Do You Have Any Feet Left to Shoot?

I was wondering if you had any advice to give a Six who's having a hard time getting out of a rut.

One of the characters in a Nelson Demille novel asked another if he had "any feet left to shoot." The person in question was the hero of the story in every sense of the word, and his metaphorical "shot in the foot" referred to how recklessly he exposed himself to gangsters, because it was the "right" thing to do. So I'm not being literal in the title to this essay, although the metaphorical "wound" can be painful for Sixes, and it's easy to forget how the shooting was self-fulfilling.

The positive side of this phenomenon is a willingness to challenge I call the Patrick Henry Syndrome: "Give me liberty or give me death!" (It's interesting, given the Six's focus on hidden agendas, that Patrick Henry also said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.")

On his Enneagram tapes ("Easy in Your Harness") Tom Condon tells a story about gazelles, whose natural enemy is the lion. Instead of staying away from the lions, the gazelles keep the lion in sight, and occasionally one who's in denial of his fear (counterphobic) will move in close to the lion. Like gazelles, Sixes often fail to see how they keep themselves powerless by challenging others whose respect and/or affection they crave (in business that's often people in positions of authority). 

Sixes typically hold high standards for leadership, their own and others, and want to be helpful to their bosses. In personal relationships they may even seek partners who need help, and then keep the cycle alive by criticizing their partners for their failings. On the up side they're giving potentially useful feedback (and Sixes are good observers about what makes relationships work). At the same time, constantly reminding your boss or your life partner how s/he could be a better person has its obvious pitfalls. 

A Six client, for example, took great pride in his ability to pull projects together across functions, and couldn't understand why he received so little recognition and couldn't seem to get ahead in the organization. Yet every time he and I met he had another complaint he'd raised with his boss (a Five): "He's got to see that holing himself up in his office won't help him. He needs to wander around and let people get to know him. He never gives me or the others any praise," etc., etc., etc. Another Six found herself bouncing from job to job because she eventually got into an argument with her boss over some injustice and quit in anger (and without another job waiting on the side).  

In Beginning Your Enneagram Journey, Loretta Brady has outlined a process for self-observation that gently reminds us of the joys and difficulties of all nine styles. She says Sixes "offer trust and reliability in their friendships. And they seem able to be committed to others through all the ups and downs of relating..." However, "Because safety is tied to friendship, any change in affection is very threatening...." What Sixes tend to conclude is "I'm somehow lacking and may be abandoned," but instead of staying with their feelings and embracing their fear, they create a cover that makes it seem as if they know what's going on. 

This cover Brady refers to is associated with a psychological mechanism known as "projection" - the act of observing and reacting to something in others we fail to see in ourselves. Sixes certainly aren't the only ones to use projection, but they sometimes seem to have a corner on the market. As pointed out by William Miller in Chapter 7 of Meeting the Shadow (edited by Zweig and Abrams), projections can be positive as well as negative. So the fact that Sixes make heroes of certain people, for example, may be a projection of their own positive traits held in their unconscious. More often than not, however, our projections are negative. Some aspects of projections truly fit the other person (e.g., the Five boss mentioned above was a little stingy with praise). You're probably when your feelings about others are unusually strong and persistent. If you can't let go of focusing on how stingy with praise your boss is, for example, chances are you carry the same trait to some degree.

Sixes don't usually face the fact that their criticisms are held toward people they desperately want to like them. Nor do they realize the degree to which they give away their power placing all that energy outside themselves, instead of learning to love and trust themselves. It takes real courage to look inside, because to get there you've also got to face what you don't like about yourself.

Instead of always focusing on the lion, gazelles need to turn inward to embrace their own strengths and weaknesses, and deal with the lion only when they have to. Of many excellent self-empowerment strategies, here are two of the best for Sixes:

1. Get feedback from others about how they see you, and listen to it. Don't try to explain or defend yourself. Just try it on for size for a few days, giving yourself permission to see some things about yourself you may not like, as well as some strengths you find it hard to believe about yourself. (Sixes do a lot of self-doubting.)

2. Notice when you get really "hooked" by someone's behavior, assume that your reaction is partly projection of some unknown part of your own unconscious, and "bring it home." For example, if you find your wife or girlfriend to be "too critical," accept that as partly true but also "try it on" yourself. Notice the ways you're critical (of her, for example). If you think your boss is too stingy with praise, accept that as partly true but "try it on" yourself. Notice when you're stingy with praise. (And we know already you're stingy with praise for your boss.)

Over time you'll develop the capability to know what fits you and what doesn't. When you catch on to a projection, you'll find the strength of your emotion toward the other person lessens and you'll begin to see the unwanted trait in yourself. That's O.K. This doesn't make you a bad person; it just makes you more fully human. And the more you accept yourself as you are, the less those unwanted behaviors will own you.

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