knowledge of ones inner essence and in reaching out to the world of others' Willeford clearly believes that the psychological function of feeling is fundamental to the discovery of integrity and our delight we are able to take in it".

"Like thinking, feeling is a function Jung places on the rational axis of his compass of personality, the axis our psychological consciousness that is interested in ordering experience through understanding . This recognition that feeling is just as rational in it's aim and design as thinking understanding, was a landmark in the history of thought, a break with tradition, because philosophy had always confused feeling with emotion, denying it the status of reason and mistaking it, in a misapplied compliment to the feeling function, for the affective influence of the irrational.

Thus, Pascals, "the heart has it's reason which reason knows nothing of". But Jung saw through the pretensions of feeling types, to recognise, as a good psychologist, that feeling can deny or attempt to control the irrational just as effectively as thinking. In fact, feeling loves to bring order to emotion (as we see through the rhetoric of psychotherapy; sort it out, work through it, talk it out), and the means it employs in doing so, are rational, involving the conscientious application of values and relationship.

(Further), feeling is involved, just as much as thinking, in "judging" which feelings go where, and how much weight is to be put on them. Feeling is an option we can exercise in judging our experience of integrity. It is a way of making that experience more harmonious to ourselves and, if we want it to be that way, more in harmony with a universal order of duty or love".

From John Beebe, "Integrity in depth".

[teddy564339]

Just to add some info...

Like thinking, feeling is a function Jung places on the rational axis of his compass of personality, the axis our psychological consciousness that is interested in ordering experience through understanding . This recognition that feeling is just as rational in it's aim and design as thinking understanding, was a landmark in the history of thought, a break with tradition, because philosophy had always confused feeling with emotion, denying it the status of reason and mistaking it, in a misapplied compliment to the feeling function, for the affective influence of the irrational.

See, it's things like this that confuse me. I don't understand exactly how feeling is just as rational as thinking. What is the difference between feeling and thinking in this case? Is it that both are logical, but that feeling values the information of other people's emotions over more objective information?

[SubterraneanHomesickAlien]

If we're talking about 'logic' in terms of finding the truth and making objective decisions, then no, feeling is not nearly as effective as thinking. I agree that that quote doesn't make any sense at all; either feeling is based on making rational decisions, or it's based on emotion, and if the former is true, why the hell call it feeling? The only way I could make sense of that is if the author is referring to F as a "gut" feeling, in which case it is no longer rational... in any case, that seems to be more of an N/S than T/F thing.

I guess if you look at it from an evolutionary standpoint, you could say that feeling is 'rational' because it stops us from all killing each other in order to preserve our species. But this only proves that the function itself is has a rational purpose, it doesn't prove that people are *trying* to be being rational when they use it.

[yellowrose]

When I make a decision (I am a feeler), I immediately ask myself how the decision would affect all people involved and go from there. If there are no others involved except for myself, then I usually trust my feelings/instincts rather than logic; however, the logic is right there staring me in the face and I ignore it. I have made some stupid life decisions because I ignore this logic and just do whatever is pleasing to me emotionally and in the short range. So this is why I classify myself as a feeler, and I always test positive for feeler.

This only revolves around decision making though. For example, I sometimes speak without thinking and hurt people's feelings, but I don't think that makes me a thinker. I think that a thinker might ignore their emotional response when making a decision where I am ignoring the logic. And just as completely ignoring logic can be harmful in the long run, so can completely ignoring emotional needs or the "people" side of things. That's my understanding.

Even though I have made some less than desirable decisions due to feeling, I don't necessarily think I would have been happier along the way had I used logic...just richer. What's funny is I don't think I've ever made a decision based on logic over feeling. I would like to try it sometime just to see what happens! :)