Fours
The Outsiders. The Artists. The Individualists. Fours are creative, emotional, sensitive, but also eccentric people. Their personality is multi-faceted. They are daydreamers surrounded by a cloud of melancholy, but they are equally headstrong and passionate rebels. This stems from the fact that Fours do not feel seen, understood and thus not loved. The origin for this lies in a childhood in which they were abandoned or simply not loved by an important caregiver, usually a parent. They are convinced that they are to blame for the lack of love, because they are flawed, inherently different from the rest of the world, and that this is the reason why they are not lovable. So they escape into a dream world where they dream of the unattainable, a better life, and long for the one true love. The future partner is idealised and seen as a saviour. He or she is just as different and the only person who really understands the Fours and who is capable of loving him or her. Since ideals do not exist, but Fours are very demanding, they have difficulty finding joie de vivre in the real world. As soon as Fours are confronted with reality, they perceive it as if others knew the secret of happiness that has been withheld. Fours feel like God's forgotten children and see only the riches of others, while they are hardly able to see the beauty that life presents to them every day, as their longing gaze drifts into the distance. As they don’t know exactly what makes them so different from others, they search for their lost identity and thus dive into the deepest depths of the soul, not shying away from the darkness, even feeling secure and at home there. The Beyond appears seductive when Fours feel all too foreign and lonesome, and so they have tendencies towards depressive moods. They find refuge in spirituality, psychology and mythology. Any kind of unexplored phenomena fascinates them. Likewise, taboo subjects and anything otherworldly have a magnetic attraction for Fours and so they love everything 'mystical'. They see themselves on the fringes of society, they are headstrong and love to march to the beat of their own drum. Fours despise the well-behaved citizen as a stupid, easily manipulated sheep in the obedient flock. This conformity makes them angry, resentful and even brings them close to despair, as individuality and authenticity are the highest values and the Fours’ greatest demand on humanity and on themselves. The pain of feeling different, of not-belonging, is thus turned around and everything is done to remain an outsider by perceiving and presenting themselves as somebody special and elite. In doing so, they take great pleasure in shocking others with their eccentricity and audacity. Rules that they consider nonsensical are ignored, naturally.
At the same time, Fours are highly sensitive beings endowed with an intensely turbulent emotional world. Within a few hours their emotions can take them on a rollercoaster ride, rejoicing to high heaven and then plunging to depths of despair. They are often being perceived by the outside world as extremely moody, irritable and theatrical. For this reason, Fours are often referred to as drama queens. They lick their wounds and wallow in their suffering with the conviction that no one has to endure as much pain as they do. In the process, they exhaust themselves emotionally and also physically to an extreme and need a lot of time to recover from these impassioned forces. Because their hyped-up emotions are so space- and existence-filling, Fours are convinced that their emotions are a signpost to their own identity, and thus they attach too much value to them. "It's not fair" shows how much Fours compare themselves to others. They always relate the actions and words of others to themselves and let the outside world determine their value too much. Their desperate attempt to be understood makes them all too eager to talk about themselves and their self-knowledge in detail. Fours often find an outlet for their ground-breaking inner world in artistic expression and thus the art scene is teeming with Fours. The extent to which they separate themselves from the masses varies in kind and intensity. Many Fours love eccentric individual self-expression to the outside world, while others retreat more into their studies of mysteries and see themselves as separate from the superficial majority through their intellect and sensitivity. Since Fours in their unredeemed form suffer from fear of loss, loneliness and depression, it is absolutely vital for them to break this vicious circle.
The challenge for Fours is to embrace all their ‘flaws’ as an endearing part of themselves rather than feeling ashamed and putting themselves down or, conversely, arrogantly setting themselves apart from others. This becomes possible when they shift their attention from themselves to others and realise that the despised masses are a collection of individuals who are 'imperfect' just like they are. In addition, change happens when Fours learn to arrive in the Here and Now instead of dwelling on the idealised future and the rose-tinted past they have been grieving for too long. When they manage to accept and approve of life as it is and shift their focus from the darker sides to the lighter sides of life. The most beautiful change, however, happens when the pain of others awakens them from their own and they transcend and heal their own pain by unswervingly guiding the weaker through times of despair with their fullest devotion and empathy. Then they will find their place in this world and feel significant, and a deep gratitude, humility and connectedness will fill their inner being.
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