Worldview & Motivation

Driving your personality is the worldview that something is missing, and to experience connection and wholeness, you need to search for the ideal circumstance or relationship to fill the void. What you have in the here and now is not enough. This may feel like a sense of abandonment or like you have a fundamental flaw or simply that something is missing.

As a type 4, your underlying motivation is to search endlessly for the ideal through your imagination, creative expression or connection with another. You also seek to be unique, special or different and avoid being ordinary. Many type 4s are drawn to drama and intensity and feel that there is a depth and richness to melancholy and sadness.

Habitual Patterns of Thinking

Because of this underlying belief, your focus of attention naturally goes to what is positive or attractive about the future or the past and what is missing in your present circumstance, relationship or in yourself. Your habitual patterns of thinking also include comparing yourself to others, devaluing yourself, looking for ways to be unique or special and looking for what is deeply meaningful and authentic.

Your blind spots are all that is of value in your present circumstances and in ordinariness and your idealization of what you don’t have.

To expand your focus of attention, practice becoming more aware of where your attention naturally goes. As you notice these habits of mind they will begin to loosen and allow you to intentionally shift your attention and be more open and available to the present moment. Develop a practice of intentionally looking for your blind spots in order to gain a more balanced perspective.

Habitual Patterns of Feeling

The emotional drive of type 4 is called envy and refers to the sense that what is valued and needed is outside of yourself and unavailable. Envy can feel like a longing or an intense craving for whatever will make you feel happy or whole – a different circumstance, job or relationship. In Enneagram language, envy is the Passion or Vice of type 4.

What is missing is equanimity, which means being balanced and allowing yourself to be engaged with your emotions without being swept away or overwhelmed by them and recognizing that what is here in the present moment is sufficient. In Enneagram language, equanimity is the virtue of type 4.

The path from envy to equanimity is to allow yourself to feel your feelings without getting swept away by them and developing the ability to have a balanced perspective on yourself and your circumstances that allows you to see yourself and your life accurately. Develop a sense of sufficiency - you are enough just as you are, your relationships are good enough, your circumstances are good enough, nothing more is needed in this moment.

Strengths & Challenges

As a type 4, you have many strengths which when integrated in a healthy and balanced way support you and your well-being. Paradoxically, these strengths can work against you when they are overdone or not
appropriately integrated.

When you are at your best, you exhibit these strengths:

  • You are idealistic, romantic, passionate and intense

  • You have a very fertile imagination and a strong artistic and creative impulse

  • You are emotionally intuitive, empathetic and able to hold space for intense feelings

  • You are original and unique in how you present yourself

  • You are authentic and appreciate authenticity and emotional depth in others

  • You are introspective and highly in tuned with your own emotions

When your strengths get out of balance or are used in unhealthy ways, they result in these challenges:

  • You experience an inner sense of lack or deficiency and a general dissatisfaction with who you are

  • You are overly emotional and get lost in and controlled by your feelings

  • You focus too much on what is missing, longing for what is unavailable.

  • You idealize and envy what others have, imagining that it is better than what you have

  • You are overly focused on pain and suffering, sometimes as a way of avoiding what you don’t want to face

Centers of Intelligence

The Enneagram recognizes our three centers of intelligence: the head center, which is the intelligence of the mind; the body center, which is the energy and sensations of the body; and the heart center, which is the intelligence of feelings and emotions. While we each have all three centers, most people tend to favor one center over the others. Ideally, we want to balance all three centers because each carries valuable wisdom.

Each Enneagram type is rooted in one of these three centers. The way this affects us is that we tend to perceive the world and rely most heavily for information from our own center of intelligence. We also tend to have the most dysfunction in connection with this center. It is both our strength and our weakness.  

As a type 4, you are a heart type and most likely process information through your feelings and emotions. Heart types are particularly tuned in to their image and how others perceive them. As a type 4 you likely want to be seen as being special, unique, authentic and deep and manage your image in a way that people will see you that way. Heart types also tend to feel more shame and regularly compare themselves to other.