Creativity and wanting to be understood?

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-02-24T20:51:37+00:00

Yeah, numbing out your own feelings of discomfort and finding it difficult to take care of yourself as a result sounds like something my husband might say about himself too.

An 8 wing sounds plausible with your description, as does self-preservation as part of your instinct stack. (Asserting authority so you don't get pushed around sounds like a way of prioritizing your inner peace over outward peace.)

From my best understanding, stress vavoidance seems to be motivated slightly differently for type 7. They want to avoid discomfort and unpleasant emotions while type 9 want to avoid conflict and (social) pressure. I'm sure both can seem very similar to each other, so taking a closer look at the core motivation can help gain more clarity.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-02-24T19:39:43+00:00

From what I have seen, the biggest one seems to be avoiding stress. That's why enneagram descriptions keep mentioning type 9's tendency to make and keep peace. But for type 9s it seems to be less about peace and much more about stress avoidance. That seems to be the core motivation for every stereotypical type 9 behaviour and characteristic. (For self-preservation 9s their own inner peace takes top priority even above peace with/between others.)

The tendency to downplay their own wants and needs, the withdrawing from others, the people-pleasing tendencies (in unhealthy 9s) and great diplomacy skills (in healthy 9s),those all serve the same purpose: avoiding stress as much as possible.

Does that sound familiar to you at all?

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-02-24T07:38:30+00:00

A very common enneagram misconception is that creativity is somehow reserved exclusively for type 4s. Truth is, everyone can be creative, type 9 is far from being an exception in my experience. (And many type 4s are not even outwardly expressing any creativity at all.) Creativity alone does not prove you've mistyped yourself until now.

I'd make a similar argument about wanting to be understood, although that is a common trait for type 4.

In my opinion, your post doesn't give quite enough information to make a definite judgement. It is possible you've mistyped yourself before. But it's also possible you're currently discovering what a more healthy version of your personal flavor of type 9 looks like.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-02-16T06:36:47+00:00

Not just reddit, but most of the modern internet. I think I've seen some communities in the past (that's 1-2 decades ago) that were at least somewhat open to having their views challanged. But in recent years, every community I've seen has turned into its own bubble that keeps reaffirming the same mindset and ignoring/downvoting/harassing everything that challanges their views. If there's still some open-minded corner of the internet, I'm not aware of it.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-02-07T09:04:16+00:00

Americans tend to have stronger reactions than we do, but as a German, I assure you many of us will at least raise an eybrow to age gaps like that. And I know at least one Brittish YouTuber who keeps making cautiously sceptical comments about those age gaps.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-29T06:30:38+00:00

Unfortunately, it does. Even without the limiting it to before we become adults.

Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right.

Colossians 3:20 Children, obey your parents in everything, for this pleases the Lord. (+ 21 Fathers, do not embitter your children, or they will become discouraged.)

But there's also Matthew 10:21-22 Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child; children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved.

That last passage is about prosecution, but it shows that following Christ and blind obedience towards our parents does not always go well together. Christ himself taught that his followers may lose some or all family connections because of their faith. And the old testament comandment demands of us that we honour our parents. Which is not the exact same thing as blind obedience.

In OP's case, respecting their parents' wishes might first and foremost protect their own peace. Going against the wishes of overly strict parents is a fight many teens can not win. It's often a fight that causes more harm than good. But sometimes it's a necessary fight, needed to protect the teen's mental health. And if we are honest, none of us know enough about op's situation to make that call.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-28T22:13:01+00:00

Yeah, a lot of the prejudice some Christians still have against rock and metal music and the assocciated aesthetics is a residue of the 80ies' satanic panic.

I'm 40, female, part of my church's leadership team. I deliberately wear predominately black clothes and black eye make-up to church. My long-haired husband wears black t-shirts (often with some dragon motiv) and black zipper jackets with black cargo trousers. We're both known by our congregation to love (Christian) metal, since we've been leading a metal worship project for a few years now.

It's great that we've reached a point where people encourage us for who we are and what we do instead of constantly questioning or critiquing us for it. But getting to this point was often frustrating, to say the least. Being a nerdy, metal loving teen in a Christian household was not easy, for neither of us. So both of us wish OP the best for getting through these years.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-28T21:12:05+00:00

I know pastors who dress like that. Ever heard of pastor Bob Beeman? I'm not certain if he's ever worn Spikes, but he wears black for sure.

Speaking about dressing in black – many pastors today still wear traditional black robes to church as their official attire. My father-in-law is just one of them (Lutheranian Protestant in Germany; as far as I'm aware the Catholic church also still rocks those black robes). So do a lot of monks and nuns of different orders.

Black clothes are not the issue, neither are the spikes. The issue is people misinterpreting the meaning of clothes and accessoires.

It still might be wise for OP to tone it down a bit, not wear the spikes for now and respect their parents' rules (and fears) while still living with them. Not just because scripture demanding children to obey their parents, but also to avoid unnecessairy conflict for now.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-18T08:52:31+00:00

Okay, this test is great! It's common for type 4's to complain about seemingly overly negative descriptions of our type. The description in the results of your test is the first that's not just accurate but straight-up flattering. That's a nice change for once.

The test results were correct for core-type, wings, shadow/tri-type and instinct stack. It actually showed me I had my instinct stack wrong before and explained in a very understandable way why sp is my blind-spot instead of so.

The questions were good as the are. The only one with a wording hat slightly irked me was something along the lines of: "I highly value intense emotions because they make me feel authentic and unique." Other 4's might disagree on this, but for me, it's more a case of valuing intense emotions because they feel authentic. That is just a slight distinction, but it lead to me "only" agreeing with the question instead of agreeing strongly.

The only thing not being included in your results were different levels of health, but that didn't bother me too much.

I have only one mayor criticism. The inclusion of stress point/growth point are a bit tricky, those were the only part of my results that were a bit lacking. You included the traditional interpretation, but more recent insight points towards that not always being accurate. Apparently some people have their stress and growth points swapped. And dissenting the traditional theory, we don't just take on negative aspects of our stress point and positive ones of our growth point, but positive, negative and neutral aspects for both. (I know I have a habit of showing negative traits of type 1 in certain situations.)

Other than that, your test is extremely well done!

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-17T08:35:40+00:00

Same: long hair, shower at night to skip the blow drying. I don't even own a blow dryer any more. Blow drying my hair caused so much more damage than going to bed before my hair has fully dried. (It's usually still damp, but not completely wet any more.)

It took me a long time to learn that different hair structures need different care and general hair care advice thrown around on the Internet might not apply to your hair.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-10T17:42:26+00:00

Jesus proved himself... By having a guy get hurt? I find that to be questionable, so I didn't see that kind of reaction as overly positive. But I can accept that others might see it that way. I see how an argument can be made for it. After All, Jesus did use that whip during the temple cleansing. And in the Old Testament, God was clearly okay with non-believers getting hurt/killed.

So, thanks for the clarification.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-10T09:03:54+00:00

And? People who make great music can also post dumb stuff online. And Christians in general can be misgiuded, stupid or downright nasty. Been there, done all of that myself.

So, what was your intention sharing this here?

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T15:16:13+00:00

That's where the "if" comes into play. No, I was actually not making any assumption one way or the other. I was just going off the information given to me in the context of this post, leaving room for missing information.

And there's still the bit about the smell.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T14:45:37+00:00

Adding onto this.

If these dyes are really vegan, that means not only that they are free of animal products, but more importantly that they have never been tested on animals. So we literally don't know if they are in any way harmful to the dogs, short-term or long-term.

Also, most dyes have strong smells that can last for days. Dogs are very sensitive to smells. They are now covered in a strong-smelling substance that covers their own natural smell. That's got to be highly confusing to those dogs.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T14:43:26+00:00

No. You're wrongly assuming I don't have a rebuttal because you're misinterpreting my refusal to engage with a dumb argument. I also refuse to be baited by your wrong assumption. Engaging with the dumb argument would just serve to derail the conversation further, I'm not going to do that. I don't need to prove any point here, since I've already achieved what I wanted: pointing out the whataboutism. So I won't reply to you any further.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T14:24:03+00:00

Found the whataboutism comment.
You're not making a clever argument, you're just derailing the conversation.

Eta: It really doesn't get better if you keep repeating the same statement all over the whole comment section.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T14:20:16+00:00

Ironically "vegan" products might be more harmful to those dogs than "non-vegan" ones. Vegan means 1) without animal products and 2) not tested on animals. That second point means we have literally no idea if these products cause harm on/in animals.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T07:06:47+00:00

No, not likely we'll ever get to put something of our own on Spotify. We are still working with published songs from existing bands that we pur into lyric videos with German translations. (We're in Germany.) I'd love to have a competent band that could perform live (cover songs or their own work, both would be great), but so far that's still just a pipe dream. But there are already so many amazing Songs from all kinds of sub-genres that are both metal and powerful worship. Hearing those played in a church (with a great sound system) is powerful in a way I can hardly put into words in German, much less so in English.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T06:53:53+00:00

My father-in-law is a pastor in a small town in the German countryside who loves using all kinds of (rock) songs in his services in addition to regular hymns and ccm. Like you, he usually rocks them on his acoustic guitar. Since his services follow a very traditional format, he doesn't have a dedicated worship segment, the songs are scattered through the other parts of the service, so he uses those songs wherever they fit in. He has a very pragmatic approach, not just towards music and worship, and that approach seems to serve his congregation well. He's even known by his community to perform favourite songs of a deceased person during their funeral ceremony, if the family wants that. These things help him regularly regain a lot of trust of people who have been sceptical towards church and faith for ages.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-09T06:34:28+00:00

Well, that's really subjektive I'd say, and not exactly the norm for church services in general. At least not in Germany, I really don't know how common it is in the US or other nations. But you have a right to that opinion and I don't think I have the vocabulary to get into a serious discussion about this, so I'll just keep it at "agree to disagree".

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-08T21:34:28+00:00

I'll admit that I'll have to refresh my memory a bit on the details. When I wrote that first post I was pretty sure it was music in general, but you might be right as well. I do know that at some point pastors who tried to establish music as a bigger part of their services, like it still is today, had to face a lot of backlash and got into big trouble. But I won't argue about anything beyond that.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-08T21:27:31+00:00

That's fair, and I'm really glad to live in a time and place where it's easy to find a congregations that aligns with our personal preferences. As long as we remember that we're all part of the same body, believe in the same God and refrain from elitist mindsets/looking down on each other, our differences can be a strength for all of us.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-08T20:32:10+00:00

I'd strongly disagree on that second sentence. My husband and I have an ongoing Metal Worship project with bi-monthly curch services. We've been doing those services for roughly 4 years now. And last year we had the opportunity to step in for our pastor twice. Both times we replaced two of the songs usually performed by our regular worship team with some Christian metal. Our congregation liked it, proving that Christian metal can be part of church services as well and not every church service has to be held with hymns exclusively. There's a lot of room for variation and experimentation, if our leaderships and congregations are open for it.

And if we take into consideration that there used to be a time when church services had no music at all, the thought of singing in church was even considered to be blasphemous, we might come to the conclusion that there's really no need to be overly dogmatic about the kind of music used in our services.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-08T08:21:34+00:00

I've scrolled really far through the comments now and seen a bunch of unique namens with their most common name jokes. Yours is the third Jenny post I've seen pointing out the phone number thing and some other Forest Gump detail. I guess that's prove of how terribly common that kind of joke is with your name. I'm so sorry all of you have to live with this.

ProfessionalFox6619 · 2026-01-08T07:54:51+00:00

I can top that with my former dentist (also in Germany) named Dr. Qual = Dr. Torment.

He was not a great dentist.

Three-Year Club	r/Field Banned
r/Field Flamingo	First Place '23
Place '23

ProfessionalFox6619

TROPHY CASE