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Well, I was thinking of this part:


Which didn't sound too inspirational to me, for the reasons stated.
I see! :D Yeah, It's true my motivation for it may come more from the desire to maintain balance in the group, since one person looking like a victim puts others at unease too. I tend to keep my ambitious side inside my own room unless the group needs it, which is probably something I should work on. ^^'
 
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For a while I was pretty much torn between a 9 and a 4, but with my questionnaire I did everyone told me why they thought I was a 9. It all made sense. Especially considering with MBTI I was confused between ISFP and INFP, and it's largely because of my enneagram. If that makes sense!
 
Before I first came across the Enneagram a couple months ago, it was at a time where I had been very introspective due to some events that I wasn't happy with and I was trying to figure out reasons for some of my behaviour. A big part of it was that I realised thinking so much about what other people want and my indecisiveness tends to do more harm than good, and I wanted to change. I thought something was wrong with me because other people don't seem to have this much trouble making simple decisions.

So when I discovered the Enneagram and read the description for type 9 it blew my mind. Every single sentence I read explained so much about everything that I had been going through the couple months. Many of the thoughts I had about myself were written right there. I felt relieved that nothing was wrong with me, and thought that maybe I could use this to improve myself.

I thought if this could give me so much understanding about myself, I could use it to understand other people because I feel disconnected from everyone. This is the part where I went crazy and read as much as I could about type 9 and all the types. For two weeks straight it became my life. If I wasn't reading about it, I would be thinking about it whenever I wasn't sleeping, which I didn't do much of. I thought about various events in my past and related them to being type 9. I thought about other people and typed them and discovered motivations for a lot of their behaviour.

I felt like I was starting to lose my touch on reality. One day I was spaced out at work all day, just thinking about a lot of negative things. I went home and slept for 13 hours straight. When I woke up I stopped thinking so much about it because I was worried I'd fall into that state again. Part of me wishes I kept that state of mind, I think I would have discovered a lot more. Unfortunately I have to work and it wasn't really helping with that though. So now I'm just continuing to read more and more. I'll keep learning and see where it goes.
 
I discovered my 9-hood in the last few weeks, and it's been a great journey going deeper into this stuff. It was both that "oh crap, that's me" feeling, and "there are other people like me??"

It made sense to me based on comments friends and clients have made to me over the years... one friend when we were kids said that all her other friends and family could be represented by certain colors and patterns she was picking out in a little scrapbook, but I would be an empty frame because I took on others' identities. That killed me for years. Others have commented on me being a "passive" leader.. don't you ever get mad...you're always "nice"...never have drama... etc, you all know the drill. While inside I can be a tornado of fury, but I felt if I expressed it it would take over and kill me, or drive everyone away and I would be alone. I saw no solution for staying connected to others but to be a chameleon.

And OMG, it's not just my personal weaknesses and failings. There are others like me who react to life with these patterns! And I can recognize the patterns more and navigate with them now!

(In addition, my relative who I see is a 1's behavior makes a LOT more sense to me now...)

I ended up reading about this stuff based on a desire to heal, my word of the year for 2015. I couldn't figure out why it affected me SO MUCH that my mother was sick for years and died when I was a young teenager. Sure, it sucks for anyone, but it was really bothering me inside on a daily basis that something about MY identity was stunted and sick as a result of how I reacted to this (25 years ago!) I've lost other loved ones over the years that I can love and leave to their journey and stick to mine.

I see now my 9 pattern of hooking into others for identity and energy, and checking out into numbness when crap hits the fan. It resulted in me basically becoming a zombie of no emotion for the really bad times, pretending it was all good and denying my anger for the slightly less bad times, and always subconsciously feeling like if I didn't have my mom to connect with and basically give me an identity as I grew up, I was as good as dead too. I just abdicated my interests and loves (music) and did other things I didn't really care about. Because, you know, I didn't REALLY exist or matter...

Anyway, now, as a good 9, I'm all self conscious about actually talking about myself. Thank you all for listening and discussing this stuff, it really helps so much.
 
I didn't really understand what it meant at the time since it was in a type me thread.
People said I was 9 and I was like "Nice got that one in the bag"
Then I updated my sig and went back to debating cog-functions.
 
My reaction: "...Oh. That makes sense."
9 seems to explain things about me that I always struggled to understand, all the way back to my childhood...I've said a lot of 9ish things in the past, and recently, when I wasn't thinking about Enneagram at all. Makes sense. I'm more likely to find my type when I'm not looking for it. >_>
 
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