Spirit of the Enneagram: Type Five Forum

A place for questions and reflections around the type five enneastyle.

These are the best practices offered during the webinar:

What a Five Can Do:

  • Lift weights (whether you are a man or a woman). Notice that you are organic. That means the more effort you spend, the more strength you have. Learn this truth in your body and apply it to your mind and spirit.
  • Put this sign on your desk (all fives have desks): “You have to sing like you don’t need the money.”
  • Spend time in nature reflecting on its abundance. Notice how there is always enough – and that it comes effortlessly!

4 Comments on “Spirit of the Enneagram: Type Five Forum

  1. Good afternoon. I am Dean Sharpe, a five, and I will be your mentor on this forum page. I have worked with the Enneagram for over 20 years and it has been very useful in my own awareness and my relationship with my wife, an eight. Please post any questions you may have and I’ll respond.

    • Greetings – I’m Bonnie Reese, another five. I’ve been studying enneagram for about 5-6 years. I have group of 12 people. We study with our teacher who has studied under Richard Groves.

      I know I’m a five in that I’m constantly observing and processing it all. I get pretty exhausted. A cruise ship situation can be too much – there’s a LOT going on in a cruise.

      I too am married to an eight. For me it’s a good combination. My husband’s expansive eight energy gets me going along. I also use that arrow to eight. At certain times I ask myself “What would an eight do?”. Answer is always “move into it, you’re prepared enough”.

      In reply to ‘what song is yours?’ I thought of “She’s got everything she needs, she’s an artist she don’t look back”. I hum this when I’m contentedly working on a project that’s moving along.

  2. Thanks for your comments. Yes the eight energy does move me out into the world and she is often frustrated by the amount of time it takes me to analyze before doing–analysis paralysis. The lost message of the five childhood is that our needs are important. Because we haven’t felt our needs are likely to be honored, we tend to have fewer and contract them to the minimum. Thus some of our stinginess, living simply and the reason the song resonates–we think we have everything we need. Unfortunately it was a lie early on that our needs were not important and a lie we continue to tell ourselves thus cutting us off from the connection we really so desperately want.