William James famously said, “when you have a choice to make and you don’t make it, that is in itself a choice.”

Nines orient themselves in relation to other people, so losing connections can make them feel lost and adrift.

Remind yourself that experiencing your anger doesn’t mean you have to express it

adopt a coping strategy that involves forgetting themselves (and the pain of not getting what they want) and overadjusting to others as a way of finding peace and avoiding conflict. Nines can’t tolerate conflict because it seems to them

start believing that, somewhere inside, you know what you want, and just take a stab at it. Over time you will develop a clearer channel to that part of you that does know what you want and need.

Nines can be hard to deal with at times, especially when they’ve been so easygoing that they find themselves doing things they don’t want to be doing and so become stubborn or irritable.

When they were children, Nines may not have received the attention they needed, and their wishes and preferences typically weren’t listened to and acted upon.

In psychological terms, this “dimming of consciousness” expresses the fact that as a basic survival mechanism, the human psyche automatically “goes to sleep to,” or dissociates from painful experiences as a way of surviving or staying safe in the world.

And overadapting to others eventually creates a sense of dissatisfaction that can leak out through passive-aggressive behavior and lead to the kind of conflict the adaptation was designed to prevent in the first place.