Enneagram type 5

Welcome to the fifth article in the series on becoming a better version of yourself (using the enneagram).

The information below is all based on the following book (The Complete Enneagram | By Beatrice Chestnut) which I highly recommend, if you want to learn more and go much deeper on the enneagram and on type 5 specifically.

Ian lives his life sparsely with very few needs. He believes in scarcity, lives in his own head and avoids his emotions.

He has a limiting belief of limited resources such as energy and time, and he believes that he needs to limit and manage how he spends these precious resources to make sure he won’t get worn out and totally depleted. He needs to make sure that he keeps enough time and energy for himself and the things that are important to him.

Spending time with other people and doing things for others can quickly become extremely tiring and consume the limited energy and time that Ian thinks that he has. Especially people that are highly emotional or needy can be extremly draining.

Ian Goes through life as more of an observer and analyzer, than as an active participant, Ian is most interested in things like thinking, understanding, reading books and other thought and knowledge related activities.

Ian has a strong set of barriers he keeps up in order to keep other people away for much of the time, and to protect his freedom and inner life.

When Ian was young, he felt that his needs were not being met as he was either ignored or was engulfed by others. This caused Ian to respond and protect himself from this kind of hurt by limiting and shrinking his own needs (e.g. repressing emotions) as well as by holding on tightly to his own available resources to best cope with this on his own.

The 3 flavors of Ian are:

Self preservation Ian, focuses on barriers and all different ways to protect himself from the outside world and keep other people and fearful experiences at bay.

The social Ian focuses on knowledge and on understanding as a replacement for emotions and connections with other people.

The sexual Ian strives and seeks for an idealized one to one connection with a single ideal partner or multiple ideal partners.

Ian may actually be happy with the way he is as the defensive mechanisms work well and keep him very comfortable and safe. However, by focusing mostly on scarcity and on being alone Ian is actually only enjoying a small part of what life has to offer.

To grow outside these limiting confines Ian would need to:

Slowly becoming more aware of his feelings when alone or when with others.

Trying to replace his focus on lack of energy and lack of internal resources with a belief in abundance and the option for replenishment and getting more emotional resources by spending time and energy on connections and on other people.

Read about Enneagram type 6

To learn more about Beatrice Chestnut and her work please visit her website at https://beatricechestnut.com/ were she offers books, coaching, trainings and workshops.

Originally published at blog.myquestions.co on June 17, 2018.