[Type 4] Signs You're a Type 4

[CuriousFeeling]

You know you're a type 4 when:

- You find beauty in the most unusual things.
- Learning is a beautiful emotional experience for you. It's not just absorbing knowledge; it's a wondrous experience where knowledge brings light to everything around you.
- You've always felt different from everyone else.
- Your clothing style may change depending on your mood.
- You're on the constant pursuit to figure out just who you really are, and where you belong in the world.
- You consider your tastes in art, music, literature, as well as your favorite topics of study, as a part of your identity... I am ______.
- There's not enough ways to pour out your creative energy.
....

Feel free to add to the list.

 

[oncetheriver]

- You feel slightly disappointed when someone else feels/does something that you thought only you felt/did.
- You feel suffocated when you're restricted from expressing your individuality.
- You thrive on self-expression.
- You fear finding out that you're a sham who's just the same as everyone else, that you're not truly "unique".
- You secretly hope people will notice that you're different.
- You take pride in your ability to be honest with yourself and your flaws.
- You are familiar/comfortable with your "dark side" and willingly embrace it, thorns and all, in the hopes of discovering some deeper truth about yourself.
- You would rather hold back than say something obvious or cliche.

 

[Elfboy]

- you don't care about impressing others, but you want to express yourself
- others have called you self absorbed and dramatic
- you hate doing all the fruitless, ungalamorous labor that most people seem to spend 60% of their life doing
- you have an almost complete inability to do something you're not interested in
- you are disgusted when someone asks you to "fit in"
- when wearing any kind of uniform for school, work or any kind of activity, you find subtle ways to distinguish yourself by messing with it to make it look better
- you either dress with complete apathy or do a 180 and look like your own version of a glamorous celebrity
- you are disgusted by anyone who is fake, emotionally dishonest or people pleasing
- you really don't care about other people at all except on an ethical level, with the exception of a few close friends
- you frequently fight the urge to talk about yourself and encourage others to talk about themselves more

 

[Sunny Ghost]

These are good. I can pretty much relate to all of it.

 

[Phantonym]

- you really don't care about other people at all except on an ethical level, with the exception of a few close friends

Ooohh...I've been beating myself up for feeling like this. Now I have something to blame for it. Sweet.

 

[CuriousFeeling]

- You feel weird about people having to be subservient to you, and would rather do something on your own. (Applicable for 4w5 sp's)
- Even though you may border a type 5 trait of being a total nerd, and may seem like an intellectual b*tch, deep down you feel emotions strongly.
- You feel anger like blackness and darkness, sadness like a torrential rainstorm, happiness like a glowing heaven.
- Often times you've felt the world has gotten you beaten, but then some creative idea comes up inside your mind, and this creative vision is what keeps you alive, and you're brought back up from the ground.
- Something from the past haunts you, it's like a ghost never quite leaves your presence, and it makes you feel like an empty vessel, yearning to be filled.
- For you, art and music aren't just background wallpapering, or something to keep you entertained, it's something that touches your soul, something that keeps you alive, a part of your being.
- You've been told by your peers that you're focused, independent, and don't let anyone stand in your way to achieving what you want.

 

[Reverie]

- and then at some point your worst fear is confirmed and you actually are like everyone else, but it's not terrible like you thought and it actually frees you up to express yourself more fully because the pressure to be artificially markedly different for the fear that without your difference you'd be nothing is erased. You embrace the fact that you don't have to be different to have human value and that you were born with it. It was your birthright as it is everyone elses' and that we are by nature varied and that what is called personality is a whole you've built all along in the search for it constructed from a stream of actions, attitudes you've adopted and life decisions and you end up with a unique painting but there is no judge who will hand you a prize for it or rate it in any way. The beauty was in the joy and passion of the moment of painting it and it was shared then and there with the people who surrounded you at those moments. There is great beauty and uniqueness and tragedy and joy in each painting and it's ok.

 

[wildflower]

~you've always wanted to live in france

 

[Porcelain Hearts]

- You would rather hold back than say something obvious or cliche.

I thought this was just me.
Just kidding! lol

 

[Rasofy]

You think you are special.
You used to be an Indigo child.
Your values always come first. They also come before other people's values.

 

[Society]

all of the above describe me annoyingly too well... *grrr*... stay away from my unique embracing of my non-uniqueness...

i'll add:
- your self esteem has the best freaking defense in the world - every mistake and failure is another step forward in your self-seeking journey, every flaw in your character found is an awesome discovery, other people need to protect their esteem like a fortress, yours is a whore house inviting all the enemies in.
- sharing your unique thoughts is sort of like a dog taking an intellectual dump, you just need to get it out, it rarely matters how important is the place, as long as you know your leaving it where others can smell it and its all the better if it's where you've sensed the unique smell of others, preferably of the opposite sex (perhaps more so for the Extroverted SX/SO 4s).
- wanting to be helpful to others is actually a result of being unhealthy, and being a righteous prick is a result of being healthy, how screwed up is that? well, if your a 4, then you lavish in how screwed up that is, because your that much more special.

more specifically for 4w5 7w8 8w7s:
your 4's growth point is your 7s stress point, your main branch is your 7s growth point and your 8s stress point, your 8s growth point is your 4s stress point. try to get out of that entanglement.

 

[OrangeAppled]

~you've always wanted to live in france

Which then leads to the question: where do the 4s in France fantasize about living?

 

[Rasofy]

Which then leads to the question: where do the 4s in France fantasize about living?

Somewhere distant, where people speak another language, the climate is the opposite, and the HDI is classified as high. My best guess is Australia.

 

[Southern Kross]

...when:

- you swing between arrogance and insecurity; between pretension and self-deprecation
- you tend to get mocked for being too earnest and over-analysing everything (at least until you work out it's better to keep your mouth shut!)
- you can somehow manage to be both an intense cynic and a fervent idealist
- you are filled with so much self-awareness and a compulsion to dissect everything, that have no idea how to just "be in the moment"
- you over-indulge in the use of sarcasm

 

[animenagai]

- wanting to be helpful to others is actually a result of being unhealthy, and being a righteous prick is a result of being healthy, how screwed up is that? well, if your a 4, then you lavish in how screwed up that is, because your that much more special.

I don't agree with that. It's certainly true that we can be helpful just so we feel like a good person and hence, a bit more special, but the path to being truly healthy certainly isn't to be a righteous prick. The best thing you can do is to catch yourself doing something nice just because you wanted to help someone, without the ego boost.

 

[Society]

I don't agree with that. It's certainly true that we can be helpful just so we feel like a good person and hence, a bit more special, but the path to being truly healthy certainly isn't to be a righteous prick. The best thing you can do is to catch yourself doing something nice just because you wanted to help someone, without the ego boost.

sorry, i didn't provide the right context in what i meant - i was refering to the 4s stress point (2) and growth point (1):
- by unhealthy helping (2), i didn't mean helping out of kindness, i meant helping others so they will depend on you, probably because you feel they do not understand you and its your only to connect.
- by growing to be a self righous prick (1), i meant incorporating the perspectives of other people into your self-exploration, deriving external value to your self expression, recognizing traits in you that aren't merely fascinating self-observations making you unique but are also character flaws that need to be worked on for the sake of those you care for or may care for in the future.

honestly i didn't hold much credibility in the directional arrows until recently, i mainly viewed the enneagram as an attempt to place structure on basic human fears with disregard to the credibility of the structure's resulting meaning, and i never had much of a 1 or of a 2 in me,, but in the last few years i experienced both extremes of stress and growth, and what can i say? ok maybe calling me a believer might be a stretch, but i take it with a little bit less salt then i used to.

 

[Reverie]

Which then leads to the question: where do the 4s in France fantasize about living?

They're french so in France. ;D
They're sitting in a cafe in Rive Gauche gazing wistfully into some distant landscape that unfolds only to them amids the early morning hustle and bustle of Parisians going to work, with a worn copy of Rimbauds Fleurs Du Mal resting on the wrought iron table beside their steaming espresso, and they think "I love being a misunderstood french 4".

 

[brainheart]

They're french so in France. ;D
They're sitting in a cafe in Rive Gauche gazing wistfully into some distant landscape that unfolds only to them amids the early morning hustle and bustle of Parisians going to work, with a worn copy of Rimbauds Fleurs Du Mal resting on the wrought iron table beside their steaming espresso, and they think "I love being a misunderstood french 4".

Ah! Mon reve! Lucky misunderstood French 4 bastards.

 

[Burger King]

- You do things, play out scenarios, use music, use whatever, to amplify certain feelings.
- You hold on to grudges/old wounds, nursing it and not letting go, feeling that somehow "they" are the ones responsible for depriving you of your dreams.
- Contrary to popular belief, you actually do care for the opinions of others, to an extent, but only if their opinion is that of someone you respect, someone you feel possessing "good tastes." This is the elitist/aristocratic aspect of E4s.

On a side note, how do guys feel about the integration/disintegration theories? For example E4 integrates to 1 when healthy, but disintegrates to 2 when unhealthy, easy right? But what about the wings? For example, if you are a 4w3, is it possible, when unhealthy, to exhibit tendencies of 4 disintegrating to 2 AND 3 disintegrating to 9? Similar with 4w5, disintegrating to both 2 and 7. I ask because I exhibit both the 2 clinginess and 9 apathy/slothiness when I was unhealthy and vice versa (integration to E1 and E6) when healthy. Can anyone relate to any of this?

 

[Society]

On a side note, how do guys feel about the integration/disintegration theories? For example E4 integrates to 1 when healthy, but disintegrates to 2 when unhealthy, easy right?

yes, both seem to apply to me:

in disintegration, when i don't feel i can communicate myself the way i want to to those around me, i find myself wanting to fulfill other's needs as a way to obtain a sense of security (i'm an SX/SO), which usually proves itself to be an illusion.
in reintegration and recovery, m 1 menifestations go through my functions - coming out of shadow-function-mode, my Ne starts brainstorming alternative routes i could have taken, i start blaming myself for not taking them, i question myself and my choices, my Ti starts looking for ways to fix things and milks the lessons, and only later starts channeling my Fe as a way to formulate a leveled playing field with all perspectives involved (to the extent of the information i have at the time) and starts questioning other people's choices. often the resulting ethics is more internal - less "thou shell not do upon to others" and more "thus shell not persume/take-for-granted/misinterpret/etc".

But what about the wings? For example, if you are a 4w3, is it possible, when unhealthy, to exhibit tendencies of 4 disintegrating to 2 AND 3 disintegrating to 9? Similar with 4w5, disintegrating to both 2 and 7. I ask because I exhibit both the 2 clinginess and 9 apathy/slothiness when I was unhealthy and vice versa (integration to E1 and E6) when healthy. Can anyone relate to any of this?

yes, i'm a 4w5 with w tri-type of 4w5-7w8-8w7, which makes sense with 8 being the 5 growth point and 7 being its stress point, and i can see how it applies to me. i think because 4s self esteem is very resilient (your searching for yourself, so nobody can really harm it by demonstrating you are wrong in how you view yourself), it might actually be more common for the wing's integration and disintegration points to show up then the main e-type.

on the other hand, if you include the full tritype, things get interesting:
my 4s integration point is my 7s disintegration point (1)
my 4s disintegration point is my 8s integration point (2)
my 7s integration point is my 8s disintegration point (5), also being my main wing.

i'd be screwed.. although this would explain a lot.