What A Four
balance is everything.
I have been somewhat asked to explain about Fours.
For those of you who know what I'm talking about [& are either my Socrates, an expert, a Four &/or have a Four-wing] I am enlisting your help to create a more thorough report.
For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, a.) I have failed you, b.) you don't know me that well, or c.) you don't want to be place 'in a box' [*cough* Bert Spaid *cough*]
Basic overview, the Enneagram is a personality type system that includes nine basic types. I have been a student of the wonderment for about the past seven years, so I kind of know my stuff a little bit. Pair that with a bachelors of psychology & you've got an over-analytical observer who sees & knows all.
But really.
'We Fours are some of the most profoundly creative people that exist.' was the only statement I could muster before I launched into a half-honest, half-self-deprecating rant about my lack of tactile creativity. We are creative in different ways, most lean toward art [in all forms] or at least aesthetic attention. Cooking, knitting, decorating, drawing, painting, writing stories, composing poems, birthing songs, writing music, you name it, we love it & with it we show you our wounds--organic or imagined--with which we tap into the universal truth that is emotion.
One book I have dubs us the 'deep-sea divers of the psyche.' If it can be felt, we've already been there. We've already gotten the tshirt, managed to lose it in the river & composed a poem about it.
We feel more deeply that any other type & we know it. It makes us feel special. We can tell you more about the different components of disappointment than we could about biotechnology, unless that happens to be our area of expertise [especially if we've got a touch of a Five-wing] then we can astound you in both areas. We watch your eyes as the gears turn. We imagine that you are finally viewing us in the way that we know we should be, the way we've been waiting for. 'Finally, someone who sees the real me!' our bleeding hearts exclaim.
We exist primarily in our minds, entertaining any & every potential fantastical reality. And honestly, you exist there too. We see your every facet, good & bad. We love you for it. We can see the best & worst in anyone & still want you around. See, we feel that we do not belong & that we never have. We love the underdog. We love the fact that you snort when you laugh. We love the fact that you can't cook. We love the fact that you know obscure facts. We love your sad stories. We love your emotions. Ultimately, we love you, regardless of who you are or how we know you.
We also collect your emotions. We're not heinous, but through accepting you, as we see you don't fit in either in whatever way, we add you to our museum. There are thesauruses of emotions, glass cases that hold past relationships & photo albums of peculiar people. In order to build up our reservoir of deep-felt-everything, we collect people. We need to feel everything there is to feel, sometimes more than once, as we tend to learn slowly in matters of the heart.
Our emotionality makes it difficult to let things go. We can become greedy, holding onto something long-lost...or something never truly had. We can be selfish, self-absorbed, jealous & melancholy.
By balancing our heart with our head, once we've developed a way of finding balance through logic & reasoning, we can grow into someone that not only feels, but can also elaborate upon it. We can put feelings into expressions, which is not easily done for many. We can come in, no-holds-barred, & explain what an emotion is like & what to do with it.
Once we can detach from our past, we can learn from it & carry on. The less we're stuck in our heads the better.
We feel everything. We blind ourselves to truths because we like the fantasy better sometimes.
The more we accept what we cannot change & realize what we can, the better off we are, the more we can become the person we've been striving to be.
The best thing you can do is accept us, listen to us, show us that we're special...or if you don't feel that way, let us know, don't lead us on & don't lie to us.
Our goal in life is to understand ourselves & we want you to be a part of that, because we can help you too.
<3