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[Type 4] Type 4 Soul-Child at Type 1

Animal

So carnal it's spiritual
Joined
Mar 9, 2013
Messages
650
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SeFi
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4
Hey 4s. =)

Can you explain how you relate to the concept of the soul-child? Your soul-child would be at point 1. I am curious how this manifested for you, and to what degree? Can you relate to what is written below, or did you experience it in another way? What do you think lead you to become a 4, and veer away from your soul-child 1?


This is what Palmer wrote. I copied the text below from the link.

http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/enneagram/29022-soul-child-type-four-point-one.html

Within the dramatic, intense, and emotional facade of a Four is a bossy and pushy little One-ish soul child who is intent on all the other little kids behaving properly - seeing to it that none of them jumps the line, that their clothes are tidy, and that their manners are good. This soul child is a Goody-Two-shoes, prim and proper, and critical of all those who don't follow the rules. She is a stickler for fairness and correctness and gets quite angry when the other kids are bad. They are the problem children who need to be straightened out, and in this we see the Four's tendency to blame others for their problems, as well as their defensiveness when an "imperfection" about them is pointed out.

Acknowledgeing this self-righteous and resentful little soul child is difficult for a Four, since it feels like her biggest flaw, opening her up to tremendous self-attack and self-hatred. Rather than imploding her agression and directing it towards herself, bringing her soul child to consciousness is really a huge part of solving her inner suffering. The more she sees it, the more she acknowledge her defensiveness and her need to be right, and in so doing, her soul is gradually able to relinquish its control. Understanding her need to control others and make them do what she wants will expose her lack of perception of perfection of things as they are and, more important, of her own perfection. As she progressively integrates her soul child, she will see how the purity, luminousity, and inherent brilliancy of her soul were not allowed or mirrored in her childhood.

Losing touch with the Aspect of Brilliancy, which she most embodied, she felt damaged, and developed in reaction a personality stype based on estrangement, abandonment, and longing for connection outside of herself. The more she integrates her soul child, the more the little do-gooder will transform into a shining sense of inner completeness, perfection and elegance. Instead of living a life based on envy or mourning, and longing from a far for contact, she will find that the completeness she seeks is within and that the grass inside is very brilliant indeeed.
 

Amargith

Hotel California
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For me, it manifested as a desperate need to be understood and loved myself, I guess, and an allergic reaction to hypocrisy. If I was not perfect...surely I could not demand anyone else to be perfect either :thinking:

I actually have a tl;dr post in my blog about this, if you re interested. It walks you through the entire process I actually went through, to get to the end of the tunnel. It is heavily focused on a Fi-pov, but it definitely corresponds to this 4 'soul child'
 

Azure Flame

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That describes the isfp I last spoke to quite well.

Funny thing about palmer is she lists integration and disintegration as two possible options that are both good and bad in their own right, which I find rather interesting.

as an 8 with 5 and 2 as my disintegration/integration points, I actually do act E2'ish when I'm insecure, I try to fit in but it just looks really awkward sometimes. No one seems to complain when I go E5 and hide in my man cave.
 

Animal

So carnal it's spiritual
Joined
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Messages
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For me, it manifested as a desperate need to be understood and loved myself, I guess, and an allergic reaction to hypocrisy. If I was not perfect...surely I could not demand anyone else to be perfect either :thinking:

I actually have a tl;dr post in my blog about this, if you re interested. It walks you through the entire process I actually went through, to get to the end of the tunnel. It is heavily focused on a Fi-pov, but it definitely corresponds to this 4 'soul child'
Oooh I am so interested. I'm going to digest this blog asap. I glanced over some of it - fabulous. Thank you!
 

Amargith

Hotel California
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Oooh I am so interested. I'm going to digest this blog asap. I glanced over some of it - fabulous. Thank you!

:blush: Knock yourself out and lemme know what you think ;)
 

Southern Kross

Away with the fairies
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I can be a bit like that. I can be bossy at times, insistent on things being done right and am generally irritable. When I was in my mid to late teens you could have mistaken me for an unhealthy 1 (although this was disintegration). I wasn't happy and I took this out on everyone around me with endless nitpicking and surly complaints about things being wrong. Thank god that's over.

I have always been a bit of a know-it-all and will stubbornly carry on an argument until people acknowledge I'm right. I think I was even a grammar nazi from the beginning (despite not being the best speller or proof-reader :blush: ). I remember being 9 or so in school assembly at Christmas time, and the whole school would sing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. The kids would always sing, "all of the other reindeers..." and it drove me bananas. Every time they said it I clenched my jaw and resisted the overwhelming urge to stand up and scream, "It's REINDEER not REINDEERS you idiots!"

I suppose the other way it comes out is in my idealism, ethical standards and just how opinionated I am. I tend to guilt trip people into using fair-trade coffee and tea, for example. My mum gets very fretful and defensive when she can't get any and has to explain that to me - she fears my ethical lecturers. :D

I'm certainly not as in your face about it as my 1w2 sister. It tends to seethe away underneath until I'm around close family and friends where I can let it out. My sister in particular tends to bring out the 1 in me - although less so as we get older. When we were kids I would often criticise her for getting little things wrong, like the lyrics to a song or saying something imaginative that was illogical. She was so demanding and pushed me around so much, I think it was just me pushing back and asserting my independence. When we were teenagers it was a nightmare. Can you imagine two irritable, stubborn, know-it-all, nit-picky, perfectionists doing the dishes together? I'm surprised WWIII didn't break out.

I don't know about the theory that, as a 4, I started out as a 1, because I was mostly too dreamy and shy as a young child to be all that pushy and critical. The reason I ended up a 4 is because I was bullied really badly all the way through school and was made to feel like freak in every possible way. I'm not sure that has much to do with 1-ness - extreme awareness of imperfection? :shrug:
 

Galena

Silver and Lead
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If I was not perfect...surely I could not demand anyone else to be perfect either :thinking:
It is a lot like that. Until I could pass unmarked through the lil' drill sergeant's rigors myself, I felt I had no place being critical to the outside.

That authoritarian core is hard to face because it comes disguised as something softer. When you're down and go "I just wish people/things/whatev wouldn't be/behave like that!", an unsettling vision might appear if you stop, think about and visualize what the world would honestly be like if your ideal came true for everyone in it. Especially when you're in a really unhealthy state and thinking in emotional extremes, that world could come out as a silent world, a gray and still world, a chained world: something reminiscent of everything you thought you wanted to be free of. Of course it's hard to face, but once you must, it's hard to forget.
 

Typh0n

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Okay, Ive read this now, and I relate. It always pissed me off to see kids behaving "badly" as a child, and it still does annoy me to see people (like on the street) who behave like animals. It really pisses me off internally but I hold it in. I think during adolescence there so much depravity and indecency going on that I kind of accepted that as a reality of human nature, then kind of let go of my inner child(the one's desire for orderliness and goodness). I kind of sunk into myself and told myself that if everyone was depraved, I was depraved to, and gave up doing anything right at that time. I guess the depravity is part of human nature, Im not sure. I think our society is really impure and I have a strong desire to see purity(I see it when Im in nature or natural landscapes for example), yet I also enjoy many of the things I discovered during adolescence. After all, it was in my late adolescence I was most happy out of my whole life so something mustve been right at the time.
 

Asterism

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Southern Kross's post sounds a lot like me. I was a very bossy and exacting young child, and I suppose years of intensive bullying + problems at home drove me inward. This aspect of myself is definitely not something I unleash unless one gets to know me well, because I never want to think of myself as someone so resentful and controlling, and certainly not self-righteous! :D Despite this, I'm extremely critical of myself and others and insist that there's a proper way to do most things. "If you're going to do it, do it right." I am intensely annoyed by unfinished projects (even though I'm extremely guilty of leaving things in a state of partial completion until I forget what the purpose of it was) and anything that looks half-assed. There are standards of behavior I hold myself and others to, as well, and it bothers me when I/they fall short.

I also have a one fix, and it seems to make things that much more difficult, because while I want to accept and revel in this flaw as being an intrinsic part of myself, there's a part of me that either wants it eliminated, or buried so deeply it will never cause problems ever again. This seems to manifest most distinctly in my tendency to smile and laugh off anger in public and just let it churn violently under the surface; it's rather telling that this is the only emotion I have trouble with. There's also the fact that I have an awful lot of "shoulds," and "if onlys" which are constantly at war with "but is this what I want?"
 

Chiharu

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I was a 1ish little child too. I always felt like I was a terrible person, flawed in every possible way, and that no one could possibly see how evil and filthy I was inside (I remember thinking this when I was about 4). Imagine growing up Catholic, on top of that.

I was also bullied. I'm actually surprised by how many 4s are bullied as kids, from these posts alone. Is it some kind of prerequisite?

Now, I somewhat value my 1ish tendencies. My perfectionism hurts my self-esteem, but it drives me to accomplish more and makes me question any belief system that's not coherent. It can temper my emotions, which I need to work on more.

Idk, I feel that the 1 side of me makes me a better-adjusted 4, and keeps me from playing the emo kid in the corner for too long.
 
B

brainheart

Guest
Ok. I get this now. On the healthy side of one, I'm starting to realize how much I love being self disciplined and what a good thing it is for me. (Being on here is bad self discipline. Bad Brainheart!)

Also, poor grammar drives me nuts. I have type one grammarian parents who were always correcting me so I always try to suppress this in myself. But sometimes it gets to be too much and I can't take it anymore. Then I explode and just start correcting people all over the place- You should be using an adverb not an adjective! AAHHHHH! As a kid I loved diagramming sentences. It seriously was one of my highlights of elementary school, pathetic as that sounds.

I can also be prim, proper, and overly moralistic at times, not to mention hypercritical of others.

What I don't agree with is I'm not a rule-follower (minus the grammar thing). My one-ish qualities are very internal/introverted feeling values, so it's not external rules/values/standards.
 
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