6 Meltdowns: WHY WON’T ANYONE HELP ME?

I caught myself having a 6 reaction the other day.

The reason for my relative silence with this blog is I’m working on an Enneagram book. I swore I’d never write another nonfiction book, that the MBTI one was the hardest thing I have ever done… and here I am, self-torturing with another attempt that seems even harder than the last one. I shed blood, sweat, and tears, handed it over to a beta reader, and her response was not at all what I wanted it to be, which triggered my 6 reactivity.

To be clear, I get reactive when I’ve done a crap-ton of work, and then have to start over because it’s not right or good enough, because we are talking about 120,000 words. It’s like saying, “The Statue of Liberty sucks, melt it down and start over.” So I reacted with maturity by thinking, “Well, if it’s crap, I just won’t do it anymore! Throw the whole thing into the trash! It’s all rubbish! Don’t even bother to read the rest!”

I sulked for an entire day, over the fact that I’d need to rewrite such big chunks of it, and that was a task I didn’t want to do, and I had other 6 reactions, which included, “Why has no one helped me with this?” (A few people did, but I was feeling melodramatic and a sense of rage.)

Which is 6 thinking, to the max. How? Because it feels entitled to the assistance and guidance of others, in order to feel secure. If I failed, and wrote up this description wrong, it’s because no one helped me! An abdication of self-responsibility and pointing the finger at the people who could have shed light for me, and chose not to. Because that’s what I would do for them, as a 6. I give, I shed light, I help where I can, in the expectation others will do the same for me, and when they don’t think on those terms, I get cross. And, being self-aware, I knew exactly that I was 6-ing while doing it, and my reasons why (lack of self-trust, to write stuff that is wrong and still think it’s amazing, and a desire to get it right, because to get it wrong means the sun falls out of orbit and everything burns!). I can no longer hide from myself or pretend I don’t know what I am doing, when I seek support, don’t find it, and feel unsupported.

So, I had to laugh at myself. After feeling annoyed with myself for a bit for having what I fondly refer to as a “6 meltdown.” I can be quite melodramatic when I want to be, although I withdraw from everyone to do it, so no one sees how silly it is. After a good long sulk about all the work involved in starting over, I wound up going “well, I will do my best, and if it’s not right, at least I did my best. And I did it all by myself!” If it’s wrong, it’s because I didn’t know enough yet, not because no one came alongside me to correct me along the way, because I don’t need them to. Being wrong is not the end of the world.

This doesn’t mean, as a 6w7, I don’t fight the urge every step of the way to “run my stuff past experts,” to reach out and consult people who seem to know these things, to word-search to find specific conversations to refresh my memory on other people’s takes on the types, or even to think about paying someone who seems to know this stuff to beta read it for me to check my work. And, I have to forgive myself for that, because it’s who I am. It’s me being a 6. But at least I’m a self-aware 6, who knows she’s doing it. And that’s more than I can say for myself ten years ago. 🙂

PS: If you are noticing emotional rawness and intensity in this post, that’s also 6-ness. It’s called Reactivity, and it is inviting the readers to share my emotional experience (frustration! thwarted intentions! the despair of being alone in this!) and then inviting you to take a breath at the end and realize a 6 thinks they need others, but they really don’t. The need to self-actualize, self-trust, and de-escalate by knowing it will all turn out fine is how a 6 needs to swing from reactivity into competency, by using their line to 3 and 9 to find internal peace and guidance, so they can move forward.