Hello and welcome to the Barrcast.
I'm your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a sunny and breezy, April 1st.
April Fool's Day.
So, it's been a while since my last chapter, but if you'll remember, we're on the sexual 3, whose keyword is attractiveness.
So I actually recorded this one a few weeks ago and didn't feel great about the recording.
I rushed my way through it and I realized we're back to, we're at the final number, the three.
We started the four, because I'm a four, and it snuck up on me.
But, we're back in my neighborhood.
And the sexual subtype and the self preservation subtype, these are the subtypes that I find, myself connecting with more deeply.
So I realized, gosh, I think I probably breezed through this chapter in a way to avoid my own inner stuff.
So I'm gonna do another pass.
I'm gonna be a little bit more connected with what's happening inside me.
As I read is a super long chapter.
So that's.
That's part of the problem.
And so I'm gonna do my best to navigate this.
But let's hear what, Claudio Naranjo has to say about the sexual 3.
For the passion of the sexual 3, Ichaso used the words masculinity or femininity, depending on the case.
I used to explain it as an excessive attempt to conform to cultural images, perhaps Hollywood style, of what it means to be masculine or feminine nowadays.
He says, I believe that the fundamental pathology of these individuals lies in the fact that instead of acting from instinctive freedom, they invest all their passion into the thirst for love and the corresponding seduction, either through compliance or by projecting an image that is meant to be attractive and exciting.
The result of this is that a woman being overly focused on pleasing a man, loses her ability to enjoy herself. additionally, this personality type tends to have a certain passion for family, which, while it does not appear as a flaw, represents an exaggerated need to please others, perpetuating self alienation.
Among the three subtypes, the sexual three is the most dependent.
They do not usually display aggression and cannot tolerate rejection.
Their seduction is aimed at being embraced and validated, confusing their self worth with the attractiveness of their body.
So that's the introduction, and we have Lorena Garcia de las Bayonas beautiful name with the, transformation in the sexual type 3.
So before we dive into it, I really what Naranjo describes as his own evolution. when I think about his starting place for the sexual three.
Well, the, the person who comes to my mind is Don Draper from Mad Men.
And I'm reading, watching Mad Men now.
And so you have this masculine, attractive, mysterious type. he's, he himself has reinvented himself. ?
So there's that mask quality that we typically associate with the more available words for the three.
The three can be chameleonic, the three can be political.
The three can be focused, on success and progress.
So all that Don Draper energy is there. and Don Draper certainly conforms to the cultural images of what it means to be masculine.
But I how Naranjo gets even more specific, which is that their passion is to be what is desirable from the opposite sex.
So to make yourself into something that is pleasurable, pleasing, desirable to the opposite sex is the passion.
So it's not just Clint Eastwood, it's Clint Eastwood if and only if that is known to be what women want.
And we'll have a woman's perspective for the sexual three.
So we'll hear a lot more about that.
You can imagine that sexual threes will be different for men and women because men and women want different things.
And I just, I guess I'll say a little bit more before we get into the chapter, which is that the core types 3, 6 and 9 are for me the most difficult types to work with.
The energies of them.
And in part that's because they're more pure energies. we've talked about the six.
The six is the, the passion of fear.
And who can't relate to fear?
Fear is so basic of a human mechanism. nine is trickier in some ways.
I think nines are perhaps easier to type.
But the nine, passion of sloth or indolence or numbing, self forgetting.
Again, we all have profound amounts of self forgetting.
Very few of us are really in contact with what we want, what we're about, what we're on earth to do.
So self forgetting is this universal, human condition.
And then three desirability, mask, falsity, covering up, with deceit, A, profound emptiness.
Again, we all have that. we all look in the mirror every morning.
Many of us do and dress up according to some idea of what something somebody wants.
But I think the three in particular is hard for me as a four.
And this is something that is useful to know about Naranjo.
I don't think Naranjo really talked about the wings much.
Wings have taken off in the popular framing of the Enneagram.
But Naranjo really was concerned with the core types and then looked at the other types as stemming from the.
So you're basically a three, six, or nine.
And so a four is a three, a two is a three. you're just a three.
And so the three is continually preoccupied with image.
And the two has found a way to have a positive self image, and that comes with their own issues.
The four has found a way to have a negative self image, and that comes with their issues.
And so that would be a a brief way of Naranjo describing things.
So it's interesting.
One of the, names I played with when I was thinking about maybe starting, a publication just for this was Four Wing Five.
And there are a lot of people who identify as Four Wing Five. and Richard Rohr has talked about that chasm between the four and the five as the hardest to cross.
So there's a little bit of mystique around a four wing five. at the at the bottom, the 6:00 of the Enneagram.
But if Naranjo were here, he might say, that's not really a thing.
Four Wing Five, a four is much closer to three than they are to five.
And I think that's interesting to play with for myself and for other fours, potentially, because, nobody wants to be a three, really.
Threes get hard.
They get put through it a little bit in the.
In the Enneagram, again, because they have this fundamental almost universal human thing of having an image.
And so it's easier for a four, I think, to take their authenticity and their creativity into the five space of, this genius area.
It's in a way easier for us to hang out in that space.
I'm not just creative.
I'm also a hermit.
But.
And of course, there can be truth to that.
But, I think it's healthy for any four to explore their threeness.
And I think it's probably hard for a four to do that.
And it might be the same with fives.
Fives might, be drawn to the fourness.
I'm not just a hermit.
I'm also a creative artist.
But, for five to actually touch the fear underneath, that feeling of maybe emptiness or solitude.
Oh, yeah, there's fear there.
That.
That's probably juicy terrain for a five.
So I'm glad I didn't call this four ring five, because I would have at this point said I've made a terrible mistake.
Okay, let's get into the Transformation The Sexual Type 3 by Lorena Garcia de las Bayonas.
And we will try to breeze through this while hitting the key points.
So she thanks a bunch of individuals. she writes, as sexual three approaches character healing, they become free to be, to feel and to express themselves authentically without being imprisoned by the beautiful physical image, being able even to be ugly and show the ugliness of their life such as pain, anger, sadness, jealousy, envy, resentment, and everything they consider shameful or that makes them lose control.
So off the bat we're talking about freedom and spontaneity.
And threes are.
One of the easier ways to spot a three or differentiate a three from other types is threes are a little, held in.
It's a three has to pass through an image filter before doing something.
They're the most image conscious.
And so freedom, the freedom to be, to feel, to express isn't there for the three.
So as this is helpful for me was when I'm doing my self typing, Self Preservation 4 has always been the one that spoke most clearly to me.
But a self preservation four has that in common with the three, ?
The self preservation four has to be contained and containment, something that three and the four, the sexual three and the self preservation four share here.
Now the reasons for containment are different and we'll explore that as we get into it.
In this way, they're free to be able to make mistakes without the fear that they will stop being loved.
They also leave behind the dependence on approval and love from others, especially from a partner, which results from a lack of self love.
What remains is more real sense of self love through which they can feel a greater warmth inside after passing through the hell of breaking through the internal numbness and the inability to love.
So for the three, the self abandonment is profound, and prevalent here.
The three has made this bargain early on to treat the image of themselves as their real self.
And they don't know that they've made that bargain or it's not available to them.
So in contrast, the four has this unlovability.
The four has the presence of being unlovable.
The three has the absence of being lovable.
For the sexual three, if my partner isn't validating me, then that's terrifying.
And I think it's even more.
It's not that I'll feel bad.
It's I don't even.
I'm without ground.
Whereas the four might say, if my partner leaves me, I knew I was bad, I knew all along they would leave me, they don't me, et cetera, et cetera.
So it's for the four, the threat of separation is a confirmation of some deeply held negative belief.
For the three.
Then they touch emptiness.
They touch not knowing what I am, who I am, if I am not pleasing to this person, I understand how my ego is destroying me and preventing me from finding love.
Now at this stage of my life, love is about all the love I can feel for myself.
Truly knowing myself and considering myself.
That is where everything begins to be more real.
Love is not a goal, nor a task, nor an achievement, nor a conquest.
When a sexual three heals, they also appear more relaxed and carefree.
They let go of the compulsion to do things, to have everything under control and to be loved.
With their gaze turned inward rather than outward, they can see the difference between what they truly feel and need and self deception.
In this way, they become stronger and more mature and the sensation of fragility disappears.
The kind that makes people say, better not touch them, they might break.
They also become more independent, knowing they can survive sometimes even better without a partner, feeling loved and valued for who they are, not for what they do.
That might be a way to disambiguate between a sexual three and a self preservation four. the work that I'm doing in this document is.
I don't know if my gaze is that turned outward, to some extent.
It is, for sure.
I would say that, yeah, I think I'm much more inward focused.
I certainly do enact and feel and think ways that are according to, masculinity.
And when I think about masculinity, what, what does masculinity mean?
To me, it's super heterosexually motivated. being a man.
Being masculine to my structure is being the things that a woman needs, which is different. an 8.
Their masculinity can be about power and autonomy and strength.
Same thing with a six.
Potentially sexual six.
For me, my sense of masculinity is deeply tied in to, meeting the needs of, of the feminine, of the, of the, Of a fe.
Of a woman. that said, the conclusion there still feels a lot more a self preservation, for it still feels a lot more containment and self suppression rather than looking, feeling a certain way.
But there, opening doors, paying for dinner.
There's a whole set of things that I do automatically or did automatically when I was dating.
Now I just slammed the door in my wife's face.
No, that.
Yeah, those were, Those were image conscious.
I just don't know if they were.
That, I wasn't doing a lot of this outward gaze.
I don't think it's interesting to spend more time with that.
Healing also involves finding the freedom to enjoy sex without merely being an object for the other's pleasure.
Being able to let go of control and be less focused on their image, which does not allow them to feel pleasure and in many cases reach orgasm.
Yeah, so a sexual three, I'm going to speak from the man, heterosexual man's point of view. that's about my sense of worth is wrapped up in the woman's pleasure. my potency is the woman's orgasm.
In my own sexual experience, it's just not again.
Almost nine, ? just forgotten.
Remember the nine and the six of the three, that core triad, they have so much in common.
I think nine sixes and threes move into each other with a lot more fluidity than the other, connected types.
So the three, and being so preoccupied with image, of course forgets themselves.
The sexual three woman, in the process of healing, sees her, sees herself learning to live without the need for the gaze and recognition of a man.
And of course, for a woman, our culture is so much more conducive to threeness.
For a man, she adds, it would similarly involve the need for the gaze of a woman, a childish and narcissistic need for constant applause, which leaves him increasingly empty because his romantic relationships are based on doing things so that the other applauds him.
So much of these relational needs end up, becoming transactional.
So I need the love of a woman.
But in that need for reinforcement and confirmation, we both end up losing our true erotic connection.
On my end, I need.
I regress into a childish need for applause on her end.
She shuts down into, great job, honey, and nobody is actually getting what they want.
Many times, she adds, achieving that applause becomes very difficult, leading to great frustration that results in a permanent state of unhappiness in their romantic life.
So we're talking about, she says, becoming aware of self deception and falseness in romantic relationships.
Self deception and falsity being the core passions and fixations of the three.
Unmasking the image of being good and perfect in order to be loved.
And realizing their difficulty in truly loving represents one of the greatest shadows for the sexual three, as they have always believed they had a great capacity to love.
Yeah, that's painful.
That's really, that's really hard.
I'm going to skip over some of these quotations from a book she writes about entering the therapeutic process for the sexual three.
Remember, a lot of these writers are, psychotherapists.
So this is heavy on the therapy side here.
So, she talks about why might a three start therapy or a sexual three start therapy. she says if a sexual three looks inward even slightly, then they will realize they feel a sadness that has always been there.
Reminds me of the five.
If the five looks inward even slightly, they will realize an emptiness that has always been there.
And for a three, they'll feel a sadness that has always been there.
And for a four in the middle, you'll probably get a mix of sad and empty.
So there's that polarization between the three and the five.
I think that's another way to disambiguate. the three is a polarization between the two and the four.
So the three is bringing in more of that other centricity that a 2 has, that attunement to need.
The 4 really is a bit more self, self absorbed.
So the four is caught between the inner emptiness and the inner sadness. so what do they do with the sadness?
What happens is that by not expressing it and being constantly preoccupied with not showing it, they don't even reveal it to themselves.
So why might the three start therapy? someone they admire might.
That's snarky.
But she says, the motivation that a sexual three finds to begin therapy is initially related to the fact that someone they admire has spoken to them about the benefits of the process and has told them they might need it.
A sexual three might also come to realize they had a difficult life.
I say realize because perhaps they have been disconnected from their personal tragedy.
I think that I can connect to that.
There's, threes may not really be in touch with what they didn't get.
And then they share something about their life or childhood and someone reflects back to them the tragic nature of their experience. another reason, she says, is the trendiness of the therapeutic world.
Rarely.
Her point is the motivation comes from a true need for a feeling of true need for transformation that takes time to develop.
Because the three, or the sexual three specifically feels this deep disconnection to, their experience. they'd have to let the mask Slip, perhaps they might feel a very fragile and sad person, or they might not show that, or they might embellish it to use it as a seduction tool.
Where they may clearly feel the need for introspection is usually after a breakup.
In that case, they will connect with a primitive pain related to reliving an abandonment by their father or mother.
For sexual three, a breakup is their worst nightmare.
Better than die.
To separate, they seem to think, or they imagine that is the closest thing to death.
I, don't know how common that is, but I certainly relate to that. it took me a while to be able to accept the prospect of the end of a relationship, as a normal thing.
For me.
It was always existential, always a death and something that I almost couldn't look at. not so much because of fear.
Fear, of being abandoned or fear of being alone, but that primal fear of, what am I if not in a relationship?
Not even that conscious thought, but just almost, an incapacity.
And I certainly have had times in my life where alone, even if my partner is just away for a while, I just fall into this really crude way of being not taking care of myself, things that.
And again, I don't know how much of this, maybe that's men, I'm not sure.
But here in the sexual three, I think that feels that's part of the energy when facing a breakup.
They may even have suicidal thoughts, start using drugs to drown out their suffering.
They're terribly afraid of pain.
And when they enter it, it feels they will never come out, no matter how many times they've been in and out of it before.
That's tricky for the four, because the four is a friend of pain.
Although the four has turned pain into a story.
And so the four also, their pain, their drama sometimes is their protective device against even deeper pain.
It's one of the worst survival strategies in the Enneagram.
I think for the four, the four is let me, Let me feel a lot of pain so that I don't actually have to feel the real pain.
People quotations, point being life.
Life revolving around romantic relationships.
A sexual three feels and lives in a permanent prison.
The feel suffocated by vanity.
And this suffocation leads them to want to remain unnoticed and to be extremely shy, afraid of saying or doing the wrong thing.
They need to free themselves from this is another motivation that might lead them to therapy.
So this prison is on the One hand, the need to always be, pleasing to the other. again, not pleasing in the supplement supplicatory way of the two.
Not submissive pleasing or sexual pleasing.
It's more a full identity complementing. it's a performance.
It's a.
It's masterful performance of I give you exactly what you need.
So there's power there. there's less of an insecurity or at least a conscious insecurity.
So that takes a huge amount of energy which is suffocating, which then wants They want to remain unnoticed and be extremely shy.
That's interesting.
We haven't really heard much about the shyness of the three, but it makes sense.
You would want to be almost in a place where you're completely alone, which is maybe familiar to the three.
That not being noticed.
Essentially.
I either I'm either on stage or I'm.
Nobody's noticing me.
That's an interesting polarity for the three to explore.
What is left behind in the process of transformation.
Emotional, sexual and physical disconnection is left behind.
The fear of real intimacy, the dependency on love.
The self deception around love.
The thirst for loving and being loved.
Superficiality.
Compulsion to put all energy into seduction, conquest and pleasing the other.
The dependence on recognition and applause in romantic relationship.
The fear of confrontation is also left behind as well as the self deception that comes with the stories one tells oneself to avoid confrontation.
You can hear the nine in that finally the sexual three dares to experience conflict and sustain it.
Something so feared and difficult for them.
Therapeutic recommendations.
Yeah, just stepping away from seduction, stepping away from image.
And the therapist.
These are, recommendations to a therapist that she's giving here is the therapist has to be aware of this seductive performance that the three will put on.
And with self deception and seduction, there's also the danger that the patient will end up taking control of the therapy and will not surrender to the process.
Seeing the same relational patterns, repeating feeling an object only seen for the term see.
Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. the three takes control.
That's the Mad Men Don Draper assertiveness piece, I think even, the feminine side of that, which may be more, submissive in some ways.
There's still a controlling.
That's very important for the three.
I control the experience.
And by controlling the experience, I feel I have power.
I feel I have freedom.
I feel I know what's really going on.
But in fact it's the opposite.
There's no freedom.
It's, a highly contained, experience.
There's no spontaneity.
There's not seeing what's really going on because there's disconnection from one's interior, and you're not in contact with the other.
So once they get past all this, she writes, the sexual three will connect with the void of not knowing who they are outside of another person.
That's huge.
Connect with the void of not knowing who you are outside of another person.
That's the basic work, I think, for the three Energy, threes, if you work with the three, getting, them to, to write about what they want in a way that's just for them.
Not a, Not a blog post, not an announcement.
It's very difficult.
A lot of things come out of the three, pr.
Once they pass through that emptiness, then they can begin to see the self deception they've lived in all their life.
So there's seduction and self deception moving through that.
Then there's this void of really not knowing what I am and then spending time in that void a, a baby learning to crawl. well, what do I want?
What do I care about?
What's real to me then?
But just by seeing how hard that is for themselves, then they come face to face with their self deception and how, how it's driven their, Their life.
And it's so hard for a three because the three is successful.
The three is good looking.
The three has it all.
The three has great relationships.
Typically.
I'm super generalizing, but contrast that to the four.
The neighbor four is come beating down the doors on therapy because they're really having a tough time.
So the four comes saying, I want to transform.
So interesting.
They're very different that way. and they have so much in common.
But the four, four are certainly more in contact with that emptiness.
But the four is tricky because the four can turn anything into a story really fast, including that emptiness.
The three is the same way the three has.
The four turns it into a story of art and of drama and of, its aesthetic.
Aesthetically beautiful.
That's how.
That's how the four stays.
I'm talking really subtle layers now.
But the four, even at the deepest levels of experiment, experience can turn that into art.
And it can be wonderful art.
But, that instinct oftentimes comes from a still a need to be authentic and need to be special to avoid, let's say, generic feelings of abandonment and hurt.
Anything but generic, ?
The three.
I, think as we'll see maybe later in this chapter, and I think we saw in the previous one, the three will touch that and then turn it into a success story, Turn it into a turnaround, turn it into a hero's journey.
Gosh, I hit bottom and then I made it great.
So they both have that fast reconstituting, structure, quality.
They may realize their entire life has been a great lie they constructed out of hunger for love and admiration. these are hard things to say, but this is from a three, and threes are, I think part of the reason the literature is hard on threes is because threes are hard on threes.
That's part of their transformation work, is threes are, brutally honest.
At the end.
They, they look at themselves in the mirror, but when they do, they can really can be stark.
So I take it when she's saying these things, I take it that she's speaking to herself.
Realizing that your entire life has been a great lie I constructed out of hunger for love and admiration.
You'd love to see someone be a little bit gentler there.
But I think for her and for maybe threes, there's actually some healing with that going to the depths of that, pain.
Quote.
I came to therapy with great internal confusion and physically exhausted.
Entangled in an abusive relationship without being able to leave or recognize it.
After 15 years, I woke up.
The idyllic dream had turned into a nightmare in a prison.
I saw that I didn't really my life, and I was enormously tired of sacrificing myself and feeling dead inside.
End quote.
To begin valuing their essence, the person first needs to know it.
And here the therapist has to be patient.
The sexual 3 may feel they've got nothing to say.
When they look inside, they only see emptiness.
That's where the healing begins. there are suggestions around seeing potentially a female, therapist for a woman so that the seduction is less present.
Recommended, exercises.
We've got the usual suspects here.
I'd love to see more differentiation, but I feel these are.
You hear them over and over again.
Reconnecting with the body theater. that's okay.
That's a great one for the three in particular. ?
Because of that spontaneity and learning to bypass the.
The image manager, as it were. meditation, daring to be authentic, expressing oneself, authenticity, authentically allowing oneself to express what one considers ugly also helps So I can really connect with that. probably one of the scariest ways that I could show myself would be ugly for me.
And yet as a four, I dwell in ugliness, so that's what's confusing.
Can I solve that puzzle in, In a minute for myself?
So for.
I'll just say this four deals with profound issues of being bad, ugly, toxic, etc, and deals with that in a bunch of ways. so the, the story there is available to me, but the actual, the actual experience, maybe this is just how things have shifted for me.
Maybe it would be a different story 10 years ago, but these days I see through that, story more how arbitrary it is and how, how and when and why I might have made up that story about myself, but still, being vulnerable, being sloppy, those feel ugly to me.
So I'm somebody else would be oh, I talk to a lot of people.
They have concerns about being too much. if I, If I tell you everything, then that that might overwhelm you.
I don't really have that.
I just feel that would be ugly.
That would be aesthetically unappealing.
And so I, Maybe that's just 3 energy there.
But it could also be told in a 4 framework, ?
Of that will.
They'll.
Then they'll see the real me, which is ugly, and, and leave me or something that.
But, but for.
For this four, at least, the, abandonment is less present than rejection.
And rejection is not so bad for being alone as for being unseen, unknown, unknown.
That feels a little more foreish.
You, know, these, These pro.
These primal things.
Abandonment, rejection, isolation, they're all very, very close to each other.
So you have to dig in there to figure out what is it specifically.
So rejection, of course is very painful for the four.
Not being known is very core for, I think a lot of fours for the three.
What is at the core? what's so bad about being rejected?
I know that I connect with.
With 3 energy.
I connect a lot with being discarded.
Very painful. the, the feeling of being thrown out, but that feeling is still an object feeling.
So that still.
That still is the feeling of a three who feels an object.
If I take off my mask and express myself as ugly or spontaneous or then what?
See, I think the three is.
Is it's.
It's more connected, I think, to they don't have necessarily another choice. what we're hearing in this chapter is threes have to connect with the emptiness.
They have to connect with how little they've developed their real self.
She's saying here, first it's necessary to connect with one's own needs in order to identify what one wants and does not want from others.
This allows the sexual three to set the necessary boundaries.
She's talking about boundaries.
So they no longer feel used. yeah, feeling used, that's used up, discarded.
So that's that wounding.
That's very familiar for the three. what the three doesn't know about is being loved for exactly who you are, just.
Just for who you are, what you are. the unconditional love.
But the three hasn't had that experience so much in their bodies, at least in their hearts.
So I think it's more of an annihilation, emptiness, destruction, void thing that I would say is that's what's so scary.
It's not, I'm afraid of being rejected, of course.
I'm afraid of being rejected, of course.
The feeling of being discarded is unbearable.
But I think even that feeling of being discarded is a layer on top of the core void, emptiness.
That is terrifying, sure, but is also simply just I don't know what I am.
Complete disorientation, complete not knowing, carrying on.
Humility is important for the three sense of humor.
And I find a lot of threes have this humility and humor about themselves.
Self deprecating humor in a way, but not in a.
In a really beautiful way.
The three is the most honest.
The healed three will tell you their journey.
And this is where the three stuff gets so tricky because it's threes can also turn that into a great business, And so it's gosh, as a three were, you've got to be so diligent about Am I turning this into marketing?
Has my marketing department taken over again?
Because threes will tell an amazing story about their transformation.
But if they're clowning around a little bit, if there's a sense of humor, that I think that's a really good sign.
What a sexual three must come to understand.
It is important for a sexual three to understand that nothing bad will happen if they emotionally surrender to another person, if they lose control, if they let go of their mask, and if they show themselves authentically, on the contrary, it can bring immense relief and allow them to build relationships that are deeply fulfilling ones where they can form a true bond with their partner.
Letting Go of.
The need for power in relationships is key.
The need for power and control comes from fear.
This is where threes and eights can get a little bit mixed up.
And I think it's Naran who says that, one of the easier ways is the eight has that spontaneity.
The eight will unleash their power and the three is more contained.
But power and controller are of primary concern for both. the sexual three must understand that refusing to commit to one person and constantly seducing others just in case something better comes along only leaves them feeling increasingly alone and empty.
Okay, so we've got some, Yeah, we still have a lot to do, so I'm going to try to breeze through some of these testimonies.
I love testimonies.
But here, here, listen to this self preservation4energy quote.
I confused love with the obligation to endure everything.
If I love my partner, I endure them.
And by enduring, I receive their love.
I think from that quote alone, you can't say whether That's a sexual 3 or a self preservation 4.
Endurance is key to both.
But the 4, the self preservation 4 will be more obviously beleaguered, drained.
A lot of fours wear their fourness on their face, I would say.
I, I think maybe that's taboo to talk about, faces, but you can definitely get, information.
I'm not talking about the.
What is it?
Phrenology.
It's just fours have.
Especially self preservation 4 can be eating themselves from the inside.
Whereas the 3's endurance, again, think about Don Draper.
There's that stoicism, that forbearance there, but he turns it into his mask.
Very tricky.
I think, for myself at least, I might have to try on sexual three as a, as a structure for a few weeks and see what I learn.
I felt such desperation for my husband's sexual and emotional rejection that my conclusion was if he no longer likes my body, it means he no longer likes who I am.
I was willing to do anything to win back his love. and in a state of complete disconnection and impulsivity, I went to a plastic surgeon to get breast reconstruction.
I was at the peak of my neurosis of the madness of vanity, where being and body are confused, where giving and receiving love is confused with image.
I was convinced that I could win back his love by becoming sexy again.
When I started my inner journey, I realized it had been an act of self harm and an attack on my own femininity.
You can see how different masculinity and femininity show up.
So it might be the same structure, but really different ways of being in the world.
My confidence has always depended on men.
I've never known true confidence in myself, only an illusion where for moments I could feel a superwoman.
If a man I was interested in, loved or cared about me, then I was valuable, someone worthy.
That way I could take care of myself and believe that I truly mattered.
If that person lost interest in me, it was a catastrophe.
My false sense of confidence would collapse and I would see the truth that, deep down I felt nothing but hatred and contempt for myself because I wasn't able to win or maintain their love.
Terry, my wife is a two and fours.
And twos have a lot of material that they collide with each other on.
We talked about positive self image, negative self image, and the three is where they meet. ?
But the three is also so hard to look cleanly at. so I'm just thinking about my relationship with her, how much my own confidence depends on how she sees me.
And again, some of this is normal.
I'm not saying healthy, I just mean normal. 3, 6 and 9 being the core triads. probably a lot of people feel that way. their sense of self worth, of course, is deeply wrapped up in how their life partner sees them.
But also a lot of people would probably say, if my partner stopped liking me, I'd look for another partner.
And then even more deeply than that is, my partner didn't me.
Then I would say, sucks for them.
I myself.
That's where we would to get to.
But whether you're two or four or three, it's dependence, it's codependence, it's the codependent triad.
Two, three, four, shame, triad, heart. triad, codependent triad.
Maybe that's not fair. because eights, nines, sixes, all experience codependency in some way.
But it's the home of this heart triad relationship.
Now I see the absolute necessity of strengthening what is mine.
My home, my work, my way of spending time.
That my desires are not just a way to pass the time while I wait for someone to love me for real.
I think it's really healthy for a three and for any number but a three to do things for themselves.
Cook for yourself, design a space for yourself, not for the other.
Many, many of these quotes are from women, which is helpful. but I don't want us to forget how different masculinity and femininity are.
Quote.
In my life, the gaze I have sought most is that of a man, and has come at the cost of losing myself in the presence of a man.
I have never given myself space to know who I am, what I desire, or what I need.
I simply merged with him.
I have sought out men who, from the beginning, showed signs of emotional absence, which require me to exert even more effort to be noticed, as if I were repeating over and over the endless search for my absent father.
I was trapped in the crazy fantasy that if I adjusted enough, the other would stay by my side.
So I took on the responsibility of making sure that the presence of the other depended on how well I could be and do things.
I sought men whom I idealized for what they represented in the world because through them, I could build a more solid identity for myself.
If I'm with someone who's important, maybe that means I am important too.
See, I think none of that really applies to the male sexual three, because what she's saying here is the gaze.
In order to attract the gaze of a man, I need to lose myself and merge with him and.
And reinforce him, applaud him, be by his side, etc.
That's.
That's the feminine.
That.
That.
That's.
That's the feminine idea of the masculine gaze or the male gaze.
I think the male idea of the female gaze.
There are many. certainly, attractiveness in terms of pure sexual appeal is.
Could be one.
But, safety. ?
Women want to feel safe.
So that's where I'll be macho.
I won't have needs.
I'll.
I'm not.
I'm going to be contained and I'm going to make her feel safe, make her feel treasured, make her feel a trophy.
Make her feel I worship her again.
Make her feel Not actually worship her, not actually have her be safe, not actually do these things, but make her feel that way.
That's the.
The, Same goes to make them feel that way.
I think Suzanne Stabile has written, that the three is feeling repressed, but they're also feeling centered, meaning that feelings are really primary for them.
And I think they're very conscious of how they want to make people feel, and they act from that place, even if unconsciously.
But what do they feel that's not.
That's blocked?
Reclaiming Authenticity.
Quote.
Let's talk childhood.
I always believed that I had a happy childhood, but later I realized that From a very young age, I was deeply disconnected from myself.
Although I perceived myself as a sensitive child, I quickly learned that if I expressed what I felt, I could upset others.
Mainly my parents who were always very busy.
My mother raising children, my father always tense and working.
So I learned not to express my emotions or my needs.
And I became very good at controlling myself.
I became self sufficient, A prudent, well behaved, responsible child with no major complications, but completely alone when it came to emotions.
Sometimes I went unnoticed.
Other times I achieved success and recognition at school or was chosen a leader in activities.
And I loved that, even though I was somewhat shy.
Now looking back, I see that my childhood was filled with difficulties in recognizing what I felt, what I wanted and what my needs were.
I struggled to trust my sensations and my intuition because.
Because they were always denied.
It was as if I had to feel what my parents wanted me to feel.
Which is why I grew up feeling immense confusion about what was real for me.
I gradually suppressed pleasure and spontaneity.
I learned to disconnect from my feelings easily, inappropriately, because I believed that expressing them would complicate things for others and I shouldn't be a bother.
I stopped validating when I felt and began hiding everything I consider not good.
I struggled to see the shadow side of things, of people, of situations, of myself.
I couldn't see the ways in which I was being mistreated.
The dark side of life.
I didn't even recognize my own fears. and reading that, I hear a lot for myself and self preservation for energy.
I also hear a lot there.
If I'm trying to disambiguate for a second the self preservation four, there's so much more inner turmoil.
I don't think the four loses so much their inner state.
They just learn that they have to not be that, that what that is is not okay.
But they struggle from that.
And so The Self Preservation 4 will explode in anger because this repressed, ignored, frustrated part is still there.
Saying somebody look at me and then we'll need that contact.
The three, it feels their spiral is toward numbness and emptiness.
They just disconnect from their feelings. so I'm feeling a certain way, I'm talking about childhood, as, as referenced in this quote. this doesn't feel I feel I'm being mistreated.
But if I were to feel that fully, then it would complicate things for others.
I would not.
I would no longer be pleasing and I want to be pleasing Again, the nine and the six.
I want to keep everybody together.
I want to preserve relationships.
I want this to be safe.
So very pure motivations there. and so I question my own intuitions.
I doubt my feelings.
And that confusion, it sounds the survival strategy for this person over the years goes from confusion to disconnection. better just to put it aside, put feelings aside.
The four doesn't really put feelings aside.
The four buries feeling the self preservation.
Four, sexual four. out with their feelings.
I think drama has to be present for the four.
Even if it's internal drama, even if it's private drama, the three doesn't have that drama.
The three has to be awoken to the drama.
Oh my gosh, I did have a tough childhood.
Oh my gosh, I didn't experience unconditional love.
I want to wrap.
I feel better about.
I'm not.
I wasn't super vulnerable, but I think I was in contact with some of the core questions I have at least about this.
And, yeah, there are a lot of quotes here, but in conclusion, she writes, sexual theories were children who were abandoned, mistreated, used, abused, beaten, or violated.
We were taught to be objects and our loved ones used us according to their needs.
They did not know how to love us for who we were, but only what we did.
We became the caretakers of our parents.
We were never taught the difference between good and evil, and we learned to disconnect from painful experiences by beautifying them so as not to betray our abusers.
We confused mistreatment with love and learned to take responsibility for their actions, transforming them into good people and idealizing them to preserve their image and by extension, our own.
All this left us with very low self esteem and a total lack of love.
We believed we deserved everything that happened to us and assumed the guilt.
Always keeping a pleasant demeanor, appearing sweet, being compliant, and hiding our strength through perfection, we sought moments when we could feel loved and adored, especially by ourselves.
Enamored with the idea of love and with being adored, we have drained our lovers and partners, suffocating them with our narcissistic love, demanding a level of attention that no one could possibly fulfill.
We sold perfection in order to be loved and demanded that same perfection return.
For much of our lives, we chose partners who despised or mistreated us in order to reinforce the deep sense of worthlessness we carried inside.
We endured unbearable situations that would eventually be followed by sweet reconciliations.
By tolerating mistreatment again and Again, we were willing to pay any price to relive the phase of conquest where we were again once.
Where we once again adored, where we once again became the center of the other's gaze.
And for that, it seemed worth it.
We continued to protect our original abusers and repeated the same pattern, enduring everything in the name of love.
When we began to connect with our inner world, we realized that in our partners, we'd been searching for what we never received as children.
And as we failed to find it, our frustration, resentment only grew.
Our vanity led us to believe that our false love could transform the monster into a prince.
Through our healing process, we came to see our vanity and arrogance.
How we tried to place ourselves above those who had hurt us in order to maintain our untouchable image of goodness, generosity, and purity.
By doing so, we denied them their responsibility.
When we finally handed their responsibility back to them, we experienced it as a liberation.
At that moment, we began to distinguish what was ours and what was not.
And then we were able to begin feeling our pain and our rage.
And that rage, in turn, transformed into strength.
A strength that allowed us to know what we want and what we do not want in our lives.
And in this way, as we begin to find our own power, we stopped handing it to others.
Beautiful ending.
And we'll finish this project with the, self Preservation three next time.
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