(I thought I would be doing 6 next, but I figure it might be educational to do this one while the recent troll incident is fresh in ppl’s memory as an educational worst-case example of what can happen when all of these act in concert to create an airtight logic-proof wall of teflon that also doubles as one hell of a drug.)

repression

In the context of psychoanalys, this is defined as the pushing of desires from awareness while those may still be acted out.

That last part is important to remember as it marks the difference to 1 or 9, who are more likely to actually give up on acting out the desires.

2w1s can also have a lot of the 1 complex of mechanisms going on & hence look a bit more like what we colloquially refer to ‘repressed’ but with 2w3 this is often not the case at all, indeed they can be outright hedonistic, dramatic and temperamental.

In this sense 2 is a mirror image of 7, it’s opposite process type. Both are ‘hysteric expressive’ – that doesn’t necessarily mean being ‘hysterical’ in the colloquial sense, but that feelings tend to be readily expressed, outwardly discharged and acted upon (rather than bottled up or processed inwardly). Both types are noticeably effusive and expressive, a style that also extends into text communication (‘Wowwww! Thank You sooo much!!! [Multiple Emojis]’)

(though culture & personal history can affect the degree to which an individual shows this. North american culture can be dismissive of people who show feelings or it may be labelled as ‘flamboyant’ in men, whereas in France or Italy the social norms are pro-gushing & casual affection.)

This kind of ‘sanguine’ temperament presents a dilemma: On the one hand one feels a strong need to act on one’s feelings, whims & desires, but on the other hand, there is high desire for social contactfulfness, so taking an adversarial/competitive stance like 8 or 3 isn’t practicable: You can’t antagonize people if you want them to like you, spend time with you and give you attention. Or at least, you prefer not to be knocked down from your relatively cheerful base mood and the resulting sense of feeling positively about yourself.

Now the ego (in the freudian sense) has the ‘job’ of putting out a picture of reality that reconciles those desires and drives, and it does so by giving the desires a ‘makeover’.

For 7 that is, ‘I can do this thing because I have a good reason for it’, for 2 it’s ‘I can do this thing

because I have good intentions and I am acting out of positive feelings’.

Positive feelings & desire to help, bond & be together are often genuinely present, of course. Humans are social animals & hence often wired to find interacting with each other & pro-social behavior genuinely rewarding & satisfying.

Often there is not one “true” fundamental reason why people do something but more reasons for it than against, and the ‘reasons for it’ may be both benevolent and self-interested in nature.

What repression does is that the self-interested part is pushed out of focus, leaving only the positive part to come into conscious awareness.

Repression helps to maintain this self-organization in two ways: First, simply by making distressing incongruence go away. If you feel you must always be good, liked, benevolent, helpful etc. & want to stay in a positive state of feeling good about yourself, perceiving wants might get in the way of that & trigger feelings of shame, or fear of powerlessness, insignificance or rejection (since they might tell you no, and you would tend to assume they will unless they owe you) – starting from those assumptions consciously experiencing the desires is just a liability.

For example, the 2 may come into the college dining hall and see a dude sitting in the corner eating by himself. The 2 might think that he is probably lonely & could use some company. And the concern might be very real, but another thing at work might be that the 2 wants someone to chat with, or, they think the guy eating by himself is attractive.

This works as a defense because it allows the 2 to come into the relationship from a secure vantage point. Rather than having to be scared that the dude might reject them as a friend or romantic partner, they are doing him a favor because he’s probably lonely. If he says no, the 2 can tell themselves he’s ungrateful, not rejecting them, and the frustration they feel about not getting what they wanted is made congruent too as a justified response to the ingratitude.

But at the same time, that fear might be why they decided to pick this guy to begin with: If no one else seems to be giving him sexual attention or social inclusion, he’ll need the 2 for it & has less reason to ditch or refuse him.

In the 2s mind, the thought of wooing the guy might just be a distant hope, or maybe the 2 isn’t conscious of it alltogether, and same for their fear of rejection, but they are still influencing the 2’s behavior and expectations, so if the guy reciprocate the 2 may have doubts that he only likes them because they gave him attention. Or, the solitary diner is sitting alone by choice (maybe he’s busy or very introverted) and doesn’t actually want to be befriended or flirted at, and the 2 is going to feel dissapointed & rejected.

If this leads them to act salty, an onlooker might easily deduct that the 2 was expecting romantic reciprocation (since they are ostensibly mad that it didn’t happen) and conclude the kindness was a ploy to get in his pants, or even a pity-based power trip.

And the poor 2 won’t help their case at all by insisting they only did it out of altriusm – either because they think anything else makes them bad & unloveable, or because they really think it…

The second thing it sometimes does is to make it “ok” to want/pursue something that the person really strongly wants by that same process of deleting the self-interested part from awareness.

For example when a parent disapproves of their adult child’s lifestyle choices & raises a stink to discourage them, but when confronted they say it’s “for you own good” or “I can’t help worrying I’m a mom/dad”. Here the repression offers a kind of “plausible deniability” for the 2s self-interested actions.

There can be a self-reinforcing vicious circle or trap here where a 2 that has fallen into some state of unhealth has a perverse incentive against being more self aware because the less they “see” their motivations, the less shame they feel, and also, the less they ‘see’ their desires they can ‘allow’ themselves to have the things they want.

As Naranjo already observed, there is a lot of individual variation and situational fluidity in the degree to which the 2 “knows they’re looking away”. In terms of the subjective experience that is created, this means the person feels like they should only have benevolent intentions, or that wanting and acting to get things is only ok if it’s for benevolent reasons – or, when the ego defenses are more rigid, the individual can claim, or even be legit convinced that they only have good & positive intensions. It’s a sliding scale, though the nature of the problem shifts as you move along it.

In the middle to upper average range one might experience shame & self-recrimination over the thought of having self-interested desires and great inhibitions with stating them.

A person might beat themselves up for, try to ignore or take longer to spot & acknowledge negative and ‘raw/ unpopular’ emotions like sadness, anger, resentment, impatience or craving for love.

In the lower middle you have people who genuinely coudn’t tell you their desires even if asked up front by a loved one who very much wants to make them happy (even if an observer could probably easily guess from their behavior – 2s trying to be more self-aware & their loved ones alike often learn to “triangulate” it from their actions & emotional reactions) People describe just drawing a blank, or feeling something like an “inner flatness” or a hollow in the pit of their stomach. (doesn’t help that many 2s are Fe dom & therefore Fi opposing)

And then on the low functionality end, you get the villains of those classic ‘Just No MIL’, ‘narcissistic mother’ or ‘suburban Karen’ horror stories of someone doing horrible abuses but feeling entitled to be treated like the victim/martyr because they bothered to briefly dip their selfish capricious actions in sugar coating and fawning language.

‘You are a horrible person, and after how nice & civil I was, too! Big hugs and Kisses!’ as if the hugs & kisses part makes the ‘you’re a monster’ okay or means the other person has to take it.

As if ‘I just do it cause I care’ was a magic word that means everyone has to let them do as you please…

From the fact that it often comes out when the person is cornered, pushed or called on their BS you can tell that on some level there is a fawning fear response at work. Probably the person survived whatever bad parenting made them so awful by placating and pleasing. They might not look it but they tend toward the same ‘rejecting’ object relation as 8s and 5s where they are surrounded by a hostile world.

But also like 5 and 8, the bullied can sometimes become the bully by getting on a vengeful power trip using the power of placating & flattering words to get them out of trouble.

Also,far from the pleasant attentiveness & proactive interest-taking that makes healthier 2s well-liked, sugar on top of hostility just has the effect of adding insult to injury and making the other person angrier rather than placated – which reinforces that underlying expectation of a hostile world in a vicious circle.

Useful Question: In addition to all the nice, altruistic and other-based reasons why you’re doing something, could there also be something that you personally want out of this action?

What does your ideal outcome look like?

Note here that wanting stuff doesn’t make you bad or selfish or unloveable. Everyone wants stuff. You have a right to want stuff.

The point of bringing wants into conscious awareness is so you can use the full extent of your adult rational problem-solving skills to find a win-win solution, or stop pouring energy & frustration into something that can never have the result you want and will just leave you resentful.

To do this, try to get that head center online & consider the following questions:

Is the outcome is realistic? - You only have 24 hours in a day & you take on too many responsibilities, you will get burnt out & cranky.

Be wary of wishful thinking & only wanting to see the positive.

Is your action the best way to get it? - Maybe you are being indirect where directness would be more productive. Like instead of conspicously mentioning how nice it is that your neighbors spouse does X, ask your spouse if they mind doing X for you.

Does it depend on the choice of another person?

You may prefer it if your kid dates this other person or stayed living closer to you, but their life is their own choice. If they don’t choose it, this desire just can’t be granted. It’s ok to be sad about this, but trying harder to make it happen will probably lead to counterproductive results.

This can also be liberating: For example if someone doesn’t want to be friends with you that’s not necessarily because you’re not likeable enough. They must want it too.

It’s scary, it’s exposing, but it also means you don’t have to feel guilty & can focus more attention on those who do choose you.

psychological anesthetic

Now, in the enneagram world deliberate intensification of feelings is usually associated with 4, but actually, 2 does it too, only that in this case it is positive feelings that get dwelled on and amplified.

Though, since 2 is a heat type those are often relational feelings towards others. So your 2 could be crying & lamenting because they are amping up the sympathy they are feeling for a family member who has fallen on tough times. Lamentation isn’t positive but sympathy is positive toward the family member. For the same reason dramatic anger on behalf of a wronged friend is ‘allowed’ because protectiveness is positive toward the friend. (in this way the flavor of ‘positive bias’ is different from a 7s or 9s)

Now intensified feelings can certainly bring spice to your life & be a great source of motivation. (for example, if a given 2 works themselves into a frenzy about the plight of adorable baby birds and then volunteers at a wildlife rehabilitation center)

But they can also serve the purpose of a defense. Some of you may have experienced that when you’re goofing around with friends and having a good time joking around with them you can get almost a little manic ‘high’ off of it.

It’s also why people (especially those who are easily moved to sympathetic expression of feelings) get pleasure out of soap operas or cheesy romantic movies.

And since the 2 is naturally effusive and outwardly-expressive, doing this comes easy.

This can work hand-in-hand with repression: In the college dining hall example, the person is probably not just repressing their self-interest, but also amplifying, intensifying and cultivating the sympathy for the perceived loneliness of the guy sitting by himself to the extent that it may look exaggerated or insincere.

And like a literal narcotic, much of what gives pleasure can numb pain. Now having a fun evening with your friends to soothe the pain of some upset can be a perfectly mature and adaptable coping mechanism.

However, negative feelings can sometimes be valuable feedback. For example if you got rejected or criticized, and it was somewhat deserved.

The pain that comes with this and the shame of having something reflected back that isn’t the positive way you want to be seen could be a nudge to improve your behavior… or heck, maybe you haven’t even done anything wrong but it was the wrong approach for that particular person.

But you’re less likely to correct if instead you soothe your pain by going ‘hey, I am a nice person! I do all these nice things! My friends also say that I am nice. Plus, I had such good intentions!’

By the time you’re finished dwelling on your positive feelings towards both yourself and the other person and working yourself into a ‘drama high’ to cover your original pain, shame or self-repproach, you are less likely to be thinking about how to better your relationship than you are to be indignant about how dare they reject you when you’ve shown nothing but goodwill for them… nor will you probably make the best, most thought-out decisions in such an emotionally charged state.

The same might happen to crucial feedback from the 2s own negative feelings.

For example someone might try to act cheerful & focus on happy things to cover their sadness so that even if someone asks how they’re doing, they will give an enthusiastic positive answer. (there was a meme posted about this recently wasn’t there?)

Or, anger & resentment that might be an important warning that they’re being taken advantage of might be stamped out by focussing on more positive sentiments towards those others.

Condon describes a type 2 client of his who was cheated on & kept lamenting about the cheater’s pain & the sympathy she had for his circumstances.

She probably wanted to be feeling just about anything but her own pain, plus it allowed her to think of herself as an empathic supporter rather than someone who was discarded & disregarded because the cheating husband didn’t need her or treat her as important.

If she’s this empathetic person who understands and forgives him where others might not, then she still has an important position. She can feel like they’re still connected rather than face the loss of the relationship.

Maybe you have noticed some odd, paradoxical song lyrics where the PoV character talks about not wanting their love interest to lose them. (The Cardigans have a couple songs like this; wouldn’t be surprised if whoever writes the lyrics is a 2)

Isn’t it more logical to say that they don’t want to lose the love interest? It’s up to them if they account you a loss or not. But of course that’s probably precisely the pain they’re trying to anesthetize themselves from.

In the case of the cheating partner example, the person might say that she can’t leave him because he’d be lost without her and no one would ever love him as much as she does, what’s really going on is that she’s not sure she will find anyone else that she’s going to be as important to and that she would be disoriented and not knowing who she is without him, but is focussing on his feelings (or what she thinks his feeling are) to distract from her pain.

Because of the outward-expressive nature of type 2, this also naturally lends itself to crying to your friends about those feelings hoping to get validation & attention to soothe the pain.

On the healthy coping mechanism side of it this can lead to close knit bonds of friends supporting each other.

On the other extreme this can lead to a crab bucket circlejerk of validating each other’s entilement (if you want to see the worst excesses of this, go to an estranged parents forum) or the kind of petty drama that tears apart families & makes work places hell.

For people with smaller social networks or less people skill, it might well look like the 2 has turned everyone agaist them with black magic.

Useful Question: If you are getting into high drama situations repeatedly, consider if this drama is being triggered by some pain or insecurity inside yourself that you want to cover, and consider disengaging from it & just focussing on yourself for a bit.

Also, while it may feel more congruent for you to try to think well of others or look at them with benevolence, if you are experiencing prolonged unhappiness, it might be time to consider if it’s time to to Let Them Lose You.

emotionalization

In a reverse to how some other types such as 7 or 5 might look at things from an abstract, conceptualized big-picture perspective to take the edge off of the emotional side of it, 2s tend to overemphasize and overfocus on the emotional and subjective aspects of a situation to ward off inconvenient facts and arguments coming from the mental/rational side of things.

For example in an argument with one’s spouse one might dismiss their attempts to explain the situation as excuses and talk about how them disagreeing with you makes you feel. Or deflecting criticism with “I do it because I care” or “they hurt my feelings”.

Not engaging with anything that was said on an intellectual/factual channel but instead focussing on the subjective and emotional angles. in some unfortunate cases even trying to introduce reason will be answered on a personal level – you’re saying it to hurt them, or, you’re trying to look smart, or you’re dismissive of their feelings etc.

Indeed for many 2s this may crystalize into explicit beliefs like all is fair in love & war, feelings are more important than reason etc.

More intellectually inclined 2s might instead tell you that love should guide your philosophy.

This is also why unlike for 1 or 6 the 2s version of ‘goodness’ has less to do with rules but more with feelings of empathy.

A lot of times you see empathy equated with morality or even basic humanity, but aside from how there is an aspect of inborn talent, it’s also just as liable to bias as any other part of the human mind (reason included). Empathy can lead you to be mistaken about the other person’s feelings but act as if you know them for sure, it has little inherent sense of proportionality or scale, it can lead to keyhole compassion where all the care is focussed, it can lead you to care more about not having to see upsetting things than actually solving the problem, and it can lead you to make cruel assumptions about those who respond differently than you… and this is all even if you don’t make the error of thinking you’re better because of it.

And make no mistake: Feelings are important. They are a facet of the human experience so no problem involving humans can be solved without considering them.

The point is not to repress your feelings or not care about them (for starters, they wouldn’t be gone, just out of sight, and still affecting you) but rather to consider reason in addition to them.

Doing this makes it a lot easier to do both of the previous mechanisms. If you always focus on the emotional side of things, there is more to get worked up into drama over, and it’s easier to keep your motivations in the psychic basement if you don’t go looking for patterns or pause to think & reflect for too long, instead remaining in emotionally charged states.

Another function this serves is that if you feel that to be loved you must be indispensable you can’t be at a loss for what to do. 2 usually comes with a competency wing, they need some means of solving others’ problems. You can’t be at a loss for what to do when your ‘business model’ depends on dispening sage advice. You expect of yourself to know better, make everything better etc.

The mind can be helpful for this, but you can’t depend on it because in the realm of the mind sometimes things are unclear ambiguous & confusing and there’s no clear answer and it’s not obvious how you’re supposed to feel about it.

Whereas if you look at things in feeling terms, there is usually a clear answer. (though it may be the answer to a subtly different, easier question – eg. would I like it if A & B got together rather than is A a good match for B.)

Useful Question:

Perhaps you have gotten the feedback that you take things personally. Could it be that, in this situation, the person wasn’t so much insulting you as making a factual statement or trying to problem-solve?

regression

Now Naranjo already alluded to a quality of ‘childlike pushiness’ in some 2s when discussing their defenses (without really giving it a name) but it’s Condon who really fleshed this out more.

This is one of the ‘classic’ documented defense mechanisms dating back to Freud and refers to pretending that a situation is simpler than it really is or ignoring its complexities in order to get a sense of temporary relief. The name comes from how this can lead a person to act and emote as if they were younger than they really are, as if they wanted to turn off their reason to go back to the simpler world of a child or adolescent, as if they had ‘regressed’ to an earlier stage of development.

This can look like an overly cutesy presentation, talking in a singsong voice, an uncharacteristic moment of temporary indulgence, throwing a tantrum, not really taking care of yourself despite being capable, clingyness, not treating criticism seriously, acting impulsively without really considering consequences etc.

Now appreciate that “just pretending the complicated issues aren’t there” isn’t as easy or convenient as it sounds. Others may find themselves ruminating on it, anxiously stressing etc. The reasons this can be done with relative ease is how the overall constellation of the defenses is geared at avoiding attacks to one’s positive & benevolent sense of self by getting so hyped on feelings you can’t think straight. From such a state it’s a short leap to oversimplied thinking and childish behavior.

To make matters more difficult for any 2 wishing to break out of their pattern, this shift is going to feel good, like a deserved relief after doing so much for these people who don’t appreciate you and all the sacrifice and deprivation… which might be partially or wholly self-inflicted, but to see that you would need to switch on the head and look for patterns, not to mention suffer the pain of realizing humiliating things about yourself. (some of which you might lowkey fear are true in moments where the repression-o-mitron isn’t firing on full cilinders… but the resulting distress just makes you double down.)

Besides the relief of making the world simpler, this is also part of the tendency to fawn, placate and people please under pressure, to try to get on people’s good side and maintain a sense of self as well-intentioned – how can you be the bad guy here if you’re so loveable, non-threatening and innocent?

It’s worth contrasting this with how some immature 9s or phobic 6s can appear dependent, however – those may blame themselves, tell the other person they need them, lack confidence in their delivery, apologize for being not strong enough (6) or a burden(9) etc.

A 2 in ‘fawn’ mode will not “incriminate themselves” beyond lip-service (‘I know I’m not perfect, I’m sorry that you see me this way’) or cede the high ground, and will be very deliberate about how they present themselves.

They won’t be arguing that you should help them but that you should be ashamed of yourself for doing them so dirty. They want to get on the good side of the audience.

To some, this might smell of wounded gazelle gambit, manipulation or simply the victim side of the drama triangle.

Though talk of ‘drama addiction’ is often insensitive and dismissive as if they’re just making stuff up to be evil rather than coming from a place of feeling you will be eaten alive and be powerless if you don’t get in the good graces of the powerful.

The will to power is first of all the will to freedom, but your freedom has to stop at the other person’s nose or it becomes tyranny. In a way it’s a mirror image of 8 where power is projected to avoid being victimized, but for the 2 its power over people’s hearts. In the beginning it was only meant to be ‘insurance’, but when you feel cornered the last thing on your mind is the damage you’re doing.

Still, for all that I hope the reader will have some empathy for the 2s in the abstract even at their worst, in the concrete world there is always a point you can’t blame people for steering clear of drama (ironically, the opposite of what the 2 probably wanted)

A way that this might be counterintuitive and sometimes give people major whiplash because in other ways 2s can also be precocious or hyper-adult, putting themselves in a superior, quasi-parental situation but it isn’t as contradictory as you might think: If you feel you had to mature fast and couldn’t be a kid when you were an actual kid because you felt you had to helpful and good and whatnot, you might be left with some latent desire to “make up” for lost time, to be free.

So as you might expect this ‘latent immaturity’ will be much more pronounced in individuals whose childhoods involved actual deprivation or abuse.

The hyperadult pseudo-parental self on the surface and the indulgent child self deep down are really two sides of the same coin.

Some 2s show one side more than the other whereas in others, both may coexist in a Dolores Umbridge Evil Kindergarten Teacher kind of way.

The hyper-adult 2s often displace their disowned needy child-like characteristics onto others & por nurturance on those they unconsciously see themselves in, in a way giving to others what they felt they weren’t allowed to have.

Many have an affinity with or feel drawn to children, conscious self gets some security out of being in the one-up, one-down position of the parent/caregiver.

It is of course easier to relate to children when you can easily understand their mindset, but problems may appear when the kids hit puberty and start gradually moving to a more independent and then finally equal relationship, and the 2 still talks down to them as if they are children.

Useful Question:

Can you try to be aware (if possible, at first without judgement) of some of the ways that you’re acting cutesy and harmless?

Is there some pattern in what triggers it, such as confrontation or feeling deprived, or put-upon?

Or, if you don’t relate to that but rather tend toward the ‘hyper-mature’ presentation:

If someone repeatedly complains about being ‘babied’ and unwanted help, consider if the one who really wants or needs what you are trying to give them is you. How can you give that thing to yourself with a healthy outlet?