 Welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes. This podcast was created to provide you the information and tools Doc Snipes gives her clients so that you too can start living happier. Our website, docsknipes.com, has even more resources, videos and handouts and even interactive sessions with Doc Snipes to help you apply what you learn. Go to docsknipes.com to learn more. Hi everybody and welcome to Happiness Isn't Brain Surgery with Doc Snipes, practical tools to improve your mood and quality of life. We're going to continue with the segment on strengths, needs, attitudes, preferences and temperament and really focus on the last two dimensions of temperament this week. Now, if you remember, I'm just going to recap a little bit from last week. Your strengths are those things that you've done in the past that have worked for you and you know, they may not work 100% of the time, but that's where we can start. We can build on those instead of trying to reinvent the wheel. Your needs are those things that go figure it. You need in order to be happy, healthy, etc. So for example, if you've got diabetes, you may need insulin shots. If you've got chronic low back pain, you may need special chairs and accommodations in order to be comfortable. So those are your needs. Your attitudes and preferences kind of go hand in hand about how you feel about things, what you think is going to work, what you don't think is going to work, what stresses you out, what makes you happy, etc. And your temperament is really an inborn way of existing and perceiving the world. The first dimension of temperament talks about your preferred environments, how you solve problems and generally how you prefer to socialize. So extroverts tend to get energy from being around people. They like to be in active environments that have a fair number of people around because they glean energy from those people. When they solve problems, they solve problems by talking them out with other people. It's not that they can't solve their own problems, they just like to do it verbally. They like to have somebody else as a sounding board, for example. And they tend to not mind interruptions. They tend to be pretty spontaneous in that respect. Now somebody who tends to be more introvert really gets in depth with anything that they learn about in any of their relationships. They are very intense people. It's not that they're antisocial, they just are more aware of what's going on inside them and are more intensely focused on one thing than focused on everything that's going on around them. Introverts prefer to have environments that are characterized by quiet, not very many interruptions and also just a few people, you know, two, four, maybe six people at the most. So like small book clubs, prayer groups, big book studies, things like that tend to be more appealing to the introvert as opposed to going to a group meeting or a conference or can't even think of the word right now. And you go listen to music at places. You can tell that I'm more of an introvert in that way. But an introvert will get overwhelmed if they have to spend a lot of time around a lot of people in a noisy environment. Introverts tend to not be great as elementary and preschool teachers just because there's constant interruptions and there's a lot to keep track of. They may thrive on the other hand in high school and college teaching. So it doesn't mean you can't be a teacher. It just means you have to find the environment that fits for you. So then we move down to how people conceptualize problems and look at the world. Sensing people tend to focus more on the facts and they believe if it's not broke, don't fix it. They can get lost in the weeds, paying bills and doing the duties of the day. So it's important for them to lift their head up every once in a while and realize and recognize and benefit from the fruits of their efforts. So they need to look up and take advantage of that. Intuitors on the other hand tend to be dreamers. We tend to always have our head up in the clouds and we may not look down enough to see some of the details. We always are trying to improve things, trying to make things better, whether it's our self or our relationships or where we work. We always see possibilities for ways to change or improve or enhance something. So we can get too caught up in trying to change something, though it's working just fine, thank you very much, and not have time to appreciate what's going really well. So remember with temperament, each side balances out the other side. It's kind of a yin and yang. You don't want to think that one's worse than the other. You can do really well in relationships if one person is on one end of the continuum and the other person is on the other end, because you can balance each other out if you're aware of your own tendencies and the other person's tendencies and you can communicate effectively in order to make it work like a teeter-totter or a yin and yang instead of trying to butt heads and say it has to be my way. Now thinking and feeling is where we're going to start today. Thinking and feeling really talks about how you assign meaning to problems and to situations in order to make decisions. In DBT we talk about the wise mind, which is a combination of the rational mind, the thinker, all the facts and the details, and the emotional mind, what makes you feel happy and what seems to make everyone else happy and feel good together. The rational mind takes both of those sides, basically taking the thinker and the feeler and smooshing them together and saying, okay, let's find the thing that makes the most sense logically that also makes everybody as happy as possible and we can arrive at a conclusion. Thinkers tend to like words such as principles, justice, standards, analysis. Thinkers and feelers both feel things very intensely. They believe in things very intensely, but their rationale for why they do and why it's so important to them is often different. Again, not better or worse, just different. Thinking people respond to other people's thoughts more easily, whereas feelers may tend to respond to their emotions going, oh, you must have been really angry. The thinker will focus on the details of the situation. They want to apply objective principles and can assess logical consequences. If I do A, then B is going to happen. Perfect example. When I was pregnant with my son, we had just gotten married. Like 11 months before and we were fresh out of college. We were not wealthy. We were not rolling in dough. We had just bought our first house and I found this dog. Yeah, you see where this is going because you know me and animals. And she was a great dog, but it seemed like she belonged to somebody. So I called the animal control to come get her so her owners could find her. Long story short, three days later, nobody had claimed her. Now I was trying to be rational and, you know, I tend to be more on the feeling side and I'm like, we can't really afford a dog right now. We can't afford any more animals. We've got a baby who's going to be here in two months. So probably not the best logical decision. And but my husband knew it was tearing me up on the inside. And he's like, no, we're going to go get the dog because 15 years from now, I'm still going to be hearing how that dog died because you couldn't, you called the animal shelter on it and you couldn't rescue it. So logically, we kind of flipped on that and he recognized that I assigned meaning by what makes everybody feel the best and what seems to be the most compassionate thing to do. And, you know, I was trying to take his perspective of logic, but we met in the middle and he's like, you know, it's going to really upset you. We'll figure out how to afford it. Thank God she was a very healthy dog up until the end. So, you know, it was it was decent fit and she was a great dog. But recognizing that you assign meaning and you make your decisions based maybe on different priorities is important in a relationship. And it's important in recovery too, because you can make some very logical decisions in recovery about what needs to be done. But if it doesn't make you happy, if you are a feeling person and you're trying to be too logical, you are not going to feel fulfilled. You are not going to feel happy. On the other hand, if you're a feeling person and you tend to be too compassionate, you want to reach out and help everybody who needs to find recovery and you only have two or three months under under your belt yourself, you may be putting yourself in a dangerous situation. And a thinker might come back and say, I can hear you really want to help that person. However, is this the smartest thing to do for you based on where you are in recovery? So I've digressed a little bit from going down the thinker. The thinker, I always think of thinkers typically as lawyers. They're very fact oriented cops fall in this category as well. Not that they don't care. Not that they don't have compassion, but they tend to make their decisions logically. Feelers tend to be your therapists and, you know, people who use a lot of feeling words, go figure, they value sentiment above objectivity. Believe it's more important to be caring and merciful than necessarily right. So there may be two different decisions and one may be more merciful and one may be more right. And the feeling person is probably going to prefer the one that's more merciful. We assess reality through a good or a bad lens, not a right or a wrong, but a good or a bad. What's going to make people happiest? What's going to be best for the world as a whole? We may tend to see people who are thinkers as insensitive. So it's important that in a relationship, feelers, and you can really typically hone in on them based on the things that are important to them. We tend to be the bunny huggers of the world and we tend to want to make sure everybody's happy. And we tend to use a lot of feeling words, angry, mad, sad, glad, exasperated, whatever. Those are clues that we tend to be feeling people. Thinking people will talk about regulations and rules and probabilities and those sorts of things. They're not better or worse. They're just different ways of looking at the same problem. Remember in DBT, you have the emotional mind, the rational mind, and the wise mind. We all have those in our head. It's just a matter of finding a nice balance and figuring out how to compromise. And do remember again that you're probably not all feeling or all thinking. You're probably somewhere in the middle with a dab of one or the other, but knowing what your preferences are and being able to respect that somebody else may make different decisions based on their preferences is important in relationships and again in recovery. So quick questions. When you're trying to think about is somebody thinking or feeling, does the person prefer words like logic, fairness, and analysis? Those are your thinkers or do they like words like compassion and intimacy? Those are your feeling people. Big surprise here. 60% of thinkers are men and 60% of feelers are women. Now that's just over 50%. So it's not saying that all guys or all women, but it is saying that gender wise, there is definitely a difference. Does the person make decisions through a true false lens, which again are your thinkers or a good or bad lens, you know, what's going to be the most compassionate? And does the person seem to be more objective, making lists and waiting your options and figuring out what is the most logical choice or more sentimental, what is going to make you happier? What is going to be more important six months from now? This is how you can get a feel for the people around you and how they make decisions. Because if you're trying to persuade them to do something, you want to persuade them in their own verbiage. So if I'm trying to persuade someone who's a thinker to do something, I'm going to talk to them about what's logical, not what's going to make everybody feel the best, because that's not how they assign meaning. If somebody's trying to persuade me, they're going to try to help me understand how it's the, you know, the thing to do because it's the most compassionate thing. And, you know, I'm all over it. Just an important difference. So both thinkers and feelers have an emotional, rational and wise mind. Thinkers prefer facts and logic, justice and rules, and just this is how it's done. Now, you know, if you ask my husband, I tend to be one, I will latch on to statutes and regulations and manuals. I love knowing how it's supposed to be done. But then when it comes to making decisions, I tend to be more on the compassionate side to see if I can find a way to make it work. So I'm one of those people who's pretty much smack dab in the middle of thinking and feeling because it makes my stomach do somersaults if I don't have 100% compliance with every regulation. I'm just a little, little strange that way. Feelers prefer compassion and connectedness. It should be done this way because it's the most compassionate. We should try to do this because it's the most compassionate, not because it's right or wrong, but because it's the best choice for the greater good. In relationships, thinkers must be willing to appreciate compassion and connectedness. And feelers must be willing to look at the logic so they can, you both can compromise to reach the best decision that gets the most, that's the most logical and the most beneficial. And you'll come up with something, but it's probably not going to be what either one of you would have necessarily done independently. In recovery, thinkers tend to be go by the book and struggle immensely with those who are more flexible. Thinkers tend to be the ones that say, this is the path that I walked. So if you want to have recovery like I do, you walk in my exact footsteps and you do the same exact things that I did, which doesn't take into consideration the wide variation in temperament and personality and all that kind of stuff, and they can struggle with this. Or if it's a program that's not a hundred percent twelve step, or it's changed a little bit or whatever, thinkers may struggle a little bit with that. Feelers tend to want everyone to succeed and are very giving of themselves sometimes at their own expense. And that could cross over into codependency, but feelers really want everybody to be happy and they all want to hold hands and sing Kumbaya and make sure everybody's doing the best that they possibly can. Logically, that's not always going to be possible because people have to be willing to invest themselves in order for recovery to work. So feelers can provide an environment in which people can find recovery and thrive. However, the people that are coming in have to be willing to do the work. And that's kind of the thinker feeler logic. Yes, we can provide it, but we can't we can lead a horse to water. We can't force them to drink. Thinkers can help people find the compromise between compassion and self-sacrifice. So thinkers can be the ones that say, All right, I hear that this is tearing you up right now because you want to reach out and help this person, but they are not ready for help. So let's look at in reality, if you keep down this path, what's that going to do to you and how effective are you going to be six months from now if you keep wearing yourself out? The thinker brings the logic back to it and says, take a step back. You're too close to it. You're too involved in it. Take a step back and look at it through an objective lens. Feelers, on the other hand, can help thinkers look outside the box and embrace some of the benefits of connectedness or a feeler might be a thinker might be one to go by the rules and this is how it's done. A feeler can say, I see that. However, there's this other possibility over here. What would that feel like? And it can make thinkers a little uneasy to go outside the box. Just being compassionate and supportive, the feeler can help the thinker get outside the box a little bit. Again, compromise. That's what it's all about. If you like this podcast, you can subscribe on your favorite podcast app. You can join our Facebook group at docsknives.com slash Facebook, and you can join our community and access additional resources at docsknives.com. 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