Introspection

I walk with a group of women every weekday morning. We are in our sixties, and we often talk about the challenges of growing old: staying fit and active and positive, where to go when we are too old to take care of ourselves, our evolving relationships with our children, etc. It’s a terrific group of women, and I always come away energized, both physically and emotionally.

One subject that invariably pops up is the potential to become self-absorbed as we grow older, especially if we are now living alone, and children and grandchildren are non-existent or far-flung. This tendency is especially fraught for those of us who are Fours on the Enneagram, because we so love introspection and plumbing the depths of our psyches. When we are unhealthy, that introspection can lead to moodiness, self-pity, and sadness. Unchecked, depression may creep in and establish itself. The world constricts, the sky hangs dark and low, and the mind seems to run on an endless loop of regret, fear and hopelessness.  Self-absorption now feeds on itself.

Where does a Four go from there? Although it seems counterproductive, self-examination can help a Four grow towards a healthy involvement in the real world. When Fours study of the Enneagram, they learn that they are not alone in their particular orientation to the world. It’s like meeting your tribe for the first time. Oh, joy! Did you feel like you were inherently flawed, too? Did you struggle to identify yourself and your place in the world, just like I did?

For many years I believed I had little to offer. Enneagram study revealed a fuller portrait of a Four beyond its proclivities and pathologies. A healthy Four is creative, insightful, intuitive. She engages with the world in a meaningful manner, bringing understanding and compassion. She can stand with you in your pain, because she has been there; she knows that suffering can save and transform a seeker. She is honest and authentic.

I was not happy to discover that I was a Four; it was too hard! However, I set to work to accept and finally enjoy myself in all its Fourness. Relaxing into myself has, paradoxically, freed me from self-absorption. I live life connected not only to others, but to the divine all around and, yes, within me.

The Three Centers of Intelligence

Intelligence is not just about mental acuteness. The Enneagram recognizes three Centers of Intelligence – Thinking, Feeling and Doing, or Head, Heart and Body. We each have all three centers, and need to learn to use all three to become alive and healthy. Typically, though, each personality type or Number will prefer one Center as a way of responding to the world, with a second as back-up. The third Center will generally be repressed until it is awakened and strengthened.

I don’t read a lot of poetry, but in the early 80s I discovered Theodore Roethke’s poems. I was a stay-at-home mom who worried that I was not doing anything important, and found comfort in the last line of his poem The Abyss:

Being, not doing, is my first joy.

Roethke’s words served to validate me in my mind. I read them as a subtle rebuke to the world where everyone else was busy, busy, busy all day long doing doing, doing, important things. I, special Four that I was, would seek fulfillment in everyday life. I didn’t have to do; I could just be. So I ran carpool and volunteered and did my best to be like everyone else in my little world. 

I misunderstood the poem at that time; Being was not my first joy. I was not even close to Being. I was stuck in my Feeling Center, where I thought I could hide because Doing was so hard. I also liked being in my Thinking Center, where I tried to figure it all out. The Feeling Center is oriented to the past, while Thinking turns toward the future. I preferred either to the present.

Slowly, slowly, I have awakened to the healthy aspects of Feeling, trading my stories and self-image for truthfulness and authenticity. In my Thinking Center, doubt relinquishes its hold as clarity grows. Waking up my Doing Center is a challenge. Kathleen Hurley calls it the “home of play and fun,” and it dawns on me that I have not played enough in this life.

I hope that as I continue my Enneagram study and am better able to integrate these Centers of Intelligence in healthy ways, I’ll learn to live more and more in the present. That’s where Being resides, here and now.

Fours Long for a Rescuer

Fours long for a rescuer, and I was no exception.  My college boyfriend seemed to meet my specifications. His family consisted of a mother and a sister who were far away, so I could fold him into my own family with little fear of having to share him. He had a trust fund, which would protect me financially in the future. He was tall and handsome, funny, sophisticated in my eyes, a terrific dancer, and he had a great car. Frat man. Gentleman’s C’s, but I knew he was smarter than that. He was very cool, and never lost his temper.

He would take care of me and I in exchange would make our life together perfect, so I proposed and he accepted. We were married for 35 years before he came out of the closet. It turns out he had needed a rescuer, too, from his true self – that is, until times had changed, until the internet, until he had found his tribe and no longer had to pretend. A beard, I believe it’s called.

What does a Four do when her rescuer deserts her? 1. Collapses in shock and disbelief. 2. Collapses again in shame and humiliation. 3. Takes up smoking again.  4. Summons her Four creativity and composes a song to the tune of Jerome Kern’s “A Fine Romance”, which she sings to her rescuer in their couples’ therapy session:

Our fine romance is now fading,

A new romance is what you’re craving.

I thought old age was causing your poor erection,

But now I know you’d gone in a new direction.

A straight romance today chills you,

A gay romance is what thrills you.

Your next true love will surely be wearing pants,

You’ve got a second chance

To find a fine romance.

(Rescuer and therapist loved it, but today I think it’s kind of sad that it expressed a new love for him but not for me.)

To bring us up to the present day, my rescuer and I divorced and he found a new person to rescue (40 years his junior).  A life coach said to me in the interim, “Judy, no one is coming.” I didn’t, couldn’t, believe it. When no one came to save me, I finally rescued myself from myself with the help of a compassionate psychiatrist, the Enneagram, and massive amounts of antidepressants.

When my older granddaughter was four, she loved to play Sleeping Beauty; I was the prince who slashed my way through the thorny vines surrounding the castle and awakened her with a tender kiss. Rescued! We played it over and over again to her delight, changing costumes, props, staging. Baby brother was too young to play. I hope the attraction of the game had more to do with having her grandmother all to herself for a while, and not the story itself. It’s a fairy tale, after all.

Hypersensitivity and Authenticity

Yesterday I wrote for a solid two or three hours.  I can’t remember exactly how long, because I was in a flow state of mind.  And for the rest of the day I felt very, very good.  This morning I was wondering whether I wanted anyone to read what I had written, and a friend’s recent comment immediately came to mind:  “Who wants to read a blog?  They’re boring, just about what someone thought or did.”  That burst my tiny bubble of contentment, proving yet again the rightness of my former boss’s admonition:  “Judy, anybody who criticizes you can have you.” Although in this case it was me criticizing myself.

Enneagram authorities Don Richard Riso (now deceased) and Russ Hudson discuss Fours’ tendency towards hypersensitivity in The Wisdom of the Enneagram.  “They replay conversations in their imagination from the previous day or previous year, trying to arrive at what the other person was really saying to them.”  What I heard my friend saying was, “Judy, no one would ever want to read a blog written by you.  No one cares what you think or what you do.  You would just embarrass yourself if you wrote a blog about your life.”

Riso and Hudson suggest getting reality checks from people when what they say sounds like criticism or rejection.  They advise avoiding over-interpreting, and point out that other people really do not spend all their time scrutinizing you.  In truth, people are busy thinking about themselves most of the time.  My mother often said, “Judy, the whole world is not thinking about you.”  It was hard to believe at the time.

Riso and Hudson further add, “Notice, too, your degree of interest in others and the nature of your comments and thoughts about them.  Would you find this acceptable in them?”  This is a healthy step to take, and I consider that I really like my friend.  She’s intelligent, well-read, a journalist, and a published author.  However, in my mind I have made her into the spokesperson for the literary world.  Does she really want to be the arbiter of my particular tastes in what I read or what I want to express in words?  I doubt it.  Her opinion of blogs is her opinion, nothing more, and has nothing to do with me – unless I let it.

Unlike my friend, I adore memoirs and first-person meditations. Your story would fascinate me, whether you were famous or not, if I got to hear what was in your head while you were living your life – of course, here’s hoping that it’s well-written.  You are interesting to me because you are a fellow human learning the special lessons you were born to encounter in this lifetime. 

So I’ll keep writing these pages, because I am finally accepting my true nature – my Fourness, as I now call it.  Fours value creativity and individuality, and when they are healthy they are able to express themselves without fear or shame.  Authenticity, long patient and gentle, welcomes me.