Enneagram Personality Type
Four : The Sensitive Artist/The Romantic
Fours are motivated by the need to experience their feelings
and to be understood, to search for the meaning of life and to avoid being
ordinary
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Fours at their BEST are
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Fours at their WORST are
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warm
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depressed
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compassionate
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self-conscious
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introspective
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guilt-ridden
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expressive
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moralistic
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creative
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withdrawn
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intuitive
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stubborn
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supportive
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moody
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refined
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self-absorbed
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How to get along with a Four
- give them plenty of compliments
- be a supportive friend. Help them learn to love and value themselves
- respect them for their special gift of vision and intuition
- sometimes they don't like to be cheered up but sometimes they like to have
someone lighten them up
- don't tell them they are too sensitive or are overreacting
What's good about being a Four
- they are are able to find meaning in life and to experience feelings at
a deep level
- they can establish warm connections with people
- they admire the noble, truthful and beautiful in life
- they are creative, intuitive and have a sense of humour
- they are unique and can see the unique in others
- they are aesthetic and can pick up on the feelings of those around them
What's difficult about being a Four
- they may experience dark moods of emptiness and despair
- they have feelings of self-hatred and shame and feel they don't deserve
to be loved
- they feel guilty when they disappoint people
- they feel hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands them
- they expect too much from themselves and life
- they fear abandonment
- they obsess over resentments
- they long for what they don't have
Fours as Children
- have active imaginations; play creatively alone or organize playmates in
original games
- are very sensitive
- feel that they don't fit in and believe they are missing something that
others have
- attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists
- become authoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
- feel lonely abandoned (perhaps as the result of parent's death or divorce)
Fours as Parents
- help their children become who they really are; help the get in touch with
their feelings
- support creativity and originality
- are sometimes overly critical and overly protective
- are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed
Source: Adapted from Riso, Don Richard with Russ Hudson, Personality
Types:Using the Enneagram for Self Discovery,1996. Houghton
Mifflin and Baron, Renee and Elizabeth Wagele, The Enneagram
Made Easy, 1994, Harper Collins