Type 4: The Longing for Depth, Authenticity, and Uniqueness

Creek: 00:00:02

Welcome back to Fathoms in Enneagram podcast. My name is Creek. We are now finally at the type 4. It's.

Abram: 00:00:11

I mean, the least exciting. Most.

Creek: 00:00:15

Yeah. But the most downloaded, typically when you talk about 4 is honestly, like, I see stats.

When it is a four episode, people download it the most because everyone's confused.

Abram: 00:00:25

Yeah, yeah.

Linz: 00:00:27

And perplexed.

Creek: 00:00:28

We are the most complex because you.

Abram: 00:00:31

Want to confuse people so they can't understand you. When there is something to understand, it's just you don't want to be understood.

Creek: 00:00:42

This is going to be one big, long fight the entire episode.

Linz: 00:00:47

Yeah.

Creek: 00:00:51

Yeah, There's.

Linz: 00:00:52

There's an energy here today. It's a distinct energy.

Creek: 00:00:56

It's a very. I've had a unique few days. I'm all fired up. Hearkening back to the nine episode where we did a lot of compare and contrast.

I've been perseparating on the good word on the whole completion distinction, comparison. And I think that's why I trigger you, Seth.

Linz: 00:01:27

Well, we resolved that. Yeah, finally.

Abram: 00:01:30

Yeah, there's. Yeah, there's been plenty of moments because my. My closest friends are fours, because I have a lot of them and they're all pretty similar.

And the thing that they all do the same way is just dig down, like, into the same ground. Like, there's more here, there's more here, there's more here. And then they pop up and it's like I have now, you know, like. Oh, yeah, it's just like.

You really want to keep going, huh? Okay.

Linz: 00:02:07

We'Ll wait you out.

Creek: 00:02:08

So this is also a masochistic episode, especially for the forest. You'll love it. All right, so we're going to hop into terminology definition.

Per usual, we'll get this out of the way for those that have already heard this, but for those that haven't listened to the other episodes, please stay and listen because these are really important. So, Lin Se. Please begin.

Linz: 00:02:36

Number one. Befuddled.

Abram: 00:02:42

Am I reading a different note?

Linz: 00:02:48

Type. Type. That's my challenge. We all have to say these words in a different way than we've said them before on previous episodes. Keep it interesting.

A category of people or things having common characteristics. Also a person or thing symbolizing or exemplifying the ideal or defining characteristics of something or someone.

Creek: 00:03:14

Strategy.

Linz: 00:03:16

Okay.

Creek: 00:03:17

A plan of action or policy designed to achieve a major or overall aim pattern.

Abram: 00:03:27

A regular and intelligible form or sequence discernible in certain actions or situations.

Creek: 00:03:34

And finally, we have model. A simplified and provisional description of a system or process to assist Calculations and predictions.

See, the thing is, I can just cut you guys out afterwards.

Linz: 00:03:45

Don't though. We're trying to nail this synchronicity here. By the time we get to seven, we're going to have it.

Creek: 00:03:53

See, you just need to tap into your unit of consciousness a little bit more and then we can do it. All right. And because this is type four episode, we got a few terms here.

Abram: 00:04:06

We'll have music underscoring the entire thing.

Linz: 00:04:08

To feel very heart wrenching differently.

Creek: 00:04:12

You know, I think I will. I think I will do it. And cue music. Okay. So unique. This is going to be a term that's. That's used everywhere in this episode in all the schools.

Dictionary definition being the only one of its kind, unlike anything else. The other one is distinct, which is kind of a.

Mario and I have a joke where whenever he says striving to feel unique, I just come in and say it's actually striving to feel distinct. It's the same thing, but don't tell him that. So recognizably different in nature from something else of a similar type.

There's just some more nuance to that and a little bit more, I think, truth to it. So then finally, and I'd like let's.

Let's have a little bit of a discussion about creativity here, but creative relating to or involving the imagination or original ideas, especially in the production of an artistic work. So something for me that I noticed as I was listening through this episode.

So I think there's some version of it where we think of creativity as the original idea, something new, something novel that is entering into a certain sphere of work. I think to a certain extent that is true.

But I think it's like Stravinsky who said lesser artists borrow, great artists steal and use it in their own way. So I think there's some sort of differentiation there for me of like Mario mentions, you'll hear it in a little bit.

But that creativity doesn't necessarily mean in the arts though a lot of fours do some level of what would be considered art. But there's an infusion of my identity of who I see me, see myself to be, needs to be a part of everything I do. And that, that.

I think that's another reason why we're kind of obsessed with identity is how do I know myself best in order to infuse who I am into what I'm doing, whatever that is. And that's obviously going to be some level of novel or creative, but it's not always going to Be in the art per se.

Linz: 00:07:00

There are artists, musicians, creatives in every single one of the nine types. And I think that your type informs your values around your art. Right.

And so a four is just wanting to use, kind of like what you're saying, use their art to distinguish themselves as a pathway to search out their identity. Whereas a 7, for example, might be wanting to use the art as a way of exploring their curiosities or satisfying some sort of need for.

What is it like to do this? What is it like to do this? I want to feel it, I want to experience it. So art is a vehicle and everyone is using that vehicle.

Also, when it comes to the specific word creativity or create, everybody is creative. If you don't think you're creative or if you've ever said, I'm just not really a creative person, I call bull on that.

Like you are creating a life every day. You have to make choices about what that looks like. And so every single human being is creative, period.

Creek: 00:08:06

It's creativity, I think at its base level is the infusion of your stories, your values and your perspective into something.

Linz: 00:08:15

And that intentionally or unintentionally, I think.

Creek: 00:08:18

Either, I think either it's.

You can have creativity in a spreadsheet, you can have creativity in, you know what food you're going to make, but it is an infusion of your story and your values and your perspective that you are sharing in some way.

Linz: 00:08:38

And maybe that's where it becomes art is the decision to be of how aware and intentional you want to be.

Creek: 00:08:46

Yeah.

Linz: 00:08:47

With what you're already doing. Then it shifts into art. Maybe. I don't know.

Creek: 00:08:54

Yeah, that's a whole other conversation.

Linz: 00:08:56

Well, it sounds fun though.

Abram: 00:08:58

I wonder if, I mean you can, you can create things without being open hearted, but I wonder if there's creativity without vulnerability. I think creativity is expressed authenticity.

Linz: 00:09:14

Okay, so now you're using a different definition than the one I just used.

Abram: 00:09:18

Yeah.

Linz: 00:09:19

So let's fight.

Abram: 00:09:20

But to me, to me, that opens it up beyond like I would say growth is healthy. Growth is creativity.

Creek: 00:09:30

I, I mean this is, this is great for the four episode because we're just going to keep distinguishing it over finding.

Abram: 00:09:39

And yeah.

Creek: 00:09:42

I think in any job you're required to, you know, there's a problem, I need to figure out how to solve it. That is a form of creativity.

Vulnerability does like, I know vulnerability feels like a strong word when it comes to making art or something that you are personally invested in. Sure. That's going to require some vulnerability. I think it was Seinfeld, who said something along the lines of, I don't like hugs. There's that.

Which I get. And then. But it's like there's no such thing as writer's block. It's. It's fear, basically, of writing, of not wanting to write the next word.

I should have. I'll.

I'll have to find a clip or something and put in the show notes. But, yeah, I think there's depending on where you draw the line on creativity. Problem solving is just. Is creativity.

I have a problem and I need to solve it. It's not always novel, but it is an obstacle that needs to be. I need to figure out how to do it.

Linz: 00:10:57

I don't think I agree with you.

Creek: 00:11:00

So we're going to move into the schools now. My episod.

Linz: 00:11:10

I think that problem solving can utilize creativity, but I don't think that problem solving requires creativity. I don't think that they are the same. There are some problems that require you to be more creative than other problems.

But a problem in the morning is I just. I have to put clothes on my body. So I don't go to work without clothes or in my pajamas. And there's not really.

I literally could reach into a drawer with my eyes closed and pull something out and put it on, which might be a creative way to get dressed in the morning, but it just. Do you know what I'm saying?

Creek: 00:11:51

No, I get it. I get it. You can be. There are things that still can just be done without investment.

Linz: 00:11:58

And we need that because we can't be. We can't be reinventing the wheel all day. We'll burn out. We can't be creative, quote, unquote, all day long. Some things just need to be.

Abram: 00:12:13

Which is a patterned good thing for a four year.

Creek: 00:12:18

I don't like it.

Linz: 00:12:21

Some things are just common and normal and routine.

Creek: 00:12:26

Yeah, we should revisit that on the outro. So there's your cliffhanger. To make it all the way through this episode to talk about the constant need for novelty and uniqueness.

So with that, here we go, the schools.

Abram: 00:12:47

The narrative.

Christopher Copeland: 00:12:51

So we'll move on to type 4. And so the 4, we've traditionally in the narrative tradition, called that the romantic.

We more recently are calling that the individualist because it actually feels like a better term, a better, more accurate kind of capture of what it is. Although we fours might like the word romantic, Most humans in 21st century have no idea what that means.

So the worldview of the four is something like the world is an abandoning place or the world brings disconnection or abandonment. And this results in a feeling or a sense that something really important is missing. There's something fundamental that's missing.

The world communicates that in some way. And again, that's from the lens of the type.

The response to this way of seeing is then the fours have this sense of, I can reclaim the lost connection. Because. Because there is a lost connection. And just to say, emphasize again, the worldview isn't, isn't. It is a kind of illusion.

Because what I would argue, of course, is that like all of us fours, we are connected already. But fours believe that they can reclaim what they sense is this lost connection. And by doing that, by being special or unique or different.

And if I can be special or unique, there's a kind of sense of like, I can be more connected, maybe to others, maybe to that which is greater. And there's also this sense of like, I can pursue the idealized experience. Fours love the ideal. And kind of imagining, oh, what it could be.

It could be like this. And if only. I'd say that's the refrain certainly for me sometimes. If only.

And so if I can pursue this idealized experience or relationship or job or whatever it is, and when I get that, then I'll have that feeling of completeness or fulfillment or wholeness. And so there's. That's where the hustling comes in, if you can hear that right. It's like I'm always. It's just out of reach.

And of course, what fours tell us is that when they reach, quote, unquote, the ideal, what happens is dissatisfaction. Because, of course, what they notice is what's missing in that, because that's where the attention goes is like, what's missing. Or the long 4 ideal.

So the strengths here for the type 4 are a real sensitivity. And I'm going to call that a strength, because my whole life as a child, I got called oversensitive.

And I just want to, like, say mean things to people who said that to me in my childhood. But that sensitivity and attunement to feelings is really such a great gift. And we might use the word empathy here.

We could certainly use that word with type twos as well. And for fours, this real empathy might show, particularly around suffering. You know, fours.

Fours know suffering and often say, fours will go with you to the darkest places because they've already been there, and that doesn't scare them. And so this ability to be with people in the difficult places is such a. Such a gift.

There's a creativity and idealism, an appreciation of for that which is particular or unique. My spouse just earlier today was saying I want to buy some card table and chairs for the house.

And I was like no, no, no, we can't just get the ones at Walmart. I have to go find some that are really interesting and nice and look good and all this. So this is kind of an example of that.

The challenges are there's a kind of. Because feelings are so central here to the type, there can be a moodiness, the kind of following the feelings up and down.

And so this kind of roller coaster can happen. Drama sometimes for some, some fours is kind of dramatic way.

Dissatisfaction is a big challenge because as I've mentioned, there's this sense of something's missing. And so the thing that there is in front of me, I can see what's missing and become dissatisfied with that.

And fours also can become quite self absorbed in all of this. Sorry to bring that to you all but just the truth, every time I say it I think, oh I feel so self conscious saying that and part of my type.

So the motivation here is to then feel deep and meaningful connection. That meaning is a big piece of this for the four and to regain a sense of wholeness if I can just feel whole and connected.

And so the open hearted quality or the virtue, we actually like to call this gratitude, traditionally called equanimity.

But I love this word gratitude because it's this ability to meet each moment, each experience with appreciation for what is, you know, with sorrow, with joy, with just the ordinariness of life. But to really see in it its beauty, its particularity, it's. It's all gift.

And so when the, when the forest heart is more open, there's this move from what's missing or if only this to wow, what's here is enough, it's what it should be. And there's this gratitude that pours forth from the heart.

Linz: 00:17:55

Enneagram Institute.

Michael Naylor: 00:17:59

All right, so the type four, the individualist, the introspective romantic type. Type four is a deeply compassionate, deep feeling type individual. And we have a beloved four with us here on the, at the mic.

And there's this quality of the four of really seeking to understand one's emotional and psychological self at a deep level. There's a way that they're called kind of deep and inquiring, honest conversation and inquiry.

And when they're healthy they do this with skill and equanimity and joy and humor.

So a healthy four often has a kind of quiescence at the core of them that they've developed through many nights, dark nights of the soul, and transformed themselves to many of the knots of personality. But at the.

At the depth of it, there is a quiescence, an equanimity that force can emanate such that in the face of, you know, trauma, deep trauma, you know, Don used to say it's really important if you're dying to have a 4 around, because it's like they know how to navigate and be with that intensity and the awakeness that's required. So type fours, you know, like, all the types are awesome, but they do it in a very unique way. And I'm a little bit biased, but it's.

I'm just telling the truth.

But for the type four, you know, when I'm really at my best, my capacity to sense underneath the veil of personality and to sense what's not being said is one of their Jedi skills when they're healthy. And a lot of therapists, you know, people who do a lot of interior work are type fours. This capacity to.

To sense and feel the depth of a person suffering, but also to hold it with kindness and compassion and non judgment is. Is again, one of their. Their best gifts. And so fours, you know, are sometimes known for loving to tell the story of their own life.

Autobiographical stories that capture the universal suffering of other people. And when they're healthy, they do that quite skillfully. When they're less healthy, they just keep telling that story over and over again.

And you wish they would just, like, take a break, which I've been asked to do in my past. Enough on your story. Here's mine. But, you know, the gift of the four, I think, is this.

There's like a deep wish to know at my depth, who am I and why am I here? Now, all the types have that on some level, but it seems like fours get that at a very early age.

There's a kind of longing for, I must understand this mystery, but I don't have one words for it. So healthy fours are adventures into the depths of the soul.

And when I start to lose connection with my own sense of individuality or my own value or my own beauty, what happens is I can start to become very oriented in getting you to reflect back for me what's missing in my soul. So as Gail was talking about the heart centers, you know, when I'm really in a state of presence, you know, I'm.

I can connect with beauty, I can connect with the depth, I can connect with my identity. I can Feel it. But when I lose contact with that, it creates a kind of shock and despair.

And so now I've got to try to manufacture it and get you to reflect back to me that I'm special and individual and, and unique.

And so I can start to become a wee bit difficult to be around because I start to feel like, you know, you're not attuning to me in the way you should. You don't realize how awesome I am. And it's beginning to upset me. And I.

I have to be emotionally honest with you and remind you that, you know, you're really messing up here.

So there's a way when I start to get caught up in my patterns that I start to, in a sense, overdo the gifts and maybe even use them in a way that is off putting. And again, you know, I start to get to be temperamental. It's like things can bother me really quickly. You feel like you're walking around a landmine.

You just don't want to step on the wrong spot. But it doesn't have to go that way.

When I'm healthy and transform my own suffering, there is that state of equanimity that becomes the heart and soul of my experience.

Mario Sikora: 00:22:27

Okay, so enneagram type 4 we refer to as striving to feel unique. Now, a lot of the Enneagram literature talks about the four as a creative person or an artist, or a melancholic or whatever the names are.

In our experience at least, the creativity is typically in service of uniqueness. In our view, it's this need to understand exactly who I am and in what ways I am an individual. Right.

In what ways I am different from others so that I can get a sense of, okay, this is me and that is everything else is really what's going on here. Now this can take a lot. You know, this can take creative expressions in many fours.

But, you know, I've met plenty of fours who are, you know, you would not think of as particularly creative people and who are in jobs or, you know, life circumstances that are not the kind of commonly understood way of being creative.

Creek: 00:23:32

Yeah.

Abram: 00:23:32

So sometimes it is perceived or thought.

Creek: 00:23:36

Of as artistically creative and that could be. But it.

Mario Sikora: 00:23:40

Right.

Maria Jose Munita: 00:23:40

They need to kind of like I am all this self reflection and look, search for identity gets expressed in the things that I do. And those sometimes are artistic and sometimes are just mechanic. I don't know. But it needs to have a bit of who I am and that way they're creative.

Mario Sikora: 00:24:06

Yeah, you make a great point there, Mariose. In that the creativity can express itself in different ways and not always what we think of as creative.

I remember years ago, the first time I went to Spain, being with a friend who was a four and going to the Prado Museum, and particularly I wanted to see the El Grecos.

And so I'm there and I'm just soaking in these incredible masterpieces and just, you know, in awe and kind of, you know, geeking out about the El Grecos. And my friend who's the four is bored out of her mind, right. And can't wait to leave. And, you know, and. And of course that's against the stereotype.

You know, the four is supposed to be the one who's obsessed with the art and the eight's supposed to be a barbarian and, you know, unappreciative and so forth.

Maria Jose Munita: 00:24:52

But who doesn't even read?

Mario Sikora: 00:24:53

Who doesn't even read. So. So the creativity is not like Marioze said, always what we stereotypically think of as artistic creativity.

But there often is some kind of creation. This same friend tends to create programs and organizations and all that sort of thing. So it's a different form of creativity.

What is there is self reflection, right?

A desire to understand myself, to observe myself, to pay attention to my experience, particularly my emotional experience, and to figure out ways to approach life in a way that's interesting and different under stress. This is when we see kind of a lot of what we think of as the stereotype stuff of the four.

And I think that's another thing about the four is that the literature tends to describe the unhealthier aspects of the four. The more melancholic elements, the remoteness, the non communicative and this despairing feeling of being misunderstood.

Yeah, that's what we see in fours when they're experiencing stress, anxiety, or these dark nights of the soul. But most of the time they're just kind of going through life like regular people that you couldn't spot out of a crowd for, you know.

Maria Jose Munita: 00:26:20

Don't say that, Mario.

Mario Sikora: 00:26:21

Yeah, I know, I know. Creek just flinched.

But, you know, but really, I mean, you know, most fours, you know, they're not all wearing purple or black and smoking clove cigarettes and, you know, all these sort of things like the stereotypes are.

Maria Jose Munita: 00:26:35

What I really like about fours is their desire to be authentic. And that can take different shapes.

But the more adaptive ones is they're usually honest about how they feel and how they think and what they say to other people and they don't want to kind of fake their responses and things like that. So I really, really like that. Now in the extreme, you can try to be so authentic that you are too convoluted or you try too hard.

But I think that that's something that I would highlight about Fours that I really like.

Mario Sikora: 00:27:24

We talk about the difference between sort of naturally expressed uniqueness and manufactured uniqueness.

And this is really the growth path for the four to get out of that need to manufacture uniqueness and just sort of ease into the fact that by their nature they are individuals and unique. I also just finish by saying that I think that particularly lately, for some reason, it seems that fours are one of the more misunderstood types.

There's a real stereotype that's pervasive of what the 4 is or should be. That doesn't account for a lot of Fours that are out there. I think the stereotype is what we would think of as the transmitting four.

And that means that a lot of navigating and preserving fours get overlooked as fours.

Abram: 00:28:18

Well, we are back with one of our human interviews. Our human interviews and today's human. I just love that we call it that. I think it's really great.

The purpose is to try and help show people, you know, there's a massive unfortunate misconception around the enneagram that, you know, a person and their type are equated. And our hope is to try and show that the person, the individual is what contextualizes the type and makes it special.

Especially if you have a four on. And today we do. We have Stephanie with us. And why don't you say hi?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:28:57

Hi.

Abram: 00:29:00

So what we like to do to just unwrap, unravel things quickly is to begin with some just initial, brief, rapid fire questions. So my first one I'm going to let you pick. Do you prefer giving gifts or receiving gifts or do you think the handlebar mustache is handsome?

Which one would you like to respond to?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:29:32

I mean, really, I want to know where that second question is coming from because that has a context that I don't know that I am not going to step into. So I will say for sure I prefer giving gifts. I'm a pretty. I take giving gifts really seriously.

I try to give very specific things that feel tied to the person's identity or their relationship with me.

Creek: 00:29:54

And receiving gifts, is that uncomfortable for you?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:29:58

For sure, yeah.

Creek: 00:29:58

Cool. Same.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:29:59

It's just so I.

I feel like it is so hard for someone to nail it when it comes to a gift for me because either it's going to feel like too light or they're going to try hard but miss the mark. And then I feel like they don't really know me at all. And so, like, either direction is going to have a fault.

And, like, that tightrope of that middle space if I feel seen and known, but also correctly seen and known.

Creek: 00:30:26

And we're off to the races.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:30:27

I noticed you backing up from your microphone as I said those things.

Linz: 00:30:32

And he's gone.

Creek: 00:30:34

Amazing.

Abram: 00:30:34

How many of your gifts that you've ever received have you actually liked? No, you don't have to answer that.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:30:41

That feels like a trap.

Abram: 00:30:43

Yeah.

Creek: 00:30:46

Lindsay, what do you got?

Linz: 00:30:48

Yeah, I'm curious. What is the best 90s movie?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:30:52

Oh, gosh. Now I'm trying to make sure I get the era right for what was in the 90s. Dead Poets Society.

Creek: 00:31:00

Ooh, I've not seen that one. No one is surprised.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:31:06

What?

Abram: 00:31:06

Stop the recording.

Linz: 00:31:07

You haven't seen.

Abram: 00:31:08

Turn it on now.

Linz: 00:31:09

Any movies, Creek, you've seen none? Yes. Why do you like that movie?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:31:16

Well, I just watched it recently, so that, like, was easy to come back around to 90s. I generally. I will say I generally hate picking favorites of anything. I'd rather. I'd rather give, like, a top five or a.

I like this movie because of this and that movie because of that. I like movies that tell stories that relate to the human experience beyond themselves, I think.

And so there's just all of these questions in there about what it means to grow up, about what it means to teach, about what it means to engage in an artistic process and do things outside the bounds, but then face consequences for trying to do things outside the bounds.

Creek: 00:31:59

So in the future, you're going to have a museum exhibit based on your life. What are the three items, possessions, that are going to be on display to represent you and your life?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:32:14

This bowl is full of things that I've collected on trips or as little like. So it represents a bunch of things. And I think that everybody would just wonder about what's in the bowl.

It would just be the bowl of things that other people would have to figure out.

Creek: 00:32:30

That's the name of your museum exhibit, the bowl of Things.

Linz: 00:32:34

Bowl of Things.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:32:37

So that would be there Is this after I'm dead?

Creek: 00:32:40

Yeah. Yeah.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:32:42

Okay, good. Then one of my paintings, because then I don't have to wonder how people are analyzing it. It just would be there.

Creek: 00:32:48

Do you have a specific painting?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:32:52

Yeah, probably. I don't know. I can't. I'm not going to choose because I'm like, I'm getting anxiety even looking.

I have my I have a wall of paintings over there that I just looked at and I'm like, nope, I'm not gonna. I feel super vulnerable. I don't even know. I can't even talk about it.

For the third item, maybe like a photo album, maybe just like a digital scrolling photos of family pictures and nature pictures. I take a lot of pictures, so maybe even just like a camera roll from my phone and everybody can wonder the story of the pictures.

Creek: 00:33:31

And they'd be Polaroids, I would imagine, you know.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:33:35

No, that's not me. I'm totally fine with digital.

Creek: 00:33:38

Okay, all right. So not unique. Okay, moving on. I'm kidding, I'm kidding. I'm a big fan of digital also.

Linz: 00:33:49

I just want to highlight how much you just misunderstood her.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:33:52

Well, this makes me want to listen to all the interviews and like how everybody handles interviewing someone of the same type as compared to a different type. Like, I want to know how you are with the nine and Lindsay with the two. Like, I want to. I want to compare them side by side.

Abram: 00:34:07

That would be fun.

Creek: 00:34:08

Stephanie, you've known about the Enneagram, been a part of it for a while now. Can you give us the story of the discovery of your type and what did that feel like? What did that look like?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:34:22

Yeah, I was thinking about that this morning. I think I have known about the enneagram for 11 years. And I found it helpful before I knew my type, which I think is actually.

I think at that point it just wasn't as popular as it is now. So the journey was different. I didn't feel the pressure to land on my type right away. I found the discovery process itself to be a helpful tool.

While I was in the midst of some transition. I used to be a pastor and had started work at a church. That was a new community to me. And it just was not a fit. I was not liked.

And then I was trying really hard to be liked.

And then none of that was going well and led to an important leaving, but a lot of discovery along the way for who I was, what I was looking for, why I was doing things.

And the language of the Enneagram was helping me ask a different set of questions and about all that, but actually took me a while to land on my type. And I. I do like to tell that story because I think for some people it's quick and some people it's not, and that's okay. And as you're.

As you named this sort of human first interview process, I think there's a lot of overlays related to why we do what we do. And so I at first thought I was a 2. And the reason that's become clear to me over time is because I have an insecure attachment style.

I have an anxious attachment style. And there's a lot of things about anxious attachment that can look like some of those type 2 descriptions.

I do tend to have some forward energy in forming new relationships that might not look 4ish, but it's not coming from the to place. And so it took me some time to sort through those layers of, of what was really underneath, why I was doing what I was doing.

And one of the reasons I finally started seeing myself as a 4 was because I realized that every story I told had some level of adversity in it. And I never told like happy story. And that I usually had some like survival element to it as well.

That I started the description of a self preservation 4 is tenacity. I was like, oh, maybe that. But I've always had a complicated relationship with my emotions.

So I needed some time to really see more clearly how much emotions and intuition were driving me.

Because it wasn't something that would have been as obvious to other people, I think as it was to myself and my own inner landscape of how often I was having existential crises. But other people might not have known I was having them.

Creek: 00:37:19

Absolutely. Can I just go back real quick to be trying to get people to like you?

No idea what that's like personally, but can you explain to us like what, what does that process look like? And it's kind of a vulnerable question. But I feel like there's some real juice there to kind of get an insight into fourness.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:37:42

Yeah, I think that, you know, in my previous, my previous position I had been in the same place for 10 years and so I really had a lot of relationships there. And I had, I hadn't had that experience of starting over again for a long time.

And I was starting over in a community that was like, I just, I want to paint them fairly but I don't think I'm going to paint them fairly without. But it was, it was a wealthy, it was a wealthy group of people who kind of the vibe was. That was all the popular kids.

And I very much felt like back at that middle school lunch table kind of feeling. And so then I wanted to prove that I wasn't that person. I wanted to, yeah, I just tried too hard.

And I think that that's where I would say that feeling of being liked. I often, I often have that experience of feeling like I'm either too much or not enough.

And that there is this way I then try, but then that makes it worse because I try too hard and I feel like, I feel, I feel, I perceive this. There's this feeling of people like, oh, she's so cute.

Look at, look at the way she's making effort there towards like, but like just not quite getting it right. And so, you know, I think, I don't know, I'm struggling to find like a specific way there.

Abram: 00:39:10

But could I ask a question, a follow up to that? You know, I think wanting to be liked, desiring, needing to be liked, is definitely a human thing.

But I'm curious if you can recall in maybe in that situation or any situation which you were trying to be liked, that there was maybe a 4 aspect to it in which you went about trying to be liked.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:39:31

Yeah, well, I think, I think it's also like I'm actually fine not being liked if I'm not liked for the right reasons.

Like if I'm being perceived correctly and someone doesn't like how they're perceiving me but it is true to who I am, then I don't care if they don't like me.

It's when they're not liking their false impression of who I am that I then want to correct that impression so that they can actually choose whether they like me or not based on who I actually am versus how they're perceiving.

Creek: 00:39:59

Me, authentically hating me or loving me. Just. Just be authentic. That's all I ask.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:40:05

Yeah.

Abram: 00:40:05

My twin brother says it's much safer for him to present a Persona that he doesn't really care, won't be liked, because that way he's not going to get hurt.

Creek: 00:40:16

Interesting.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:40:18

It does make a difference if I'm in a role. You know, I think that because I can also hold space if someone just doesn't like the role I'm playing, that can also be fine.

But there was a way that it felt.

Felt more attached to who I was, but that it wasn't actually who I was that I was then like trying to correct and sort of in a loop of making it worse.

Creek: 00:40:36

I think that's helpful. And what I hear you saying is is the being understood is more important than being liked.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:40:45

Yeah. And I think it was also like I was on, I was on my own identity journey at the time that was overlapping with that communal expression.

So it was also about that I was still trying to figure out some things. Like I really thought that I was Good at speaking or like, I was that I was supposed to be having that role.

And I had the opportunity to be, like, teaching from the stage, and it wasn't going well.

And so I was also trying to figure out, is it not going well because I suck at it, or is it not going well because this community is not the right fit for me?

And so it was bumping up against that as well, where then I was trying harder to be a good speaker, but that actually made me a worse speaker and made me worse perceived by the group. And it was looping into that in part because of my own identity questions that I was tying to the communal experience.

And I think that is one of my struggles as a four is over tying identity to things that aren't about identity. That's what makes me terrible at social media. Like, I'll go through these moments where I, like, try to do social media well.

I try to do the things you're supposed to do, but it doesn't end up feeling authentic to me. So then I spend too much time trying to make it feel authentic to me, but then it doesn't actually go over well. And then I'm like, effort, I'm done.

And then I'll try again.

Creek: 00:42:10

Yeah.

Abram: 00:42:11

So not everything has to be about your identity. That's what you're saying.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:42:14

Turns out not everything has to be about identity. But that doesn't actually feel true.

Linz: 00:42:20

Well, that's what I was.

I wanted to ask you, and maybe that would be your answer, but I'm curious if you could drop down from this moment with the wisdom you have now, go back and speak to Stephanie then. Like, what would you say to her to calm her or comfort her or help her through that time?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:42:41

I would help her know that wasn't going to be her only opportunity for that identity question. So she didn't have to finish resolving it. There was okay to leave and leave that question unfinished.

I would tell her that sometimes people not seeing or understanding her is about them, not her. I would tell her to give things time and space.

I would tell her to use her imagination for what the thing that's on fire inside of her could become, besides the narrow box that she was being offered to put it in and let her wonder about. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's not going well here because here isn't the space it's supposed to be lived out. And sometimes it's about place.

Linz: 00:43:42

This is really good. I'm gonna go on to the next question. But this is so good. So, Stephanie, I really am enjoying your book.

And it's my coffee table book for my front porch, actually, because, like, one of my favorite things to do is sit on my porch and just, like, be out there.

And so your book is such a great companion for me for just that space of, like, I'm gonna flip through this at my leisure, see what gems kind of speak to me as I watch the sun slowly setting. You know, that sort of thing. So it's really beautiful.

So in light of your beautiful book, I would like to ask this question about thinking about the Enneagram as sort of this broad landscape with all these different features and all of these different, you might want to call them streams that flow into one river, or however we may want to imagine this. This wild world that we're all kind of living in. How would you describe your participation in all of this?

Is there a school of thought that you really feel like you. You land in? And that's sort of the stream that you work from when you work with clients or when you study the Enneagram or teach it?

But, yeah, what's that journey kind of been like for you?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:44:52

Where do you land now in terms of schools of Enneagram thought? I have.

I have done training with a few different people, and I've also just read a lot and done some of my own synthesis from the things that I have read.

And I think that I, in my other world, besides the coaching I do with the Enneagram, I co lead a nonprofit, and we work with a lot of people who have had religious trauma and are in some level of, like, faith deconstruction, reconstruction, process success. And so I have found in that work how harmful it can be when people really follow a school of thought and a leader. And I think that I have a.

Almost a reactionary approach to that in the Enneagram world, where the thing that I am not is the follower of any one particular school of thought. Because I've just. I worry about the way that that creates gurus and the way that gurus end up doing harm.

And so I think then sort of intuitively, as I've done training, I've trained with Jerome Wagner, and I've also done a training with Ginger Lapid Bogda. And I've also done a training with Mario Sakura, and I've also done a training with Russ Hudson. And I want exposure to that breadth.

And I'm somewhat of an Enneagram universalist in sort of then choosing from that breadth what works for me and also trying to be mindful of the ways that the skills.

Schools of thought don't always go together so universalist, so that I'm not watering down any of those schools of thought in the way I'm bringing them together. I think that's an important part of that work, too, to say some things can't.

And I'm wrestling with some of those things right now of, like, what goes together, what doesn't.

And then also, I do feel like it's sort of stereotypical for space that, like, one of my influences is like, a book of an author who's no longer with us. But it was like. It's an outlier book. It's called Roaming Free Inside the Cage. It's a Taoist approach to the Enneagram.

Abram: 00:46:45

Good book.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:46:46

And that book was highly influential to me, writing my book, because of the way that he was describing triad groups in terms of energies.

And that felt like a way that triads made sense to me as one of the layers of the Enneagram, and started really thinking about the energies of type and the energies that types have in common and the energies that they have different. And so that book was highly influential to me.

Abram: 00:47:08

Yeah, that's a great book. Yeah. I'm glad you named it, because I do think it's less known, but one of the better ones available.

Something we've been asking each human is to give us five words that you would describe. You would use to best describe yourself primarily as a way to kind of reveal how you personally view yourself, kind of your self concept.

But also we tend to see that. I do this usually in typing sessions because we tend to see that people use adjectives that are very correlated to your type as well.

Not always across the board, but yeah. Do you have five words you can give us?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:47:55

As long as they are only held to the five words I would use to describe myself today.

Creek: 00:48:00

Of course. Of course.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:48:02

So I would say intuitive and creative. And I. I don't know. These exercises are so difficult for me. It's a very. I don't know. Okay.

Creek: 00:48:22

They inherently feel limiting. I'll get.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:48:25

Yeah, it does. Yeah.

Abram: 00:48:27

I think you could also, if it's helpful, include what other. What words do you think other people would use to describe you?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:48:33

Yeah, I mean, that's where, like, people tell me I would. Yeah, that would be helpful because, like, people tell me I'm wise, but I don't.

That feels like a weird word to use about oneself, you know, or discerning, maybe, but I think that's related to, I don't know, the best adjective for this, but I'm just a question asker of life and other humans. And then some level of like. Did I say like a tenaciousness, a strength, a survival sort of edge would also be a word I would use to describe myself.

Was that five?

Creek: 00:49:04

Yes.

Linz: 00:49:05

Yeah, yeah.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:49:06

Somewhere in there. Great.

Linz: 00:49:07

Six.

Creek: 00:49:10

Great. Intuitive. So sometimes intuitive can be like, can just a feeling about something, but often intuitive.

I think a better definition of intuitive is something that you've had a lot of experience with and your brain is putting some pieces together that you're unable to quite articulate, but your brain is recognizing a pattern that is somewhat familiar.

And you're like, I don't know how to name this, but I can, I can guess what's going to happen or I can guess so what, what does that look like for you, like in the realm of creativity or just in your work with your non for profit?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:49:52

I think when I am, when I'm creating art, when I'm painting, I don't usually really know what it's going to look like at the end until I'm in it. So there's some level of intuitiveness in the process of making where it is.

It's sort of like I'm making space for the other, whatever the other is to be a part of the process of becoming.

And so I would say that same thing happens when I'm facilitating is that which is the work I do a lot with the nonprofit is that I'm intuitively following the conversation of the room in a way that the room is then participating in what the room becomes.

And so I think that intuitive is something about that, something about leading while listening, creating while responding, that there's a paying attention as I go along where I am going to have. It's not that I have no plan.

I might have some level of agenda for something, but I'm going to be holding it loosely according to what is coming forward in the moment or with the art or with that group of people and in that listening space of intuition for what the final product becomes.

Creek: 00:51:07

So creativity and intuition, what's the difference for you?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:51:11

Creativity is more about the way. The way I organize my work versus intuition would be more about how I do the work. Like the creative.

There's something about the creative that's more about a process and an approach to me as compared to the intuitive is what's happening when I'm in it.

And so it's almost like a different spot on the timeline where like I think if I think about like my book, there was a Creativity in, like, coming up with the idea or going through the process of picking the photos and all of that thing. But then there was an intuition in what the imagery actually was that was chosen, that was sort of coming forth as I was doing it.

And so I would use a different word than creativity for that because of the way it didn't feel. It didn't feel located in me. It felt located in.

And I talk about this a lot, this idea of a muse, like an energy that exists outside of ourselves that we catch when we're creating something. To me, that's a part of what intuition is. It's not just from in me.

It's from the universe, from the moment, from something that requires a listening space.

Abram: 00:52:26

This is kind of a bigger question, but I wanted to give a question of depth to A four and see how you wrestle with it. You know, there's definitely the negative side of this can come across sometimes, but I think it's more than that.

It's not true across the board, you know, for the thought life of all fours, I would say. But there's. You maybe have heard that line around fourness, that they're thinking about the best of what's missing and the worst of what's here.

And I was wondering if you could tie the value of naturally seeing what is missing to the word you used, curiosity, and how that is a strength for creating perspective.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:53:12

You know, I do think that it is. There's a real grief that's attached to each type that I think is a part of developing a compassion for each type.

And I think there is a grief to the fore journey of that longing for that thing that's missing. And it's really hard. And back to those schools of thought pieces.

It was a Russ Hudson training where he talked about the necessary alchemy, where whatever that struggle is for our type, we have to hold the struggle long enough for it to be alchemized into the gift. And so there's this thing in us that wants to, like, just stop doing that.

Like, I don't want to think about what's missing anymore, but that that misses the opportunity for the virtue to come forward when you sit with the pain of what? Of that thing. And so I do think that that longing can really be a driver towards.

And I think for me, this comes across in some of the descriptions of certain types of fours, at least of, like, because it's missing, it can drive me to make it. But then once I've made it, I feel what's missing again. And like, What I made isn't enough.

And then I'm driven to do the next thing, to try to fill in the gap of what's not here. And so there is a way that means that I don't really.

It's hard to celebrate the thing that I've done made because as soon as it's made, I see what's not in it. And that's the pain of it. But it also means it drives me to make something else.

And it creates that quest for more depth that is actually an important part of bringing four things. And I think then the journey for a four is can I do both?

Can I be driven by that desire to make the thing that's not yet here, while also learning to appreciate, appreciate what is already here.

Linz: 00:54:54

Would you say that that is where the tenacity that you mentioned, you described yourself as tenacious, that that's where the tenacity comes in, is the energy behind figuring out what's missing. Because I'm really curious about that tenacity piece. And again, this is my experience of fortness is that there is a.

There is a slowness and a caution and even at times like a fear of moving too fast and hard in the wrong direction. And so that word, I can see it, but I am also a little surprised by it. And I would love to hear you expand on it.

Stephanie Spencer: 00:55:33

It is one of the descriptions of. If we go with the. You know, the instincts are described in two core ways between the ATA approach and other approaches.

And in this, in the non ATA approach, the self preservation for is often called tenacious because that, because of that drive that when I'm suffering I. I work towards the thing I don't have would be a part of that stereotypical description of that. And. But that.

That wouldn't necessarily be the same word that other fours might use because they might hold that differently. Although I would say if we're talking about fours, I think most fours are perceived as being much weaker than they are.

I think they are quite strong types that get painted with a weakness sort of lens with the emotionality that is often a missed boat to get curious about with the person about what strength they have. Like my. The fours I know do some pretty amazing. I have a friend who's a four who's a music therapist at a children's hospital.

And one of the things that. That she does is she creates music over the heartbeat of children who have died as a gift for their parents to have their heartbeat forever.

Who can do that. Like that's a regular Part of her practice.

And so I would say that it requires tenacity to be a person who chooses that as a form of art they're bringing to the world and can see, sit with the suffering of someone to help create beauty in the suffering and be held and seen in the suffering. And so I would say that's her version of tenacious is I can sit in this pain long enough to create something in the pain.

Mine can be a little bit more forward energy than that, like. Like creating a book or going after that. That thing. But I think it does have that sense of.

I think in the inner world of A four, we are just sludging through mud to do things that for other people feels like walking on air because of the level of feelings that is in it all the time. And so there's a tenaciousness to doing things that might not actually feel like it would take tenaciousness from someone else. Else to get done.

Linz: 00:57:59

Thank you for that. Yeah, you're making me re examine my own definition of tenacious. So.

Creek: 00:58:04

So the word that you didn't want to describe you of, Wise. We're going to talk about that. So, I mean, we've talked over Marco Polo about this as well. And I don't know, it makes me think of.

I think it was Socrates of saying something like, I know that I know nothing. And from the forward perspective from Stephanie.

Abram: 00:58:30

Right.

Creek: 00:58:33

What is the resistance to seeing yourself as wise?

Stephanie Spencer: 00:58:39

I think some of it is one of the values that drives my life is I want people to experience and find their own inner wisdom and trust it more. Because sometimes so many people have outsourced their wisdom to gurus and books and coaches.

And so I think I hesitate to see myself as wise because I don't want people to come to me. I want people to go into themselves. And so there's a piece there.

There also is a piece of, like, the only Enneagram book I ever could have seen myself writing was the one I wrote because I wasn't making any claims. It was all imagery and questions. Because I cannot imagine.

It is very hard for me to hold the space of making claims or feeling like I know enough to say something with certainty. I have a very. I'm like, allergic to certainty. And so which I think. I mean, maybe that is wisdom, but I think that. I don't know. It's also.

I will do is think about the: 1800

And I will wish I would have showed up differently. And I think that that becomes then a part of the difficulty of holding wisdom is requires a holding of my identity as having been good enough.

And usually that doesn't feel true in the aftermath of doing something.

Creek: 01:00:21

Yeah, I think this is the double edged sword like you were talking about, of always seeing what's missing, always differentiating, always distinguishing and tearing down to try to get to the core of something, get to the authentic piece of something. And the funny thing about life is that doesn't exist. You just keep. There's just.

You just keep going, you just keep discovering, you just keep finding new ways. And that's both so frustrating and exhilarating because there's always another horizon to be reached.

I think what I'm hearing you say and what I experience as well is I never reached the horizon.

But I forget how far I've come and what I have done along the process of trying to reach the end of the rainbow or whatever it is that we're chasing that is never ending.

Stephanie Spencer: 01:01:23

The never ending chase.

To me when I'm describing types like in a typing session with people, I tend to think about types as this core set of gifts that has a core desire with it. But that the desire is insatiable and therefore creates distortions in how we show up in the world.

Because the way we overuse our type to try to get that desire met. And so I'm going to describe that, and I describe that different ways with different types.

But the way, the way I've language The desire of a 4 is to find and actualize the significance of my true identity. And the problem is I can never actually fully find it and I can never actually fully fully actualize it.

And so it always feels out of reach to do either or both. I'm always on the search to find it, or always on the search to actualize it.

And when that's where I am, I'm actually then trapped in that space of trying to be significant instead of recognizing my inherent significance. That is the desire that I then have to try to speak truth to and say actually this moment is enough. It's okay to empty the dishwasher.

Not everything has to be about identity, you know, like that. But it takes intention to speak truth to that desire and to recognize it as being a trap.

Abram: 01:02:43

That's kind of What I was hearing you maybe even saying in only if these words describe me for right now, and maybe some limitation to that, but also embracing the limitation of that, too. That's what I kind of hear you saying. It's the paradox of both of those.

Stephanie Spencer: 01:03:04

Yeah, I think that I love the word paradox because I think I just actually, I have up on. I like differently. I have quotes that I'll put on my wall at different times that speak to me so I can just sit with them a little longer.

And the one on my wall right now is a Carl Jung quote that says only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life.

And I think that there is something about holding the paradox of there's a way that this desire is good and an important part of who I am, and there's a way it's a trap. There's a way my gifts are good, and there's a way my gifts become vices and blind spots.

And how can I hold the paradox of who I am in order to then find contentment in holding it instead of trying to resolve it?

Creek: 01:03:49

So, as we're kind of wrapping up here, the final couple questions. What's one caution that you could offer the listeners, something that you've worked through that would really help shift someone's perspective?

Stephanie Spencer: 01:04:05

I think I get trapped into thinking solutions need to come from really big and significant and mountaintop experiences, when often they come from ordinary experiences.

So I tend to think that my healing comes through going to some retreat to a really cool place, that I get to tell everybody the story of what happened when I was there. But actually I found a ton of healing through breath, work and yoga, which is much more boring and ordinary. So I don't want it to come from there.

But actually, like, opening up to some of those practices have been around for a long time for a reason, and they can do a lot to help us be embodied and to be present and to see the moment for what it is. I had this moment years ago when I was in that training with Russ Hudson, and he's talking about the alchemy.

And I had this feeling of, like, but I can't do it. It's too hard. I can't wait for it to be alchemized. I just want to stop the longing. And I came.

I was, like, reflecting on that right before a yoga practice. And in that yoga practice, I finally held crow pose for, like, a significant amount of time. It had always been, like, awkward.

And what I realized is I had shifted my gaze and I was, look, I had been looking in the wrong spot. It wasn't that I wasn't strong enough, it's that I was looking in the wrong spot. I was looking, I wasn't looking forward enough.

I hadn't shifted my body to a different center of gravity.

And, and I think that a lot of times we get stuck thinking I'm not strong enough or I haven't done like when really we just have to shift our gaze or shift our balance and it can suddenly change everything when we do that. And sometimes it's actually not as hard as we think it's going to be and we just have to shift a little.

Creek: 01:05:56

Stephanie, what's one action or habit that's been hard won that you found, really?

I mean you said yoga and that sort of thing, but I know we've talked about different rituals, different routines that you've cultivated that have really helped continue to help give you resilience for the work that you're doing.

Stephanie Spencer: 01:06:17

Oh, I like the word resilience. Maybe we would replace.

Yeah, I think again sometimes it's these simple practices of like I have a simple, simple practice of creating a fresh to do list every Monday to really organize my priorities so that yes, I can be intuitive, but also I can be practical and I can be, I can. It's really, I think of that as really like receiving that one arrow point wisdom every Monday. Like okay, be.

Just spend a minute, get organized, follow that plan for the week ahead. I think that was hard fought and now is a pretty important and helpful part of my life.

Art was a hard practice for me for years I didn't do anything with art. It was something that was really core to who I was as a kid. And then it just didn't fit anymore.

I was working too hard in other things and I just put art down and I had to really fight to bring it back. And I still have to fight for it because it's a place where I really feel insufficient. And I really. The comparing mind is so strong with that one.

And I also know that it's an essential practice for me opening up and feeling my feelings.

And so I think that that wisdom of like the thing we resist, it's usually this, a thing we need and I resisted it and I need it and I still struggle with it intensely.

But that's exactly why I need it in my life and I need to fight for it to be there even if I don't quite know what to do with it and just have a drawer full of paintings in my office. That's just in a drawer. That's what I do with them. But I'm making them.

Creek: 01:08:09

Well, I've been looking at the paintings behind your right shoulder and really enjoying looking at them. For what it's worth.

Stephanie Spencer: 01:08:18

Thanks. Those are mine. It took a while before I would put anything in a visible spot for other. Well, actually, this one was not mine.

This is from somebody else. But that one, the abstract one, is mine.

Linz: 01:08:31

And those cards just above your head are from your book, right?

Stephanie Spencer: 01:08:35

Just from my book, yeah.

Abram: 01:08:36

Well, I'm a little surprised you didn't use the word authentic. But then again, I. I could see maybe how that word might feel paradoxical. Like to use it would be inauthentic.

But at the same time, I just wanted to say you come off to me as less a curating kind of for. I don't know if that's just the work that you've done, but I really appreciate the authenticity that you showed up with in this conversation.

Just wanted to name that. But for our listeners, where could they find you in your work?

Stephanie Spencer: 01:09:11

I'm curious if how often, like, authenticity is important to force. But there's like, I know how much I'm not actually revealing right now, so maybe that's a part of not using the word.

So my website is stephaniejspencer.com that's got links to all of my socials and that sort of thing. I'm on Instagram @stephaniej. Spencer, but it's got a couple underscores in there because my name was already taken.

There's a few people with this name out there. Yeah, I know. It's frustrating.

Creek: 01:09:45

Awesome.

Stephanie Spencer: 01:09:46

Website's best. Stephaniejspencer.com and my book's available. My book's called out of the Box and Into the Wild, and it's available on Amazon.

Linz: 01:09:55

Get that book.

Creek: 01:09:58

Awesome. Thanks, Stephanie. Appreciate it.

Linz: 01:10:00

Thanks, Stephanie. Oh, and for the listener, Stephanie is now doing crow pose to say goodbye to us.

Creek: 01:10:06

Those that are not watching.

Abram: 01:10:12

Tide Talk movie duck about the type. Well, we did that. That happened and we're here, so. Oh, man. Yeah, we heard from the schools. They're more similar than I would say.

Distinct takes on type four, sadly. But then we heard from Stephanie as well, and I really enjoyed that.

Stephanie's got a unique lens, I think, and one that I would say for feels, you know, how like a lot of people really just kind of play back everything they've read or. There's not that, especially the books. It doesn't feel like there's much unique actually coming out these Days.

This is just another iteration of the description of the type. Whereas I feel like she actually is doing. And even in her book that she's doing unique, different, distinct things with the. In the world. So true. For.

Linz: 01:11:24

Yeah, I feel like Stephanie is really, like, dropping the plow a whole other level deeper and then blowing it out, expanding it out. There's just, like, such rich, fresh layers there to contemplate and think through. Like, just. I just love it. I loved that interview a lot.

Abram: 01:11:44

Yeah. Yeah. I just want to backtrack, too. And name. At the very start of recording this, Craig's first words were, I don't want to do this.

And then talk about that. And then, folks, he's in his childhood closet.

Whether or not he knew he was doing that to feel all the feels and nostalgia to talk about his experiences before, I don't know. But I just. I thought it'd be helpful to, you know, address this. It is a.

Creek: 01:12:16

It is a convenient. A convenient thing, that's for sure. I'm just.

Abram: 01:12:21

Wait.

Creek: 01:12:21

Convenient, like nostalgia is just, like, oozing into my pores.

Abram: 01:12:26

I was gonna say convenient because it helps you be fory. Or convenient because it was right.

You're still living at home or like you were close to the house because I would say it's not convenient as a four to keep curating your life, you know, when you could just live it.

Creek: 01:12:50

So many things.

Linz: 01:12:54

I can see why there's.

Creek: 01:12:55

This feels like a big roast. My housemates have been deathly ill, so I've been bobbing and weaving to avoid the stomach bug.

So I have been staying at my parents for, like, the past week to try to avoid that. And they are. They. They. I think I'll be able to go back today, but.

Abram: 01:13:19

So that is convenient. I get it.

Creek: 01:13:21

But on your other thing of. Is is curating worth the effort? Yeah. That's why your life is so boring.

Linz: 01:13:31

My life is not boring at all, I have to. To say.

Creek: 01:13:35

Would you like to share, Lindsay?

Linz: 01:13:37

No, But I do want to know what you're looking at right now.

Creek: 01:13:40

What am I looking at?

Linz: 01:13:41

Yeah, tell us what you're observing.

Creek: 01:13:43

sight right now are like old: 1950

My recently deceased grandmother. First mention of death in the type 4 episode that.

Abram: 01:14:12

Grandma died because it was a joke, but it was serious and it was like.

Linz: 01:14:17

Your humor is very dark, though. That's the truth.

Abram: 01:14:21

How we survive.

Creek: 01:14:24

And then. Yeah, below me here is Hardy Boys books. I am. I am still actually collecting the full, like, old series. Trying to get. Trying to get them all.

I used to love the Hardy Boys, and it's such easy, cute reading that I, you know, I'm like, reading philosophy books and psychology books and all these, like, really complex, gotta work for it books. Sometimes I'm just like, I don't have the brain power, so I just pick up one of these and it's just, it's nostalgic. It's all sorts of stuff.

Linz: 01:15:02

Gravity and levity. Let's put a pin in that. Come back to it.

Creek: 01:15:06

Yeah. I see a bunch of old CDs.

Linz: 01:15:12

That stands for compact discs for our younger listeners.

Creek: 01:15:17

I got all my LEGO technology here. I can see my keepsake box and, like, all my treasures and miscellaneous items. It's. It's everywhere. It's. It's scary.

Linz: 01:15:32

That's a vibe.

Abram: 01:15:33

And how do you feel right now?

Creek: 01:15:35

How do I feel right now? A little anxious and angry.

Abram: 01:15:39

Oh, that's not what I was expecting.

Creek: 01:15:42

Yeah, the anger's coming from somewhere else. But hey, we're. We're just being authentic here, so back off.

Linz: 01:15:51

Was there. Are there any kind of weapons in the closet?

Creek: 01:15:54

Oh, yeah, there are some. I have my William Wallace broadsword that I got for, like, my 16th birthday. I was homeschooled. Shocking, I know, but you don't even.

Linz: 01:16:12

Have to say that. Like, all of this just make sense without you even having to say.

Creek: 01:16:17

Yeah, yeah. I do have my 410 shotgun that I got for when I was more into deer hunting. Don't cancel me. And lots of knives. I love collecting knives.

So I'm not a violent person. Contrary to my popular belief.

Linz: 01:16:43

If you have to say it like, I don't know.

Creek: 01:16:49

Oh, man, I have machetes out. Out in the other room.

Linz: 01:16:53

So this was a wonderful tour. Thank you.

Creek: 01:16:58

Yeah.

Linz: 01:16:58

For your curated vulnerability.

Creek: 01:17:03

Always. Okay, so. So let's talk about the schools. Enough with me. So what are some things that you guys kind of picked up that you thought was really good?

Interesting contrast. The different schools.

Abram: 01:17:21

My brief, brief note taking through listening once again was first doctor that two of the schools have names, have a name for each of the types, and one of them does not just find that interesting.

The narrative talked about Christopher named David Daniel's basic proposition, which is kind of just this initial state one is in before the world informs, you know, the lens or the worldview that they begin to interpret the world through.

Creek: 01:18:00

Yeah.

Abram: 01:18:01

I find that to be valuable because it's a way for me at least to understand that you can practice. I mean, Christopher named that your worldview is an illusion. I think that's a way to realize this doesn't have to always be your perspective.

You can shift that, you can change that. You can have more of a growth mindset and recognize that the world is not an abandoning place as he was naming about for us.

But especially if you already have that sensitivity, that temperamental sensitivity and then you actually do experience it.

Oh man, that's going to be a hard thing to not keep seeing or expecting everywhere to show up, you know, but to also just recognize that it is a worldview that you can hold and don't have to keep projecting on every situation. Is this a great, great thing to have informing you?

Linz: 01:18:55

I think I don't love the language of sensitivity, being attached to fours because all types are.

Abram: 01:19:01

I'm super sensitive, sensitive.

Linz: 01:19:03

I'm also very sensitive.

So I think there's something to explore there further or to at least to press people for better definitions of what they mean when they say sensitive as it relates to fourness. But I will say that I have observed that one thing you're very intentional about is building your capacity for discomfort.

And so what that makes me wonder about is the connection to different types of and their relationship to their nervous system. I don't want to get too like rigid about this is how this type nervous system is. I'm not making a correlation there necessarily.

But what I am saying is if you're a person who has a heightened sensitivity, you may also be a person who needs to do more work with your nervous system and build your capacity for discomfort. Otherwise you're going to be overwhelmed all the time. You're going to be overstimulated all the time, you're going to be reactive all the time.

So I wonder what if you can speak to that. Your journey with noticing. You've talked about this like as a child, right?

Being noticing that or having people who love you notice your sensitivities and what's it been like becoming aware of yourself as a sensitive person? And then how have you, how have you supported yourself through that?

Creek: 01:20:40

Yeah, I mean my mom always says that I was a very sensitive child, very affectionate as well and very soft hearted in her words. And I think over time, yeah, just you know, realizing that that's not always accepted, not always helpful.

Linz: 01:21:08

Especially for boys slash men.

Creek: 01:21:10

Especially for boys. Yeah. I can't, I don't, I don't remember explicitly ever being shamed for that, but it did. I Saw how it hampered my ability to interact with people.

I was painfully shy. Like most people didn't know I spoke until I was in, I don't know, like junior high. And.

Linz: 01:21:39

And now we can't get you to shut up.

Creek: 01:21:41

I know the irony that I do body casting for a living. Wild. Yeah. So I think just over. Over time there was some masochism tendencies, some really unhealthy versions of it.

And I think over time realized, oh, that doesn't. It somehow makes me feel good for a moment, but then it doesn't.

Linz: 01:22:06

And so do you mean experiencing that sensitivity?

Creek: 01:22:11

Yeah. Or just like somehow. Somehow pain. Was that again, going back to that controlled pain? It's something I could do. I.

Something I could experience the intensity of.

And then over time, kind of readjusting my position on it and seeing it as a resilience thing, as a way in which I can separate the story from the sensation. And Stephanie said this as well. And we've had this. Stephanie and I have talked about this as well.

You know, force being labeled as these like fragile little creatures. And just. Just because, like, yeah, maybe our feelings can get hurt relatively easily. And I've worked. I've worked through a lot of that where I.

Sometimes it's. It's gone too far and I've shut parts of myself off in order to not feel. And other times it's just like, yeah, who cares?

But yeah, it's, you know, through cold exposure or working out or the hiking stuff or all of that as a way to help my nervous system be able to deal with how much I take in and how much I'm processing and having that sort of consistent morning routine and weekend routine of being really, really careful not to over expose myself. Because I. Because sometimes I don't feel like I have a filter of things that come in.

And so I have to create moments in which to kind of clean my system to sort through things and categorize them, make them interactable. Yeah, it's just been. It's been a journey to how can I be stronger? How can I be more resilient?

Linz: 01:24:23

When Michael was talking about. He said that forest can sense the veil. Sense under the veil of personality. I loved that statement. And sense what's not being said. I loved that too.

And whenever I hear about, you know, I heard some variation of this with all three of the schools is for his capacity to hold other people and their suffering. I always want to say if they can hold themselves with compassion.

Because a four who does not know how to hold themselves with Compassion is not going to hold your suffering well. So I think that just has to be a qualifier to that statement. Always, in my opinion.

Creek: 01:25:20

Absolutely. Sometimes they're the worst. To go back to Seth's thing. Sometimes they're the worst people to have around when they're suffering in death.

Abram: 01:25:27

Because you can make it about you. Not you, you know, but other ones, other force. Creek. I'm just curious if you could say something about that. Why? What comes up for you about that?

Creek: 01:25:43

I think it depends obviously on the health level.

I think the maturity, the skillfulness, that sort of thing of a 4 for some reason and I mean I could probably find the reason, but not worth exploring right now. More interested in the darker side of things, in the things that we avoid. Maybe because it's just.

It's more unique, it feels more authentic when it's the thing that people don't talk about.

Abram: 01:26:20

Is there something there about intensity too? This is where I feel like eights and fours have some overlap or some friendship.

Creek: 01:26:28

Intensity can often be equated with authenticity. Not always the case. Sometimes it's over identified with those with that correlation. But I think there's just a.

Because we dwell on those darker side of things and there's just. There's a comfortability with death, with the underbelly of the universe that it's just not disturbing.

It's like this is just kind of matter of fact of this is what it is. I've. I've always. I always expect something terrible to go wrong or some sort of sadness to be present. So in some ways I seek out sadness.

So it's just a very normal, comfortable emotion. Comfortable as a stretch. It's normal, but it's not always comfortable. But it is known where most people try to avoid that.

So I think also in the realm of like in the curation, in the, in the. The savoring and squeezing of life, it's out of that sense of death is always around the corner.

And so it drives us to make beautiful things, to find beautiful things, to infuse everything with meaning, purpose and story. And so death is just kind of a normal thing to think about daily. I mean, I think about it daily. My own death and the death of those I love.

Abram: 01:28:12

Well, there we go.

Linz: 01:28:13

Daily. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Is that an exaggeration or do you mean that daily?

Creek: 01:28:22

Almost. Almost daily. I mean, I can't say that for certain, but like it is a common for you? It's very common.

I mean, oftentimes on my evening walks, like that is the end, near the end of the walk. It is a practice of mine to be like, yeah, one day closer to death. And that elicits feelings of gratefulness and preciousness.

Abram: 01:28:54

But is that, oh man, there's some strange places we could go to here.

Creek: 01:28:59

Strange.

Abram: 01:29:03

Help me understand.

Help our listeners understand the difference between how that isn't how it is, both depending on your level of health, the intensity of feeling, the depth of darkness to curate my uniqueness to stay separate and nobody I'd never be. And this is because this is beautiful, because this is a way to find gratitude in what I have.

And that life is fragile and that's the reality of things.

Creek: 01:29:33

I think on the less healthy side of the equation, there's this narcissism and nihilism that enforces this sense of self, of being unique and special. Because I'm the only one that sees reality. I'm the only one that sees the thing that everyone else is avoiding.

And no one is suffering as great as me because I am. I am seeing the meaninglessness of everything. And I think the turn is, I think a lot of foras in, like studying Nietzsche and some.

Some other thinkers in this realm.

It's like they're not going far enough that there's a sense of if you keep pressing into nihilism and even like that level of narcissism, you come out on the other side like free and grateful and admiring the place that you exist in the universe instead of. This is all a waste of time. And I think that that sense of uniqueness and trying to find and in some ways fixating on the ways in which we suffer is.

Is that sense of some is the forething of wanting to be rescued, wanting to be seen in some ways not wanting to be held responsible for the ways in which I'm falling short of what's expected of me. Because if I am, if I'm the one that has. That sees all the problems, that is the problem, then I'm not. I don't need to be.

I can't be held responsible for making you feel bad, for blowing up, for, you know, not being consistent. You know, there's. There's so much more. I could just keep going on saying that, but did I answer the question?

Abram: 01:31:44

I think so. What I.

What I maybe hear you saying is some of the distinction is about a victim identification which is keeping you stuck, versus an impermanence, which is naming the reality that things keep stop or dying. But that's normal and I'm moving with it. So there's actually a stuckness and a movement.

Creek: 01:32:06

Yeah. That they're like, to me, life is death in motion.

And that things will continue to exist, but they'll go through this cycle of birth and then death, and then they'll become something else, and then they die again. And it's just. This is the part of life is just that cyclical nature of dying. And how, like, from the.

From a human level, how do we want to engage that? How do we want to honor that? How do we want to drink of that and wrestle with that sort of. That contradiction of.

We just want to remember that we are living and not that we're dying. And so how do we let both of those things be true?

Abram: 01:32:59

I have many thoughts, but. Lindsay, go ahead.

Linz: 01:33:01

Well, somebody said it.

I forget if it was Christopher or Michael, but they referenced the ways that fours have a special attachment to my words, not theirs, but an attachment to meaning and meaning.

And I feel like one of the things I've observed in you over the course of our friendship is I've watched you wrestle with that attachment to meaning and kind of push it to the edge of meaninglessness, almost like a bumper you're bouncing off of. So I feel like I watch you do some gymnastics with that, a little bit like, with that attachment to meaning.

Do you know what I'm trying to express there?

And I guess what I'm curious about is, and even for listeners, too, who are fours, is that relationship with meaning and how you, as fours, may approach that differently. Because I think some people might dive into it, like, life is so meaningful and so beautiful and sort of amplify that attachment to meaning.

I think I've kind of seen you take an opposite. Opposite approach. Would you agree with that or no?

Creek: 01:34:16

Of course I take an opposite approach. And I guess first I want to name and call out like, we had two fours for teachers.

Linz: 01:34:28

Right.

Creek: 01:34:29

And then Stephanie and now me. Like, this is. This is a lot of. I was trying to find ways in which I disagreed with Christopher and Michael, and I just couldn't.

Linz: 01:34:39

Yeah.

Creek: 01:34:40

I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And. And Mario. I mean, I. I don't disagree with Mario either, but you could just. You.

I could tell there's a difference of Michael and Christopher talking from experience versus Mario talking from experience. But. But secondhand. And just so much of what Stephanie said, I just resonated deeply with, I think, to answer your question.

And Stephanie did talk about meaning as well. I don't remember exactly what she said, but that striving to feel unique is the fundamental question of who am I? And identity is based around story.

So I think for a good portion of the beginning of my life, and this is completely normal, natural and helpful and necessary, all those things. But it was trying to create meaning, curate meaning in purpose.

And sometimes I made that up myself, sometimes I was given that meaning and purpose and I tried to live into it. But then everything having had to be infused with story, with which is meaning.

And so like, I mean again, just looking around my closet, like all these things that I've kept in here are because they're infused with story and that is meaning. That's what creates our sense of purpose and belonging and connectedness to being human and what represents our lives.

Whenever I buy something, it takes me forever.

And Christopher mentioned this, instead of going and get chairs at Walmart, I have to find something unique, even if it's the same chair, but I got it at a garage sale that I had a cool conversation with this person. You know, like it's, it has to have a story attached to it. Some in some nostalgia is a bonus.

If it's a story and nostalgia, a lot of my like pieces of furniture that I've selected for my actual bedroom are pieces from my grandparents or adjacent to that. So anyways, what I'm getting at is I think there is, there's a, a striving to find myself through the curation of story and meaning.

And then at some point it stops working and it becomes anxiety producing.

And it still is to a certain extent, but I, but I think through lots of study and self reflection and just work on myself, the meaninglessness helps tamper or tame that, that need for it to mean something and to be able to let go and to disidentify with certain identities, certain stories, not bad, not all of them bad, you know, some really beautiful ones.

But still letting go of that gives me the freedom to encounter and experience life in a way that is naturally, authentically beautiful and meaningful.

But you first have to take out your projections before you can experience what's naturally coming up and what you naturally find beautiful and wonderful and true, good and beautiful.

Abram: 01:38:31

Yeah. Stephanie named something that I think all fours need to hear around coming to recognition.

I think at some point when she started realizing that not everything needs to be about identity, not everything is about identity. And when she was trying to make everything about identity.

And I feel like that's another way to just say, to talk about like things are being curated, to find the meaning of how I can uniquely show up in this. But I'm curious. What question or how do you know when something is truly authentic versus you've curated it to be authentic, to feel authentic.

Does that make sense?

Creek: 01:39:17

Well, first of all, I think over time I've realized there's a difference between trying to make something authentic and creating a container for authenticity to emerge. Curating a container. And I do that all the time.

I mean, Lindsay hasn't been able to join, but like when we've done the Fathoms get togethers in the past, I'm very, very intentional, sometimes overly so, in trying to create a container where profound, meaningful things can happen.

And it is, it's a part of my everyday, everyday practice in the morning and creating opportunities to be hit with gratefulness, with wonder, with meaning. And whether it's just my regular sunset walk or, you know, going to a museum or going to an opera or a symphony or something, it's like there's a.

There's a curation that is putting some boundaries on a place where I can experience meaning. And then there's the I need this to mean something. Or I've done like a creative retreat with a couple guys before and sometimes it works really well.

And other times I've tried so hard to make this moment profound and just a symphony swells. I think Stephanie mentioned that as well, of needing life changing moments to be as epic as movies. Like a montage.

And I get really frustrated and angry when things aren't coming together as I had envisioned them in my head. But my housemate, I was actually showing some of my housemates have a kid. She's. She like won.

And I was showing her some videos of us driving back from Kentucky, I think, and going through the mountains in the sunset was just brilliant. It was incredible. And I had, I had Seguros on and driving like pristine countryside.

And my housemate saw it and she's like, yeah, Nora, Seth likes to live his life like a movie. And it's like it was both funny and I'm like, both a stab and also like, yeah, I do.

I try to curate my life such that it is movie like, and in some moments it, oh, it's overdone and it's over curated and it's just stiff and inauthentic. And other times it's like I've created. I've.

I've chosen to make this drive off the main highway because I know the sunset's gonna happen and I'm gonna put on music that I know I love and just enjoy being in this moment. I've curated a container for this to happen versus, like, hurry, I need to get to this thing.

Abram: 01:42:28

It's.

Creek: 01:42:29

It's a difference in state, I think.

Linz: 01:42:31

Well, and a difference in knowing. Like, I just want to do this because it fills me up and I love it and I just like it.

I like living my life this way versus I have to do this or else I don't know who I am.

Creek: 01:42:44

Yeah. Yeah. That's much shorter way of saying that.

Abram: 01:42:48

When is that?

The sludging through the mud for other people that feels like walking on air, like Stephanie mentioned, you know, because when are things allowed to just be mundane and normal and not have a bunch of meaning and purpose and depth to them, you know, because. And not the kind of meaning that's found in the meaningless. You know, when is it just find to be boring and mundane? You know, when does that happen?

Creek: 01:43:26

Never. Yeah.

Abram: 01:43:32

And that. The thing is, is that's the. The beautiful then, because it just is mundane and the mundane is sacred.

Creek: 01:43:41

Yeah. And it. And it's like you were saying in the nine episode. You can't just say that to a four. Be like, the mundane is sacred.

It's like, okay, it still requires. I think there's two versions of that.

There's already beauty and meaning and sacredness, preciousness that you can observe and that you can find in the most mundane things if you're present to it. Then there's also just like, yeah, not. Not every moment needs to be that. And sometimes you just got to get some stuff done and that's okay too.

Like, it's. It's part. It's. It's leaning into the contrast of if everything is a mountaintop high, then it starts losing its magic.

And so like, allowing for things to just be normal, mundane, even boring, you can. You can find ways. You can still find ways to enjoy it, but also know that this is.

This is sometimes just the work that needs to happen in order for that next moment of ecstasy to exist.

Abram: 01:44:57

Yeah. Isn't that maybe what attributes to some of the low lows, though, is trying to make things just always high? And then it's just. I can't keep this up.

Like when. Where's the narrative? Named this the equanimity piece. When is the. When is. When is life as it just is coming normally? You know, enough.

Because what I think curating intensity of beauty does is it creates a roller coaster of a life. At what point does that become no longer feasible, no longer maintainable?

Creek: 01:45:42

I mean, of course, at some point you can't always control these things and you Miss out on moments. And it starts to work against you in needing things to be special and unique and beautiful and profound at all times.

And then you end up missing the very thing of just living and experiencing what is. Instead of painting over the thing that's happening.

So, in fact, you're living a less authentic experience when you're trying to make something more than what it is. I think that's why I go towards creating containers instead of trying to create the moment. And so it's, you know, taking a.

Taking a walk every evening at sunset some days is going to be drab and uninspiring and not beautiful. And there's no actual sunset, but letting that just be fine, too. And I can find beauty in that too. I don't think that's. That's the thing is I don't.

I don't think it's. We're not asking.

You're not suggesting that forzine to stop looking for beauty and just let things be ugly or just not try to find the inspiring and the mundane. What I'm hearing you say is it's more trying. Trying not even doing the consistent and the mundane because of fear of it not being profound.

Abram: 01:47:27

Yeah. Christopher was talking about, you know, just this disconnection from the, you know, initial unique state or feeling of, you know, enoughness.

And so that creates this sort of fundamental state of missing. But there's this idea that I can reclaim this lost connection by being special and unique. But when that is the motivation. Right.

When that's what you're chasing versus there is something enough about you already, then there's not a need to create it.

And so it just is happening because it's an overflow of what is already accurate or what is already true, rather than I'm trying to manufacture because I don't feel it. I don't have it.

Creek: 01:48:31

Yeah. And we need another 12 hours to talk about all the implications of those things.

But I think what I'm hearing you say, and if I'm relating it to my own experience, is finding enoughness in the moment of, like, existing is belonging. And I think for me, and we've had this discussion of sometimes even trying to force myself to believe in my own value is too. Enough is too much.

Too much of an effort. Value is just a really, really complicated term with lots of baggage.

So not even trying, for me, it's like not even trying to define that, but rather lean into, you know, regardless of that, I am here. I am existing. I do belong to this earth. I do have. I Inevitably have impact on the world. Whether it's good or bad is up for debate. But like I do have.

I am part. I am part of this. I do belong. If a four can get to.

Or if anyone really can get to that place of remembering that you're a part of this planet, you're part of this human race, to me, that's. That's the starting point of building something afterwards. Of building what. What kind of life do I want to live? What are my values?

What identities do I want to lean into? When it's coming from just a place of whether I like it or not, I'm here and I do belong. I'm gonna make an impact.

So what kind of impact do I want to make?

Abram: 01:50:33

1. One thing I was trying to get a little more closer to though, and I don't. Sorry, Lindsay. I want to make sure you have space to talk to.

I feel like it's been creaking.

Linz: 01:50:40

I have five things.

Abram: 01:50:41

Okay. I was sort of alluded to it earlier, but there's a thing for every four I know where it's like, hey, you don't have to keep mulling this over for.

For years. Actually we've. We've processed it, I think. Or at least everybody else had.

Has like 16 years ago and you're still on it trying to figure out what's going on or why or what. Like I wanted to get into that a little bit.

Like what is still happening there because it feels like you're trying to find a diamond when there's nothing else there.

Creek: 01:51:25

Yeah. The sunk cost fallacy. Oh of. I've already done so much in this direction.

It has to have to find something that was worth going this far and yeah, sometimes. Sometimes for sure. It takes me a long time to make a decision about certain things. I hang on to things far too long.

I keep trying to find the end of an idea or of a process or a relation. Try to find something that is no one else has gotten to. That's a real gift and easily overdone.

Can easily in relationships past like held on to things for far too long. Long such that I end up cutting off parts of myself in order to try to get to the payoff.

Abram: 01:52:40

Can I just say real fast, what's been confusing about it for me is that as much as I hear from fours that loss is so pivotal and good and normal and it feels like a perpetuation of denying the loss that it did happen. And I'm not ready to actually finish. So I'm going to keep trying to figure this out.

Creek: 01:53:03

If the meaning isn't clear, then I have to keep going. Like, if this wasn't worth it, I have to find a reason for why it's worth it. All this suffering. Why is this suffering worth it?

Yeah, loss is going to happen. Pain's going to happen, suffering is going to happen. But I have to figure out why it's worth it. And I think there is. There's an. There's a. There's.

There's chosen suffering and then there's suffering that just happens. And I think we do a lot more chosen suffering sometimes as a pastime, but when there is. But inevitable suffering is all is much. Can't.

We can't control that. We can't curate that. We can't always make it beautiful. So there's a. There's an element of control, I think.

Linz: 01:54:05

Does that feel like a failure of some kind if you can't make it beautiful sometimes?

Creek: 01:54:10

Like, I don't know if failure is the right word, but I. But it is. It is like a. I want to avoid it because. Yeah, I don't have an answer for that at the moment.

Abram: 01:54:22

It sometimes feels like there's a Buddhist saying that pain is inevitable, suffering is.

Linz: 01:54:32

Optional, suffering is optional.

Abram: 01:54:35

When I feel like force flip that suffering is inevitable, pain is optional.

Creek: 01:54:42

That's good.

Abram: 01:54:44

Did I say that word right?

Creek: 01:54:47

Optional.

Abram: 01:54:47

Optional. Yeah.

Linz: 01:54:49

Yes.

Abram: 01:54:49

I don't know why it didn't sound right when I said it. You know what I mean? That's what it feels like. Force do. But I'm perpetuating this because I'm not willing to actually be done with the pain.

Creek: 01:55:01

So pain is familiar.

Abram: 01:55:03

Yeah. This feels like force. Swipe it, swipe it, swap it.

Linz: 01:55:08

That word he did not pronounce correctly.

Abram: 01:55:11

No, I didn't.

Creek: 01:55:12

Nailed it.

Abram: 01:55:16

You know what I mean, though? The swipping of those.

Creek: 01:55:22

Yeah. When we swiped those.

Linz: 01:55:27

That'S going into fathoms lexicon.

Abram: 01:55:30

Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. But for force, a lot of times, suffering is inevitable, pain is optional.

Creek: 01:55:38

Suffering has story attached to it. Pain doesn't always have a story attached to it. And I.

So it's easier, I think, to make meaning out of suffering than it is to make meaning out of pain.

Abram: 01:55:53

And there you have it, folks. Welcome back. Or we'll see next time.

Creek: 01:55:57

Got to what Abram was trying to get me to say for the past.

Linz: 01:56:01

20 minutes, but also everything's meaningless. So.

Abram: 01:56:05

Yeah.

Creek: 01:56:05

Yeah. So who cares?

Abram: 01:56:07

Is that. Is that a helpful. Anyways, Is that a way, though, to recognize, oh, I'm stuck in that this is optional rather than, you know, I think.

Creek: 01:56:18

Yeah, I think so.

Linz: 01:56:19

This is optional and I'm going to choose it.

Creek: 01:56:23

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I. I'll say one more thing and then we'll get to your five things. Lindsay.

Learning neuroscience, learning philosophy, all these sort of things has.

And even like the intentional discomfort that I do on a regular basis has helped me draw a firmer line between those things of pain just being a sensation and I don't have to attach a story to it, I can just experience it and then it will like, you know. Yeah. When I walk barefoot out in like single digits, it hurts, but like it'll stop hurting when I go inside.

On the, on an emotional level, it's like I don't, I don't have to fixate on the emotions I'm feeling. I don't have. Like I can feel them if I want to or I can just like, well, there's that one. And then just keep working.

And if it sticks around such that I need to process it and metabolize it, then sure, I'll do that. But sometimes like, hey, not right now. We don't need, like, I don't need to let this affect what it is that I need to be doing right now.

And just keeping emotions and stories in their proper place.

Abram: 01:57:54

Also this question that gets framed up for round fours a lot, I just want to ask too. The question is, who am I and why am I here? I was just curious as to why is that so important for Forest and your eyes got large and then.

And I just, I do appreciate the language around from, from the institute around how losing contact with presence or losing contact with death that's already here is when you become temperamental and identify with suffering. And then from the ata they were, I largely heard just, you know, talking about creativity and some of the misunderstanding around how.

Well one way to frame it is like why are all. Why are people who are creative not all fours? Because that's a big misconception.

Creek: 01:58:47

Huge.

Abram: 01:58:47

Right. But they're not all wearing black and smoking clothes like Mario said. But so how does uniqueness show up in the non stereotypical ways?

And then that, the last part of that, that stood out to me was like what's. What gets naturally expressed versus manufactured uniqueness. Those are the things that stood out to me.

I don't know how to clarify the unique differences between them. I just noticed that they all said something different about foreignness. I think it'd be great to hear. Why is that question so important? Who am I?

And Why am I here?

Creek: 01:59:22

Oh, yeah. This is why it's so hard to talk about.

Abram: 01:59:29

Talk to people in general.

Creek: 01:59:32

Yeah. One, it does feel like a question everyone's asking, but not on a conscious level. And not. They're asking it in different ways, I think.

Abram: 01:59:48

But are you saying you're technically asking that all the time?

Creek: 01:59:54

It becomes more and more conscious every day for sure. And I think more and more. And a lot of people have those moments in their life where all of a sudden their identities are stripped from them or it's.

They all of a sudden realize that what they've been doing their entire life isn't working for them anymore. And so I think because there's an obsession of like figuring out I have to know who I am in order to know how I'm different.

And the why I'm here gives me a role inside of society such that I'm irreplaceable because there's that fear of abandonment.

If I can create myself in such a way, if I can curate myself in such a way that I am, whether you like me or not, I am indispensable, then I'm safe from being left. And then there's just the whole like.

But then I create that and then it's like, oh, are they keeping me around because I'm indispensable or because they actually want me around? And so it's. It's kind of a self defeating cycle, which, you know, that's everybody.

Abram: 02:01:05

But especially I wonder if it becomes more problematic when it's manufactured. Uniqueness versus naturally, right?

Creek: 02:01:14

Yeah. And even that, it's just a hard thing to delineate a lot of times. What's natural? I don't know what's natural.

And you get obsessed about figuring out what's natural and that ends up being manufactured sometimes. And that's a personal process and probably a topic that is much larger than what we're able to get into right now.

But it did something that Christopher said of like the. The idealist and like this sort of hustling, which is a word I don't think you normally hear associated with fours.

But all the fours I know are fairly driven. I think oftentimes it's like this, this. They get characterized as kind of this sort of depressive laziness.

And I think it can look like that, but a lot because we're hearkening back to our cliffhanger at the beginning of the episode of this need for novelty that fours also have, where the novelty is the uniqueness. It's the Fresh. It's something that no one else or not many people have experienced.

And so there's just this drive to get to the next thing that is unique, that is fresh because that bolsters my identity of I'm the person that experienced this or discovered this or articulated this in some frame. So that's something that I think the narrative. I just like that language.

Linz: 02:03:02

I'm just really curious why I think the schools in general, it's not that they talk about all these types the same per se, but they at least have some words that we can go, okay, every school used this word, or every school can agree on this concept. Why do you think when it comes to fours, the schools seem to have more. I won't use the word disagreement. That's not.

There just seems to be broader descriptions. Why is that?

Creek: 02:03:38

I think it starts in the same place a lot of times, but then as they move off from their beginning point, it starts to become more and more different based on their experiences and their context and again, how they draw the lines, especially in the instinctual bias instincts. But I. But I do think it is like, fours are very internal. And the.

It just becomes a lot harder to put words on the internal and the existential and identity. All these things are kind of. There's smoke, and we're fours try to capture smoke on some level.

Abram: 02:04:26

And that's why artistic expression tends to be correlated with foreignness. Right. But not always.

Linz: 02:04:34

I think he just blew my mind just a second ago. That's.

Creek: 02:04:39

Would you like to share?

Linz: 02:04:41

Well, I mean, I was disagreeing with you at first because I think that's what the whole Enneagram is, is trying to name the internal for every single type. So why are fours any different in that capacity? But. Yeah, yeah, that seems true.

Creek: 02:05:05

And that's not for me to try. I'm not trying to make fours the unique one on the Enneagram, necessarily. But there is.

When that state of striving to feel unique or that sort of, regardless of what model it is, that's kind of the core thing. It's questions of identity. It's questions of, like, uniqueness is tied to what is this and what is not this. Who am I? Who am I not?

And so all of these are questions of deep identity. And the further you try to find what makes you unique, the further you're drawn into the depths of, you know, philosophy and.

Or whatever else that is trying to answer that deeply human question. And I think all types are asking a deeply human question, but there's something extra In a direction that causes for.

To kind of have to work through those issues a lot quicker.

Abram: 02:06:09

It seems like you. I mean, you.

It seems like everybody at some point along the way in their journey has to ask existential questions at some point in their development, especially as they maybe go through some bigger life transitions or have major breakups or those kinds of things. Whereas maybe fourness is largely. That is the identity they have, whereas it's maybe a stage of development some people go through here and there.

It's not an identity, it's a season that I might experience.

Creek: 02:06:48

And I think. And Michael said they have a familiarity with intensity. I think intensity. And I think I'd put it a little bit further in of internal intensity.

And I think the other type that I often find other than four, is six. Because there's also some deep existential questions in that of safety and fear. And they're also dealing with a lot of internal.

On the darker side of intensity. And again, this is my experience, so don't take this as gospel.

But so I think there's that familiar, the familiarity with intensity because we're asking such existential questions constantly in order to feel okay. And in. Those questions are inherently of who am I and why am I here? Are inherently kind of unanswerable.

So that creates angst, that creates depression, that creates anxiety. So when everything is about that, that just creates so much emotion.

And I've gone through different stages of turning off that emotion of like, I just. I can't. I can't keep having to hold all these emotions all at once.

And the intensity of them, even though they're probably the same emotions a lot of the times, it's just really, really big. So it's. It's been a process of sectioning off times to feel deeply, other times to not. And to know what to do when I don't have a choice but to feel.

So, yeah, there's just something fundamental about our core motivation that drives us to that.

Abram: 02:08:39

Yeah, I feel like this question that gets asked that can of who am I? And finding distinction between me and other people and how that can, you said, lead to depression and states of suffering.

I feel like that leads well to the quote that we want to get into. But before we get there, I still have some other questions to just put a pin in that.

One thing that I am not a fan of within the Enneagram world is that people like to take type and say this type more than any of the other types does this.

Creek: 02:09:09

This.

Abram: 02:09:10

I don't tend to agree. The Majority of the time with the following statement.

You know, one of those for fours, I think, is that fours tend to suffer more than all the other types. And I wonder if you could tell our listeners why that's not true. Why aren't fours suffering more than other types?

Linz: 02:09:31

Maybe because I.

Abram: 02:09:33

Because I don't buy it. I tend to think that hearing foreignness, because people don't have this experience and that experience sounds painful to me. I couldn't do that.

As long as you do that all the time in my head. It's normal for you. Right? Creek, you and I have talked a little bit about some of this before, but how is that? How are you? I don't.

Maybe I'm wrong, but we're all suffering in our own way.

And I don't think foreignness means that you just must be, you know, the endless suffering, romantic, you know, that is worse off than everyone else because you just so happen to be born with foreignness.

Creek: 02:10:14

I don't know if it's quantifiably more, but the topics perhaps tend to be more intense and. And because we're looking for uniqueness and it leads us to those existential questions. Yeah, it does.

For I've talked to Stephanie about this as well, of just being an acquired taste. Because the things that we are interested in are things that people try to avoid a lot of times.

And we seek after them because they are unique and different and very closely tied to the who am I and why am I here?

Abram: 02:10:57

So there's a capacity for it that others don't tend to have.

Creek: 02:11:00

Right. And so it's a flavor of suffering that people aren't used to. So when you're not used to that sort of flavor, it's going to feel more intense.

And then there's also just like suffering more versus being stuck.

And suffering more might be another distinction because there's some level of pleasure in it that there's a wrestling in it that feels like I'm doing something. And sometimes I am doing something. Sometimes I'm just going around in circles being more masochistic.

Linz: 02:11:44

Has you seen. Has. Has you seen.

Creek: 02:11:48

Has you seen.

Linz: 02:11:49

Has you seen the meme of the monkey with the remote? And it's like playing the song again, because it didn't hurt my feelings enough the first time.

Abram: 02:11:59

And it's just this monkey that's like.

Creek: 02:12:02

And. And I think there's also, like that that obsession with intense emotions is because, again, I just keep coming back to that sort of.

The fundamental question we're asking lends itself to that Intensity. So if we don't feel that intensity in other aspects of life, we're suspicious of it.

And so we try to make it intense or create intensity from something that is not. Or create the uniqueness out of the mundane or something like that.

Linz: 02:12:29

And that's why people call you dramatic. Yeah, because it's like, it doesn't need to be this deep right now. Like, it doesn't. You don't need to make it a big thing.

Creek: 02:12:41

Yeah.

Abram: 02:12:41

Or. Or. Or some people need to understand that it actually is.

Linz: 02:12:46

Yeah, but.

Abram: 02:12:47

But just not as often as maybe.

Creek: 02:12:50

You'Re making it or not right now.

Abram: 02:12:52

Yeah, or that.

Creek: 02:12:53

And that's the other. Like, I can make anything existential and deep. Give me five seconds.

Linz: 02:13:01

That would be a fun game.

Abram: 02:13:02

No, not right now.

Creek: 02:13:04

Not right now, Lindsay. Guys, you're at seven.

Abram: 02:13:09

Guys, that's not what I meant.

Creek: 02:13:17

Too much existentialism. I need some games.

Abram: 02:13:23

I just want to go a little bit more deeper into this. Like, I don't. So suffering. Like, one way to understand is suffering is refusing reality as it is. Like, suffering is the second arrow. Right.

Of my mental reaction to something I don't like or want to be happening. But it did. It did happen. And now I'm replaying it over and over and over. And so everybody experiences that. Everyone experiences suffering. There's.

But there's the difference between that and, like, how you use thought to enhance feelings, because, you know, there's something about foreignness that is. To make this feel real, it has to feel huge and intense.

And I could see in the emotional experience, maybe there's some more suffering, but not in the sense of how people can experience suffering, especially the way that everybody thinks. And sure, there's a spectrum of mental health that people have, but maybe there's this more intense emotion, but maybe not more suffering in general.

Creek: 02:14:24

Like, the other night, like, I was woken up in the middle of the night. There's. I was working through some anxious stuff and anger and abandonment, and all these other things are coming up.

And the amount of different stories that weren't even. Didn't even happen, but were. That were. But could potentially happen and were causing my emotions to rev up and get started so big.

And the stories I told myself that were not true weren't even close to true, but they kept coming to my brain. It's like, it was just like, man, this is. I'm.

I'm getting worked up because there's some level of safety in rejecting myself first before I'm rejected. To replace people's perception of me with. To negate my responsibility of showing up of. Of not just because I don't.

I'm not getting the reaction I want or. Or the exchange that I want. That.

That doesn't mean that the way I get that is to remove myself, to create a vacuum so people will invite me back in and prove that I'm wanted again. And so that's been my work of, like, trusting that I'm wanted in the group, regardless of the exterior interaction.

Abram: 02:15:54

Right.

Creek: 02:15:54

Not being dumb about it. Like, take a hint, dude. Like, stop trying to draw us into the depths.

For instance, I've had to learn that, you know, not everyone wants an existential question this second time they meet me. You know, so it's. It's being skillful, of course, but it's just. Yeah. Does that answer the question?

Abram: 02:16:16

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm, you know, for four is like, I'm the only one suffering or this story, you know, to enhance distinction and how emotionality bolsters that story, it tends to go more so in toward negativity. Right. But a question I have then too is, can it go toward positivity?

Creek: 02:16:41

Yeah, for sure. I mean, I think something was it. I think it was that the inferior or.

Abram: 02:16:45

Sorry, superior.

Creek: 02:16:47

Yeah. Michael said, like, you don't realize how awesome I am.

That was actually close to like my mantra for last year of I'm tired of being awesome and no one knows about it. And. And it seems a little cocky, but it is like, so this. This constant vacillation between superiority and inferiority.

And I think I've said this on the podcast or other places, but I realized one day it's like we've. Fours will feel inferior as a replacement of loving themselves and feeling superior as a replacement, being loved by others.

Abram: 02:17:25

That'll preach. That's pretty solid.

Creek: 02:17:30

Yeah. And I. I think that's constantly with that vacillation gives me this space and distinction that I'm looking for without ever actually being known.

Abram: 02:17:43

Right.

Creek: 02:17:44

Or. Or being vulnerable, rather. I can't be known.

Abram: 02:17:46

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a. There's a. I'll just say there's a part of fourness that I have.

Have been jealous about for a long time in that it is so hard for nineness to find distinction and so easier for fours.

Creek: 02:18:03

Too easy.

Abram: 02:18:04

Yeah, yeah. And when you play it that way, like, it's.

I think nines and fours people get mistyped a lot, but I think it's because four nineness wants to find themselves in the distinction of foreignness. And it's still like a. A vicarious embodiment in some way, you know?

Creek: 02:18:28

Yeah. I talk about sending my ghost into the room. It's a vicarious interaction with this curation that I've had that I.

That I've put together, but as a way to keep myself out of the. The loop.

Abram: 02:18:41

Yeah.

Creek: 02:18:42

Of what's actually happening.

Abram: 02:18:43

So last. Last fast question is, how many times in the last two hours have you been in this recording?

Have you been noticing and positioning yourself in your mind as different from Lindsay and I?

Creek: 02:18:55

I mean, it's just obvious, isn't it? Yeah, I don't. Not consciously. I just. I mean, at this point, it's just. I know.

I know what I bring to the table, and I mean, I trust both of you to, you know, be able to handle whatever intensity I have to bring. So it's. It doesn't come up very often. It's more in.

In the relationships that are less certain and less clear on where the power differential is, where, you know, where's the limits of what I can say and what I can't say. So. And that's also very, very much, you know, social navigating. So.

Abram: 02:19:43

Right.

Creek: 02:19:44

This episode has been, you'd say, I guess, unique in that we didn't quite do as we normally do, which, you know, whatever. So. But we do want to just hop on the mistypes real quick and. And, you know, we've talked about, like, the 4, 9 thing. I've.

Believe it or not, I've seen 4 and 7, which is wild to me. How I. I can find reasons, but.

Linz: 02:20:15

Yeah, 4 and 2.

Creek: 02:20:17

4 and 2.

Linz: 02:20:20

I think preserving 4 and 1 sometimes.

Creek: 02:20:24

Sure, that makes sense.

Abram: 02:20:26

I've seen the 4 and 5 combo mixture. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. I mean, that was Russ Hudson too. Right. I think they both have intensity in some direction. One toward.

It's like a Fives are using feeling to intensify their thoughts, whereas fours are using thoughts to intensify their feelings or escape their feelings.

Linz: 02:20:53

That's my personal opinion.

Abram: 02:20:55

Yeah, definitely. Or go down into certain feelings that they're most comfortable with to help them feel unique. Not the whole range, actually.

Like, a lot of people think.

Creek: 02:21:04

Yeah, there's the 4 and 7 thing. I'll just say real quick. I know there's also this idea of, like, the Sunny 4, and I'm just. I really struggle with that terminology. But there are.

There are versions, you know, people don't expect fours to be funny, but there's also like, this intensity for experience, for, like, pontificating and like. Like this sort of like, like juiciness to, to how they express themselves. So those are a few different mistypings.

Linz: 02:21:45

So if someone is A quote unquote sunny4, what type do you think that they should look more closely at?

Creek: 02:21:53

Well, I think traditionally that would like equate to the Self Preservation 4, which again, I don't experience that. I think if anything, like for me I would probably be put in that category of more on the sunny side of force, you know, false. I get, I get.

But I think that there's some cause for mistyping there because it can like nine and seven, maybe two. If there's two much positivity.

Linz: 02:22:36

Right, right.

Creek: 02:22:36

Then if there's. It doesn't mean no humor, it doesn't mean no joy. Just means like a reframing towards the positive.

Linz: 02:22:46

Yeah, that's what I was going to say too, is okay. So sure, fours could reframe. You could make a case for fours being reframers. But it's in service of distinction. Right.

It's in service of uniqueness and other.

Creek: 02:22:59

Types or more authenticity. Something that's more clearer.

Linz: 02:23:04

Yes. Get clearer, get closer to the truth, get more honest, get away from the bs.

Maria Jose Munita: 02:23:10

Right.

Linz: 02:23:11

But if it's reframing because, oh, it's getting negative, we need to, we need a bright side of this, probably.

Creek: 02:23:22

I can do that. But it's often in service of, of creating a fuller picture of what's happening, not avoiding the other side.

Linz: 02:23:31

So also it could just be that fours are misunderstood. It could be that fours are misunderstood and they actually are all sunny at times.

Creek: 02:23:49

Yeah.

Linz: 02:23:50

Yeah. You can have a happy 4. 4.

Creek: 02:23:53

Yeah.

Linz: 02:23:54

Yeah.

Creek: 02:23:55

We aren't all doom and gloom, that's for sure.

Linz: 02:23:59

Yeah.

Creek: 02:23:59

Sometimes we're happy about weird things.

Linz: 02:24:01

But you know, fours believe that they can reclaim a lost connection is something that, that Christopher said. When A4 feels that. I don't know if impulsivity is the right word. That familiarity, that familiar pattern taking over of. There's something missing.

I must reclaim this lost connection. What can they do that is adaptive?

Creek: 02:24:42

Yeah, well, promotes growth. I'll just, I'll say like there's, There's a lot of.

Without going all the way into it, there's a lot of assumptions even in that phrase of connection to what? Loss. Loss of connection to what?

Linz: 02:25:01

Right. That's what I'm wondering too.

Creek: 02:25:03

And it's going to be. It's. Yeah. Depending on your worldview and all that other stuff, it's going to. I think it's going to be different on how you handle it.

But I think in general, for me, when I feel like, you know, something is missing or something is wrong in some way, it's just. In some ways it's just been a practice of like, is this good enough?

And sometimes it is like, pushing beyond to the point where it's like it's starting to feel. It's starting to feel unauthentic and overworked. So then I need to go back and I think we have a bias, all of us do, of when something's wrong.

We add things instead of taking away things. So when something is missing, maybe something's missing, you need to add something. Maybe you've put too much in there and you can't see clearly.

So you need to take some things away. You need to get better perspective. You need to slow down, you need to take a walk.

You need to, you know, forget about the things that you want to accomplish and do and just go be somewhere. Go, go take a walk. Go just enjoy something. Invest in yourself and trying instead of trying to push yourself onto the world.

Linz: 02:26:32

It makes me think too. Just a callback to our episode on the instincts and the instinctual biases.

This is a really great place where knowing that information about yourself can be helpful because you can lean into. It's an opportunity to lean into something that's underdeveloped.

If you're transmitting really hard, you know, and using the strategy of four to do that. Maybe there are some under skilled and under cultivated preserving things that you can shift your focus into in those moments.

Because, yeah, legitimately, maybe those skills are missing.

Creek: 02:27:22

Right.

And I think there's a lot of like, really practical things that forage can do that are just like normal things that all, all types should do, like take care of their body and. And that sort of thing. I do think there's a. There is. Out of all the types, there is a lot of. We're predisposed to be internal and navel gazing.

But I do think there is a lot of our work is about really repositioning ourself, reorienting ourselves to a new way of thinking. And so like, instead of viewing the thing that I just made as it's lacking something, seeing like, okay, where can I find?

Is it lacking or is it just. There's a contradiction in here somewhere? And can that contradiction become a source of creativity instead of just an impedance? Or like the pain of.

The pain of something doesn't mean I stop, doesn't mean that I freeze in that state. Because yeah, pain doesn't mean stop. It just means Pay attention.

And so kind of reorienting yourselves to these ways in which you get stuck, such that you can have a better story to live from, to lean into that.

Your desire for meaning and purpose and story, the infusion of story, and having the impact on the world in a certain way, finding those ways to work with that instead of trying to deny that part of yourself, because it's a beautiful part and we need that.

Linz: 02:29:04

You want to share your ice cube practice?

Creek: 02:29:07

Oh, yeah. So there is intentional discomfort for those that don't live in the North.

I've done this practice with a few different people where you go grab an ice cube and the idea is just to stay with the sensation and be. Instead of fixating on, like, this is cold. I need it to be warm. Or this is painful. I can't wait to be able to put this down.

It's practicing actual pain, not just emotional discomfort, but actual sensationally painful things, and learning to try to separate the sensation from the story and becoming curious about that sensation instead of just bearing it because you're not in danger. Nothing's going to happen. Like, you're not going to get frostbite from an ice cube, but it's going to hurt.

And of course, you know, drop it if it's like, in crazy. You know, crazy or hurtful or whatever. But, like.

Linz: 02:30:14

And don't sue us.

Creek: 02:30:15

Yeah. And don't sue us. Yeah. But it is. But I do think it is a way to practice intentional discomfort. Very simple.

And yeah, that's the biggest takeaway for me over the years is I don't always have to put a story to the sensation. I can just feel the sensation and move on and nothing's going to happen. Yeah. So.

Abram: 02:30:38

All right, so the. The quote that we have for Type Fours is from Alan Watts, and he said, the mundane and the sacred are one and the same.

Creek: 02:30:51

That's great. Awesome. Well, thanks, folks. And Fours, I hope you feel mildly, slightly represented. I'm sure we really didn't hit it. Exactly.

And there's probably a lot of things lacking in this episode, but now they.

Abram: 02:31:08

Feel seen, though, that you said that.

Creek: 02:31:09

Yeah, exactly. I know my people. So, yeah, we'll see you all next episode.

Abram: 02:31:17

Goodbye. Bye.

Creek: 02:31:22

Thanks for the listening to Fathoms and Enneagram podcast. If this episode affected you in some way, we'd love it if you would share it with a friend or family member.

Don't forget to check out the show notes for ways to connect with us and continue your serious work as an unserious human.

Abram: 02:31:57

You guys can keep going, too, without me.

Linz: 02:31:59

Don't me. Don't leave me alone with him in this mood he's in.

Creek: 02:32:08

All right, do you want to start from the top, Stephanie, or you want to just leave off with you were bullied and not popular?

Stephanie Spencer: 02:32:18

Yeah, let's just what other place would a four start by the story of I was bullied.

Creek: 02:32:27

I never fit in to my family.

Michael Naylor: 02:32:31

Nobody understood me.

Abram: 02:32:33

Oh, man.