|
|
Fine Distinctions: Eights
Subtypes
Self Preservation Eights
• Strongly focused on physical security; very hard workers.
• When healthy they are exceptionally self-reliant, independent and responsible.
• Self-preservation Eights can be implacably determined to prosper.
• Momma Bear or Poppa Bear; both fiercely protective and tenderly nurturing.
• Eights with this subtype can be homebodies who are focused on comfortable survival.
• Often see the world as a place where they have to fight for whatever they have.
• Grow up poor or struggling or feel somehow responsible for the material well-being of their family of origin.
• Eights with this subtype can have a stronger connection to
Five and may be collectors or have prized, treasured objects.
• May value possessions and objects over people.
• Possessions may symbolize security, representing the fact
that the Eight has made it and overcome past deprivations.
• Eights with this subtype can grow preoccupied with controlling their immediate environment, including their home.
• The people who endanger the Eight’s possessions are the
same people the Eight is pledged to take care of – their family.
• Could bully their children to “toughen them up” for life in the hard world outside.
• Bully their own vulnerabilities in order to feel safe.
• Prone to survivalist thinking. Might openly preach
selfishness and believe that civilized behavior is just a veneer
concealing our true animal nature.
• This subtype is also evident in the behavior of tycoons,
self-made men and women who create empires out of nothing.
• Some are notoriously aggressive, bosses-from-hell.
• A Self Preservation Eight’s family members could become
inadvertent obstacles to the Eight’s continued survival in a dangerous
world. So they must be controlled, contained or squelched.
Intimate Eights
• Considerate protective friends; loyal, dependable and there when you need them.
• Healthy Intimate Eights can be thoughtful and
philosophical about matters of the heart, the vagaries and complexities
of relationships.
• Sensitive and compassionate, they often have a stronger connection to Two.
• Boxer-poets; people who have a paradoxical combination of aggression and sensitivity.
• This subtype can bring artistic tendencies: the desire to create, express,
write.
• Many female Eights have this subtype.
• A nuanced ironic intelligence, especially about relationships.
• Intimate Eights are sometimes mistaken for Fours and occasionally have a Four parent.
• More easily able to switch places with their beloved, to
sympathetically enter into the world view and feelings of the other
person.
• When intimate Eights are less healthy, they are wary of betrayal and prone to suspicion.
• They can freight up their relationships with expectations,
often worrying about the other person’s capacity to handle their
aggression and vulnerabilities.
• Want stable, loyal predictable partners and may be sensitive to signs of faltering commitment.
• Can feel that a close relationship is a mutual pact of protection in a dangerous world.
• Test their partner’s motives and fortitude by being
paradoxically tough and aggressive. If the partner can handle being
emotionally roughed up then the Eight can relax and be unguarded.
• Intimate Eights can express love so implicitly and invisibly that their partner doesn’t know it.
• May give you a gift that they have poured their heart
into, but do so in such a casual way that it seems to mean nothing.
• Set themselves up to be ignored and overlooked and then react angrily.
• Can be possessive and try to dominate and control an intimate partner.
• They can be exceptionally jealous, hooked into the other, overreacting to their partner’s every move.
• Might seek out pliant or passive people – Twos Sixes or Nines – so that the Eight can be in charge.
• The dark extreme of this subtype can be seen in the behavior of male stalkers and spousal abusers.
• May want revenge for being rejected and carry the sense
that the other person is my possession and they aren’t going to get away
from me.
• Connected to the low side of Two, prideful codependence
and emotionalism. Focus on the other person while they neglect
themselves.
Social Eights
•
Healthy Social Eights are often loyal to a chosen group and conceive of
themselves as that group’s protector, provider or leader.
• The group’s welfare and cohesion are important to them. To
this end, they are often cooperative, seeking positive solutions and
open to feedback
• Social Eights are genuinely interested in how others feel and are willing to listen and to negotiate.
• Honest about their faults and hold themselves accountable to others.
• More likely to apologize when they’ve been unfair.
• This subtype has a stronger connection to Two and can emotionally switch places with others in their chosen group.
• As friends they want to protect what’s soft or young in you and appreciate the same treatment in return.
• Can be bold, audacious or progressive in the service of changing a system so that it becomes more socially just.
• Some suffer from “eldest child syndrome,” feeling
responsible for younger siblings while compensating for inadequate or
distant parents.
• The group the Eight protects could be family, friends,
coworkers. Or stray animals, abused children, misfit teenagers or the
small and inarticulate – those who can’t advocate on their own behalf.
• Members of the group represent the Eight’s vulnerabilities and that’s what the Eight is essentially protecting.
• When Social Eights are less healthy, they are more likely to put
themselves in a one-up position, the adult in charge.
• Friendless protector of others, alone in the middle of a group.
• They can’t receive well, and don’t expect to be given to or believe anyone will notice when they need something.
• Their group is pitted against the world or another group; persecutory justice for a cause.
• The mentality of unhealthy Social Eightness is always present in wars.
• Hang onto power for its own sake.
• Gangsters, street and prison gangs; cultures prone to retributive feuding and cycles of revenge.
Eight with a Seven Wing
• Expansive, extraverted and overtly powerful.
• Gregarious and generous; can display a cheerful, sunny bravado.
• May be forceful but with a light touch.
• Often funny and have a sense of humor about themselves.
• May talk loud and be sociable partygoers, although this can be modified by their subtype.
• Generally ambitious and materialistic.
• Can be visionary, idealistic and enterprising.
• Sometimes driven to bring the new into being and willing to take risks to make that happen.
• The realm of tycoons or high-profile social reformers who overhaul a system to make it more just.
• Can be good at seeing options, being flexible and strategic in the exercise of power or achieving a goal.
• This wing also brings Eights more intellectual capacity.
• Eights with a Seven wing are usually more visual and see clearer imagery in their mind’s eye.
• Use their imaginations to dream up projects and plans but have trouble seeing themselves.
• A busy, fast-moving tempo to the way they think, talk and move. In a hurry.
• Some Eights with this wing can speak in hyperbole using words
like always, never, the greatest. This reflects their grandiosity as
well as either/or, black-and-white thinking.
• The appetite of Seven and Eightish lust combine to form a stronger tendency towards addiction.
• Reactionary, prone to temperamental ups and downs; moody, egocentric, quick to anger.
• May court or create chaos as well as inflate themselves narcissistically.
• Some are ruthlessly materialistic. Driven by plans or big dreams.
• Can use people up, suck them dry, roll over them.
• May be explosive or violent, prone to distorted overreaction.
• Activity addicts; some Eights with this wing are chronically
restless and stay in continual motion to avoid the shadow of boredom.
Eight with an Nine Wing
• Healthy Eights with a Nine wing can have an aura of supernatural calm.
• Have a strong implicit belief in their own abilities and take their authority for granted.
• The outward manner of someone who hasn’t had a self-doubt in decades.
• The queen or king of all they survey. A quality of not needing to display their strength.
• A grounded rock-like quality, as though their feet are anchored to the center of the earth.
• Healthy Eights with this wing have a receptive Nine-like quality and a modest, mild-mannered social presentation.
• Can be gentle, kind-hearted and soft-spoken. Sensitive in a non-emotional way.
• Tender, nurturing parents as well as steady, supportive friends.
• Informal and unpretentious, patient and laconic, often more introverted.
• May have a dry or ironic sense of humor.
• A stronger receptiveness to other people. More disposed to reflexively pleasing others. Can seem like Nines.
• Eights with this wing are generally more auditory and kinesthetic and less visual.
• A slower tempo of thought, physical movement and speech.
• Some have flat or even voices, which they modulate only slightly.
• More oriented to the present than Eights with a Seven wing.
• Many have a high physical pain tolerance.
• Can be oblivious to the force of their anger until after they’ve hurt someone.
• Can be calmly dominating, emotionally cold and blind to softer emotions.
• Might have an aura of implicit, simmering anger, like a sleeping
volcano. They can be slow to erupt but when they do it’s sudden and
explosive.
• Some Eights with this wing act jaded and present the world with a tough, deadpan, poker-face.
• Prone to boredom and, when unhealthy, have a marked tendency towards clinical depression.
• Can go numb, have trouble showing affection, act dead.
• Can be cruel especially in the service of ill-conceived goals.
• May be highly intelligent but their aggression makes them stupid.
• Prone to paranoid plotting, muddled thinking and warped acts of revenge.
• Blind destructive behavior, abusive towards those they love, don’t know when to quit.
• Might passively accommodate other people’s expectations and then get angry when they have done too much.
• Can turn violent when they get close to their own vulnerabilities.
Eight’s Connection to Two
• Connection helps Eights to sympathetically identify with others.
• They extend themselves, become better communicators, admit their interdependence.
• More compassionate, thoughtful, open and vulnerable.
• Peacemakers. Some have a conscious ethos of love.
• More in touch with the child within themselves.
• Healthy Twoish Eights can have “therapeutic” personalities; want to heal others and make things better.
• They see people 3-dimensionally instead of as 2-dimensional caricatures.
• This connection brings codependence.
• Some Eights can become overidentified with their partner and are unable to disengage.
• Could compensate for and defend their partner’s weaknesses, even those that injure the Eight.
• Compulsively over-protective of others.
• They may also overreact, displaying a kind of hair-trigger emotionality based in anger.
• Can hang onto slights and injustices, take the whole world personally.
• Might be more vengeful, act entitled, episodes of megalomania.
The Two’s self-inflation reinforces the Eight’s narcissism.
• Possessively demanding; could become obsessed about their
partner. This connection sometimes brings jealousy and reinforces the
unhealthy tendencies of the Intimate subtype.
• Try to dominate people on whom they are dependent.
• The Eight defense of denial and Two habit of repression reinforce each other.
• It is not unusual for Eights to express this connection by marrying it.
Eight’s Connection to Five
• Healthy connection brings mental clarity.
• Able to be strategic and think things through.
• Less driven by power or aggression.
• Can see better in their mind’s eye, their visual field is enhanced.
• The connection brings a detailed, subtle, nuanced quality to an Eight’s responses.
• Can detach, stand back from circumstances and pause before they react.
• May have an intellectual streak, especially with a Seven wing.
• They can be bookish, could have technical or philosophical interests; a love of learning.
• Loners. May recharge and replenish themselves by withdrawing into solitude.
• This connection takes the edge off Eight’s addictive tendencies and helps moderate their behavior.
• A calming influence; helps them see the big picture, remember
their long-term goals and avoid (over) reacting to immediate
circumstances.
• Fiveish Eights can isolate themselves and lapse into inaction and depression.
• Collectors, hoarders, might be stingy with money.
• Distrustful and suspicious; start seeing friends as enemies.
• Guilty brooding about past actions, may sink into morbid regret.
• Self-punishing; in extreme cases a risk of suicide.
• Feel powerless; heightened fear of betrayal by others.
• Anti-social, try to manipulate people from a distance.
• Can be fond of malformed, unfounded conspiracy theories.
• Dissociated, lose touch with reality, paranoid-schitzophrenic.
|
|
|
|
Products
* About
* Enneagram
* Ericksonian
Hypnosis
Join Our
Mailing List
|
|
We
will notify you of new blog posts, upcoming product specials
as well as
new podcasts, workshops, CDs,
videos and books.
|
|
|