E8 Conservation (Self-Preservation) – Satisfaction

The most armed of all the E8 is the conservational. The word that corresponds to it is satisfaction: "I have to have it. This is mine. I have to have it." It is more an intolerance of the frustration of what he wants to have than the actual having of it. In this sense, it is somewhat like a characteristic of the sexual E1, who is also obsessed in the desire for him. But an E1 is very different from an E8. One is hypersocial, while eight is completely antisocial. One is too concerned with the rules and the other too little.

The E8 conservation pursues the satisfaction of your needs. He doesn't usually talk much. It is like the lion. A lion only moves when it is hungry. It seeks to satisfy its unsatisfied hunger and then sleeps for the rest of the day. Very majestically. It's like no nonsense, no words, no puns in a conservation eight.

We could say that his need is that of an exaggerated selfishness. They are the people who know how to do business and know how to haggle to get ahead of everyone. There is the expression: a used car salesman. That is the art or the talent of the eight conservation. But it is also his need: he is a survivor, a term that has been used for eights in general, but is more indicative of the conservation eight. He knows how to survive in the most difficult situations. He knows how to get things, how to get away with it.

The transformation in the conservation E8 by Juanjo Albert

Claudio: I don't know if everyone here knows Juanjo Albert, part of the national psychiatric mythology. We haven't seen him around here in a long time. They are scarce, the eight conservation. So I'm very happy to have one who is not only eight conservation, but also an experienced psychiatrist who has not only seen himself through a long journey, but has seen many patients through his life, and surely he has taken a great account of people similar to him.

Juanjo: Well, I had seriously prepared a paper, with etiology, etc., but I am going to limit myself to Claudio's indication of talking about what the path of self-knowledge is like for a conservation figure. So I go to read my text and thus save time.

In the first place, what the eight of conservation need to understand is that, basing ourselves on our idea that kindness and good intentions do not exist, what we do is disqualify and discredit before ourselves and before others any feeling or person, idea or institution that opposes our wishes. Also, we disqualify for the mere fact of having something to go against.

When an E8 approaches therapy, this is something he already senses. Although they do not believe too much in the therapeutic process, it is from this intuition that they approach it.

From here, it is necessary to start assuming the anguish caused by the emptiness of not having reasons to go against anything. We must also assume that this compulsive movement only responds to intolerance, frustration and anguish, and that, deep down, it is nothing more than a desire for revenge for which we do not even know why. It is healthy, therefore, to open up to the understanding that something must be covering up this compulsion to attack, since there are no objective reasons to attack.

The eight conservation also need to open ourselves to the understanding that, in reality, there is something more than the purely material and physical, and that we are something more than a body. It is necessary to understand that life goes beyond what is perceived sensorially. That love exists and that, in principle, for us it is a completely unknown experience. From this ignorance of love we can assume that it is precisely love, because it is unknown, that scares us. It helps to recognize the impotence to love and the disqualification with which we look at the world of feelings, precisely to hide this impotence towards love.

We conservation E8s also need to recognize that generous group protection—going to the point of allowing others to lean on us—is more than a way for us to secure our status and hide insecurity. We must realize that this generous offer imposes the condition that things always be done our way, and requires that others give up a part of their lives and their ways of doing things. All this implies an obedience that we falsely call loyalty.

We conservation eights apply a drop count, under strict control, in what is nothing more than a way of generating dependency. Dependence of which later we are equally slaves.

Under the cover of ensuring the fidelity of others, what we seek is to feel security. Furthermore, we then blame the protégés for being dependent on us, for not doing things well and independently, for themselves, since we want everything our way.

A very important step in evolving is to let go of the need for possession. Both on the material and on the emotions of others. It would be about reaching the conviction that the world and people do not belong to us and are not at our disposal.

Recognizing the right to one's own life of others, letting go of the desire to own people and goods, and trusting in the generosity of others and of one's life itself are also steps toward healing.

It is possible that this renunciation of possessiveness is one of the hardest steps and that it needs more time to establish a healthy nucleus in the personality, since possession is one of the ways with which we feel that we secure our lives, and renouncing it means confronting ourselves with the anguish of insecurity. The feeling is akin to being left without any possible protection.

It helps to take responsibility for our actions and, above all, for our own failures, excesses and exploitation, both of ourselves and others, and not to blame anyone for their weakness. This

inevitably happens by acknowledging the pain that we have caused ourselves and that we have caused to others.

It is necessary to assume the use that is made, with total contempt, of people and their lives, both emotionally and physically, for their own benefit – even those who were believed or claimed to love – either out of evil or ignorance.

It is convenient to see the insensitivity to pain, contempt, disregard, not taking into account the lives of others except as mere throwing objects... This is the crucial bridge for the enneatype eight conservation, and crossing it supposes such a laceration of emotional and physical pain that you never want to cause this damage again, neither for the other nor for yourself.

I think this is the point of no return. Once we become aware of the consequences of the pain we cause ourselves and others, we don't want to go through it again.

In my experience, this has been the crucial point. The experience of the pain caused leaves no other way than to move forward to try not to fall into it again. And to restore, as far as possible, the damage caused.

From this recognition, we are intensely sensitized to the emotional pain that we can unnecessarily cause. Seeing the pain, one strives to be impeccable in the action and care of the other.

On this path, one comes to the understanding and knowledge that the pain of the other is also mine. Not in theory, but in the flesh itself. And we can choose to be harmed rather than harm others.

Thus, consideration for others, their recognition as free and sensitive people — not as objects of exploitation — is the achievement from which this enneatype begins to grow and mature.

But this awareness is not easy to maintain, both because of the tendency to unconscious action, based on the pure habit of not giving consideration to anything beyond one's own noses, and because of the difficulty of controlling one's own impulse.

Control over impulsivity, both for those actions that from a moral point of view we could consider bad and for those that we would consider good, is a tool without which it becomes very difficult to move forward. Impulse control involves not only stopping action, but most importantly: being aware in the present of the consequences that actions can have on others. That is, to have others present, so that we avoid acting without paying attention to the consequences. It is difficult, but this awareness helps in the attempt to get closer to impeccability in action. It's worth a try.

Stopping the momentum and staying idle gives you the opportunity to see what's behind the compulsion to action. In addition, you have the opportunity to get to know what we really need and want, and it opens the possibility of realizing that the compulsion to action responds only to intolerance to frustration and anguish so typical of E8 conservation, embarked on a permanent flight from it, in a behavior of avoidance. In short, a cowardice.

Stopping the momentum also means giving others the opportunity to see us devoid of the power with which we invest ourselves. It is the opportunity to present ourselves as limited and normal people, something that is avoided because it can suffocate the source of security.

Neurotic thinking assures that, "as long as you are loyal to me, I will meet your needs." This is an important point, since it is one of the most unconscious movements of the conservation subtypes, one of the pillars of their neurosis, since the eight conservation is supposed to be omnipotent, capable of satisfying itself and satisfying any need.

All this assumes that the path goes through understanding and assuming that the limits are not established to limit myself precisely to me, to limit my freedom, but on the contrary: the limits are established in order to be free. Normally, we tend to consider that boundaries mark the place where something ends, when rather they could be seen as a support from which something new can be started. Accepting boundaries means being able to contain anguish and not run away from it. It means to stop cycling downhill and without brakes, shouting without anyone hearing us: "Oh my God, someone or something stop me!" To accept limits is to leave behind rebellion: rebellion against the external and the need to dominate reality. It's a break.

But it is much more important to be able to leave behind the rebellion against oneself: that means constant and sound health in the present. You have to accept that things are as they are, that you are the way you are, with your own physical, emotional and intellectual limits; something as simple as realizing that being tired is not being sick, and that being sick is not an unimportant. It means accepting oneself and being able to see that it can be changed from within. That I need to change from within and that you can influence the path more effectively by going for than by going against.

To leave the inner rebellion, against oneself, is to reach the backwater that this guy needs, the peace he longs for, the love he does not know. It offers the possibility of taking care of yourself, of loving yourself and of being loved.

From my experience, this means being able to come to love and be worthy of being loved, as well as leaving the need to make demonstrations of power: to surrender power. So, plain and simple. To concede that the other also has reasons and feelings that, probably, I do not yet know in myself and with which perhaps I can develop and grow.

It helps, by song, to concede that the other may be right instead of going with a previous attitude of rejection. It helps to stop presupposing the other malignancy: this opens the door to

being able to establish a real emotional contact, and leads to being able to be really generous, tender and kind.

I believe that it is from the surrender of power that another stage of the road begins where there is more truth. And then the path becomes faster: one perceives deeper and more permanent changes and, although it is also more painful, at the same time one is much more loving, above all loving with oneself.

One perceives that people are good and deserving. And, from there, whatever comes is accepted. It is, in the end, to develop an attitude of trust and dedication to life as it is presented.

Claudio: The good thing [about Juanjo] is that he is believed. His words sound like he went through that.

Juanjo: Yes... to blood and fire.