How seriously do you take disintegration/integration? I know it's kind of an integral aspect of enneagram theory, and I find it very interesting and cool, but deep down I feel it is not realistic at all. It's TOO perfect. And too open to interpretation.


This is what I'm dealing with personally:
I recently retyped from 7w6 to 9w1 but lately I've started to notice myself in old patterns of what I once considered integration/disintegration. The way I experienced this and described it as a 7 was that when I integrate to 5 I am suddenly very interested in some project and want to isolate myself from the world to work on it. My mind constantly coming back to that project even to my detriment. It's kind of an obsessive state. I'm oddly creative and productive and single-minded.

I also have clear phases of what seems like integration to 1. Even though I'm usually pretty easy going and an underachiever, hate rules, don't like to tell people what to do, I will go through phases during stressful times in my life where I am suddenly neurotic, hyper-critical, and obsessed with justice and correctness.

I think I integrate when I feel like I am in a relatively secure place and I'm not feuding with someone, having major money issues, etc., so I am able to relax and concentrate without my mind always coming back to some concern or guilt I'm trying to repress. Or just being distracted by worldly matters. The opposite causes me to disintegrate. When I feel a lot of guilt and stress or if I feel my job performance has dropped to an all time low and I'm tired of being criticized, I'll kind of go on the offensive, saying "Criticize me? I'll become perfect so no one can say shit and I'll criticize them so they know how it feels!"

I think I could just as easily say this is 3-6-9 integration though I think. Becoming more productive at 3 and more super-ego-y at 6. But see, that's what I'm talking about. I could probably make a case for any type that way. Or none of this could be related to enneagram at all! It also kind of seems like I'm going back and forth between Creative and Normalizing subtypes.

Sorry for the rambles. Thoughts?