SO -
Over the past two years my wife and I went to marriage counseling to try and improve our communication issues.
One of the things I learned about myself was that I am devoid of ability to make decisions about things that are predominately "feelings based." For example, whether or not I wanted a divorce. I knew I loved my wife dearly, I knew we were both miserable dealing with each other, I knew I had no fear of dividing everything in half and starting over from scratch, but I could not for the life of me make a decision on the topic as a whole. I knew how I felt about every issue that was good or bad, but not whether to stay or go.
So, how did I try to solve it? MS Excel! I bought every credible book I could find on Amazon.com specific to how to decide to stay or leave a relationship. I scoured threw them all, summarized them in a spreadsheet, and tried to make sense of it all. No luck. None. Paralyzed.
I ended up in a depression after that, the first of my life, EVER. I was a useless lump of a person for about 4 months. How did I end it? I had to ID what I was depressed about. So I thought...and thought...and thought...and after getting slapped in the head by the marriage counselor: "Don't think about what is making you depressed! Figure out what you feel sad or mad about that you have not resolved!"
Thank God a few days later I realized I was sad about not knowing what to about the divorce, and I was really pissed about a personal matter. Then, as ESTPs naturally do, I THOUGHT about how I wanted to handle the problems, and what ACTIONS would allow me to reach positive closure.
My wife made my life easy. She came to me out of the blue and apologized for her share of our problems and told me she loved me and that if I stayed she would work very hard to meet me half way and make me happy. How could I leave now? I couldn't. That was what I needed. Problem solved, the patience of getting there almost killed me, I have no patience.
The other matter was even more simple. Once I knew what was pissing me off I figured out a way to obliterate the situation and did it. That was that!
So, it toook FEELINGS to identify what was causing me depression, but once the culprits were known I resolved them with THOUGHT and ACTION.
I can tell anyone how I feel, it's usually: "Great!"
I can describe my feelings in words or in writing very easily.
But making a decision based on feelings? Forget it. Dead in the water!
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Has anyone else (ESTP or maybe other Thinking types) had to deal with such things?
If so, is it not a real pain in the ass?!
It is the one time in the past two years of me having some understanding of MBTI that I found a definitive weakness in being an ESTP. All other aspects of my implementation of the type I am totally at peace with, but this one sucks!
Over the past two years my wife and I went to marriage counseling to try and improve our communication issues.
One of the things I learned about myself was that I am devoid of ability to make decisions about things that are predominately "feelings based." For example, whether or not I wanted a divorce. I knew I loved my wife dearly, I knew we were both miserable dealing with each other, I knew I had no fear of dividing everything in half and starting over from scratch, but I could not for the life of me make a decision on the topic as a whole. I knew how I felt about every issue that was good or bad, but not whether to stay or go.
So, how did I try to solve it? MS Excel! I bought every credible book I could find on Amazon.com specific to how to decide to stay or leave a relationship. I scoured threw them all, summarized them in a spreadsheet, and tried to make sense of it all. No luck. None. Paralyzed.
I ended up in a depression after that, the first of my life, EVER. I was a useless lump of a person for about 4 months. How did I end it? I had to ID what I was depressed about. So I thought...and thought...and thought...and after getting slapped in the head by the marriage counselor: "Don't think about what is making you depressed! Figure out what you feel sad or mad about that you have not resolved!"
Thank God a few days later I realized I was sad about not knowing what to about the divorce, and I was really pissed about a personal matter. Then, as ESTPs naturally do, I THOUGHT about how I wanted to handle the problems, and what ACTIONS would allow me to reach positive closure.
My wife made my life easy. She came to me out of the blue and apologized for her share of our problems and told me she loved me and that if I stayed she would work very hard to meet me half way and make me happy. How could I leave now? I couldn't. That was what I needed. Problem solved, the patience of getting there almost killed me, I have no patience.
The other matter was even more simple. Once I knew what was pissing me off I figured out a way to obliterate the situation and did it. That was that!
So, it toook FEELINGS to identify what was causing me depression, but once the culprits were known I resolved them with THOUGHT and ACTION.
I can tell anyone how I feel, it's usually: "Great!"
I can describe my feelings in words or in writing very easily.
But making a decision based on feelings? Forget it. Dead in the water!
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Has anyone else (ESTP or maybe other Thinking types) had to deal with such things?
If so, is it not a real pain in the ass?!
It is the one time in the past two years of me having some understanding of MBTI that I found a definitive weakness in being an ESTP. All other aspects of my implementation of the type I am totally at peace with, but this one sucks!