We like to think we’re complex, but personality gurus pegged me

By David McElroy · August 5, 2019

Am I really this predictable? Or are they reading my mind?

A couple of months ago, a friend told me about a daily “EnneaThought for the Day” which I could sign up to receive from the Enneagram Institute. You know how much I’ve come to appreciate the insights of the Enneagram personality typing system over the past four or five years, so it was a no-brainer for me to sign up to get the free thought of the day about the Type 1.

But I didn’t expect it to feel as though somebody had been reading my thoughts. These people had me pegged. I appreciate it — and the recognition makes me laugh — but it also makes me a bit uncomfortable.

Am I really this easy to predict?

“A major feature of your personality is the tendency to see disorder all around you and feel personally obliged to do something about it. Watch for this in yourself today.”

I inhaled sharply when I read that one. I laughed at myself nervously. How could they possibly know this? How did they know that I feel as though the world is falling apart and that it will collapse if I don’t fix everything?

Surely that was just a fluke.

But it keeps happening. Not every day, of course, but at least once a week, one of the thoughts pierces me and reminds me that something in me is organized in a more predictable way than I like to admit.

“Remember that your Basic Fear is of being bad, corrupt, unredeemable, and condemnable. Can you feel into the existence of your Basic Fear in yourself today?”

Those are feelings that I try to hide. How could they know I feel that way? How could they know that I often feel as though I’m irredeemably bad or broken? I’m terrified for anybody to know this, so how could they see it?

“Ones have a self-defeating, negative tendency toward obsessions and compulsions. Do you see evidence of this in yourself today?”

I don’t want to admit this.

“Try this Affirmation today: ‘I now affirm that the best I can do is good enough.’”

How could someone possibly know that I need to hear this? I’m often convinced that my best will never be good enough to earn the love I need — and this leaves me depressed.

“When do you think you will give up getting angry about the indifference of others to your efforts? How about today?”

I wanted to cry out about that one. I become bitterly angry — but I try to hide it — when people are indifferent about the things I see as important, even holy. There are certain things which I offer to the world as my best gifts — and it feels like offering pearls to swine. How can I possibly stop being angry about that?

“Back to basics today: remember that healthy Ones are conscientious, self-disciplined, and highly principled. Cultivate these qualities in yourself today.”

And then another.

“Remember that your Basic Desire is to be aligned with the ‘Good,’ to be virtuous, and to have integrity. Can you become aware of how your Basic Desire is the root of many of your most compelling motivations and unconscious actions?”

Both of those hit way too close to home. Yes, these are the things I am at my core. They’re the things which I assumed everybody was or at least wanted to be. It destroyed my innocence years ago to discover that so few people care about being good — that so few care about doing the right thing just for the sake of being righteous.

“Remember that your Direction of Stress is to Four, which is a metaphor for feeling alienated, misunderstood, and self-pitying. Do you sense these qualities in yourself today—and know what triggered them?”

For years, I mistyped myself as a Type 4 and now I know why. Under stress, a Type 1 starts acting more like a Type 4, sometimes for good and other times for bad. “Alienated, misunderstood and self-pitying”? I never saw self-pity in myself but I strongly saw the other two. I still do. I suspect I always will, unless I find a place to belong — and someone to belong with.

“Your Achilles’ heel is your self-righteous anger. Try to step back and see that your anger alienates people so that they cannot hear many of the good things you have to say.”

I hid my anger for many years, even from myself. Expressing anger wasn’t allowed when I was a child, but I constantly feel anger today about the world not being what it should be — about people not being what they ought to be. I didn’t realize this until I read those words, but people are probably turned off by my strong sense of right and wrong — of how things ought to be and how they must be. I guess not everybody feels that way.

“For the One, the Missing Piece will be found at the highest Levels of type Four.”

This one made my head feel as though it was going to explode, at least for a moment. What they’re saying here is why I have trouble giving up my identification with the Type 4. The best parts of myself identify strongly with the healthiest parts of the Type 4. And now this tells me why I can’t let go of the need to create. I thought that giving up the identification with Type 4 would allow me to abandon my desire — compulsion, really — to create.

But I was wrong.

Part of me wants to never see another one of these thoughts again. Some of the insights are so painfully true that they hurt. Just a bit. But another part of me knows I need this — because I need somebody to call me on my own tendencies. (And, yes, this is why I desperately want to be loved and understood by someone who gets me deeply, so she can call me on things I need to hear.)

It’s far too easy to identify with my narratives and live in those thoughts, but these insights pierce my balloons and deflate my ego when it’s identifying too strongly with the wrong parts of me.

I want to be loved and understood, but I never thought that there could be so much understanding from someone who’s never met me and who’s not even writing for me.

At times, I fear that I can never good good enough, be worthy enough, or really be loved. But these insights show me that my inner patterns do fit among humans — at least somewhat, at least some of the time.

For better or worse, being called on my secret tendencies make me feel understood. And accepting those things — even the ugly parts — makes me a better man.

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After I wrote last night about being happy, I thought of an old song that mirrored what I was feeling. After listening to the entire album, I found it remarkable how well the emotions of that music match my own heart at this point in my life. Bob Bennett’s “Matters of the Heart” came out while I was in college. Even after all these years, it holds up really well, and you can listen to the entire album on YouTube. The specific song which matched my feelings last night was “Madness Dancing,” but I still find every song on the album to be strong with the exception of the eighth and ninth. (The song about his parents, called “1951,” is especially poignant.) In fact, the opening and closing songs paint a picture of my heart at its best now in these lines: “A light shining in this heart of darkness, A new beginning and a miracle, Day by day the integration of the concrete and the spiritual.” It’s old music that you’ve probably never heard, but it means a lot to me.

Narcissists tend to turn their children into narcissists — and since a narcissist doesn’t realize he or she is a narcissist, there’s no bad intent. How does this happen? I watched a YouTube video over the weekend from an Australian psychologist who does a nice job of summarizing how it works. None of this is new to me, but I thought it was useful for those who haven’t spent years digging through books and articles about it. The same psychologist has an excellent summary of something which confuses a lot of people about narcissism. You’ve all seen examples of the loud, boisterous and overbearing narcissist, but what about the ones who are more introverted and vulnerable? This type is called a covert narcissist (or a vulnerable narcissist), and this is what my father was. In the first video, I strongly see myself in the ways my father treated me and in the second video, I see what my father was almost successful in making me become.

It’s National Dog Day in the U.S. and Lucy is here to remind you to go express love and appreciation to your favorite canine. Not only does your doggie friend give you love and affection, but he or she also protects your home from intruders — such as birds, squirrels, mail carriers and other undesirables who deserve to be barked at vigorously. Where would we be without that? And if you think this service is actually unnecessary, ask yourself how long it’s been since your home was the victim of a vicious squirrel attack. See? The doggie defense works. Keep barking at ’em, Lucy.

I’ve spent a tremendous amount of time over the last couple of years thinking and writing about love and connection. I’ve come to understand that this lack of love and connection is at the root of a lot of human tragedy and unhappiness, including addictions and depression. As I talked with others and researched the psychology behind the issues, I ran into the surprising fact that researchers are increasingly using psychedelic drugs to allow volunteers to have experiences which are giving them a sense of connection which they’ve lost — something that allows them to feel connected to love and God in a way they didn’t understand before — which is having dramatic effects in combating things such as depression and addictions. In this 15-minute TED talk — without an audience in the age of COVID-19 — Johns Hopkins researcher Mary Cosimano shares her experiences with guided psilocybin sessions being used to treat addiction, depression and end-of-life issues. One of her key observations is the importance of love and connection. She said that it seems love is literally part of the answer. In her role as director of guide/facilitator services for the program, Cosimano is responsible for training and supervising session facilitators.

It’s something I wrote four and a half years ago — in the desperation of loneliness — and it’s become my most popular article. It’s not my best writing. It’s raw and unpolished. But it seems as though a lot of people can identify with it. It’s called Missing someone creates intense physical sensations in my heart. Just to give you an idea how many people still read it, I had 11,586 people visit the page last month — from 2,907 cities and towns around the world. London sent the most readers for it, followed by New York, Westminster, Los Angeles, Chicago, Kuala Lumpur, Melbourne, Sydney, Toronto and almost 3,000 more. I’ve noticed something interesting. It always gets the most hits from an area of the world in the late hours, right after midnight, and that breaks my heart — because I understand why. All these people are so lonely and are missing someone so much that they turn to a search engine looking for answers, so they stumble upon this piece. I wrote this late at night on the day after Christmas because my heart was breaking. I needed to express how much I missed someone, and a lot of people seem to identify with it. If you’re one of those people, I have no way of knowing who you are, but I empathize with you. I know why you hurt. I wish I could do more to help. I hurt with you, because after all this time, I still feel the same way.

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