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[Type 9] 9s need to feel pain to feel better?

ilovereeses

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I know that it's a natural thing for 9s to tune themselves out to pain, because it helps them get through it, but is it healthy? Is it better to avoid falling into that state of numbness and just dealing with the pain?

The reason I ask is because I'll feel like I'm over something that was really painful, but I'll randomly feel a sting from it one night, but then withdraw from it and I feel perfectly fine again. It's really confusing and don't know if it's very healthy to feel so out of tune, even though it feels like it's the best way to heal.
 

VagrantFarce

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I don't know if it's to "feel better" ;) I would imagine the extreme is what you should be avoiding, i.e. numbing everything out just to feel better, to the detriment of yourself and those around you. I don't think you actually need to embrace pain, you probably just need something to jolt yourself back to reality every now and then.

p.s. This is hardly sage advice, but you reminded me of it and I felt like posting it:

[youtube=uuiKJ0rRTAo]Chemical Burn[/youtube]
 

StephMC

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I'm a 9 as well, and I definitely know what you're talking about. Sometimes I even wonder if the pain is automatically filtered out nowadays :thinking: Even if I -try- to focus on something that bothers me it just... whoosh! It just vanishes. I also wonder if that's just because a few years ago after a bit of a rough time, everything pales in to comparison. I drop it and move on because... well, it isn't that big of a deal.
 

cafe

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Yeah, I tend to push it to the back of my mind and it doesn't bother me much until something reminds me of it and there the pain is almost fresh as ever. I have no idea how to process it, really.
 

StephMC

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Yeah, I tend to push it to the back of my mind and it doesn't bother me much until something reminds me of it and there the pain is almost fresh as ever. I have no idea how to process it, really.

Yeah... that's it... It's pretty frustrating, but I wouldn't even know where to start.
 

MacGuffin

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With passive-aggression!

j/k I find it tends to fade.
 

Nomorenames

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As a 9 I don't need pain, I just need to listen to it.
 

cafe

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Pain makes you feel alive.
I have a low tolerance for stimuli, so my mom's mashed potatoes can make me feel rapturously alive. Pain is not the good kind of feeling alive.
 

ilovereeses

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I don't know if it's to "feel better" ;) I would imagine the extreme is what you should be avoiding, i.e. numbing everything out just to feel better, to the detriment of yourself and those around you. I don't think you actually need to embrace pain, you probably just need something to jolt yourself back to reality every now and then.

p.s. This is hardly sage advice, but you reminded me of it and I felt like posting it:

[youtube=uuiKJ0rRTAo]Chemical Burn[/youtube]


Wow, powerful video O_O

And yeah, by "feel better" I meant to feel...more human? I just feel so cold, being unable to feel intense emotions as much anymore.
 

ilovereeses

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I'm a 9 as well, and I definitely know what you're talking about. Sometimes I even wonder if the pain is automatically filtered out nowadays :thinking: Even if I -try- to focus on something that bothers me it just... whoosh! It just vanishes. I also wonder if that's just because a few years ago after a bit of a rough time, everything pales in to comparison. I drop it and move on because... well, it isn't that big of a deal.

Yes, exactly! It automatically leaves once I try to focus on it.

Yeah, I tend to push it to the back of my mind and it doesn't bother me much until something reminds me of it and there the pain is almost fresh as ever. I have no idea how to process it, really.

Yeah, I find myself start to tear sometimes when something reminds me of something painful, even though I'm not feeling the pain itself. It's like my body reacts to it without my mind. o_o
Pain makes you feel alive.
I agree! (Emotional pain, though, not physical) Because this is bugging me so much, every time I start to feel emotional pain from something, I try to hold onto it as long as I can...which is never very long. :doh:
With passive-aggression!

j/k I find it tends to fade.

The pain fades? Or the problem in general?
As a 9 I don't need pain, I just need to listen to it.

I never looked at it that way. Now I'm even more confused.
 

cafe

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So people want to feel more? I am usually wishing I could feel less. Almost everything feels like the volume is blasting away at me emotionally. I can't watch the news because half the time it makes me cry. I get my feelings hurt all the time, and I'm sure most of the time people don't mean it. I fall apart when one of my kids get hurt or sick. I don't find this stuff pleasant or desirable, even though it probably has some kind of positive benefit.

I keep a very tight reign on this stuff most of the time because nobody wants to see a big emo jelly blob -- I sure don't want them to see it -- and the unnatural stoicism makes me appear cold. :doh:
 

ilovereeses

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I keep a very tight reign on this stuff most of the time because nobody wants to see a big emo jelly blob -- I sure don't want them to see it -- and the unnatural stoicism makes me appear cold. :doh:

Yeah, I'm the same in that sense, I don't wanna look emotional to other people. It's just...weird.


I found this at the Enneagram Institution and thought that it was really interesting:

Being easily thrown off their emotional balance is not generally a trait of most Nines. Interestingly, the healthier the Nine is, the more sensitive and open they are to reality, and hence, their experiences, even unpleasant ones, have a more conscious impact on them. They allow themselves to feel more deeply and to interact with the environment more powerfully. However, from Level 4 on down, therei is an increasing investment in not being touched by the environment or even by their own feelings, to the point that in the Unhealthy Levels, it is as if they have turned a "blind eye" to most of reality, often with devastating consequences to themselves and others.
 

BlackCat

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I do that a lot too. I think it's because I desensitize myself to unpleasant things I've already experienced.
 

Nomorenames

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I never looked at it that way. Now I'm even more confused.

The physical sensation of pain is your body's way of communicating that something is wrong and needs to be looked at.

Emotional pain would then be the mind's means of communicating.

I've ignored both and plowed ahead, to my detriment. It's better to pay attention and look for the cause- common sense, right? Well, sometimes it's easier to just put up and shut up.
 

cafe

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Well, like the thing I've got is several years ago, my mom got involved with this con artist guy and as a result all of us kids had to distance ourselves from her for our own protection and the protection of our children. She did and said a fair amount of pretty nasty things. My youngest brother, who was 13 at the time, ended up moving in with our other brother and has lived with him ever since. He's 18 now and getting ready to leave for college.

Last fall, mom finally got tired of the guy and divorced him. She seems to have grown up a lot (which sounds weird coming from her kid, but there it is). Now I've always liked my mom and we usually get along pretty well, so when she needed a place to stay in November, I let her move in with us and things have been going smoothly.

But sometimes she will try to downplay what happened during those years and that is when I get angry. I can't figure out if I'd still get angry if I've really forgiven her or if I've really processed the pain if it still makes me angry. We have talked about it and she has apologized, but it's like her memory is kind of foggy and she half thinks we kids all over-reacted. If we'd been able to have a relationship with just her, we would have kept things up, but she kept pushing this guy at us and he kept pushing himself at us -- even trying to boss us around when he's younger than me, etc.

So I prefer not to talk about it or think about it. What's done is done. Nothing can really fix the past or give any of us the lost years back or make what happened less bad. Mom is sorry and there is no reason to belabor things and make her feel bad.
 

ilovereeses

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Well, like the thing I've got is several years ago, my mom got involved with this con artist guy and as a result all of us kids had to distance ourselves from her for our own protection and the protection of our children. She did and said a fair amount of pretty nasty things. My youngest brother, who was 13 at the time, ended up moving in with our other brother and has lived with him ever since. He's 18 now and getting ready to leave for college.

Last fall, mom finally got tired of the guy and divorced him. She seems to have grown up a lot (which sounds weird coming from her kid, but there it is). Now I've always liked my mom and we usually get along pretty well, so when she needed a place to stay in November, I let her move in with us and things have been going smoothly.

But sometimes she will try to downplay what happened during those years and that is when I get angry. I can't figure out if I'd still get angry if I've really forgiven her or if I've really processed the pain if it still makes me angry. We have talked about it and she has apologized, but it's like her memory is kind of foggy and she half thinks we kids all over-reacted. If we'd been able to have a relationship with just her, we would have kept things up, but she kept pushing this guy at us and he kept pushing himself at us -- even trying to boss us around when he's younger than me, etc.

So I prefer not to talk about it or think about it. What's done is done. Nothing can really fix the past or give any of us the lost years back or make what happened less bad. Mom is sorry and there is no reason to belabor things and make her feel bad.

Wow, that's hard...I think you've forgiven her, but it annoys you that she thinks you over-reacted. So it's not the actual thing you haven't forgiven, it's the way that your mother dealt with it.

The physical sensation of pain is your body's way of communicating that something is wrong and needs to be looked at.

Emotional pain would then be the mind's means of communicating.

I've ignored both and plowed ahead, to my detriment. It's better to pay attention and look for the cause- common sense, right? Well, sometimes it's easier to just put up and shut up.

I see what you're saying now. So you just look at pain in more of a logical sense instead of a state of being.
 

Froody Blue Gem

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I am a person with a strong 9 fix. Sometimes, crying to get something out helps if I've been bottling it up for so long. I rarely outright cry but I go through phases with easily crying and barely crying at all. When doing art, it often touches upon dark topics. I try to avoid pain but once I've been through with beating about the bush, it takes me a while to process which stinks for me. If I do actually process it, I dwell on it and play it in my head but I don't share it with anyone. I suppose facing what I was avoiding is painful but in a way, it's facing the truth. It does take a while to resolve, my instinct is to run in the other direction but it eventually does help.
 

Zhaylin

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Long version.


Short version: I'm adverse to emotional pain.
 
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