Enneagram Type 4 Personality and Wholeness in Therapy by Dan Siegel, M.D.

SUMMARY
Enneagram Type 4 “Bonding Inward” – Personality and Wholeness in Therapy
Affective Neuroscience Perspective

Enneagram Type 4 or PDP Pattern B-i | Pattern of Developmental Processing

PDP B-i – Bonding and Connection Sought Inward, Experience and Express Aversive Emotions

Enneagram Type 4: The The Romantic/Individualistic

Motivation: Bonding for Connection

Primary Emotion: Separation-Distress/Sadness

Emotion Regulation Mode:  Up-regulate (Experience and Express)

Enneagram Center of Intelligence and Knowing: Leads with Heart or Feeling Intuition, Knowing, and Perception

Place in Human Body of Initial Energy Processing: Heart/Solar Plexus

Enneagram Type 4 Core Dynamics in Therapy

Growth, integration and wholeness from habitual and reactive patterns to higher human capacities as a result of:

    1. relaxing the pattern
    2. renewed aspirational intentions
    3. moving from reactivity to pause/deep breath.

Melancholy vs Origin – The Cognitive Dynamic, Growth, and Wholeness

Melancholy

  • Cognitive Preoccupations and Habitual Narratives: Attention on what is missing that is important. What is negative in what is present, what is positive in what is absent/distant. The longing and yearning.
    • Low Integration: Away from the oneness with the womb, the feeling of disconnection activates the subcortical Bonding network and with the Attendency inward, the intensity of this separation distress and concomitant sadness is high.  The focus of attention on that which is missing and the isolation and lack of being connected when in lower states of functioning, lead to a repeating and intrusive experience of being alone and forlorn while feeling something is just not right in the world.

Origin

  • Cognitive Higher Capacity: Idealist for others. Appreciates life for what it really is. Sees the center of things, what matters, the core.  Realizes wholeness and realness exist now.
    • High Integration: In learning to differentiate the inner yearning and harnessing energy outward for connection, the release of the capacity to feel fully and deeply appreciate the miracle of being alive is facilitated.  In the present moment, the sense of openness to both the connections in the world and the intense sentiments of disconnection can be embraced without shutting down gratitude and joy for life’s many layers of experience.

Envy vs Equanimity – Emotional Dynamic

Envy

  • Emotional Drive, Tone and Reactivity: Emotional energy on what others have which I don’t—wanting it. Grasping at or getting depressed over what I can’t have but deserve or don’t deserve S
    • Low Integration: The Bonding inward PDP in its raw, low state of integration is about the sense that something is missing—and from the inner sense, this is fully true:  The individual is no longer at one-with-the-womb and now, alone in the world, the sense that things will never be Whole when left with this isolated, inner energy focus has a feeling of finality, a longing for something that ultimately will never be fulfilled.

Equanimity

  • Emotional Higher Capacity: Balance—nothing of substance is missing. Emotions not dominant. Showing equilibrium regarding external circumstance. Living in harmony with what is present. Satisfied fulfilled with taking just enough.
    • High Integration:  Differentiating this inner drive for connection through the motivation for bonding from the memory of in intrauterine past of being at-one-with-the-womb, the movement to link now in this alone-in-the-world life can be embraced with a sense of acceptance and ease as new linkages in life are cultivated even in the face of this inner sense of “something being missing” being in the background even with authentic connections in the present.

Enneagram Type 4 Synopsis

Brief Description

he Type 4 believes you must obtain the ideal relationship or situation to be loved. Consequently, Romantics are idealistic, deeply feeling, empathetic and authentic, but also dramatic, moody and sometimes self-absorbed.

Key Interventions

Help the Type 4 overcome his or her longing for what is missing, appreciate what is positive in life now, and accept oneself as lovable, separate from his or her identification with being “special.”

Somatic Profile

Type 4s are more aware of their emotions than many types but they are biased toward sad feelings. Being happy or having fun is more challenging. They can be very expressive and dramatic, sometimes overly so; they can be very quiet and withdrawn, even to the point of depression; or they can swing back and forth from one extreme to another. It’s hard to establish an emotional middle ground. Energy tends to collect in the middle of the body and may be withdrawn from the periphery (eyes, hands, feet) and can result in anxiety and hyperventilation. Self-expression through music, dance, writing, creative work, or parenting helps create emotional and physical balance.

Communication Style

Expressive of feelings, possibility-oriented, personal and self-focused. Others may perceive you as overly dramatic, self-absorbed, unsatisfied with responses and emotionally intense.

Behavioral Profile

  • Strengths: Sensitivity, empathy, especially with suffering, creative disposition, attunement to feelings, intensity, romantic, passionate, idealism, appreciative of the unique, extraordinary, and singular, being passionate and idealistic.
  • Difficulties: Dissatisfaction and anger with life as it is, “nothing is good enough:” rejects help, dominated by fluctuating feelings: pain is associated with the D’s: depression, devastation, disdain, drama, disappointment, deviancy; experiencing the painful side of uniqueness as a misfit who feels different from others, experiencing difficulties in sustaining a relationship or path, feeling pain associated with the self-created crisis, a sort of “addiction” to suffering; envy of those that allegedly have fulfillment

What Triggers Reactivity in Relationships

People that disappoint us. People that let us down. People that leave us and leave us feeling abandoned. Feeling unheard, unseen, and unimportant. Feeling slighted, invisible, rejected, and unwanted. Feeling misunderstood and not enough. Phoniness. Insincerity. Meaninglessness. Ugliness.

Social Profile

Type 4s range from introverted to extraverted, but tend to be more on the introverted side due to their internal focus. In addition, their social disposition is impacted by the three relational sub-patterns. Dominance toward self-survival or self-preservation is a relational focus based on me first (or put your life jacket on first, before attending to others) can lead to being more introverted. Dominance toward bonding survival, or one-on-one, focused relationships tend to fall in the middle of the I-E spectrum.  Dominance toward group survival or social focus on groups and organizations can lead to being more extraverted.

Enneagram Type 4 Basic Proposition and Loss of Wholeness in Childhood

Holy Origin is that original ideal state of full, deep, complete connection to all things.  In essence, which after all, is permanent and unchanging, and underlies all material or external manifestation, nothing is missing, nothing is lacking.  In original essence wholeness and realness exist in each moment according to universal principles.  We have all had these moments when nothing is missing, everything being whole and complete.  We experience equanimity.  We are in complete harmony with what is present, we have no longing.  The young child is permeated by essence, externally connected, in the beginning, to her own essence.  We can observe the infants or a very young child connected to her essence, content with what is.  So too can we observe her connected fully to her mother carried along in this fullness.

Even when circumstances change and the connection naturally comes and goes, we can observe the infant responding appropriately to the changing circumstances.  Essence doesn’t come and go, only the connection the personality necessity has to essence.  In our enlightened moments we all can realize that the continuity of life and death goes on, that the heart fills and empties only to fill again. The equanimity we live in harmony with this life flow connected to our own essence and to that of all sentient beings, our bodies responding as much as is necessary.

What Wholeness Looks Like for Enneagram Type 4

What does greater wholeness look like when those with Enneagram Type 4 make their way on the journey of self-study and growth?

  • Moving from a Cognitive Preoccupation that only “I do not have” to a cognitive awareness that” everyone has some things and doesn’t have other things”
  • Moving from intense internal feelings to emotional balance with what is and what is not

Integrating the higher capacity of being aware and in touch with an undestroyable, ever-present connection to oneself and all of life-origin, rather than the ever changing dynamic world where loss is inevitable is able to be present – become a therapeutic theme and daily practice. Then, there is an ability to experience living in emotional equanimity with a knowing that every human is unique and at the same time connected at a deeper level. The Bonding system is balanced with a grounded Agency and sensing of self-sovereignty and the ability to lean into Certainty and ways of perceiving the world, especially when strong emotions take over the internal experience.