Enneagram: Four
I In General
If you area
FOUR, you are gifted in many ways. In particular, you are:
☺ Intuitive ☺ Creative ☺ Sensitive
☺ Expressive ☺ Cultured ☺ Stylish
☺ Original ☺ Artistic ☺ Empathic
However, like everyone
else, you have your flaws. For example, you can be:
S Moody S Possessive S Self‑Conscious
S Obstinate S Critical S Spiteful
S Hypersensitive S Depressive S Masochistic
As an Artist you strive so hard for originality
and uniqueness that you become envious of other people's gifts and abilities.
But you are so oblivious to your envy that
you deny how controlling and destructive it is.
II SUBTYPES
A. Self‑Preservation: Focus
on Risk
You risk
everything when it comes to feeling alive. There's a self‑abandonment to
your recklessness that is not too remote from an acceptance of death (suicide).
Living on the edge is an adrenaline rush and brings with it a longed-for
intensity of living, which makes normal routine living pale by comparison.
You can't stand
playing it safe and being predictable. You regularly "up the ante" on
feeling alive (thrill‑seeking, law‑breaking, promiscuity, gambling
etc.). By throwing caution to the winds, you succeed in transforming your inner
pain into a meaningful energy that lifts you out of the ordinary. If the risk
pays off (in terms of wealth, friendship or happiness), the cycle goes on, as
you again gamble with losing what you have gained. You relate to the saying:
"Don't fence me in."
You distract
yourself from your need to be special and your feelings of loss by competing
for attention. This is particularly so with colleagues or rivals, though not
with close friends. Your powerful need for approval increases your energy
levels, and you are determined to prove how desirable you are. Your
competitiveness is generally self-referencing ("I'll show her I’m as good as he is.")
When
successful, your self‑worth is boosted. When you fail, your self‑esteem
is shattered and you change from being competitive to being a rival. This can
range all the way from bad‑mouthing and spitefulness, to an intense and
vindictive hatred. Your compulsion to push your partner away in order to be
able to win him/her back again, gives you the feeling of being in control, but
is ultimately self‑defeating.
Since you never
feel you are good enough or as talented as others, shame is your constant inner
companion. You have low self‑esteem and envy other people's achievements.
This is a source of painful embarrassment to you in company. Shame is a product
of questioning your own inner worth and results in feelings of inadequacy,
failure, exclusion, and unimportance.
You retreat
into the shadows in case others should discover how flawed you are and then
reject you. Your hypersensitivity to the slightest snub is in inverse
proportion to your yearning to be acknowledged as special. You have a fear of
being ignored or unwanted, especially at social gatherings. You rely on image
or involvement to compensate (e.g., making strong dress statements, or seeking
positions of authority or gold‑circle club membership).
As you grew up you
began to realize that your mournful hangdog approach, as well as your roller‑coaster
moods and dramatic expression of feelings were a turn‑off. After all,
most people prefer to deal with the ordinary and everyday rather than the
unique and highly sensitive. So you began to rely on the personality style
nearest to you to give your own style some balance. You may, for example, have
spotted that a clinging possessiveness is
among the list of your characteristic flaws. But detachment is one of the strengths of your Five Wing. When you
learn to incorporate your wing‑strength into your own personality style,
you begin to soar.
Three Wing: When you access the strengths of your Three Wing you have a heart
combination. The Three influence allows you to deal with tasks more efficiently
and to become more career‑oriented. The Three's practical, down-to‑earth
efficiency enables you to survive amid the humdrum and the everyday.
Additionally, you begin to accept that you can have what you long for, provided
you are prepared to work for it.
There is a danger, though, that you will become even more self‑centered
and overidentify with the dramatic role you have chosen for yourself.
Five Wing: When you access the strengths of your Five Wing you have a heart/head
combination, and this will help you in a different way. With it you learn to
become more stable, because thinking moderates (even suppresses) feelings. You
will also find it easier to remain detached and to analyze calmly what is
happening to you. You will, however, need to be careful not to become more shy,
retiring, and aloof.
Proper balance
is achieved by accessing the strengths of both
your wings and taking care to avoid their characteristic weaknesses. When
you do so, you learn to let go of your obsessive
Artist viewpoint and begin to experience the advantages of other points of
view.
The Arrow
Theory of the Enneagram can be very helpful when you are feeling either stressed or secure.
As an Artist you
are motivated by your need to be special and to be understood. You are stressed
by misunderstanding, by vulgar insensitivity, and by conflict in feelings and
relationships.
Almost as soon
as the pressure begins to build up, you gradually tend to slide to the lower
end of your own personality style. When this happens your natural tendency is
for your mood swings to increase. The intensity of your feelings churns you up
so much that you frequently become sick and have to take to your bed. However,
this or any other form of retiring (isolation) can make you feel even worse.
You become quite vulnerable, begin to blame yourself, slip into a depressive
state, and even entertain thoughts of suicide to stop the pain.
As your stress
increases you find yourself all too easily adopting the negative characteristics of your Two-stress point. However, this need not be an inevitable
progression. You can, instead, get in touch with the positive side.
Two: (Stress Point)
-
You deny
your own needs and concentrate on others.
-
You
attempt to "buy" love to fill the aching loneliness.
-
You latch
on to another in a dependent role.
-
You seek
attention by developing unusual illnesses.
+ You become more outgoing and less
self‑obsessed.
+ You relate more dispassionately with
people.
When you are
secure you are generally more in touch with the higher side of your personality
style. As a Four this allows you to appreciate how special you already are. You
begin to realize that the extraordinary is only the ordinary unwrapped.
Everyone is, therefore, unique, and ought to be celebrated rather than envied.
The past and future no longer need to be given exaggerated importance, because
the present is all there is. Living to the full in the "now" relieves
you of the burden of fretting or fantasizing about what has been or might be.
All of this
feeds into the positive strengths of
your One security point. But, here too there can be some negatives. Dealing with the pluses and minuses helps us grow.
One: (Security Point)
+ You begin to live in the real
world, flaws and all.
+ You gain more control over your
feelings.
+ You concentrate on the positive
rattier than the negative.
+ You develop down‑to‑earth,
practical everyday skills.
‑
You feel ashamed at not measuring up to standards.
‑ You are critical and
angry when things don't work out.
1)
Bloom
where you are planted!
2)
The
extraordinary is the ordinary unwrapped.
3)
T he mess
is part of the reality.
4)
I am not
my feelings; I can control them.
5)
I am a good
and loving person.
6)
Think of
the flowers. (Luke 12:27)
What characterises this FOUR
portrait of Jesus is the personal quality of his love. We see this in his
attention to individuals, choosing them to be with him and calling each of them
by name. He discloses himself to each person in a wholly original way. He empathises with each
one in the weakness and wonder of their humanity. He is sensitive to people and
comfortable being with them, whether they are joyful or sad. He acknowledges
the dignity of people and especially of those who are ignored or rejected by
society. Jesus gives concrete expression to his respect for everyone in the
courtesy which characterises all he says and does.
The people who give us a good impression of
this portrait love us in a personal way. They
communicate one to one with the unique person in each of us and respect the
fact that we are different. Therefore, they highlight what is distinctive about
us by choosing us out of the crowd to be with them as friends. They reveal
themselves to us with ease and invite us to do the same so that they may call us by name. It is this capacity to
be sensitive and responsive to the unique person in each of us that
characterises all the features of this portrait.
The people in
whom we catch a glimpse of this portrait are sensitive. They are perceptive or tuned in to the deeper
meaning of what we say and do, discerning our hidden thoughts and what
motivates us. They easily identify or empathise with us as there is no depth or subtlety of
feeling that they are not familiar with. They are also responsive to what we think and to how we feel. They bring out into
the open feelings we hardly notice and thus they intensify or reinforce our
positive ones and free us from the domination of negative ones. Though they
feel deeply and can express this with passion there is a balance or evenness in
their response to the ups and downs of life that is termed equanimity.
There is a
distinctive style too about the behaviour of the people who make this portrait
real for us. They are sensitive and respectful in the way that they acknowledge us. There is a style not
just about what they say but about all they do. This finds expression in their courtesy which is for them part of the
supreme art, that of relating.
A) Holy Originality highlights what is
unique in each person by choosing us, calling us by name and by communicating
with us in a personal way. In building up our personal relationships by
communicating, we are:
B) Sensitive, i.e.:
Perceptive or in touch with the depth dimension, essential
dignity and uniqueness of other people as we are with our own.
Empathetic or we have an intimate knowledge of others,
born of our ability to feel for and with them.
and
C) Responsive i.e.:
Emotionally honest in that we feel free
to express the full range of our feelings concerning what is shadowy and what is sublime with
Equanimity which is the virtue
that meets our need for balance in expressing strong feeling arising out of life's peaks and valleys. We are as
at home with the sublime as with the ordinary.
and
D) Relate creatively, in
that we
Acknowledge others in being sensitive
and respectful towards them and by being,
Courteous in that there is a style about the way we relate, about all we say and do.