I’ve never seen a case of a person who has been into the enneagram, who has entered it in a healthful state. And this is because people who would be interested into the enneagram, would have motivations for its entering, that more concern a lower level of health.
A healthy person wouldn’t really need to be that into the enneagram, really; they’d have reached their integration point.
Unhealthy ego patterns are more likely to attract to something as this.. My motivation for coming into typology was to further separate myself from other people, and also to understand why I was so fucking different from everyone else.. Even, I differ far more than your typical person with autism… I also fell in love with the archetype and pattern aspect, because of my intuition.. And I contemplated it a lot. How I got good at the enneagram actually is mostly from my own contemplation and holistic understanding of the types.. I’ve not done as much reading as it looks, I had started off with a not so good, but better than many starter schools like Chesnut or Fauvre, with Christopher Heurtz, and his book *The Sacred Enneagram* was the only book I ever completed.. Now, I’m trying to read more of Wisdom of the Enneagram, I had just really started off reading the triads within it, and my own type and the core 8, because I crushed on an 8…
But the motivations for entering the enneagram are important to know. Because they for one thing, say something about your own type… But also, the motivations are really not likely to be healthful. They are far more likely to serve the ego….
I do not like having to see myself in something so common, and a few years ago, I wouldn’t even have been able to say this.. But child abuse is “common”, and most people in the typology community appear to have had dysfunctional (at best) or abusive childhoods… There doesn’t appear to be anyone that I’ve ever seen with an ideal childhood, in any typology community. It is worse in the enneagram, but also seen in MBTI and Socionics, as well. And neurodiversity is prevalent in these communities, and being neurodiverse with its differences, predisposes trauma in most environments.
People are a lot more likely to mistype as their disintegration point when they come in.. This didn’t happen to myself, but when I first took an enneagram test, I had gotten 4 core, but just one point short of 2. I believe it was the eclectic energies test.. I don’t believe testing is that great anyhow, especially because there is such a poor understanding of types in the general enneagram conscious. But when you have no idea as how I hadn’t, about the enneagram.. You at least cannot just answer the questions in as biased, a way.
I would have to say that young adult years can also be quite a challenge… An abused child, unless they were able to evade their abusive situation early on, isn’t going to enter the world healthfully, and with healthy ego patterns. So, the likelihood is that their motives and thus behaviors, would induce the pathological ego structure… There is less time to process the abuse, as well.
This is in part why I don’t really feel that it’s actually a good thing to diagnose personality disorders so young… For one thing, the personality isn’t finished forming until the mid to late twenties (in variance by individual), but also because an abused child who wasn’t able to get out of their abuse, who just enters young adulthood, isn’t going to be undone of their abusive schemas….
I was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder at just 17, with the provisional borderline protocol.. I’m in my early twenties.. I outgrew a lot of my “borderline behaviors”, but my attention seeking behaviors when I hit my 2 line still always come on from stress (which is often, because I still live in the abusive environment I grew up in).. It’s just that to me, a personality disorder (on a pathological level as with the DSM) is a fixed, rigid personality pattern, that won’t absolve when stress lifts…
There isn’t even a chance really, for the young adult to really not have a dysfunctional behavioral pattern, and the personality isn’t even yet set into place.
The reason I bring up personality disorders, is because more than any type of disorder, these correlate to the enneagram specifically. Theodore Millon subtypes are better than the DSM, in my opinion… They aren’t necessarily a “disorder”.. And I would fit the schizotypal borderline in there. I see schizotypal borderline as 4w5, narcissistic borderline as 4w3, and core borderline as 6.
Something to be mindful of for someone who never has processed their childhood abuse and/or trauma, and also for other people who are looking on at the person, is that the behavior may really more show the disintegration point…. The motivation will of course be at the core, but people focus way too much on behaviors, rather than motivation, in these communities….
People make the mistake of assuming most people would be at an average health… People into the enneagram aren’t really your “average people”, with very specific motivations for entering the enneagram, most times… Ones that aren’t going to be as healthy of a motivation.
Another thing that I sort of explained yesterday, is that symptoms that are strictly related to PTSD can be misinterpreted as types.
More than any types, I would have say PTSD overlaps 6 and 9.
With 6, PTSD can exaggerate reactivity with its hijacking the amygdala to make more extreme emotional reactions, with what perceives as a threat. PTSD is an anxiety disorder (it classifies as both anxiety and traumatic), and 6 is an anxiety type…. If the nervous system is on too much, it can stress the body with cortisol and make one more hypervigilant and that’s why you get the defining symptom of exaggerated startle response.
PTSD also can mistake as core 6 projection…. Because the hippocampus wires to store memory and will be overactive when a perceived traumatic stimulus awakens that memory, and so you can get someone with PTSD reacting to what is their stored trauma, and it can look like complete, unsolicited projection.
Any type can have PTSD, and these are universal symptoms that define PTSD.
The prefrontal cortex, amygdala, and hippocampus are all brain parts that are damaged when coming to PTSD, but they are reversible in some extent…. PTSD is essentially an injured Limbic system. It’s more an injury than anything else…
With a core 9.. It can be mistaken because 9 disintegrates to 6, not only, but also because of the dissociation.
I feel that the main differences in these things, is that these behaviors would only exist on the offending trauma. A person with PTSD would only dissociate from traumatic events or emotions that are specific to the trauma.. Someone with PTSD only would react like this to traumatic triggers. (The hypervigilance can apply to anything, though. That happens from repeated traumatic trigger clicking and putting the body in a perpetual cortisol grip where it hijacks and startles).
The way a person gets abused matters. For one person, the trigger can take form of sexual content, and for another, invalidation… If the person has suffered numerous types of abuses, there can be more triggers.
Some types of abuse are a lot easier to set off triggers with, like invalidation, so the person would be reacting a lot more… And if a person extends numerous traumas, there would be more kinds of triggers and thus, more ways to set off reaction.
I will also say that maybe PTSD can also overlap a 4 fix.. Something I just thought of.. And, it makes sense to me in why I see the CPTSD description heavily biasing to 649/469.. Is that someone’s abuse and trauma can make them from others, feel alienated. That no one can understand their own trauma… And if an abuser makes the person to feel this way, calling them something as a “weirdo” or “freak”, and the vicim introjects this…
Now, as with myself, if it is a general belief that no one ever will understand you on any level— with separation that ensues from this feeling alienated to gratify ego and quell shame, that is a 4 core. If it’s just for the trauma, it may, or may not pertain to a 4 fix….
Attachment types may also mistake their trauma as their core identity. Especially I feel a 6, who may attach to something as a support group, and identify as a “traumatized person”…
This is why the motivation really has to be the focal point of consideration. Some types may not as much attune to what their core motivations are, less introspective types (8, 7, 2).. And attachment types.. Especially when there’s no 4 or 5 fix….
A telltale way to know what someone’s type is, is the line movement. There are some superficial behaviors that can result in overlaps of line behavior… But overall, if one looks closely to examine.. It isn’t as easy to fuck up, as it is with someone looking onward a person, with mere behavior.. In order to type someone in lines, you have to actually see the person fall or rise, though. Otherwise, it is just behavioral, as much as it is without looking at lines…
The lines I feel are better than even the triads… The triads are traits that can taint with underlying pathology… Or even with something as MBTI or Socionics type.
The entire premise of being able to type behavior is that it shows where the core motivation lies and pushes all that behavior.. If you have something external to enneagram that adds behavior that is related to cognition or to different brain wiring (injury or a hardware as autism or adhd), then you aren’t actually looking at the enneagram type. That’s a different anatomy. In my book I’m writing, I made metaphor for this all…
People are far too complex to just blanket general behaviors.. There are human frailties that no typology was made account for on a behavioral level. The enneagram is different from all other typologies in that you can actually type a person with ease, if you can actually access the motive and line movement, which are meant to withstand anomalies…
An issue that I feel is here, is that people are too used to systems like MBTI and Socionics, where you focus more on behavior and speech patterns alone, to see where the cognition is.. You of course have someone’s speech to factor into the enneagram, but it is far more nuanced.. And communicative barriers and behaviors can misinterpret as showing way to a motivation, when it’s a dead end and not where all behavior generates from in the emotional (enneagram) sphere. People conflate enneagram and MBTI things all the time as well, and this is where I made the metaphor I haven’t to public given.
MBTI and Socionics don’t concern a lens.. So, you can quantify the types a lot more just by external looking.. It isn’t into the heart, the heart is harder to access on a surgical level than the brain. And the part of the brain where emotions govern, is far harder to access and is inoperable, really, whereas the prefrontal cortex (mbti, socionics) is not as much so. It is a metaphor of accessibility, the way it is in itself structured.
A person can kill if one tries too hard to reach into the amygdala… A person can metaphorically kill with their assumptions and their humiliating a person where their core insecurities, pain, and fears lie… A person’s perception is more delicate tissue than of hardwired bone.. That can take of more… That isn’t as to the touch, soft…
The perception, rather than cognition itself, is where almost all pathologies lie. Perception impacts how the cognition works. How a person who is a 4, would with their Ne, find ways to separate their own self… Or their Ni, seeing in their eye how different they are… How a 6 perception would use its cognition with something like Ne, to find possibilities of threat… Or a 5, possibilities with Ne to further expand their intellectual sphere to feel more in the world, competent.
The perception is the driving force for all interactions and how the cognition to interact inside and out, uses. It is the heart and conscious brain, pumping all blood to the other areas, and the conscious that tells a brain what do.
There are some things with circumstance.. That can make fog to the perception. Disintegration itself.. But things that would be outside, as much as the weather can snow or rain.. And hit the perception.. These things will result in disintegration their own self, but some of these things would be unrelated to the enneagram. They would still wet the psyche, but can make the perception lose control over its inherent way of seeing. Such is the case with something as PTSD.. Where chemical accumulation in the body will wet it, erode it.. And the original structure of it has momentarily deformed..
The cortisol surfaces up, it drowns the perception and stresses it.. So the perception sees underwater of all this cortisol.. And drowns as it tries see.. But can’t..
It sickens a mind.. And if the genetics make for it, result in physical frailties as fibromyalgia, autoimmunity, TMJ, and other means. I’m diagnosed with idiopathic neuropathy, TMJ and fibromyalgia. I’m being tested for autoimmunity, as my sister and aunt have mastocytosis (sister) and chron’s disease (aunt). My cousin who is older than I, he’s 28.. He just this recency got diagnosed with thyroid cancer and had his taken out. He had thyroid challenges before….
All relate to PTSD and the cortisol, I feel. But the Nod2gene runs in my family. It’s just the stress activated it. In me..
The generational abuse in the family line has made for more stressed nervous systems that likely played role to activate this gene..
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