Feelings and Pragmatism

When I was first in therapy, many years ago, I used to joke with my therapist that I grew up as a "feeler" surrounded by an ocean of "thinkers."

There's an old Scandinavian joke about the couple Ole and Lena, and one day while eating dinner (after they've been married for 15 years) Ole realizes that he loves Lena so much that he almost tells her...

It's just not so far off the reality I grew up with. Suffice it to say that nobody really cared about anything unless it was practical. Feeling something wasn't considered to have a purpose, so it was basically a waste of time.

After my mother passed away at age 86, I was really surprised to find that among her things — that were not kept out in the open — was actually a book on astrology. It was definitely not something she ever dared to mention while she was alive.

By the general statistical estimates in psychology, feelers account for about 30% of the population and thinkers account for about 70%. That's not to say that we don't experience both, just that it is our dominant function.

Somehow, in my extended family, there were a total of three feelers that I was aware of and about 40-50 thinkers. I suppose this lends some credence to the idea that temperament is — to a large degree —inherited.

It was a strangely challenging way to grow up. I learned early on that I needed to "mask" the essence of who I was because it would generally either be criticized or dismissed as "nonsense." I pretended to not really experience emotion, except maybe as something very fleeting at the death of a parent or loved one.

During my teenage years, especially, that masking included masking over the fact that I was often severely depressed, and sporadically suicidal. In retrospect, I think those tendencies arose out of the fact that I got to see a completely different paradigm when visiting my friends and their families... something so much warmer and empathic than my world.

Masking doesn't make for becoming a healthy and well-adjusted human being. In retrospect, I think I made out better than my cousin who was also a feeler. She struggled more with fitting into life and ended up leaving home at 15, and subsequently attempted suicide numerous times.

She eventually ended up taking her own life in her late 40s.

My other cousin addressed the situation by largely estranging himself from the family, moving from Denmark to Australia when he was in his 20s, and pretty much re-starting his life from scratch out there.

The important takeaway here, isn't that feeling is somehow some kind of weakness or something you should hide, nor that feelers are naturally depressive or histrionic, but that when you are forced to hide who you truly are because those around you do not accept you, it is likely to cause psychological problems.

As I said in my opening statement, I was in therapy way back then and I lay culpability for that being a necessity squarely at the feet of a group of people who insisted that my reality wasn't my reality.

Had they just made fun of me and joked around with me I probably would just have developed thicker skin, but the fact that they dismissed what I was experiencing as "nonsense" and insisted that "it didn't exist" is what set up a lot of inner tension in my psyche.

But can I really fault them too much? They did the best they could with what they knew.

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Are you more of a "thinker" or a "feeler?" Was your personality mostly like your family's, or different? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2026.03.27 00:57 PST
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