defect purging

[ashlesha]

this is probably something i'm going to want to delete later, but argh.

um, hypothetical person feels sort of a compulsive desire to dig out their character flaws and put them up for examination...its not FUN for them but it feels sort of necessary in part because they want to connect with people in an honest way (by being transparent), in part because its sort of like a neurotic picking at themselves (similar to somebody picking at a hangnail, except with the "self," heh), and partly for this sort of indescribable feeling of needing to confess and purge or something. but mostly the first reason.

its like this dream i had once where i met this guy and found out that for the last several weeks he had been reading my mind. and i was horrified and ashamed of all the disturbing and "bad" things he must have seen and i was apologizing to him for that. but then he was like, no, youre still a good person. and the relief i felt was amazing. it was the only time i've ever woken up crying.

sorry for the emoness of this thread, lol. maybe i should be talking to a therapist instead of you guys, but hell.

i was thinking this might be enneagram related. i'm not completely settled into my enneagram type. sounds kind of 4-ish, maybe?

also, can anyone relate or does anyone even know what the hell i'm talking about? lol.

[Aleksei]

I think that's probably related to EII and E4.

[Cyrano]

this is probably something i'm going to want to delete later, but argh.

um, hypothetical person feels sort of a compulsive desire to dig out their character flaws and put them up for examination...its not FUN for them but it feels sort of necessary in part because they want to connect with people in an honest way (by being transparent), in part because its sort of like a neurotic picking at themselves (similar to somebody picking at a hangnail, except with the "self," heh), and partly for this sort of indescribable feeling of needing to confess and purge or something. but mostly the first reason.

its like this dream i had once where i met this guy and found out that for the last several weeks he had been reading my mind. and i was horrified and ashamed of all the disturbing and "bad" things he must have seen and i was apologizing to him for that. but then he was like, no, youre still a good person. and the relief i felt was amazing. it was the only time i've ever woken up crying.

sorry for the emoness of this thread, lol. maybe i should be talking to a therapist instead of you guys, but hell.

i was thinking this might be enneagram related. i'm not completely settled into my enneagram type. sounds kind of 4-ish, maybe?

also, can anyone relate or does anyone even know what the hell i'm talking about? lol.

But don't you know you are already a good person.

[ashlesha]

But don't you know you are already a good person.

aw, thanks, thats very nice of you to say. but...well, how do you know? :wink:

also, the dream...it wasn't so much about being deemed "good," per se. it was more about being loved and accepted in spite of all my ugliness being exposed. which i'm guessing is probably a pretty universal desire? so its not about being "good" so much as about being "worthy," if that makes sense or is relevant to typing.

[Cyrano]

aw, thanks, thats very nice of you to say. but...well, how do you know? :wink:

I've been watching.

[Creepy-bg]

I've been watching.

it's true. I bought 4 hours of survailence tapes off of him.

[Bardia]

this is probably something i'm going to want to delete later, but argh.

um, hypothetical person feels sort of a compulsive desire to dig out their character flaws and put them up for examination...its not FUN for them but it feels sort of necessary in part because they want to connect with people in an honest way (by being transparent), in part because its sort of like a neurotic picking at themselves (similar to somebody picking at a hangnail, except with the "self," heh), and partly for this sort of indescribable feeling of needing to confess and purge or something. but mostly the first reason.

its like this dream i had once where i met this guy and found out that for the last several weeks he had been reading my mind. and i was horrified and ashamed of all the disturbing and "bad" things he must have seen and i was apologizing to him for that. but then he was like, no, youre still a good person. and the relief i felt was amazing. it was the only time i've ever woken up crying.

sorry for the emoness of this thread, lol. maybe i should be talking to a therapist instead of you guys, but hell.

i was thinking this might be enneagram related. i'm not completely settled into my enneagram type. sounds kind of 4-ish, maybe?

also, can anyone relate or does anyone even know what the hell i'm talking about? lol.

I can relate to this. I will often ask my close friends to give me an evaluation of what they see as my weaknesses or shortcomings. I am always curious how people see me. I wouldn't say it negatively impacts my self-esteem though. I look at it as a way to maybe improve myself if I see the problems they mentioned in myself. I only do this with people I know well though. As I get to know people I slowly reveal more of my weird side and imperfections to see if people won't mind them. I also dig up others weaknesses and like to discuss them to.

[Singu]

um, hypothetical person feels sort of a compulsive desire to dig out their character flaws and put them up for examination...its not FUN for them but it feels sort of necessary in part because they want to connect with people in an honest way (by being transparent), in part because its sort of like a neurotic picking at themselves (similar to somebody picking at a hangnail, except with the "self," heh), and partly for this sort of indescribable feeling of needing to confess and purge or something. but mostly the first reason.

Well if all you're going to do is pick apart your own flaws, then that's not going to be very constructive. It could also mean that you have way too high standards set up for yourself, so therefore you can't help picking apart your own flaws. It could also mean that the person was on the verge of noticing his own pretenses, meaning that how he was really feeling was quite different from how he was acting on the outside.

But it's also not enough to lay all of your flaws out in the open, and saying that confession alone should be enough. It depends on what you're willing to do... and that meaning the willingness to change yourself. There's nothing wrong with having flaws or talking about your flaws, but if you're not going to be doing anything about it in the end then it will be meaningless. It would simply be schadenfreude, where you might get some kind of a gleeful satisfaction from beating yourself up. If that happens, then it only means that you have simply lost sympathetic feelings for yourself.

its like this dream i had once where i met this guy and found out that for the last several weeks he had been reading my mind. and i was horrified and ashamed of all the disturbing and "bad" things he must have seen and i was apologizing to him for that. but then he was like, no, youre still a good person. and the relief i felt was amazing. it was the only time i've ever woken up crying.

This could only mean one thing... you were projecting your own standards that you put on yourself onto others, so you thought that others had the same standards as you did. The consequence of this is that you'd feel like everyone is staring down on you, using your own standards. So in the dream, the evidence to the contrary may have greatly surprised you.

The basic rule of the thumb is this: if you can't love or accept yourself for who you are, then there is no way that you can believe that others can possibly love you.

also, can anyone relate or does anyone even know what the hell i'm talking about? lol.

Yes... but I think I understand these things better now. Better than I did before.

[ashlesha]

@ singularity: wow, who ARE you? your response was amazing.

you seem to really get it and a lot of what you said really hit at the core of things so much that i'm feeling a bit dizzy. especially about pretense and about confession not being constructive. yes..these are things that have been kind of swimming around at the edge of my mind but i havent wanted to face them.

i want to say something to neatly summarize it all and show my wisdom like, "yes, i need to work on shedding pretense from this point forward," or something like that. but i don't think i can really do that with full integrity. what i can say is thank you for your genius reply.

i dont suppose you want to speculate about any possible relation to type? i guess things can be excused more than they should be that way (which i noticed you talking about in a different thread today). but im curious to know if my issues are plugged into some bigger thing that other people deal with, if that makes sense.

[Creepy-male]

I think that's probably related to EII and E4.

I see some E1 in that also, they are very perfectionistic about building their character up to be moral and perfect.

and interestingly E1-E4 share a link (integration/disintegration).

It sounds like the issue is concerned with this axis. The big difference is E1's are rigid, angry, perfectionistic, and unyeilding about this process at picking away their flaws and can seem morally pious and hardass like about doing this. The E4's are melancholy, emo, and ashamed... the type to hate themselves or be all morbid and melancholy over their flaws. Both E4's and E1's are "ideal-seeking". E1's are more productive and practical and objective about seeking these ideals, so they systematically and rigidly pick away at their imperfections. At best having that sort of positive self-afirming character building attitude. At worst being an angry moralist (burn in hell heathens!) attitude. E4's are more fantastical and imagine things at their best and then look to reality and feel all emo at how different things are. Sometimes they fantasize about themselves being really awesome and then they look at reality and get all emo because their is such a massive divide between their ideal self and real self. That's why they are the identity building personality. The know a direction forward for themselves and their personality and they want to build themselves up to that, but sometimes they doubt themselves, hate themselves and get all emo, and thats why they integrate towards e1... because when they get a little e1 in them they stop being so emo and start trying to incorporate that change into their lives and move towards that ideal self, building up their personalities, and becoming unique characters that fit outside the mold of "joe everyman".


The dream sounds like a 4 in a way, 4's in a way have a strange love of their character flaws... they think its part of who they are and their experience. It sounds like the man represents the ideal mate but is part of your own psyche, and your obsessing over your flaws thinking "how can anyone love me, I'm so f***ed up, if anyone truely got to know me, they'd hate me".... and then the man told you that wasn't so and therefore changed self-hate to self-love, and that made you feel better. ladedade da... yea its e4 bullshit =p.

[ashlesha]

thanks lucid, that clicks. i relate a lot to the 4 stuff you described. which is why even though aixelyd and bardia both had very good and valid responses, i didnt feel a lot of connection with what they said. i wish i could say that this is all about some kind of perfectionistic striving for self-development, but when it comes down to it, it isnt, really. its more like sitting around all filthy and wanting to be loved so much that i actually smell good to someone. which is pretty gross, i know. /unconstructive confession

[ashlesha]

i was just reading the type 4 description on ocean moonshine and i don't relate to it at all. the thing that stood out to me the most is:

Of all the types, Fours are the most acutely aware that the persona is a construct – something which has been created and can thus be re-created. This is indeed the fundamental respect in which Fours are artists; they may or may not be artists in the conventional sense of the term, but all Fours have a sense that their identities are, in some respect, their own creation.

versus...

At a largely subconscious level, Nines intuitively grasp that the constructed personality, the personality with which most of us identify, is not the true self; it is not who they are. This is, in fact, a very deep truth; the constructed personality is simply that - a construct through which consciousness operates, much of it built out of defenses and reactions to dangers which are no longer present; it is, in a sense, both a limitation and an obscuration.

reading this, it seems like 4s actively modify their personality and 9s shy away from the idea that they can modify their personality. i remember reading this excerpt of the 9 description before and identifying with it a lot.

am i understanding it correctly though? any other interpretations?

[Creepy-male]

i was just reading the type 4 description on ocean moonshine and i don't relate to it at all. the thing that stood out to me the most is:


versus...



reading this, it seems like 4s actively modify their personality and 9s shy away from the idea that they can modify their personality. i remember reading this excerpt of the 9 description before and identifying with it a lot.

am i understanding it correctly though? any other interpretations?

This whole thing touches on what I mentioned above, 4's are the "identity-building" personality. But 4's aren't fake narcissists, their whole basic desire is to be authentic and unique, that's there heaven, and there hell is to be worthless and un-unique, just another product off the shelf mass produced so to speak.

9's are different, 9's are more passive about their personality, they tend to get absorbed in other people's lives more than there own, and I'm guessing thats what is being referred to, that 9's tend to realize their outward "ego" if you will isn't their true personality but a reflection of something deeper, and that they tend not to overfocus on their outward "ego" as much.

4's are probably also aware of this (their outward "ego" isn't their true identity), but to a 4 they are actively constructing their ego like an artist, constantly tearing it down and building it back up, hoping to touch on something true and authentic and what not.

No e-type is the "fake" personality e-type, they all have different concepts of themselves, all have their pitfalls and so forth. Being phony and fake is mainly an unhealthy 3 issue.

[Singu]

@ singularity: wow, who ARE you? your response was amazing.

you seem to really get it and a lot of what you said really hit at the core of things so much that i'm feeling a bit dizzy. especially about pretense and about confession not being constructive. yes..these are things that have been kind of swimming around at the edge of my mind but i havent wanted to face them.

Well, thanks. Although to be honest I'm just getting all of this from clinical psychology. It is quite insightful and astonishingly accurate... Maybe it's because they've done their job and analysis through decades of clinical observation of their patients. So they've done their homework.

i want to say something to neatly summarize it all and show my wisdom like, "yes, i need to work on shedding pretense from this point forward," or something like that. but i don't think i can really do that with full integrity.

There's no need to. :wink: But it's interesting and good to know that you've realized and noticed this in yourself. I am now thinking that what you have described in the OP basically has to do with this. I also have/had these pretenses, and I used to be really puzzled by it, and now I'm just beginning to understand the meanings behind it. I can try to explain the mechanics behind it... if you want to know. But maybe you really ought to be talking to a therapist instead...

i dont suppose you want to speculate about any possible relation to type? i guess things can be excused more than they should be that way (which i noticed you talking about in a different thread today). but im curious to know if my issues are plugged into some bigger thing that other people deal with, if that makes sense.

I don't know... I don't really think that it's related to types (I wouldn't consider it a type-related problem, or I am looking at it from a different angle). I am thinking that it's just a human thing. There's a logical progression to this particular problem. Basically, it's something that starts in our childhood, and if not resolved, then it will continue to keep on operating. It can be observed in anyone, but their strategies and directions may diverge or differ a little. So a simple, innocuous problem can snowball into an avalanche that can crush or overwhelm us.