Persona and Shadow: What is Destructive For Themselves And For Others

In previous entries, we have described the functioning of character, more with its shadows than with the opportunities it offers to the person who lives from it. The Social 7 comes into contact with that shadow in his intimacy as he progresses in his work of disidentification with character functioning. It becomes clear to him that his passion to look extraordinary, his self-sacrifice, or his fixation on self-indulgence has an aspect that is destructive to himself and to the world. Next, we will complement these forms that harm life.

To understand how his self-destructiveness works, it is worth remembering that his basic core is mistrust—in himself and in others. He connects the difficulty in nurturing others with a sense of ontological unworthiness to be loved. This sense of deep unworthiness is associated with a basic pain that supports his reaction to avoid contact. We could define the Social 7 as an emotional anorexic, a constantly hungry being who denies his hunger and bases his supposed superiority on denial and manipulation of their emotional needs. It is in this anti-preservation strategy that self-destructiveness is based. A first form of destructiveness is towards one's own body. For the Social 7, the body is a machine at the service of the mind and considers it in terms of efficiency. There is no loving care, just efficient maintenance. Primarily, the need to feed and maintain the body in a functional physical form. All the primary necessities are postponed in an unconscious delirium of omnipotence.

From the perspective of destructiveness, we can also see its relationship with money, understood as a basic resource. He lives it with detachment and superiority, as a means to achieve other goals. He has no love for money; he does not accumulate it or care about its management in the medium or long term. Money is a vulgar subject. It interests him as an instrumental good through which he can achieve a supreme good, for which he uses it to exhibit an attitude of generosity; it is a tool to promote the social image (of kindness) and seduction. In no way can it be an end because he considers it a worldly good and, therefore, far from the aspects that decorate his idealized, holy image. The Social 7 does not feel comfortable owning goods and money. He shows no attachment to objects or material resources, boasting of his generosity. This difficulty in dealing with money in reality puts him in trouble since it does not allow him to build financial security. Again, from his ideal of not needing, he does not attend to his real needs and puts himself at Self-Preservation risk.

Another way in which this character expresses his self-destructiveness is in relation to his emotional needs. The Social 7, like all people, needs love, contact, intimacy, and surrender to the other. The mistrust that there can be love for him leads him to deny these needs, and once again, transforms her reactively into emotional independence. His defensive idealism

is catastrophic in affective terms since, by not contacting the difficult emotions, his interpersonal relationships cannot be actualized and deepened to ultimately nurture him.

The E7 associates itself in a sea of unidirectional relationships. He believes that he can be in the world as a giver and establishes his network by placing himself as superior, without dealing with the actual exchange in the relationship. The maintenance of this exchange is based on the realization of the narcissistic idea of oneself, emptying the contact with the other of real content. More than destruction, this ensures the non-construction of real reactions. On the surface, you seem to live in an ocean of relationships, and in reality, you feel like you are in a desert.

This way of functioning is tied to their tendency to distance themselves and withdraw from relationships. In solitude, you get the energy recharge, which is really just a reduction in the fatigue of relating. In the medium term, isolation brings a “problem”: it brings him into contact with the inner world, where he finds himself once again with the pain that he wants to avoid at all costs. The experience of boredom, of isolation, of being nothing reappears in relational withdrawal, so contact with oneself must be broken.

What is destructive for others is not what they receive from this character, but the place from which it gives. It is a selfish and narcissistic internal place in which the other is nothing more than a mirror where you can see your extraordinary image reflected. Those who want to rob people of this character have it easy and can take advantage of them as long as they make them believe that they are being impressed by the privileges of the Social 7. On the other hand, for those who believe that in the giving of this subtype there is something more, those who wait for their presence, those who feel that there is an exchange in that giving, will feel disappointed and used.

What is destructive in the relationship is especially evident in the couple and intimate friendships. In the same way that at first, he used a seduction made of understanding, politeness, good humor, happiness, and optimism, later on, the desire for the other person to play the same role takes shape. This condition, not made explicit, will serve as an excuse to start the game of devaluation of the other.

The mask of seductive complacency will break, and the child who has swallowed all the anger will appear. In this way, an explosive rage begins to manifest, and the aggressive attitude is strengthened, creating a greater distance and a process of aggression towards the person who has frustrated him. This becomes someone with a thousand faults and weaknesses, an enemy with whom it is not worth continuing to associate. The Social 7 begins to think about how to break the relationship, how to punish the partner or the close friend. Conflict and emotional distance are expressed more and more frequently. At this point in the game, the relationship is seen as a source of exhaustion, and the Social 7 flees

into restful isolation. This defensive modality creates a cushioned bubble, a subjective and virtual reality that distances you from contact with the other.

The trials of life related to separations, bereavement, and events involving inevitable pain undermine the self-referential system of the Social 7, destroying character defenses and bringing out the core of the basic wound. A painful feeling of unworthiness and rejection arises that seems to lead to disruption, to a blind, violent, and murderous rage towards the alleged aggressor, in a context in which he is not equipped to manage the emotional dimensions avoided for so many years.

In the most extreme cases, derealization can occur, understood as the experience of estrangement from life itself that, as a result of ataraxia, does not transmit any emotion. Like seeing life through a distancing filter. The partner or close friends thus suffer a surprise attack. They don't understand why so much of what was going on in the relationship has been kept from them. Basically, everything painful and frustrating has not been confronted in due time and only appears through explosion or abandonment. This unconsciously shallow relationship makes it very difficult for him to anchor people in life to deep levels and live the relationship in all its dimensions. Those who accompany this functioning in intimacy will feel attacked, disoriented, and angry with their way of handling conflicts.

In the representation of pain, there is an equivalence with death. This idea is the basis for his avoidance, a strategy that over time has not allowed him to develop the psychophysiological devices designed to allow him to feel pain and manage it. This fear of death ends up making him allergic to the cycles of life that are plagued by small deaths. Here we see how he lacks the courage to face the truth in his relationships; he feels that he will not be able to bear the pain that comes with transparency. And without truth, nothing grows. Neurotic contact with the other makes it possible to avoid intimacy with oneself and with others, and functions as a distraction and a palliative filling of the existential void.

Thus, the tendency in relationships is towards discontinuity, based on repeated enthusiastic withdrawals and returns, ruptures, and opening of new relational fronts. There are maintenance mechanisms that, mitigating the effects of these continuous oscillations, are complemented by the destructive dynamics of this subtype: distance or impossible relationships, where excited contact-withdrawal cycles are the usual dynamic. This subtype is one of the more neurotically mystical characters in the Enneagram, attempting to identify with the divine ideal to such an extent that self-dissociation is based on this basic principle. It creates the conditions for the denial of what it claims to believe, denying the experiential dignity of life.

Narcissistically infatuated with the idea of son of God, he bases his spiritual experience on a jumble of temporary ideas and experiences, none of which can be turned into real involvement. Spiritual experiences, as well as relational ones, lose appeal as soon as they

require a real and transformative commitment. Even his spiritual path meanders in search of the extraordinary: guides, thoughts, schools, experiences; in other words, the gluttony of plurality, the idealization of the spiritual path. This is self-defeating because it mortgages one of its development paths by tricking it. The mystical is sought from neurosis, not found from the human thirst for development.

“I remember working in Brazil with a leader of an evangelical church who confessed in the group that he did not believe in God and that every Sunday he felt like a fraud sitting in front of the faithful and proclaiming the bonds of his church. Nobody knew his inner truth, and he knew how to make a perfect countenance to be able to embody his role. He said that he did not believe in his sermons, but he knew how to make them useful to his parishioners.”

Even political and social causes are experienced with the same degree of superficiality. The passive-aggressive attitude of counterdependency typical of the Social 7 helps to keep active a social criticism that is an end in itself, that is not functional in reality. Social criticism is more of an intellectual exercise where moral relativism and cynicism implicitly authorize any corruption. This E7 is always on the side of the revolution before and after its implementation, never while it is happening. In this sense, he is complicit in maintaining the status quo, since he cannot really channel his criticism into action for change. His way of poisoning the possibility of social transformation is by using the public arena for his narcissistic ordeal, rather than for real change in the world.

With its lack of courage, it makes difficult the necessary actions that are required for change, with its idealism and with its difficulty with direct aggression, which is needed to uphold the difficult truth until the last consequences. In addition, he is able to work because he rents a good place, so we can find him selling his intelligence to the patriarchy in exchange for making him feel seemingly extraordinary. In its neurotic form, it adds cowardice, disconnection, lack of reality, and perversion to the thousands of the world.

In relation to this cowardice, it should be noted that one of the most hidden aspects of the Social 7 is fear. This is the emotion that turns off their social promotion, drives them away from relationships, and inhibits them from taking responsibility. Each scenario becomes a source of fear because, in each one, being discovered is at stake. Thus, this trap that they create for themselves is also projected onto the world. It is one of those who prefers a good social lie to a bad social reality. They will contribute to social idealizations in the world that prevent us from seeing the deep and structural conflicts that are difficult to face.

The condemnation of the Social 7 is that of the fugitive. They are boastful, ashamed of themselves, afraid of being discovered in their superficial improvisation, of losing control, of not being able to manage their own strategies, and of not being intellectually adequate. A

fear they deny with their apparent antisocial nonchalance. But this leads them to suffer internal self-persecution for not feeling capable of facing reality.

Fear increases with the intensity of the relationship. It is the fear of not being understood, of being left, of becoming dependent on a relationship and not being able to survive its lack, of being truly seen and not accepted, of giving up and being lost. There is the fear of symbiosis as a hellish paradise from which they will be kicked out again. Fear of affective dependence forces them to neurotically maintain a false autonomy. This encourages another aspect: their difficulty in deep engagement with their truth and relationships.

They end up constantly running away from themselves, out of fear of their own feelings and deep emotions. Fear of being truly discovered, of seeing their unacceptable aspects and what surrounds them. Fear of having no way out.

“This fine isolation is re-inhabited without consciousness. It is the innate reaction of rejection and the hope that tomorrow will be better, creating in the mind an ideal world in which to enjoy and be better. But when confronting the pain, which, in my own experience, deep down is that of early rejection, we become aware of the mask. Seeing it face to face can cause the ego to go into crisis. When there is a lack of structure, when it breaks itself and takes a different step, it is how the Being can incorporate what is new into its existence. But keep in mind that these crisis steps are not always the same. They can lead us to a path of growth and evolution or to a process of annihilation and self-destruction.” (Xavier)

It is not uncommon to understand these aspects in relation to the anger with which this subtype handles certain situations. We have already mentioned how it hides deeply destructive nuclei of oral rage within itself: an omnipotent desire to incorporate the other, to destroy them, to tear them to shreds. When there is a psychological fall, rage assumes the desire to wipe out everything and everyone. Ideas of possible physical aggression, often imagined and experienced in fantasy, may appear, along with a desire for revenge. When the defensive apparatus of rationalization gives way, a strong fear of a projective nature emerges, often directly proportional to the repressed rage. The difficulty in experiencing and channeling it is a very destructive aspect, both for oneself and for others.

In this case, the self-reference becomes personalization, meaning they tell themselves events that have no possible realistic relevance, such as feeling persecuted by others or by life itself. Sometimes, the result is a form of paranoid thinking, ranging from simple social conspiracy to demonic persecution.

All these aspects, unless they enter into a pathological expression, are generally kept hidden. Only the accumulation of prolonged stress, related to the onset of anxiety, can lead this structure to collapse and force the Social 7 to lean toward the logic of expressing themselves or asking for help. Thus, their repressed anger and fear at their inability to break

free from the role of the good and harmonizing person eat away at them. This way of handling both emotions also contributes to the tension in the world, since they don't let them come out and express themselves in the group, instead trying to bury them under a lot of good rationalizations. Thus, they contribute to the cancer of society.

On the flip side, in terms of hypomania, it is not uncommon for a Social 7 to display traits of delusional thinking related to their spiritual path. Identification with Christ supports false miracles. The visionary capacity, combined with the desire to realize their identification with the role of the chosen one, leads to pseudo-delusional interpretations of their feelings. They show great sensitivity to all extraordinary events and, of course, with self-referential delusions. In other words, the Social 7 tends to cultivate imagination and tell fables with the idea of having healing, messianic, or visionary powers. Once again, we see how their character leads them to delirium, and from here, they also join those in the world who, with the desire to access the transcendent, end up inventing it.