Personality – Page 6 – Midlands Psychological Associates

Temperament V: Caretakers

Ron Johnson Personality, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness February 2, 2019

Players and caretakers both like things. And they both like to do things, but their liking and doing is quite different. Players see the world as a place to play; caretakers see the world as a place to take care of. Players want to play in their doing; caretakers want to produce in their doing; players want the experience of doing and potentially the excitement in their doing. Caretakers want accomplishment in their doing. Players want to use things; caretakers want to save things.

Think of caretakers as people who have a mission: take care of the world. Caretakers take to heart the dictum that God gave Adam and Eve in Genesis chapter 1: “Take care of the world.” A caretaker goes through his or her day seeing what needs to be cared for: fixed, repaired, restored, or cleaned up. If you’re not a caretaker yourself, you certainly have known them. They can be very unobtrusive in their taking care of things, so unobtrusive that you might not even see them fixing and cleaning. You might see the result: the kitchen cleaned up, the kids’ room put back together after a day’s playing, your car washed, or the toilet paper replaced on the dispenser. Caretaking is more than taking care of things, but caretakers are first quite aware of the status of things, how to keep them in working order, and the importance of property for its own sake. Yet it would be a mistake to see caretakers as simply taking care of property, however good they may be at that because caretakers also take care of people. In fact, much of their taking care of property is for the use by people. A caretaker might simultaneously enjoy seeing a cleaned-up car, but this could be his car, your car, or anyone’s car. I have known caretakers who are compelled to turn the lights off in car in some parking lot that belongs to a complete stranger. There is a certain kind of love that caretakers have for people, but this love is profoundly different from the lovers that we previously studied.

I remember being surprised by the activity of a caretaker friend of mine one morning some years ago. I heard the hammering and sawing being done by a carpenter repairing my back steps. The carpenter, Jim, was getting the job done that I had asked him to do. I hadn’t actually expected him to get this job done so soon because I just asked him to look at the steps the day before. Jim is the kind of a guy who tears right into a building project, thinks on his feet, and makes adjustments to the project as he goes along with his work. He doesn’t ask a lot of questions, just enough to get him going and keep him busy for the next few hours. Many years later I met another caretaker-like carpenter, Lonnie, who operates in the same way: examine the project for a few minutes, jump right into the project, and make adjustments as necessary. In a lot of ways Jim and Lonnie are men after my own heart because I am also a caretaker. We caretakers have some very specific characteristics:

Business.

Consider the two ways of pronouncing this word, business: “biz-ness” and “busy-ness.” Caretakers are both: business people and busy people. Caretakers are usually quite good at “doing business,” like conducting the affairs of a private enterprise, or better yet, working for someone else in conducting corporate business. The basic nature of caretakers lends them to the rudiments and requirements of succeeding in the business community because so much of doing business lies in the arena of taking care of things like money, property, and people. Because they are people who like to get the job done, business owners like them and usually count on them. Leave caretaker employees on their own, and you will be able to count on them doing their jobs without further interruption. Caretakers are good at doing things on their own or following directions of someone else who is trying to make business work. You want something done, without play, conversation, or questions: ask a caretaker to do it.

Doing business is only part of caretakers’ business nature, but caretakers also have a busy-ness nature. A caretaker can become completely absorbed in an activity for activity’s sake. Given that my basic temperament is caretaker, I can speak about this characteristic quite personally. Friends have often commented about my busyness, sometimes seeming “unavailable” for spontaneous conversation or play because I am always busy at something. The “being busy at something” all the time brings us caretakers great pleasure. Our view of the world is that it needs to be cared for. It also needs to be protected, repaired, and organized. All of these activities are caretakers’ way of taking care of things. There is always something to do in the world for caretakers, and this doing something is what the caretaker feels inside of himself or herself as their main gift to the world. Caretakers don’t think about their doing; they may not even plan their doing; but they are always doing. Even as I am writing this sentence, there is a “doing” nature to it, a busy-with-something nature. I have just finished with a patient and I am waiting for my next patient who happens to be a few minutes late. I don’t want to “waste” my time “hanging out”, calling my wife to say Hi, or going on Facebook. I want to do something, hopefully something important.

As players don’t need to learn to play, lovers don’t need to learn to love, and analysts don’t need to analyze, caretakers don’t need to learn to be busy. I never remember dreading work set out for me to do. I never remember having nothing to do like so many people often express. I never remember being bored. I always had my desk ordered and clean when I was in school. My desk is not always free of papers but it is never messy or cluttered. Nobody ever told me that I should do these things. It just came naturally to take care of things. It doesn’t even matter whether these things are mine or someone else’s. Why would I feel compelled to pick up toilet paper on the floor that someone has dropped? It might not even be sanitary. It doesn’t even seem logical. But I am compelled to do things like this. In my mind things need to be taken care of, even public restrooms. What is so hard for people of other temperaments to understand is that caretakers are compelled to take care of things, particularly human-made things. To truly understand a person with a caretaker nature you must grasp this core value that caretakers have: take care of the world, particularly things.

Production

Players get bored when there is no excitement, lovers get bored when there is no connection with other people, analysts get bored with there is no problem to solve, but caretakers never get bored. It doesn’t much matter to them what they do, as long as they have opportunity to do something, primarily producing something.

The business community loves caretakers because bosses can count on their caretaker employees to finish the jobs given to them. In fact, sometimes bosses have to tell their caretaker employees to go home instead of staying at work until the job is done. I know many caretakers who struggle to use up their vacation days even if they lose them after a year. Our office manager/secretary, Cheri, is certainly primarily a caretaker, and we have had to remind her that it is time to call is a day on occasion because she “just had one more chore” to do. Leaving work with unfinished tasks is hard for caretakers, especially if they are in the midst of completing a task that isn’t quite done. Caretakers are notoriously last to leave work, come home late from work, and bring work home, as Cheri has done many times. She has learned to score the many psychological tests that we administer in our office, and will routinely take these tests home if they are not finished on her shift. Cheri was distressed not long ago because a patient had been delinquent in getting her tests to her which meant she might not be able to get the result back to me in time. One of the best hallmarks of caretakers is that they do what is expected of them, and they do more than they expect of themselves.

All caretakers have the same values in doing, producing, and repairing, but the things they do may differ. All caretakers value property, but they do not all value the same property. Lonnie the carpenter values his tools and the five cars he is restoring, while Secretary Cheri values an orderly desk and all insurance claims properly made. Some caretakers value the care of people and do such things as changing diapers for adults in a care facility as intrinsically valuable and meaningful to them. Some caretakers want a meticulous lawn, while others might only see it necessary to cut it once a week and weed it once a year. Yet all caretakers like the sense of accomplishment: looking back on what has been accomplished in the previous hours or days. I often find myself simply enjoying the accomplishment of my production: having seen eight patients, having written 40 pages of a manuscript, having finished remodeling the kitchen, or even having finished putting away all my books and files where they belong.

American culture rewards production, regardless of quality. Because of this valuing of producing it is easier for caretakers to adjust to American society than all the other temperaments. The Japanese culture also values production, but has added to this value a deeper concern for quality than is usually present in American production. American cars dominated the world for more than 60 years before the Germans and Japanese began to produce cars with more quality. It took 20 years for the American car culture to accommodate to the market’s demand for better quality in automobiles. Yet there is still much reward for quantity over quality in America. It is the busy mothers who are seen as motherly, the busy businessman who is seen as successful, the busy teacher who is seen as most helpful, and the busy pastor who is seen as properly pastoral.

Players talk about experience, lovers about connection, and analysts about meaning. One last thing: when caretakers talk, they usually talk about what they have done, will do, or should have done.

Providing.

When life requires something to be done, caretakers are there for the doing. Likewise, caretakers are best at providing what people need. They enjoy providing physical or emotional needs to the people around them, usually without complaining. Caretakers sometimes complain of “having to do all the work around here,” but usually they just go about doing what needs to be done. People with other temperaments are far more inclined to complain about “busy work” that gets in the way of what they would rather do. Caretakers usually do not have something they would rather do. The difference between the nurse who goes about her caretaking duties without complaint and the nurse who complains about her patients is probably due to their difference in temperament. Nursing is largely caretaking by its nature: it is active, it is required, and it is repetitive. Such repetitive caregiving fulfills the caretaker’s sense of purpose and duty in life. LPNs might actually to do more caretaking than RNs, and CNAs might do even more than LPNs. If a non-caretaker is “caught” in a profession like nursing that requires a great deal of simple care, he or she may become quite unhappy because their professional life asks more of them than they have to give. I heard 15 minutes of complaints today from a teacher who has an analyst temperament. She complained that her students didn’t want to learn and were often disruptive. If a caretaker teacher were teaching the very same students, she might not have such resentment. She would see the task of taking care of her students regardless of their behavior. I suspect that Martha is frequently disappointed that her students aren’t interested in learning as much as they are in getting good grades.

The providing nature of caretakers is not limited to professions. Caretaking is the essential nature of early parenting, and much of the whole of parenting. Parenting of infants and toddlers requires the repetitive nature that is natural to caretakers. While no one likes being awakened at 3 A.M. in the morning by a screaming infant, caretaker parents take these events in stride. It is the caretaker who easily gets out of bed for the third time in one night to provide for his infant’s basic needs of feeding and diaper changing. I remember many such semi-sleepless nights. When I was aroused by one of my children’s hunger cries, I did not feel the urgency of my daughter’s needs for sustenance or comfort as much as I felt the necessity of getting out of bed and going about the business of warming the bottle and getting the dry diaper ready. Very often, I didn’t even think about whether I wanted to get out of bed; rather, I just got out of bed and did the necessary. Pity the infant of a player parent who wants to play until midnight and then have a good night sleep. There is not much play in diaper-changing and bottle-feeding.

Property-oriented.

Caretakers are particularly good with management of property. When explaining the caretaker temperament, my wife suggests that we consider such people “groundskeepers”. It is the groundskeepers of the world who protect and preserve property, their own property and the property of others. Some caretakers have less interest in property because they would rather take care of people, but all caretakers tend to manage property, repair property, and protect it. They also tend to own a lot of property, often because they don’t throw things away.

The way caretakers manage property is only the behavioral evidence of their basic personality structure. These folks seem to fuse their personalities with property, and then they feel emotionally connected to property. For instance, books might be valued for themselves rather than for the information they contain or for the pleasure they give in their reading. Sam has a library of books, but he admits that he will never read most of them. His books are very important to him, and he has them all ordered, visible, and available for use if necessary, however improbable that may be. I borrowed a book from him some time ago, read a few chapters and put the book aside. My friend has asked about the whereabouts of his book several times, and I finally felt compelled to return his book half-read. Sam is not so interested in getting the book immediately back because he would gladly allow me to have the book for years if necessary; he just wants to know that the book is alright. He wants to know where his stuff is. As a caretaker myself, I can’t blame him. I want to know where my stuff is too. You would rarely, if ever, hear a caretaker say “oh, it doesn’t matter, it is just a book” or “that isn’t important, it is just something that I had around”. Stuff is always important.

I have come to believe that caretakers consider property to have intrinsic spiritual value. They can value property over people’s feelings, or over people altogether, not so much because they are selfish but because they see their sacred responsibility to save and protect property, ultimately for human use. In this sense caretakers can be very generous with property. They just want their property cared for responsibly. A caretaker girl could easily loan her favorite toy car to his player brother erroneously thinking that her brother has the same value for the toy car, only to be gravely disappointed to find the car ignored, lost, or broken because it was, indeed, a “toy” to the player brother. When that toy is lost or damaged, the caretaker child might be truly grieved. The toy was sacred to her, but simply a toy to her brother.

Simplicity

There is an attractive simplicity about caretakers. Their view of life is so much about what is, that they are very good at seeing the facts and saying the facts. I wonder if the boy who saw that the “Emperor had no clothes” was simply stated the obvious. He was not trying to understand why the emperor had not clothes. He just saw that he was naked. Seeing what is, more than seeing what could be, is the heart of the simplicity of caretakers. They do not by nature look under the surface. They look at the surface. They do not ask how and why; they ask who, what, when, and where. Yes, caretakers can be simplistic, but for the most part they just look to understand things in as simple a manner as possible.

Caretaker’s simplicity is a part of their doing nature. They can truly be satisfied doing almost anything. As we noted, they rarely get bored, probably because there is always something to do. Their activity can be intense or it can be easy; it can be intricate, like fixing a computer, it can be delicate, like a jeweler repairing a diamond ring, or it can be repetitive, like the man on the assembly line. Simple doesn’t have to be trivial. The most successful IT people are not those who ask why the computer isn’t working; they ask what isn’t working, what was happening when it stopped working, and what was happening in the room when it stopped working. The true scientist may be a genius but he can also be a person who can do 200 trials to find the exact combination of chemicals that does the job he wants done.

Further Reading:

Note suggestions on previous Temperament blogs

Previous blogs on players, lovers, and analysts

Future blogs on the challenges and opportunities every temperament has

Johnson, R. and Brock, (2018). Watch your temperament. Prepublication manuscript available at our office.

The Go-To’s of Life

Ron Johnson Feelings, mindfulness, Personality, Positive psychology, Self-Awareness, Spiritual January 25, 2019

We all have them. I call them “go-to” places. These are the places we go to when…well, when we want to for some reason. But let’s start with the idea that this “go-to” place is a good place, a safe place, a good thing for people, a place where people find solace, and maybe even a spiritual place. But the go-to’s of our lives may not be places. So, let’s consider what might be a go-to for you, for me, and for other people.

Go-To’s based on Temperament

Many people truly value things, often more than people. We have been discussing temperaments in some recent blogs, and people who have what we call the “caretaker” temperament actually care deeply for things, property. Things can be very small like a favorite piece of jewelry or clothing, or it can be large like a room, a garage, a house, or a car. It can even be money.
There are many forms of people being go-to’s. Some people have very special people who are go-to for them. Some people, we call them “lovers” by temperament, could go-to almost anyone as long as the person is living
People with what we call the “analyst” temperament” tend to go-to with ideas. They love to consider possibilities, solve problems, prevent problems, and figure things out. There are variations of ideas being go-to’s including some idea or problem that has interested or intrigued someone for years, while others’ go-to places may be more random, like just thinking about some possibility or conundrum.
People who have experience as a go-to we call “players” in temperament. They want to be involved physically in something and often look for excitement. Usually, this experiential go-to is new and different, like going to a new city or meeting a new person; but it can also be something that is activity that is quite familiar, like going to a familiar park or watching a familiar movie.

Go-to’s that are Helpful

Food. We all have our special foods. Sometimes these may be “comfort foods” that are usually high in carbohydrates, but some people have a go-to with meat, vegetables, or fruit.
Drink. We normally think of alcohol in this category, but drink also includes soda, fruit juice, coffee, or just plain water. If you have a go-to with alcohol or something else, consider the time when water was actually your drink of choice, maybe after a long run or on a hot day.
Reading. Some people go-to fiction, others nonfiction, and yet others historical fiction. Some people poor over their favorite researcher, theoretician, or author, while others have a favorite topic that always can be explored
Playing. Here we have many forms including the simple ones that take minutes, like Su-do-ku and Word Play, or the more complicated ones that could take hours, like Monopoly, or video games. Still others are intensely physical, like cross country skiing, basketball, or golf.
Working. You don’t have to be a so-called “workaholic” to have work as a go-to. Many people who are not “addicted” to working, if we even call it that, truly go-to work when they don’t know where else to go.
Entertainment. This includes movies, concerts, sporting events, and certainly TV. This is a go-to for most Americans at least to some degree. This can be movies, soap operas, weekly drama or comedy. But it can all be just flipping channels to find something that is interesting and enticing for the moment.
Physical contact. Lovers are much into this as a go-to, but it is much more common than just with lovers. And it is not just about sex, although sexual contact is certainly a go-to for many people. This may be physical contact with a lover, a friend, a child, an unknown person at the market, or an animal.
Sleeping can really be a wonderful go-to because it can restore body and soul simultaneously.
Walking, and Hiking. I am intrigued with the people who run daily. While not exactly a go-to for me, walking and hiking is certainly something that is a go-to for Deb, and for many people.
Do you know someone who is always humming or singing, often completely unaware that he or she is juggling a tune? An adjunct to singing might be reading or writing poetry, or maybe just playing on your guitar.
Extraverts are inclined to talk when they have nothing of substance to say just because it is good for them to talk. Likewise, introverts often prefer their own company and find great solace in being quiet. Both good. Both different.

What have I missed? Probably plenty. Possibly a go-to that really works for you. You might even have a go-to that you don’t want anyone to know about. Nothing wrong with that. I think these go-to’s are usually related to our personalities in some way, like the temperament-based ones we started with. But they can be cultural or subcultural in their origin. Latino cultures have a “man(y)ana” in their culture, which technically means “tomorrow” but really means “eventually.” Church can be a go-to for many people that can be just as important to them as drinking or hiking is for someone else. No one can tell you that your go-to is wrong. It might just be different. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to work out every day…for an hour or more for goodness sake. I struggle to work out twice a week. But it is good for them.

While there is never anything intrinsically wrong with a go-to, any go-to can become harmful. Harmful is when something that is intrinsically good turns out to be experientially bad, largely because it has become an avoidance of feelings, avoidance of activity, avoidance of people, or any other kind of avoidance of the necessities of having a good life. We might call such avoidances “addictions,” but I try to avoid that word in favor of a go-to being something to a fault. When a go-to becomes an activity or a substance to a fault, it has encroached on the rest of life and in so doing, has limited one’s experience in life. The distinction between something that is good for you as a go-to and something that is harmful to you as a go-to has nothing to do with the amount of the activity or thing. It has to do with the reason you are engaging in the go-to. A go-to that helps you find solace, safety, and pleasure is rewarding and enhancing. A go-to that has become an avoidance brings none of these things. Recall the blog I did on liking and wanting. A go-to that is something you like profits you, and it tends to end peacefully. A go-to that has become an avoidance reduces you and it tends not to end at all. It may not even give pleasure. It’s just a habit.

I encourage you to consider your own go-to, value it, and use it. Then consider whether you are profiting for it, or perhaps using it as some kind of avoidance of the rest of life. Remember: there is never anything intrinsically wrong with you go-to. No one has the right to say that you are addicted, or avoiding, or that your go-to is stupid. You are the only one who can make a judgment between “good for you” and “not good for you.”

Temperament IV: Lovers

Ron Johnson Connection, Feelings, Personality, Personality, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness January 24, 2019

This is the fourth in a series about “temperament” in which we are discussing the idea of temperament as a way of understanding personality and the behavior that results from one’s personality. Acknowledging that there are many ways of understanding personality, we propose that there are four primary temperaments that give us a general orientation to the world:

Players: seek experience, often excitement, adventure, and tend to take a rather physical engagement to the world
Analysts: seek meaning in life by identifying problems and their solutions
Lovers: whom we will discuss in this document
Caretakers: take care of things, both property and people

Our use of “temperament,” as well as several other ways of understanding personality is first and foremost a focus on “what is right about people” rather than the rather popular way of understanding what is wrong with various mental health diagnoses. We do not disparage the use of such problem-based ways of understanding people, but rather do not think it is the best way to start the understanding process. We do, however, admit that there are problems that result from all good things including temperament. The “problems” that erupt from temperament are primarily three: (1) the person does not know, and hence value, his or her own temperament, (2) the person uses the gifts of his/her temperament “to a fault,” and (3) one’s gifts of temperament may be substantially different from people with other temperaments leading to a conflict between two good things.

Herein we will discuss the characteristic that are natural to the people we call “lovers” and then speak somewhat of the value that such people bring to the world. We will defer the challenges and opportunities that lovers have in the world to a latter blog.

Characteristics of Lovers

Connecting

Like the term love, “connecting” does not lend itself to an exact definition but it a very real experience nevertheless just like the many elements of psychology and the basic elements of the universe are real but hard to define. This is the central ingredient of people we call “lovers,” but this characteristic does not lend itself to exact definition. It is something like feeling the same thing that another person feels. Connecting is a shared feeling, shared, insight, shared belief, shared joy, shared sorrow, shared hope, shared expectation or shared experience. Clearly, this has to do with sharing. This sharing, this connecting blends the boundaries between people, and it is something that lovers do all the time and especially with the people they most love. I sometimes say that lovers think, “If you feel it, I will feel it,” whatever the “it” is. A cognate of this feeling is something like, “If I feel it, you feel it,” which, however true this might be, can be problematic for lovers. The simplest experience of something shared jointly can be the seeing, appreciating, and experiencing a sunset or a sunrise because beauty is usually another part of the lover temperament. Connection can just as equally experienced in any other realm of life but the key is always having the same feeling as someone else.

This connection/sharing phenomenon can lead to a new creation, what we call la unity of souls. This unity is more than one person and more than the other person, and it is more than just two people experiencing something. It is a spiritual union that now makes an us out of “you” and “me.” This “us” orientation that lovers have is more important than the I and the you, and it is something that they are looking for all the time.

Both of our daughters have this lover temperament, and both seek connections, but our younger daughter, Jenny, is perhaps more of a true lover, while Krissie blends player with her lover temperament. When we talk, text, Facebook, or visit, Jenny is always the one who seeks connection with us. Certainly, hugs are first when we actually meet, but after those moments she is looking to what we feel, what we think, and what we have done. She is looking for connections. She is looking at a way to find us so she can find a way to blend with us. I wonder how these two girls turned out so good in life with one parent a caretaker and the other an analyst. It seems that we all muddled through their childhood together doing our best to love each other. Lovers do it best.

Harmonious

Harmony is an adjunct to connection. When two people have this unity of souls, there are yet two people in the “us” but the relationship but these two people find different ways of experiencing life and expressing their feelings. Ideally for the lover, this harmony works to enhance not only both people but the “us” that has been created in the connection. In seeking this harmony lovers avoid conflict if at all possible. They will bend their own perceptions and their own words to find agreement and harmony, and they attempt to blend others’ feelings and perceptions to blend with their own. Lovers will do their best to find this harmony by listening, watching, and feeling their emotions in order to see how the other person sees the world and feels about the world.

The lovers that I have mentioned above all have this characteristic of seeking harmony. Daughter Jenny rarely displays any kind of anger or displeasure. Likewise, I have rarely seen other lovers angry, at least at the beginning of a relationship. Janet gets angry on a very rare occasion, and I have only seen John a bit irritated. Rather, I have seen these people spend hours and hours seeking to connect with people and find similarities that make for human harmony. And when they can’t seem to find harmony, they can feel great distress and clearly repressed anger. Mostly, though, they simply feel a great loss when harmony is in absence.

Dreaming.

We have discussed how analysts like to dream. Lovers also dream, but their dreaming is substantially different than that of analysts. Simply put, lovers’ dreams are more emotional while analysts’ dreams are more cognitive. Furthermore, lovers’ dreams are more about connections with people. Dreaming for a lover is much more of a free-floating process where their minds drift into possibilities and opportunities for human connections. Lovers’ dreaming is almost always people-centered rather than things-centered the way caretakers dream or idea-centered the way analysts dream. They don’t think much about why something has happened the way analysts do, nor do they think about what has happened like caretakers. They dream about who they could be connected with. They might dream about having a perfect relationship, or dream about improving their current relationship, or they might dream a having a relationship with some unknown person where everything is about connection and harmony. Lovers can dream about places, ideas, and possibilities but these dreams always involve people. Furthermore, these dreams do not have to come into fruition; it is enough for a lover to dream about doing something, seeing something, or going somewhere. When a lover has engaged in this kind of fanciful dreaming, it may no longer be necessary to actually do the dream. Lovers have the ability to experience the future when they dream, a future that may never happen, but is real nevertheless.

Touching.

It is almost impossible for lovers to keep from touching people. Yesterday, Deb and I did therapy with a couple. I have been working with the man for many months, and Deb has been working with the woman. This man and wife have come to a very difficult place in their life together and they needed us to help them sort things out. After rather intensive three-plus hours with this couple, and after many tears, we ended the session. After we all stood up, the wife, a woman I had never met before, reached out her hand for a handshake, which I accepted. But then almost if she had said, “I need more than this,” she reached out to me for a hug. It was one of those full body hugs that lovers give where two bodies are close enough to feel one another’s heartbeats. It wasn’t one of those hugs that I call “A-frame” where two people only touch at head level, nor was it a “C-frame” hug that is typical of men where the two men stand facing in the same direction each with an arm around the other guy. This was a great big bear hug. It was real, and it was absolutely necessary for her. We had had this three-hour connection, not all of which was pleasant, and she needed to feel this physical connection before she left my office.

Lovers’ tendency to touch people is clearest when they touch another person who is in pain of some kind. The affectionate touch rendered to someone in pain that is fairly natural for all of us is perhaps more of a wonderful compulsion for lovers: they are compelled to touch a person in pain, whether that pain is physical or emotional. Their touch is very likely healing in a way that lies beyond exact science. There are professional healers, many of whom may well be lovers by temperament, utilize “healing touch” as a principal part of their work. Healing touch is quite simply the healer placing his or her hands on the part of the body of the patient that is in some kind of pain. There is a good bit of research that suggests that touch, whether emotional or physical, is beneficial to people in some kind of pain. Massage therapists perhaps know more about the healing nature of physical touch, but it is also a part of physical therapy, chiropractic, nursing care, Reiki, and other more traditional medical practice. When I had a massage recently, I could not distinguish the difference between the muscle relief I experienced from the more emotional relief I felt. Many nontraditional healing practitioners talk of a healing “energy” that occurs when two people touch one another.

Generous.

Lovers truly enjoy giving. They like to give hugs. They like to give greeting cards and thank you notes. They like to give presents. They can even give things that they probably can’t afford to give, like property, money, or time. Lovers are very good at giving affection for someone who is in pain even though the very same person may have brought them pain in the past. If a lover is around someone that is hurting in some way, whether from physical, emotional, or relational matters, the lover will feel immediate compassion and a desire to give something to the hurting person. Lovers’ generous nature is more than meeting someone’s need. They simply enjoy the act of giving, expecting nothing in return. My sister, lover by nature, insists that I take some kind of present with me when I leave her house, and when she comes to our house, the car trunk is full of several presents. Lovers’ giving can be out of their own abundance or out of sacrifice, but it is absolutely genuine.

This generous nature of lovers extends to deeper feeling and sacrifice. Lovers are more forgiving than people of other temperaments. It is simply easier for lovers to forgive offenses and mistakes in other people. They seem able to understand that much offense and many mistakes are not intentional, but rather due to misunderstanding or misjudgment. When they are at their best, lovers can forget about bad things that have happened to them or that have been done to them. They can be on the receiving end of vicious attacks, physical or verbal, and they will return the next day, even the next hour, with a spontaneous and genuine felt concern for their attackers if the attacker displays regret and makes an apology. Lovers seem not to even remember offensive things that were said or done to them. Forgiveness for lovers can come easily and naturally, especially if the offending party shows some kind of contrition.

Next up: Temperament V: Caretakers

Further reading: see previous blogs