oh no, silk, that's embarrassingly revealing about things i try to hide
By defeating themselves first, Sixes at least control the time and place of their defeat and perversely take a kind of default power.
yeahhhh
steel yourself against the worst, and reality will be easier to stomache...
When you finally express the anger that you didn’t know you had, the Six might seem happy or relieved and perhaps say something like, “Oh, that’s all it is; I can deal with that. I can see why you would be angry, that makes sense.†It’s a relief to the Six, because he or she was hallucinating something far worse.
Some very counterphobic Sixes are people of action who climb mountains, race automobiles and trek across deserts. Typically, they are aware of their physical body feelings but have little or no idea that they are emotionally afraid. The fact that they are driven by fear can be surprising to them.
i like physical challenges. i want to swim the english channel someday, run marathons, be really toned and fit, etc. it's totally counterphobic - i want to be ready for anything physically.
here's some stuff on the subtypes. it seems so is most likely phobic and sx most likely counterphobe.
Self-Preservation Six
Best Defense is no offense
When I taught high school, I noticed that if a boy didn't know how to answer a question, he would look irritated or glum. Girls, however, would usually smile and frequently giggle. In the beginning I was irritated: there was nothing funny about my question. But I learned something that helped me understand self-preservation Sixes. When some people are afraid, they smile. When I was much younger I would walk through the park and inwardly rejoiced at how many women would smile at me. When I studied self-preservation Sixes, I learned once more that when people are afraid, sometimes they smile. The women in the park were not flirting, they were defending.
Self-preservation Sixes do this as a lifestyle. They use smiling and warmth to make friends with what they perceive as perceive as a hostile environment. Tom Condon is a movie buff and told me that Julie Roberts, a six, goes around to all the camera operators and set helpers and makes friends with them. Then she can relax and get to work.
Because they see other people as a threat to them, they make sure they do not appear to be a threat to you. They may be excessively modest and shrink from any comparisons (unless they have a strong connection to Three). If they are working for a boss, they will work hard but make sure the boss knows they don't want his job.
The belief that the world is a dangerous place shows up also in their homes. They are often homebodies, creating a sanctuary to which they flee. I know one Six who lives in a small safe rural town. He locks and deadbolts his doors. What he doesn't find incongruous is that his doors are largely glass! The locks are largely symbolic, and that is usually a tip-off that an Enneagram style is in play.
Self-preservation Sixes specialize in lurid inner scenarios, a kind of horror film they direct that always ends up with the worst that can happen as the most likely to happen.
Self-preservation Sixes combine both a strongly negative world-view with a warm and positive personality. No wonder they are perceived as contradictory.
The Social Six
The Keepers of the Flame
Subtypes are important because they often enable you to recognize yourself more easily, but even more so because they are a real source of "juice." If you know your subtype, you'll soon see that when your subtype (often called instinctual by some of the major authors) is threatened in some way, you get a lot of energy.
Your subtype changes the preoccupations but not the major mechanisms of the type. The Six will react with fear and practice hyper vigilance in a fearful world, no matter what the subtype. But what frightens them and how they react to the fear will be subtly different.
Let's look at the social subtype of Six. Each subtype has been given a key word by the tradition. The word for the social subtype of Six is "duty."
Social subtypes in general have a preoccupation about where they stand in the group. They want to know who belongs: who is in, who is out, who's on top, and in the case of the Six, what are the rules of the group.
Social Sixes sees the authority in the group as critical. They may easily play devil's advocate, but they will never ignore authority. The group may be family, church, school or tradition. An Enneagram teacher who is a Six will learn what the teaching of the tradition is and will want to make sure you get the authentic tradition and not just their private interpretation. A Six researcher will find out what all the authorities say before making a judgment. They may attack those positions, but they will never ignore them. When a social Six breaks rules (and they certainly might), they never break them accidentally. They know the rules. They do it on purpose.
This attitude toward group and authority can make them quite traditional. These folk are the keepers of the flame. They're the ones that show the home movies of when their children were babies - often. They never forget anniversaries, they know just how Thanksgiving dinner ought to be done and they insist on using their mother's favorite recipe.
In the workplace, these are the company men who work 35 years for the same company and wear the jacket with the company logo on it after they retire. They may not like their job, but they'd sooner stay and complain than leave. It just isn't right to leave the group. Nor is it safe. They can over identify with the group and even shun or persecute others who do not share their group's ideals. Sometimes you'll find religious fundamentalists with this subtype. They love to quote "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life," and then say that everyone else is going to hell. (I love to quote the opposite text to them, ""Who is not against us is with us. Mark 9:40) social Sixes can be overly conscious of boundaries in order to make sure they belong. It's a small step from making sure "I belong" to being sure that "I don't belong."
They can tend to exaggerate their dependence on the group. This makes them great team players because they can put the group's needs ahead of their private good. I once did a survey of Nuns and found that 40% of them were Sixes. My group sample was small, about 400, but it does seem to fit. Community life is probably more attractive to social Sixes than many other styles.
The downside of group loyalty is that communities don't appreciate the contribution of the social Six unless the authorities give concrete form to that appreciation. The workforce is filled with complaints about how the company or community doesn't appreciate what they have done for 20 years.
Social Sixes love to work in a group but usually prefer not to be the leader. The belief from childhood is that all attention is bad attention so they prefer to be down the ladder of authority a ways. Number two is fine, three is just as good, as long as they are important to the group and supported by the authority. Sixes know that it is the tall strands of grass in the lawn that get mowed down.
Sixes can work forever if they believe in the cause. The cause hooks their idealism, they feel united to the group in some way or other and the cause usually has a lot of rules. For example, if a Six is an environmentalist, they can do a million earth-friendly things and feel part of the group with every recycled can.
Because Sixes are simultaneously idealistic and skeptical, they often idealize an authority or a cause and then set themselves up for disillusionment. One has to have illusions before one can be disillusioned. Social Sixes have them. But they also have an attention style that looks for danger, conspiracy, inconsistency and patterns behind the data. So if the authority is doing anything wrong on any level, the Six will certainly catch them at it. That can cause disillusion.
The Intimate Six
Anticipatory defense
The phrase usually associated with the intimate subtype of Six is "strength and beauty."
Within this subtype there is a tendency to develop strength, either inner or outer. Sixes are often quite disciplined anyway - it is a type of defense at times. So within this subtype you often find body builders and martial artists. The discipline it takes to become a martial artist is fueled by the belief that if I become strong enough, I won't have to worry about someone or something attacking me. In fact, at the pinnacle of martial arts is the learning how not to have to fight. The motivation is self-defense, not aggression or competition, as it would be within an Eight or Three Enneagram style.
The inner strength can be created by physical discipline, but especially if the Six has a strong Five wing, they may acquire knowledge as a way becoming strong. However, because fear resides in the mind and strength is more often a physical feeling, the usual way is to develop physical strength.
Many Counterphobic Sixes actively seek physical challenges in order to experience conquest. I watched a mountain climber being interviewed. He gave the usual answer to why he did it - because it was there - but his real reason was that he was afraid. When asked how he dealt with the fears involved with dealing with the dangers, he gave a classical Six answer. "You have to constantly be aware of your environment." This is how Sixes deal with fear. They constantly scan the environment for possible danger.
The feminine counterpart of this is beauty. The understanding is that if I am beautiful enough, I will not be attacked. Beauty does not get destroyed nearly as quickly as ugliness and beauty is valued. For many women, too, beauty is extremely valuable in gaining protection from powerful men.
But artistic endeavor is another route to beauty. intimate Sixes will often see arts and crafts as a way of shutting down the committee in their heads. Further, art is way of non-verbally reaching beyond what they can think. There is a sense of having reached the end of what they can figure out, they reach into painting or drawing or music to reach a level of integration they can't quite accomplish just by the compulsive think they are so often plagued with. They will often report long periods of peace - in their case freedom from fear - when they are engrossed in artistic endeavor.
But most who do seem to identify as counterphobic. Anyone else out there see themselves as a phobic 6?
