[NT] How Do Rationals Deal With Emotions?

[Dom]

Hm, I don't think you really understood what I said, Dom

My post was only partially inspired by what you had written, your post suggested that you have started what is a confusing journey into understanding how and what your feelings are and how to account for them in your decision making process if at all. All that stuff I Wrote about comfortably numb comes from experience of other thinking types and a danger I believe may exist in the approach you have taken.

However you did say that you acknowledge emotion only so you can

"know your enemy"

in an attempt to

more effectively keep them out of my decision making process

. I was suggesting that this may not lead to a real contentedness or happiness but possibly to a numbness. While I do not think that is your active goal, it is a risk inherent in ignoring the information available to you in the form of emotions. I also wondered why you begin from a point of suspicion with regards to your feelings? Why are they an enemy?

Please understand that (I can't speak for all feelers and you may not agree from your own experience but) as a feeler I try to

figure out intellectually whether these particular ones ought to be given a say

that sounds perfectly reasonable and healthy to me, it has led me into unhappiness at times though. Those times were when I was trying to not act upon very strong emotions as using Ti I had arrived at the conclusion that acting on them would be crazy! Something along the lines of trying to decide whether to pursue a relationship when separated by 3400 miles of water, with someone you've only spent 11 days with in real life and the only realistic chance of you being in the same place was to get married. My Ti was telling me I was crazy for considering it and I didn't "Go for it" until I could appease my rational thought (I managed to arrange an opportunity to spend substantially more time together in real life) it caused considerable pain.
It is always difficult to know whether to include emotions in the process or not, all I have been trying to suggest is that they key to a happier life is learning how to integrate them, as is seems you have started trying to, rather than how to neutralize them or how to better ignore them.

These things called emotions are, in my opinion, a very very basic almost animistic response to our environment. It seems to me that it is as rational to include them in decisions making as it is feelings of tiredness and hunger. I accept that, in the same way that eating every time one felt like it leads to being overweight, too much emphasis on ones emotional state can lead to a serious problem in the decision making process, but trying to find ways to best neutralize those feelings could leave you emotionally Mal nourished in the same way that effectivly shutting off feeling hunger could physically.

I don't think I could ever live with basing decisions on them, the most I can imagine me doing is allowing them to influence decisions, having rationally concluded that it's appropriate or constructive to do so.

Basing and influencing are different things granted. Sometimes I base my decision firmly on the emotions, sometimes my decisions are merely influenced by them. I'm not really trying to convert you into behaving or doing anything differently. I'm firstly trying to understand why T's react to emotions the way they do (the questions about why one treats emotions as the enemy were not rhetorical) and secondly I'm trying to encourage T's to integrate or try to more of their emotions into the decision making process. I accept that we all behave differently and I don't want you to turn into me but being a fluffy F I do want everyone to be happy. Most of my social group and certainly closest friends and partners have been T's, my observations of them leds me to think that they spend too much time repressing and ignoring information that is important to a happy outcome.

 

[Dom]

Hm, I don't think you really understood what I said, Dom

Quite simply, you can't do something whilst simultaneously doing its opposite. There are certain things that a human mind can do that are very useful and important for society and the individual, which are best done in a detached state of mind. It's important for society to have a certain number of people who are very good at doing this, and to get very good at doing that you tend to be a person who values doing that above doing its opposite, and it tends to entail not being as good at the opposite.

Like if you wanted to be a guitar maestro, you'd get there by practicing an awful lot on the guitar, but possibly at the expense of your cooking skills. That doesn't mean you disdain cooking or cooks, does it?

For me to think the way you think and have the same attitude towards my emotions as you do towards yours (and perhaps mine too, I dunno), I'd have to not be me. That would mean I wouldn't be able to do half the things I do easily and instinctively, which I value being able to do. You wouldn't want to turn into me, because it'd mean sacrificing the things YOU have put importance on in your life and become good at.

There are pros and cons to every way of being. My autistic daughter has obvious limitations in her interpersonal relations, but she wouldn't want to sacrifice her skills in other areas that are above those of non-autistic people, in order to be a darling of society. And I wouldn't want her to either, I accept and love her as she is, for both her strengths and her flaws.

Arghhh, an edit...

I'm not sure I can agree that rational and detached thought is the opposite of making decisions which have been influenced by your emotions. I do not agree that sound decision making and emotions are mutually exclusive.

Your analogy with the guitar maestro is useful, you are quite right, that to become that good at something requires the neglect of other skills. However many genius' and maestros have areas of their lives that are deeply unfulfilled. If that is a conscious choice, to neglect those areas for their guitar that would be one thing. But many spend a lot of time in denial about the areas they find lacking or unfulfilled. Does it not surprise you that people who have mastered their chosen skill sometimes have extreme emotional distress even to the point of suicidal thoughts? Despite being the maestro? Leaving all that aside, even the maestro still needs to cook from time to time. To quote a fictional character "specialization is for insects". Most average humans need to learn to use ALL their functions (not equally, certainly, but they do need to use them all) to be able become well balanced and happy.

As I said before, I'm not wanting to turn you into me, I'm merely trying to understand why T's find an enmity with their emotions. In fact if you even attempted to weigh your decision making in the same way I do you would become very very unhappy (Us F's do too, it takes a long time to learn what needs to be ignored, what needs to be double checked, and what is OK to include but for you this would also be a rejection of who you are on top of all that) and as I said above I want you to be happy. I merely trying to explain my attitude in the hope that you may give your heart a listening too. It is hard for me to try to base a decision solely on what my logical and perfectly rational mind tells me is probably best for me. Actually it's only difficult if I have emotions that are telling me different. You are right that I can not be the way you are easily and that you can not be the way I am easily or happily. However, for me to make sound decisions I need to integrate some of that cold T my brain is capable of; what I'm trying to encourage is that T's try to find a similar accommodation with their F and not to try to repress or ignore it completely. I do not believe that the functions are mutually exclusive, you have a Fi (puny as you say it is) and a Fe as much as I have a Ti and a Te (actually my Ti is pretty well developed) we can use them together, while still leaning toward our respective overall preference and it is in doing this (in my opinion) that we can become happier and well balanced people contributing to society. A society, which incidentally, needs people with my skills as much as it does people with yours.

With regards towards your daughter, I'm glad she is happy with the trade off she's been dealt. My only regret is that she will probably always be subject to peoples lack of understanding and for that I am sorry. I do not think everyone needs be a "darling of society" to be happy, this is not an attempt to "fix" the Ts of the world, just an attempt to learn from them and offer something they may benefit from learning about.

 

[Haphazard]

In discussing this with some T's I find they view their emotions as coming from somewhere outside of themselves. We each have a core that we consider to be our conscious selves. Our souls if you like (in it's original meaning; which was the decision making part of the human psyche). I thin T's see their emotions as something intruding (or trying to) into the decision making parts of their psychology, F's consider it a natural part of their center.

T emotions:

 

[Dom]

It's kinda like a judge presiding over a court hearing. Justice is paramount, and the judge cannot let the fact that he feels sorry for the defendant blind him to his duty to carry out the law, and he also can't allow his disgust or other feelings about the defendant to prejudice him when listening to the evidence. he has to learn to identify and be aware of his feelings SO THAT he can put them aside and ensure that they don't interfere with the dispensation of justice and the law.

I find that the way that works for me to be fairest with other people is to think a bit like the judge. In order not to behave in a way that violates my beliefs, my principles and knowledge, it's easiest if I don't allow my feelings to interfere with the process of living by those things.

It doesn't mean I automatically think that there is no place in my life for feelings. It just means that the feelings are informed by my intellect.

I agree. I try to behave in a away that does not violate my values and principals too. I find that when I don't I am stressed and unhappy, my feelings help inform me of what my values really are. This is sometimes... disappointing. I understand how you could feel that it is easiest not to allow your feelings to interfere with the process of living by those things(Principals and values), it isn't easy to integrate feelings into that process for an F either. My suggestion is that learning to do so, rather than learning how to "neutralize the enemy", may result in a happier balanced person.

One thing that has always confused me about the T preference is this concept that intellect can "inform" emotion. Does that really work? It often appears to me to merely be a cover up for allowing intellect to justify repression, not the nullification of emotion. It seems Ts do go on feeling this way or the other regardless of what their intellects have decided. Does the emotion really just switch off when you decide it's irrational or is it merely shunted away from being the object of your musings?

I thought this thread was talking about how NT's deal with THEIR OWN emotions??

Of course two ENFP's are likely to agree that NT's are silly and their opinions on feeling smell of poop.

The critical thing to understand about my position is that I have not said at any point that I don't think it's important to understand both my own and others' feelings, nor to take them into account when making decisions.

Maybe I'll address it in more detail when I've got time later... if I get time

I do not think you opinions on emotions are silly and smell of poop. Like I said my first response was not directly to your post, or else I'd have quoted it in my post, since then I have tried to address your post directly. I have made mention of how you have said that you do try to take emotions into account; so I do not believe I have missed the crucial point as you said it is.

Please do not think that I am trying to personally attack or criticize you, I'm not, I'm trying to learn and offer information so I can be understood.

How's the ?

 

[Dom]

T emotions:

lol very apt. As either kitten could be the emotion at different times huh?

 

[FDG]

I'm fine with my emotions. I really like positive emotions. I don't like negative emotions. Thus I favor activities that promote the former, and disfavor activities that promote the latter.

 

[substitute]

There's a lot to answer there Dom and I wish I had the time to go through point by point, but time's short at the mo, so I'll go with this...

I can definitely and emphatically say that yes, my opinions and detached thought DOES inform my emotions. It tells me what to feel and that's how I feel. As opposed to emotions, which are spontaneous and can't be chosen consciously, my FEELINGS about something or someone (my long-term attitude) are decided by rational, intellectual thought that's as divorced from my emotions as I can possibly get it.

For a Feeler, your opinions are, at least part, based on your feelings. For me, my feelings are, for the most part, based on my knowledge. Hard to believe perhaps, but true.

Also, and this is starting to sound just like conversations I have with my ENFP brother... heheh... I *am* happy that way. For me to make decisions the way he does and treat my emotions the way he does, I wouldn't like myself. I like myself this way, I'm not a tortured self-hater nor am I particularly repressed.

Being happy for me, as in contentment, a state of long-term peacefulness and rest, does not rely or depend upon me feeling positive emotions. I could literally be sitting all alone in a cave in the wilderness feeling isolated, in despair, confused and angry at the cosmos and yet I'd be perfectly happy that this is where I have chosen to be, I am here because it's what I know is necessary in order to follow where my intellect leads me. And despite the negative emotions I feel, I am content and would not change the situation for anything.

But conversely, I could be at a party full of family and friends loving me and praising me, feeling smug and loved and accepted and all the fuzzy emotions you can imagine, and yet underneath it all feel deeply discontent, miserable and displeased with myself, if being there were not what my intellect led me to believe was right and logical as a product of my current knowledge. And I'd want to get out ASAP.

That's the part my brother seems unable to comprehend. Emotions can be the enemy because when I act on them, it causes me to do things and behave in a way that makes me unhappy with myself, even if that doesn't entail being an ass particularly. Doing the things that they urge me to do, behaving and speaking as they urge me to, at least 70% of the time brings about a state of mind and a situation that makes me deeply discontent, though perhaps temporarily 'happy' as you understand the word. To continue to respect myself and live at peace with myself, I HAVE to repress them.

 

[substitute]

Put simply, I just don't place as high a value on my own personal positive state of emotion right at any given moment, as my brother does. We've talked about it at length. For him, happiness is the goal. For me, it's a nice bonus, but not the goal; he wants to reach a stage of life where the prevailing emotion he feels all the time is happiness, this is a main goal for him. For me, it's just a total irrelevance, not something that I consider at all necessary but yet appealing all the same; like I say, a nice bonus that I wouldn't turn down but, by the same token, wouldn't bother working for either. And if offered it on conditions that entailed me fudging over knowledge that I have and saying "well I know it doesn't make sense but it's what makes me happy", then I would, absolutely, turn it down even in favour of abject misery. This is what I understand as integrity.

By this I mean the emotion of happiness, feeling happy at a certain moment, as opposed to being generally happy in the sense of content with one's life.

To hammer it home even more (for others, I'm sure you've got it by now Dom lol), imagine a person who is in their ideal job, married to their ideal partner, everything in their life is wonderful and they are happy with themself and their life. Then they get some bad news about someone they care about and it makes them sad. They are not unhappy in the sense of discontent, but they're feeling the emotion of sadness. The FEELING of happiness still remains. Geddit?

So, for me to get that feeling of happiness, due to other things that I value very highly, it is necessary for me to NOT chase after positive emotions or to value them very highly.

The Buddhist proverb about meeting triumph and defeat with equanimity and treating those imposters as twins also applies to me in regard to happiness and sadness.

Now I really have to get some work done

 

[Eldanen]

I'm saying this as someone who doesn't know whether if he is a Rational or an Idealist.

Are NT's highly aware of their emotions and intuitively aware of how other people are affected by their decisions and simply choose to not act on them or does their 'personality' cause them to lack this sort of awareness and that's how they can make objective decisions so easily? Overall, I consider myself an objective decision maker rather than one who is subjective. However, I always know how I feel about a situation, sometimes my feelings affect my decisions but if I feel that a decision is best made without my feelings, I will ignore them.

Thanks in advance!

I'm always aware of how I'm feeling, and I can make objective decisions in spite of emotions. On the other hand, I choose not to at times. One of my biggest issues has been bottling up emotions rather than letting them out, so I'm practicing various things to sort of engage in catharsis. You know, the yelling, beating a pillow kind of thing, when you're angry.

 

[INA]

T emotions:

I can't relate to this at all.
F4IL.

 

[substitute]

One other point: my daughter is PERFECTLY HAPPY as she is, just as I'm perfectly happy as I am. She doesn't feel any need to change and neither do I, other than as a natural by product of our own exploration, growing knowledge and free choice. The only thing that makes either of us unhappy, usually, is OTHER PEOPLE refusing to accept either our personalities, or our own judgement as to our level of contentment or satisfaction with ourselves and our lives, and pressuring us to change in ways that our own free minds do not agree with or desire, "for our own happiness".

SO MANY people look at her and think 'oh it'such a shame she can't enjoy close friendships', perceiving this to even be a) the case and b) a shame just because by that person's individual definition and preference for close friendships, she doesn't seem to have any. But by her own definition, she does get what she needs and wants; she does have close friendships that she enjoys and values - the 'rules' are just totally different to what most people expect.

What they seem to perceive as a shame is that she fails to want or need something that's only indispensible to the person judging her. It isn't a shame. Her existence and way of being is not a shame. Neither is mine. I don't consider it a shame that many NF's "can't" do what I do - I accept that it's their judgement that a different way of being is what they choose as the most likely path for them to that long-term peace and contentment that we all seek. The fact that this gives them weaknesses in other areas I don't see as "a shame", but just an inevitable and acceptable side-effect of them being the person I love and accept as them.

For these reasons I find I relate to her and to other autistic people very easily and quite strongly - not because of any autistic tendencies of my own (I have none), but because I see her all the time being perceived as somehow missing out on life or being defficient in some way simply because her aims, goals, desires and skills in life don't match the norm. Even though she is, within herself, perfectly content. Not in denial, not self-deluded, not repressed - just genuinely, sincerely happy.

Just as I am with the way I choose to make my decisions and the down sides that come as a result.

If I feel an emotion, it has to be run through the intellectual filter to discover whether it has any right to exist or not. If the mind veto's it, then the heart simply has to man up and get over it. If the head permits it, it can run its course. If the head postpones it, it gets put aside, to be allowed out to play at a time the head judges as appropriate.

That's the way I operate. It's not the result of bitterness, fear, personality disorders etc and it isn't in need of being 'fixed'. Whatever I learn about identifying emotions and understanding their interplay with each other and those of other people, it will only be put to the service of my chosen way of being. I am, in short, incorrigible

This isn't aimed at you Dom, but I do get rather tired of having my whole way of life and being subject to amateur-pop-psych scrutiny all the time and made to seem like I'm not valid simply because some schmuck just can't imagine themselves wanting to be in my shoes. It doesn't matter what they want or imagine; that's the beauty of it. It's my life.

 

[substitute]

Oops, I killed the thread

 

[INA]

You drove a stake through its evil heart. it's coo'

 

[Dom]

Oops, I killed the thread

No No... I'm thinking about it all.. odd for an enfp i know but there you have it...

 

[Tallulah]

My emotions totally sneak up on me, like the kitty picture. And when they reach the point where I actually notice them, to act on them would feel like me throwing a giant tantrum. I just don't think my emotions are as developed as they would be in an F-dominant person, so it's not as if saying that I couldn't/wouldn't make an emotion-based decision is some big snap on F-doms.

I would like to be more balanced, but I'm just not aware of my emotions much of the time, and when I am, it just feels like a giant tangle of emotion, rather than anything specific. It takes too long to sort it all out.

 

[substitute]

Oh, I was just surprised a bunch of other NT's didn't come along and say "sub you talk such BS, I'm nothing like that, that's just you, you big ol' freak!!"

 

[Haphazard]

Just as I am with the way I choose to make my decisions and the down sides that come as a result.

THANK YOU SO MUCH.

I could kiss you.

But I don't think I will. But... respect the sentiment. Or whatever those NFs do.

 

[substitute]

Ok, now I'm suspicious

And feeling guilty for being suspicious just in case you're not being sarcastic.

Get that emotional awareness! Fi, I pwn you!!

 

[Dom]

Ok, now I'm suspicious

And feeling guilty for being suspicious just in case you're not being sarcastic.

Get that emotional awareness! Fi, I pwn you!!

I'm always confused as to whether that is Fi or Fe, I thought Fi was evaluating information in the light an internally derived set of values...

 

[substitute]

I'm always confused as to whether that is Fi or Fe, I thought Fi was evaluating information in the light an internally derived set of values...

Yeah that, but I thought it was also just being aware of your own emotions? Or is that just F generally?

See? clueless

In any case, my internal set of values tells me it's mean to be suspicious of someone when they're just being nice. So it could still be Fi making me feel guilty?

edit - even though Ni is telling me he's probably being sarcastic to see how egotistical I can be when I take it seriously and believe he thinks I'm awesome, and Ti is telling me who cares what the big girlpants thinks anyway?