Enneagram 4: Individualist Romantic

We all appreciate the creativity, poetry and empathy that exudes from Fours. They are in the Heart Center of Intelligence and they are profoundly involved with their feelings. Fours are wildly imaginative and deeply sensitive. They are artists. They seek to have their authentic self flow out of them in order to make an impact on the world. They have a need to be unique and a dislike for the ordinary. They are looking for their true identity and how it can imprint the world as it flows genuinely out of their inner experience. To be mundane or insignificant without an identity is their greatest fear.

Fours are more comfortable with melancholy than the rest of us. They enjoy sad music and heartbreaking love stories. They don't see a need for things to always be bright and cheery. Though they can certainly be joyful, they are just as content in despair. They are romantics at heart. They are safe places for friends to run to and they thrive on meaningful intimacy. In sad times, they are the friend who will sit by your side in solidarity.

In any given day they can experience a vast range of feelings from extreme highs to lows. It can be confusing for them to know what they are genuinely feeling because of the conflict. Others can experience Fours as moody and self-absorbed. They can be overly dramatic. They believe they are what they feel. They fall into a pattern of trusting their feelings more than reality. They can become overly attached to the emotions they prefer, whether sad or joyful or romantic, and then try to create situations through music, relationships or experiences that help bolster and prolong the feeling. They seek to reinforce their feeling of choice rather than let feelings change and come and go as they naturally do.

Fours have a sense that they are somehow flawed differently than others. It's like they once had a nameless deep connection but it has been lost and they struggle to find it again. This desire for the abstract and undefined leads them into a fantasy world. It also brings their passion of envy to the surface. They envy the easy way others are in the world and wrestle with identifying the essential element that they lack. They believe others have a wholeness that is for them unattainable.

Healthy Fours discover they aren't lacking a secret ingredient. They learn to express gratitude which neutralizes the envy. Rather than focus on loss and voids, they choose to focus on the gifts and blessings in their lives. They are appreciative. They understand that no emotion is forever. They relax the procrastination from striving

to be unique and instead do useful, practical things to leave a positive mark. They focus outward rather than getting stuck in self-absorption and appreciate life just as it is. Even the ordinary becomes beautiful.

Giving thanks for today,

Jessica Morgan McAtee