- Fives are intellectually curious types who love to explore what interests them. They frequently indulge in spending lots of time with what’s impractical. While they put lots of effort into thinking about things they have deceptively strong feelings however. They state their points dispassionately and insure what they communicate is well thought out which make them seem less emotional than they really are.
- Fives take it for granted they have an inherent ability to theorize and understand things more deeply than others, something they’d never say openly. They are never quite “fully there” in their physical presence however. Their sensitivity to emotional stimuli plus a lack of smoothness from their less developed instincts always makes them removed to some degree to better handle situations. They withdraw from their environment and detach emotionally from others to shut out intrusions in their time and space. From the safety of their minds they can intensify their investment in their mental activities. They feel planning sufficiently and knowing enough can enable them to survive and thrive in life despite being isolated. This overuse of their thinking center to navigate an intrusive world from a distance causes them to be both idiosyncratic in how they perceive reality and eccentric as others perceive them. This causes fives to exhibit a certain quirky cleverness
- Fives are far more sensitive than they appear. Being fear types they tend to feel a crippling anxiety that’s usually only noticed by close family and friends. Behind their distant exterior often lurks feelings threatening to overwhelm them. They prefer their privacy where they can immerse themselves in whatever interests them. Their limitless curiosity causes them to be self-motivated to learn challenging things and delve into subjects they truly enjoy, to the point of compulsion even. More than any other type they are connoisseurs of knowledge. As a result fives tend to have a few intellectual areas of interest they have a deep understanding in which they take great pride in. Many fives withhold their knowledge just as they withhold themselves however, hence the five stereotype of a reclusive expert that no one knows about.
- Fives see an interdependent world that desires too much from them. It’s not uncommon to see them cut out dead weight and live minimalistic lifestyles to separate themselves from the world. They feel people want more of them than they have of themselves to give. They are affected by others easily and withdraw because they don’t believe they have what it takes to deal with other people’s demands and expectations. They are equally aware of being a burden on others and withhold both themselves and their emotions from others. Expressing emotions can make them feel vulnerable as they fear that will backfire in front of people who clearly don’t understand them. They don’t care for superficial small talk and limit themselves to authentic people who do have the potential to understand them. At work they prefer to be given their assignment then left alone. Even in relationships they may withhold parts of themselves and keep many secrets. Simply put fives are fear types who are always wary of people or things that come with “strings attached”. Because their instinctive center is weakest they fear “giving their power away” would lead to them being a “sitting duck.”
- This fear of being a “sitting duck” leads fives to focus on having power. They remove themselves from external activity in order to feel they have enough mastery of the situation to navigate it from a position of strength. They separate what’s important from what’s irrelevant and have an unrelenting focus to get to the bottom of things. They delight in “checkmating” others’ points that aren’t as well thought-out as theirs along the way. Their intellectual curiosity for a subject is intense enough to eventually turn into mastery. They imagine scenarios to understand the world well enough to anticipate reality. They feel powerful trusting their own opinions over what society says. They think things are under control if they know enough. They think they can get on top of things on their own if they figure things out and plan sufficiently. They have delusions of grandeur that make them dream about how the world would be if they had the ability to set things. They feel powerful knowing that others haven’t thought about stuff as deeply as they have and don’t understand what they understand. This “claim” along with their borderline intellectual overconfidence is a cover on a more subconscious level for their heightened sensitivity and inadequacy though. It’s one thing to create theories but quite another to put them into practice. They have trouble with simpler things that most people can handle spontaneously. They know how odd they are and always feel fundamentally apart from others.
- In enneagram theory fives are thinking-feeling-instinctive in that order. This causes them to intensify their efforts thinking up scenarios to anticipate and handle reality at the expense of being engaged in the real world. Because they are instinctive center last it is easy for fives to become ungrounded and spin out of control. They encounter new people in spontaneous situations and instead of acting naturally they detach or “freeze” (a very minor form of shutdown) to intellectualize their emotions (“How do I express this emotion?”) instead of using their feeling center to express their emotions (fear that could backfire on them). Opportunities to reach out to others are missed and fives loses confidence in their ability to act naturally around people. They spend more time alone with makes them more out of touch with the world. This increases their loneliness and eccentricity which makes it even harder to relate to people, which makes them withdraw and isolate themselves even further. Once a critical point is reached their cynicism and disdain for humanity accelerates. The scenarios their imagination comes up with to understand the world become more disturbing and further removed from reality. Healthy fives though are able to both fully participate in life and contribute to an interdependent society while also being able to give more of themselves and handle greater degrees of emotional interdependency. Their greater engagement of life allows them to be more in touch with reality and better at anticipating things
- 5w6s see themselves as being fundamentally apart from others due to their oddness. They aspire to be one of society’s foremost thinkers. They tend to be more awed at a world that never ceases to provide them with something to look into further. They are natural investigators who take the initiative to enthusiastically debate and discuss with others how they see the world. They tend to be more self-revealing and more emotionally detached than their 5w4 siblings. They have more of an uneasy truce with their emotions. On average they are less sociable than 5w4s. While they also think there is more to them than meets the eye they feel more awkward about showing others this.
- The 5w6 inner landscape is one of limitless curiosity, arguably the most of the eighteen subtypes. They’ve thought a lot about the world and the nature of things with an unrivaled specificity. They’ve seemingly thought about everything at one point or another from the complex to the simple. They’ve looked further into things than most others. As a result they feel they have an understanding of the way things are in the world that others don’t. Others haven’t examined things to the extent that they have. They think most people don’t understand them and aren’t likely to put in the effort to do so.
- 5w6 aesthetics are rooted in what is tangible and more easily seen due to their six wing. They envision being on the cutting edge of technological advancement as well as on the frontier of intellectual and physical realms. They contemplate exploring where few have gone before and witnessing worldly phenomena firsthand. They wonder what it’s like to be inside the tiniest of probes observing life at the cellular level, or to be safely suspended in the fabric of space-time far away amidst black holes and other awesome anomalies of the cosmos. From these vantage points they are removed from the world of people yet tethered to the furthest reaches of the universe. Their sense of being in touch with these various frontiers beyond human experience has a highly intuitive and emotional aspect to it. There is a certain nirvana that’s connected with understanding these worldly phenomena which also serves as an escape from reality. When they tap into that it feels empowering and feeds their tendency to think they have mastery over elements in the world. The more confident they are of their grasp of reality the more in control they feel and the easier it is to take action in the world without hesitation.
- 5w6s tend to have more sequential and incremental streams of consciousness and lack the “illogical leaps” of 5w4s. There is a process of gradual solidification to their reasoning that makes them natural synthesizers of what they take into account. They tend to have a “one thing progresses to another” way of coming to a conclusion that’s generally more precise and easier to follow. They have bias against solutions arrived at primarily aesthetically for not being objective enough. They prefer a thinking process that is more “valid” and can withstand more scrutiny. They are more likely to see a bunch of things that cluster as “coincidental” and not an indication of some higher meaning that they can’t explain, unless they can tie things in the cluster together in some way. They tend to not believe in fate. Much of life is random and they accept that. They are more likely to miss things that are there than see things that aren’t there like their 5w4s siblings. They tend to be more methodical and analytical and gravitate to more structured intellectual areas.
jul 9 2016 ∞
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