I'm a 3

[Cat King Cole]

No shoehorning on this one.

I took one look at this, and it's pretty much how I've been describing myself recently only from an independent source.



"Be admired" is a driving force for me, as is "self-improve". You can always know more, be more aware, be more physically fit, be more skilled, be more competent. No matter what I do I can always get one step further, indefinitely.

I mean, that's not the end of it. I've been reading through different resources on 3s and I could pick out passages that echo what I've said of myself if need be.

Forts?

[Absurd]

I do come out 8 on majority of these and this one. Love ?

[Gilly]

Not a 3. No way. 2 or 9 definitely, I lean 2, probably with 3 wing, sx/so. Trifix likely 2w3-7w6-9w8.

[Gilly]

I don't see you as an assertive type, quite frankly.

[aestrivex]

i disagree that you are a 3; i think you are 9w7

[Cat King Cole]

I'd agree, niff but then I'd have to discard notions of integration and disintegration.

That said, I like f9 and 3 a lot, since both elegantly answer a lot of my questions about being a Nine, especially in relation to identifying a lot with Competency triad. f9 by shifting me into being a neighbour to 5, 3 by being a Competency type.

Two just doesn't make sense to me, Gilly. I'd be interested to hear why you think that though.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

I can't see you as a 3 at all. 3s look a lot more narcissistically beautiful than you look. And what you have achieved in your life? You are a wow nerd. (no offense or anything, so am I)

There's a lot more to being a 3 than 'projecting the right image.' That is probably just your middle class-ness or something. 3s are known to cover up their loserness and be typical workaholic americans. You OTOH proudly wear your geekiness as a badge.

Real friendship matters to you too much to be a 3. Even the most self-liberated 3s at their healthiest have problems keeping true friends. How you cared for and stuck up for Isha when she was down, instead of getting a corporate job and 'looking good for society' disproves this crazy 3 theory. You simply do not shit on others enough to make your own self look good.

You are a 9 or a 6 most likely. I think you're a 6.

[Azeroffs]

There's a lot more to being a 3 than 'projecting the right image.' That is probably just your middle class-ness or something. 3s are known to cover up their loserness and be typical workaholic americans. You OTOH proudly wear your geekiness as a badge.

Given the right social circle, an e3 could easily be seen wearing geekiness as a badge. Also, "narcissisticly beautiful" screams 3w4 > 3w2 to me. 3w4s are more prone to the image of "look but don't touch." 3w2s are much more engaging and attention-whorish. They hardly have an elegance to their narcissism.

[Cat King Cole]

I can't see you as a 3 at all. 3s look a lot more narcissistically beautiful than you look. And what you have achieved in your life? You are a wow nerd. (no offense or anything, so am I)

WoW expat. I'm never going to go back to games. What do they get me, and where do they get me? Nothing and nowhere. They're a waste of time, something that I've wasted far too much of already.

I mean, no offence taken. It's just a visceral emotional response to having a year and a half getting nothing done and focusing all my drive and ambition on a videogame. It's absurd. Who cares if I'm the best at tanking or healing? My raid? Some puggers? They do. And I eat it up, definitely. But that's small-time. It's a dead end.

There's a lot more to being a 3 than 'projecting the right image.' That is probably just your middle class-ness or something. 3s are known to cover up their loserness and be typical workaholic americans. You OTOH proudly wear your geekiness as a badge.

Part of the geekiness is a way of saying--hey. Aren't you envious of me? I'm more shameless than you. More natural. More unshakeably self-confident. I can wear a dressing gown around like it's an Amani suit and talk to you like I'm hot shit. And you'll swallow it.

(And people do. That's the glory of it: people love me.)

The whole notion of being a loser or openly wearing your shame is just toxic to me. I have this checklist of people I think are losers or have loser traits. I want not to be them or have those traits as much as I want to be competitive with people I see as being successful human beings or having admirable traits.

That said, part of the geekiness is because I am, in fact, a geek. I get intellectual boners over maths and science. That's who and what I am. You can hide it from other people because they can't relate, but you definitely can't fake it.

Or is that not what you meant by "geekiness"?

The thing about these forums is that they're plugged straight into my inner life. I wrote elsewhere that I have dual lives. There's the guy on the outside, the performance. Then there's the thoughts and feelings on the inside that nobody knows are there. Sometimes I don't know they're there, or even what they really are. My internal landscape is so mutable like that.

I've already crossed my event horizon of shame and openness on these boards. I also have more to lose by acting a part rather than being honest so I can learn about myself. That fact that I'm even acting and performing even when nobody is looking should be telling.

Real friendship matters to you too much to be a 3. Even the most self-liberated 3s at their healthiest have problems keeping true friends. How you cared for and stuck up for Isha when she was down, instead of getting a corporate job and 'looking good for society' disproves this crazy 3 theory. You simply do not shit on others enough to make your own self look good.

Meh. Isha wasn't a "real friend". I loved her. That's a general human thing.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Let's keep it short and sweet for now lol.

3s are known as the achievers. That's their main point, in a sharp nutshell. What have you achieved??? You just aren't a go-getter achiever....((as far as I know, feel free to prove me wrong with real/tangible, external evidence....))

3s achieve to look good in the eyes of others. That's why they keep making so many external successes, to look good for other people ie "This is what I should be doing with my life, instead of being a loser."

and okay yeah my comment about 3s not knowing how to make real friends was too harsh.

[Cat King Cole]

Welp, most of my conscious drive to achieve got diverted into WoW. Guilds I've raided with would comment that I'm an excellent healer. PuGs loved my tanking and my heals because I pulled off shit that had no right to be done. Some of that leaked into other games as well. I have a bunch of unfinished essays on fundamentals of strategy RPGs and analysis of game design kicking around in my scrapbook.

In high school I deliberately cultivated my image and popularity as an oddball. I was that kid that everyone knew, even the junior years. I think I was kind of a joke to them though. For my own grade I was heavily mythologised--or so I hear. I only got to hear snippets here and there of the rumours being passed around behind my back. Didn't really matter to me if I was a laughing stock or a respected celebrity, almost everyone knew who I was.

In primary school I got a neverending stream of academic achievements term after term for being in the top 10 students. I still have no idea how, and the impostor syndrome from that still haunts me to this day. I guess being told I was brilliant constantly and then having my intelligence be neutralised by challenging high school work was really confounding for me, especially because I was pretty much being mindraped by a bunch of infatuations and a chronic rough patch with my mum, so I pulled all the way inside myself and was pretty much the definition of a psychotic depressive. I really let myself slip and just "worked" on being popular and trying to build a mini-economy for myself in WoW, which phased into becoming an expert dungeon runner at some point or another.

I also managed to attract a 10k view, 1k post thread playing a reverse turing game with a bunch of pimply mouthbreathers. By the end of it some randoms who weren't even part of the forum came in and used Gödel's incompleteness theorem to prove I was a human. It definitely started off small as an accident, but I kept it going quite deliberately.

Once in high school I got offered to give a talk about the Kuiper Belt just because the teacher picked up that I was doing a lot of independent science reading. I don't know if I'd gotten into my habit of interjecting classes with "Did You Know" trivia that I'd encountered on my wiki trolls then, maybe that was why. I did the research and gathered together a vague talk but didn't think it was good enough so I turned down the offer on the day I was due to give the presentation.

The next year's general science class as well I was That Guy who knew. That was the one year I did amazingly well at anything since my straight-HD year 7, because the teacher just made a general remark about "I expect you to do well on genetics". I really studied hard for the science exam, pulled myself together, did my planning and doing schtick that I do so well, and got myself a D for science. I don't think I did well on any other exams, except maybe Latin, but that's cheating because I have a talent for languages. I guess I have a talent for learning things too, though, so the science was cheating too I reckon.

I also got into the highly selective extension 2 maths. To put that in context, I'm covering my ext 2 maths work again this year in uni doing the university maths. Only 3 schools in my state offer it and I think the candidature was <100 out of the entire state. I guess that counts as an achievement?

Last year in my bridging course into uni, the tutor encouraged me to talk to the tutorial about some mind mapping software that I was talking with him about. I got everyone set up with it and set up a sharing account so we could get collaborative mind maps drawn up of the lectures. Honestly I think it went right over their heads, but whatever.

In general people seem to get this impression of me as some kind of shining beacon of fantastic wonderful awesomeness or something. I've variously been called brilliant, full of potential, aware, insightful, highly reflective, thoughtful, highly detailed, knowledgeable, highly talented with voice acting, blah blah blah blah. All that BS that's been glancing off the windshield since I stopped magically getting good grades without understanding what was happening.

The irony is that nobody recognises me for the things that I actually struggle to improve because I feel like I'm defective in them. Nobody knows that I can be roughly competitive with people in mental arithmetic, lagging behind by <1s now, despite the fact that mental calculations used to make me literally cry tears of frustration. So there's another achievement. I've overcome most of the emotionality that used to cloud my judgement and ability to reason... but nope. That goes unacknowledged. (Mostly... someone recently commented that my beliefs are flawlessly logical. (On the inside: WINNING.)) There's another one. Oh yeah, and people love me now, semi-effortlessly on my part (some of it's still measured and rehearsed, drrrr). I'm not that awkward kid who smells bad who you don't want to talk to. That's my crowning achievement.

[Cat King Cole]

3s aren't just about external success. It's about trying to rise above being a failure. Losers are all about failing. Running from your humble roots.

Even success opens up more failure, and the only way you can win is by trying harder and harder to temper out all your imperfections, but it's obviously a game where the only winning move is to fold and walk away... but no, that jazz is jive talkin', cat! That's loser speak for lamey loser failures.

--

I want to take a step back for a second.



Tom Condon is a genius. I just want to say that now.

But what's important about that video? Heart types operate out of derived feelings. They relate emotionally to how they picture themselves, how they evaluate themselves, how they imagine other people see them, etc. They're feelings about imaginary things, rather than being your "own" (or own? idfk, I'm so out of touch with myself).

I don't know how much it shows in my writing, but when I focus around "failure" or "victory", it changes how I feel. I get emotionally involved in my imaginary scenarios. I'm relating to my image of myself as either one of those two things. Don't I look stupid, I bet people are embarrassed just looking at me.//I'm FABULOUS! I can feel everyone's envy/admiration and it's glorious.

I hope everyone's taking notes. This is pure gold right here.

Inside? I feel whatever I'm "meant" to. Before I was a Nine. Unflappable, dispassionate, occasionally angry. Now I'm a Three. I'm an arrogant, narcissistic douche. What I haven't ever really been except when I'm being gobbled up alive by sadness is a Gul, and Guls have lots of feelings that you can't read off a script, but as for what they are, it's irrelevant to typing me.

So. There you have it. I'm a Three.

[FDG]

I can't see you as a 3 at all. 3s look a lot more narcissistically beautiful than you look. And what you have achieved in your life? You are a wow nerd. (no offense or anything, so am I)

There's a lot more to being a 3 than 'projecting the right image.' That is probably just your middle class-ness or something. 3s are known to cover up their loserness and be typical workaholic americans. You OTOH proudly wear your geekiness as a badge.

Real friendship matters to you too much to be a 3. Even the most self-liberated 3s at their healthiest have problems keeping true friends. How you cared for and stuck up for Isha when she was down, instead of getting a corporate job and 'looking good for society' disproves this crazy 3 theory. You simply do not shit on others enough to make your own self look good.

Yep, that's my impression too.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

Gul: Everybody likes being liked though. I don't think type is about that. If you try to ruin anybody's objective reputation, you will piss them off and create an enemy. Because it's something that anybody would have a hard time standing up against.

It's not really about being liked for a 3, it's that they live through other people's eyes. Not a set of individuals, but their society & culture as a whole. They like to look good for other people in a very general way. Whether the being liked is genuine or not; that is only important to 3s who are the most psychologically healthy.

So superficially and externally and professionally, they do 'all the right things.' While on the inside, confronting and accepting ambivalent feelings (being more like a 6) is what they would need to grow personally, they usually avoid that stuff; because it would get in the way of them winning and one-upping somebody else. Being part of a system that is about friendship and cooperation and not their own personal growth is also a part of that.

But yeah, some of it is just passively walking into a room and "fitting in" so fluidly that I don't realise until I spend time later reflecting and realise I wasn't myself at all.

Sounds so much more like a 9 to me.

[Cat King Cole]

idk, I don't see 9s as deliberately playing roles and putting on masks just to impress people or draw attention to themselves. In fact, I don't see Nines being good at drawing attention to themselves at all.

I can not draw attention to myself simply out of an understanding of all the negative attention it can bring, especially over here in Australia. Even superficial humility is another calculated performance, as is boasting.

Anyway, I'm deep in the throes of hindsight bias now. Time to take a break and stop talking about hypotheticals.

You also can't argue that I haven't been an all-star in anything I've set my mind to. That's been WoW and being distinctive, so far, but that's not enough. It would be a completely sick joke if I was lying on my deathbed and looked back at my life and all I'd achieved was "Everyone at school knew who I was, and I got lots of compliments about my skill at playing WoW". I've been able to go places for eight years now, and all I've achieved is being kicked out of university, and some crumby nowhere university at that. That in of itself is a sick joke. Why am I wasting my life like this?

I mean, yes, if all I aspired to do with my life was play WoW or whatever, you'd have an excellent point. But I don't, I live inside my aspirations and my plans. I definitely dream big, but it's a balancing act between big dreams and realistic expectations, and a lot of that is just living up to my mother's encouragement that I'm going to go places and my dad's belief that there's someone confident and successful hidden somewhere inside me.

[Galen]

But yeah, some of it is just passively walking into a room and "fitting in" so fluidly that I don't realise until I spend time later reflecting and realise I wasn't myself at all.

Sounds so much more like a 9 to me.

I've known lots of 9s in my life, and this doesn't sound like any of them.

idk, I don't see 9s as deliberately playing roles and putting on masks just to impress people or draw attention to themselves. In fact, I don't see Nines being good at drawing attention to themselves at all.

Agreed.

[Hot Scalding Gayser]

You're not making any sense, Gul.

If you were really a 3, you'd already have done those things, because your emotional problems wouldn't get in the way of you achieving all those 'real world str8 man things.'

It wouldn't even be something you really questioned yourself about. You'd just do it, and put your feelings in a box. Because 'yourself' wouldn't come into the equation, only what your culture wanted.

So imo either you're a 6, that DISintegrates to a 3 (which doesn't make sense, because you said you wanted to aspire more in your life) or you're a 9 that INTEgrates to 3. (Makes better sense)

You seem to be confusing core type with integration and disintegration. If 3 was already your core type, then you just would have a completely different life history.... no ifs ands or buts.

There's nothing objective about your type that you're saying. It's like, no offense but you're being neurotic maybe?? Your objective behavior patterns and your inner type have to align somehow or the whole thing doesn't make much sense at all.

[Creepy-male]

Your definitely not a 3 for the main type.

It could be part of your tritype, in fact I'd think 3w2 would work pretty well for you in the heart triad. Sometimes you ramble on about feeling lonely/sad but its hard to pinpoint this... is it a 9 going through the withdrawl phase feeling underappreciated, is it a 6 feeling anxiety and dread, or is it a 2/3 without enough admiration. It's hard to say, but I hardly ever get the melancholyish/artistic vibe a 4 has from you -- your much more positive.

[Creepy-male]

Also a system with 9w7 would complete screw up the mathematics/structure of the enneagram very poorly and some basic assumptions would have to be re-worked.

You are probably combining the 9 and 7 into a single type because they resemble each other. Both 9 and 7 are part of the same harmonic group, which you probably already know about.

[aestrivex]

Also a system with 9w7 would complete screw up the mathematics/structure of the enneagram very poorly and some basic assumptions would have to be re-worked.

You are probably combining the 9 and 7 into a single type because they resemble each other. Both 9 and 7 are part of the same harmonic group, which you probably already know about.

right, thats obviously it. you have crushed to pieces the logical foundation of my hypothesis. please assume more about the nature of its origin, your assumptions will of course have a high likelihood of being correct.

[Creepy-male]

Also a system with 9w7 would complete screw up the mathematics/structure of the enneagram very poorly and some basic assumptions would have to be re-worked.

You are probably combining the 9 and 7 into a single type because they resemble each other. Both 9 and 7 are part of the same harmonic group, which you probably already know about.

right, thats obviously it. you have crushed to pieces the logical foundation of my hypothesis. please assume more about the nature of its origin, your assumptions will of course have a high likelihood of being correct.

I can contact you at aestrivex@gmail.com

[xerx]

I fully endorse gul's SF & not-ILE typing. Anyone who thinks he's ILE needs to be restructuring his understanding of what an ILE is, what Ne is, and what a logical type is.

[Gilly]

You are piecing together tidbits about 5 and attributing your 3 ness to them.

[Cat King Cole]

You are piecing together tidbits about 5 and attributing your 3 ness to them.

You are piecing together tidbits about me and attributing your 3 ness to them.

[Galen]

You are piecing together tidbits about me and attributing your 3 ness to them.

[Gilly]

You are piecing together tidbits about me and attributing your 3 ness to them.

Seriously? That's all you've got? You've left your pieces all over this forum...just like I have. Shocker I've picked some up?