en·​nea·​gram

Personality tests and I don't get along well. We never have. And yet I'm drawn to them like a shopaholic to an Everything Must Go sign, a Schwaar to a thrift store, and an overthinker to a second (third, fourth, fifth) follow-up text. Like sheep to the Freaking SLAUGHTER.

I love tests; I love results. I love immediate results, and I love being analyzed. But I hate feeling misrepresented. And I hate feeling like I messed up and answered questions incorrectly (which must be the case every time I disagree with a personality test result, right? And I traditionally disagree with all my results). So I loathe them, despite my addiction.

A practice that's helped me cope with my irritating addiction to personality tests is the creation of a completely separate way of self-identifying, one that's messier but far more true. It's an iPhone note titled On Me. Whenever I identify characteristics that ring true for me, that resound in my chest and wrap me in a blanket of relatability, I write them in this note. When I can finally craft a generalization of how I engage with arguments, my relationship to affirmation, or a consistent fear, I jot it down in this note. Fewer and fewer bullets will need to be added as I continue solidifying, but it will never be complete, just like I'll never be a finished piece.

Here's where it gets interesting (for me, at least): For the longest time, I was torn between identifying as a 3 and a 1 on the enneagram. I was logic-minded as I grew up, and I loved math and grammar, order and organization, integrity and honesty, etc. This all pointed towards me being a 1, but I knew that achieving was a huge driver for what I did & that I needed affirmation consistently, almost constantly, driving me towards the more people-pleasing 3 type.

I remember when I came out to my brother (spoiler, I like boys) in 2018, saying that I felt like a 1 that had started exhibiting 4 symptoms because I was in a time of stress. It felt like a revelation, a real click in my brain, like the satisfying last slide of the red car in that Rush Hour board game (iykyk). I was a 1, and the reason I was being dramatique was because I was grappling with my sexuality/faith collision - makes sense!

Fast forward a couple years, and my more fully-cooked brain chose to start identifying myself (in the inevitable "what's your enneagram?" conversations we Christians/post-Christians get into) as a 3, wing 4: an Achiever with strong Individualist tendencies. I've craved the promise of achievement that grad school offers, the allure of academic success. I aim to balance a room & keep the conversation going, pleasing those around me to the point of showmanship. But what I'm finding, apart from these characteristic 3 traits is the persistent recurrence of attributes like "melancholic expression", "a sense of emptiness", "quirky and endearing", and "determined to understand the truth of their experience," which are textbook 4 traits as you can tell by the quotation marks.

A week ago, this is where I sat: I cannot say with any certainty what type I am, though I'm relatively certain that it dances somewhere on the bridge between 3 and 4, likely leaning towards a home base in fourdom. I see my 4-ness as a restless child that keeps sneaking downstairs after they're put to bed, coming a stair or two lower each time before being whisked back to bed. After being worn down by the child's persistence, the babysitter in my brain resigns to let it sit on the stairs or sleep on the lower landing, within view but out of reach, away from the spotlight.

But the following excerpt reads to me today as an invitation for that sleepy child to come take center stage, sweeping its Oscar de la Renta train as it finds its light, smiling with a single Kacey Musgraves tear on its cheek:

"[Average Fours] try to understand themselves by introspecting on their feelings. As they move inward in search for self, the become so acutely self-conscious that their subjective emotional states become the dominant reality for them." - Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson, Personality Types

So it's less of a light that this 4-child is finding, and more of a comfortable gloomy corner, but boy did they find it. They may not be ready to perform, like Baby Annette freezing on that spooky spire stage, but they are ready to learn and stop being relegated to their shadowy bedroom. There is a lot I look back on and wish I could change, knowing how my actions were likely guided by unhealthy four tendencies. My desperation for intense emotional connections early on in a relationship; my occasional tendency to soak in depressive clouds without a desire to exit them; even my adverse relationship to personality tests - these could be a whole series of therapy sessions.

My heart and my brain are in a fistfight right now, because I want to go back to my most recent ex and say, "I understand myself so much better now! I was asking too much of you too quickly, because I'm a 4! I get too emotionally involved, and I have a 3 wing, so I get too self-involved as well, isn't that fun? I'm both impossible to hate and impossible to love! I'm scared of nothing except my own self, because I'm a complicated monster who simultaneously drudges and dances through every day, hoping to find someone to love me for who I am, even though I don't know who that is. I dove into us, because I couldn't believe you wanted to date me…so when you agreed to, I latched on like an barnacle. And now here I am, having scared you off with my emotional intensity and need for affection. with my broad non-textbook-Chicago-gay interests and skills and quirks that make me both amazing and exhausting. date me again?..."

---

Knowing my type, I can choose to alter the weight I give my daily emotions, doubts, and insecurities. I can harness the strength of my logical mind and use it to set reasonable expectations for myself and those with whom I'm in relationship. I can zoom out and take a snapshot of myself, a 3-D index of my character, which is both boundless and observable like the northern lights, streaming within the confines of our atmosphere. I'll hang this x-ray in my kitchen with a clothespin, bordered by definition-enhancing white margins. An image like this will help disillusion me about my boundlessness, my inability to be understood and therefore fully loved, my perpetual fear of being too much, because that glossy, rainbowed photo paper will show me just how finite I am. Someone once said, regarding Type 3s, something that gave me great comfort (regardless of my core type):

"Similar to 2s, 3s gauge their worth based on people's feelings towards them, and so to be told that you're too much to be in a relationship with feels like a value statement. If you walk into a relationship hoping for it to assure you that you are not too much to be loved, you will be let down, because if that relationship doesn't work, that just confirms for you your fear that you are too much to be loved. However, if you walk into a relationship saying I'm gonna allow this relationship to teach me how to love my too much-ness, then you have released that other person from the unfair responsibility of assuring you that you're not too much. Yes, your authentic self is gonna be too much for some people. But those are not your people." -@rudeassenneagram

My depth of feelings seems to be increasing almost daily, pummeling downhill at an alarming pace (like Westley or Thackery Binx). It is both a capacity to feel and an incapacity to moderate those emotions. It is foggy and whiplash-inducing, and my days can be turned on their heads by the sight of an ex or the receipt of a parking ticket as quickly and significantly as only the news of a tragedy would turn others' days upside down. To boil it down, I'm a drama queen. That known, that declared, that acknowledged, I can begin to learn and modify the course. I can begin to choose emotion-informed logic as a decision maker and mood-moderator, rather than emotion-steered amorphism.

"One of the biggest challenges Fours face is learning to let go of feelings from the past; they tend to nurse wounds and hold onto negative feelings about those who have hurt them. Indeed, Fours can become so attached to longing and disappointment that they are unable to recognize the many treasures in their lives." - Enneagram Institute

This knowledge, combined with consistent yoga, has led me to more clarity of mind than I've experienced in a long time. I feel like I'm in an atmospheric hot tub, my body soaking and swirling in jet streams of the quotidian, my head peeking above a bumpy quilt of pink, gold, and blue clouds. This is the feeling I experience when gazing at open water - the mesmerizing motion of Lake Michigan's tide reminding me that we're each just one piece of a 7.9 billion piece puzzle that no one can (or really should try to) put together perfectly. In my hot tub I can see my choices like bao buns and potstickers on a dim sum cart being generously wheeled over to me as I soak, and I know this: I could try 100 different dishes if I want. And once I've taken a bite of each, I cannot undo my having tasted that dish. But I can set it back down after a bite and elect to move onto another. And while I may have disliked that dish, maybe even been harmed by its spice or its price, I learned about both it and myself by tasting it. And I can choose to say, "Ouch my mouth" or "Ouch my wallet," or I can say, "Wow what a treat to know, in an Edisonian way, what doesn’t work for me and, by process of elimination, what I'm looking for in the future." Active learning, here in the hot tub / clouds, is my current resting state, and I'm so thankful.

"You are unique, and if that has not been fulfilled, then something has been lost." - Martha Graham (a Four)

---

“Anyone who knows me, should learn to know me again; For I am like the Moon, you will see me with new face everyday.” - Rumi (a Four)