On Being a Four
Susan Rhodes
Upon discovering I was a Four, I knew I was in trouble. Sure, I could relate to some of the descriptions (“intense, individualistic, emotionally sensitive”); I knew this was me. But there was more: melodramatic, envious, and elitist. I wasn’t so sure about that. And then there were some things that I had considered assets—like determination, the yen for authenticity, and the ability to stand up against public opinion—that were made to sound like problems. I didn’t understand why. I mean, I could understand how they could become problems, if we didn’t take the right attitude. But they still seemed like gifts in need of proper development to me.
I had a hard time relating to type labels like the Romantic or Tragic Romantic, too. They sounded positively Gothic! But then maybe they weren’t so far off; all those sweet but strange 4w5 Sexual (SX) subtype Goths are definitely Fours….but not quite my kind of Four. A lot of type descriptions seem to be for Sexual Fours (and not-terribly-well-adjusted SX Fours, at that).
I’m a Self-Pres. (SP) Four, and we’re a hardier lot—at least on the outside. We look a lot like Eights (at least if you don’t look too close; we tend to have that same bluntness and directness that people don’t like very much and no patience for b.s. (remember the Four’s love of authenticity….). I’ve meet up with possible Fours sometimes at enneagram events who think they’re Eights but are not really sure. Are they really Eights or just SP Fours who don’t want the melodramatic description that so often comes with the type?
(I once suggested to one would-be Eight that she might consider Four as a choice and she practically jumped out of her skin. Sometimes people act that way when you nail their type, of course. But she seemed insulted—like being a Four might be beneath her. Maybe it’s because we’re usually portrayed as self-destructive or needy; and I suppose that wouldn’t appeal to an Eight.)
What’s really going on at Four is the working through of emotional conflicts—the ones that are more than skin-deep. Everybody’s got those kind of conflicts, but at Point 4, working through isn’t a luxury but a necessity. Early in life, we’re doing what other people are doing: trying to grow up, get a job, get a “hold” on life. But those issues that come up at midlife for other people often come up for Fours at an earlier age, even before adolescence. Fours tend to be serious kids; and they tend to ask Mom and Dad serious questions early on, leaving non-Four parents nonplussed. I suspect that a lot of us little Fours sort of scare our parents by broaching subjects that even they aren’t yet prepared to deal with. And that may account for why Four kids can feel alienated from both parents and other kids: because they’re delving into deep stuff much earlier than everybody else—and they’re going much deeper. And that makes people uncomfortable.
I’ve written about my difficulty with parents who were probably a Three (my mom) and a Six (my dad); I sometimes joke that they wanted a compliant little Nine to complete the family. My mom’s familiar refrain was, “Why can’t you just learn to say ‘okay’ ?” You can imagine the response that would evoke in a Four! As an adult, my forays into different (but, to them, exotic forms of spiritual exploration) evoked the same puzzlement; they had a hard time understanding why I didn’t just want what other people did.
Of course, so did I! I spent years wondering the same thing—wondering why I couldn’t settle for what seemed okay for the rest of the populous: a 9 to 5 job working in an office, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and all the rest. But as a Four, it didn’t quite work out for me. Not that Fours don’t do any of those things, but we seldom do all of them—and whatever we do, we don’t do it unreflectively. It’s just not in our nature. It’s one of the things I really like about being a Four: the fact that I can’t help but take the time (and spend the effort) to really work out the ramifications of what I’m doing. I may not always work it out correctly, but I’m always engaged in the process. Afterwards, I’m willing to take responsibility for my choices. And I think that this is something I see in a lot of Fours: when we make decisions, there’s not a lot of second-guessing. We think about things, decide what to do, and then take the consequences, good or bad.
The difficulty for modern Fours is that a lot of us are searching for the kind of context that doesn’t seem to exist in modern society—for a transformative role that involves the transmutation of intense emotions or sexual energy. That’s why we see so many artists, actors, and depth psychologists that are Fours. But there’s something missing (!) from these roles—something deeper and more basic. Perhaps it is part of the lost feminine mysteries, with their temple dancers, high priestesses, and mystics.
Whatever it is, it’s not part of the dominant paradigm these days. And that’s why we see it as missing: because it is missing! We’ve lost something in modern life, something deep and mystical and real. It can be found, but it takes a something of a quest to find it, because it’s not right around the corner.
Fours, like Eights, need something to commit to, something that is truly worthy of our time and energy. When we get committed, we get totally committed, and it can’t be to projects, people, or organizations that we don’t respect. This stuff about Fours coming to terms with “ordinary life”; yes, it’s true, that we need to be able to come to terms with certain things, but sometimes at enneagram events, I’ve felt like people were sort of trying to rub my nose in it—trying to say that I just need to suck it up and settle down to what passes for normality these days. But that kind of prescription doesn’t work for a Four; it only makes us pull away, because we know that other people just don’t understand. As for equanimity: yes, another fine quality, especially if it means the eye within the center of the storm, because that is something I can relate to. But often, it seems to be interpreted as “getting over it”—you know, just letting go of all that intense emotion so you feel nice and calm—so we’re back to transforming Fours into Nines again. (Good luck with that project; it never worked for me.)
I’ll admit that I am attracted to intense experiences, but I don’t see anything neurotic about that; intense experiences are often transformative experiences, and I am drawn to transformation—for better or worse. Transformation sometimes causes deep suffering, and I can’t say I like that part; but I do see benefit in opening to experiences that allow me to throw off unwanted inner baggage. This is different from being melodramatic, although I’m guessing that authentic (but transformative) suffering and melodrama can look much the same from the outside. SP Fours make a clear distinction between the two; we have a distaste for melodrama, being the most practical of our type. Our inner sensitivity tends to be well-disguised. I put on a good show most of the time in the interests of meeting other people’s expectations. That’s okay; it’s a good discipline, as long as I can let my hair down when I’m by myself or with close friends.
I think most Fours find it particularly hard to live in a Three-dominated culture, because we are trying to divest ourselves of the inauthentic bits of Three. It’s not that Three is better or worse than any other type, but it tends to be a “shadow” type for Fours, probably because we still feel the pull of Three but know we have to learn how to tell the difference between image and reality if we want inner balance. I did gain a better appreciation for the joys of living in a Three-dominated country after visiting eastern Europe and India and living in London for a while. Nothing modern seems to work for long outside our busily efficient country (where we are very good at promptly fixing public elevators or escalators, among other things.) And everything is terribly expensive, especially high-tech stuff. Europe has wonderfully crumbly city walls, staggeringly beautiful gardens, and amazing cathedrals, but lacks something in the way of efficiency, effectiveness, and cleanliness (at least, from an American’s point of view).
Getting back to the paper-thin sensitivity thing…it’s both a blessing and a curse. It makes Fours one of the “serious” types. Not that we don’t have a sense of humor, but it’s quirky. We joke about taboo stuff, like death or pain…ha-ha-ha…nobody else does, that is, except Fives and Nines. Fives have an even quirkier sense of humor than we do; and Nines—well, Nines are basically shock-proof. It’s great; you can talk about virtually anything and most Nines will sit companionably by and listen without blinking. No big deal. Neither type puts out “critical vibes,” either, which is really nice. And they tend to like decisive people; and I have no problems making decisions.
Upon reflection, there have actually been an awful lot of Nines and Fives in my life. Is it because Fours, Fives, and Nines are “withdrawing types”? Enneagram books always make the withdrawal sound like something we shouldn’t be doing. But why not? There’s a lot to be said for solitude. Nines like to “withdraw” into nature, Fives into books, and Fours into art. And we like to withdraw together, too; some of my best gatherings have been with small groups of Nines and Fives. (It’s not that we don’t like to socialize, folks, it’s just that we like a little intimacy and space “apart from the madding crowd.”)
I get along relatively well with most other types, too, although I seldom have Threes as close friends; they’re just too driven and/or involved in the hustle-bustle of life. And that gets me over-amped. I admire most the Ones I’ve known; they always seem to be involved in doing meaningful work or upholding some admirable principle. They can be touchy, though; and some of them seem defensive around Fours. (I guess we’re at the wrong end of the connecting point spectrum.) Twos are warm and fun-loving, but in some things they act friendlier than they really are, and I’ve gotten my feelings hurt at times. I’m much more cautious around Twos than I was in my Twenties. Sevens are fun (at least, when they are not those super-serious “overly-reformed” Sevens that don’t know how to relax). But like Twos, they can some time be initially engaging only to wander off later—and that’s hard on me, once I’ve formed a bond with somebody.
Sixes are interesting types, but I never know how the relationship is going to go. It’s my impression that Sixes either put Fours on a pedestal or find them scary, or both. It’s hard to know what’s going on in their heads. Learning about the enneagram helped me not to tease them about their anxiety, something I used to do before I realized how real it is for them. I think this is a blind spot for most Fours; we might get “down,” but we don’t really get anxious. In some ways, we could really use a little more fear because it would make us more cautious—and more understanding of other people’s fears.
Eights are like our polar opposite. I really enjoy Eights; they make me laugh. But the relationship can become explosive; there’s a lot of intensity in the air when you get a Four and Eight in the same room. Strangely, I’ve noticed that we can also scare one another at times. Eights can be intimidated by a Four’s way with words while Fours can be intimidated by an Eight’s ability to get out in life and do “big things”—like plunge into jungles or war zones. And then there is their “big energy”; it could really hurt if any Eight decided to unload on you…. One of my best friends is a 9w8, and she’s very easy to be around; she has the impassivity of the Nine and the strength of the Eight, so there’s the big energy but in a calm outer package. She doesn’t mind my intensity and I don’t mind her occasional grumpiness.
Now that I’m older, I don’t mind being sensitive as much as I used to. I have ways to take care of myself and don’t expect other people to do it for me. Finding the enneagram helped me better understand where people are coming from, so a lot of things I used to take personally just rock off my back now. I might not like the energy, but I know it’s not my fault when people get reactive, anxious, or hostile. Also, I’m more aware of what I get from that sensitivity: the ability to deeply empathize and be receptive to people who are in genuine pain.
Arthur Koestler spoke about the tragic and trivial planes; I think he might have been a Four. He found himself in a lot of intense situations, and I think that’s the way he liked it: living more on the tragic than the trivial plane. By tragic, he didn’t mean sad, though; he meant highly-charged, intense, or numinous. And by trivial, he didn’t mean worthless or unimportant; he meant situations where the energy is not super-intense, as during an ordinary day. During the Spanish Civil War and WWII, he found himself in lots of intense situations. Afterwards, he probed into deep topics (like the nature of creativity and systems theory) and did a lot of writing about what he found….From my experience, Fours are okay with ordinary life as long as we manage to find some way to be in touch with something deeper in life. The problem with ordinariness comes when ordinariness is all there is. I don’t know any Four who can live without depth or a sense of meaning, however we conceive of it. We just can’t live on the surface of life all the time; we starve without something deeper. All the stuff that nourishes us is deep in the earth, where the mysteries dwell...my idea of a good time is to envision myself sitting by a deep pool in the forest, just drinking up the energy there.
Writing also pulls up that deep energy within me; and what spills out onto the page is always new. It’s like giving birth: painful but exhilarating. It can take months to write a book chapter or article, especially when the material is emergent. But it is such an interesting process, even with the frustration. I know I throw away two or three times as much material as I end up with; ruthless culling is the only way to create something people might actually want to read.
In that respect, we’re a lot like Ones; we’re fussy about what we produce. Discipline confers dignity, and dignity confers self-respect. And that’s so great. Having self-respect doesn’t always bring happiness but it sure beats self-hatred, which is a big bugaboo for Fours. I always wondered why envy was the official sin for the type when it was obvious to me that hatred was a bigger issue—I guess it’s because hatred isn’t on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins, although one wonders, why not?
Actually, Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo have talked about hatred and Fours; so I guess it’s not exactly a secret. Here’s my theory about Fours and self-hatred: Fours are extremely tuned in to other people’s emotions, especially negative emotions. We also sense when people are lying about how they feel. So when we don’t get real love when we’re little, we know it. And we want it! If we don’t get it, we get very frustrated. Then we get angry—and then we start hating the ones that don’t love us. Ultimately, we start thinking we’re pretty awful for hating people that way, and we start punishing ourselves by “eating” our own hatred. The fancy term for this is introjection.
I did some inner child work once, and was shocked to find a raging 18-month old inside me, filled with both hatred and self-hatred. The hatred was for my parents, who knew more about sentimental affection than real love; the self-hatred was for me: punishment for hating my parents so much. They were trying, but like most of their generation, they really needed a breather after 20 years sunk the Depression followed by WWII. But what did I know about that? Like all kids, I wanted my needs met. And when it didn’t happen, my frustration became anger. It didn’t take long for the anger to become rage and the rage to become hatred and then self-hatred! For Fours, this can become a pretty nasty vicious circle.
The only way out is retracing our steps back the way we came: self-hatred > hatred > frustration > need > fear > vulnerability > sorrow. We know we’re getting somewhere when we start to cry. When it happened to me, I cried for years and years; it takes a lot to wash out all that stuff inside. There’s no self-hatred left in me now; it’s quiet in there. But there’s still a streak of native wildness that I need to honor. It was immensely helpful to me to discover that Type 4 was next to a zone of chaos on the bottom of the circle—lots of people have commented or written about that. It was a relief to understand that the wildness I felt within me was natural, not something weird. It has a purpose, just as I do, just as life does. Discovering that life has purpose is such a gift; there’s nothing else like it.
When I look at my life now, it’s not like I don’t have problems. There are plenty of them; they never go away. But they don’t seem like mountains anymore; they seem normal and life seems basically do-able.
By the time I started working with the enneagram, I had already reached the point where I was ready to focus more on potentials than problems. So when I looked at my type, I saw the “up” side: the depth, originality, courage, and rejection of artifice. And I couldn’t help but admire those qualities and want to find ways to develop them. And of course I saw the potential in the other eight types, too; it just jumped right out at me. And that’s how I came to be such a cheerleader for a positively-oriented enneagram.
It’s ironic, but it is incredibly easy when you’re a Four to see the “down” side of both my type and all the other types; nobody has to tell me all the ways in which people can be disappointing! But I guess I found that focusing on those disappointments didn’t seem to help anything; it just made me feel hurt and alone. It was when I began to focus on people’s potential that I was able to start contributing something instead of draining other people with my emotional demands.
I think the greatest gift at Point 4 is the gift of the Wounded Healer: the gift of healing others because we know how much they hurt. The challenge is acknowledging the wound but focusing on gaining the strength of heart we need if we are to heal others. Fours who can do this find the meaning they have been seeking, as well as inner peace.
__________ Enneagram Monthly, Issue 180, September 2011
I had a hard time relating to type labels like the Romantic or Tragic Romantic, too. They sounded positively Gothic! But then maybe they weren’t so far off; all those sweet but strange 4w5 Sexual (SX) subtype Goths are definitely Fours….but not quite my kind of Four. A lot of type descriptions seem to be for Sexual Fours (and not-terribly-well-adjusted SX Fours, at that).
I’m a Self-Pres. (SP) Four, and we’re a hardier lot—at least on the outside. We look a lot like Eights (at least if you don’t look too close; we tend to have that same bluntness and directness that people don’t like very much and no patience for b.s. (remember the Four’s love of authenticity….). I’ve meet up with possible Fours sometimes at enneagram events who think they’re Eights but are not really sure. Are they really Eights or just SP Fours who don’t want the melodramatic description that so often comes with the type?
(I once suggested to one would-be Eight that she might consider Four as a choice and she practically jumped out of her skin. Sometimes people act that way when you nail their type, of course. But she seemed insulted—like being a Four might be beneath her. Maybe it’s because we’re usually portrayed as self-destructive or needy; and I suppose that wouldn’t appeal to an Eight.)
What’s really going on at Four is the working through of emotional conflicts—the ones that are more than skin-deep. Everybody’s got those kind of conflicts, but at Point 4, working through isn’t a luxury but a necessity. Early in life, we’re doing what other people are doing: trying to grow up, get a job, get a “hold” on life. But those issues that come up at midlife for other people often come up for Fours at an earlier age, even before adolescence. Fours tend to be serious kids; and they tend to ask Mom and Dad serious questions early on, leaving non-Four parents nonplussed. I suspect that a lot of us little Fours sort of scare our parents by broaching subjects that even they aren’t yet prepared to deal with. And that may account for why Four kids can feel alienated from both parents and other kids: because they’re delving into deep stuff much earlier than everybody else—and they’re going much deeper. And that makes people uncomfortable.
I’ve written about my difficulty with parents who were probably a Three (my mom) and a Six (my dad); I sometimes joke that they wanted a compliant little Nine to complete the family. My mom’s familiar refrain was, “Why can’t you just learn to say ‘okay’ ?” You can imagine the response that would evoke in a Four! As an adult, my forays into different (but, to them, exotic forms of spiritual exploration) evoked the same puzzlement; they had a hard time understanding why I didn’t just want what other people did.
Of course, so did I! I spent years wondering the same thing—wondering why I couldn’t settle for what seemed okay for the rest of the populous: a 9 to 5 job working in an office, buying a house, getting married, having kids, and all the rest. But as a Four, it didn’t quite work out for me. Not that Fours don’t do any of those things, but we seldom do all of them—and whatever we do, we don’t do it unreflectively. It’s just not in our nature. It’s one of the things I really like about being a Four: the fact that I can’t help but take the time (and spend the effort) to really work out the ramifications of what I’m doing. I may not always work it out correctly, but I’m always engaged in the process. Afterwards, I’m willing to take responsibility for my choices. And I think that this is something I see in a lot of Fours: when we make decisions, there’s not a lot of second-guessing. We think about things, decide what to do, and then take the consequences, good or bad.
The difficulty for modern Fours is that a lot of us are searching for the kind of context that doesn’t seem to exist in modern society—for a transformative role that involves the transmutation of intense emotions or sexual energy. That’s why we see so many artists, actors, and depth psychologists that are Fours. But there’s something missing (!) from these roles—something deeper and more basic. Perhaps it is part of the lost feminine mysteries, with their temple dancers, high priestesses, and mystics.
Whatever it is, it’s not part of the dominant paradigm these days. And that’s why we see it as missing: because it is missing! We’ve lost something in modern life, something deep and mystical and real. It can be found, but it takes a something of a quest to find it, because it’s not right around the corner.
Fours, like Eights, need something to commit to, something that is truly worthy of our time and energy. When we get committed, we get totally committed, and it can’t be to projects, people, or organizations that we don’t respect. This stuff about Fours coming to terms with “ordinary life”; yes, it’s true, that we need to be able to come to terms with certain things, but sometimes at enneagram events, I’ve felt like people were sort of trying to rub my nose in it—trying to say that I just need to suck it up and settle down to what passes for normality these days. But that kind of prescription doesn’t work for a Four; it only makes us pull away, because we know that other people just don’t understand. As for equanimity: yes, another fine quality, especially if it means the eye within the center of the storm, because that is something I can relate to. But often, it seems to be interpreted as “getting over it”—you know, just letting go of all that intense emotion so you feel nice and calm—so we’re back to transforming Fours into Nines again. (Good luck with that project; it never worked for me.)
I’ll admit that I am attracted to intense experiences, but I don’t see anything neurotic about that; intense experiences are often transformative experiences, and I am drawn to transformation—for better or worse. Transformation sometimes causes deep suffering, and I can’t say I like that part; but I do see benefit in opening to experiences that allow me to throw off unwanted inner baggage. This is different from being melodramatic, although I’m guessing that authentic (but transformative) suffering and melodrama can look much the same from the outside. SP Fours make a clear distinction between the two; we have a distaste for melodrama, being the most practical of our type. Our inner sensitivity tends to be well-disguised. I put on a good show most of the time in the interests of meeting other people’s expectations. That’s okay; it’s a good discipline, as long as I can let my hair down when I’m by myself or with close friends.
I think most Fours find it particularly hard to live in a Three-dominated culture, because we are trying to divest ourselves of the inauthentic bits of Three. It’s not that Three is better or worse than any other type, but it tends to be a “shadow” type for Fours, probably because we still feel the pull of Three but know we have to learn how to tell the difference between image and reality if we want inner balance. I did gain a better appreciation for the joys of living in a Three-dominated country after visiting eastern Europe and India and living in London for a while. Nothing modern seems to work for long outside our busily efficient country (where we are very good at promptly fixing public elevators or escalators, among other things.) And everything is terribly expensive, especially high-tech stuff. Europe has wonderfully crumbly city walls, staggeringly beautiful gardens, and amazing cathedrals, but lacks something in the way of efficiency, effectiveness, and cleanliness (at least, from an American’s point of view).
Getting back to the paper-thin sensitivity thing…it’s both a blessing and a curse. It makes Fours one of the “serious” types. Not that we don’t have a sense of humor, but it’s quirky. We joke about taboo stuff, like death or pain…ha-ha-ha…nobody else does, that is, except Fives and Nines. Fives have an even quirkier sense of humor than we do; and Nines—well, Nines are basically shock-proof. It’s great; you can talk about virtually anything and most Nines will sit companionably by and listen without blinking. No big deal. Neither type puts out “critical vibes,” either, which is really nice. And they tend to like decisive people; and I have no problems making decisions.
Upon reflection, there have actually been an awful lot of Nines and Fives in my life. Is it because Fours, Fives, and Nines are “withdrawing types”? Enneagram books always make the withdrawal sound like something we shouldn’t be doing. But why not? There’s a lot to be said for solitude. Nines like to “withdraw” into nature, Fives into books, and Fours into art. And we like to withdraw together, too; some of my best gatherings have been with small groups of Nines and Fives. (It’s not that we don’t like to socialize, folks, it’s just that we like a little intimacy and space “apart from the madding crowd.”)
I get along relatively well with most other types, too, although I seldom have Threes as close friends; they’re just too driven and/or involved in the hustle-bustle of life. And that gets me over-amped. I admire most the Ones I’ve known; they always seem to be involved in doing meaningful work or upholding some admirable principle. They can be touchy, though; and some of them seem defensive around Fours. (I guess we’re at the wrong end of the connecting point spectrum.) Twos are warm and fun-loving, but in some things they act friendlier than they really are, and I’ve gotten my feelings hurt at times. I’m much more cautious around Twos than I was in my Twenties. Sevens are fun (at least, when they are not those super-serious “overly-reformed” Sevens that don’t know how to relax). But like Twos, they can some time be initially engaging only to wander off later—and that’s hard on me, once I’ve formed a bond with somebody.
Sixes are interesting types, but I never know how the relationship is going to go. It’s my impression that Sixes either put Fours on a pedestal or find them scary, or both. It’s hard to know what’s going on in their heads. Learning about the enneagram helped me not to tease them about their anxiety, something I used to do before I realized how real it is for them. I think this is a blind spot for most Fours; we might get “down,” but we don’t really get anxious. In some ways, we could really use a little more fear because it would make us more cautious—and more understanding of other people’s fears.
Eights are like our polar opposite. I really enjoy Eights; they make me laugh. But the relationship can become explosive; there’s a lot of intensity in the air when you get a Four and Eight in the same room. Strangely, I’ve noticed that we can also scare one another at times. Eights can be intimidated by a Four’s way with words while Fours can be intimidated by an Eight’s ability to get out in life and do “big things”—like plunge into jungles or war zones. And then there is their “big energy”; it could really hurt if any Eight decided to unload on you…. One of my best friends is a 9w8, and she’s very easy to be around; she has the impassivity of the Nine and the strength of the Eight, so there’s the big energy but in a calm outer package. She doesn’t mind my intensity and I don’t mind her occasional grumpiness.
Now that I’m older, I don’t mind being sensitive as much as I used to. I have ways to take care of myself and don’t expect other people to do it for me. Finding the enneagram helped me better understand where people are coming from, so a lot of things I used to take personally just rock off my back now. I might not like the energy, but I know it’s not my fault when people get reactive, anxious, or hostile. Also, I’m more aware of what I get from that sensitivity: the ability to deeply empathize and be receptive to people who are in genuine pain.
Arthur Koestler spoke about the tragic and trivial planes; I think he might have been a Four. He found himself in a lot of intense situations, and I think that’s the way he liked it: living more on the tragic than the trivial plane. By tragic, he didn’t mean sad, though; he meant highly-charged, intense, or numinous. And by trivial, he didn’t mean worthless or unimportant; he meant situations where the energy is not super-intense, as during an ordinary day. During the Spanish Civil War and WWII, he found himself in lots of intense situations. Afterwards, he probed into deep topics (like the nature of creativity and systems theory) and did a lot of writing about what he found….From my experience, Fours are okay with ordinary life as long as we manage to find some way to be in touch with something deeper in life. The problem with ordinariness comes when ordinariness is all there is. I don’t know any Four who can live without depth or a sense of meaning, however we conceive of it. We just can’t live on the surface of life all the time; we starve without something deeper. All the stuff that nourishes us is deep in the earth, where the mysteries dwell...my idea of a good time is to envision myself sitting by a deep pool in the forest, just drinking up the energy there.
Writing also pulls up that deep energy within me; and what spills out onto the page is always new. It’s like giving birth: painful but exhilarating. It can take months to write a book chapter or article, especially when the material is emergent. But it is such an interesting process, even with the frustration. I know I throw away two or three times as much material as I end up with; ruthless culling is the only way to create something people might actually want to read.
In that respect, we’re a lot like Ones; we’re fussy about what we produce. Discipline confers dignity, and dignity confers self-respect. And that’s so great. Having self-respect doesn’t always bring happiness but it sure beats self-hatred, which is a big bugaboo for Fours. I always wondered why envy was the official sin for the type when it was obvious to me that hatred was a bigger issue—I guess it’s because hatred isn’t on the list of the Seven Deadly Sins, although one wonders, why not?
Actually, Helen Palmer and Claudio Naranjo have talked about hatred and Fours; so I guess it’s not exactly a secret. Here’s my theory about Fours and self-hatred: Fours are extremely tuned in to other people’s emotions, especially negative emotions. We also sense when people are lying about how they feel. So when we don’t get real love when we’re little, we know it. And we want it! If we don’t get it, we get very frustrated. Then we get angry—and then we start hating the ones that don’t love us. Ultimately, we start thinking we’re pretty awful for hating people that way, and we start punishing ourselves by “eating” our own hatred. The fancy term for this is introjection.
I did some inner child work once, and was shocked to find a raging 18-month old inside me, filled with both hatred and self-hatred. The hatred was for my parents, who knew more about sentimental affection than real love; the self-hatred was for me: punishment for hating my parents so much. They were trying, but like most of their generation, they really needed a breather after 20 years sunk the Depression followed by WWII. But what did I know about that? Like all kids, I wanted my needs met. And when it didn’t happen, my frustration became anger. It didn’t take long for the anger to become rage and the rage to become hatred and then self-hatred! For Fours, this can become a pretty nasty vicious circle.
The only way out is retracing our steps back the way we came: self-hatred > hatred > frustration > need > fear > vulnerability > sorrow. We know we’re getting somewhere when we start to cry. When it happened to me, I cried for years and years; it takes a lot to wash out all that stuff inside. There’s no self-hatred left in me now; it’s quiet in there. But there’s still a streak of native wildness that I need to honor. It was immensely helpful to me to discover that Type 4 was next to a zone of chaos on the bottom of the circle—lots of people have commented or written about that. It was a relief to understand that the wildness I felt within me was natural, not something weird. It has a purpose, just as I do, just as life does. Discovering that life has purpose is such a gift; there’s nothing else like it.
When I look at my life now, it’s not like I don’t have problems. There are plenty of them; they never go away. But they don’t seem like mountains anymore; they seem normal and life seems basically do-able.
By the time I started working with the enneagram, I had already reached the point where I was ready to focus more on potentials than problems. So when I looked at my type, I saw the “up” side: the depth, originality, courage, and rejection of artifice. And I couldn’t help but admire those qualities and want to find ways to develop them. And of course I saw the potential in the other eight types, too; it just jumped right out at me. And that’s how I came to be such a cheerleader for a positively-oriented enneagram.
It’s ironic, but it is incredibly easy when you’re a Four to see the “down” side of both my type and all the other types; nobody has to tell me all the ways in which people can be disappointing! But I guess I found that focusing on those disappointments didn’t seem to help anything; it just made me feel hurt and alone. It was when I began to focus on people’s potential that I was able to start contributing something instead of draining other people with my emotional demands.
I think the greatest gift at Point 4 is the gift of the Wounded Healer: the gift of healing others because we know how much they hurt. The challenge is acknowledging the wound but focusing on gaining the strength of heart we need if we are to heal others. Fours who can do this find the meaning they have been seeking, as well as inner peace.
__________ Enneagram Monthly, Issue 180, September 2011