Experiencing the Pandemic as an Extroverted Enneagram Four

Let’s say it out loud: pandemic life is hard and we’re all grieving.

I am someone who feels negativity deeply, but externally tries to encourage everyone. This can take the form of omitting my internal experience, compartmentalizing it, and thinking that I‘ve overcome an emotion.

The answer is no.

The emotion is still there.

I’ve had horrible back and neck pain during this pandemic, to the point where it can be debilitating. Subconcious stress and depression have found their way into my body, rearing it’s ugly head.

I’ve dealt with high-functioning depression my whole life, and most people are surprised I contain any sort of sadness in my heart. I am not always happy, but I do have glimmers of joy most of the time. This joy is in tension with the sadness I feel towards myself and others.

I’ve come to realize this depression in the fact that I have a hard time doing mundane tasks and my memory is horrible. Instead of engaging in picking up my clothes, I go into my head and have a deep, abstract conversation with myself.

Knowing the enneagram has helped me in recognizing this lack of health. As the rarest type on the gram, a four, I can go into a place of feeling so different and misunderstood I freeze. On top of that, I am am extrovert; an oddity amongst the usual introverts that make up the four preference. This is not to say I’m some magical, special unicorn. It quite frankly sucks much of the time to be such a paradox. People don’t know what to do with people like us. There’s very little information on us. They don’t think we really exist.

I need human connection as an extrovert. The pandemic says, “no, just kidding. You aren’t getting that today.” But then, my inner introvert is totes okay with chilling alone. However, I am engaging a part of myself that isn’t natural. Yet, pushing myself into shallow, broad relationships also isn’t natural. None of this pandemic experience is natural.

I am beginning therapy again on Monday and I couldn’t feel more accomplished. I am very self-aware, and this has led to unhelpful therapy in the past, because my therapist thinks I’m okay because I know the roots of my problems that they’re meant to point out. I may know the ins and outs of the ship, but I struggle to know how to navigate it through the stormy waters of my internal ocean.

The pandemic is full of grief. It is a prodder into our interior selves. It’s an expose on everything we’ve tried to hide. But this might just be the stripping away I need to fully become my truest self.

xoxo,