#5 tag

[enneamalia]

twilight sparkle and giles from buffy the vampire slayer have the same enneagram type

[enneamage]

So not for a cc, but like, what does it mean to actually be a 5w4? Just curious

What does it mean to be me 🤔

A core theme with Fives is learning and information gathering. A big unwritten theme of Fives is our focus—I still don’t think of myself as an outstandingly smart person, but I think about one thing for a loooong time, and from a lot of different angles. I think of it as having a sticky brain. Overall there’s a genuine love of being able to take things apart and see how they work.

The inverse of this is I’m not great at picking up on things that I haven’t focused on, and have had to go out of my way to learn things that other people learn more circumstantially. This leads to dense patches of knowledge scattered between wide fields of having no clue what’s happening. We’re also not the most socially adjusted, since a lot of those skills are meant to be ‘picked up on’ instead of directly taught and explained well. They can be learned over time, but some of us feel a bit like aliens on the inside.

A big part of being able to function for me is being able to retreat into my own space and think things over. I can get overwhelmed easily if I’m processing a bunch of new information up-front, but I can handle situations better if I’ve thought things out beforehand and don’t have to take in everything on the spot. I can go for days or weeks thinking about one theme very intensely.

The way the Four wing shows up for me is my preference for intensity and weirdness. I like looking into things that other people don’t and finding new or obscure information, rather than going over well-explored systems. I like playing on the line between discovery and invention, which is probably what brought me here.

A big thing with Fives is that just because they don’t have other people’s emotions doesn’t mean that they don’t have emotions, and some can be very moved or sentimental about things that people wouldn’t expect (or even think about.) Basically, I have fewer obvious emotions than other types, but I’m not as dry as I could be. An interesting thing is according to the profiles I’m actually less social than a 5w6 would be, so maybe that’s the trade-off.

[uozlulu]

I was so caught up in a solution that might save Yami and Vangeance that I forgot one of my earlier theories was that to achieve the Tree of Q, the Dark Triad must be sacrificed, so that's something to ponder

[dabihaul666]

this is the fuckin height of romance over here smh

[yourmanofwar]

My brother? A lover of the Russian queen? You would be, fucking commie queer.

hey, hey, woah.

let's pump the breaks here. I am a man, it's straight for me to be the queen's lover, guess what that makes you.

that's right, a transphobic capitalist.

eat hot asphalt and dissipate 🫂💋

[enneamage]

I was lurking thru ur older blogposts and saw that ur a 5w6!! I'm a 5w4 and was wondering if you knew a bit more about the differences between the two? I think it makes so much sense for you to be a 5 (me too) since you're here on critblr which is a very niche system of information that not many know about but is very interesting to get into. I also wonder if you would ever consider finding a professional avenue to practice this kind of in depth research and analysis, because for me that sounds like a nightmare (mixing work and pleasure) but I'd love to hear another 5's perspective.

Hello!

I’m actually another 5w4 so we are in the same boat. I’ve found that 5w6’s tend to be a little bit more engineer-like, but that isn’t a hard rule as much as a trend. I’ve found this description is reliable if you ignore the celebrity section. It’s not a shorthand but I’ve found the best way to understand the difference is to meet the people—having the experience of “okay so I’m kinda like this but you’re really like this” helps build the intuition up.

I think it’s really interesting that apparently it’s a trend among Fives to not be as into their field of interest as a career as often as a hobby. I think it’s something to do with the freedom that being a lone actor and not having to rely on other systems to get things done. Granted I know plenty of Fives who have brainy jobs and do them well, but I’ve seen just as many go into something that gets the bills paid so that they can have their freedom on weekends and when they get home. I think it comes from not wanting to be co-opted into something that will drain them.

This is going to sound unbelievably arrogant but knowing what I know about the average view-rate of academic writing, a doofy post that gets viewed on tumblr is probably going to have way more eyeballs and casual individual impact than most formal papers OTL. Academia has a real problem of stuffing everything behind a wall or in a fridge and guaranteeing it never sees the sun, it’s very locked off from the ‘practical’ world, even (or especially?) when its useful. (The rest of the time it’s so badly communicated by reporters that it kind of mutates into being untrue or not what was said in the first place.) The idea of doing stuff formally and intensely is appealing, but the reality of where the money comes from, what people want to use info for and what people are practically able to do kind of dulls it for me. I think I have the most fun when I’m a free agent and can lurk whatever weird fringe thing I get my hands on without having to run it by other people first.

[enneamage]

not really related to any ccs, but do you have a better explanation of the whole stress arrows thing? was thinking back on my own past and the 5 integration to 8 thing feels relevant -🎋

For some unknown reason it works out that the little shape (“The Enneagram” itself) that represents the personality types as a set has a flow line between the points. Rather than the nine types just sitting in a circle where only their wings are connected, the tangle of lines between them work as integration and disintegration points.

(The “arrows” integrate in this direction, 3->6->9->3, 1->7->5->8->2->4->1)

There’s a lot of narrative around why it is that types have these dynamic points that they go between, but honestly I don’t believe enough of it to repeat it. For whatever reason it works out that when a given type is under stress and their usual style of behavior isn’t working, they’ll take traits of the type they disintegrate to, and when they’re doing well and moving into aspects of themselves that they aren’t always in touch with they integrate to the type ‘in front’ of them. The story of what each type tends to disown or deny themselves is different, so there’s as many different ‘paths to integration’ as there are types.

Sometimes the integration points are considered behaviors that people started off with in early life but were distanced from over time, as though life didn’t have room for those traits. They sometimes get the nickname “soul children” because of this, which I find goofy, but it also kind of resonates because I was a surprisingly Eight-y child and sometimes it feels like I can go back to that.

Eight integration is fun. I’m biased, but I think we got a good deal. I think integration and disintegration look a little different for everyone-- since not all Fives are the same, it makes sense that not all fives going to Eight are the same either. If you want to understand Eight integration a little more you could look into descriptions of healthy Eights and see what resonates, as well as some of the info on this page about integration.

[enneamage]

i was wonder if you had any thoughts on type 1s vs type 5s? because i recently starting delving into enneagram stuff and when i took the test i got type 1 with type 5 following closely behind. do you have any advice as to how to figure out which one i am? thank you ^_^

One vs. Five In a fight? A One could take me out easily, I wouldn’t stand a chance /j

This page has some good info about the difference between the two types, which might help break the tie. (Here’s a shorter one too.) Type One is still kind of a blindspot for me in the sense that I get it but I feel like the way I get it is too shallow to be able to speak on it well. There’s a lot of quirks to it that exist outside of the ‘perfectionist’ stereotype, and I haven’t been able to get a good read on what the mechanics are that underly them. I’ve also known some Fives to have a perfectionist edge to them so the question ‘are you a perfectionist’ won’t cut it.

Another thing to keep an eye on is the Growth / Disintegration arrows—Five goes to Seven under stress and Eight when integrating, while One goes to Four under stress and Seven while integrating. That sounds like a whole lot of nothing to most people, but a different way to put it is One moving to unplanned positive stimulus-seeking is a good time and a sign of growth, for Fives it can be a bit of a nervous impulse and a sign that something is going out of control. (It’s not that enjoying things is bad for Fives, Eight integration can give a lot of focused or spontaneous passion, it’s embodying the frantic escapism of the Seven where things get sketchy.) Basically being more like a Seven is positive in the case of Ones but a red flag in Fives.