- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 954 so/sx
Enneagram type confusion
- Thread starter Miswired7
- Start date
- MBTI
- INFJ
- Enneagram
- 954 so/sx
I'm usually more of a "fake it until you make it" kind of girl lol. But I do have limits on that. My fakeness is mostly about trying to recognize my weaknesses and make a determination not to act on them. Not about trying to take advantage of others.
Miswired7 said:
I am happy to discuss the subtleties of this if you like; the thing is we'll have to figure out how to reconcile your two statements:
(1) You seem to (informed perhaps by your experiences with a family member's condition) want to ensure you show yourself with all your ugliness, so it's clear what you're being rejected/accepted for
(2) Yet you also seem to have a fake it till you make it attitude -- on face value that would seem to contradict (1), in the sense of being willing to not show the ugly (I understand both strategies -- you can't always trust that people will be charitable and fair to your ugly side/they might attack it without understanding)
Fake it till you make it is more likely to be associated to 3 than 4.
As a probable E6, I'd say I'm usually cautious, cerebral, and have a "don't praise me...or others...and don't criticize me...or others....just try to find a solution -- don't ask me to be courageous when you don't have an answer." I usually will discuss something with someone for days, months, years, however long it takes, but I refuse to sort of just take the plunge into things I'm not fully sure about.
The key misunderstanding here is the word "show". I want to KNOW, so that I can correct. I have no desire to SHOW others my ugliness. Why would I put them through that? ;-)
I freely admit that I have many contradictory qualities. There are aspects of myself that I strive to be open and honest about. There are also aspects of myself that I prefer not to expose to others. Sometimes it is self protective... I need to come to terms with difficult issues before I can face the way people might react if I share them. Sometimes it is because I know that a particular attitude / feeling / behavioral weakness is immature, selfish, or dysfunctional, and I choose not to display that to others, even if I know that the feeling is lurking inside me. Fake it until you make it is not about achieving material success as much as it is about having a vision of normalcy, and working to achieve it.
Which is why I have considered that I might be a type 3. I doubt it, because of the fact that success has not been my primary agenda. It is more of a nice perk. But I remain open to further consideration.
I relate to being cautious and cerebral. I also do not like to be in the limelight. I like to be modestly appreciated if I have honestly done something well, but I do not like to stand out in an obtrusive way. I tend to see the negative in everything, including myself.
Thank you for the feedback!
Miswired 7 said:
OK I see, simple misunderstanding... I missed the bolded -- that changes the meaning from not wanting to hide ugly things about yourself from not wanting to hide from them -- the latter signifies you want to know about them, whereas the former sounds more like showing people your ugly side.
As to why you'd want to do the showing part, well why not -- if you don't show them who you really are, you never know where you stand with people for real.
That may not really matter to you, but it does to people who seek to be loved / accepted for their ugliness.
Still, there seems to be a bit of a tension between saying you want to fake it till you make it and know the ugly fully in truth about yourself. If you're the sort of person who wants to really know yourself in a brutally honest way, what function does faking it till you make it have -- after all, you know you're still ugly inside, and you don't want to sort of ignore that ugliness and identify with your 'fake' persona, by your own admission.
Is the reason a desire to work through your ugliness yourself, and preferring others to not know about it, because you do not trust them to be charitable and fair to your ugly side?
This sounds a little like a 6's negative line to 3. It's also something I think I identify with myself -- I am much more interested in knowing than in revealing... because I'll fix it on my own (with the possible exception of a tiny number of trusted folks).
I tend to see achievement more as insurance against destructions to self-confidence, than as intrinsically things to be sought. Sometimes, i may not even believe the award or achievement, but will be grateful for it while I figure myself out.
Type 3 usually has a pretty different vibe. More of a go-get-it to things that build up their resume. If they're neurotic, it is about failure and feeling they didn't achieve as much as they could've.
For me it's much more like if I know I could achieve something I don't care to do it. At most it is protection for self-confidence.
I'm more likely to go collect lots of info about authority figures and analyze the crap out of and debunk their methods for awarding praise than anything.
Because at the end of the day, I see most of their methods as biased, and these biases can crush people.
(I also have a very negative attitude towards dogmatism in typology communities....fits in the same sort of spirit)
For me it's much more like if I know I could achieve something I don't care to do it. At most it is protection for self-confidence.
I'm more likely to go collect lots of info about authority figures and analyze the crap out of and debunk their methods for awarding praise than anything.
Because at the end of the day, I see most of their methods as biased, and these biases can crush people.
(I also have a very negative attitude towards dogmatism in typology communities....fits in the same sort of spirit)
Beautiful idea, but not what happens in the real world. Everybody is a fake to some degree. IMHO it is part of being an adult. If I see someone with something terribly disfiguring, I might wish to stare at them to better understand what I am looking at. Or I might feel repulsed. But I will not act on those impulses. I will attempt to look past the surface and be kind. I do not display my negative feelings because it would be hurtful and serve no purpose. It certainly would not make that person love me for "who I am". Similarly, I may have a fantasy that I would never act upon because I know that it would be hurtful to my family, and is not what I would really want in the long term. I might explore internally why I would think about that, but I do not feel the need to spew it out to others who might be hurt by it.
I do similar things in many situations. Sometimes I pretend to be more confident than I feel. Sometimes I avoid doing things that might be construed negatively in a way that would be hurtful to my family. Sometimes I probably take it too far. That is something I am examining. I believe that being "who we are" is not all that it is cracked up to be. Who we are can evolve and change, just as feelings change. I do not want to just "find myself". I want to be a better person. To be clear, I am talking about relatively superficial things. I do not compromise core values or change major beliefs in order to "fake it until I make it".
I don't want to ignore the ugliness and be later blindsided by it. I don't want to be hurtful to others without even recognizing it. I believe that it is possible to do the right thing even if you do not feel like it. I believe that love and kindness can be a decision, and that when you act loving towards someone, genuine feelings can follow. I believe that we sometimes need to push ourselves outside of our comfort zones in order to experience growth. So, in that manner, I choose actions before feelings.
Sometimes. I rationalize that I choose to do "the right thing" for altruistic reasons, but I am honest enough to admit that sometimes I do it to protect myself.
Thanks for the input
Miswired7 said:
a few points:
- first, for the point about e4, it would only need to be true that some do it to a significantly greater degree than others. A strong focus on authenticity is sufficient there (and I think it's obvious that some have a greater focus than others)
- second, if someone is willing to show much of their ugly side, I see no reason why some of them would not show all of it, at least outside the workplace where perhaps it will get you thrown out. What if they'd rather be alone rather than accepted for something they're not -- not everyone really cares to not be a hermit. I'm pretty much one myself, personally, although I don't think it's related to anything 4-ish in my case.
An important thing you need to consider is many 4s are not very practical people. That significantly influences how much they'll chameleon/I don't think that's everyone's defense mechanism. Some people really don't seem to do it, and instead cut the world off or something more of that nature.
- third, I think there are core trusting friendships where people actually are authentic. It's obvious that many or most people won't be authentic to a threatening audience, but things change with a nonthreatening audience.
I guess I can buy what you're saying if you mean almost everyone needs to at some point edit what they say to fit the needs of, say, the workplace.
But not if you mean with everyone!
Well I have a sort of different take on this:
First, it's really 'who you are' to prioritize not-harming over other things you probably see as more trivial. I probably have a similar such priority.
If I like to play loud music at night, but I also like people around me to sleep soundly, and if I prefer the latter to the former, it IS who I am to not play the loud music. It is ALSO who I am to say I'd rather I could have a soundproof bubble in which I can blast the music.
I think the idea of acting inconsistently to your actual priorities is basically incoherent if you really think about it. What you're really saying is the world imposes constraints on which version of yourself you act out. That isn't really fake so much as a limitation.
As to editing my negative feelings, frankly in my close friendships, I make sure we can express the negative feelings fully --- as long as they're about things, and not each others' character. I assume in my close friendships that we fully care for each other. If someone does not enjoy a book I like, I don't really care, as long as I can still read the book. If someone doesn't want to sit in my room while I watch a movie on large volume, I don't mind if they say it -- as long as they don't suggest I'm a worse person for doing so.
See the ultimate pattern? As long as the judgment is mechanical, impersonal, and not about me, robotic, and so on, I don't see why we can't be rationally forthright with each other if we know we really care about each other.
When people prefer non-authentic behavior, I think they're ultimately being somewhat unreasonable somewhere.
Obviously if someone tells white lies to not get killed, I don't fault them, but I don't think it's reasonable to think the more reasonable of us need to cultivate that as the default culture.
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As to whether the enneagram has any validity, I'd say it seems to be pretty similar to the functions-theoretic MBTi. the Dichotomies-theoretic MBTI is well-correlated with the FFM, so for those seeking a relatively empirically tested theory, it fares pretty well -- the same cannot be said of the functions-theoretic MBTI, which is an offshoot of Jung's ideas/has if anything complicated the model further.
Basically, the more experimental functions-theoretic mbti seems to me to have a lot of great ideas, but it's a work in progress, and a lot of theorists present it like it 'just works' -- it doesn't. It's more like, under some circumstances, with the right massaging, you can make fair statements using the language if you have delved deeply enough into it to know what it can/cannot do.
I think the same tentative take holds for the enneagram.
I think there's usually some lack of background in the theory leading to thoughts that it seems random or whatever -- the idea is seems to be extremely canonical. The basic root of it is the age-old idea that our motivational patterns are rooted in the way we experience the so-called self vs outside distinction, one which may not be metaphysically valid, but may be psychologically very hard to avoid.
After all, independent of such a distinction, how to make sense of the struggle of the self -- it would simply be....if there was no feeling that there is a foreign environment to navigate and make sense of, whether, as in the heart triad you aim to ask "what is my place in this foreign world" leading to the meaninglessness or meaningfulness of one's existence, or as in the head triad "forget if I have a place, how do I deal with the foreignness" with the gut triad aiming to dissolve these questions entirely e.g. with 1's rigid focus on perfection, so there are no choices/murkiness to be made.
And this idea leads to lots of types, which ultimately are rooted in a common theme, namely either you dull this sense of self to lessen the feeling of separation, or you enhance it because in some sense you feel it's all you have....hint here's where 5/avarice/holding on and building walls comes in (or any number of variations in between). The former corresponds to E9, and the latter to the farthest from it in the circular structure: 4/5.
The great thing is not only is this idea pretty canonical in the abstract, you also see examples of these types readily. But as with the mbti/jung/etc, I do feel many theorists made arbitrary assumptions along hte way, and I usually am ruthless about throwing stuff out if it seems arbitrary to extract only what's canonical.
Basically, the more experimental functions-theoretic mbti seems to me to have a lot of great ideas, but it's a work in progress, and a lot of theorists present it like it 'just works' -- it doesn't. It's more like, under some circumstances, with the right massaging, you can make fair statements using the language if you have delved deeply enough into it to know what it can/cannot do.
I think the same tentative take holds for the enneagram.
I think there's usually some lack of background in the theory leading to thoughts that it seems random or whatever -- the idea is seems to be extremely canonical. The basic root of it is the age-old idea that our motivational patterns are rooted in the way we experience the so-called self vs outside distinction, one which may not be metaphysically valid, but may be psychologically very hard to avoid.
After all, independent of such a distinction, how to make sense of the struggle of the self -- it would simply be....if there was no feeling that there is a foreign environment to navigate and make sense of, whether, as in the heart triad you aim to ask "what is my place in this foreign world" leading to the meaninglessness or meaningfulness of one's existence, or as in the head triad "forget if I have a place, how do I deal with the foreignness" with the gut triad aiming to dissolve these questions entirely e.g. with 1's rigid focus on perfection, so there are no choices/murkiness to be made.
And this idea leads to lots of types, which ultimately are rooted in a common theme, namely either you dull this sense of self to lessen the feeling of separation, or you enhance it because in some sense you feel it's all you have....hint here's where 5/avarice/holding on and building walls comes in (or any number of variations in between). The former corresponds to E9, and the latter to the farthest from it in the circular structure: 4/5.
The great thing is not only is this idea pretty canonical in the abstract, you also see examples of these types readily. But as with the mbti/jung/etc, I do feel many theorists made arbitrary assumptions along hte way, and I usually am ruthless about throwing stuff out if it seems arbitrary to extract only what's canonical.
And the great thing is you really needn't subscribe to any particular metaphysics to agree that there's at least a psychological truth to these things. I.e. it at least seems like these tensions exist, even if you don't believe in any fundamental self/outside dichotomy.
Thank you for the input. I agree about arbitrary assumptions making it harder to discern.
After much self reflection, I am certain that I am not a type 9, although I have developed more type 9 characteristics as I have gotten older. Hopefully that is a good thing ;-)
I see type four in myself, at least as part of tritype, but rather than identifying as being weird or defective, I have a great fear of being weird or defective, and I try to avoid it. Yet I don't see myself as a type 1 either. I am not above doing something to protect my image with others, and I am not all that rigid or perfectionistic.
@Miswired7 -- interesting observation there! I think that's a good way of thinking, i.e. count 'countertypes' (if you have a large fixation on something, even if it's exactly counter to the normal version of the type, that's often a case of the type).
Although, of course it is sometimes a symptom of being a different type too.
Although, of course it is sometimes a symptom of being a different type too.
I believe you are right about the fixation being meaningful!
I used writing to figure it out... I started writing memories and free associations, going back to early childhood. Then the patterns became clear.
I am pretty sure primary is 6w5, with a 649 tritype.