E2 Conservation (Self-Preservation) – Privilege

In the conservative E2, seduction can be compared to that of a child towards parents. Just as the social type appears large, this is someone who is seen as small, childish, in their attitudes and even in their physical features. Just as the social two seems hyper-adult, over-mature, and the sexual E2 —like Bizet's Carmen— appears as a wild, force of nature, the conservation E2 seems tender and childish.

Precisely, psychoanalysts called this infantile character. Ichazo used for his characteristic neurotic need the expression: "I, the most important thing", which in his day I misunderstood when I thought that it designated the Napoleonic attitude of one who shows off his chest. Finally, I came to understand that, unlike an ambitious person's desire for importance, this "me, the most important thing" of the conservational type refers to infantile egocentrism, which is a desire to be in the center of attention without having to be important through qualifications, performances or feats. For the child wants to be loved not for this or that, but simply because; that is, for being what he or she is.

What is most prominent in this human type, then, is the need for love, the naked need for love, obtained neither by sexual seduction nor by social self-importance.

But why would a person have the need to remain childish or to act like a child? Naturally, there is some advantage in this. They like children more than adults, and babies are very attractive to people of a motherly disposition. We can say that the infantile traits themselves are seductive, and that the neurotic need of that human type is one to seduce through infantility — which implies a need for tenderness, delicacy and fragility, although it also implies self-centeredness and evasion of responsibilities.

The transformation in the E2 conservation by Cati Preciado

I don't want to be an adult!

I consider that the most difficult thing in the transformation process is to grow, to mature, to assume that I am no longer a girl to whom everything is apologized, for her ignorance, for her innocence, on a whim, living on pampering, privileges and comforts, in her own right and because. Leaving childhood-adolescence has been a difficult job, I have been in love with my image as a pubescent girl for a lifetime; an image that has seduced me, that I have loved and that I have let direct my life for the most part. The attachment to the childishness of my character is more than a preference or a fixation: it is a way of life, a style of living where responsibilities never rested on me and my decisions, but on circumstances, on others or on the randomness of life.

Growing up is a process that, when viewed from the past, I might describe as complicated, difficult, uncomfortable, but mainly unpleasant. Falling in love with myself has been the most important and decisive task to grow. That is why couples only grow when they transcend the state of falling in love and walk towards the process of building love. Thus, this is precisely what I have been encountering: realizing that to grow I have to build myself, not based on the superficiality of my bad habits of character, but based on the bittersweet reality that surrounds me constantly, taking into account that sometimes I only need to stay still or silent to listen to the inner voice of my needs, of my soul.

The work to grow has been worthwhile: it has meant entering a reality shared by others and by me, where I have been able to experience company, support, fear and being able to face my own ghosts, as well as learning to ask for help.

The transformation process continues, it does not end, it is happening right now, and in part it has consisted of an effort to tolerate frustration, accept the weight of things, the consequences of my actions. I have only achieved such a condition through recognizing a deep sense of incapacity, ignorance and laziness of being.

Becoming a woman and growing up means registering the need to contact and relate to other women as equals, as sisters, friends, teachers and guides; it means joining the feminine world not only to cultivate seduction and persuasion; it means contacting receptivity in the face of demand; contact with sensitivity versus insensitivity, with love versus dependency, with reality versus fantasy.

Making me a woman makes me flesh and blood: I feel. Not only do I want to feel with the other: I also feel mortal, with age, with borders that I did not see before in the face of my arrogant heroism as a super-powerful girl. Why super powerful? For believing that I can sit on the legs of Lucifer himself or an almighty God and believe that I can kiss him, caress him, play the charmer and achieve everything I want; I always felt that I could handle anything, of course it was anything that was of interest to me. My unconscious surely protected me by approaching situations where it did not require great intellectual efforts or special skills; My childish charm and the promise of offering unconditional love, like that of children, without limits or barriers, were enough. Who can resist such an offer?

I remember the feeling of feeling like a kind of beast tamer: when the other is angry or needs something, when the conflict appears, there I am, almost ready for anything, like an oasis in the desert for the thirsty, like a song of sirens in the middle of nowhere Ultimately, this is needing the beast and its grotesque ways to minimize my own shortcomings, my deepest desires and needs. Clearly, my own beast ends up dominating me.

My search began when I got fed up with living at home with my parents, and at the age of 21, recently graduated from psychology school, I managed to get a job that allowed me to pay for an apartment for myself. I didn't think much about it and went looking for a place to live

alone. My fantasy was that my problems would end when I achieved the economic and physical autonomy of living on my own: I would be free at last! Free from the demands of my parents, free to do with my time what I wanted, free to make use of my space, and so on. A few months later I began to feel depressed, gaining almost 20 kilos of weight... The feeling of loneliness and taking charge of myself filled me with anguish and fear, but I did not dare to confess all these feelings to anyone. and I lived them in silence. However, I went ahead with my plan to live alone. He barely spent time with me, he always had visitors or some activity. I asked the boyfriend on duty to move in with me and he refused my offer: there I felt more depressed and then I had allergic skin reactions. Sick, when visiting the dermatologist he told me:

— You are under a lot of stress, what is going on in your life?

Hearing this question made me feel like dying. An uncontrollable rage invaded me and I wanted to take it out on everyone, on my parents, on my boyfriend, on the world... I felt like complaining to everyone that they weren't taking care of me. Life seemed tremendously complicated to me, I felt powerless, I was in total crisis...

Now I know that underneath the anger I kept a pain of feeling unprotected, useless, insignificant and undervalued that was evident when I became independent.

At that time I was so disconnected from myself that I lived in a run-down apartment. The old wooden ceiling had termites. When it rained the water seeped into the kitchen and into the room. I remember that he put buckets and boats so that the water would fall and he did not complain to the landlord. I was so numb that I didn't even question if I should change my apartment. It was as if she did not see the negative in the house or in me: I lived in that den fleeing from family life, of which I was fed up, and where there was no longer a place for me as I wanted.

After ten months of independence I moved to a new flat where everything was comfort, closeness and beauty. It took me almost a year to realize where I wanted to live, since the first attempt was just a space to get out of the family home quickly due to the desperation I felt there.

My job was to manage a hospice clinic. I did what I wanted, I was constantly late, my start time could be eight in the morning and it was usual for me to arrive at ten. Sometimes she said she was sick and went for a walk. I also used money from the office expense box to spend on my own personal expenses. I pretended to work and told many lies to constantly apologize.

The search for myself began in this crisis in which I had no one to talk to about the truth of what was happening to me: I had no one to lean on, I felt tremendously alone and unprotected, I ate poorly, slept poorly, had nightmares and fears. at night. My boyfriend was a depressed boy who I had to take care of instead. I felt more and more tired, and to cope with all that I took refuge in parties every day I could, or I went shopping borrowing from credit cards, or I ate everything I wanted: breads, desserts, chocolates... It was a totally messy lifestyle that was

looking for a way not to contact me and wanted to avoid feeling bad at all costs. In exchange, there was never rest: euphoria was my companion and distracted me from my inner life with a constant search for sensations and experiences that would distract me from my sense of abandonment of myself. I constantly applied an attitude of not getting frustrated at anything, of not feeling the emptiness that I carried deep inside, of avoiding the constant anxiety of not knowing what to do with myself, which led me to being hyperactive and full of people who helped me to distract myself.

Thus, one good day when I felt very depressed and alone, a former teacher from the faculty of psychology called me and invited me to a training and personal work group. So I saw a little light at the end of the tunnel. I started in the group and entered a psychotherapy process with him that lasted five years. The process was a kind of detoxification: I started eating better, I started doing some exercise and changing habits. He attended psychotherapy once a week and was also part of a training group that met once a week. These five years were like coming out of the hole to see that there was another kind of life. They served to recognize my depression, my pain, my lack of affection, of support.

Today I realize that I can protect myself: being self-sufficient and cooperating within my relationship gives me the confidence that I can do things for myself and for the other. I feel less and less anxious, less worried about what to do with myself.

I feel committed to what I do, to my work, to the simple things of daily life, like cooking or going for a walk. Life is becoming simpler, less complex.

The euphoria is also gone: I feel calm and can enjoy myself without having high expectations of myself and/or others. I often see myself telling the truth about what happens to me, what I think, what I feel.

I never gained the weight back like when I was 21 years old. For me it is a very concrete indicator to learn to control my impulses to compulsively eat or to eat disorderly, which since adolescence was a very difficult subject for me. Now, in general, I maintain a weight and I can regulate myself.

I also feel less and less heavy: I have always felt like an overwhelming, sticky person, like honey that you cannot easily get rid of, like a spoiled girl who demands affection, looks and attention all the time. Now I see myself lighter: I no longer feel like a girl all the time, but I see myself wanting adult things, such as commitment, responsibility or being present with another person without the usual selfishness of taking advantage.

I see myself understanding the lives of my parents, I see that my demand towards them has decreased as well.

I see myself taking myself seriously: my voice counts for being a person, not for being wonderful or for getting away with it.

I see myself choosing situations in which I want to get involved, instead of falling into the compulsion to offer myself at every moment in order to continue being the favorite.

I think of myself as a woman, not as an eternal adolescent, and in this way I manage to take care of my health.

I feel mortal: before I didn't see death or the finitude of my life. Now I see myself taking into account that life can end at any moment. Sometimes I forget, but every time the idea that life is finite is more present in me.

The biggest difference I perceive is that now I think and decide for myself. I realize that I am not in complete control of my relationships, but rather that relationships are alive, they have their own dynamics and their evolution depends on the two involved or on all the people who form it.

I have entered the world of adult women, I see them as equals, and I see my competitiveness, my complicity, my envy and my admiration towards them.

What is new is also that today I feel tired, I perceive the absence of euphoria and tantrums and I pay attention to my need to live in an orderly manner.

I have stopped treating my family of origin as if it were my property, as if they had to pay homage to me.

I have learned to commit myself in a relationship, to listen to the criticisms and flaws that I have within it.

I admit my intellectual laziness, my ignorance. And I feel the emotional pain that it causes me.

I have learned to be with myself and also to know satisfaction.

I have learned to trust in help, in support. It helped me identify that the feeling of being wonderful is a screen for all the insecurity that we keep inside, related to not even knowing what we want for ourselves.

Today, it is easier for me to feel brotherly with people, to live the experience that I am one of the crowd, that we are all in the same boat.

And, above all, what has helped me the most to grow is to accept the error, the defect, to see how inattentive I can be, to identify that I was self-absorbed, that I always acted like a parasite, feeding on others to feel protected, preferred and consented by them.

It has served me to de-idealize the world in which I have lived, to de-idealize myself before people, to feel the pain, the disappointment, to face the fall of fantasies...

It has helped me to work as a psychotherapist, to make myself useful, to serve a purpose where I have had to make an effort, to have discipline. As a psychotherapist, it has served me to live the experience of patients leaving: when they leave the process, when they no longer need it, when they no longer need me...

It has been essential to impose disciplines on myself, routines where there are limits, where I cannot do what I want. Some examples are: attending psychotherapy for the last ten years uninterruptedly, maintaining order at home, organizing food; always eat at the same time, eat breakfast without exception, always take my medications; meet my credit card payments on time, without going into debt; take care of my car (take it for maintenance, put gas in it, clean it), take care of my health by eating healthy, not staying awake, taking a nap, resting, not attending to all the demands of those around me, running a psychotherapy group uninterruptedly during the last eight years, in which I have had to commit to offering a space for listening and support, in addition to preparing week by week what is going to be worked on, etc.

All of the above I was not able to do ten years ago: I lived in constant chaos.

I leave behind an idealized childhood, I leave behind being condescending to myself at every moment, I leave behind the fear of not being liked, the fear of not being charming, I leave behind being inefficient.

And I leave behind my expectation that they satisfy all my desires, of wanting to be unique and special; I leave behind the expectation that my family be as I want it to be, the desire that they love me as I want them to love me.

If I look at the past I see myself as a prisoner of my need to look pretty and nice most of the time: I lived trapped in my compulsion to be liked by everyone, my compulsion to give gifts without seeing others. I have also left behind the feeling of being born into the wrong family and a feeling of being a slave.

Now a life of simplicity emerges, a 40-year-old person emerges who has the presence of a woman, the recognition that death exists emerges, fatigue emerges, the interest in learning aspects of life that seemed very complicated to me, such as philosophy, history, life itself: today I realize that they did not interest me because I did not want to make the effort to learn. A better organization with my work also emerges: I have learned to manage my economy, to save, to optimize my work, etc. A greater acceptance of my parents also emerges: I have managed to accept my origins. And I feel desire for a satisfying life, not a wonderful one. With all this, the taste of freedom emerges.

Psychotherapy has been decisive in elaborating the contents of my life, starting reason.

Dr. Claudio Naranjo helped me a lot by suggesting readings, and I myself found some that marked my self-knowledge and helped me identify or differentiate myself in the process. Exercising reading, analysis and reflection has been a way of activating my intellectual part that I had so despised.

In my psychotherapy process, it has been very useful for me to work with a woman: enneatype two usually has a twisted relationship with the mother, and reparenting myself through female psychotherapists became a very important step.

Knowing admiration and the divine through music has been a fundamental exercise. Dance has become a way to access flexibility, spontaneity and creativity.

If I look ahead, at my future process, I want not to anticipate, not get ahead of myself, not have illusions, continue with the work of building myself, feel more and more real, more solid, more present, simple, seeing things for myself, trusting in life and in what I can do.

What I have learned from my growth process is that the important thing is not to despair when feeling alone, to have patience and to know that it is enough to begin to know each other to feel accompanied.

For a conservation E2 it is important to realize to what extent their relationships are utilitarian: to see that there is always an advantage and an exchange of conveniences. Enneatype two uses and ends up being used by others, so in the end they are left with a feeling of being an object and/or seeing the other as an object.

From my experience, I would recommend an E2 conservationist to resist his tantrums when we are confronted by those who love us, learning to stay and show his face, to give feedback to the relationship with the other. It is good to assume that he wants to be in control of their relationships, and to assume how his manipulation and his lies want to take the other where the E2 wants them to go.

I suggest that the E2 conservation see the price of his childish behavior, what he loses every time he behaves like a child: how that little power becomes a way to denigrate himself and to be left alone.

In the therapeutic relationship, the conservation E2 is initially a complacent and very affectionate patient who will try to seduce the therapist with his childish affections and great idealization. This seduction will serve as a lure so that the psychotherapist does not confront or mistreat him; he will look for the therapist to become attached and feel difficult for treating him as an adult. Through false tenderness, he will try to soften the relationship so that they treat each other as two friends, as accomplices: in this way, his conservation ego will remain intact.

In my practice I have had contact with E2 conservation patients. In all cases, they were women. The reasons why they say they seek psychological help always strike me: in some cases,

when they have problems with their partner, the conflict lies in the fact that the manipulation they have been exercising no longer works for them, or they have received some ultimatum in this sense. Thus, there is usually a problem of limits with the couple. This means that they spend family money haphazardly or in secret, they cannot fulfill agreements, they feel victimized by their partner without seeing their part in the conflict, etc. They also tend to harbor the feeling that they always offer more than their partner: more sex, more joy, more time, more dedication... I have often seen great difficulty in differentiating themselves from the family of origin: they are patients who expend energy, money and efforts in making the family move and behave as the patient wishes, with the addition that E2 conservation also often has difficulty setting limits, so that, in many aspects, the family of origin ends up being more important than the family of origin. his own family. Added to this is the fact that they cannot let go of control: they need to be protagonists within the family of origin. As mothers, they have difficulty being adults and behave like children with their children. There is great difficulty in exercising maternal authority. I have seen a great identification with children's childhood and wishes that they live a life totally free of pain and suffering.

While sitting on the honeymoon with his psychotherapist, the conservation E2 will seem like an excellent student, the most diligent, the most affectionate, but the moment that illusion wears off, he tends to leave and find someone new to pamper him, that makes him affectionate and treats him as he wishes. It is convenient for the two conservation to be persuaded to know what it feels like to stop being a child: the psychotherapist must be an agent that inspires you to try the freedom of being an adult, of being able to decide freely about your life and not being a slave to your desires and their relationships.

Another important aspect for the E2 conservation is to realize that his childhood narcissism is relentless. To self-regulate, it is very useful for him to understand that everything he does is destined to be left without the ability to fend for himself: even if he gets protectors, he generally becomes a slave to them, in a utilitarian relationship where E2 conservation feels privileged while represses your personal frustrations and desires, in a position too suspect for growth.

For all these reasons, it is very important that they tell him the truth, that they confront him despite his sweetness, that false sweetness that is only the façade of a titanium frame against the uncomfortable and hostile world that he does not want to see or recognize.

To transform, the E2 must accept constructive challenges that teach him to expose himself to the adult world, so that he can face the world with the resources he really has, not with what he promises but never delivers. You need to know how his whims not only don't satisfy you, but fuel his frustration. He needs to see that being childish guarantees loneliness in his life. And that, by not making an effort, he becomes paralyzed in his immaturity and, therefore, feels useless.

In short, your path is to know your limits: that exploration will offer you an invaluable experience of security and containment.