By Kenneth Sørensen, the article is part of the book Energy Psychology
In order to get the most out of this article, it is a prerequisite that you have basic knowledge of the energy types. I would therefore recommend that you read The seven energy types – intro first .
The purpose of this article is to inspire you on a journey of discovery in your personal energy psychology and experience how revolutionary it can be for your self-understanding and insight into others.
We do not see reality as it is, but as we ourselves are. This means that we see ourselves and others through a filter that is more or less obscured. Energy psychology is a lens that gives us access to the entire psychological spectrum of being human – and this in a unique way. It gives you the opportunity to act with more wisdom and authenticity because you understand and accept more.
In this article, I will endeavor to give you inspiration to translate energy psychology into your everyday life. I will do this by telling how I myself have experienced my type composition and what I have done to bring my psychological DNA to life.
It is only when we translate psychological theory into practice that we understand if there is a real reality behind the theory. We must remember that a theory is not reality. A good theory only points to phenomena that must be discovered and experienced through observation, studies and experiments.
Let me therefore take you on a journey in my youth and show how my energy types unfolded, without me even being aware that this was actually what was happening.
In the military, my 6 personality takes shape
When I am 17 years old, I sign a contract with the army as a professional soldier. It will be the start of a five-year course in the army’s combat troops, first as an infantryman, then as a gunner on a tank, and finally as a scout in a tank squadron. I also participated in a one-year mission as a UN soldier in Cyprus, and the whole process helped to shape my first budding personality.
It was a good time and I was in my element. At that time I was a right-wing nationalist who wanted to defend my fatherland against the communist threat from the East. This was before the fall of the wall and the Cold War was thriving, giving free rein to my passionate commitment.
Today it is clear to me that it was my 6th personality that woke up. For the first time I had a direction in my life, something I could dedicate myself to and believe in. It was also a very insecure and vulnerable young man who signed up. My dedicated and passionate emotional life (the 6) had found it difficult to express itself in the years leading up to my becoming a soldier.
I had entrenched myself in a hard and isolated male role with no room for emotions. I had also used great effort to suppress my vulnerable and sensitive sides. Today I can see that the focus on self-control and fear of humiliation (because it was shameful to show emotions) was created by my dynamic mentality (the 1). I clearly remember that the literature I was most interested in in my teens was war literature or westerns. They conveyed the same black and white image of the man as a hardened hero who took the lives of the bad guys. It is not strange that this stereotype strongly appealed to me when you see that my entire personality is dominated by 6-161 – in other words, a strong dominance of the will function which is also included in the 6.
Another very significant feature of my early personality was a pronounced isolasjon. I don’t remember having a single personal friend until my military days. Friendship almost bounced off me, perhaps because no one in the working-class environment I grew up in could stimulate my true nature. I pretty much always felt different. It makes sense today that I was so isolated, as 1s and 6s often prefer being alone rather than adapting to their surroundings. The 1 in particular has a great inherent need for freedom, and will rarely compromise.
1968, preschool age
Another important theme has been the experience of major internal conflicts, that is to say a difficult temperament with strong emotional reactions, especially if I felt dominated or exposed to injustice. The emotional reactions could often not be played out because the demand for self-control (the 1) was always massively present. The first 3 years at primary school I was often in fights with the other boys. It was almost natural for me to fight, it was something boys did. But it also isolated me. It was clear that I was strong and good at fighting, which is expressed in my 1st body. This pattern stopped abruptly when I lost a fight against a stronger boy and was humiliated by the defeat. At that moment the 1 in me stepped into character. I chose a different path to the top by being the fastest and sharpest in the cue (1st mental). The fear of humiliation is one of the 1’s biggest limitations, because it wants to be the strongest or at the top of the food chain.
The military service made it possible to channel my aggression and frustration into a constructive expression. The relatively hard discipline and the approach to destructive weapons gave me the experience of being able to handle the energies in my nature. Those who have not been in the military will probably have difficulty understanding what happens to you when you are trained in the different types of weapons. For me it gave a form of trust to some of the most primitive energies in the personality. Shooting training gives you the ability to be calm and focused. The first time you throw a hand grenade, you have to trust that it won’t blow up in your face when you pull the fuse and throw it. When you fire an anti-tank rocket or the cannon at a tank, you get access to the same primary destructive energy.
1982: Just promoted to corporal, as a soldier in the UN peacekeeping forces in Cyprus
I don’t want to glamorize life in the military, and most of us probably wish we didn’t need the military. But it was a good experience for me at the time. It gave me a direction in life even though it could in no way solve my deeper psychological problems. The discovery of energy psychology in particular has subsequently given me a much deeper understanding and acceptance of my basic energies and the problems I have struggled with. It has made it much easier to understand my positive qualities such as determination, idealism and hard work (1s and 6s). But of course also the dark sides, such as self-sufficiency (the 1), a fiery temper (the 6), and a deep dissatisfaction with my personality because it does not live up to my high ideals (the 6).
The military service gave me something to believe in, it motivated me to discipline my nature and gather my resources around becoming a good soldier. These 5 years were the first step in a long process of gathering my personality through idealism, commitment and activism. I really believed in the project – to defend Denmark and the free world. But this happened in a very unbalanced way, which is typical for this phase in life when you develop your personality.
Breakdown and breakup
In the years from the age of 17 to 22, it was not about going to psychotherapy or reflecting deeply on my own nature. During this period I was often deeply unhappy, especially because of my lack of love life. In the military I made my first proper friends, but I often felt depressed without being able to share this with anyone. I developed an ability to isolate myself and went through my processes alone. A condition that often comes with a strong 1 is that you have to get up under your own power. I had also developed a massive defense system (1s) so that no woman could access my vulnerability (6s). Behind my hard facade, however, there was a devoted and romantic heart that belongs to my 6th nature. This made it impossible to open up to a love relationship, although there was no lack of possibilities. It felt like a glass wall separated me and my surroundings. I also developed severe acne with blisters on my face, which made me even more vulnerable and reinforced my fear of being humiliated.
When one’s personality is composed of the 1 and the 6, a violent conflict arises between the two energy types. In my younger years, the need for self-control and a cool facade (the 1) battled with the need for romantic passionate devotion (the 6). It wasn’t until I met my first boyfriend at 21 that the cork came out of the bottle, and out came a lifetime of repressed emotional life. A great romantic crush combined with an uncontrolled wave of unhappiness washed through me. It turned my life upside down, because I completely lost self-control due to the strong pent-up emotions.
The relationship lasted a few years and the ending triggered my first major existential crisis. I could no longer live behind my isolated facade (the 1), something new had to happen. Miraculously, at the age of 24 I left the military, moved from Næstved to Copenhagen and started college. This was the start of a complete identity transformation.
From Soldier to New Age Devotee: Personality Version 2.0
A completely new energy came into my life, and it was about understanding and developing my EMOTIONAL LIFE (6 personality and emotions). It was clear that I woke up to my repressed feelings and my social phobias, and that I was living behind a shell that I had to get out of. The most important change in this period was that I got a completely new social life with people who were interested in astrology and self-development. I let go of life in Næstved and everyone I knew there; I knew instinctively that I had to free myself from old influences in order to carry out a major identity change. The mental 1 gives the ability to let go and cut ties with the mental ax to create greater freedom.
At college it was a course in astrology and parapsychology that lit a fire in me that I had never experienced before. When I met astrology I knew what the rest of my life would be used for, because it gave me a key to understanding who I was and what I could become. Once again, it was the 6 who drove the process with a glowing interest, supported by my dynamic and purposeful mentality. But it was also the first contact with my essence (the 2), because astrology opened to a cosmological wisdom which gave me an understanding that I was part of a larger whole.
My primary involvement in life was still ego-centered and was mostly about freeing myself from the prison of uncertainty I lived in. I woke up to the multiple conflicts that lived in my being, but now I started to do something about them. In the years until I turned 29, I focused on studying astrology, meditation and psychotherapy. I still had no significant education. I lived off odd jobs in the construction industry and as a cleaning helper in a kindergarten. I came from a working class background and was used to hard manual work. Nothing in my upbringing could stimulate my ambitions, beyond the will to fend for myself. The hard physical work had begun to become humiliating for my 1st, but my identification with the alternate universe made up for the humiliation, and for the first time in my life I began to keep a little of myself.
When I was 25 I meditated for the first time and it was like coming home. Meditasjon taught me that I could change my unhappy emotional states by visualizing a sun in my chest that radiated radiating acceptance. For the first time in my life I found a loving place inside myself. Meditasjon became my self-healing, a place where I gathered strength and could transform myself from the inside out.
What drove this process was my need to experience love (2-6s), as well as to be completely free to be myself (1s). The introverted part of the 6 was activated through meditation, and my inner mystic slowly emerged. In the meditation session, I experienced spontaneous openings into love energies that were unconditional, and they redeemed my vulnerable nature in love. During the first years, a deep love for Christ broke through and this seemed completely natural to me, even though I had grown up in an atheist home.
From New Age to missionary in social psychiatry
My 6 personality increasingly focused on development through daily meditation practice, psychotherapy and studies in astrology and spirituality. In 1991, my personality got a new focus when I started a social pedagogic education. Stepping into a relatively left-wing universe was a bit of a culture shock for me. It was not long ago that I had been a flaming right-wing nationalist soldier who hated communists and other left-wing figures.
1996, activist social educator
In a way it was as if I had gone over to the enemy’s camp, but at the same time this was quite natural because I no longer identified with my past. I had become a vegetarian, did not touch alcohol, practiced meditation and new age philosophy. Therefore, the education was a natural step into a completely new identity. From one extreme to the other, however, is a classic development pattern for an immature 6 personality.
During the 90s I stabilized my personality. I started a family for the first time, and had a great social political commitment in connection with my work in psychiatry. I took the initiative for a nationwide magazine for psychiatric patients, written and produced by them themselves. Along with my involvement in theosophy, a cosmological and spiritual philosophy, this became a focal point in my life.
6’s personality was still in the driver’s seat. I was an activist missionary for my two causes of the heart. I was fairly single-minded and a bit fanatical in my approach to what I believed in. However, many good things came out of it, even if it was unbalanced. In the years around the turn of the millennium, another major shift took place. I had a daughter and had to develop a whole new identity as a father, which was good for me because it made me more soft and listening.
I left Theosophy as a result of a crisis in the community I was a part of. I was deeply disappointed and disillusioned by our inability to live up to the ideals we preached, and I resolved never again to identify with a specific religion or philosophy. I still appreciated many of the values and insights that were part of theosophy, including the philosophy of the seven rays, but I felt that I was trapped in a certain philosophy that limited me. I needed to be much more flexible and think for myself. In a way, the missionary died in me, but not the activist. Both archetypes are strongly marked by the 6’s need to advocate for a cause of the heart.
The missionary dies, but the guide is born
In those years I also changed my identification with the qualities of the 6 to that of the 2. Because of this crisis, I decided to further my education and start an intensive psychotherapeutic course. I began my education as a psychosynthesis psychotherapist, which I finished with a Master’s degree at a university in London. I thus became the first in my family to get an academic degree, probably a clear example of the 1, but also the 6 who often break patterns and create new paths.
I also changed careers. I graduated from social psychiatry and started my own business as a coach, teacher and later as a psychotherapist. My inner focus shifted under the influence of a completely new energy. The psychotherapeutic work opened up a far more intimate, calm and spacious side of myself. I became more embracing in my philosophical point of view, I was more experience-oriented and down to earth. It is quite clear that my 2nd essence paved the way for my full-time work as a psychotherapist and teacher of psychology and meditation. I became better able to master the passionate energies. I now rode the horse, the horse no longer rode me.
In my case, the sensitive life energy gives me a much greater awareness and insight into the psychological universe we live in. It stimulates me to find a center of calmness and presence within me, where I can be in sensitive contact with myself and my surroundings. It is still a daily struggle to conquer this calm, loving, observant being. Again and again the fire from my personality types (6-161) flares up and temporarily throws me off balance.
2005, photo for Will-management workshop
Let me give a few examples of how my energy types fight against each other and what I must do to harmonize them so that my body, emotions and thoughts cooperate with my essence.
In connection with my writing, I am often disturbed by the reaction from my dedicated and passionate emotional life. I can get so excited about the ideas and insights I describe that I get overly emotional and have to take a break from writing. My solar plexus is boiling and bubbling and I have to go for a walk to cool down. This is very inappropriate, because it destroys the creative flow of the writing process. I must therefore intervene in my reactions and let go of the disturbing emotions by breathing in and calming them down. I observe them in a loving and impersonal way and ask them to relax. This is an example of how I can use the 2’s sensitive energies to tap into the 6’s disturbing passion.
Another problem in connection with the writing process is that my focus is sometimes so intense that I overlook my bodily and emotional signals. I write no matter how I feel, and mash the words through and down on the paper. After a few days, clear symptoms of stress begin to appear: irritation, tension and a feeling that I am no longer in touch with joy. This is an example of how the dynamic mind, with the help of pure willpower, can force its agenda through. It is extremely unproductive. Sooner or later I will have to give up the writing process for a few days because my nervous system is completely exhausted. These are clear examples of how too much intensity and use of force creates problems.
With a humorous twinkle in my eye, I often say that my life project is about getting my wise and sensitive nature to express itself through a tank. This is not an easy project.
When humour, spontaneity and openness polish the personality
This brings me to my final point, which is the need to integrate some of the other energy types. We have all seven life energies at our disposal – something that is absolutely essential. At some point in 2012, I came to the conclusion that I had to strengthen my contact with the creative and spontaneous energies of the 4. I felt that I was still too stiff, inhibited and single-tracked in my personal expression. These are of course the consequences of the energy typology I am equipped with. I therefore decided to develop a more spontaneous, light and relaxed personality.
When we know the energy universe of energy psychology and the methods we use, we can shape our personality as we wish, within the framework of our type composition. We can add strong facets from the other types, depending on how much effort we are ready to make.
I changed my meditation practice and meditated on the psychological qualities of the 4 for a long time. Using visualizations of images of beauty and harmony, I came into contact with the qualities of gracefulness and playful lightness. Every time we experience the energy, appreciate it and let it fill our being, we gradually integrate it into our personality. In this way we can create a new atmosphere and behavior, and this is actually the core of Eastern yoga philosophy. Or said with a Christian perspective: «As a man thinketh in his heart, so shall he be.»
But there is always a price to be paid, a challenge that arises when we seek to change qualities and behavioral habits. In my case, it led to the opposite poles of this open and playful energy rising in my being, especially when I had to live it out in my encounters with the outside world. For example, I experienced a stiffening fear of letting people get closer to me in public space. I worked with these reactions and psychotherapy for a longer period, and in that way got help to let go of some of my defense mechanisms. How big the internal resistance is depends on how high the goals we have set ourselves.
I started going to yoga three times a week because my body was stiff as a stick and not very graceful or mobile. Bodily yoga is a form of movement that has many of the 4’s energies in it, as it leads to physical and mental balance and harmony. I practiced yoga for a period of two years and the results were amazing. My body changed significantly and became much more flexible and well-coordinated. Being with the other yoga practitioners also affected my emotional life because I almost absorbed their energy. People who do yoga are often small, slender and graceful people who radiate the lightness and grace that I myself needed.
I also participated in several courses where dance, authentic relationships and intimacy were the focus. This was extremely out of line for my personality type. It is the balance between the inner work and changed behavior among people that creates the fastest transformation. I therefore sought out social environments that were largely characterized by 4 energies, which was also quite challenging because the 4 type is far more physical and intimacy-seeking than my being is used to.
The result of all these efforts was a completely new way of being in life. I changed my teaching style and became more experience-oriented and physical. The 4’s qualities made me much more expressive and relational, and it became easier for my 2’s essence to express itself in my personality.
It also changed my love life, because in 2015 I met Karianne, who is today my wife, my soul mate and life partner. The love that we share, and that I only now had the opportunity to open up to, has strengthened my ability to be both present, vulnerable and strong.
I am still on a journey to balance my energy type composition with the other life energies, but I have now found a color palette that I can decorate my personality with. In this way, I get even more to give, and as mentioned earlier, our greatest gift is to be able to give who we are to the world .
Do you want to know more about energy psychology and its energy types?
Here you can read about the book : Energy Psychology – Your Energy Types – Your Psychological DNA
Here you can watch a short video interview where I explain my energy types
Here you can read the in-depth article on Energy Psychology
