E5 Conservation (Self-Preservation) – Refuge

The need to retreat is a clear characteristic for the conservation five. But keep in mind that every E5 subtype has some of that: some need to retreat. In the case of conservation, the passion has a lot to do with finding refuge, erecting high walls that separate you from a world that can invade you, that can take you out of a precious little world that hides inside you. The idea of self-preservation becomes clearer if we imagine them as strong supporters of cave retreat. The E5 conservation extremely limits his needs and desires, since each desire could mean a dependency status for him.

Like each conservation subtype, this one is also linked to survival and to the concrete, attached to objects and personal space; but like E5, which is the most mental of the mental characters, it is in thought, in incessant reflection on how to survive and live by limiting external disturbances, that it finds the greatest refuge.

The transformation in the E5 conservation by José Ignacio Fernández

“I discovered the enneagram in 1998 and it was a great impact for me to identify myself in character five, seeing for the first time that there were other people like me. Knowing that the creator of the adaptation of enneagram to modern psychology was Claudio Naranjo, I always wanted to go deeper by approaching him, his school and his books. This led me to carry out the SAT process and to offer my collaboration after the II International Symposium on the Psychology of Enneatypes, held in Pilas, Seville, in 2008. I am deeply grateful to Claudio for having created this system that has helped me so much and continues to help me. others to go beyond themselves.”

How the process begins: see the cave I'm in

In the beginning, the main work for the healing of the ego consists of an awareness of one's vindictive attitude towards the world, which manifests itself with separateness. It is an undoing of the victimized self-image that judges the world as hostile, inadequate, hypocritical, ignorant, brutal, etc. When this matter is clear, one becomes aware that withdrawal and hiding are ways of attacking others.

The process is also about becoming aware of your own vulnerability, hypersensitivity, and fear of being crushed, and realizing that these difficulties are so great that they lead to avoidance and disengagement.

It is about seeing how little life one has, that the choice to get by with little implies living little. That giving up needs implies having a rather unsatisfactory life. In the end, it is to see that there is a great passion for not wearing yourself out, for conserving your own energies, since you do not have faith in being able to obtain more.

It is necessary to identify the ideal of the self so unattainable that you have. An ideal built of visions of wisdom and deep and elevated knowledge, of greatness, of overwhelming force, of power, even omnipotence. Becoming aware of this already helps to begin to approximate this ideal a little closer to reality, thus raising the level of self-esteem, which is especially low.

Conflict avoidance

The conflict is experienced internally and it is necessary to see the tributes that this entails. On the one hand, the price is self-injury by internalizing rage, internal anger. Also, killing the other internally: the interior head cutter. It is helpful to recognize the mechanism by which, in the face of what is perceived as a particularly painful aggression, a great deal of resentment develops internally, which, however, the Conservation Five is hardly allowed to express outwardly. The most common consequence of this resentment is a withdrawal reaction that can be linked to certain actions if the safe space itself is threatened. Resentment is a constant and at some point you need to see to what extent an attachment to it occurs. So much so, that this attachment leads to an internalized vengeful attitude. A testimony can clarify such a process:

"Actually, I have been leaving many relationships after feeling hurt by something. The process is always very similar: first something happens that hurts me, I don't express it, I keep it inside and later I begin to have feelings of rejection or devaluation towards that person and I move away, I stop having contact with them. Normally, the person in question never gets to know the reason for my departure," says Ignacio Fernández.

A typical way of experiencing the conflict is to inhibit the response, sometimes changing it for the opposite behavior to what is felt. Thus, for example, when someone unexpectedly shows an aggressive and demanding attitude with a five conservation, he may accept what is required of him to escape the pressure, but at the same time he will begin to feel a sense of rage against himself, inside himself, for not having reacted in a way more in accordance with his wishes, displacing the action.

"When I started that job there were already three people there, and one of them had the only copy of the key to enter. During the day, the building was closed, so we had to open and close at the entrance and exit. I had a tendency to be late and from the beginning I found it very humiliating to have to be at the expense of someone else opening up for me, making me see my delays. Perhaps at first I questioned the system, but soon I accepted it, at least apparently. However, after a year of this situation, when the circumstances were favorable, I managed to get another copy of the keys from the person in charge, which greatly infuriated the person who until then had enjoyed that power. This gave rise to a conflict that was kept hidden for a long time until it broke out years later", says Ignacio.

The clandestine action

Acting in secret so that your actions do not compromise you becomes a way of avoiding confrontation and avoiding generating expectations or dependency relationships.

Hyper-adaptability manifests itself, for example, in a compulsive way of saying yes to an external demand, if the refusal may be uncomfortable or lead to conflict, and in saying what one thinks the other person wants to hear. The change consists in seeing to what extent this implies a betrayal of oneself and leads to giving up the satisfaction of one's own needs.

The tendency to anesthetize, forgetfulness and mental confusion is another notable trait of this character. Working on attention and intention at the moment things happen is a good way to counteract this tendency. There is an internal idea of not wearing yourself out by paying attention to things that are trivial for you and a resistance to remembering these kinds of things. In addition, the very habit of being disconnected makes it difficult to be fully aware of what is happening around you. Information is lost and then the action becomes clumsy.

"Appearing invisible, playing deaf, that was a way of hiding from my own feeling of discomfort, of perceiving myself as a coward, a fearful person who, at any sign of threat, ran to hide inside the house. [...] I never knew if my perceptions were correct, if my reactions were appropriate, if my feelings were acceptable", tells Luciano to describe his childhood.

Seeing your withdrawal as an aggression also helps, allows you to take responsibility for it, and therefore opens the door to see the tribute that is being paid for this withdrawal in your own life. It also allows us to understand conflicts in our personal history, stop seeing ourselves in them as victims and pave the way to understand others, especially those who hurt us. It is the beginning to deactivate the resentment to which he is so attached.

The greed of time

Not wasting time is an obsession. There is in E5 conservation a passion for taking advantage of time but without a clearly defined purpose, it is rather a diffuse thing with which he connects when he is "wasting time".

This character needs to see to what extent he feels attached to safe objects and places, until he manages to transfer his affective ties to them. Something similar also happens with the few relationships that he establishes: although he has little awareness of his attachment to them, in reality he feels a great attachment and possessiveness.

"Recently I understood what attachment was. That getting lost in the other without any limits. That giving everything to the other and being left with nothing, from a little deserving, [I understood] that I have defended myself from hitting myself from an extreme distance, but that when I opened up and related not only did I open up but I went to the other extreme of hitting myself to the other and lose my dreams, my apartment, my limits", says Beatriz Helena Vega.

The E5 conservation also needs to realize the great attachment they have to their own intuitions, ideas or deductions, and the impoverishment of clinging to them, closing off to other points of view. Realize that criticism or disagreement with these ideas is often experienced as personal devaluation and aggression. And also how this leads to a reaction that can be offensive or arrogant, but also self-deprecating.

Given the passion for the elevated, for fantasy worlds, it is necessary to see that it constitutes a sterile search if it is done from disconnection in a vain attempt to give life meaning.

Start to connect

The first point of reconnecting with oneself is to recognize one's own needs:

"During my first year of therapy I experienced a situation that was decisive for me. I remember one night with my partner when suddenly I see him start to cry. I do not understand anything. Then after a few moments she tells me that she has decided to leave me. I remain in suspense, I begin to think: well, it's fine, I'll meet other more interesting ones, I'll stay free, better, and things like that. However, after a few moments, I begin to feel a very great pain, an infinite pain. Something inside me said: see?, she has happened to you again, you have lost it again. So I felt that I was risking everything at that moment and I cried like never before in my life, I literally felt that I was breaking inside. That also touched her to her heart and the relationship continued. It was the first time in my life that I realized that I needed another person," says Ignacio.

Take care of the body, appearance and personal image: realize that it is not something for others. Allow yourself to want to please others and yourself... All of this is fundamental.

"For me, taking care of myself is treating my body with love and delight. For example, I used to see physical activity as something useful to achieve an ideal, to have a strong body by subjecting it to discipline, bending it, and it was like fighting against myself. Now I have learned that physical activity can be a pleasure. Without pursuing an ideal goal, the enjoyment is in the activity itself, which also gives me a feeling of more presence, of more connection with my existence", says Ignacio.

Food is another factor to change. There may be a lack of interest, an oversight, eating just to eat. Other times, compulsive eating may occur to fill the void. There may also be automatisms that should be banished: eating while reading, watching television, etc. It is about transforming all this into conscious eating and also into eating with enjoyment, with delight.

At first there is a great lack of interest towards people in general, for example, to waste time meeting someone who is not interesting for something. The change comes when you pay attention to the names, to the trivia that they tell you, but it is a loving attention, which should be given when a true interest arises, without implying forcing yourself to do it with everyone.

Respecting yourself in this is important. You have to learn to say no when you really don't want to pay attention.

Experiencing situations of happiness, jubilation, uncontrolled laughter, spontaneous play, is another element of transformation. It is necessary to recognize and identify two mechanisms: freezing and rationalization or intellectualization. Only by experiencing these situations can we become aware of the paralyzing effect of these mechanisms and allow them to become more common and long-lasting. Not taking things so seriously and not taking yourself so seriously is an attitude that also helps.

And, of course, it serves to experience pleasure. Realize that you can only enjoy trust in the other.

Another area to explore is to experiment with one's own assertiveness. This character is so unassertive that sometimes it is difficult for him to even understand what he is. Starting to respond differently is part of the transformation: being more congruent with oneself, trying to say what one wants to say, even if it is not what the other expects to hear...

When the anger so characteristic of the conservation five enters the scene, consisting of punishing in silence, not speaking, pouting, etc., it is about becoming aware of the inner discomfort that it causes and experiencing other ways of reacting. For example, sharing what you have been feeling can be very liberating.

Showing yourself more is a very important part of the process. Coming out of the cave is also letting others get to know you better. Sometimes, the fear of generating expectations in others is so great that there is an intentional concealment of oneself. That's where the weird look comes from. The job is to realize that you can share information about yourself, opinions, emotions, tastes, and at the same time reserve a space of intimacy. Sometimes there is a desire to share everything that is most intimate, and it is to be able to share this space with whoever you want and when you want.

Letting go of loved objects and safe places is a big step forward. There is a lot of attachment and emotional transference to certain personal objects; The first step to do this is to become aware of such attachment and move further trying to let go of ballast.

How does this whole process turn out? The transformation consists in feeling more life, in acquiring a new vision of oneself and of the world. It is also discovering that life hurts and above all it is discovering what love is. And this is a great discovery. It opens the door to live relationships more intensely, to develop trust. Also from there can be a new intuition of what the spiritual really means.

Occupy your own space

Taking one's own place is activating an antidote against resignation. It is typical of E5 conservation to resign oneself before taking risks: "taking risks, for what?", "it is not worth it", are the usual thoughts. It is a way of renunciation from the fear that you will not be able to achieve what you want. There are desires, but they are sublimated, diverted, replaced by little things or simply annulled. Well, it's about trying to take risks, starting to identify your own desires and needs and giving way to action to achieve at least some of them and feel what happens with it.

The next step is to further develop your presence, to participate where you are. This opens the E5 conservation to be more connected and generates more intense relationships with the people in the environment. It implies being more available to the demands of others and also allowing oneself to need others. It is a job of developing confidence in oneself and in others.

You need to learn to express yourself more directly. Ask more clearly, speak louder. Accept that sometimes they will listen to you and pay attention to you and sometimes not. The same thing happens with opinions and ideas: it's about expressing them whenever you want, accepting that sometimes you'll like them and sometimes you won't. It is important to detach yourself from your own ideas and conclusions.

Developing empathy means putting yourself in someone else's shoes. See from the other's perspective. Develop understanding and compassion.

Taking up your own space is another attribute that helps. In social settings, at work, etc. It is transformative to occupy one's place. The opposite of hiding and disconnecting is moserating and being connected, being respectful of what comes out of oneself. It is not an abrupt and clumsy exit but conscious and connected, consistent with one's own feelings, with the awareness of one's own needs and one's own fears.

Often, it will be necessary to do what is most difficult for a conservation five: teach groups, lead therapy groups, do individual therapy, give lectures, lead a team, to give a few examples. And also allow yourself to live your emotions and your instincts. Try to let go.

"My sexuality awoke from a very early age and was always linked to my fantasy, I could say that the creations of my imagination always mediated my experience and sexual desire. A strong contradiction between a great need and desire and a great fear took me to the end of adolescence without having a real experience with a woman. And then, too, I always needed to resort to the creations of my imagination. The first big step was the experience of feeling my partner as someone real, feeling her desire for me, for my body, and recognizing the fear I felt of abandoning myself to pleasure, of surrendering myself to pleasure with her. I experienced a breakthrough. Years later, another experience connected me with a great desire for another woman, reciprocated, which led me to feel for the first time in my life that I was totally delivered, in a passionate and instinctive way, living something like the fulfilled dream of being through to give myself over to pleasure", narrates Ignacio.

Another step is to reconcile with your masculinity or femininity, as appropriate, which are so suppressed by such little experience of your instinctive part. This means recovering one's own aggressiveness, understood as adgredere, going towards, putting energy into achieving an objective, satisfying a need.

Having a birthday party and, in general, organizing parties for fun goes a long way. This can be very good because of how strange it is for this character to host one of these events. And besides, you're likely to find that you actually like it.

Allowing your friends to get to know each other, getting them out of the watertight compartments where you often keep them, and doing it with awareness, will be a step forward.

It can be good to learn jokes and tell them. To make laugh. Laugh at yourself and generally bring your inner child to life.

"For me it is allowing myself to do crazy things, giving myself the luxury of saying what I think, allowing myself a bit of narcissism, self-aggrandizement, self-indulgence, giving myself a break, a satisfaction", says Maurizio Cei.

Flourish

It is to come to pass. Give life through others. Give your time and your attention. It is to find what one is for in the world. Find out what life and the world expect of us. This is not a goal, it is a process. It requires developing an intention to go to and act on what is in the present. An example may be illustrative:

"During my therapeutic process and my training as a therapist I went through several phases. At first it was something I did for my own growth, I didn't even imagine myself as a therapist. Later, the desire to be a therapist one day appeared in me, since I realized how much that helped me to be connected, but I saw it as something distant, someday when I had sufficiently prepared myself and obtained the necessary degrees. I have finally started practicing as a therapist with my current resources. First it was organizing and running a Zen meditation group. Then the idea arose of holding a gestalt workshop, then a cycle of bioenergetics workshops. Then a person appeared who asked me for individual therapy, then a colleague sent me another patient... Throughout this process I was able to live my fears, my insecurities, my ignorance, but I also discovered that I had many more resources than I thought. and each time I trusted more in myself", says Ignacio.

Developing a commitment to service is essential, in the area that has a personal meaning for each one. For example: working with groups, acting as a therapist or similar.

Meditation, naturally, will be more useful once a process of self-knowledge has begun, because without such a process there would be a risk of using it as an element of refuge. It can be helpful to connect with the "purposeless", "seeking nothing" of Zen.

Leading, leading, motivating, taking the reins, in any case from a purpose with personal meaning, are transformative elements, always from a purpose consistent with going towards self-realization. No matter where you are on the path.

"Embarking on a project that involves opening my own practice, having a psychotherapy center with other people, has meant daring to let myself be seen, going out into the public sphere, aware of my fears and difficulties and also of the satisfactions and opportunities that I offers", says Ignacio.

Helping others to heal is another step. From wherever you are and with your own resources, be it as a therapist or as a teacher, father, brother, friend or whatever. This can lead to connecting more and more frequently and counteracts the tendency to become self-absorbed.

Finally, it especially helps to work and balance the three loves through relationships, giving more space to compassionate-maternal love and recovering and giving life to erotic love or love-joy.