Personality Style FIVE: The Wise Person
Core Value Tendency: FIVES are attracted to and value wisdom, knowledge, and learning. They want to understand the world and make it a more reasonable place to live in. Having insights, learning about the nature of things, and seeing how everything fits together is what life is all about.
Adaptive Cognitive Schema: The objective vision that keeps FIVES aligned with their true nature and with reality is the realization that real understanding and wisdom come from experience, participation, being involved with people and the world. And being known, seen, and revealed (transparent) is just as vital as knowing, seeing, and revealing.
Adaptive Emotional Schema: The state that accompanies the FIVES’ objective paradigm is non-attachment, which is the experience of love as flowing in and out vs being withheld from outside and bottled up inside. The energy of life flows freely into and out of the self. The detached person takes in just what is needed and lets the rest go. The world is engaged and joined for the mutual enrichment of both world and self.
Adaptive Behavioral Schemas: The combination of an appreciation of wisdom as involvement and interaction along with the state of non-attachment lead to the ability to both detach and be observant and synthetically get the whole picture as well as analytically getting to the heart or essence of the matter. FIVES inner observer or fair witness is well developed allowing them dispassionately and objectively to consider situations and events. They can put together disparate pieces of information into a unified system and distill complex situations into concise insights and pithy statements. FIVES can move ideas and images around in their head facilely. They can communicate clearly and succinctly. They are comfortable with solitude.
Maladaptive Cognitive Schema: When FIVES exaggerate their intellectual qualities, they over-identify with the idealized self image of I am wise and perceptive. To compensate for the maladaptive belief that they don’t know enough to act assuredly and assertively and so are inadequate, and to keep themselves safe from criticism, they try to be wise and invisible. FIVES don’t want to look foolish. They move away from involvement and up into their heads. They believe if you don’t know what they’re thinking, you can’t criticize them. And if you don’t know their position, you can’t shoot them down. FIVES are overly sensitive and may exaggerate or misperceive intrusions, demands, being engulfed and taken over. They believe the world is depriving and/or intrusive. FIVES don’t want to look foolish.
Maladaptive Emotional Schema: As a consequence of moving away from the world and attempting to live solely from their own resources, FIVES experience the passion of avarice. They are greedy for knowledge and information to keep them safe and unassailable and are stingy with their ideas, feelings, time energy, etc. Operating from a scarcity mentality, FIVES hold on to what they have and withhold from others lest what they have be taken away from them.
Maladaptive Behavioral Schema: Perceiving the world as depriving and intrusive, and feeling greedy and avaricious about this uncaring state of affairs, FIVES are inclined to move away from the world, retreating into the sanctuary and privacy of their minds. They tend to be loners who view life from the sidelines. They need to understand something completely before they make a decision and act. It is difficult for FIVES to move against people and confront them to protect their space and ask for what they want. It’s also difficult to move toward people and express affection. FIVES are afraid of and avoid their feelings and go instead to their ideas. It’s hard for FIVES to stay connected or be too exposed.
What is Avoided: Because they want to appear wise and guard their privacy, FIVES avoid feeling empty or being emptied. FIVES avoid situations where they don’t know what they are supposed to do. Knowing the guidelines, the rules of the game, what is expected and allowed helps them enter the game. When they are afraid they’ll be taken advantage of, they stay out of the game.
Defensive Maneuvers: FIVES ward off uncomfortable feelings and situations through isolation and compartmentalization. To avoid feeling empty or drained, FIVES isolate themselves in their heads away from the intrusions of their feelings and other people. They separate or compartmentalize their thoughts from their feelings. That’s why when you ask FIVES what they’re feeling, they tell you what they’re thinking. They also separate one time or period of their life from another. With FIVES, out of sight tends to be out of mind vs making the heart grow fonder.
Childhood Development: FIVES may have experienced their parenting figures as being either too intrusive or too aloof and depriving. They didn’t experience their environment as empathic, as coming to them when they needed something and leaving them alone when they were playing contentedly. As a result they withdrew and began to do everything alone. By distancing and dissociating themselves from what was going on around them, they felt safer. To survive, FIVES learned to keep their feelings and thoughts to themselves. The intellectual world became more controllable and secure than the world of feelings and the interpersonal world.
Non-Resourceful State: When FIVES are under stress and do more of the same, they remove themselves and retreat further into their heads. They feel inadequate and unable to influence the situation and so withdraw. They become contemptuous of others instead of reaching out to them. They fear pain and avoid it. They rationalize or trivialize to avoid being assertive. They get into planning instead of doing. They distract themselves or space out instead of focusing, deciding and acting.
Resourceful State: When FIVES are in a resourceful relaxed state, they get in touch with their personal power and energy. They say to themselves: “I am powerful; I can do.” They move down into their body and feelings instead of up into their head and thoughts. They insert themselves in the situation, believing they can change it. They move towards and against others as well as away from them. They make contact and get engaged and learn through experience vs vicariously. They set boundaries for themselves directly rather than by withdrawing. They ask for what they need and let go of what they don’t need. I am therefore I think and I am connected replaces I think therefore I am and I think in order to figure out how I’m supposed to be and how I’m supposed to get connected.
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