Really? It didn't sound like you at all.. I think you did a great job of keeping it in check. If you say it like that, it did look like a 8 trait.... On the other hand, you might have been a well developed 8, who'd been able to subdue their harmful behaviour. Have you shown a 8-like behaviour in the past, based on the list?
Yes, actually. I've always been my own person, even when I was a wee little kid, but I was a nice kid. The 8 behaviors started to really appear in my teenage years. My senior quote was "No one controls me". I've grown into a lot of the deeper 8 behaviors over the years. I still don't have all of them.
There are parts of 9 that sound a lot like me. The motivations and goals of a 9 are very much like my own. Peace, harmony, tranquility, even getting lost in my imagination. I didn't always stand up for myself, but eventually I got tired of being the nice guy because it never got me anywhere. But now that I think about it, I was taught as a kid that being the nice guy was the way to be strong.
However, most of the reactions attributed to 9s are nothing like my own, such as trying to ignore the problems, hiding from emotions, and the ability to accept unpleasant things. That's not me at all. I get mad. I get depressed. I get obsessive. I fight back. I very much love peace and harmony, but I have no problem standing up to someone who is being a problem.
I see *hugs*. I can see how it might have been difficult to put into one Enneagram. Maybe in your case, it's more fluid than it is to other people.
Thanks for the hugs. It's possible. I'd assume that the more 'issues' someone has, the more they're going to identify with more than one Enneatype. I've got a few issues. As best as I can tell, I've got 9 motivations and 8 reactions.
..since they said the Enneagram is about motivations... well, say you did lose your motivations. What do you feel, and why and how would you find it back?
My motivation for a very long time, and I mean since as long as I could remember even into my early childhood (age 5 or so) was finding a soulmate. I know that sounds crazy, but that urge was always within me. From there, I wanted to deeply bond with them, and live out our love in peace and harmony, and help the world become a better place, even if that meant we had to fight for it.
It took me until I was in my 30s to find her, and I've since lost her. In fact, today is the 3 year anniversary of losing her. I was utterly and completely devastated. I'm past most of the depression and anger now. I'm just numb. But, with her went that dream of comfort, peace, and love. My one motivation in life.
Since then, I really don't have much left other than my base motivation to survive, which involves keeping myself emotionally and mentally alive as well. That's why I got so interested in personality typing of late. I feel like over the past three years, I've had to let go of so much of myself that all I have left is the animal side of me... not in a 'feral' sense, but in a sense that has let go of many of my previous assumptions about my idealism and my sense of how things should be. The reasons I would have held back emotionally, been cautious, which was to protect the potential of my dreams coming true, are gone, so there's nothing really holding me back anymore.