u/TowardInnerN0rth

I have aphantasia, but I always wanted to be an artist. I never developed that and have no skill to speak of. However, I have a lot of ideas for art that I want to create. I don’t know what to do to be able to translate these ideas onto a canvas. Are there any aphantasic artists with advice on where to start? Do I just need to start with the basics of how to draw and hope that I can eventually translate my ideas into actual drawings? I’m unsure how I would be able to draw original content signed I won’t have a reference photo even if I do develop drawing skilled.

If you are an sx/so 5 do you mind sharing what you are like? The descriptions of sx/so sound so mystical and cult-like that it’s hard to imagine what an average person might be like with this instinctual stacking.

I thought I was sx/sp but I think I may actually be sx/so.

Thanks in advance!

As a female 5 who has spent a lifetime being in denial of/ ashamed of my 5 qualities, I want to offer my own experience in the hopes that it encourages other women to embrace their own nature as the gift that it is.

I was raised in a culture where women are supposed to behave, look like, and act a certain way. I suppose this is true of women everywhere, but in my culture that looked like “having a servant’s heart”, “being ladylike”, looking good on the outside, always having a smile on your face and a lilt in your voice. Make people feel comfortable, feel welcome, feel included. These are wonderful things, but they came at a cost. For every minute I spent chatting with the girls, I needed an equal amount of time to recover. At every party I attended I would spend the time questioning why I was there and when I could leave. I joined the healthcare field because I wanted to help people, but couldn’t understand why I felt so exhausted after every shift in a way that felt soul deep. I became a mother and couldn’t admit that I felt like I needed space from my own children sometimes, because what kind of mother thinks that?

Through it all, in every stage of life I have had a feeling of feeling fundamentally different, like I lacked something that all other women seemed to have. Maybe as a female 5 you have felt similarly. Maybe you were told in a thousand subtle ways that a good woman gives freely. That a woman should always be warm and available and open.

If that is you, you are not alone. I have no clue how many of us there are, but I seem to stay on Reddit because I find comfort in knowing it’s not just me. That I am not the only one who feels this way. Yes, everyone is different in their own ways, and that is not an experience unique to female 5s. But I wanted to take a moment to celebrate the unique, isolating, beautiful experience that occurs when you are a woman who is also enneagram 5.

May you embrace your ability to look beneath the surface of things. May you see the strength in being able to ask the hard questions instead of settling for easy answers. May you be proud of your ability to sit with complexity instead of shying away from it. May you see your boundaries not as coldness or dysfunction but as a form of courage that is rare among women.

The funny thing is, embracing my 5 has made me feel more like the warm, feminine woman I always felt I was supposed to be, and I guess that’s just what happens when you authentically embrace your whole self and celebrate the person you actually are. I wish the same for you 🫶🏻

What to do when you can intellectually feel like you have a part responsible for a certain behavioral pattern, but you can’t seem to actually meet the part? I know a part is there and can see the behaviors it causes, but I can’t meet it. I’ve tried the same things I’ve used when meeting other parts and I just can’t seem to get there. I can’t even figure out what bodily sensation it’s associated with either as a jumping off point. I’ve tried acknowledging, asking what it needs etc

I don’t have an IFS therapist anymore as I switched to ERP, so maybe part of the issue is not having an external person to help.

What do you do when the usual methods aren’t working?

Hi, I consider myself a person with aphantasia. I cannot hold visual images in my mind. I can have a brief, hazy flash of an image but I cannot hold it in my mind or manipulate it.

However, some strange things have happened recently that make me wonder if I have a sort of self imposed aphantasia.

I have done a lot of work lately on healing OCD, anxiety, CPTSD and just overall healing my nervous system. In the past few months I have experienced involuntary visualization a few times. Mostly they have been sudden scary/ disturbing images. The first time it happened I noticed myself consciously trying to banish the image from my mind. In the few other times it has happened I did the same. It made me remember that this actually used to happen to me as a child.

I wonder if I used to have visualization, but the OCD made the images so scary and anxiety inducing that I started to make them go away, and eventually this became a subconscious habit.

Is this theoretically possible? If so does that mean I have hope of gaining an ability to consciously visualize??

I did the work
I learned to breathe into the spaces that held tension
I relaxed my shoulders down from my ears
I let my belly stop bracing

And now the feeling is here
And it is heavier than I expected
And I hope I can hold it all

I grieve for the one who painted beauty into corners
And I worry for the weight be carries now
As if it were my own

I grieve the one who was too close a mirror
And I understand now what it costs
To look at your own face and not look away
I feel that too

I did all this work to feel
And feeling turns out to be
Just as hard as not feeling

Just truer

I’m tritype 512 for context. I’ve been doing a lot of work on understanding myself and building self love. I used to never share opinions and would defer to others, but as I’ve grown I’ve noticed I’ve started to share my opinions, even when they aren’t needed. It goes like this:

I’ll analyze something, have an insight, and it feels like truth that needs to be shared, like it is wrong to withhold it. It feels almost like I would be a bad person not to share it, like I would be withholding something important.

I think maybe it’s linked to anxiety, and while it honestly feels like care for the other person I think maybe it’s actually a coping mechanism? Like a need to intellectualize and explain things rather than feel them? And so I project them outward?

It’s just confusing because openly sharing my thoughts and opinions is relatively new to me.

I guess my question here is how do you tell the difference in insight that needs to be shared and what you need to keep to yourself? I know my old strategy of keeping it locked in wasn’t the right way either. I want to be able to help people, not hurt them with unwanted analysis.

Update: I’ve realized that yes, I do this when I’m projecting, but I feel that sense of urgency most when I’m trying to intellectualize something instead of feeling it. Thanks for the helpful feedback, it got my wheels turning to work through this pattern

I had a connection with a sx4 that made me realize something about the sx instinct. He (well meaningly) called me a lightning rod that was helping him channel his creativity into output. And it was really good. And it felt good to be his muse. But meanwhile, my own creative output stalled. It made me realize something I’ve been trying to grasp but couldn’t yet reach.

If you’re sx dominant, your intensity is your greatest gift and your greatest vulnerability. The sx instinct is wired for depth, merger and total fascination. When it’s grounded in a strong sense of self, it creates profound intimacy, creativity and aliveness. When it isn’t, it searches for an external home, and it will always find one.

Here’s the patter: you meet someone. The connection feels electric. You feel more alive, more creative, more yourself than you have in years. Your energy flows toward them naturally, generously, and completely. They flourish while your own work sits untouched. This phenomenon can also go in reverse where you become the siphon.

You weren’t being selfless. You were being a lightning rod. Drawing the charge down and sending it into someone else’s ground because your own interior wasn’t strong or safe enough yet to hold it. This is what happens when you haven’t yet built the interior life that can match your own depth.

The sx dominant person needs above all else to become their own first home. To build an interior that can hold the sx. You have to develop a relationship with your own intensity that doesn’t require another person to make it real. You have to learn that energy that brings other people alive belongs to yourself first. Not so you stop connecting, but so you stop disappearing.

Stop being the lightning rod and become your own storm.
I picture myself as Violet from Fourth Wing learning how to channel her lightning. Even in that story, she needs a conduit for it before learning how to hold and control her lightning. And she, like me, is INFJ 5.

I’m learning how to channel my own lightning and hold it for myself before channeling it into the right things ⚡️

You painted watercolors in unexpected corners of your house
Little pockets of beauty for those who choose to look

Just like you looked at all of me and did not flinch
You looked into my corners and saw the beauty
You asked for more of what I had forgotten was there

The season was too short, but it felt like spring
Learning to bloom in the open
Letting myself be seen outside of performance
And it felt like safety

I hope I gave you something too
A hand to hold when feeling felt like falling
A quiet place to land as you found yourself

Now the season is changing, as seasons do
When one thing must end so another can begin

And in the bottom corner of my heart
There is a painting you left there
Unexpected and beautiful

Here’s what I mean:

As a very broad generalization, it seems that most sx5s, or sx doms seem to follow a path where the first part of their life is spent chasing intensity, having a lot of highs and lows, a lot of relationships with some instability, a lot of intense sexual encounters, maybe some risk taking.

I am for sure a sx5, but I took a somewhat different path. Due to several factors in my childhood as well as OCD, I spent most of my life seeing my “sx” as a threat and trying to suppress it with mixed success. I didn’t have the language for it, but I recognized that drive in me and was scared of it. I kept myself out of the dating pool and shut myself down emotionally.

What happened as a result was that I completely lost my vitality. I became a shell. My world had no color. I’ve realized I can’t live that way. I am connecting with my body and my emotions again. I am finding my creativity. I have found my vitality. But now that this is “sx” energy is out there, I have no clue what to do with it. I’m trying to channel it into creative output, but the drive to channel it into another person is so, so strong.

I have had a lifetime of trying to suppress this “sx instinct” instead of learning how to channel it constructively. Has anyone worked through it in this way?