Enneagram Type Seven

I'm tired of changing my enneagram type every few years. First they decided I was a Nine. Then they decided, no, I'm not a Nine, I just have chronic fatigue, which is why I appear to be 'lazy.' So then they decided that I'm actually a Six. But now they're thinking I'm a Seven.

I like the enneagram, but it's a trial-and-error process figuring out what you are. And I'm not one of the people who says 'Therefore, all personality type systems are bullshit.' Just because it's difficult to use them or understand them doesn't mean that they have no useful information or useful observations about personalities. People CAN be categorized. Their personalities seem to be stable over time, and people are different from each other, but categorically similar.

While reading Choke, I had to ask what enneagram type Chuck Palahniuk or his characters are. It's an unhealthy Seven, doing hyperactive, random, addictive things in order to get some excitement out of life. My 'prescription' for an unhealthy Seven is the same as my prescription for everybody else.

And I have to quote Judith Swack even though I associate her with the onset of the psychotronic attacks and I've never been sure if she was responsible for it. But the name of her treatment is 'Healing From The Body Level Up,' and I take that same approach, although I am not doing anything like what she does in her therapy. I'm more interested in things like nutrition and detoxification from chemicals that cause environmental illness. Elimination diets like the Feingold Diet, the Failsafe Diet, wheat-free and dairy-free diets, and so on, will calm down hyperactive people, and I know this from my own experiences.

So in that way I use a similar approach, that no matter what's wrong, I start by assuming there are physical health problems that are the first thing to work on. I don't like 'talk therapy.' (However, that doesn't mean that talking is useless, it just means that my own experience with 'talk therapy' never solved the problem that I had chronic fatigue, chronic pain and illnesses, and food sensitivities, and I was being physically attacked by criminals as well, and those were the main reasons why I couldn't get my life together.) That's the first thing that goes through my mind whenever I read a story like that where somebody seems to have a chaotic life and a lot of problems.

I was told that my writing style resembled Palahniuk, and when I read that book, I saw a lot of things that I talk about, like herbs, and medical problems. I remember back when I wasn't yet on the semi-Feingold diet that I am on now, my informal diet where I avoid the worst foods most of the time (cereal, milk, etc), and I was extremely hyperactive in college and I did a lot of bizarre and impulsive things, but I couldn't actually focus and complete a task.

This is on a slightly different topic, but, there are things people say about Libertarians (or sometimes, Objectivists). One of the things people joke about is, a Libertarian won't even call the fire department when the house is burning down. I used to call myself a Libertarian before I called myself an anarchist (and an anarchist is even more extreme than a Libertarian in that way). Someone had said to me recently that I should call the health department because the landlord wasn't doing anything about the mold in my apartment (although, he did a couple things to try to fix it), and my response was that I didn't want to escalate the conflict to a higher level. I don't go calling authorities on people unless there is some desperate emergency. I prefer talking things out and getting mediators and acting as though there is no government. I assume, as an anarchist, that I should always ask the question, what would I do if there were no government? How would I resolve conflicts with people? Not just about the mold, but also about other things people have done.

I'm going to try to have children of my own, but I also like to read about adoption. I have learned a lot about relationships by reading about adoption, especially because adopted children tend to have more problems than children raised in one household all their lives. I am usually friends with people who have problems, because I don't feel understood by people whose lives are all together and going great. Whenever you 'adopt' an adult as a friend, it's similar to adopting a child because you didn't raise that person, you didn't teach them what they know, and their beliefs and values may be totally different from your own, they might do things that you hate, they might do things that you totally disagree with, and you somehow have to accept that this is something you have no control over. Granted, there are limits to who you choose to 'adopt' because there still has to be something useful or valuable in the relationship at some level. You don't associate with people who are absolutely worthless to you or hostile to you in every possible way.

Well, 'they' have been asking me to assume, what if you adopted somebody who had problems or criminal behavior and you still had to be a parent to somebody in spite of that. This applies to adult relationships too, not just adoptions. However, thinking of it as an 'adoption' helps remind me that when you choose a friend, you choose a long-term relationship, a long-term bond with somebody who is a human being, a real and imperfect person. You don't just bond with people and then drop them the next day, on a whim.

Every living person has a set of parents (unless they were conceived in a test tube using artificial genes that didn't come from a human). Every person needs whatever it is that parents provide. So reading about adoption made me wonder, what is it that parents are supposed to do for their children? What role do they play? If you could choose your parents, what kind of parents would you choose, assuming that there really is a *need* for the role parents play? What do you have control over, and what can you not control? What good things can you do for your children that will help them through all of their lives? There really are better and worse ways to be a parent. All of those things apply to ordinary relationships with people too: what roles do you play, and what good can people do for each other in their relationships.

So, bonding with a friend isn't literally an adoption and it isn't literally a parent-child relationship, but again, I've been reading about adoptions and it reminds me of that. Adult relationships have some of the same issues, for instance, accepting that somebody is a real person even though they do something that you hate.
And yes, I am going on with my life, and I will still be here, although I do have to move to another apartment, but as far as I know, I'm staying in the area. Right now, unfortunately, the household herbal contamination is still the biggest problem in my life, and it's impossible to convince other people that it's real. The herbal contamination is actually an even *worse* problem than the psychotronic attacks, for me. It has to be fixed before I can do anything else.