Enneagram type 9: Dysthymia and chronic apathy

[Milo]

Is this common for 9s to feel like they should be doing something from the outside: being productive, working, meeting goals, but remaining indifferent and uncommitted to any of it deep inside? If so, how do 9s get over this state? There are many 9s who seem to be doing fine. On 9 forums there are many posts like this one where some report pervasive struggles with apathy:

Hey guys, I'm an INTP enneagram 9w1 and I'm trying to figure out what to do/what direction my life should go. I've been depressed for a while, but I've been on prozac lately and feel I have more energy so I should use this before I slip back down the slippery slope.

I feel like I should be doing something with my life, something productive, but I can't find interest in anything. The only things I find barely enjoyable and just chilling with friends and smoking weed. I have no sense of enjoyment from learning about things that I will never use or honestly just learning things in general right now. I can't seem to figure out a way to be emotionally impacted enough by my values to actually do work.

I feel like I need to do things that are productive because I feel like I will never find a partner in life if I am just a lazy person who does nothing every day. D&D is fun, as it seems like a total Ne and Ti thing depending on what the INTP is going for.(also have questioned being an INTP for being an ISTP) I also enjoy pickleball, but I haven't done either of these in a while because my energy is so low and my body aches.

I don't ever remember if I ever had a love of learning for learnings sake(which is really a main signifier between INTP and ISTP I feel), but I would like to at least get some sense of enjoyment from things again. Even relaxing the fun is taken from me because I'm constantly reminded of how I am doing nothing productive and thus will never be in a relationship. Also if I'm not doing productive things or learning than the INTP is basically a logical robot who has little to say and is boring. Sure the Ne sometimes picks up slack, but that is short term and makes me feel like if I am not constantly coming up with creative stuff to challenge others thoughts, or being funny, that I am terribly dull and nobody wants to actually spend time with me. I always do these unproductive things because when all of the stuff gives me little/no enjoyment, I might as well do the ones that take the least effort.

I can hang out with people and go about my daily activities fine, but none of it is productive and none of it impacts me on a deeper emotional level. It just feels like I'll never be able to find a passion that gives me drive or a sense of purpose/meaning.

Am I just stuck in unhealthy thinking or what is going on here(other than depression).

In turn, a translation from the Greek “a-chedia” (no care), accidia refers to a laziness of the psyche and of the spirit, rather than a tendency to inaction, and so does “indolence” in the context of this book. Such spiritual laziness may be spoken of in terms of ... a deafening to the spirit and a loss of the sense of being to the point of not even knowing the difference—a spiritual coarsening. Psychologically, accidia manifests as a loss of interiority, a refusal to see, and a resistance to change.

The combination of loss of interiority and the resigned and abnegated character that goes along with it, results in a syndrome of a good hearted, comfortable “earthiness” that may be exaggerated to the point of literalness and narrowness.

We could say that the extreme extroversion of enneatype 9 not only has a constitutional root, but that constitution serves as a point of support for the defensive evasion of interiority. Arietti has drawn a distinction between two main types of depression, each supported by a different type of personality: The “claiming depression” (our envy type 4) and the self-blaming type, “where the main emphasis is on self-accusation and self-depreciation.”

The same trait of psychological inertia may be thought to underlie an excessive attachment to the familiar, to the group norms or “how things are done.” Robotization, of course, can be seen as a consequence of loss of interiority, of alienation from self. On the whole we are struck by the paradox that this most painstaking and long suffering way of being in the world is rooted in a passion for comfort: a psychological comfort purchased at such high price that, as intimated above, bioenergetics practitioners brand enneatype 9 individuals as “masochistic.”

[ApeironStella]

Ah... I actually was wondering if I have dysthymia for a few years now, so it might be related, maybe. Chronic apathy is certainly something nines, especially when not in a good place in their life and sometimes even then, struggle with. It is kind of the reason why I have so many different hobbies- I feel like I should be doing something important but I don't exactly have personal self-drive of a 3 so it gets directed to hobbies. Even then, even when I act so immersed in something, there is always a... removed quality to it? Almost as if I am just faking it than feeling it.

It is even more confusing with so/sx and LII combo- I am actually seen as a pretty lively person with an always upbeat childish air to me, while most of the time I'm either indifferent or slightly depressed. (nothing to E-4 level though, just simply being bored of everything kind of unhedonia which often goes hand-in-hand with chronic apathy.)

I can spend hours doing a thing of my own decision but in the end I am still not fully invested in it. Only time I really seem to get affected is when I feel like I might be losing a bond with someone dear, but even then my first reaction is to shutdown and immediately try to go into "I don't care" attitude.

And well... I will share it if I ever find out something that actually works and doesn't feel like generic bullshit advice that you just go nah with.