Refuge and the Self-Preservation Five

Hello and welcome to the Barrcast. I'm your host, Nick Barr, coming to you on a Sunday evening. We're getting a lot of rain in New York, so we've got hot, muggy weather. And it's a good time to seek refuge, and so that's the keyword of the Enneagram Type 5 self-preservation, or in Spanish, conservación, or refugio. Beautiful word in Spanish, translated neatly to refuge. But let's get right into it and find out what keyword makes most sense for us. This is a really wonderful chapter, so I am going to go deep on it because I actually think this is... The self-preservation five is the fiviest of the fives subtypes. And so I want to go deep on this. It's also the best written chapter, in my opinion, because it goes into more of the five in their less integrated state. I've also had a glass of wine, so I'm amped up to do this. So let's see how it goes. The need to retreat is a clear characteristic for the conservation type five. However, it must be taken into account that each subtype of the five has some of that, a need to withdraw. In the case of conservation, the passion has a lot to do with finding refuge, erecting high walls that separate them from a world that can invade them, that can take them out of a small precious world hidden inside them. The idea of self-conservation becomes clear if we imagine them as firm supporters of retreating into a cave. The five conservation extremely limits their needs and desires as each desire could mean a status of dependency for them. Like every conservation subtype, this one is also linked to survival in the concrete, attached to objects in personal space, but as a five, which is the most mental of the mental characters, it is in thought, in incessant reflection on the way to survive and live by limiting external disturbances where they find the greatest refuge. So already just like really wonderfully lucid writing. I think we're seeing themes again of why Buddhism... might appeal to a five, a practice that literally talks about going into a cave. And then we're also starting to touch on a few different metaphors. We've talked about the cave, but then we also talk about high walls. And at least one of the popular Enneagram organizations, I forget which one, calls this subtype castle is their keyword. And I think castle is I wish there was one word for castle meets cave. Refuge, the problem with refuge is it's a little bit hopeful, and so you might actually think that. You might get away from what the passion is trying to do here. It is not a successful strategy. None of these strategies is ultimately successful. Instead, it's a self-perpetuating strategy. Retreat, you know, retreat is actually not a bad keyword. Refuge is also fine. It's a radical act of separation. It's a removal from the possibility of invasion. But castle and cave, maybe these are sub-subtypes. Cave is an act of renunciation. Cave is private. Cave is... retreating and then castle is more of a fortress defense it so castle is prepared for interaction and heavily boundaried we think about moats we think about spires we think about little little windows for archery to stick through Cave is removing oneself from the possibility of interaction. So there are two different versions of refuge, and I think this subtype covers them both. Castle, and I think we'll cover this later, castle does a good job of describing, maybe part of this is just like, do you have a family or not? Because the family-oriented SP5, you can't have a cave. I mean, you can have a castle and you can have a man cave in your castle. And man cave is a perfectly good thing to have in the back of our heads here for the five. I think men who have their man cave are accessing their five. It's probably, you know, and okay, so let's just touch on that. If you have a man cave, are you a five? No, not necessarily. You might be a five. But the, I think this is maybe a good point to touch on masculine feminine energy in Enneagram. According to Naranjo Naranjo. Roughly speaking, the left side of the Enneagram is masculine, the right side is feminine. So five, six, seven, eight have more masculine energy. Not that women can't be those numbers, they just have more masculine energy. And then a five connects to all those. A five is the wing of a six, and then a five goes to seven and eight, and seven and eight go to five. So all of those numbers may have times where they want this cave-like retreat. And I think for people in relationship with a man who needs to withdraw, these are classic, at least in the U.S., like classic gender stereotypes, the man cave. I think learning about the SP5 and the passion of refugio, refuge, is instructive. So let's go deeper. The transformation in the social preservation five by Jose Ignacio Fernandez. I got to know the Enneagram in 1998 and had a great impact on me. I'm not going to diligently read all of this. I'm going to skip it. How the process starts seeing the cave that I'm in. At first, the main work for ego healing consists of becoming aware of one's own vengeful attitude towards the world, which manifests itself with separateness. It involves undoing the victim image that judges the world as hostile, inadequate, hypocritical, ignorant, brutal, etc. When this issue becomes clear, one becomes aware that withdrawal and hiding are forms of aggression toward others. And I think this is a really important point for the five that I don't think came up in the previous subtypes. becoming aware of one's vengeful attitude toward the world one's one has certain beliefs about the world that are maybe not so obvious to the five the five might think that their separateness comes from a quirkiness or an introversion or an inborn innate inclination But according to Jose Ignacio Fernandez, connecting with this vengeful, the world is not merely scary, the world is brutal, hostile, full of idiots, but full of dangerous idiots, potentially. The process also involves becoming aware of one's own vulnerability, hypersensitivity, and fear of being crushed, and realizing that these difficulties are so great that they lead to avoidance and disconnection. It is about seeing how little life one has that the choice to manage with little implies living little. That giving up needs means having a rather unsatisfactory life. That giving up needs means having a rather unsatisfactory life. In the end, it's about seeing that there's great passion for not wearing oneself out, for conserving one's energies. That's why the SP5 is the five-iest five, conserving one's energies, as there's no faith in being able to obtain more. It is necessary to identify the unattainable ideal of the self. This unattainable ideal then harkens back to our talk about the social five, totem. Yeah, so fives want to avoid conflict. That's why they're going to the cave, to the castle, to the fortress, to the refuge. So why is that? Conflict is experienced internally, and it is necessary to see the toll this entails. This is really starting to point now to the energy deficiency that five experiences. On the one hand, the price is self-aggression by internalizing anger, internalizing rage, also killing the other internally, the inner beheader. It is useful to recognize the mechanism by which, when what is perceived as a particularly painful aggression occurs, a great resentment develops internally, which, however, the conservation five barely allows themselves to express outwardly. I mean, I would go farther to say they barely allow themselves to experience internally. The most common consequence of this resentment is withdrawal. resentment is a constant so um and let's let's listen to this quote from Ignacio Fernandez I have indeed left many relationships after feeling hurt by something the process is always very similar first something happens that hurts me I do not express it I keep it inside and later I start to have feelings of rejection or devaluation toward that person and I withdraw stop having contact with them Normally,… This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit barrcast.substack.com