‘type 8 vibes’
“The bottom line IS! If you’re a MAN, you take the ups and downs!!! If you’re A REAL MAN!!! You never go down…YOU JUST STAY UP! ”
The clip is from The Iron Claw. The Ric Flair promo.
Let me be clear before we go further: I am analyzing the characters portrayed in the film, not the real people. What I am interested in is the energy on display.
When Ric Flair says, “No daddy’s boy is going to take that away from me,” it doesn’t sound like performance. It sounds like projection. There is contempt in it, but there is also something beneath it. A wound.
That is Type 8 energy.
The Enneagram calls Type 8 “The Challenger” or “The Warrior.” People like the word warrior. It sounds disciplined. Powerful. Commanding.
But armor is not strength.
Armor is protection.
Type 8 is often built around an early decision: I will never be powerless again.
Sometimes that decision is made because someone was not there. Sometimes because someone was too harsh. Sometimes because softness was punished. Whatever the origin, the strategy becomes the same. Control the field. Move first. Do not be controlled.
That energy can build stability in chaos. It can also quietly destroy intimacy.
I did not find the Enneagram searching for enlightenment. I found it by accident.
I was bartending at the time. I came into work and the bar was chaos. Sticky counters. Glassware scattered. The day shift had been overwhelmed. It wasn’t a good look.
I didn’t complain. I didn’t ask who messed up. I started restoring order. I cleaned. I reset the environment. Then I moved from table to table making sure every patron was taken care of. Sector by sector. Calm in the storm.
Later, an HR manager who had been observing me mentioned the Enneagram and suggested I might be a Type 8. I brushed it off.
“I know who I am,” I said.
(Said the asshole.)
That was armor.
She wasn’t criticizing me. She was impressed. She had watched me assess the field like a battlefield and deliberately turn the tide.
What she saw as leadership, I saw as standard.
I take pride in my work. I’m not going to operate in filth. I clean a kitchen before and after I cook. I make my bed every morning. Mess irritates my mind. Disorganization slows me down. I don’t like being micro-managed. I don’t like inefficiency.
I don’t like being slowed down.
Type 8 doesn’t just fear being hurt. It fears being constrained.
Most of the time, I am calm. Deliberate. Strategic. I prefer efficiency over noise. I don’t walk around looking for conflict. I don’t enjoy intimidation.
But when something pushes too far, the energy changes.
When my general manager once described my aura as “menacing,” it wasn’t because that’s how I move through the world. She had seen me very agitated. Something had crossed a line. My energy compresses when I’m angry. It doesn’t explode outward immediately. It tightens. My voice drops. My focus sharpens. The room shifts.
She wasn’t describing my personality. She was describing my activated state.
I felt ashamed. I didn’t want her to fear me. But I understood why she said it.
When anger rises in me, it is not theatrical. It is contained. It is a triggered adrenaline release. It is the moment when something in me says, “Business now.”
When I was younger, I realized something unsettling: I could induce that adrenaline state.
If I let myself feel sadness long enough, it would convert. Vulnerability would flip into force. It was like watching Bruce Banner become the Hulk. Banner is intelligent, analytical, restrained. Hulk is raw power without deliberation. The transformation feels protective. It feels necessary. But it comes at a cost.
When anger spikes, clarity narrows. I become efficient but less intelligent. Power increases. Discernment decreases.
That discovery forced me to confront something deeper: anger was not my strength. It was my shield against sadness.
I didn’t have my father in my life. There was no one to protect me from life. I had two older brothers and an overworked, overburdened mother. There wasn’t room for weakness.
So I became silent, strong, sturdy.
My grandfather was a WWII Marine veteran. A hard man. A disciplined worker. He taught me structure. He also beat his wife. I hated him for that. I admired him too.
That contradiction shaped me.
Strength without cruelty became my internal code. If I was going to be strong, I would be strong for protection, not domination. Somewhere along the way, my dharma became hero. Not cinematic hero. Structural hero. Stabilize the field. Protect the perimeter. Do not let things collapse.
But armor left on too long becomes isolation.
All my relationships were strained. I fell into depression and drinking. Two DUIs. Friends who amplified intensity instead of discipline. Girlfriends who bore the weight of emotional unavailability.
Rajas without sattva governance.
There was an intervention.
I could call it God. I experienced it as the higher self — the immortal identity — confronting the personality I had constructed.
The moment happened in the lobby outside a courtroom. I had been dragged in and out of court for two years on the same case. Bureaucracy grinding. Delays. Obstacles. They were in my way.
I felt defeated.
And when Type 8 feels defeat, the reflex is simple: If I feel it, someone else will feel it harder.
I was ready to hurt people in a permanent way. Not emotionally. Decisively.
Before I stepped fully into that darkness, something interrupted me.
“No. Please don’t.”
There was no condemnation. Only compassion.
“I’m sorry. I know you’re hurting. But I can’t get you where you need to be if you don’t let me help you.”
It told me to go back into that courtroom and lose.
Stop fighting. Accept the punishment. Everything will get better.
For a Type 8, that is death.
We do not lose willingly. We remove obstacles.
I consented.
I went back in and stopped fighting.
I felt peace.
That peace was not weakness. It was alignment.
The first thing I eliminated were the friends who fed the intensity. Then the girlfriends. Then it was just me and anger locked together in a room.
Instead of suppressing anger, I studied it. I redirected it.
Rajas is energy. Energy is neutral. Theosophists say you can harness it like a motor engine. I poured it into building this company. Into structure. Into discipline. Into long-term strategy.
I did not become soft.
I became governed.
This is where “know thyself” stops being abstract.
The Enneagram is not a label. It is an emotional blueprint. Later we will discuss deeper metaphysical structures. But the Enneagram is the safest and most economical place to begin.
Castaneda called it stalking. Map yourself. Know what you are. Know what you are afraid to face.
Type 8 is not evil. It is protection overdeveloped.
If rejection cuts deeply for you, follow it. It usually echoes an older wound. Often parental. Often abandonment. Often betrayal.
When every choice feels bad, you will not have time to philosophize. You will revert to your inner compass. You should know what that compass is.
If your compass is anger, know it.
If your compass is withdrawal, know it.
If your compass is dominance, know it.
I suspect many in Generation X carry 8 structure. Raised to figure it out alone. Do not complain. Do not cry. Handle it.
That produces strength. It also produces isolation.
The Ric Flair promo shows what happens when armor becomes identity. Contempt for “daddy’s boy” reveals more about the speaker than the target. When affection feels like weakness, the child who needed it becomes the adult who mocks it.
Two Type 8 archetypes can stand in the same ring. One channels pain into conquest. The other into endurance. Both are protecting something.
The question is whether protection is conscious.
Take the test. Read the result slowly. If it unsettles you, sit with it. If it angers you, sit with that too.
Courage begins when you stop defending your armor and start understanding why you built it.
Know thyself is not poetic.
It is survival.
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(written with the assistance of ChatGPT)
