Difficulties & Challenges of Five
Social Isolation
Under stress, Fives increasingly retreat from the world. When they feel incapable of meeting the demands of life and fear the world will overwhelm them, isolating themselves is a coping strategy.
Healthy Fives enjoy solitude, but they also enjoy friends and family, physical activity and social engagement. They emerge from their private world and have balance in their life. When they are more constricted, Fives begin to avoid social contact and spend more of their time alone. Now others seem intrusive to the Five, as if they will place demands that the Five can’t meet. Private becomes secretive and cut off. This isolation prevents the Five from participating in the world and sharing their thoughts and ideas.
At work you may notice that Fives dislike meetings and absent themselves. If they have to be in a meeting they might come late, sit by the door and rarely speak up. Ironically, they probably have the best ideas in the room. If someone asks them a question, they may amaze with their reply. But they need to be drawn out.
At its worst, Fives can become “loners”, working away on their projects and avoiding interaction, neglecting their physical needs and even their hygiene. Although this isolation feels painful, it is hard to break out of because Fives find it very difficult to ask for what they need- their assumption is that the world will not meet their needs and their social isolation stems from this bleak outlook.
There is a loss for the world when Fives isolate because they are often having good ideas or doing good work that they are not sharing.
Consider the reclusive life of poet Emily Dickinson, thought to have been a Five. Dickenson lived with her family in Amherst, Massachusetts and was rarely seen outside. She “spoke to visitors through doors, gave treats to local children by lowering a basket from a second-story window and listened to her father's funeral from the privacy of her bedroom. She didn't leave the family property for the last two decades of her life.” (time.com)
Only a few of Emily Dickinson’s poems were published during her lifetime, all anonymously. After her death, Dickinson’s sister found a cache of nearly 2,000 poems. Imagine the loss if her sister had not discovered Dickinson’s work.
The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and You—beside—
The Brain is deeper than the sea—
For—hold them—Blue to Blue—
The one the other will absorb—
As Sponges—Buckets—do—
The Brain is just the weight of God—
For—Heft them—Pound for Pound—
And they will differ—if they do—
As Syllable from Sound
~Emily Dickinson, circa 1862
Narrow Mental Focus, Darkness
Closely related to social isolation are the mental challenges that Fives can suffer. Fives are said to have an “Inner Tinker Toy” (Riso-Hudson), they enjoy concepts and playing with ideas. When less healthy, they can have an increasingly intense and narrow mental focus.
Remember that Fives are trying to be capable to feel safe in the world and to them feeling capable means having knowledge. Two unhealthy developments occur for more constricted Fives- they believe they must master their subject before they can step forward with what they know, and they come to focus on increasingly narrow subjects.
Fives believe that their expertise is what allows them to participate in the world. Sharing their ideas or offering their opinion based on their expertise is how they relate. Fives don’t like to share half-baked ideas- they want to speak from their knowledge. The problem is that what Fives might consider half-baked are good ideas that others would like to hear. The give and take of exchanging ideas can be lost as the Five never feels they have mastered their subject. The process of thinking, studying, gathering information and conceptualizing can go on indefinitely with “mastery” always in the future.
Also, because their value comes from their expertise, Fives want to know about a different subject than others. Their observations and thoughts are more valuable if their area of knowledge is specialized. For healthy Fives this might mean having a specialized area of research which is new and fruitful- the innovative thinking we saw as a strength. But when they become less healthy, the subject matter Fives focus on becomes more narrow, even obscure or bizarre. To really show their mental superiority the Five might need to go off the beaten path.
This can show up as being incredibly well informed about arcane or special topics, for example the history of rock music or baseball statistics. Whatever specific area of interest the Five focuses on, they will develop encyclopedic knowledge and perhaps have a collection, such as records or baseball cards to go with their knowledge. As a pastime this may be harmless, but it is the increasing withdrawal into a narrow mental world that is the issue for the Five - and what else becomes neglected as a result.
The stereotype of the “absent-minded professor” who forgets to put on his trousers captures the flavor of the Five living exclusively in their head. The life stories of chess masters like Bobby Fisher illustrate the difficulty of living in the intense mind- brilliant but in some ways not able to function in the world. The old movie Shine portrays the pianist child prodigy who has a mental breakdown. The movie A Beautiful Mind portrays (with biographical inaccuracy) the math genius John Nash and his mental breakdown and eventual recovery. These are extreme examples that give a sense of imploding intelligence.
The increasing retreat into the head and the narrowing mental focus can become disturbing and dark. Where Cronenberg or Hitchcock might make art from dark places, other Fives might just be suffering with their thoughts. We can all relate to thoughts of despair and hopelessness- and how our thinking can spiral into dark places and be profoundly unhelpful. Remember how Eckhart Tolle described his intolerably painful thoughts before he had his spiritual awakening.
Edvard Munch, possibly a Five, is the painter of The Scream. Notice how the person is holding his head.
Hoarding
We named minimalism as a strength of Five, but like everything it can be overdone. If we remember that the Five child believes their needs are not important, we can understand there may be unconscious pain behind choosing to go with less. This painful minimizing of needs feeds into what we are calling “hoarding” in the unhealthy Five. Fives come to feel a scarcity or lack of abundance that necessitates restricting their needs and holding onto their resources.
The Vice of the Five is Avarice. This does not mean greed, it’s a hoarding of resources and stinginess based on the unconscious belief that there is not enough.
Five hoarding is not like what we see on tv- the piling up of lots of stuff and never having enough. It’s more a stance of trying to hold on to what little I have for fear of scarcity. This may literally be resources, but it may also be energetic- leave me alone, don’t intrude, don’t ask me for anything. Fives are not ungenerous people- it is the energy of restriction that we are trying to capture. If you really don’t believe anyone will come to meet your needs, it makes sense to minimize them and then to hang on to what you’ve got.
Fives can also hoard their knowledge- partly waiting until they feel they have mastered their subject, but also to retain their expertise. Most Fives love to be asked a question and talk about what they know about their special topics, but they want to be the subject expert and be seen as knowing more than others. Since knowledge is a strategy for safety in the world, it is understandable that the less healthy Five wants to hold on to their special knowledge. Fives can show arrogance at times, a sort of superiority that stems from knowing they understand more than others (they usually do).
Consider how understanding this hoarding of resources ties together your understanding of Five. The whole gestalt of Five- wanting deep knowledge and understanding, withdrawing into the head to feel safe, gathering expertise and mastering a subject matter to feel competent and capable- and how this would make you want to hold on tightly to what you have managed to gather. Healing the underlying belief that they must rely only on themselves will allow the Five to engage in the world, share in the flow of resources, put their ideas out into the conversation and know their true capacity.
