Thoughts on Instinctual types

I've been thinking about the Instincts, in regards to my life, and the way I can't understand some types of other people.

The Instincts are pretty easily observable operating in day-to-day life, amongst friends, coworkers, family...at least, I find.

What isn't easy at all is understanding and fathoming the entire perspective shift operating throughout life from an instinctual orientation that's not my own.

Someone {one of the Enneagram author/researcher types}once said that the Instincts were perhaps a stronger and more important and fundamental difference between people than even their Enneagram type.  I think I'm starting to come around to that thinking, myself.

My biggest mystery is Socials.  It takes a big leap of the brain for me to keep my head in that perspective- well, firstly to entirely encompass the Social instinct's perspective, really- and then retain it, as I envision going about life, and various activities of the day.  It's hard work.  It feels like homework.  It takes thinking, for me, at every step.
Which is one of the first reasons why Social is not my first or even second instinct; and a good hint that it's completely dead-last.


I can understand Self-Preservation...mostly.  It's not as hard to wrap my head around; I "get" it, and it's not as hard work to envision how going through a day as a Self-Pres type might be.  I still have to stop myself and think, but it's more like the work you do trying to remember to step lightly on a sprained foot, each stride...you have to do the work of remembering, but the remembering is easier to retain and it's easier to engrain the temporary new pattern in your mind.

My Instinct is the Relational.  The Intimate [also called Sexual] instinct.  It's hard for me to imagine that other people don't go through life - in fact, the week, the day, the hours - swinging from the magnets' pull of attraction, longing; a soul-thirst sort of interest in one thing or another; fascination.  Or the desire...the desire to get under the layers of other people; to really know them.  [Even if not wanting to be so known, pursued, or probed themself...as is my case- the Five.  And perhaps the other Withdrawn triad types...well, the Nine, maybe, anyway...Okay- and some other, non-Withdrawn triad types would probably feel various aversions to that, too.]

I want to 'know' while being hidden...coccooned; until I'm ready to come out, or reveal.  But it takes a lot for a Five to feel that safe.  My therapist used to say that being around me at times was like being around a fearfully cautious baby, testing out a stranger...they need to feel you out [feel you literally, like touch your face with their hands, in a baby's case--which is what she pantomimed, while she said this], know that you're safe...that you will hold still and not frighten them while you're being explored.  If you've held very still and gentle and haven't frightened them, but have exhibited absolute trust in them, allowing yourself to be explored and known- the will settle down in your lap and be ready to place their absolute trust in you; to be intimate with you.
I think this is a very good description of a Five in love & in intimacy of any kind.  Maybe the Intimate subtype Five, in particular...maybe not.  Couldn't say.

So ~ anyway, as an Intimate Five you can see I'm at a catch-22.  Yearning for intimacy; for immediacy of knowledge, to the soul level, of the other~ in another word, a simpler word, closeness;
at the same time, fearing letting the littlest bits out, of my soul, of things dear to me, for fear that in those things not being shown love, or being valued, I will feel eradicated & destroyed, bit by bit.

Fives are very fragile, in that way.

--Not if you don't matter to them!...
but if you do..........

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anyway, like I was saying:  I seem to be surrounded by what I see as Socials, in life, and they bug me.  Well, not that...but just...they seem to have taken over the world.  ;)

To my eyes, Sixes mimick Social-ness.  Almost all Sixes that I've known, whether their primary Instinctual subtype was Social or not, have seemed like Socials or seem to have a huge social component.  Even my best friend- who is NOT (I don't think!) a Social subtype--and she's a Six--is so much more preoccupied with the Social realm, and aware of it, involved in it, and worried [lol...see: Six--worry!] about it.  She Twitters.  >:p   Apparently.  *facepalm*

[Twitter strikes me as an overtly Social-type activity.  Much the same as Facebook, etc., etc.--all of those things.  Yes, to answer the probable unasked question: I searched my soul a lot and hesitated, 'ere I first began a blog.  (All I'm saying is, a blog, though more like a little bit of a further-apart cousin, can or cannot be, depending on what you make of it, something akin to Facebook & Twitter and the like.  They're not un-related.)]

So many popular {ugh...'popular' -itself a Social instinct idea} pastimes and things that spread and get advertised and talked about and taken up are things that Socials like.  I guess they go hand in hand; Socials like to do certain types of things, and the types of things that Socials do and habits that they have naturally lead to stuff getting 'advertised,' for lack of a better word.

Which also leads to my suspicion that Socials must make a lot of babies.  >:{

I can't see why not...what kinds of things do babies and children lead to?  Well, let's see:  Being a first-time mom (or dad) is kind of traumatic and scary, no matter how stoked you are about it--so you naturally tap in with other people who have been there, or ARE going there, before you or with you--and you can share notes and cry or freak out on other parents' shoulders.  And what is that?  That is socially connecting.

Socials (mostly) like social connection.

A little further along, what do you do with your baby(ies)?  At some point you're probably going to need sitters or daycare or early ed. of some kind...so you take them to other little groups of people you must connect with in order to get the proper care taken of your baby(ies).  -There's more.

Even later still...what's next?  School.  And activities.  And teams (of this and that), or clubs/groups.  Which requires you to meet and connect with teachers, and coaches, and scout leaders, and soccer moms, and more other parents...and more, and more....!

Good heavens, it's a frigging non-Social's nightmare!

But Socials eat it up.  It makes them feel whole, and complete, or something.  [I don't know.  ?!?!  Go ask them!]


So anyway...even if they're not, by the prospect of all this, highly motivated, even--at the very least, they feel no aversion (to making babies), for these reasons.

So you see why it's not so far beyond the pale for me to hypothesize that Socials are probably the lead baby-makers, and that their interests also tend to take over a society...by dint of the nature of their interests & likes combined with their social nature, alone?

Of course, all this goes to pot if there is no basis for believing that the Instincts are somehow hereditary.  If they are not, then all that we have are one set of Instincts' likes and interests being much better advertised and spread around by word of mouth than the other two Instincts'.  But not necessarily a population explosion of Socials, even if they do like baby-making:  If Instinctual type isn't hereditary, they'd theoretically be having as many little Relationals and Self-Pres's as they were little Socials.

*squeezes eyes* Please, God....................!

For whatever reason I've heard some others say that as far as being free (think 'unfettered') with their sexual lives goes, though, that Self-Preservation types excell.  Not that they are promiscuous; again, use the word unfettered to lead, on this one.  In the sense that Socials have certain types of fetters psychologically restraining parameters of their sexual lives and activity, and Relationals [aka Sexuals]--because one's primary Instinct is the most 'fettered' up with ' issues,'--are a conflicted group, surrounding that life area...and absolutely do not necessarily have more sex, despite what their primary Instinct's name might suggest to one's mind.  [This is all according to what I've read & heard from others.  None of this bit on the attitude and living out of their sexual lives of the Instinctual types could I verify or inform on, from my own info.  I just don't really have any.  Well, except that I can affirm as an Intimate subtype that I agree that, as one, it's not about sex, it's about intimate/deep personal connection and bonding, and the hangups of connecting or not connecting, each time & under each new circumstance, and with each new/different person.]