The concept of MYELW is that the only person you can change is yourself. The only person that you can make healthier is yourself. In addition, you cannot get your emotional neediness met from anyone else on a continuous and unconditional basis. There will be moments when your partner is totally focused on what it is that you need emotionally, but that moment will pass. They will go to work or to watch a sporting event or be distracted by the children’s needs or just become more focused on their own neediness.
However, if you do your own personal work and become aware that what you are seeking is actually coming from unfulfilled needs of childhood, then you can refocus your efforts from trying to obtain these needs outside yourself to re-parenting yourself. You are the one person who can love yourself continuously and unconditionally. You are the one person who can understand yourself, affirm yourself, protect yourself, support yourself and even initiate playful activities for yourself. That child that didn’t get all the things they needed in their birth family can get all things from their adult version of themselves.
When you move your neediness from your partner to yourself, then your partner will change. They will not feel so drained by your neediness and will actually, in many cases, begin to meet those needs. They will have the energy to be more loving, attentive, affirming, and supportive. Most of us are not getting those needs met with our current strategies, so perhaps trying a new strategy does not entail much risk.
So how do we start this process? We begin with a dialogue with our Inner Child. Close your eyes, breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, feet solidly on the floor and comfortable in your chair. Now visualize your child and note what age they are and ask them what they want to be called. I would take the child to a safe, pleasant place and begin the conversation. I would start with stating explicitly that you love that child unconditionally and that they are the most precious thing in your life. What do you need from me? How can I reassure you that I will provide ___________ for you? What can I do right now to demonstrate my commitment to meeting your needs? When the conversation is over, then tell your child that you are always available and that you will return soon for another conversation.
Whenever you are angry, fearful, or sad then visualize your Inner Child and ask them what is wrong. Why are you afraid? Why are you angry? Why are you sad? What can I do to ease your pain?
This process is the beginning of a journey that should last the rest of your lifetime. Always returning to that precious, precocious child that knows what you and she need. Each time you acknowledge that her unresolved pain has been triggered by an event outside of both of you and that you want to know why she is in pain, what is the real source of the pain, then you get closer to a resolution of the childhood pain that you still feel inside of you.
Written with love and kindness and hopefully from thoughtfulness, caring and authenticity.
Sincerely,
Steve Purdom
I believe that each of us is born into this world with a Personality Type in place. For me, the easiest visualization is that it is genetically determined and when confronted with the normal issues of powerlessness as a child and subsequent separation from our Mother primarily but also our Father we use the defenses of our Personality Type to defend ourselves. If we are lucky enough to have a supportive, emotionally healthy family then our attachment to our defense mechanisms softens but in less supportive and more dysfunctional families our attachment increases in proportion to the physical and emotional abuse that we perceive as happening.
The defense mechanisms of Type 5 are Isolation and Compartmentalization. So in the face of abusive parents the Type 5 will withdraw as much as possible and also compartmentalize emotions and social interactions. The safe place for Type 5 is in their head. So they withdraw to their room, if possible, and frequently pace back and forth and talk to themselves. Other ways to withdraw are into books, video games, math puzzles, science experiments, etc. Anything that limits social interactions with unreliable human beings is embraced. Not only do they compartmentalize their emotions and separate thinking from feeling but they also compartmentalize all of their relationships. That is, family, friends, coworkers, fellow students, fellow hobbyists etc are not commingled. That would complicated the interactions which is difficult for Type 5 to handle.
So Type 5 is born with a world view of Scarcity and how does this influence their behavior. First, they reduce their needs to conserve their resources. They hoard time, energy, emotions, information, and material resources ( food, books, money etc. ). They are frugal. They view every interaction as an opportunity for someone to abscond with their resources, not as an opportunity to replenish or expand their resources. They are the minimalists in our society. “Live lightly on the earth” is a type 5 quotation.
Type 5 gives up on emotional interactions to some extent in order to avoid making themselves vulnerable to the emotional neediness of others. Emotionally needy people take resources that are scarce already. Type 5 live in their head where there is order, such as the study of mathematics or science or computer technology, not in the exterior world which consists of complex social interactions with bartering and sharing and emotional vulnerability. That exterior world is simply to complex and too scary.
Unfortunately, viewing the world through the lens of thought and not feelings can inhibit our relationships with others. One of my Type 5 friends said that if your pickup line starts with “ have you seen the latest statistics on birth rates?” that you are probably a type 5.
Withdrawing into ones interior world and specifically into the world of thought is one way to conserve emotional energy but type 5 will withdraw physically also. They can live like hermits or find jobs that are isolating. For instance, they could take a job as fire spotter in an isolated part of a national forest. Or they can stay in the city but work on computer technology in an individual setting rather than a team approach. Another way to withdraw is to become an Observer of life rather than a Participant. They watch people dance and study the behavior rather than participate in the dance.
All of this behavior serves to protect the interior against unwanted and unsolicited intrusions. Type 5 views questions about their emotional life as a breach of boundaries and an invasion of their privacy. Again, this exposes the Type 5 to the loss of emotional energy or if they allow the person into their personal life they might take resources such as information or material resources, including money. The boundary must be defended and the defense mechanism is Withdrawal/Isolation.
To develop their wholeness, Type 5 needs to embrace their shadow aspects. From Beatrice Chestnut’s book “The Complete Enneagram” she describes the shadow of type 5 to be Love, Intimacy, Strength, Power and Aggression. I would agree. I would wish for my Type 5 friends to visualize the messiness of relationships as a way to enrich themselves rather than deplete themselves.
With love and kindness,
Steve Purdom
