Zarathustra
Let Go Of Your Team
- Joined
- Oct 31, 2009
- Messages
- 8,110
Discovered!
I've obviously been having some difficulty figuring out my enneagram type, but I think I finally got it!
The exercise over in this thread has actually been the most useful method thus far... (reading descriptions of different types is always the best method, imo...)
Anyway, to recap:
I started off thinking I was an 8w9; then someone suggested that I'm actually a counterphobic 6w5; now, based off these readings, I think I may actually be an enneagram 5 (which I have largely ignored til now), who identified with 8 because its my integration point; the level descriptions of 5s and 8s are what I identify with most (5>8), while the level descriptions of a 6 just don't really feel like me...
Also, enneagram 5 is the first type in which I feel like either wing could accurately describe me; 5w4 or 5w6: I could probably go either way (I might even be leaning more towards 5w4)...
If I were a 5w6, I presume my integration point would be an 8w9 (is this right? do you also integrate into an "integration wing", based on the integration point of your normal wing?), which would create an interesting symmetry with what I first thought I was...![Thinking :thinking: :thinking:](/data/vbsmilies/thinking.gif)
Here's my post from that other thread:
I feel like this all just finally clicked!
![Cheese :cheese: :cheese:](/data/vbsmilies/chees.gif)
I've obviously been having some difficulty figuring out my enneagram type, but I think I finally got it!
The exercise over in this thread has actually been the most useful method thus far... (reading descriptions of different types is always the best method, imo...)
Anyway, to recap:
I started off thinking I was an 8w9; then someone suggested that I'm actually a counterphobic 6w5; now, based off these readings, I think I may actually be an enneagram 5 (which I have largely ignored til now), who identified with 8 because its my integration point; the level descriptions of 5s and 8s are what I identify with most (5>8), while the level descriptions of a 6 just don't really feel like me...
Also, enneagram 5 is the first type in which I feel like either wing could accurately describe me; 5w4 or 5w6: I could probably go either way (I might even be leaning more towards 5w4)...
If I were a 5w6, I presume my integration point would be an 8w9 (is this right? do you also integrate into an "integration wing", based on the integration point of your normal wing?), which would create an interesting symmetry with what I first thought I was...
![Thinking :thinking: :thinking:](/data/vbsmilies/thinking.gif)
Here's my post from that other thread:
I've actually been having difficulty identifying my enneagram type, but I think, by doing this exercise, I've now got it!
Type Five—More Depth by Level
Healthy Levels
Level 1(At Their Best): Become visionaries, broadly comprehending the world while penetrating it profoundly. Open-minded, take things in whole, in their true context. Make pioneering discoveries and find entirely new ways of doing and perceiving things.
Level 2: Observe everything with extraordinary perceptiveness and insight. Most mentally alert, curious, searching intelligence: nothing escapes their notice. Foresight and prediction. Able to concentrate: become engrossed in what has caught their attention.
Level 3: Attain skillful mastery of whatever interests them. Excited by knowledge: often become expert in some field. Innovative and inventive, producing extremely valuable, original works. Highly independent, idiosyncratic, and whimsical.
Average Levels
Level 4: Begin conceptualizing and fine-tuning everything before acting—working things out in their minds: model building, preparing, practicing, and gathering more resources. Studious, acquiring technique. Become specialized, and often "intellectual," often challenging accepted ways of doing things.
Level 5: Increasingly detached as they become involved with complicated ideas or imaginary worlds. Become preoccupied with their visions and interpretations rather than reality. Are fascinated by off-beat, esoteric subjects, even those involving dark and disturbing elements. Detached from the practical world, a "disembodied mind," although high-strung and intense.
Level 6: Begin to take an antagonistic stance toward anything which would interfere with their inner world and personal vision. Become provocative and abrasive, with intentionally extreme and radical views. Cynical and argumentative.
Unhealthy Levels
Level 7: Become reclusive and isolated from reality, eccentric and nihilistic. Highly unstable and fearful of aggressions: they reject and repulse others and all social attachments.
Level 8: Get obsessed yet frightened by their threatening ideas, becoming horrified, delirious, and prey to gross distortions and phobias.
Level 9: Seeking oblivion, they may commit suicide or have a psychotic break with reality. Deranged, explosively self-destructive, with schizophrenic overtones. Generally corresponds to the Schizoid Avoidant and Schizotypal personality disorders.
I identify most strongly with the bolded.
In my good days, I'm some combination of 1-3 (2 resonates most strongly); the goal of my life is to be at 1. (bolded only)
In my bad periods, when life is not going as well, I'm more in the 4-5 area; I stop acting, and start "preparing". (bolded and underlined)
I went through a period in college when I would dip into 6-8. When I almost wrote my honors thesis on the inevitability of the reversal in the slave-master dialectic between mankind and technology, I was at about an 8. If I'd let myself get to 9, I probably woulda been like that guy who wrote that 2,000-page manifesto and shot himself on Harvard Yard... (underlined only)
At my worst, nowadays, I might fall into a 6, but that is very rare, if it even happens at all.
Type Six—More Depth by Level
Healthy Levels
Level 1 (At Their Best): Become self-affirming, trusting of self and others, independent yet symbiotically interdependent and cooperative as an equal. Belief in self leads to true courage, positive thinking, leadership, and rich self-expression.
Level 2: Able to elicit strong emotional responses from others: very appealing, endearing, lovable, affectionate. Trust important: bonding with others, forming permanent relationships and alliances.
Level 3: Dedicated to individuals and movements in which they deeply believe. Community builders: responsible, reliable, trustworthy. Hard-working and persevering, sacrificing for others, they create stability and security in their world, bringing a cooperative spirit.
Average Levels
Level 4: Start investing their time and energy into whatever they believe will be safe and stable. Organizing and structuring, they look to alliances and authorities for security and continuity. Constantly vigilant, anticipating problems.
Level 5: To resist having more demands made on them, they react against others passive-aggressively. Become evasive, indecisive, cautious, procrastinating, and ambivalent. Are highly reactive, anxious, and negative, giving contradictory, "mixed signals." Internal confusion makes them react unpredictably.
Level 6: To compensate for insecurities, they become sarcastic and belligerent, blaming others for their problems, taking a tough stance toward "outsiders." Highly reactive and defensive, dividing people into friends and enemies, while looking for threats to their own security. Authoritarian while fearful of authority, highly suspicious, yet, conspiratorial, and fear-instilling to silence their own fears.
Unhealthy Levels
Level 7: Fearing that they have ruined their security, they become panicky, volatile, and self-disparaging with acute inferiority feelings. Seeing themselves as defenseless, they seek out a stronger authority or belief to resolve all problems. Highly divisive, disparaging and berating others
Level 8: Feeling persecuted, that others are "out to get them," they lash-out and act irrationally, bringing about what they fear. Fanaticism, violence.
Level 9: Hysterical, and seeking to escape punishment, they become self-destructive and suicidal. Alcoholism, drug overdoses, "skid row," self-abasing behavior. Generally corresponds to the Passive-Aggressive and Paranoid personality disorders.
These really just don't resonate with me.
Thanks to this, I really don't think I'm a 6...
Type Eight—More Depth by Level
Healthy Levels
Level 1 (At Their Best): Become self-restrained and magnanimous, merciful and forbearing, mastering self through their self-surrender to a higher authority. Courageous, willing to put self in serious jeopardy to achieve their vision and have a lasting influence. May achieve true heroism and historical greatness.
Level 2: Self-assertive, self-confident, and strong: have learned to stand up for what they need and want. A resourceful, "can do" attitude and passionate inner drive.
Level 3: Decisive, authoritative, and commanding: the natural leader others look up to. Take initiative, make things happen: champion people, provider, protective, and honorable, carrying others with their strength.
Average Levels
Level 4: Self-sufficiency, financial independence, and having enough resources are important concerns: become enterprising, pragmatic, "rugged individualists," wheeler-dealers. Risk-taking, hardworking, denying own emotional needs.
Level 5: Begin to dominate their environment, including others: want to feel that others are behind them, supporting their efforts. Swaggering, boastful, forceful, and expansive: the "boss" whose word is law. Proud, egocentric, want to impose their will and vision on everything, not seeing others as equals or treating them with respect.
Level 6: Become highly combative and intimidating to get their way: confrontational, belligerent, creating adversarial relationships. Everything a test of wills, and they will not back down. Use threats and reprisals to get obedience from others, to keep others off balance and insecure. However, unjust treatment makes others fear and resent them, possibly also band together against them.
Unhealthy Levels
Level 7: Defying any attempt to control them, become completely ruthless, dictatorial, "might makes right." The criminal and outlaw, renegade, and con-artist. Hard-hearted, immoral and potentially violent.
Level 8: Develop delusional ideas about their power, invincibility, and ability to prevail: megalomania, feeling omnipotent, invulnerable. Recklessly over-extending self.
Level 9: If they get in danger, they may brutally destroy everything that has not conformed to their will rather than surrender to anyone else. Vengeful, barbaric, murderous. Sociopathic tendencies. Generally corresponds to the Antisocial Personality Disorder.
I can appreciate a lot of what's in here, but it doesn't resonate as much as the enneagram 5 level descriptions do...
When I read these, I think about my ENTJ side, which I can employ, but which is not my "basal" personality; they also resemble me when I'm put in situations where I must be employing this ENTJ side, like at my job.
I would say I identify most with levels 1-4, and that I can see some of levels 5-9 in me (mostly 5 and 6, with maybe the tiniest smidgen of 7 and 8), but I rarely, if ever, engage in those, because, if I were ever tempted to, I would consciously catch myself doing so, and tell myself to snap the fuck out of it cuz I'm acting like a dickhead...
As such, I think that, because I identify most with 8s when they are acting healthily, 8 is probably my integration point. Interestingly enough, as such, my enneagram integration would seem to be correlated with my effective balancing of introversion and extroversion in MBTI.
I feel like this all just finally clicked!
![Cheese :cheese: :cheese:](/data/vbsmilies/chees.gif)
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