Long, arduous hours of practice.
There are a number of guides for understanding extroverts and introverts, and I know many people detest the Myers-Briggs personality model, but my life would be vastly improved by a guide for Thinkers and Feelers. It seems like a set of differences that should be intuitive, yet my Feeling sister and Thinking family have struggled for years to understand each other.
One of the disconnects that I've found most difficult to correct is the idea that Thinkers don't experience emotion, or don't experience it as strongly as their Feeling counterparts. To this day I'm pretty sure my sister thinks my Dad doesn't care about her nearly as much as he does. But we do, in fact, experience emotion, and strongly. The difference is primarily that our actions guide and influence us, rather than driving us. We don't naturally show every emotion because it isn't our primary governing process. An involuntary show of emotion is a sign that of feelings so significant they've overwhelmed us, and for a subset of T's, myself included, a voluntary show of emotion is a very intimate sign of trust. In both cases, the visible display of emotion is a sign of vulnerability that may or may not be desired. If you've heard someone say that showing emotion is a sign of weakness? This may be where they're coming from. The worst response you can give to this is to demand they bare their emotions in front of you anyway.*
Family aside, the place this concept has caused me the most frustration and pain is in roleplay. The most long-running example involved not my character but a friend's, who was repeatedly called a heartless monster and implied to be a sociopath. My character, being this guy's family, knew exactly how wrong that was. He'd seen Mr. Heartless Monster absolutely broken, but no matter how often he told the others "No, he does care, he simply doesn't show it," they refused to believe it.
There's this strange idea I've encountered that you have to display emotion visibly for it to "count." Otherwise people doubt that you're telling the truth, or claim that you're not really THAT upset. If two people are equally internally injured, but one is crying, that one "wins." What they seem to overlook is that asking for proof of pain, particularly from someone who views showing emotion as a vulnerability, is the equivalent of a mustache-twirling villain telling the hero to beg. "Before I'll help you, I want to see you broken." It's indescribably cruel, and baffling when it comes from self-styled Good and Sensitive people.
Similarly, there's this idea that somehow all of this relates to morals. If a mother on an airplane sobs hysterically while attempting to put the air-breathing-bag-thing on her child, saving her own for last, she's seen as somehow better or morally superior to the mother who calmly follows directions and places her own mask on first. Despite the fact that both mothers have the same goals and the latter system is statistically more effective at saving her and her child. If asked, most would say that you're allowed to make logical if difficult decisions that serve the greater good, and yet if you do so without showing "sufficient" regret, self-righteous, self-appointed Judges of Morality pop out of the woodwork to nay say you and demand you bleed for them.
Every time I encounter these situations and thought processes, in real life or fiction, I get so incredulously angry the words freeze up in my chest. I chain my emotion down even further, because as much as I'd like to rage and yell and rip someone's throat out with my teeth, that display of emotion is exactly what the feeling bullies want, and I refuse to give them the satisfaction. So I and my characters play up the cold, unfeeling robot archetype and impotent, infuriated hatred grows within us and plots revenge.**
I've seen these patterns over and over again for years, yet I've never seen a description or explanation of it before. So...here's my attempt.
* That is a vast generalization, and I acknowledge it. Please tack on an "In My Experience" and take everything with a grain of salt.
** Well, that part more in fiction. In real life I either dismiss whoever expressed that as not worth my attention or, if they're a friend, attempt to explain and/or distance myself until I can forgive and forget.
One of the disconnects that I've found most difficult to correct is the idea that Thinkers don't experience emotion, or don't experience it as strongly as their Feeling counterparts. To this day I'm pretty sure my sister thinks my Dad doesn't care about her nearly as much as he does. But we do, in fact, experience emotion, and strongly. The difference is primarily that our actions guide and influence us, rather than driving us. We don't naturally show every emotion because it isn't our primary governing process. An involuntary show of emotion is a sign that of feelings so significant they've overwhelmed us, and for a subset of T's, myself included, a voluntary show of emotion is a very intimate sign of trust. In both cases, the visible display of emotion is a sign of vulnerability that may or may not be desired. If you've heard someone say that showing emotion is a sign of weakness? This may be where they're coming from. The worst response you can give to this is to demand they bare their emotions in front of you anyway.*
Family aside, the place this concept has caused me the most frustration and pain is in roleplay. The most long-running example involved not my character but a friend's, who was repeatedly called a heartless monster and implied to be a sociopath. My character, being this guy's family, knew exactly how wrong that was. He'd seen Mr. Heartless Monster absolutely broken, but no matter how often he told the others "No, he does care, he simply doesn't show it," they refused to believe it.
There's this strange idea I've encountered that you have to display emotion visibly for it to "count." Otherwise people doubt that you're telling the truth, or claim that you're not really THAT upset. If two people are equally internally injured, but one is crying, that one "wins." What they seem to overlook is that asking for proof of pain, particularly from someone who views showing emotion as a vulnerability, is the equivalent of a mustache-twirling villain telling the hero to beg. "Before I'll help you, I want to see you broken." It's indescribably cruel, and baffling when it comes from self-styled Good and Sensitive people.
Similarly, there's this idea that somehow all of this relates to morals. If a mother on an airplane sobs hysterically while attempting to put the air-breathing-bag-thing on her child, saving her own for last, she's seen as somehow better or morally superior to the mother who calmly follows directions and places her own mask on first. Despite the fact that both mothers have the same goals and the latter system is statistically more effective at saving her and her child. If asked, most would say that you're allowed to make logical if difficult decisions that serve the greater good, and yet if you do so without showing "sufficient" regret, self-righteous, self-appointed Judges of Morality pop out of the woodwork to nay say you and demand you bleed for them.
Every time I encounter these situations and thought processes, in real life or fiction, I get so incredulously angry the words freeze up in my chest. I chain my emotion down even further, because as much as I'd like to rage and yell and rip someone's throat out with my teeth, that display of emotion is exactly what the feeling bullies want, and I refuse to give them the satisfaction. So I and my characters play up the cold, unfeeling robot archetype and impotent, infuriated hatred grows within us and plots revenge.**
I've seen these patterns over and over again for years, yet I've never seen a description or explanation of it before. So...here's my attempt.
* That is a vast generalization, and I acknowledge it. Please tack on an "In My Experience" and take everything with a grain of salt.
** Well, that part more in fiction. In real life I either dismiss whoever expressed that as not worth my attention or, if they're a friend, attempt to explain and/or distance myself until I can forgive and forget.