Any Old Actress

…I realise how perfectly contradictory it seems to try and reconcile feeling perception with detached logic. But 4 Enneagram tests showed a definite 5 preference, and MBTI tests all show a consistent NFP preference (w/ slight variant in I & E). I’ve looked at every aspect of 5 profiles to make sure I wasn’t focusing on a generally common really obvious trait. I don’t blindly trust tests, but this is the type I truly identify with and after objectively comparing my experience and the feedback I’ve received this is the conclusion I’ve reached.

I’ve spent my entire life looking for ways out of shallow social settings and reasons to not commit to events. Even in fairly comfortable interactions I’m looking for the exits. Nearly everyone in my life has at one time or another complained about my detaching and the most consistent description they give is “cold and heartless”. What I don’t get is why I keep testing as NF. These aren’t the most comprehensive reasons, but it’s difficult to qualify why you identify with a type without oversimplifying the issues. Another reason for my conclusion is that I know when I ‘feel’ like a 7 or 8 (per Helen Palmer’s risk/security points). I don’t enjoy playing socialite and I only comply when people won’t leave me alone. I’ve also spent time wondering at how little I cared about the goings-on and why people even bother to pull me in. So, it’s an overall picture I’m looking at to determine 5-ness, my basic sense of empathy combined with what have to be more than coincidental 7/8 patterns.

I tend to view MBTI and Enneagram as complimentary methods of typing than as mutually exclusive or supportive. Somehow, I don’t think it’s entirely impossible for ENFP’s to also be 5’s. 5’s under duress DO exhibit extroversion (my I and E switch depending on the situations I’m involved in so, that’s part of my reasoning), and meaningful observation definitely entails perception. I also don’t think we should marginalise 5’s as these totally rational beings. Logic and emotion step all over each other’s toes but most people have some measure of both. What makes 5’s particularly unique is the capacity to separate and compartmentalise them, to fully experience emotion at a time when it won’t obscure reason.

Another point of similarity I see in NF’s and 5’s is the detachment. The 5’s withdraw-and-analyze pattern has the same sort of 3rd person effect as the NF’s intensely self-aware search for identity. Only in the NF it creates a sense of contrivance or hypocrisy while I don’t think the 5 is concerned with the integrity of his behavior. Also, they are both most definitely on a search for higher knowledge. The 5’s fear of being overwhelmed and the NF’s search for objective self seem to spring from the same respect for an independent identity.