Type Six

Sixes are fractured. The six is shaped by a violent oscillation between raw animalism and vulnerable humanity. This might be referred to as a worldview of fractured dualism. They know the abyss intimately but they are also deeply aware of their need for love and connection. Their outlook is built on contradiction. A part of the six trusts only violence, domination, and impulse but at other times the six shows profound tenderness and emotional depth. They want to be good. But when the beast in them is triggered, their self-awareness disappears and they become pure drive. They are neither fully reformed nor fully feral.

“Let us dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so long ago:
‘To tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world.’”
                                        -Robert F. Kennedy (EII-Ne 6w5 sp/so)

Sixes are self-protective. This deeply-rooted insecurity leaves the Six in a shaky flux between craving self-destruction and seeking healing. While they are aware of right and wrong, they often feel powerless to fully embody one or the other creating deep internal instability. They project that existential insecurity and chaos outwards onto the world. Thus, the world as reflected back at them becomes not just competitive or challenging but dangerous, hostile, and unpredictable. Self-protection is thus the six’s logical choice in a world that they believe is a dangerous place. The core distortion of the Six is that they will be mistreated in some way (i.e. harmed, controlled, subjugated, conned…). The self-protectiveness is thus defensive, reactive and suspicious, a posture of constant bracing for attack, abandonment or humiliation and a prepared readiness to lash out to fend off predators.

Sixes are distrustful. Where the self-protectiveness is the six’s behavioral armor, distrust is their emotional posture. It’s a dangerous and unpredictable world out there for them, or so they believe, and as a result they don’t like the idea of having to depend on anybody else. Sixes are especially distrustful of people that have power over them, those in positions of authority. They don’t trust the world to meet them with fairness, safety or care. They thus become hyper-attuned to tone, body language, and motives, they scan for threat in every interaction and remain on edge, ready to strike, deflect or walk away. The six may forestall buying a car in favor of riding the bus every day to work because they think that car salesmen are bound to cheat them. If the six is being asked a question, the six can think that the question is intended to trap them into an undesirable spot, so in defense, the six may phobically lie or counterphobically state a bold opinion.

Sixes are suspicious. Suspicion is how the six maintains control in a world that they believe is rigged against them. It is part of their fight response. They scan for deceptions because they are reactive and defensive. They assume everyone is playing a game, and it is their job to unmask them. They play their cards close to their chest as they anticipate betrayal, expect people to have hidden agendas, and fundamentally mistrust appearances. To this end, they are guarded, probing and watchful. Every interaction is thus filtered through a skeptical lens. They watch people closely. Their suspicion is hot, charged with emotion, pride and fear of being made a fool. It is typically rooted in status anxiety where they are prone to interpret class differences as condescension. People’s airs and secrets don’t just irritate the six but undermines their sense of control. They can’t tolerate ambiguity, interpreting mystery or complexity as hostility and deceit. They become obsessed with exposing lies.

Sixes are reactive. Given that their sense of self is shaped by what threatens them, the Six’s identity is reactive, not rooted. They define themselves in opposition to others. The question of “who am I” for the Six is blank and unstable with no satisfying answer. They replace that question of who they are with the defensive and survival driven question of “what must I prove so I don’t feel worthless?” as if they needed external confirmation to feel real. They cling to roles (the tough guy, the alpha, the “daddy dom”, the victim) as if they are the self, and they invest in symbols of strength (money, sex, authority, image) losing their true self in the process. They split into opposing parts:  strong vs. weak, acceptable vs. rejected, loved vs. worthless which results in inner conflict and emotional volatility. This Jekyll-and-Hyde split between raw, primal force (rage, domination, assertion) and vulnerable, dependent emotion (shame, grief, need for love) means that Sixes can swing suddenly from explosive aggression to raw emotional breakdown. Although they make efforts to bury their tender, wounded side under armor and aggression it is never truly gone. Under pressure, that vulnerability bursts through the cracks, oscillating between toughness and need.

Sixes are counter-dependent. The Six is typically autonomous in both identity and pride. They don’t want to follow other people’s plan, rules or system, so they become prepared on their own terms. They want to live their life with no strings attached to anybody. They like playing a lone hand. They self-protect by cutting ties and dread having to depend on others. They don’t want to have to stick their neck out for anyone. They see themselves as their own person and resent interference. Nevertheless, they need the devotion of some other or others to validate themselves. They exhibit identity-crisis-level desperation when their emotional dependency is threatened. Their rage spikes when they feel abandoned, rejected or inferior. Their autonomy is performative, a dominance act meant to cover deep emotional dependency. They aggressively assert independence while still deeply dependent underneath.

Sixes are alliance-seeking. Beneath the six’s self-protectiveness and distrustfulness is a hunger and deep capacity for connection—for someone who can witness their truth without judgment or fear. They don’t just want an ally but they want a witness, people safe enough for them to lower their guard with. But they fear that in opening up, they’ll either be betrayed or abandoned, so the alliance must be earned through fire. That conflict drives the six’s push-pull dynamic:  forming connections, testing them aggressively, sabotaging intimacy, and then mourning loss. Their violence is a shell, a mask, forged in fear and betrayal while their warmth is not performative but real and fragile. Both parts of them are real but rarely allowed to co-exist safely. Their alliance-seeking side can feel like a traitor to their self-protective side and vice-versa.

Sixes are dominating. The six needs domination as protection from psychological implosion. In other words, entitlement to power usually in the form of lashing out becomes the six’s means of compensating for their existential insecurity. This entitlement takes the form of aggressive bluffing, belligerence, explosion, harassment, ranting, exaggerated gestures, tough-guy talk, grandiosity and unconvincing, empty threats of violence, somehow all blended into one. They are fragile and ready to explode in response to anything that triggers their sense of inferiority. They are easily threatened and fear being undermined. They are constantly testing loyalty and sniffing out betrayal. They strike out from provoked fear, humiliation or a threat to dominance, at anybody who inflames their deeply-rooted insecurity. The core engine driving their behavior is fear, distrust and a need to dominate to prevent further collapse.

“Lennox is a conqueror?  No, I’m Alexander—he’s no Alexander.
I’m the best ever. There’s never been anybody as ruthless. I’m Sonny Liston.
I’m Jack Dempsey, there’s no one like—I’m from their cloth. There’s no
One that came match me. My style is impetuous. My defense is impregnable,
And I’m just ferocious. I want your heart. I want to eat his children. Praise be to allah.”
-Mike Tyson (SLE-Se 6w7 sx/sp)

Sixes are adversarial. As the six begins to feel insecure about their ability to embody dominance, they start to feel cornered, exposed and powerless. So the six reclaims power by more directly opposing and antagonizing others. Their pride is raw, wound-like and easily provoked such that they take everything personally. Every challenge to their status is felt as a personal attack. If someone speaks with refinement, that person is mocking the six. If someone doesn’t back down, “they’re just asking for it.” If someone shows pity, it is an attempt to humiliate. There’s no such thing as a misunderstanding for the Six but only manipulation or disrespect. Male sixes especially rely on conflict to prove their manhood where sexual aggression becomes a form of power restoration, and raising one’s voice asserts rank. The six carries a deep victim posture beneath the bluster. Victimhood serves as a justification for overreaction, a shield against accountability, and a covert way to control others emotionally.

Sixes are paranoid. The adversarial behavior of the six produces paranoia because, deep down, the six acutely fears somebody will do to them what they just did to others. Their mind becomes haunted by the possibility of retribution, exposure or humiliation. They assume others operate in the same way and may find out the full truth about their betrayal, their real motives, their fragility. They become suspicious of everyone. Suspicion turns deadly. They have begun to isolate themselves through distance, as a means of preparing to fend off any attack and dealing with their suspicions. Isolation, in turn, has only reinforced their suspicions. They get secretive and obsessive about their anonymity and fanatical about their privacy. They brood in isolation over dark thoughts and build up invalid constructions of reality. They often split reality into us versus them dichotomies. They distort the world through a highly subjective lens of “hidden meanings.” They insist on connections between unconnected facts. They frequently misread cues from others in order to reinforce the belief that they are indeed being persecuted and depicted in an unfair light. Their minds become a loop of what-ifs and imagined betrayals. They see hidden enemies everywhere—plots, cabals, traitors. Ordinary setbacks are interpreted as coordinated sabotage. They believe in secret networks operating behind the scenes and in conspiracies around every corner.

“I am willing to come out when I get my message from my commander.”
David Koresh (EIE-Fe 6w5 so/sx)

Sixes are tyrannical. This is when they are at their most dangerous and completely out of control. They become increasingly erratic, unhinged and are ready to increase their level of violence to a degree that there is no turning back from. They have been pushed so much that their emotional insecurity turns into domineering cruelty. They are ready to lash out in a spiteful, self-protective explosion, taking it out on the weakest target or through a sneak attack. They have nothing left to lose except to culminate their hatred into a final act of dominance and annihilate opposition. They are not just seeking to assert control but to erase what threatens their fragile supremacy. They are dangerous not because they are powerful but because they feel emotionally cornered, wounded and too weak to face themselves. If they have any type of power, this leads to purges of allies, sudden shifts in policy, and violent overreactions. They don’t wait for insubordination but fabricate and punish it. They shift wildly between emotional states. They micromanage people and environments and demand total control. They are preemptively aggressive and aim to strike first. They eliminate perceived threats early, often brutally. Their aggressions are often messy, emotional and publicly irrational. Their cruelty is insecure and aimed at imagined enemies. Authoritarian aggression has become their last vestige of self-protection, sadism being a defense against mistreatment.

Healthy sixes are courageous. The courage of the healthy six is a mix of raw emotion, intellectual depth, and a hardened “street” intensity. It is the six having found the balance between, and integrated, their fractured duality. They are willing to scorch bridges in order to seek truth hence their courage fuses combativeness with moral defiance. They say what others are afraid to feel –pain, betrayal, rage, love. Their openness disarms people, such that they make vulnerability feel like firepower. Their courage isn’t calculated but reactive, raw and even principled. They stand for something, carrying themselves like a revolutionary and a prophet. Their rage, their pain, their love all come through physically but they also have an intellectual swagger, a mental sharpness wrapped in menace. They don’t suppress emotion so much as they weaponize it. They are emotional mood-setters. They believe in justice, truth and legacy. They are fueled by ideals and wounds.

6w5s are hierarchical. They have a keen awareness of dominance hierarchies. They have a respect for violence and coded loyalty. They have a deeper understanding of psychological leverage. Their orientation to power is more top-down and cultish. Likewise, they view others more as threats to be managed rather than as threats to be put in their place. Their means of control relies more on mental seduction and emotional leverage than it does outright physical assertion and blunt confrontation.

6w7s are egalitarian. They believe in equal footing. They are not trying to construct a pecking order so much as they want the existing pecking orders torn down. The 6w7 prefers direct confrontation over manipulation to deal with others they perceive as threats. They don’t scheme so much as they explode. They more self-define through what they can do, lift, fix, provide. They are more blue-collar in nature. They also aren’t interested in owning other people’s minds. They are more territory based (“This is my house!”).

Distinctions:

Six vigilance scans for danger. Two vigilance scans for rejection.

Accusation by a Six is driven by the projection of guilt onto another. Accusation by a Three is purely goal-oriented. Furthermore, sixes don’t get self-aggrandizing when they believe others are persecuting them. Threes do, seeing their persecution by others as proof of their greatness.

Fours are more trusting of people than sixes are and less oriented towards putting up walls. Fours can even be blindly trusting whereas sixes sleep with one eye open. Paranoid sixes can express the existence of a fantasy persona that is intended to fend off attacks, and so the articulation of this fantasy self in their inner world might be a source of confusion with fours, but the six’s fantasy persona tends to be more crude and unrefined in nature and is more or less a self-serving attempt to prop themselves up as strong and capable of fending off attacks, a deterrent.

Five autonomy is based in detachment. Six autonomy is based in distrust and is also counter-dependent.

Sixes are adversarial. Sevens are subversive.

Sixes’ lack of restraint is rooted in dependence and only temporary. Eights’ lack of restraint is rooted in deadness and only permanent.

Sixes seek safety. Nines seek support.

One vigilantism is driven by a contempt for human corruption, that which falls short of the ideal. Six vigilantism is a defensive response to mistreatment and/or the anticipation of being mistreated in the future.