My Enneagram Tritype: A Self-Typing Story, Part 4

On one page in a PersonalityCafe thread, I saw a link to the Fauvres' website and decided to check it out.  Once there, I saw that they had a free sample Enneagram test I could take, and I went for it.  It was designed with "Enneacards" -- rectangles filled with images and words that, in their research, they had learned that the respective Enneatypes characteristically associate with themselves.

The test proved difficult for me to take, but it also proved to be an invaluable experience, first of all because it exposed me to those characteristic words associated with the types and helped me gain a deeper understanding of each Enneatype.  (The type associated with each Enneacard was not revealed, but it was obvious enough to me after all the reading and research I'd already done.)  It was no surprise to me that Types 9 and 7 ranked high for me in this test, as well as Type 5 (I've always scored high on and related extremely well with Type 5, too).  The biggest stunner for me was Type 4.  True, I have often scored high for Type 4 in tests as well, and noticed myself behaving in 4ish ways; but whenever I had read descriptions of Type 4, my reaction was always, "Tends toward pessimism?  Enjoys wallowing in melancholic emotions??  No way!!  I do relate with the liking for romance and the creativity, but the overall big picture of Type 4, nope.  That's not me!  No question about it!"

But as I meditated upon the words on the Type 4 Enneacard, I was rocked by astonishment to suddenly recognize myself in them... in a big way.  OH, my goodness!  I gasped to myself.  I DO have Type 4 in me -- TONS of it!  Throughout my childhood, whenever I said to my parents or friends things like "This is my favorite ____, what's yours?" or "Here are the colors I imagine for each letter of the alphabet," I was exhibiting intuitive, creative, identity-seeking 4ishness.  I was FAMOUS for that kind of stuff in my family!  And I could never relate with the statement that Type 9s are humble and think they're nobody special, because all my life, I've been far more conscious of thinking I AM special, different, better than others, some kind of elite individual... which is none other than Type 4 rearing its head!!!  I was shocked, incredulous, but simultaneously delighted by this momentous realization.

After I finished taking the test, I wanted to rank each of the Enneatypes in the order in which they were most prominent to least prominent in me.  Type 9 was at the top, and my middle-to-lowest numbers were easy enough to rank, too.  The greatest confusion came right after Type 9, because I had chosen 4, 5 and 7 with equal or nearly-equal frequency in the test.  I was thrilled to realize that Type 4 must be my image fix!  But for my head fix, I still had to choose between 5 and 7.  I proceeded to ponder the question at length.  I mentally went back over my entire life, considering: which of these two types did I exhibit more of at that stage of my life? at that stage? at that stage?

My presumption had been that I would end up choosing Type 7 as my head fix, since that's the only other type I had ever seriously thought might be my main one.  However, much to my amazement, I had to admit after reviewing my life carefully that I'd always shown a ton of 5ishness, and not a lot of 7ishness!  There was a point at which I did show more 7ishness than 5ishness, but it was after I had grown up, and it was relatively brief, and now I had again reverted to behaving way more like a Type 5 again.  What was going on?

To find out, I made an effort to pinpoint exactly when my 7ishness had begun to manifest.  And what I discovered was that it was shortly after I got married.  My marriage was a difficult one in many ways, and my initial instinct was to use my 5-fix (i.e., investigative analysis) to try and understand the problems I was experiencing so as to be able to solve them.  However, since they proved difficult for me to do anything about beyond whatever I was already trying to do, I ended up deciding to go with my standard 9ish strategy of "just go on trying your best, tolerate the difficulties and hope it'll all get better someday."  This left my 5-fix with nothing practical or proactive to do in regard to my marriage, so what did it do?  It said, "Well, OK then, let's just have fun to take our mind off the trouble!"  And what is that strategy characteristic of?  Type 7!!  This realization suddenly sent me dashing into my mom's bedroom to find her Wisdom of the Enneagram book so that I could look something up.  I had a strong hunch that I was going to see a line of disintegration, a.k.a. a "stress line", connecting Type 5 to Type 7, and sure enough, that was exactly the case!  WOO-HOOOOO!  MYSTERY SOLVED!  The Type 5 in my nature morphed into Type 7 when I was undergoing the stress of a difficult marriage, and now that I'd gotten divorced and was again living with my highly supportive parents, I had reverted back to my healthy 5ish self!

All right -- so that was decided.  But if my head fix was not 7, then where did all my passionate, enthusiastic spirit and love of emotional "highs" come from?

From my 4-fix.  The Enneacards test made me realize that Type 4 is a passionate type, prone to strong feelings like desire, love and longing.  Yet at the same time, it's a withdrawn type; dynamic action "out there in the world" is usually not as easy for Type 4 as it is for Type 7.  Self-consciousness issues like pride and self-doubt, plus an obsessive fixation on their own internal landscape, conspire to inhibit Type 4s from interacting with the world without hesitation.  Certain things, like pouring their hearts out in creating works of art or literature, come naturally to Type 4s -- and they may contribute very valuably to the world in this manner; but, at least for some 4s, it's difficult to do a whole lot beyond that.  Aha!  Then that's why my intensely churning head- and heart-energy so seldom translates into practical action in any capacity other than writing, drawing pictures, etc.?  That's why I feel tormented by inability to act on my big, ambitious dreams?

I had rejected the idea of identifying with Type 4 for so long because it's a type that tends toward pessimism and melancholy, and I didn't recognize these tendencies in myself at all.  I've always been an optimist and much preferred happy, feel-good emotions over less pleasant ones.  But now, I could recognize that with a (positive-outlook, easygoing, tolerant) Type 9 core governing over my 4-fix and mellowing it out -- and with a so/sx (social instinct first, sexual instinct second) instinctual stacking, which I've heard yields the "lightest" and "least 4ish" Type 4 personality -- nothing else made better sense as a description of me.  I recognized that the 7's characteristic escapism, that tendency to flee from unpleasant emotions through distraction and/or denial, had never been present in me, except when I was unduly stressed.  Normally, I might not like unpleasant emotions, but I didn't fear them.  I preferred to be happy, but I valued knowledge and authenticity over pretended happiness.  If I needed to explore and talk out some painful feelings in order to process, self-cleanse, and shine light into the darkness, I wouldn't hesitate to do so.

In fact, as I watched myself over the following weeks with this newfound awareness, I began to notice how often I felt pushed away (and hurt or annoyed by it) when someone deflected or shut down my efforts to verbally air out thoughts or grievances.  It seemed that emotional self-expression -- of the good, the bad and the ugly -- was very important to me.  And astonishingly enough to me, I even found that now that I wasn't so chronically stressed out, I wasn't an incurable optimist any longer, either!  I still had an optimistic bent, for sure, but now I could see that my mother (who has two positive-outlook fixes in her tritype -- a core 2 and a 7-fix -- as opposed to my lone core 9) was way more skewed toward optimism in her views and expectations than I was.  I often had occasion to remind her, "Yes, this nice thing may happen, but it's also possible that this other unpleasant thing may happen.  Keep an open mind, and don't get your hopes up!"  Was it possible that this was me -- the one who had failed in marriage in part due to a dreadful blind optimism that stubbornly ignored our difficulties?  Apparently, yes... and I was now coming to know my real self at last!

To be continued...