![]() Without it, life feels cold, and dark, and terrifying. My country is in a heated, spiraling, toxic battle between the political left and right, and I am a (social) seven.Īs a seven, the “light at the end of the tunnel” is not just a cliché, it is an essential piece of the structure of my life. My friend died of cancer last year, and I’m a seven.Īnother friend has cancer and recently had a stroke, and I’m a seven. A lot of awful things happening at the same time, which I can’t seem to reframe my way out of, and I feel ill-equipped to cope with: And while they are very different circumstances – I can see a common thread. Six years later and I’ve found myself back in The Disintegration Zone – not in the same way or to the same degree (I’ve long since kicked the vices, and upgraded my software via a lot of therapy), but there nonetheless. I often wonder if I had learned about the enneagram back then, if I would have thought I was a one. Everything – and everyone – irritated me. I was like if the YouTube comment section was a person. ![]() Each day blurred into the next and my only moments of clarity were that sharp edge of seven-to-one where I was suddenly jolted out of my haze and into a hyperreality where I could see, in high definition, everything that was wrong. My living space was so dirty it was almost unlivable. I was right at the end stages of a decades-long struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction. The last time I can remember being there was a little over six years ago. Leave me alone, I don’t need your help or your interference, and also I have no idea what I’m doing, but I don’t dare tell you that. I feel incompetent and yet I don’t trust anyone else to help me either. My frustration with myself and everyone around me is an excuse to be angry, not a motivation to correct anything. I notice all the wrong in the world, but I lack the energy and the care it would take to do anything about it. I don’t have the discipline or the personal standards of the one, or the focus of the five. I’m still in my sweatpants, eating salt and vinegar chips for breakfast (if breakfast is just a long continuous snack that lasts from morning until noon). ![]() I haven’t “disintegrated.” But I am in The Zone. The Disintegration Zone is a dark place where repeated, ongoing, inescapable stress increases the frequency with which we hit those stress lines, and the amount of time we spend there.įor me, it’s like I’ve traveled from seven to some weird hybrid of one and five and then ran out of gas, and now I’m just there, displaced and trying to find a gas station so I can get back home. More modern enneagrammers say (and I agree) that we actually lean toward both of our lines regularly – that there is no actual integration or disintegration point, just a fluid movement based on stress, or growth, or some of both. The old school enneagram teachers said that we have an integration point (for sevens it points to five) and a disintegration disintegration point (for sevens it points to one). A defense mechanism only works until it doesn’t.Īt some point, we all start sliding into what I will henceforth call: However, reframing can only take us so far. We do this (mostly) unconsciously, so when tragedy hits, we are often the ones pointing out the “bright side.” We take the ugly, the painful, the difficult, and flip it on its head to spin it in a positive way. The stereotype of sevens being always happy is inaccurate, but also understandable because we do utilize the defense mechanism of reframing.
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