Break Out of the Box: Enneatype Five: Let me Look Into That

This series is dedicated to illustrate and explore every day human communications. It is my desire that hearing the breakthrough experiences of others, that it will present an insight or opening in how you can create conscious communications with everyone in your life.

In working with clients who have the Enneatype Five, The Investigator, a shared characteristic among them is how their minds are hardwired for the constant need to seek knowledge and understand how it relates to the Universe. They crave the learning experience and engage with the world as an observer, wondering what is really true or just speculation.

It is natural for Fives to spend hours in reflection. They are objective, independent thinkers. They manage well on their own and have a healthy self-esteem, not needing the approval of others. Codependent relationships are the farthest from their minds, yet this can also cause its challenges, as the Five tends to detach themselves from others and retreat into their minds, observing life from a distance. Fives can isolate to such a degree that they avoid reality; evading the trials and tribulations of relationships. People are emotional, whereas information is not. Fives like to keep life focused on a mental frame and tend to avoid the emotional states. Although a paradox, they want to understand before taking action, but once there is understanding, there is no need to act!

Because my work with clients is identifying what is creating frustration and the related feelings of being stuck, I often find the Five expresses their unsatisfactory condition as being scattered, usually having multiple things going on and not being able to get grounded, becoming easily distracted, and not being able to decide on what action to take. They describe what they are experiencing as a mind so revved up, there is no relief, as the landscape within is changing so fast that it incapacitates them. The Five reacts to their brainstorm by going even deeper into their private world of the mind and the cycle perpetuates itself.

There is good news for breaking out of this box. Because the Five mind is already hardwired to analyze everything that is going on around them, they can quickly shift from a scattered mind pattern through development of an Observer of their own theories, hypothesis, ideas, and conclusions. Basically, to challenge their own assumptions from their thought processes and to recognize when they are frustrated or stuck.

To illustrate this, a young male client is a promising talent in gaming, creating complex interactive online games. He has a thorough understanding on the process of taking a game to market with all of the steps and manpower requirements, yet he was frustrated that it was not all coming together. As we identified the immediate action steps to move the project forward, the blocks showed up. What always amazes me is how accurate the Enneatype structure is to one’s actual behavior. Because the Five is so independent, seeking external solutions involving other people as they engage in their decision making process is one area where they get stuck.

First was to get my client to the place where the people he needed on his team gathered. Fives abhor small talk. They see it as a waste of time, yet going out to meet people and network to build his “team” is exactly what he needed to do to move his project forward. The second behavior characteristic with the Fives is the need to understand their environment before they engage. Simply “showing up” at a gathering of people and having to initiate conversation or small talk is unthinkable. Recall that their mode of operand and security is to observe.

Once my client began to recognize these two patterns, he was able to challenge the thoughts and resistance and begin to move out of the comfort zone of the mind and engage in a way that supported him. In the example of my client, his work was to have confidence that he could initiate a conversation with people, talking about his project and his need for people to work with him.

A revealing insight into our behavior is “How you do anything, is how you do everything.” As my client began to experiment with his new boundaries, it opened up how he engaged with this family and when at his workplace. This is the exciting outcome of transformation. When one area of being stuck is cleared, it is natural that others will be cleared as well.

Some strategies for self-development:
1. Fives’ growth includes trusting your intuition as much as the information.
2. Identify the clues that you are withdrawing into your mind. What do you do? Retreat in a book or computer? Don’t answer the phone? Stay inside and keep “busy”?
3. Notice if, when with others, you are observing more than being present and engaged.
4. Experiment with doing something totally counter-intuitive then challenge your “typical” assumptions about the outcome.