Thinking VS Feeling: which one is more comfortable for you?
And why it matters.
I could have titled this article “fire vs water”, “sun vs moon”, “left brain vs right brain”, “Apolline vs Dionysian” but I’ve come to learn (by my own experience, among other sources) that these terms are loaded and elicit strong reactions which aren’t exactly what I mean to inspire here. If you prefer, though, feel free to replace the terminology in your mind.
Suffice to say: we all have both sides. It’s unhealthy, even dangerous, to suppress one or the other.
…But I’m not talking about suppression, am I?
The reason I’m writing this short article is to draw your attention to a natural tendency people have, and hopefully help you find yours. There are no wrong answers. No side is better or worse than the other; but if you ignore their existence, this could lead to a lot of unnecessary stress — speaking from experience. So, please, before anyone lectures me about “divisiveness”, consider that the reason you can’t relate to my experience could be privilege: maybe you don’t know what it’s like to live most of your life like a fish out of water, trying in vain to belong with the wrong crowd, simply because you didn’t know yourself enough.
“Know yourself” is a wise piece of advice for a reason. If we all were the same, and there really was no individuality to pay attention to, we wouldn’t even be having this human experience here on planet Earth. There would be no point to it! So, let’s be empathetic, please and thank you.
“Feeling people” don’t feel at home with facts and figures.
Note that I’m not saying it’s “difficult” for them to focus on facts and figures to the detriment of feelings. Of course not! Some of the most intelligent scholars I know are feelers. Everyone, without exception, is more than capable of excelling at formal education.
What I am saying, instead, is that the paradigm of “facts and figures” is not a cozy, homely, unwind-and-relax kind of place for them. Even the scholars I know, who do a great job in Academia, thank you very much, consider it a bit of a chore (instead of “fun”). Alternatively, some enjoy the activity on a broader sense (for example, researching), but when you look at their preferred ways of framing their findings or going about the job, there’s always an undertone of “subjectivity first, cold-hard-logic second”. Not surprisingly, these people feel attracted to the Humanities more than STEM. That’s a rule of thumb though, not a hard rule: if you think of STEM as “uncreative”, you’re wrong (some of the best innovations come from the left-brained crowd working in tech, engineering, etc. So… are you sure about that assumption?). Similarly, the Humanities aren’t always “creative” (plenty of artists out there simply repeating/perfecting what others have already tried and tested). That’s why I’m trying to avoid loaded terms here. This isn’t about cliques. It’s about the way you’re hard-wired. But sometimes, in order to make myself understood, I need to exemplify. Sorry if I can’t avoid certain stereotypes while doing so.
One thing I find particularly interesting in feelers is their preference for stories instead of stats. Sometimes it looks like they’re just not computing a generalised argument because “how dare I generalise, what about individuals here?” — it’s even sort of offensive to them. They’ll protest it and insist in centering examples, and this tends to frustrate the thinkers out there (hi, yes, I’m a thinker, glad you asked) because there are contexts where well-meaning attempts at connecting with each individual’s “felt sense” of a situation simply isn’t feasible or relevant (for example, in certain kinds of peer-reviewed studies), and instead of labeling us thinkers “heartless” or “evil”, maybe a little more open-mindedness would be beneficial here. I mean… this isn’t a “scarcity” situation. This isn’t a case of “either we approach this OR that perspective”, but instead, both! Crowd A (say, the feelers) can look into this study object from their perspective, while crowd B looks at the same exact thing from another perspective, and we can all share what we found in the end. Ya know? That would be nice. A girl can dream, lol. But in order for that to ever happen, feelers need to learn to self-regulate a bit more effectively and stop sabotageing other people’s methodologies out of fear. Not centering EVERY SINGLE THING EVER on how each individual feels doesn’t automatically equal “forgetting the existence of feelings forever and ever and ever”, ya know? Let’s not get into this all-or-nothing mindset? Pretty please? But I understand… Easier said than done.
Anyway, personal grievances aside, feelers are great at qualitative studies and would rather leave quantitative studies to thinkers.
In a less Academic and more “everyday” sort of scenario, feelers are the people who on one hand have a natural knack for holding space for people’s emotional expression (be it literally, or indirectly through art), whereas on the other hand, they perhaps need more work on their tendency to take things too personally. Ya know… strengths and weaknesses. All that jazz.
“Thinking people” don’t feel at home with attunement by itself.
Again, I’m not talking about ease or difficulty. Something can be easy and still uncomfortable.
This is about comfort; something feeling, or not, “like home”.
So, for thinkers — people who always do the thinking first and the feeling second — it can be quite disconcerting, tortuous even, to “just feel” their way through life without looking for explanations.
When explaining what it’s like to be a thinker, I always joke that “so what if certain traditions already knew what Science and tech are only discovering now? I still prefer Science and tech. I mean… Would I want to be in the know sooner? AND feel utterly ungrounded and unsafe all these years UNTIL a Scientific explanation emerges to comfort me? Sounds like torture”.
The above is all in good fun, but you get the gist.
On a more serious note: if you’re unfamiliar with this state of being, imagine you’re surviving a shipwreck, and thankfully you have a piece of wood to hold on to in order to float — but after a while, although things could be worse (for example, you could have drowned and be dead; instead you’re alive), the instability of your situation starts to feel very daunting. You start wishing for firm ground to step on and feel supported, isn’t it?
Well… the exercise above in imagination highlights exactly the feeling a “thinker” has when forced to guide themselves solely by a felt sense, WITHOUT grounding in the “earth” of facts and figures. And this can happen even to the mystics and/ot artists out there who perhaps lean more towards the thinker side of the force. I mean, I include myself here. I’m an oracle and musician. I couldn’t be more “Humanities” if I tried! And yet, I don’t feel safe or grounded or, well, “at home”, unless I can find some kind of formula (yes, like we do in science and math. A reliable, repeatable set of rules) to bring my work back down to earth and out of this “helplessly-drifting-in-the-infinite-ocean” sort of place.
In other words: it’s not an oxymoron to be into spirituality and be a thinker at the same time. It’s not a contradiction. It simply means you will enjoy things like sacred geometry or hermeticism or astrology, for example, more than the “touchy-feely” areas of meditation and lightwork. Anything that is rooted in some kind of system with equations and whatnot will feel like home to you.
That said, thinkers deserve a bit of a rant too: far too many of us struggle with opening our minds to the feeler side of the force, and this is why we often shut down information that isn’t “grounded” enough (for our standards) instead of taking it into account and working with it as is. That is probably the biggest challenge for thinkers — but let’s keep in mind that it’s a CHALLENGE. It’s difficult by its very definition. It isn’t and shouldn’t be our place of COMFORT. Don’t beat yourself up (like I used to do… lol. Facepalm) for not being a “feeler”. It’s okay to be you.
Conclusion: each “side” has a comfortable place and a challenge to overcome.
The thing is… Unless you KNOW, and you CAN NAME both things (what is comfortable and what is challenging for you), you’re likely to run into a lot of avoidable problems — burnout problems, problems with finding “your tribe”, problems with communicating, to name a few.
I hope this article helps act as a guiding light, however small and simple, towards finding what resonates and what doesn’t.
Good luck in your journey!
