The recent personality exploration I’ve gone through have caused me to perform my self analysis with a new lens based on the information I was shown about myself. A piece of this information is how I’m wired in regards to thinking and feeling. I have an ability to think and feel on equal terms. When I make a decision or make a statement, I have to have my thinker come up with a couple options, then my feeler has to verify that I feel good about one or both of these options or revise these options. Then my thinker has to reprocess any changes the feeler made and my feeler has to approve the revisions continue revising. You can see that this process becomes a little tedious. It happens rather quickly considering all the pieces involved. However, it is very slow in comparison to people who are free to make decisions based on one attribute and not two. (I’m painfully aware of how long it takes me to make decisions.)

These pieces get interesting when one of my attributes is malfunctioning. An extreme life event of some sort such as the passing of a loved one. This life event might leave my feeler broken, overwhelmed with emotion, or just shut down and became incapable of processing. Overstimulated.

So, my thinker stepped up, he said to the feeler, “Don’t worry bro, I got your back. Just sit down and heal up and we’ll pull you back in to the game when you’re better.” Very thoughtful of my thinker to take on the load for a bit.

My feeler never stepped back up. He never took the reigns again. He was lost in the fray. Hiding.

Scared.

Hurt.

He was incapacitated. He has been crying out and I haven’t been able to help him. My thinker has been overworking trying to maintain the load and my feeler just keeps feeling worse and worse all the time. My feeler eventually fell to the place where he was suppressed behind my thinker, depressed under the stimuli, and my thinker is angry because nobody is helping him.

Six months later I’m falling apart because my thinker and my feeler are overwhelmed by it all and they cannot process a dang thing. And now I’m dealing with it.

I’m looking my feeler in the face, making him process through the life events. I’m easing the load of my thinker. Letting him step down and only take care of the thoughts so my feeler can take care of his load only.

How do you deal with unexpected stresses? How long do they affect you for?

Who helps you process your stress?