You know how you revert to that parent/child interaction pattern with your parents sometimes, no matter how many years you've lived on your own as an adult...no matter
how old you are, or get to be...and no matter how evolved or 'more like friends than mother/daughter [and/or etc.]' your relationship with them seems to now be?
There will still be times when all that 'new relationship' stuff blows away, and you're back to just a snot-nosed little kid (in their eyes), and they have regressed & transformed--yet again--into a hypocritical, haughty, 'holier-than-' or 'know-better-than-'-thou, overgrown child in elders' clothing [that you can see through] in yours.
Count on it.
It's so fun. x(
So, my mother and I recently had one of these joint regressions [fighting the ironic urge here to blast
"She started it!" ;) ], and we fought over it.
I'm going to skip the non-essentials to go right to the effects and personality type analysis.
_____________
~Begin Enneagram lesson~______________
Background fact: I am a Five, in the Enneagram personality system.
I used to think I was a Four, but that was when I was undermedicated and much more depressed. I am a Five with a strong Four wing, and I am an Intimate subtype Five. The strong Four wing and the Intimate subtype together mean that the type of Five I am looks a lot less like the descriptions of Fives in most Enneagram books. I'm more emotional, I kind of have a huge and bleeding heart, and I experience deep longing, sometimes.
But it is the way that I deal with my inner self and my outer world, the behavior and coping and survival choices & patterns, and thinking and belief patterns, that make me "Five."
A Five's primary personality hangup follows the theme they call "Avarice." It's really packed, as a term--as most of the personality fixation words used by Enneagram experts are. But basically, in my own words, I'd describe it as the ever-present, just-beneath-the-surface & waiting-to-get-triggered feeling that whatever actual survival
needs I
have - that I have managed to procure and safeguard or amass, in life, are extra vulnerable to being taken, robbed of me by others.
Let me unpack survival "needs": It's different for each type of Five. Don't just straight off think
stuff. Not like money, or physical possessions, food, livelihood, lover, or anything else, necessarily. It could be none, some, or all of those. Like I said, it's different for each type of Five. But Fives do have some key psychological needs that influence what kinds of things tend to trigger extra anxiety at the thought of their loss: Most or many Fives would list highly alone time and privacy, and probably the right and freedom to delve deeply into an area of their intense interest without interference, obstruction, interruption, or criticism. [A "hands off!" obsession, basically.] [-Usually, there are more like a few, or several.]
Rather than get way into the reason that some of these things are
needs for Fives -you can read Enneagram books, for that- I'll just state that when something becomes a need, for an Enneagram type, that person feels (not rationalizes or
thinks) that they will explode or die if they are kept from it. From having it, having control over its presence or procurement, from keeping it, or from being able to go out & somehow get it. Whatever its form, the object or thing of need has become a psychological need. Okay, not 'has become'--it just
is, I should say. The theory is that this is from birth, or very shortly after.
For me, having time alone [a TON of it] is a psychological need. So are the freedom to pursue my interests without outside prevention or commentary; my cat; being free to go out and buy or have something that has stirred up feelings of longing (much like a Four) and procure it so that I can study it (even if at great physical survival cost; like, food money); and, non-judgement.
I'm not sure if non-judgement is important to me because I've been sensitized to shame and judgement for seeming "failures" while trying to make it, unaware, with A.D.D. until young-middle-adulthood; or if it's because I'm just very sensitive by nature. I think it's probably a combination of both.
Each Enneagram type has special kinds of connections to a few other numbers along the Enneagram. One of these types of connections are called "arrows" and you have two of them; an arrow to one personality type in the Enneagram that you will incidentally manifest some shades of when you are growing and expanding yourself and improving, and one arrow to another Enneagram type that you will do the same for when you are retracting, feeling the need to be self-protective, feel harmed or threatened, and feel that urge to seek the safety of the survival tactics you've used in the past that have worked- that are known. You know they might not be the best or the 'healthiest you,' but they work, you can do them, and they tend to get you what you need and get you through whatever-the-crisis, generally, every time.
For type Five, this arrow (called the Direction of Disintegration--DoD, for shorthand) points to type Seven.
When types trek along the arrow toward the E-type which lies in their Direction of
Disintegration, they're not pulling into their personality wisps and shades of a
healthy representation of the type that lies there; only the maladaptive- the bad habits and second- or third-rate coping and thought patterns of that type. The junk.
(Conversely, when a type follows its other arrow - toward the E-type that lies in their Direction of Integration (or DoI)- {for Five, this is Eight} - they're pulling in the healthier and most adaptive aspects of the type that lies there.)______________
~end Enneagram lesson~_____________
So, this week, my mother and I began a parent-child relationship regression cycle together (
She started it!), somehow...and the subject of her triggering-a-pitfall-of-my-personality-fixation
happened to be around my use of my money.
I was upset on these levels, that I'm aware of:
a)
my money
b) what right has she to voice judgement on my use of my money? I am not her dependent; neither is she mine. But for our own free acts of will, free acts of choice, we do not share money. What is hers is hers, unless she volunteers to share; and what is mine is mine, likewise.
c) if I care about something, and it matters to me- whether that means care in a heart sort of way, or an interest sort of way, or a 'need' [see E-type Five references, above] sort of way, THERE IS NO SAY on my choices around it, from anyone else.
d) I am an adult.
I was just rather incredulous at her uninvited response.
I know--for some unfortunate people that I do feel sorry for, out there, this is completely normal behavior from one or both of their parents, clear into their middle-age adulthood, and for the rest of their life. I guess I have been blessed, most of the time, to have a mother who has worked to change from that "mommy/schoolmarm" role they have in our childhood, to an adult-to-adult relationship role, when it was time.
Maybe I am spoiled.
But back to the point:
I was thinking over my very strong feelings after the triggering interaction with her took place; kind of amused, surprised, and in awe of how deep and integral to a part of my sanity, even, this irate, desperate rage felt--the rage that my deep wants are sacrosanct, besides the point about it being my money and the fact that I'm an adult & yatta yatta.
It was like she spat upon my very soul. On my heart.
And I know how overblown those feelings are, given the thing we were talking about that I was going to spend money on...the thing is a pretty trivial 'thing.' It really is.
It's what it represents, I'm thinking, that was the trigger. It falls under the category of 'those things that stir up feelings and/or longing' that I wish to re-experience, evaluate, and study. Fives do that. They tend to take emotional experiences and get away alone with them, and turn them over like a smooth pebble in the palm of their hand, that they can turn and turn and stare at, run their fingers over and experience, put away and take out again as needed and at will.
I use a pebble as an example object to show really what a Five is doing in their mind. It's all being experienced in the mind. But, like me, many Fives have actual 'treasures' that are items that are of immense worth to them because they are aids and triggers for getting there. Catalyst-helpers. At times when I become especially acquisitive for certain things it is usually over a 'catalyst' item. It's triggering me; I 'know' that it will help me find out, understand, the feeling/longing that is talking to me, and I want to hear its voice plainly. But the catalyst thing I'm seeking doesn't just help me hear the
question or experience
the asking for the feeling I'm longing for; it simultaneously answers it, gives it, assuages it. It's finding out the thirst and getting the drink for it -a little bit, anyway- at the same time.
It helps.
It helps me internally answer the question as to what's missing, what my mind & heart & psyche are wanting, by getting ever closer through fulfilling it a little at a time, by whatever does soothe it a little.
To the person who trespassed & judged me, this week, it is just another unnecessary expenditure of momentary and meager value, in what seems to be an intermittent pattern of them, over time, and currently happening when financial times are tight.
But life never bores of demonstrating to us in endlessly instructive, intricate, and creative ways why we should not bother to judge other people. It really is fools' labor.
What I remembered after analyzing why my feelings were so intense and immediate as they were was something I learned studying the Enneagram, regarding type Seven [Five's point of Direction of Disintegration]:
Sevens fear being trapped without the safety of their diversion of pleasure. Being trapped in deprivation. Being trapped in pain. And they can get awfully angry if it's you standing in the way of them, with pain hot on their heels, running to catch them from behind. They're frightened, but they just
appear livid, with a kind of large-presence, assertive, intimidation anger staring you down. And very entitled. In this sort of mode they can take on a demeaning air, and can try to paint you as pretty petty, at the least; and not infrequently, as near borderline fascist.
And I thought, as I'm thinking now, "Yeah, when I'm angry and feel violated over my pursuit of a
need, that's pretty much me."
Righteous indignation has nothing on me at that point. They are dismissed. [Also very Seven-like.] I may begin to argue them at first, but as my anger heats up over their absence of a right to speak on my life--and over the fact that I'm even arguing it with them, as if they had validation--I quickly just reject them, period. Done.
If they come back recanting or apologizing, fine. Bygones.
If they don't, things are left as they are- I was done; it stays being 'Done.'
I can't, and won't, and don't, live with a judging 'friend' or person or family member.
[*Ones that choose to show/express it to me. We all judge; I judge, too. But the smart ones of us who value and like to keep our relations, don't. There is a way of non-intrusively and non-offensively expressing to someone you care about that you have a concern for them, though it takes practice and it's hard--but yet that's still an entirely different thing, and coming out of an entirely different motivation & from an entirely different place--than the person feeling angry judgement-type feelings and thinking they have the right to victimize you with them. Usually the recipient can well tell the difference. Though, not all. And that's an entirely separate problem (people who can't tell the difference and people who feel judged by what isn't judgement, or feel judged at anything, regardless).]Anyway, in this way, I notice a lot of Seven in me. It makes me irate to be denied pleasure that's needed. Or for someone to try to control, or think they have the right to stop me, anyway, from the pursuit of a needed salve; needed pleasure. Them speaking on it at all is the same as stealing water from my lips when I'm dehydrated in the desert.
