To find the right tool when diagnosing our emotions and the challenge they present, we need to ask the right questions.  We cannot emphasize that principle enough.  Asking the wrong questions will always get us the wrong answers.  Questions about awareness, analysis, identification, cause, and trigger are diagnostic exercises that lead to knowing whether to welcome our emotions, mold them, or give them a pink slip.  

Diagnostic Tools and the Temperaments

Each temperament typically goes about diagnosis in a different manner.  

Using Keirsey’s nomenclature:

• SPs typically approach diagnosis by tactically seeking the best and fastest answer to any existing problem. 
• The SJs move through diagnosis step by step in logistical fashion.
• Typical of the NT is a detailed reductionist approach to diagnosis.  Then they fashion a strategy that will theoretically solve the problem.
• And finally, the NF diagnoses the problem diplomatically with antennas receptive to all feelings about themselves and others.

In the next few articles, we’ll examine questions that are our tools for diagnosing the emotions generated by all temperaments.  Today, we’ll begin with awareness.

Am I Aware of my Emotions?  

Awareness of the emotions that pass through our minds is not something we automatically possess on a consistent basis.  However, to be aware of anything we must focus on it.  And focusing on our emotions can be, at times, impossible not to do (for the NF, for instance).  Furthermore, it is almost impossible to do when they appear as fleeting feelings without form or familiarity — vague impressions at best.    How do we observe what is going in a mind that is constantly changing and reforming itself to accommodate the latest sensibilities?  

Persistent focus (concentration) is the answer.  In fact, awareness, focus, and concentration with persistence, works.  Let’s practice the art of being aware, a form of self inspection. But how do we use awareness to diagnose our emotions?

Here’s How to Use the Tool of Awareness in Diagnosing Our Emotions

Observe What Is Going On Inside

Observe what is going on inside your psyche without self judgment or condemnation.  Focus on your thoughts and feelings and know what is holding you ransom or stimulating your senses.  Knuckle down to the task of knowing yourself.  

Self Awareness Is Easier for the Fs

Self awareness is easier for those who are sensitive (all who have an F in their profile) and particularly those who are NFs.  However, we must all develop our sensitivity.  Don’t be afraid or ashamed of it.  How can we master ourselves without knowing what we are doing, thinking, and feeling?  

The Outside World Distracts Us

The outside world is all-consuming at times, and to be aware of what feelings are in us is to fight the pull of the external world.  Our bodily senses can seem to be all that matters in the moment.  The SP feels this way most of the time.  It takes conscious effort to divert our attention from the “real” world to the “virtual” world inside our mind, especially for the SP.  

Overcome Resistance to Introspection

We don’t like to introspect since what we can find is inconsistency, falseness, sham, and personal failure.  The bad seems to always trump the good in gaining our attention.  Imperfect beings, who struggle for perfection and who must be right and must control their environment, can’t stand the discovery of their own ineptitude and weakness.  Any ugly fact that puts us down is hard to look at.  

If your self-esteem is low, introspection can turn into self blame and condemnation easily.  The presence of negative feelings creates low self-esteem, so these are the first feelings to be aware of and to change in order to find emotional intelligence.  The super sensitive people (NFs and all strong Fs) will need to start here if they have created a damaging estimate of themselves.  

Awareness Needs to Be a Constant State of Mind

Awareness should become a constant state of mind, reading our thoughts and feelings, consulting the barometer of mental surprises, being aware of the direction the winds of the soul are blowing.   

Observation of our own feelings is a matter of an active inner sense.  Emotions make themselves known mainly by creating a good feeling or a bad one, one that brings either waves of pleasure or disturbing currents.  Only on further examination do they reveal their precise nature.  

Developing Awareness

With this understanding of the need for an awareness of emotions we must ask…

How do we develop this awareness? 

By simply looking inside and becoming more conscious of the happenings and movements of the mind.   It’s like walking.  We simply take steps. And the steps of self awareness are the conscious times we check in with our thoughts.  It is no more difficult than asking the question, “What am I thinking and feeling?”  (SPs and SJs may have to work at this since they can be easily captured by all things outside of themselves.)  

• Check in whenever you feel stressed, troubled, or anxious, and ask, “Are my thoughts and feelings positive or negative?” 
• Whenever we are stressed, troubled, sad, or when a feeling that disturbs us becomes apparent, resist the urge to do nothing and let the feeling grow.  Arrest it with questions about its authenticity like a guard questions your legitimacy at a security gate.  
• Deliberately focus on your feelings and read them until it becomes an awareness that is natural to you.  

Resources to Help You:

THE WONDERFUL TRUTH ABOUT EMOTION

Are there such things as intelligent emotions? Intelligently Emotional will argue that there are. And they are the ones we must focus on if we want to know success.

Ray W. Lincoln will show us how understanding the patterns of emotion in our temperament will enable us to manage our emotions effectively. If you long to know how to understand your emotions and the immense power of your feelings, Intelligently Emotional  will show you the way.  The path to real emotional intelligence requires learning to partner with intelligent emotions.

DISCOVER THE TRUTH OF WHO YOU ARE!

Lean into the whole truth.  Discover the truth of who YOU are — the “Real You” — and who your children truly are.  Discover how to best engage your children in finding the whole truth.  INNERKINETICS, Your Blueprint to Excellence will guide you in that

Our team at InnerKinetics is ready to provide that help, too.  If you’d like some assistance, you can request a consultation.  An InnerKinetics consultant will call you to answer questions and schedule your meeting. Schedule an Initial Consultation. Alternatively, if you are more independent and want to cut to the chase, you need not wait for a call back. You can get answers to your questions and schedule your session HERE.

Our first and most important task in a world-changing mission is to learn how to think straight (and teach straight thinking) and combat the insurgence of crooked thinking in our culture and in our world today. If we become passive victims of this crooked way of thinking, we promote it. Furthermore, if we remain silent, we also give it credence. In Who Am I?, the reader progresses from how we have become “crooked thinkers” to how to break out of this prison of the mind to become instruments of change for a better world.  We do this by recognizing from where we derive our value as humans. “Build a straight and powerful mind.” ~ Ray W. Lincoln