Type 6: The Loyal Skeptic

Self-preservation: Warmth/affection

As a self-preservation subtype, you disarm others with your warmth and affection. By acting kindly with thoughtfulness and deferral, people won’t be angry with you or harm you. You’ll make friends and get people to like you by pleasing, supporting and aligning with them – in effect creating a safety zone populated with allies. This makes you feel safe and secure. Avoiding risks and staying within well-known boundaries also can abate your fears. At your worst, you give away your authority and power, paradoxically making you more vulnerable.

Social: Duty

In the social domain, you assuage your fear through your loyal duty to a group or cause. You feel safe bonded together with others in a common cause where you understand the needs and assure the code of behavior. You align with people you trust through mutual obligations and sacrifice: “United we stand, divided we fall.” You find power and hence safety in the group’s authority. Knowing the rules and creating clear agreements with friends and colleagues are vital for overcoming your fear. As a Loyal Skeptic, your tendency to project negative power onto the world makes underdog causes particularly appealing. You align with the needy, the oppressed and the persecuted. You work for the cause. The call to duty mobilizes you rather not personal gain, which would expose you. But at your worst, you give away your own authority and power.

One-to-One: Strength/beauty

Having power and influence in the one-to-one domain with significant others counteracts your fear. It is safer to manifest power and influence with strength and beauty, appealing qualities that are less likely to create adversarial reactions than raw power moves. Instead of craving reassurance, it comes to you through strength and beauty. Knowing that you affect those close or important to you through your brilliant ideas and physical ability provides assurance. Aesthetic qualities (creating beauty in your environment) and attractiveness command allegiance from others, as do intellectual strength, including fiercely held ideological positions and physical fitness, strength and bravery. Your fear evaporates when you obtain the respect of associates or a mate. While the preoccupation with strength and beauty in one-to-one relating is more common for counter-phobics (because it is more congruent with the coping style), it is more obvious in phobics because it stands out more against a general lack in courage or self-confidence. At your worst, you can become possessed with the need to influence others, and evoke reactions by testing and challenging others.

Instinctual subtype descriptions: