Enneagram Type Four, sometimes called the Individualist, belongs to the Heart triad. Those of this Enneatype generally feel a strong sense of deficiency compared to other people, and tend to recast this sensation of lack by perceiving themselves as special or unique. They have a complicated relationship with others, as they both feel a powerful need to belong, be seen and find deep and meaningful connections, while also feeling that they can never truly form such relationships. Because of their focus on their own deficiencies, they tend to be well-acquainted with the negative side of life.

Enneatype Four Grows: Move to One

Average Fours have a very diffuse sense of agency. Sometimes Fours feel like a cruel destiny has doomed them to a life of suffering, and the best they can do is bear this burden with artistic grace by exploring their inner landscapes. This is, of course, nonsense, just like all other Enneagram mechanisms. Still, it is not uncommon for average Fours to be incredibily mopey and defeated even in conditions that others would consider relatively normal, if not optimal.

The path out of this mechanism lies in giving up their habit of navel-gazing and actually planning their way to self-actualization. It happens often that aging Fours often pine over lost opportunities (If I just hadn’t quit those piano lessons) because all paths to success usually involve the kind of drudgery that Fours feel they are too sensitive or special to persevere in. This can lead to Fours feeling that they have wasted their life, which only reinforces their sense of being doomed.

If they give themselves a roadmap, though, Fours can become more principled and disciplined, like healthy Ones. Ennatype One is known for their ability to stick to plans and principles for dear life. Furthermore, Ones tend to put their own feelings on the backburner to take a hard look at how things truly are and how they can be concretely improved, and this attitude certainly benefits self-absorbed, feeling-oriented Fours.

In integrating One into their life, Fours learn to balance themselves and to see and perceive the whole spectrum of feelings, not just the negative ones, and learn that the positive side of life is just as authentic as the negative one.

Enneatype Four Under Stress: Move to Two

Fours are one of the most self-centered Enneatypes, not necessarily because they are egotistic, but because they relate everything to themselves and measure themselves against others and others against themselves. This is where their passion of Envy comes from. For a Four, life is like being on one dish of a pair of scales, with others on the other dish, and one dish cannot go up without the other going down.

This complicated relationship with other people results in a typical push-and-pull behavior which expresses the unresolved tension within the Four’s mechanism: others are both the object of desire and of spite. Furthermore, Fours usually see themselves as more authentic than others because of their acquaintance with their inner darkness and their sense of loss and grief, and this often causes them to want to show their own authenticity in front of others, without regard for proper time and place. Unhealthy Fours may even rub salt in people’s emotional wounds (which Fours are very good at sensing) both to make them feel what “real life” feels like and to make themselves feel a bit better by comparison.

When this inevitably leads to people becoming stressed out about their behavior, Fours are suddenly reminded that, ultimately, their own sense of self is highly dependent on others (as for all Heart types). In an effort to patch things up, the stressed Four abandons all emotional honesty and becomes clingy, unctuous and pleasing, like average to unhealthy Twos. Like Twos, they feel that they can only find meaning in the eyes of someone else and become accomodating to a fault.

MQS