Tony Robbins, iNtuitive Feeler, likely innovated in “self-help” because of his severely addicted mother. He turned lemons into lemonade.
Retrospective Find of the Month:
Alcoholism authority George E. Vaillant brilliantly analogized what living with an alcoholic is like: “Outside of residence in a concentration camp, there are very few sustained human experiences that make one the recipient of as much sadism as does being a close family member of an alcoholic.” As sick as the family may appear in terms of observable behaviors (as I put it in Alcoholism Myths and Realities), some good can come of it, as Tony Robbins has proven.
Tony Robbins’ “Powertalk” audiotapes were an enormous aid in 1996 in helping me to recover from having lived with an alcoholic fiancée. At the time I figured Robbins was simply a brilliant iNtuitive Feeler, a personality type that excels at helping people become all they can. (For an explanation of the four Temperaments and 16 personality types see Keirsey’s website.) When, in 2004, I tried to get an interview with Robbins I learned enough about his background to realize he was likely a child of a severe alcoholic. At the time, I could find nothing in the public domain that confirmed this.
Now there is—and by his own testimony. In the September 2013 Playboy interview, Robbins says, “I grew up in a family where both my parents were alcoholics and users of prescription drugs. At the age of 11 I’d go to the pharmacy and convince the pharmacist that my mom had lost her Valium, and he’d refill it.” She chased him out of their home with a knife when he was 17. After stumbling around for several years and reading all the self-help books he could get his hands on, he learned how to turn anger and rage into drive, “because just being angry wouldn’t have changed anything.”
I often say, “Thank God for the alcoholic in my life.” Without her I never would have viewed people’s misbehaviors, current events and history through the lens of alcoholism, which is to say I never could have understood people’s misbehaviors, current events and history. The experience drove me to develop models that turn inexplicable into explicable human misbehaviors, something only an iNtuitive Thinker, someone who thinks abstractly and who craves an understanding of the universe, could likely have done. I’ve a hunch Tony Robbins would echo the sentiment, because it drove him to develop tools, including changing one’s emotional state, only an iNtuitive Feeler could have done.