I'm an enneagram four, hopefully someone on here is familiar with the enneagram? Well here's a little outline of the "levels" (of happiness/health basically) of a four, for some background info:

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Profile Summary for Enneagram Type Four

Healthy Levels

Level 1 (At Their Best): Profoundly creative, expressing the personal and the universal, possibly in a work of art. Inspired, self-renewing and regenerating: able to transform all their experiences into something valuable: self-creative.

Level 2: Self-aware, introspective, on the "search for self," aware of feelings and inner impulses. Sensitive and intuitive both to self and others: gentle, tactful, compassionate.

Level 3: Highly personal, individualistic, "true to self." Self-revealing, emotionally honest, humane. Ironic view of self and life: can be serious and funny, vulnerable and emotionally strong.

Average Levels

Level 4: Take an artistic, romantic orientation to life, creating a beautiful, aesthetic environment to cultivate and prolong personal feelings. Heighten reality through fantasy, passionate feelings, and the imagination.

Level 5: To stay in touch with feelings, they interiorize everything, taking everything personally, but become self-absorbed and introverted, moody and hypersensitive, shy and self-conscious, unable to be spontaneous or to "get out of themselves." Stay withdrawn to protect their self-image and to buy time to sort out feelings.

Level 6: Gradually think that they are different from others, and feel that they are exempt from living as everyone else does. They become melancholy dreamers, disdainful, decadent, and sensual, living in a fantasy world. Self-pity and envy of others leads to self-indulgence, and to becoming increasingly impractical, unproductive, effete, and precious.

Unhealthy Levels

Level 7: When dreams fail, become self-inhibiting and angry at self, depressed and alienated from self and others, blocked and emotionally paralyzed. Ashamed of self, fatigued and unable to function.

Level 8: Tormented by delusional self-contempt, self-reproaches, self-hatred, and morbid thoughts: everything is a source of torment. Blaming others, they drive away anyone who tries to help them.

Level 9: Despairing, feel hopeless and become self-destructive, possibly abusing alcohol or drugs to escape. In the extreme: emotional breakdown or suicide is likely. Generally corresponds to the Avoidant, Depressive, and Narcissistic personality disorders.

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I am level five, ridiculously so. I'm a 4w5, for anyone who wants specifics. I basically want to get up to level one, or at least a "healthy" level. This is the most broad advice I've ever asked for, and I've already done a ton of weird research on the enneagram, so I'll try to make this more fit to my personal situation:

I just really don't have confidence most of the time, so I joined this site last fall and made all sorts of depressed posts and eventually come out of it with a kind of "fuck high school, I'm awesome the way I am" attitude, made some really close friends who feel the same way, and now I'm known amongst them for always laughing and always being "the innocent one." I'm pretty happy for the most part and I can be myself around them most of the time, but I still always have this desire to be alone every once in a while, and I just always feel like they can all connect with each other in a way I can't, because I have this weird, twisted side to me that's so different from them. They all really do accept me, but sometimes I get really guarded once they try to REALLY get close and personal with me.

Really, I am so rational. Look at me. Read the "level five" again. I don't have enough confidence to NOT be self-absorbed. Here's an example: we went to see a movie last night and I totally stopped paying attention after five minutes and was thinking about this kind of stuff, and what life means, and why I think certain people might not like me and how I feel about that, etc. I have so much going on inside of me that I'm a "flurry of emotion" and don't totally express all of it; I only express the happy/humorous side of me.

Idk... help? I'm taking up piano and I write a lot, and I have some "close" conversations with a few select friends, but it's just such an uphill battle. I still think I am "weird," "ugly," "strange," "twisted," etc. I totally act obnoxious, call myself a "freak," and love it, but there is just something that's still not satisfying me, like I'm not being emotionally honest, and I'm just kind of a spectator in life. I don't know.

Maybe PM me if you ACTUALLY read all this, because I'd be pretty impressed!

EDIT: I also bolded levels four and five. Four is me on a really good day (again, the description fits perfectly) and six is me when I feel rEALLY awful, kinda like now.

Post edited at 1:50 pm on Mar. 1, 2008 by lana lang

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BE ONE OF THE COOL KIDS!