Leaving, Oral, Endurer, Aggressive, Rigid or Compensating Oral – Which are You?
These 6 character types represent “safety strategies” that we may have made use of at different phases of our infancy or early childhood. Whether we adopted a particular strategy depends upon the conditions that we met at that time, and on our genetic disposition.
The best way to interpret this quiz is simply to take the top 2 scoring character types as your primary and secondary. Scroll down and read the description of those character types below.
Check out my Book on Reichian Character Structure here
Quiz Notes
Read more about Characterology here
Leaving
Origins: Also known as the Dreamer or the Schizoid, this safety strategy usually has its origins in the womb or in the first year of life. When our brain recognises a feeling of not being safe at this time, it makes use of our capacity to dissociate from the feeling of the body. Once this behaviour has been set up, it is frequently invoked unconsciously in triggering situations throughout our adult life. Taking place before the age of 2 or 3, Dissociating people thus have a pre-egoic condition. For those with high scores in this character, drive may be low and a satisfying social, work and love life difficult to maintain. They will tend to lack a core to their personality.
Issues: Leaving Strategy people tend to inhabit mostly abstract, thought-based or spiritual worlds. They struggle to really feel present in their body and easily flee into thinking or abstract worlds. The extremities of their body often feel cold and they may have a somewhat angular or disjointed appearance. They often find social situations scary and need to know that they can escape either physically or into their heads.
Benefits: Leaving Strategy people make great thinkers, inventors, healers and spiritualists. They can be highly intuitive and very sensitive.
Treatment: The felt sense of the body is associated with fear in the brain of a dissociating person. They need techniques that can allow them to slowly and progressively reoccupy it. This will inevitably take time and cannot be rushed. Intense therapeutic experiences will usually only cause them to dissociate and so achieve little. Bioenergetic and Reichian exercises which increase the level of felt sensation in the belly area are very helpful. Once they have a level of sensation in this area, they can begin to anchor their awareness to and stay present. Grounding exercises working with the belly, pelvis, legs and feet are also very helpful. Shoulder and throat exercises are also useful but must be pursued gently. Slow, progressive gain is the way forwards for people who dissociate.
The Leaving Strategy Online Course Available Here
Oral
Origins: This safety strategy usually has its origins in the first year of life. If we experience an absence of natural connection with our mother, a sense of lack is created within us and this frequently remains throughout our adult life. Being a pre-egoic condition, Oral people, like the Dissociating type or Endurers, may struggle to get their social needs met authentically, lack healthy drive and find themselves generally struggling in life.
Issues: Oral people tend to struggle to hold boundaries because, on a deep level, they keep themselves psychologically open so as to be ever-ready to fill the inner void with connection. They may easily suffer depression. They are frequently “pleasers,” willing to do anything to maintain connections with others. Many Oral people learn to avoid certain people or situations through a fear of being overwhelmed by “the other’s energy.” Orals may struggle with addictions through attempts to constantly fill their sense of an inner void with food, drink, drugs or repetitive behaviours.
Benefits: People high in Oral traits tend to be open and caring. They can be attentive lovers and they really enjoy giving. They frequently become talented artists and musicians.
Treatment: Orals need to learn to say no. Once they can find and truly feel that authentic “No” from deep inside, they can begin to develop their own core and no longer need to source their personality in what they perceive others as needing from them. Bioenergetic exercises that work the belly centre and exercises where they need to vocally express anger are appropriate. In addition, exercises that allow them to experience some of the primal bliss that was missing in the lack of early connection with the mother can really be useful.
Endurer
Origins: The Endurer type has its origins at the time of our first attempts to forge our own identity, typically around age 2. At this age we learn the word “No” and use it to resist doing whatever our caregivers wish us to do. In so doing, we create a sense of our own inner space and from this place our own authentic personality and core can develop as we grow older. Whilst children of this age obviously need boundaries from caregivers, if these are too strongly held, if the adults seek to subjugate the child to their wishes, then the Enduring type will be the result. Such a child has given up on forging their own core. They know they must obey in order to survive. Life for them becomes a survival trip. They hide their true feelings deep within them, knowing it is too dangerous to show them. As with Oral and Dissociating types, Enduring is a pre-egoic condition, again meaning that most people strongly in this trait will struggle to have natural drive and to get basic social needs authentically met.
Issues: Endurers bear life as a heavy load which needs to be carried. They have had their natural exuberance crushed early in childhood and now simply seek to survive life and get through it as best they can. There is a colossal rage inside but they have learned to bury it so deep that they themselves will rarely acknowledge its existence. Whilst compliant on the surface, they may subtly seek to undermine authority as a means to pay back the figures of their childhood who so devastated them. They tend to complain a lot but will never take action to change things. They may appear muscle-bound and quite scary but are invariably mild-mannered. The musculature has developed to suppress their natural feelings, which they have learned are not safe.
Benefits: Endurers can be very grounded, solid reliable people. They may have a rock-like presence when everyone else is in confusion. They are frequently loyal and caring.
Treatment: Endurers need to be treated with respect and care. The early bond of trust with authority was harshly broken and they will simply refuse to give their heart to any therapy if they suspect that this might happen again. Endurers need to learn to value their own emotions and seek authenticity in their own inner world, a place that has remained hidden deep within them for many decades. In time, they will have to accept the immense levels of natural rage that also sit down there and learn to bring that safely to the surface.
Rigid
Origins: The Rigid type of character emerges at a later stage from the Endurer, Oral or Dissociating. It is an egoic condition. Rigids have learned as children that, in order to get love from their caregivers, they must behave in a way that is deemed good. They have hardened over their inner world of emotions and are now focussed on performing well and getting rewarded. They aspire to do well and to attain status. They are all about keeping up a front in a world where they know one must play by the rules in order to win. People strongly in this character type will have drive. But that drive will be mostly directed towards acquiring status or goals.
Issues: Rigid people are invariably mechanical in their approach to life. They are scared of uncertainty, terrified of feeling vulnerable and believe they must keep up appearances no matter what. Under emotional stress they tense up and work harder, which can lead to “burnout” over time.
Benefits: Rigid people are literally the backbone of Western culture. They are the guys who keep aspiring for a better life and who pull the whole of society up in their wake. These are the guys who maintain standards. The Endurers work hard. The Dissociating can be creative and inventive. The Orals feel. But it’s the Rigids who keep everyone together and who keep everything moving in a set direction. Without the Rigids, our culture would still be in the Dark Ages.
Treatment: Rigids have hardened over their inner world of feelings to become simply functional. Whilst they will rarely seek therapy unless a life crisis has befallen them, the challenge for them is to acknowledge their inner world of emotions and to allow themselves to show the vulnerability that they feel inside. Underneath the rigidity, they are often driven by a sense of low self-esteem that they rarely speak about. They have to allow a fuller range of emotions such that the feelings that underpin this sense can come out and be healed. Learning to fully express anger, as opposed to appearing aggressive, is useful for Rigids and will help them to feel safe being vulnerable.
Aggressive
Origins: Like the Rigid character type, the Aggressive type is an egoic condition. Individuals high in this characteristic are likely functional. They have drive. Unlike the 4 earlier characters, it is less clear at exactly what phase of infancy and early childhood this pattern of behaviour originates from. However, Aggressive-patterned people frequently experienced the loss of a bond of trust between them and one caregiver between the ages of 5 and 10 years. They resolved to never allow themselves to trust another so deeply again and began to use their natural drive in a certain way. Aggressives pull their energy up and to the front of their body. Dissociating people leave the body. Orals long for merging. Endurers push their energy down. Rigids hold everything tight. But Aggressives allow their energy to come up but direct it into creating a powerful front with which to face the world.
Issues: Like Rigids, Aggressives can be highly functional in the world, especially in Western society. But they struggle with normal human connections. It is hard for them to trust others. They usually have a strongly pejorative perception of humanity at large and believe that societal rules simply don’t apply to them. They are more likely to get involved in crime than others. The feeling of being enclosed – physically or psychologically – is usually terrifying for them. They have a very high need to feel free. They often struggle to learn from negative outcomes, as it is not easy for them to admit to themselves that they were wrong. Unlike Rigids, they respond to perceived threats not with rigidity but by fluidly becoming who they need to be to deal with the situation. They may become dependent on challenging themselves to experience pleasure from life.
Benefits: Aggressives usually have very high levels of charisma. They make excellent leaders, influencers and entrepreneurs. They can take an idea and see it through to its completion when all others have collapsed in their wake. Most successful politicians and world leaders are high in this pattern. Aggressives access fully the energy of emotion, unlike the other types, but instead of allowing it to lead to deeply human feelings, they channel it up their body to create a charismatic and compelling front.
Treatment: Like Rigids, it is not common for people high in the Aggressive type to seek therapeutic help, unless in a crisis. The challenges for the Aggressive character type are to allow emotions to develop from the inner energy they feel; to develop closer friendships; to allow vulnerability and to allow themselves to be in situations where they don’t have control. Although powerful, Aggressives are usually not well grounded and this is why they are so afraid of aspects of their own humanity. Working with the Bioenergetic Grounding Circuit – from the belly to the soles of the feet – can be really beneficial for them.
Compensating Oral
Origins: The Compensating Oral type is a subtype of the Oral character. The childhood situation is the same as for the Oral and thus pre-egoic. The Compensating aspect refers to the way in which this type attempts to compensate for, or cover up, the childhood wounding. The wound originates in the lack of felt connection with the mother in the first year or life. But, whilst the Oral will simply exist in an inner state of lack, the Compensating type utilises a specific strategy to avoid feeling the void inside. They make themselves needed by constantly giving to others, such that they will never have to become aware of the immense neediness they themselves have inside.
Issues: Compensating Orals love to give but their giving comes from an unconscious place. They may experience themselves simply as wanting to give, to support or to heal others. But, actually, the motivation is to make themselves so needed by others that they never feel the void within. Being unconsciously motivated in this manner leaves them susceptible to burnout, especially in a situation where the demands upon them might quickly increase. Like other Orals, they may easily become dependent on rituals, substances or behaviours that temporarily block the sense of inner emptiness.
Benefits: Even though they are not conscious of what is motivating them, Compensating Orals nevertheless are heart-centred, giving people who genuinely experience love and who are happy to help others.
Treatment: Because the original Oral wound is covered up, they will have to become aware of their strategy of giving and begin to change it in order to heal. Once this is done, they can follow strategies useful for the Oral type. Working directly with the expression of anger can be a “fast track” for Compensating Orals to create inner change and heal.
Notes
1) We all have our own way of filling in questionnaires. Some of us habitually score in the lower range, some the higher. Some stick to the middle scores, some to the extremes. So, if all your scores are above or below 50%, don’t be concerned. Simply look at the highest scoring categories you have.
2) This questionnaire has 61 statements for you to rate your personal alignment with. There are 10 that score for the first 5 character types above and 6 that score for the Compensating Oral. Each statement thus refers to only one of these six character types. Of course, some statements may be applied to more than one character type and others would indicate to the negative for secondary types. I have not done more complex correlations like this for two reasons. Firstly, the WordPress plug-in I’m using does not allow for this possibility. Secondly, I tend to see these 6 character types rather as “sub-personalities” that can co-exist with each other inside one human psyche. This would lead of course to sometimes experiencing two or more opposing views about certain situations or topics. But I find this also to be broadly true of the human psyche.
