The Thinking Triad and Fear

The three Types in the Thinking Triad - the Five, Six and Seven - all have issues around anxiety and fear. Of course we can all be anxious and fearful but fear comes from thinking and, in particular, thinking ahead. The three Thinking Types can all be characterised, therefore, as future-oriented as, apart from death - which we know will happen to all of us at some point - fear comes from thinking about what might happen and those thoughts, if given enough free-rein, can take us to a very dark place. The three Types in this triad each expend a lot of energy on trying to avoid fear although they expend that energy in different ways.

The Five is primarily fearful of the external world and of not having the inner resources to cope with it. As a result they tend to amass knowledge and information. Their question is 'What do I need to know?'. Becoming knowledgeable or expert in some field is their way of providing a buffer against it. In a sense they try to stuff their fear with knowledge.

The Seven is primarily fearful of the internal world. They fear being trapped in deprivation and pain and so compensate by escaping into activity and spending their lives in anticipation of the next thing they are going to get involved with, whatever that may be, as a means of keeping that fear at bay. This means, however, that their experiences can be very unsatisfying for them because they are not living them in the moment - they are always mentally onto the next thing.

The Six, in the centre of the Triad, fears both their inner world and the outside one. They feel anxious and so launch into activity and the anticipation of future events but then worry and become fearful that they will be overwhelmed by external demands made on them or punished for any mistakes they might make and so retreat back inside themselves before, once again, their anxiety gets the upper-hand and they jump into activity and anticipation once more and so it goes on, their anxiety bouncing around like a ping-pong ball creating erratic behaviour.

Whatever Type we are, however, it is worth looking into the ways in which we deal with fear.