Move Over Enneagram

[anndelise]

I was looking further into the idea of using the Enneagram to assist with Story Character creation and development, but then I found the info below. Move over Enneagram.
I'm so happy.

Not only does it cover the 6 different reactions to stress/anxiety, but it also gives ideas for how to transform some of their negative effects into more supportive positive ones.


6 Reactions to Stress/Anxiety
https://sites.google.com/site/psycho...orming-anxiety

1. Fight: The fight response is fairly obvious; it's what gets us into scuffles. If anxious situations make you feel aggressive and feisty, you may be able to channel your energy into vocalizing your complaints (speaking up for what's right); just saying no; negotiating boundaries, conditions, and ground rules to avoid altercation; and doing battle with the anxiety-provoking beliefs and worries inside yourself. The fighter has to engage the situation to overcome his or her anxiety.

2. Flight: Flight makes us want to run away from our problems. If anxious situations make you want to run in the opposite direction, you're a fleer. That doesn't make you a coward; you can and should leave situations if they're not working and can't be fixed; look elsewhere for better situations rather than suffering in the one you're in; step back and disengage, especially when a situation starts to look hopeless. The fleer can also completely abandon and run away from anxious thoughts inside him or herself.

3. Freeze: Freezing is stopping all movement (mental or physical) until a problem goes away. If anxious situations tend to paralyze you, you may do best by calling time-outs; observing negative situations quietly; buying yourself or others time by waiting; being patient and restrained and letting things come and change naturally; and creating space for new, better possibilities. The freezer's patience and measured personality helps him or her to make it out of a stressful situation with minimal added stress.

4. Appease: The appease response makes us supplicate; when we bow to our "betters." If you tend to take the blame yourself when in an anxious situation, you're an appeaser. You may find your anxiety lessened when you take maximum personal responsibility without overdoing it; when you offer genuine apologies; when you makes agreements and promises toward the future and amends for the past; when you give gifts, and when you acknowledge the grievances and anxieties of others and work to solve them.

5. Tend: The tend response invites us to nurture in order to balance out our stress. If anxious situations make you want to curl up and be taken care of, you would do well to build up your personal resources for dealing with situations: taking meditative time for yourself, relaxing, and building alliances and to take care of yourself, making sure that you work on your own anxiety-inducing tendencies gently while allowing your kindness and caring for others work on their own anxious tendencies.

6. Befriend: Befriending is the tendency to defuse anxious situations with levity and charm. If anxious situations make you want to crack jokes and find common ground with others, you're a befriender. The befriender can use his or her skills by making friends with his or her enemies (to a point, of course), recognizing and being kind to the inner goodness inside every anxiety-inducing person or thing, befriending him or herself (meaning being one's own best ally), and bringing a sense of humor to a difficult situation.

7. Keeping the right hemisphere of the brain busy helps to alleviate anxiety because it evolved to scan for threats, while the left hemisphere in part works to control negative emotion. By keeping the "worrier" half busy and letting the "emoter" do its business without interference, you can reduce anxious reactions.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Good stuff.

My personal theory is that anxiety/depression/low-self esteem all that negative stuff , it all comes down to feeling like one's inner puppy is being kicked instead of being cared for. The complex with this, is that babies are helpless with little independence, so it always feels like somebody else is responsible for our happiness *ie petting the puppy* instead of kicking it. It's not so simple as narcissistically barking at somebody that they need to love themselves (even though yes of course, that's what it boils down to) because it's like asking a baby to change its own poopy diaper. It just makes little common sense to ask a helpless innocent human, pure and holy- to change their own smelly diaper, but as adults- that's what we're expected to do etc. But by loving somebody's inner puppy, you can also help them learn to love theirs.

Not being a bully, and not being a victim, it all stems from one place: Loving and laughing at our own personal inadequacies and failures. Remember, God (or however you wanna call it, 'greater spirit' blah blah) wants you to laugh and feel light. The ego wants you to take everything so super seriously and get mad, take it personal, sulk about it, develop addictions, and hurt yourself, and so forth etc. Isn't it interesting how we all tend to think of negative things so much and have it not go anywhere?

[DirectorAbbie]

I can't tell which I am. Maybe it's an invalid system.

[anndelise]

First of all, the OP isn't a typing system. It is how humans respond to stress and anxiety.

Fight, Flight (withdrawal), and Freeze is part of the autonomic nervous system response and is typically associated with male gender.
Appease, Tend, and Befriend is generally considered associated with female gender, and believed to be related to oxytocin.

When the enneagram was created, it used the then common three of Fight, Withdraw (Flight, Freeze), and Affiliate (Appease/Submit, Tend, Befriend)

But people have these options available regardless of supposed enneagram type. Think of it in terms of situational as related to past experiences. Personal growth. Or maybe in terms of immediate responses vs long term responses.

For example,
How do you first respond to unexpected problems, challenges, and/or threats?
How do you respond to ongoing situations/relationships?
How do you obtain/achieve a goal?

As an individual (not a type) your answers could contain any combination of the 6 responses to stress/anxiety.

 

Personal example:
When I lived with my father, my immediate reactions to his threats was a combination of Freeze, Appease, and Flight.
I did make an attempt to seek out family help (Befriend), but was rejected, and the abuse allowed to continue unstopped.
Towards the end of my living there, I began developing a more Fight response for problems outside of home because things were less scary outside of home and so less tolerable to allow to beat me down as well. I also became a defender of others (Fight and Tend), beating on the bullies. Then, I finally started to sort of stand up for myself at home (Fight). Eventually running away. (The ultimate Flight.)

Aother personal example,
With my daughter, my first impulse is to withdraw from conflicts (Flight), not just conflicts between her and I, but conflicts she has with the world. While her first impulse is to Fight...to stand firm not just towards others, but me as well. I would prefer to have just been able to Tend her, but she needed more than that. She also needed someone to Fight for her, to confront obstacles she was facing, and that fell onto my shoulders too. I did attempt to find assistance (Befriend) many times, but was constantly rejected until finally her freshman high school counselor. This woman already had a system of affiliations (Befriend). But then she left the highschool, and the Fight fell back onto my shoulders. My daughter and I have since found two places to help her (Befriend), so less fight needed by me. And now that she is an almost an adult, with two places assisting her (Befriend), she'll be taking over the Fight needs herself, allowing me to Withdraw and recouperate (Flight).

So even though an individual might have preferences of responses to stress, much of what they actually do is dependant on the situation and needs at hand.

[anndelise]

I can't tell which I am. Maybe it's an invalid system.

Hmm, i just realized that you might have been referring to the Ennegram system, rather than the OP. If so, the post I made directly above might seem out of place, lol.

I've constantly had problems understanding Enneagram, myself. Regularly seeing a difference between the described motivations or the described actions. But now that I can look at the underlying responses, and expand them from the basic three, I'm seeing certain interactions in a clearer light.

[squark]

Oh, I took a creative writing class awhile back from someone who was writing a book on the enneagram for character development tied in with the hero's journey if you're still interested at all in that for character stuff. I imagine she's finished it by now, but I can't attest to how good or useful it will be, since I haven't read it. I don't even remember her name right now, but if you're interested, I'll look for it.

[anndelise]

@squark
I have links to someone's work using the enneagram for creating characters. She has pdfs for each type. I could link you one or two to see if you're interested. But I think I'll just take her idea about the three questions I posted above, with the 6 possible answers. Last night I was answering the questions for my female lead, and so many things about her personality and reactions to story events started falling into place. It was pretty cool. Led to a low-sleep night, lol...but I'm quite excited about it.

(Of course, give me a week or so and I'm sure I'll have completely different directions in mind, lol.)

[DirectorAbbie]

Hmm, i just realized that you might have been referring to the Ennegram system, rather than the OP. If so, the post I made directly above might seem out of place, lol.

I've constantly had problems understanding Enneagram, myself. Regularly seeing a difference between the described motivations or the described actions. But now that I can look at the underlying responses, and expand them from the basic three, I'm seeing certain interactions in a clearer light.

No; I know I'm a 1. But your stress/anxiety reactions don't seem to apply to me.

[anndelise]

No; I know I'm a 1. But your stress/anxiety reactions don't seem to apply to me.

So then...what do you do when you come across an unexpected situation? Or an unexpected problem?
Do you ever set goals/tasks for yourself or try to achieve anything? (Even in a game?)
Does your autonomic nervous system function?

If someone cuts you off in traffic do you respond at all? Maybe step on the breaks? Maybe flip them off? Maybe tell the story about it to your brother/friend? Any response at all?

[DirectorAbbie]

So then...what do you do when you come across an unexpected situation? Or an unexpected problem?
Do you ever set goals/tasks for yourself or try to achieve anything? (Even in a game?)
Does your autonomic nervous system function?

If someone cuts you off in traffic do you respond at all? Maybe step on the breaks? Maybe flip them off? Maybe tell the story about it to your brother/friend? Any response at all?

I don't like vehicles. I drive like an old lady. If someone cuts me off in traffic, I am not bothered. In some cased I may even be pleased.

If an unexpected problem arises, I look at it logically and take the obvious course of action. Unless the unexpected problem involves the destruction of a lot of my work, in which case I go away and come back to it later for a new start.
My nerves function. If you mean reaction-wise, I may snap at people who frustrate me by doing something wrong.
I try to achieve things, but I avoid setting goals. My dad talks about goals, and he's made them sound really stupid, so I avoid them. I have set tasks even more in games than irl sometimes.

[anndelise]

If an unexpected problem arises, I look at it logically and take the obvious course of action. Unless the unexpected problem involves the destruction of a lot of my work, in which case I go away and come back to it later for a new start.

This would be an initial Withdrawal response, (which is the Flight response). This allows a person time to consider the problem/situation and what to do about it. Followed by an eventual Fight response..confronting the challenge/problem/situation.

My nerves function. If you mean reaction-wise, I may snap at people who frustrate me by doing something wrong.

this would be a Fight response.

I try to achieve things, but I avoid setting goals. My dad talks about goals, and he's made them sound really stupid, so I avoid them. I have set tasks even more in games than irl sometimes.

Any time you set to engage in altering or achieving something, yourself, it would be part of the Fight response.
(If you were to turn to people to help you with it, then that would be a Befriend response.)

[DirectorAbbie]

Sometimes I recruit others to help, especially in the kitchen.
So I'm a flight-fight-befriend?
I'm still skeptical.

[anndelise]

Sometimes I recruit others to help, especially in the kitchen.
So I'm a flight-fight-befriend?
I'm still skeptical.

What are you skeptical of?

I think you're still thinking in terms of "type".
The point is that every person has these responses available to them. A person may not use them all, nor even one every time. But each of the 6 are still encoded in our abilities to respond to our world.
Is this what you are skeptical of?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fight-or-flight_response
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tend_and_befriend
http://www.enneagramspectrum.com/184...eagram-styles/

[squark]

Abbie, these are just different ways of reacting to stimuli. It's not a typing system.

[nigh]

Good read. I'm fighting all the time.

[Beautiful sky]

http://theenneagram.blogspot.com/2007/09/type-6.html

Scroll down to the "Health" section. That's what I've just been reading.

EDIT: THIS IS NOT ABOUT TYPE 6 LOL I HAD A SPAZ MOMENT. LISTEN TO ANNDELISE.

who's the writer of this blogspot? do you know?