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Controlled fear vs. real fear, melancholy vs. depression

compulsiverambler

New member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
446
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Controlled fear and melancholy musings are both used to make people feel 'more alive'.

Adrenaline junkies are people who make a hobby out of seeking an approximation of fear. Not actual fear, which is distressing and no one wants to feel, but something close enough to fear, often called 'controlled fear'. Most people seem to enjoy this to some degree. Most enjoy horror films and rollercoasters and are disappointed if they aren't 'scary' enough. Some say they need a certain amount of stress at work to keep it stimulating. But everyone has their limits. Sometimes people misjudge their limits and put themselves through something they hate at the time and regret doing afterwards. Children especially are prone to doing this with scary films and we've all seen people stumbling off of rollercoasters crying or shaking with terror. Theoretically, the people who will feel this attraction to the principle of fear the most might be Enneagram Sixes.

Likewise, most people seem to have some attraction to sadness, which has come up a lot lately. This might be more intense or frequent in Enneagram Fours, but if only Fours chose to see sad films or plays or buy sad music, they'd make no money. Real depression is something out of control. It's not experienced as in any way positive at the time, it can't be slipped in and out of effortlessly, and afterwards there's an enormous sense of relief that the ordeal is over. Real depression CAN turn out to be a valuable experience, with retrospect, but unlike melancholy, the person doesn't experience it as valuable or heading towards something valuable at the time. Perhaps just like thrill-seeking, exploring the darker sides of life can be pushed too far. When that happens the experimental state begins to get projected on to the person's real life until it engulfs them.

I don't relate to adrenaline junkies at all. When I do enjoy, say, rollercoasters or horror films, they're tame and it's not about controlled fear. I have to find something other than any illusion of danger to get from the experience, like the feeling of flying or the mystery, or I'll be bored. Other people don't seem attracted to dark feelings at all, in any mood. Their exclusive reaction is to avoid them.

Three issues:

Is there an inverse relationship between attraction to fear and attraction to sadness? Are people strong in the one tendency usually weak in the other, or are they largely independent?

Has binging on these feelings ever caused you problems? Have you had to learn when to stop and how to strike a balance between your need to acknowledge, confront and explore the negative and your need for light-heartedness? Does it get easier with age or experience to judge what you need and when?

Fours and Sixes, do you think either of these tendencies apply more to you than to most other people? Sevens, how about you?
 

PoprocksAndCoke

A Benign Tumor
Joined
Nov 7, 2009
Messages
614
MBTI Type
ENTP
Likewise, most people seem to have some attraction to sadness, which has come up a lot lately. This might be more intense or frequent in Enneagram Fours, but if only Fours chose to see sad films or plays or buy sad music, they'd make no money. Real depression is something out of control. It's not experienced as in any way positive at the time, it can't be slipped in and out of effortlessly, and afterwards there's an enormous sense of relief that the ordeal is over. Real depression CAN turn out to be a valuable experience, with retrospect, but unlike melancholy, the person doesn't experience it as valuable or heading towards something valuable at the time. Perhaps just like thrill-seeking, exploring the darker sides of life can be pushed too far. When that happens the experimental state begins to get projected on to the person's real life until it engulfs them.

This could be a little bit of Fi in there. I don't know - but it seems like it could be interpreted as an Enneagram Two thing.

It's where the good intellectual fiction comes from, sometimes. A lot of authors pour a bit of their soul in to their characters; killing off these characters or causing them depression or pain is therefore like doing that to the little bit of their soul.
 

compulsiverambler

New member
Joined
Sep 15, 2009
Messages
446
Enneagram
5w6
Instinctual Variant
sp/so
Interesting possibility. Do any other Twos think it applies to them very much as well? Fours are the only ones to seem to be partially defined by it, but maybe it's also more common in emotional types in general?
 
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