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5 Minutes to Grow Beyond Your Autopilot
How "The Mask" is the Perfect Metaphor for the Enneagram
“The Mask”, featuring Jim Carrey, is a great movie that illustrates what the Enneagram types are like: masks (or personas) we don until we become so “fused” with them that we forget our true selves. Read this blog to learn about your mask!
Seeing the Enneagram Archetypes on Screen
Stories help us see important truths in life, especially when it’s about sensitive or tricky topics like our own personality and defense mechanisms.
There are a number of movies I love using to explain what the Enneagram is, how it works, and why it matters for our own healing & growth.
This blog will be exploring how the Jim Carrey classic “The Mask” (1994) is a phenomenal illustration about how:
we all wear masks (the outward-facing aspects of ourselves) to deal with life
forget who we truly are along the way, and
need to find our way back to our true selves.
The Mask and the Enneagram: What Jim Carrey's Classic Teaches Us About Personality
In this zany movie that has no shortage of exaggerations, we see Jim Carrey’s character, Stanley Ipkiss, the quintessential Enneagram 9 who is the perfect example of how our True Self (AKA our essence) tries to navigate through life’s experiences, but falls asleep to himself by putting on a whole other Enneagram 3-like persona (literally meaning, “the mask”) when he finds it too painful to show up as his real self.
The rest of the movie illustrates what happens when our rejected, repressed inner parts take over — useful in the beginning, but disastrous in the long run.
By the way, all the nine Enneagram types are archetypes of the universal human experience. Even if you yourself are neither Type 9 or Type 3, since Type 9 represents the aspect of all of us who falls asleep to our true selves, and Type 3 represents all the ways we live according to how we think we SHOULD be in the world, you can still find your own story reflected here. Just swap out the details of what your themes and patterns are.
Before the Mask: Our True Selves (Essence)
Jim Carrey’s character, Stanley Ipkiss, is the ultimate “nice guy.” He’s sweet, accommodating, and deeply uncomfortable with asserting himself.
He avoids rocking the boat and risking conflict or tension, tries to keep everyone (else) happy, and dreams of a more exciting life—but rarely takes action for himself. Instead, he resigns himself to just taking things as they come — being overly content or seeking comfort or complacency.
“Remember? Nice guys finish last.”
Stanley downplays himself both in front of obstacles (avoiding conflict) and opportunities (not asserting himself) in ways it makes the audience cringe on his behalf.
(AGHH! If only you would JUST. FREAKIN. SAY. SOMETHING!!)
(If you felt this frustration watching these scenes, this is probably you taking on what Stanley disowned and outsourced. He underly advocates for himself, and unintentionally summons someone else (i.e., YOU) to overly take on that responsibility and get upset on his behalf. This is how projection works. Neat, huh? I digress.)
Stanley reflects how Enneagram 9s (AKA The Peacemaker, Harmonizer) generally operate.
In their sloth slumber of falling asleep to their true selves, Type nines:
Avoid conflict at all costs
Have trouble asserting their needs or opinions or just putting themselves out there
Often feel overlooked, unimportant, or ignored (yet feel squeamish about doing or saying anything about it)
Escape into fantasy, comfort, or routines to avoid discomfort (narcotization is their primary psychological defense mechanism)
Repress anger until it bubbles over through passive aggression, builds up until it explodes, or disappears entirely (supposedly)
Stanley doesn’t speak up at work, gets walked all over, consistently misses his shot to connect, and struggles to be known on a deeper level.
But inside? There's a storm of unexpressed feelings, desires, and longings just waiting to erupt.
How do these repressed parts show up? Immediately after his junk of a rental car (top) breaks down on the bridge and he smashes his hand (rage outburst) or in his dreams (bottom):
How he lives sees himself and is seen: drab, broken, unwanted, boring, loser
What his repressed longings want: to be successful, suave, powerful, charismatic
The Mask: A Symbol of Repressed or Disowned Parts of Ourselves
After an infuriating incident with the car, Stanley comes across this magical mask, which unbeknownst to him we later find to be a creation of Loki — the God of Mischief — notorious for his shapeshifting abilities.
When Stanley returns home, he tosses the mask aside and switches the TV channel to an interview of a psychiatrist author of the book “The Masks We Wear”, where he says:
“We all wear masks, metaphorically speaking.”
“We suppress the id, our darkest desires…”
“…and adopt a more socially acceptable image.”
In other words, these masks help us portray ourselves differently on the outside to be accepted by others and to succeed in life.
Putting on the Mask: Taking on a New Persona
Sick and tired of being a life-long loser, Stanley puts on the magical mask, and his world turns upside down (what he thinks is rightside up).
“It’s like it brings your innermost desires to life.”
What are Stanley’s innermost desires? To be a powerful, uninhibited, unfiltered, yet wildly charismatic being, who can alter himself and his surroundings into whatever is wanted or needed in each moment.
“Somebody stop me!”
As the Mask, Stanley says what he wants, takes what he wants, and doesn’t care what anyone thinks. He becomes the exaggerated, uninhibited version of himself — in the same way that Enneagram 3s are the complete “opposite” of Enneagram 9s.
This is exactly what the Enneagram is about.
It’s like our true face is too sensitive to the outside world — it’s too intense, too scary, too much. So we put on a mask to help us get by.
Everyone has a “mask”— a false identity, a coping strategy developed to protect the self from fear, shame, or vulnerability.
Every Enneagram type is a specific mask — a specific false identity that comes with their respective coping strategies and defense mechanisms. These are what’s going on behind-the-scenes for each type:
The Masks of the Nine Enneagram Types
Enneagram Ones (the Improver): “How can I be perfect?”
Themes: good/bad, right/wrong, all/nothing
Protect from the risk of uncertainty & feeling out of control
Enneagram Twos (the Befriender): “How can I be lovable?”
Themes: intimacy, connection, closeness
Protect from the risk of being rejected for who they truly are
Enneagram Threes (the Performer): “How can I be seen as successful?”
Themes: success, admiration, productivity, spotlight
Protect from the risk of truly being a “loser”
Enneagram Fours (the Individualist): “How can I be memorable?”
Themes: uniqueness, distinction, difference
Protect from the risk of being ordinary (thus abandoned)
Enneagram Fives (the Observer): “How can I be knowledgable?”
Themes: knowledge, expertise, competency
Protect from the risk of being overwhelmed or not self-sufficient
Enneagram Sixes (the Loyalist): “How can I be safe?”
Themes: safety/danger, security, trust/mistrust
Protect from risk, period.
Enneagram Sevens (the Enthusiast): “How can I be free?”
Themes: experience, sensationalism, opportunity, and play
Protect from the risk of being trapped, especially in pain
Enneagram Eights (the Challenger): “How can I be invulnerable?”
Themes: power, will, and change
Protect from the risk of being vulnerable or influenced by others
Enneagram Nines (the Harmonizer): “How can I be invulnerable?”
Themes: peace, unity, oneness, comfort
Protect from the risk of being a Self/agent of change
When Things Go Sideways: Fusing with Our Mask
If only these masks really gave us what we truly want!
It’s not like The Mask is turning Stanley into someone else. It’s revealing parts of Stanley that were already there — always there — just deeply buried, out of his conscious awareness because it was too painful to lead life with those parts.
The Masked Version isn’t true integration (a reconciliation of various parts). Instead, it’s overcompensation. Instead of internal harmony, Stanley is still split and polarized on the inside, making him reactive (exaggerated) on the outside.
When we wear these masks long enough, our face fuses with the mask to the point where we forget that the mask is not our actual face. We only value ourselves for part of who we are because we don’t remember that there’s a whole lot more to us than what we (and others) can see.
Though these defense mechanisms and coping strategies WERE useful when we were ACTUALLY vulnerable and without many resources, there comes a point where they start CAUSING problems.
“But it’s wrecking my life.”
These masks were appropriate backup options to have when we really didn’t have alternative ways of taking care of ourselves.
But what happens when we technically OUTGROW our need for defense mechanisms but we/our masks don’t quite get the memo?
All our coping skills know how to do is to cope — to problem solve according to what they THINK is the problem.
And if there’s no problem, it summons one from thin air. Namely, it CREATES problems that it knows how to solve, because what else is it supposed to do?
Stanley felt like he was on top of the world, the object of everyone’s desires, accomplishing things he never dreamed of doing with such ease…
…until he realized that most of the admiration and affection he was receiving was for this persona that he’s so split off from. But none of these are truly “him” — rather, they’re distorted expressions of hidden desires, shadow traits, and unmet needs.
Namely, he’s only known and valued for only PART of himself, not ALL of himself.
Even when his love interest Tina (Cameron Diaz) really is drawn to the non-masked self, Stanley can’t quite tell that she loves him, since he continues to reject and minimize himself.
At some point in his story, Stanley realizes that his mask is GETTING IN THE WAY for him to get what he really wants — to be known and connected and to have a place in this world for who he really is.
The pain far outweighs the gain, so he’s ready to finally confront the real issue: integrating the internal split parts. In order for him to truly be fulfilled, he needs to take the risk and do the scary thing: take off the mask, reveal his true self, and own what’s rightfully his instead of repressing them.
“When he [The Mask] is gone, all that’s left is me [my true self].”
Taking Off Our Mask: Integrating with Our Shadows and Repressed Parts
The issue isn’t that we have masks on. It’s that we’ve fused to our masks that we’ve forgotten who we really are underneath it.
Our Enneagram types and the identities and coping strategies aren’t bad — it’s just that they were designed with the specific purpose of taking care of us when we were actually vulnerable.
Growth and healing work doesn’t involve getting rid of the mask, but recognizing that:
There are more masks than just our type — 8 whole other ones!
None of these masks are supposed to replace who we really are
These masks come in handy — as long as we can wisely discern what each situation calls for so we can put on (and take off) these masks on command, without ever forgetting ourselves.
The goal isn’t to reject or throw away undesirable aspects of ourselves to grasp for what we perceive to be the exact opposite. That just swings us to the opposite extreme, which isn’t sustainable either.
The goal isn't to swing wildly from repression to explosion, or from invisibility to domination.
The goal is to INTEGRATE — to gather the various parts and dimensions of ourselves and to make it whole.
It’s not that Stanley was a Type 9 who then became a Type 3. He always has been MORE THAN both Type 9 and Type 3:
When he was in 9-ness (pre-Mask) of self-effacing placation, his 3-ish patterns of self-assertive dynamism were already there — just buried.
When he was in 3-ness (with the Mask) of dynamic self-promotion, his 9-ish patterns didn’t disappear — it still hung out out beneath the surface.
When he took off the Mask (and kept it off), it wasn’t like he just reverted back into being 9-ish. Instead, by the end, Stanley embodies steady confidence — a harmonizing blend of 9-ish and 3-ish traits that looks qualitatively different than either type.
By the end, we see Stanley knowing and trusting his true self, his true power, and his true place in the world. He says what he needs to say, but doesn’t need to exaggerate or conceal. He takes up his rightful space because he knows he’s important without having to be all-important.
The power, admiration, and magnetism he was looking for outside himself through the Mask turns out to have been within himself this entire time: he just needed to embody it to see it for himself.
After Stanley takes off the Mask, all that’s left is him…and that’s all he needs to be.
WARNING — When You Refuse Your True Self and Choose the Mask
The villain Dorian Tyrell is an example of what happens when we DON’T integrate power and think that the mask is GOOD and our true self is BAD.
In Tyrell’s case, the Mask completely took over, and he overidentified with his coping strategies and disconnected from his authentic self.
(In this case, I would guess he’s either a very unhealthy Enneagram 8 or Type 4SX, but any other type could just as easily become the villain.)
Just because Tyrell’s mask is taken away from him in the end doesn’t mean he’s actually free of its influence — if the opportunity presented himself, he would likely opt to put back on (and keep on) this powerful alter ego.
He hasn’t (yet) had the change of heart, which only comes AFTER one realizes that what the Mask offers is just a shallow counterfeit of what one actually needs (like intimacy).
Tina used to be in a relationship with Tyrell but was turned off by his insecurities — it wasn’t that she rejected him per se but his sensitive/kind side was so deeply engulfed by this invulnerable exterior that there was no way for her to make it through and no one for her to actually connect with.
Had Tyrell connected with and led with his inner tenderness, he wouldn’t have objectified and repelled Tina. The very things he wanted — power, recognition, and/or connection — are stripped away from him, not by external factors, but by his own choosing the Mask over his true self.
You are MORE than Your Enneagram Type/Mask
It’s usually in the wake of mask-induced problems (i.e., existential crises) that people have that change of heart/rock bottom experience and reach out for therapy. People’s go-to patterns just don’t work the way they used to, and yet they don’t know what else to do.
It’s in the process of taking a deep, hard look at the parts of us that we often ignore (our shadows and other repressed needs) and actually integrating them back into ourselves that we (re)emerge as our truest selves (our essence).
A lot of people think that their Enneagram type/mask is ALL of who they are. Some even celebrate and reinforce that. However, it’s likely that the louder our Type’s patterns, the more fused and trapped we are to our own masks. We think we’re free, even though we’re actually enslaved.
When we’ve really done our inner work, our types/masks lose their effect — even though we have the capacity to make decisions in these familiar ways, we’re not defined to them.
It’s a common sign that when someone has really done a lot of internal work, it’s harder to discern what Enneagram type they are.
When we reconcile aspects of ourselves BEYOND our Enneagram type, we become more whole, grounded, resilient, free, and fulfilled.
If you find yourself being frustrated or exhausted from trying to figure out life, the issue might NOT be that you don’t know how to fix this problem.
The true issue might be that what you THOUGHT was the solution is actually CREATING problems to begin with.
Which Mask Do You Have? Ready to Release It?
The Enneagram isn’t just about recognizing our type — it’s about noticing the mask we wear to survive, and asking:
“Is this really me? Or is this just who I THINK I need to be to feel safe, loved, or powerful?”
Of the nine Enneagram types, which ones sound most like how you engage life? How is that mask working out for you?
If you don’t know your type, check out this blog!
If you’re sick and tired of your autopilot patterns and are wanting to grow BEYOND your type, here are two options:
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Enneagram Types & Therapy
I was a panelist at the EnneaSummit 2024 for the Enneagram Practitioner Panel.
In this panel, we share our experiences and observations about what different Enneagram types think they need in therapy, what they actually need, and some important growth steps so they can grow beyond their type.
(Scroll down to see the transcript or to get the All Access Pass!)
I was a panelist at the EnneaSummit 2024 for the Enneagram Practitioner Panel.
In this panel, we share our experiences and observations about what different Enneagram types think they need in therapy, what they actually need, and some important growth steps so they can grow beyond their type.
Panelists:
Whitney Russell Stabile, MS, LPC-S, CEDS-C (Type 1)
Eden Hyder, LPC, LCMHC-QS (Type 2)
Leslie Bley, LPC-S (Type 6)
Joanne Kim, LMFT (Type 4)
Get the EnneaSummit All Access Pass so that you can see the 30+ other talks, including with Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Curt Thompson!
Transcript
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I have four panelists with me, all of whom are professional therapists. We have some amazing panels today, as you can see on the schedule. We have a heart types panel, a gut types panel, a head types panel, a parents panel, but this particular panel is for creating some space to talk about mental health.
With some mental health professionals about their observations about each Enneagram type in therapy. So this panel is going to be perfect, for any Enneagram enthusiast looking to get insights or patterns about how their type approaches mental health, and maybe what some of the barriers might be to, you know, healing and growth, but this panel is also going to be perfect for therapists who use the Enneagram or are thinking about using the Enneagram more in their practice.
So without further ado, let me introduce you to our panelists. Um, we have, uh, Whitney Russell Stabile. Can you just wave so we can, and we have Eden Heider and then Leslie Bley and then Joanne Kim. And Eden is on the heart types panel along with Joanne. So you can go over to the heart size panel and hear a little bit more of their story.
But before we jump into our observations, I'd love for you guys just to give a little brief bio of yourself so we can get to know you. Whitney, would you mind going first? Sure.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): So I'm Whitney and I'm married to Joel Stabile and we have four wonderful kids. We're a blended family. So it's a yours, mine and ours situation.
So there's lots of lovely logistics that go along with that. Um, I've been a therapist since 2009 and, um, I'm a licensed professional counselor supervisor. I'm a certified eating disorder specialist consultant. I'm also EMDR trained, and I own a group practice called Brave Haven Counseling in Richardson, Texas.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Amazing. And you are type one, correct?
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yes, that is right. And you made the type one go first. Like I didn't get to learn what to expect from what everybody else said.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I know you're prepared. So, Eden, would you introduce yourself?
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yes, I am Eden Heider. I live in Charlotte, North Carolina, formerly lived in Texas and partnered with Whitney in the past, um, which has been really fun.
I have a practice with my husband, Michael Heider, who's also a therapist. He's an Enneagram 9. I'm an Enneagram 2. And, the practice is called Inside Out Collaborative. Also have some creative projects that I've dabbled in over the years. One is a podcast called Inside Out Podcast, which focuses on attachment and providing kind of psychoeducational material on attachment and how to integrate that into our concepts of ourselves and our relationships.
And that's kind of where my specialty is as well as an eating disorders and, anxiety and depression.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Great Eden. Thank you.
And we have Leslie Bley who have interviewed on a past summit. And so it's good to have you back. Leslie, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): I live in Austin, Texas. I have been a therapist for about 20 years. I'm an LPC and supervisor here and I am married to an Enneagram nine. I'm an Enneagram six and my husband and I have twin boys that are 13. So it is a lot of unique smells and sounds and sites in my house, but it's a lot of fun.
And then part of my practice is working with groups. I run a group for women throughout the year called Compassionate Community Therapy, and it's modeled after attachment and motion regulation, story work. And then I also run groups for therapists called Business Vitality, and it's to help support therapists who are often feeling super alone in their own formation and in their business sense.
And I come from a business background, but a therapist heart. And so I try to mix those in these support and business, you know, style groups. And then I also try to do regular Enneagram for counselors, uh, trainings and webinars since there's not a whole lot out there giving tons of real straightforward.
You know, credible ways to integrate this into our world. So that's me.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thank you, Leslie. And not, but last but not least, Joanne Kim, would you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So I am an Enneagram and brain spotting therapist in the Silicon Valley. So in the San Francisco Bay area, and I, in classic or fashion where I get bored very easily, I have three businesses that now I think about on, like, I probably should have just stuck with the one, um, but, I love what I do, in my therapy practice.
A lot of my clients are nines, ones, twos, and fours. So most of the right side of the enneagram, because my people tend to struggle with a lot of anxiety, guilt, and shame. Partially because they have an allergic reaction to anger. So one of my hats is as an Enneagram therapist. So my other hats are around creating a, an online school for feelings, because there's a lot of things that I cover with my clients where they're like, I really wish I'd learned this in school.
And I'm like, got it. I will make one. So, um, that is my joy. It keeps me up at night. Just cause it's a lot of work, but, it's something that I feel like I've been brought on this planet to do so. I am a self preservation for, married to a social one. With my work wife who is a sexual tooth. And so I got both of my aerotypes covered and w definitely grow and stretch each other in all the interesting ways possible So happy to be here and happy to share things related to mental health and how the Enneagram helps inform our path forward.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Wonderful. Thank you so much, Joanne. Okay. So here's what we're going to do. We are going to go around the Enneagram starting with type one, and I want to spend about five to seven minutes or so on each Enneagram type, talking about maybe one or two observations that you all have, not all of you have to share about each type because we have to put some boundaries and limitations on our time.
It's hard enough to do, to talk about the Enneagram with one person for, for an hour, but it's, it's going to be a little challenging, but I think we're going to. We're going to be able to uncover some great stuff today. So let's start with type one and we can just, just jump in. And really, again, what we're trying to do is just to share some observations so that we can help people maybe recognize some patterns in their own type, and also to help some therapists who are interested in using the Enneagram in their practice to know what to expect if somebody wants to do the Enneagram and, and what to look out for.
So super excited about this, this conversation. So, anyone can jump in now. What about type ones? What do you, what are you seeing in your practice?
Perfection in Progress: How Enneagram Ones Navigate Trust and the Long Journey of Therapy
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): I'll say that sometimes type ones are looking for the perfect therapist, so they often struggle with just kind of the imperfection and journey of therapy.
Once they, it takes them a while to really trust a therapist because that inner critic and all of the, the deep shame that they have, like it's going to be a while before they're really vulnerable with that deep stuff. And then once they have established that bit, it's really hard to leave that therapist.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So you are saying that Leslie too, when they don't terminate, they just want to continue on in therapy for a really long time? Is that what you're saying?
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): Yeah, or just not want to even consider transitioning maybe to a different modality. Maybe it's time to work on something from a different angle, but that trust is established and it just doesn't feel easy or good to leave.
And that's been my experience with multiple Enneagram Ones.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Yeah, I like thinking about Ones as the improvers, because often they're like called the perfectionists and reformers, and I think that applies to some Ones, but the spirit of the term improver I think captures like the intentions of those who are Ones, and Often other people experience them as being like critical or judgmental, but it's really from this like sense of being connected with this ideal of like the perfect world or how the world ought to be.
And so it can be really lonely for a lot of ones who have that sense because other people don't see it. And so I think one of the things that often get missed with ones is that sadness from. Not being seen in one's experiences, being on this like mission to like help the planet be better. And then also being misunderstood and rejected by other people.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Do you guys see any particular mental health challenges or disorders? I know a few of you specialize in eating disorders and things like that. Do you see any patterns there with type 1s?
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Do you guys see any particular mental health challenges or disorders? I know a few of you specialize in eating disorders and things like that. Do you see any patterns there with type 1s?
Type 1s tend to be more on the like, Restrictive behaviors and or over exercising everyone. I tell people like when they slip over into seven, there might be some binging there, but then they'll come back to one and then be mad at themselves for all the things that they did at seven.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That makes sense.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): That;s control.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah, exactly. I was going to say, there's a, there's a, a need for that. Yeah. That structure, which I think that the passion for justice, which comes from that really sweet space, almost that, that connection to that ideal that you were talking about Joanne, that need for control and structure.
And I think the eating disorder can really. As well as maybe other mental health systems can offer like a respite from the world, which feels out of control or from their emotions, which feel out of control at times.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): I'd say like, anxiety and depression has a certain flavor for ones in that. I mean, I think for ones like depression doesn't look how we typically think of depression like being in one's feels and like, just like, you know, whining and complaining, but it's more of like the existentially type, like in being more resigned, being resigned, like, I don't get to have my wants and needs because like I have to always be on and be responsible.
And so it's kind of one's own individuality, personal wants and needs kind of take the back seat if it's like available at all. And so there's this, I mean, I think that's partially why there's so much resentment buildup, but it's not necessarily just resentment because other people aren't willing to show up for them.
Once I've actually eliminate that option for other people by stepping into those roles themselves first, but to step away from that feels really scary because then it's out of control and out of their agency. It's kind of a cycle that they get into.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Ones usually do look super functional and a lot of the mental health stuff that they're going through like even with OCD or depression, anxiety, eating disorders are usually still very functional, which I think is one of the reasons why it's hard for them to see that there that there's a problem.
Like, my therapist tells me I'm a long sufferer. Like, it takes me a long time. To actually like acknowledge that there's a problem because I can be so functional.
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): And isn't that kind of the power of anger as your core emotion to like keep You feeling active. It's very energizing. Right. Doesn't feel depressed.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Alright, let's move on to type 2. I'm curious about Eden's experience.
Boundaries & Burdens: Navigating Shame & Stability in Enneagram Twos
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah.
Oh man. Yeah. When I see type 2's, I think I see it's because there's so much relational instability um, or distress distress And it's the relationship or the relational instability that brings them in, which is often interpreted as their own failure. They've, they're failing in the relationship. And so they're coming in, um, and I think that can translate to a lot of resentment.
Sometimes it can go into a lot of shame, a lot of shame. And I think kind of what you said, Joanne, like telling a one, like. What if you tried to not improve? What if you tried to actually get worse, get worse? Right. In a way, I'm telling it to is what if you tried to set boundaries, it feels, you know, counterintuitive to a two that's struggling with their relationship because that feels like you're creating more conflict.
You're creating more distress. And that is really anxiety-provoking.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): For, I tell two is like, we have to set boundaries. But then the second part is you have to reinforce the boundary and you also have to manage your own feelings about reinforcing the boundary because there is that fear of the disruption in the relationship, but also the shame and guilt that they feel after they set the boundary.
Usually tends to allow them to not reinforce the boundary later. It’s like, they'll say, no, I'm not going to do that. And then they feel so much shame and guilt about saying no. And then they're like, okay, I'll do it. Yeah, there's 2 parts to the boundary battle.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So boundary work is just gonna be a big deal when, when twos in, in therapy.
And I'm next door as a three to the twos. And I, I, I resonate with, with that as well, like setting a boundary with kids or in parenting or anything. And then feeling like the bad guy for, for doing that and then having to wrestle with that. So I, uh, yeah, that's really insightful.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Usually have to give a disclaimer to like two clients who are coming in for therapy.
I'm like, well, I have to kind of assess where they are 'cause. If someone is like, really fused with the type 2 structure, then it's like, well, relationship is everything and so they come in for therapy. As long as their relationship, there's some stuff going on, but then once they resolve those relationships, they're like, well, I'm done.
Right? So they just like, leave, but there are a lot of people who come in and they're like, I don't know why I keep getting in the cycle where, like, I'm putting in so much work. Yeah, in these connections and like, why won't they love me type of thing. And so with those people, I'm like, I'm just going to give you a heads up.
You're going to come in thinking that the main thing is related to relationships. And what is actually going to happen is we're going to work on your connection with yourself just to give them a heads up. Cause not everyone wants that. And so then they can like move on to the next best spot. It's like, people who do know about the enneagram have an easier time sitting with that idea and that they keep like, getting themselves into the cycle.
They can't keep doing the same thing and expect a different outcome.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That’s really helpful, Joanne. That it's sort of therapy's sort of a conditional on a relationship. You might think, well, I need help because this relationship's out of whack. I need help on that. And then I'll leave. And you're like, no, stay, stay.
We need to work on, on you. That's good. Yeah.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): But I think if people are in that place, like as therapists, I'm like, sure. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. If anything else comes up in the future, let me know, just kind of leave the door open because I think twos are also more attentive to the relationship between them and the therapist and so like, I, I try to be more mindful about not imposing an agenda that might get them to like, make sure that I'm okay. Or I like them. So I kind of leave things a bit more open ended and it's like, yeah, whatever you're bringing in, like, let's work on that. And if they seem like, you know, I don't know if there's some, something more to this, then I might bring things up more directly. Um, because even knowing what's going on behind the scenes for twos might feel really painful because it feels so embarrassing compared to like fours who like, want you to tell them like all the. Deep dark. It's like, they're usually like, I want you to tell me that I'm not okay with them. I need to take it more lightly.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I think Michael Sheehan pointed out that in my interview with him, that a lot of times twos are so nice. They're asking him lots of questions. He's like, no, we need to ask you, I need to ask you the questions.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. I have twos that will, they just, They, they need those, like, first couple minutes of like, checking in with me almost.
And, and we've discussed that and, and made that kind of a part of our contract just to kind of ease them into the process. And I do think twos can struggle. With therapy, especially if they haven't been in therapy before, they may need know that they need help and know that they need to be there sitting in the room, but be very uncomfortable with the focus being on them and not really know what to do without data coming from the other person.
About how they're doing, what they need, how they should be in the room with the therapist.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): It's that whole dependency situation. A two really defines themselves based on what the feedback they're getting from the person that they're sitting there in relationship with currently, and if they're not getting any of that, they don't know what to do. You know It's that whole dependency situation. A two really defines themselves based on what the feedback they're getting from the person that they're sitting there in relationship with currently, and if they're not getting any of that, they don't know what to do. You know, so they're really like, when we are challenging them and saying, listen, you're the one that we're going to focus on. You're the one that all the attention is going to be on. They don't know what to do with that. It's like kind of a little disorienting for them to be the focus and to not be getting that feedback about.
You're doing a good job or I really like you or, you know, like we're, we're vibing, you know, as the kids, the kids, yeah, the last thing that I'll say just very specifically as an eating disorder therapist. I have never had a two in my office that hasn't believed this belief that I'm about to say. They believe that the way their body looks is either going to keep somebody in relationship with them or separate and disrupt a relationship.
And so, Then managing how their body looks through, like, exercise or diet or whatever is like, really important because that is threatening to whether they will have the relationship, whether people will love them or not and I have never sat in a in a session with the two that didn't believe that.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Do you know if that's the case for different genders? TBD. I'll get back with you.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's really good. Okay, let's talk about type threes.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): I don't find a whole lot of threes in my practice because they're often looking for coaches. Unless they're dragged into couples therapy and even then kind of things kind of flame out because. Yeah. The either the shape shifting nature of the three and trying to like look good in front of the therapist or they're like, this is not moving fast enough.
Like, let's go or feelings are too slow. Like, why are we bogging down the process? And so I, I, when I've worked with threes, I like, I feel like there's like a very small window in the beginning where I need to say a very concise version of why the Enneagram is important. And how their type 3 pattern fits.
So that I can, like, map out the sequence. And that we're right here, so this section in the middle might feel like a waste of time. But this is actually the fastest way to get there. And because of that window closes, then I'm like, I don't know if they'll just leave and they don't know if it was actually useful.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): I had every single 1 of those bullet points listed. So I agree. I do think that 3s can, whether they're coming, you know, is 1 thing, but I think they can be a little bit of a flight risk. It's like they've, they've worked just enough to find a little bit of relief. And then they, they're gone cause that patient is real that they have a, they really struggle with that.
The only other thing that I would say is like, if you've been working with the 3 and they've revealed some behaviors to you that aren't, you know, like, super pretty behaviors that they are really struggling with, they're probably not going to bring them up again. And so like, you have to be the one that kind of intentionally checks in with them about that.
Clients who struggle with porn or addiction or, you know, any other things, cheating. And so I have to be the one that's like, Hey, how are you doing with that? Cause they're not going to bring it up again.
Beyond Achievement: Uncovering the True Self of Enneagram Threes Through Relationships & Vulnerability
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. The threes that I've had in, in my office one day, Therapy can become another subcategory of their performance of their like, I want to accomplish something here.
And so they can show up as very on task and as very like, Oh, you did. Wow. You've accomplished all these things. You've done all these things, or, wow, you've done so much work, and a lot of, I've got a lot of circling back with them that I do and actually, what I've found really interesting with my three clients is family therapy or some type of family or couples where you're seeing them in the relationship where, where oftentimes they're not feeling as competent or there is right.
Something that's happened. And that's been, that's been probably the most revealing, you know, of seeing what's, what's there in a three and then also where I've seen so much healing as well.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So good. Type four. I'm just kidding. I'm a type, I'm a type of three. I just want to say this is really good. And I hope the three is listening. If there's any are receiving this because it's so, it's so valuable. What, I've done counseling once. And it's so hard and just signing up for it, going to the office and just feel this so attached to feeling like a failure.
Like, I must be doing something wrong to be in this office getting help. And I also think that, yeah, we can, if we're doing it alone, we can sort of be a chameleon and present our best self and be the best kind of client for you. Where when I do premarital counseling and I'm doing some, some. Pre marital counseling, with a couple of different, a few different couples right now.
And it's really helpful to see them with another person in the room because you can see the reactions, how they communicate. So I really, I like that Eden. I think that's really helpful to know is you can get to know the three a little bit better when you're. So good. Type four. I'm just kidding. 'm a type, I'm a type of three. I just want to say this is really good. And I hope the three is listening. If there's any are receiving this because it's so valuable. What I've done counseling once. And it's so hard and just, just signing up for it, going to the office and just feel this so attached to feeling like a failure.
Like, I must be doing something wrong to be in this office getting help. And I also think that, yeah, we can, if we're doing it alone, we can sort of be a chameleon and present our best self and be the best kind of client for you. Where when I do premarital counseling and I'm doing some, some. Pre marital counseling, with a couple of different, a few different couples right now.
And it's really helpful to see them with another person in the room because you can see the reactions, how they communicate. So I really, I like that Eden. I think that's really helpful to know is you can get to know the three a little bit better when you're.
Dealing with them, because a lot of times that friction will be in their relationships because they'll be working so hard and that's what it will be that their spouse or their kids will feel neglected.
They're burnt out all those things and as a self press 3 kind of like a 1 kind of like a self press for like, we can be very like masochistic, very like. Just grinding, grinding, grinding, and no one knows that anything's wrong under the surface.
So it takes a lot for me to actually show if there's something wrong.
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): When something you just said, Tyler, with The threes I've gotten to work with and I've, I've had a handful that have just come, you know, to improve. Two things. One is generally when there's like a pretty decent sized stressor to that happens during our relationship, that therapy totally jettisons into something different.
Really starts to get to the heart of things, but almost like with a seven, you, sometimes there needs to be kind of a catalyst, whether it's someone else in the room or a marriage that falls apart or a relationship or a job that falls apart that was really on their milestone benchmark list, that they really begin to do the actual feeling work that is more balancing for them.
And the other thing is there's so much, and this is heart triad, there's, They want to achieve in work and in relationships. There's such a tension I see with threes of succeeding in marriage and family and succeeding in jobs and that sort of work life balance, tension that they have to find at some point.
And I think that's been really neat to watch. They have such big, you have such big hearts, not just trying to climb the ladder, you know, at your job. You also want to be the best dad or the best. Or, you know, I appreciate that tension for threes.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Great thoughts, Leslie. Yeah. I think that's just helpful to, for threes to help us normalize getting help, counseling, that just part of the process of life that you're not a failure, or doing something wrong.
It's, it's normal. That's really helpful to have that people remind us of that.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So in the Bible for therapists, the DSM that highlights all these mental health disorders, whatever, in the personality disorder section, there's basically a go to personality disorder for all of the nine types, except for type three.
And I think that's partially because the United States is a very three ish 3 ish, 8 ish culture, and there's a lot of image orientation, things like that. And so. And I'm also, you know, in the Silicon Valley, which is I think very geared towards threes, like the social context really matters in that if a three has shapeshifted into being the successful persona, according to their immediate context, they're not going to be able to see that their personality patterns themselves are an issue.
That's why everyone else usually complains about the three instead of the person realizing it for themselves. And so there are certain professions like, anyone who has a public, platform or a pulpit who thinks that they're doing really well, not knowing that that's actually reinforcing their ego structure.
And so I think it's important for different organizations like communities, churches, whatever, to recognize that. It is a magnet for certain personalities. And that when they shine, that's actually their ego talking. It's not really who they are. And that's part of the reason why it's so hard for the threes to actually get help because they don't know that they're struggling.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah, I totally agree with that, Joanne. And I wish I could elaborate on that, but, for the sake of time, we'll keep moving here, but I think you said enough really helpful things for, for threes. Okay. Let's, let's move to type fours. What do you want to say about type four?
Joanne, do you want to jump in as a type, as our type four?
Therapy as a Playground: Challenging Enneagram Fours' Ego Trap and Shifting from Introspection to Action
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): I mean, in fours fashion, I'm going to say something controversial. So, disclaimer, I think therapy, psychotherapy itself is a fours playground. Because therapy is designed in helping people focus on their internal world and their thoughts and feelings and their past and their trauma and all that kind of stuff.
And to like, you know, really do all this intersectional work that fours know how to do for free. They can do it on their own time. And so I think the trap for fours is that they seek therapy and like end up becoming the therapist's favorite client because the therapist doesn't need to do much work because the four clients already there doing the things that a therapy client is supposed to do.
And I think there's kind of this feedback loop that happens where the four client doesn't necessarily get healthier. Because their ego pattern is just playing itself out in therapy. And so it's important for therapists to know that is the bias that's baked into the profession of therapy, kind of like how coaching can be very like three ish, eight ish, and that my style as a therapist has changed over time to be more coaching like, because what a lot of for clients need is not more focusing on feelings and dredging up all the gunk.
But to get their asses in gear and to like, say, Hey, these things you think is not available to you. And that's why you're struggling so much, partially because you've identified with being a suffering person. But what if you actually have good things readily available to you already? It's not out there somewhere and maybe the only thing that's needed is for you to actually like, Map out the concrete steps and break it down into smaller pieces and actually follow through with those steps in the type one ish Aero type way not a lot of fours are up for that And so in that sense, I think it takes some discernment on the therapist part to recognize like what's the nature of client?
I'm working with here. If there are four are they here to reinforce their identity as a suffering person? Or do they recognize the trap that they're caught in and they want something different? Because if, if that's the case, we need to not do therapy as well. It's traditionally been, we actually need to do more action orientation and more body work.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So, brilliant Joanne. Thank you for sharing that. Cause I know there's a lot of, uh, fours watching. I can see a lot of fours getting excited about this summit and a lot of therapists are fours, they're just brilliant at this, so what you shared the kind of the caution there, or the kind of pattern to look out for is just extremely beneficial.
The conversation. So I'm so glad to have you here to share that.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So, brilliant Joanne. Thank you for sharing that. Cause I know there's a lot of fours watching. I can see a lot of fours getting excited about this summit and a lot of therapists are fours, they're just brilliant at, at this, so what you shared the kind of the caution there, or the kind of pattern to look out for is just extremely beneficial.
The conversation. So I'm so glad to have you here to share that.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah, I, I agree with all of that. Like, I think that my job. Working with four is to help them like organize their thoughts and emotions because they can just sit there and swirl And go down deep into them and my job and i'm good at it because i'm a one and that's what I do It's like these go here these go here these go here and now we're gonna now we need to make a plan. You know like holding them accountable to the action um, because I think they The other piece and you touched on this, but like they over identify with their feelings so much like sometimes they really fear any kind of healing.
So it's like, hey, what if we aren't this depressed person anymore? Or what if we aren't like, Really riddled in the shame what then, you know, they don't know who they would be because they over identify with those feelings so much that it can, like, even just imagining a place where they don't experience that is really hard and familiar.
And the other thought was, they, whether they have it or not, they can present as looking like they have ADHD. And attentive type because they can get so distracted by all the shiny objects. And because they are repressed doing, they don't get a lot done and they struggle with like motivation to do ordinary tasks.
And that's what I see a lot. And my clients is. It's like, whether they actually do have ADHD or not, sometimes I just treat them as if they do. And it usually works.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): This is, this is so good. Do you guys find that force? Do they, do you feel like they're so introspective that they don't need therapy?
Or do they kind of, once they get into therapy, like type ones, they kind of stay in therapy for a long time? What, what have you guys observed?
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Introspection is not self awareness. If they keep recycling the same thing over and over again. Yep. They're more self focused She's so part of it. You're a little
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): echo chamber.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Yeah. Yeah, and so focusing on relationships, I think is an important way in To the self, to the fours work, because other people are in the floor fours slash zone. So there's a lot of this like push and pull dynamic or like pursuer withdrawer dynamic where like, kind of depending on what type of the other people are, if it's, let's say a group context, like work or community, family, church, whatever, it's like, Being the black sheep, the whistleblower, the rebel, like exile, whatever.
There's kind of like a social role piece to the four. And then if it's more of like a one on one relationship, it's like, like magnets, like that switch back and forth. If the person's closed, they get bored and they want the drama and the intensity because they're intensity junkies. And so they're like, I don't want, I don't want to be around you.
Or like, I don't deserve to be around you. And then when the person's far away, I was like, Oh, I missed you so much. That whole thing. So I think because relationships are more concrete than existential, you know, deep purpose, meaning oriented topics where, you know, force can have ideas of the people they're in relationships with and there's the actual people involved.
So sometimes like inviting in their partner or their family member might be helpful so the therapist can see, Oh, like. I had this whole idea. Of this person based on how the four describe them. And now I see this person as they actually are. And there's a world of a difference.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's good. Introspection is not self awareness.
That is really a good statement.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Fours will get offended by that though. I'll just give you a heads up.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Well, before we go to fives, I, I just want to say, I do appreciate all the fours watching and the, those who are therapists, you know, you look at guys like Dr. Kurt Thompson and other fours who are just leading voices.
Cause they, it's just, they get the internal world there when they're healthy. They're just, Prophetic in our culture, uh, and really helpful, especially right now, since post COVID, since there's just a boom of people that are needing help and coming to you guys. So we, yeah, I, I really appreciate the fours and I want them to hear that before we, before we transition to fives.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Very short. Self preservation fours are the fours that don't look like fours. They look like all the other types. Depending on their mood. And the main piece for them is that they're the ones who suffer silently solo and they get mistyped a lot and sometimes get turned off by the Enneagram because of that.
And so for self pressed fours, they need, their growth path involves Practicing more of the traditional four ish behaviors, like complaining more often in real time to more people, which feels like pulling teeth, but it's absolutely necessary for them to recognize just how much they're struggling outside of this idea of, I need to be a strong person who can withstand a lot of things.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): It's good, Joanne. Thank you. All right, let's transition to fives. What do you guys have for fives?
I don't see many fives unless they're brought in for a marital. So I'm, I'm curious. About the rest of you and your experience with fives.
Breaking Down Barriers: Navigating the Emotional Guard of Enneagram Fives in Relationships
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): I would agree with that. Leslie, when I, when I see fives coming in, it's with a partner, often, and it's when I, when I think about attachment styles, I think about that avoidant attachment style.
So you've probably got an avoidant attached person, the partner that's fucked any room five, and then you've got them paired. Maybe with an anxious style and they activate each other and they're coming in to kind of work on that.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): And man, just the one triggering the other triggering the other. Yeah.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah. I've noticed you just doing Ingram work, not as a therapist. It's really hard to get them to open up because of the privacy. They have such good boundaries and they don't want me talking about the Enneagram a lot of times because it feels like I'm getting to their reading their mail, jumping over the fence, getting into the castle and can very, very uncomfortable.
And so that's interesting to hear you guys kind of say that you've experienced a little bit of that in therapy as well, that it's kind of hard to get, get over the wall or those privacy fences.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah. My experience with fives. I've, I've seen a couple and you won't get the full picture until you've been working with them for like a year and then they'll drop this bomb on you and they're like, Oh my God, everything makes sense.
Now it's like this really pertinent piece of information. And then you finally get the full picture and then you're like, all right, now we can do some work.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Oh, my goodness.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): It's fascinating. It's fascinating. It happened to me with one of my fives I was working with recently. I was like, why have we never talked about this?
And she's like, you know. She never asked. She knows the Enneagram too. So we kind of had a good laugh about it.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Besides like relationship issues, professionally fives can struggle a lot. Because they spend so much time in their head and don't take a whole lot of action being actually repressed, like they can mull over something in for forever and then make a decision kind of more reluctantly because there's like a deadline or like stuff like that.
And so they might extend a whole lot more mental energy than the task actually requires. So that's been a struggle that I've. seen quite often and um, either teammates at work or spouses get super frustrated because like there's this delay effect.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Leslie, I think you were going to share something in. And then I also want to hear from you guys if there's any like general anxiety disorder or if there's any other disorders that you see with fives.
I would be curious to know what you see.
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): Well, I was just going to say, similar to Joanne sharing about, um, the space and the time need. I see a lot of fives that need the encouragement to be allowed to answer questions off the cuff, which is very uncomfortable for a lot of fives. They would prefer to speak accurately and accuracy takes time and reflection and information. And so being allowed to say, you can change your answer down the road. We're not holding you to this. I would just love to hear what you are. able to track or notice and you can circle back anytime it's okay to not quite get it, but there's this, there's just a tension around speaking off the cuff for a lot of fives and therapy is so in the moment so often.
And I think that I've seen that barrier.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah. One thing I've noticed with my own mother is a type five is maybe this is Like the, like share with the ones, they, they're looking for the perfect therapist like I know for my mom, my mother is a five and a wonderful five. There's only like a particular kind of person that she'll go to.
And so maybe is it a little bit like that too? Does it maybe fives have a hard time of going to a therapist that they view as maybe competent or, You know, I don't know if you've seen that, but I was just thinking about that off the top of my head.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): I wonder if there's a conflict between what they want and what they need when they're looking for a therapist.
What they, what they're wanting is someone who's right, as intellectual as they are, can kind of recite things to them, can lay it out very, um, rationally and logically, but maybe what they need is someone who can sit there and hold space and invite the emotion, invite the questions, invite uncertainty, and let that be a safe place for them to feel that.
But I think there's a conflict there.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): If there's any further thoughts, you can jump in. Otherwise let's move to type six.
Embracing the Pendulum: How Naming Duality Brings Freedom and Clarity to Enneagram Sixes
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): This is my number. I can jump in and say something since I'm a six and I've done a lot of therapy, on both sides of the chair. I really think being allowed to name, and this is how the Enneagram changed my life and it felt again, like kind of somebody had put Jumped into my backyard and had been stalking me and all that exposure was, was challenging.
But to name these dualistic experiences of having some love hate for things, having some fear and courage for things, having this extreme dependent times and extreme independent times, almost showing up like disorganized attachment, if you're familiar with kind of the sort of bifurcation of, of both anxious and avoidant styles.
And there's just a lot that feels kind of like this internal turmoil. And until a lot of sixes get any, Enneagram language, they can just feel kind of crazy. Anything from paranoid to, bipolar to, I mean, just to have somebody name this internal phobic to counter phobic continuum in a way that's safe and feeling seen and loved in that and where the gifting is in that, I think, is is huge for sixes.
And it's been really important for my own freedom, my own work to not feel like I am two different people, even though I can experience these extreme differences and this back and forth. That's really good. Leslie.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Yeah, Leslie, I'm married to a six, so I wish I would have heard that 18 years ago to know that I was marrying a, a bundle of opposites who could, you know, swing on a pendulum and.
And to just show compassion and have empathy for that and come alongside them and not, not freak out about it.
I wonder if one thing that gets outsourced by sixes is power and authority, disconnecting from their own power and authority, projecting it outwards, and then someone else takes on that power and authority.
And then the six, depending on the subtype, have different ways of interacting with the projected person. So having this sometimes conflictual relationship with authority figures or like completely fusing and aligning with them and that because of that the growth path for six is involved Recognizing that a lot of their mental activity or their anxiety or whatever comes from them having disconnected from their own power their work is to Bring that back, take ownership, make a decision, be decisive, and then own the outcomes of their decision knowing that they can make new decisions along the way so that they don't need to make this huge big decision up front that might set them off on a forever path and having more boldness and courage to face reality.
Each moment for what it is.
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): I mean, just saying to sixes, what do you want in this situation? What are you thinking? What are you hoping for? What's been working for you? What's not been working for you? Anything that they can name on their own. Cause we're, we're a both and. We are a flight risk cause we get suspicious that you're seeing something wrong with us.
And we are over relying on authorities. And so there's kind of this, um, challenge there. We don't want to over rely on a therapist authority. We need to develop that gut centered self attachment. But then we also don't, we can be a flight risk if we feel unsafe or we perceive something is unsafe in the relationship.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): The one thing that I'll say about working with sixes is that, you know, they, because they're thinking dominant and thinking repressed. They are really good at rationalizing a lot of their fears and all of their worst case scenarios and They do really value their ability to kind of scan the horizon And so like a therapist does have to be very gentle and they're challenging of those like thinking patterns because A six identifies with them very strongly.
And so if you're like, hey, that's not totally real, or that's not totally a great way of thinking, that, that can be really challenging for the therapeutic relationship. So you have to be really gentle in how you challenge some of their anxieties and some of their fears.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I think to Leslie's point, and then what, what you shared.
Whitney, that's just me talking, not as a therapist, cause I'm not one, but just from experience of having, you know, maybe being married to a six and then also having a counterphobic six son, there's lots of conversations about authority, and I'm not sure if that plays out in therapy with, with sixes of like, maybe, you know, kind of directing your attention towards some of those issues in their life and helping them work through issues of authority, like being, uh, overly trusting of authority.
Like I know my wife is very trusting of me. It makes me makes me wonder sometimes like I think she's she's leaning on me too much or trust me too much. Like she's fighting for me like an eight. And I'm like, I don't know if I deserve that. And or she should be doing that. She's just so like loyal, you know, to me.
And then my son is just, you know, rebel kind of as a counterphobic six, just rebels against all authority, even, and he's like a master rationalize, rationalize, or you know, he finds ways to get out of being under my authority.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): It also sounds like your son has a seven wing. He's able to figure out how to get out from under your authority pretty easily or quickly.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I don't know. I mean, it feels like he acts as it's both pretty well. Anything else, uh, observations on sixes? Oh, go ahead, Eden.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. I was just going to say, as you said, authority, I really thought of the word safety. And I think that is, that is what authority and like that's the testing of authority and the counter is a counter phobic, right?
That pushes against the is really wanting to know that they're safe, that they're going to be safe right. In these, in these relationships in life. And, and when I when I'm working with sixes, I think that's part of the work that I do. Even like, Hey, what's what makes you feel safe in this room?
Right? Like kind of building up that internal sense and intuitive sense of safety and power, Joanne, like that there's, they can hold that sense or what gives them that sense on their own apart from. These outsourced source of power
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): lines, like moving away from polarization and more integration that they can be steady and exposed to risk all at the same time, that one does not negate the other, but it's more like knowing how to rest in that in between
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): and build up the tolerance for feeling unsafe sometimes, because.
Yeah, it is not a safe. This is not a safe world in a lot of ways. It's not guaranteed, right? And so building the eat and I love your, like, what is safe for you? How do we create that? But then at the same time, building the tolerance around not always feeling safe, but feeling connected and embodied, like Joanne was saying, that's so important.
Then the more you, the more sixes trust their gut, the more they can weather unsafe times, unsafe or truly unsafe experiences.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): This has been great guys, talking about issues, authority, safety, like you mentioned, Eden, helping them to feel safe. No, you know, a lot of sixes struggle with, with anxiety.
And so helping them with that and helping to give them compassion for outworking of their strength of protecting of seeing what could go wrong in order to protect Their loved ones. And so that they feel like they're hardwired with vigilance, uh, for a positive reason to, to protect. And you can see why they would get anxious.
That vigilance is starting to get out of hand a little bit, but just to be a source of. Bring a sense of reassurance and comfort to them to help them to realize that they're not the problem, that this is, there's not something wrong with them, is, is incredibly helpful. Okay, should we, let's move to type sevens.
Navigating the Painful Paradox: Understanding Enneagram Sevens and Their Unique Relationship with Hardship
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): That hard is harder for sevens. That is my internal mantra. And I believe it and I feel for them in it.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Does anybody want to build off of that? Hard is harder? What you mean by that, Leslie? Or or anything you want to, else you want to share?
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): I mean, what I mean by that is the tolerance for suffering, if it hasn't been, been built and it gets built in different ways, and often it gets built in ways you didn't sign up for, but the tolerance for pain, the tolerance for hard things for, taking responsibility for themselves, for moving away from satisfaction and demand from.
moving away from more is more. It just seems to me that their capacity and tolerance around suffering is just very challenging for them. Very, if it doesn't, if it can't kind of be moved forward quickly or bypassed with, information or something, it's, it's just so hard. To weather, a lot of the pain of just suffering of various kinds.
So to me, I really do feel for them that the hard feels a lot harder, um, than maybe some of us might approach hard. And
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): I would almost say it's like, they're not even experiencing the suffering. So it's almost like they're not, they haven't like built a tolerance. There's so much compartmentalization of the suffering.
I'm married to a seven, so I, I can talk all day about what goes on with the seven. In my experience, sevens do have a lot of addiction. There's a lot of suicidal ideation, sometimes even suicidal attempts, can have a lot of anxiety, but a lot of anger at the same time. As a therapist, you will need to catch their reframing at like every turn.
Because you'll say something and challenge them and then they'll bring something else up to kind of negate what you said. And it's very rational and logical, but you gotta, you gotta catch them in it. Cause like you were saying, Tyler, like about your son, which was what was making me think that, you know, that seven wing, like they're so good.
At arguing and coming up with all different kinds of reasons about why something will work or, you know, whatever their, whatever their side of the argument is, they're so sophisticated and so quick at being able to come up with arguments for their side. And that is one of the reasons why it's really hard for them to be for them to change.
And even to be motivated to change and like, they do have to have some internal motivation or it's not going to happen. Like external motivators don't really do it. You know, I'm often telling my clients or even my clients who have 7 children, you know, like. You can try to give them all the consequences you want, like, life ultimately is going to be what teaches them those lessons, those like, unchangeable situations that they can't just negotiate themselves out of, those are the things that are going to be motivating to them, and Finally give them some kind of internal motivation for change.
They can have a lot of difficulty making life decisions. They can have difficulty caring for themselves. And I honestly think because they are, you know, that they're repressed and feeling, and they have no. intuitive line or access to feeling and emotions like emotion education and awareness is a non negotiable treatment goal.
Like, sometimes they will say that they know what emotions are, but like, do they actually experience them and emote them and talk about them with their loved ones? Like that takes so much work for a seven to be able to do and it takes a lot of patience for them as well.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Those are good thoughts, Whitney.
So what, when do, when does a seven show up in your guys office? What's, what's happened? Can you speak to that? Is it an addiction?
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Sometimes I think it's like the people in their lives that are like, we can't do this anymore. Like you have got to do something, you know, a lot of times sevens will Work their way into a relationship where the other people are changing so that they don't have to change other people are kind of picking up the slack or enabling their behaviors in a lot of ways and so a lot of times it is like the people in their lives are like listen we're not going to do that anymore and having to hold that firm firm boundary with them. That's when I see them or addiction
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): for sure.
I like thinking about sevens and the context of the idealist triangle along with ones and fours, like the three legged stool. We need all three legs to be even. It kind of like also overlaps with like the internal family system model of like the ones being the grownup, the fours being the teenagers and the sevens being the kids, but we have all of them, regardless of our type.
And when we overly rely on one leg of the stool and we underutilize the other ones, then things are just going to fall apart at some point. And so the piece that I think sevens outsource to other people, suffering responsibilities, type four, type one. And so like somebody else in their life probably occupies those positions, even if they're not ones and fours, like, there's a lot of sevens on relationships with very responsible people and they get, they get resentful.
So, you know, drag the seven into calls therapy or whatnot. But up until then, part partners or family members are the ones who are just putting in so much. And that is that external motivation like they're getting sevens are getting all this pressure from the outside because they themselves don't want to do it.
It's not personally important to them. They just need to wait out storm of the other person's complaints and eventually the person's going to give up and they're just going to do it themselves until the relationship gets so strained that the person who's been kind of nagging or whatever. It's like, I ain't doing this anymore.
I'm out. And then all of a sudden, the seventh, so I was like, well, where'd you go? And then they have all these bills to pay and like things that they completely neglected. So I think, I think a lot of times the way to get a seventh attention is that rock bottom experience, either through addictions or divorce or whatever.
They lose their job, where they don't have any more options literally available to them. And if the seven happens to make their way into therapy and they're open because they have no other options and life has already fallen apart, I like using the metaphor of the human body made of flesh and bone. If you have no structure in the human body and the, you know, it's just a bag of skin and organs on the floor, that person's not living.
In the same way that a person who's all bones and no flesh is not living either. So, structure, order, organization, responsibility, the things that the seven resists actually bring about the very life force that makes life as beautiful as it is. So, if sevens are seeking freedom, to thinking that freedom equals no limits, then they're going to paint themselves into a corner where they're completely restricted.
The opposite of which is if they actually choose limits and self limits, self imposed limits, which is basically taking responsibility. Then they have all these options available. So I think like there's some part of like maybe mentally or intellectually, like mapping that out for them saying like, I know you want freedom.
I want that for you too. Let's not get into a power struggle between the service and the client, but how can you actually give real freedom for yourself? Yeah. By voluntarily opting into some of these responsibilities. I think the power struggle piece is pretty big with sevens because they're very good at weaseling their way out of it.
And so I think it's important for therapists to not get it caught up in that either By becoming the next nagging person. So having a more neutral like more passive. Sure.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): It's good Joanne some really deep and profound thoughts there as we move to type X, we have to keep moving here and we have two more types, but I'll just make a note that.
You know, my, for, if you're, if you have a friend or family member or partner, that's assertive type, like a three, seven, or eight, or maybe a five, who doesn't want to open up. It's okay to, to, to call them out and say, Hey, I'm not okay with this anymore. This behavior, we need to go and get help. I, you know, I didn't want to get help in my marriage was struggling.
You know, maybe a four or five years in the marriage, but my wife has a six had the enough courage to say, to come out and say, this is not okay. You're working too much. You're always listening to hundreds of podcasts, filling your mind, like there's no space for me. There's a, this is a problem and she was, she will, she was able to do that as a six for nines, you know, and other times it might be harder to, to say that so we're just giving old permission here to, to come at the threes like me or the sevens or eights, if you're in married to an assertive type, or no assertive type, and it's just.
It's harder because they have more power, more energy and, but to have permission to call them out and say, Hey, we need to get some help. We'll keep you from getting stuck and so have the courage to, to get them into, to the counseling office. Okay. With that said, let's move now to the eights. What do you guys want to share about the eights?
What do you guys see?
Embracing the Power: Navigating the Intimidation and Progress Anxiety of Working with Enneagram Eights
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): I love working with eights. Um, I didn't think I would because as a six, I can be intimidated by powerful frames, frameworks, words, energy, dominant energy, that kind of thing. But I, I really enjoy working with eights, but something Joanne said, I see it, you said around threes and I think it's similar with being able to describe, this is kind of what the counseling process is.
This is what you may be frustrated by, but just know that you can get through that. We're going to get to this kind of outcome. I feel like aides in my caseload are the most likely to wonder if we're making enough progress or if they have enough of a sense of our, are we doing the things we should be doing with our time or there's just a lot of that evaluative presence around outcomes, progress.
And so I think like you said, outlining some of the ups and downs of this a linear experience can be helpful to validate for them, but it isn't going to be, maybe that linear and so, um, to normalize that early. And empathize with that early.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Leslie, I love what you said about like, when it's coming to the room and the dominant energy, I know immediately when an eight comes to the room, because you, I feel that wave of intimidation.
Right. And you're like, okay, here we are. Right. Like, gotcha. Right. Like and, and then being able to, I think in my attachment work as a therapist, I understand that as this is. Take this as this is how people outside of this room can experience this individual. And this is an experience that they have, and they, and they have that experience of people reacting against this intimidation.
And that may be part of why they're coming into the room.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's good Eden.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): In my experience working with eights, their future orientation is often what is giving them so much trouble, like within in relationships or even with themselves. Like they have a hard time like stopping. And pausing and attending to like their own physical pain or their own emotional pain because they're doing dominant they can like shut all that off and just like get the job done and move on to the next thing so that anything like any pain is often cannot be attended to.
And so. Having them slow down is really important and the thing that I see sometimes is like, we'll talk about a problem or an issue, especially an emotional one or something that's causing some kind of relational conflict. And then the next session, we don't talk about it again. And I'm like, Hey, we gotta go back around to that thing.
I know you've already moved on to, like, the next problem or the next issue, but like, this is, this is a big deal. We need to. We need to keep giving this attention, um, and they sometimes don't like that, but it is that, that future orientation. She's like, okay, well, that's done. And now I'm moving on. And now I'm going to get on with the next thing.
I also see them struggle a lot at work and like, it's the same struggle with authority, but there's this, I think, very different because they often don't see an authority figure that's worth following. And I think that's or that's doing the job that they think should be done. And so just that like conflict they see so much with their bosses or like their organization at large, doing the things that they don't agree with can often cause a lot of frustration, a lot of anger, um, a lot of just dissatisfaction.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah, that's a good observation, Whitney. That you might be talking with an eight about, yeah, work dynamics, bosses, authority figures. That's really helpful. And going back to what you said, Eden, about the privilege of working up close with an eight and seeing some of their emotions and softer side that other people don't get to see that that was really sweet, the eights are, are so great when you can get up close, with them.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): My other son's a type eight. So yeah. You got a lot of energy in that house.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah. I have a counterphobic six son and an eighth son and I'm a heart type. So I'm just like, just, yeah, yeah. Are you thankful for me? Do you love me? Why are you, why are you mad at me? That's how my, that's how my conversations go.
I realized I'm very high maintenance when it comes to. Meeting, like, love and affirmation back when, yeah, that's good.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): I think the action orientation of type eight forward movement for focus, not a whole lot of patience for the nitty gritty details that are like high level visionaries. Like, I just want this, let's get there.
Like what's in the way of why are you causing troubles? Like it's not complaining move. So in terms of like communication style with eights, I think this is a case for across all types when we're interacting with someone of a certain type, the more we double down in our own type, the more intense their patterns get.
On the other hand, if we move closer to them and act like they act generally, then that minimizes the polarization. So talking to an, a, you know, open chest, direct eye contact, like own your own power and engage them directly and get straight to the point. Don't explain a whole lot. Don't apologize. It's like, just.
Say the thing that needs to be said, say the action item, I think that would smooth out a lot of relationships just like off of that. Not all eights are angry all the time. I think that's a misconception. I think they're very big presence, very energetic, very intense. I think that maybe conflict, engagement, colliding with the eight is a form of intimacy.
So when other people pull away and they withdraw the aid, it's like, where'd you go? It comes after them. And then other people like, avoid the aid even further and that's a whole cycle. So, I think it's I think because opposites attract. Those who are in relationship with aids probably need to like, gear up and then actually own their power and strength.
And then the eight doesn't have to be as strong because someone else is doing it. Like even with like leadership, like eights don't sense that anyone else is like a good enough leader that they occupy the space. They don't themselves want to be the leader. And so I think in relationship context, that's a lot of where the eights patterns show up because relationships are in the blind spot of the eight.
And so I don't know if eights would readily. Here, like, in order for you to improve your relationships, therefore, you need to do X, Y, Z, because I don't know if they have the patience for that. But like speaking to them, like, if you want to make a bigger impact in your wife, then you have to know how to work with people.
And that is why it's important to work on relationships. It's kind of like coming in through the back door.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Well put Joanne. Okay. Let's, we got to move on to type Nate nines, uh, our last type. So let's, let's do it. Let's finish the, finish the circle here. What do you guys have for type nines?
Waking Up from Numb: Exploring the Hidden Struggles and Somatic Symptoms of Enneagram Nines
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): I'll jump in.
First off, my husband's a nine and the nines that I've interacted with in my office as well, there's such a loss of self that there's They they have no idea what they want or they want everything because everything sounds plausible right, and so there's there's kind of aimlessness. Maybe that's there.
I would also say that some nines may never even make it into the therapy office because their mental health symptoms become psychosomatic become enter their body instead of. Their, their mental health, it goes into a different category. So they're going to develop physical symptoms versus emotional symptoms.
I have nines that come in with like heart palpitations that develop or with digestive issues, and they're going to seek out support around that before they even come to a therapist, because that's the issue, not the emotions that have built up in their body.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's great, Eden. Yeah. That makes total sense.
Not even being a therapist, knowing that nine suppress their anger, deny their anger, but it's got to go somewhere. And so you're saying it shows up in the body. That's that's really insightful.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah, they kind of want to avoid anything uncomfortable like uncomfortable emotions physical sensations Anything in relationships, it's uncomfortable.
They really will try to just not be present for it I had a client who gave me some really good analogies for nines and she was like It's like we play possum like something uncomfortable comes up and we're like, oh, bye They just kind of check out and they numb themselves so much. And so I think for nines, a lot of my work is just like honoring the feelings that they have instead of numbing the feelings they can be so hard to get to do any kind of like action oriented therapy work or like creating any kind of change.
So a lot of motivational interviewing. Again, you know, sometimes I have a lot of nines that show some like ADHD type symptoms. So there's a lot of kind of working through some of that. A good thing that I think it was, I think it was Joe Stabile. Suzanne's husband said one time that interesting relationship between nines and ones and anger and sadness, like when a nine is sad, they're actually angry.
And when a one is angry, they're actually sad. And so like nines do kind of tend towards more like depression or sadness. But when you really get down to it, they're probably actually really angry about something. And they've just never attended to that anger or like the boundaries that were violated or them not getting their needs met.
And so they're sad about it, but they're actually really angry. It's just so interesting to be. Kind of delving into that with them and a lot of the, like, kind of what Eden was saying, but also that more 10 tending towards depression do see quite a bit of suicidal ideation with nines as well.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Wow. That that's.
Very powerful, Whitney, the feelings having come out in sadness, I can see that with some nines to talking a lot about painful experiences in the past and continuing, continuing to talk about them and bring them up over and over again, being sort of sad about it, but it just, this, a loop that never stops.
So that, that's really helpful.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah. And it's like their orientation to the past is how they define themselves. And so it's hard for them to just process through everything in the past so that they can move forward. They get really stuck. Like you were talking about.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): And great plug for ones too, to realize for yourself when you're angry, to realize that you're really sad so we can have more compassion on our ones.
That's. I've been hearing some things about nines I've never heard before. This is very, there's very helpful for me. Any last thoughts on type nines?
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): I will just say that I've been encouraging nines to do group therapy. The individual relationship can be really intense for nines cause they don't always want to do that deeper process work or they don't want to go to the anger, which they have to in order to process pain, but group work can feel a little bit like more collaborative and it can also feel like they have some shared space and it's not so intense. On them, and that maybe they can kind of build some camaraderie, with other people. And I've just seen some really big shifts when I've sent clients that are nines to do group work alongside our individual work.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): Yeah, to piggyback off of that, I mentioned earlier that like therapy itself is a very four ish space, and the four is known as the individualist, and I think that's the opposite for nines. In like blending in and merging with something else to not be a self like usually people think of like sloth as lack of activity there's a lot of action focus.
So I think for nines, it's a disconnection from self like falling asleep to oneself Disconnecting from self agency. So I think of nines like a card neutral gear or as type three. That line is like being the gas pedal and the type six being the brake pedal. You need all three to have a functioning car.
And so inaction is itself an action. And often nine to like say in relationships where I work, find themselves being more kind of reactionary to what others around them do. Not knowing that are the reason why the pressure is applied to them is because they've disconnected from their own initiative Engine, and so I've heard that like the most powerful type in all the Enneagram types is actually type 9, not type 8, not type 1, not the more like assertively known types, but when a 9 taps into their internal world like you better get out of the way. There's no stopping them. So I think a lot of body work is pretty good for better for worse.
I think nines tend to be conduits for energy. Absorbing other people's stuff or absorbing nature's energy and I think in that sense body movement Might be a good way to metabolize some of the uncomfortable experiences more than like top therapy or mental or emotional work.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah, tacking on to that, Joanne, I will point my nines to, um, spending time in nature, going to a park, sticking their feet in the earth, you know, having some way of connecting with that animal therapy, right?
Pets can be a powerful resource for nines and then body work too, those are, because there isn't, there's no perspective there to merge to, right? It feels safe in a way. Yeah.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): And cause they spend so much of their time being hypervigilant and like assessing other people and perceiving and observing everyone else kind of looking out for conflict.
Like that goes right along with what you were saying, Eden, like if they can tune into their body or nature or animals, like they don't have to be hypervigilant. Be protecting themselves.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): And the hypervigilance is very draining, very draining.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Whitney, I'd heard Suzanne say on, maybe it was in a conversation with me, I can't remember now, I think we were going around and talking about different correlations she had seen with mental health and she'd said like nines, she saw a lot of nines with ADD.
Which is now falls under the ADHD umbrella. And so the non, is it the non attentive kind of ADHD? Is that how you say it? So that's just something to be, to be aware of, uh, when you're working with nines, if you're a therapist. Or like that combined type. To you know, you mentioned Whitney, they can play possum, which is really good, a good illustration.
And just like sixes kind of swing in the pendulum of phobic to counter phobic. Do you guys experience nines is sometimes swing on the pendulum from like playing possum to then making dramatic moves. Do you see any of that that's causing any issues to be aware of? Leslie, you're nodding your head. Can you speak to that?
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): Yeah, I think from session to session, I can see the inertia principle, like whether it's they've been in low energy and so there's tons of low energy in the session or they're in that inertia and there's lots of energy. And I, I think 9th, you know, both. They're one wing and just who they are, there's a lot of idealism.
And so sometimes I say this about nines, I don't know if I'm right, but it's like they can envision things in from a three space, but they can't carry them out. And so I'll see like big endeavors or big words without the work, but like big words about what's going to happen, what they're going to do, what they're going to tackle.
But I know they don't have the energy to match that. But we need to kind of titrate down to something that is doable so they can actually feel self esteem.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's good. That's helpful. I see some other people nodding, so I must agree with you, Leslie.
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah, I usually at the end of every session with the nine, we have concrete goals that they're supposed to achieve between that session and the next one.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's so good. Whitney and I have, I have a type nine. Book club right now. And one guy just emailed me today saying that he had, he had read through it, but now being in a group with other nines, he's getting so much more out of it because they're challenging each other and spurring one another on.
And so I, I like what you guys said about maybe the group work, or even just being with you, being in a room with somebody else that can hold them accountable, set goals, like you just said, Whitney. That can be incredibly helpful for a nine. So if you're nine, just know that you don't have to do it, uh, by yourself or try to do, do it alone.
So yeah, that's really good. Okay, we're out of time. Please share where we can find you guys online, uh, any resources you want to point us to. Uh, let's, let's start with you, Whitney. I would love for people to continue to learn from you like, like I've learned from you today. So where can we find you?
Whitney Russell Stabile (Enneagram 1): Yeah, so my group practice is Bravehaven Counseling. We're in Richardson, Texas. Um, you can find our website. www.bravehavencounseling.com. And then on Instagram, our Instagram handle is @bravehavencounseling and my individual Instagram is @whitneylpc.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Awesome. And all the links you've already given me.
So I'll put them down in the show notes. So people can easily click on those. So you don't have to take any notes right now. Thank you, Whitney. What about you, Eden? Where can we find you?
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. So I'm counsel out of Charlotte, North Carolina, but I serve Texas and North Carolina when it comes to therapy work with individuals and couples and that practice is insideout collaborative.com. And then I also do attachment coaching with couples and individuals, outside of those States as well. So that there's a little bit about that at insideoutcollaborative.com, but also edenheider.com and my Instagram is @edenheider. And that podcast that has more attachment focused, material is Inside Out Podcast.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Awesome. Thanks, Eden. Leslie, remind us where we can find you again.
Leslie Bley (Enneagram 6): Yeah, just Leslie Bley Counseling. I have a team of therapists under me here in Austin. I'm also licensed in Missouri, so Texas and Missouri residents. If you're a therapist, you can find resources like Enneagram for Counselors and the Counselor Vitality Groups that are all on that same website.
And then I'm also enneagramconsultant.com for more professional use of the Enneagram with teams and companies that want that kind of lens for understanding their staff.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Great. Thank you, Leslie. And thanks for all the, yeah, the work that you've been doing and creating community for other counselors and therapists, that's, that's been really beneficial, and Joanne, where can we find you?
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So, with my Enneagram therapist hat on, I'm in California in the Silicon Valley, and I have a freebie guide, The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types. because each of the types have different ways of dealing with the emotions, MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, and NUMB. I'm also a feelings translator on the side, and that's beyond the state of California as well.
And I built a school about feelings, and in a way that's not just for heart types. Uh, so that people of whatever types can recognize that emotions have a central spot in helping us be more well rounded. They have a logic of their own and there are some action items that go along with them. So, and you can find me at intelligentemotions.com or on Instagram @intelligentemotions.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Fascinating, a feelings translator, that's, that's incredible. And like feelings resource. That's why I appreciate having all of you on the, your different anywhere, you're going to have times, you're all have different strengths. And I just want to thank you for, for joining me.
I know it's really hard. You're all professionals. You have clients. It's hard to find a time to get us all together, but we did it. And I'm so thankful for you. And I know those watching are thankful as well to have learned from you. I know I learned from something, something from each of you guys that I didn't know.
Before, and so this was really helpful to me and I know it's helpful to the Enneagram enthusiasts out there, the therapists out there. So thank you so much for just carving out this space to be a blessing to so many people. And a reminder to those watching, make sure to go back and check out all the other panels today.
The heart types, the head types, so many great panels to listen to today to really get a feel for all the Enneagram types when it comes to their own. Personal mental health stories. So make sure to go and check those out today. And if you don't have time to watch all the panels today, you can get the all access past, which will give you lifetime access to all the panels and all the sessions and all the transcripts, for this whole, any summit.
So if that's interests you, make sure to go check out that, but so much for joining us today. Before you head over to the next interview, the next panel, remember to do two things, like seek support. And share compassion because you are not alone.
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JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Enneagram Heart Types Panel: Type 2, 3, and 4
I was a panelist at the EnneaSummit for the Heart Type Panel hosted by Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3).
In this video, six panelists give firsthand accounts about what it's like to be an Enneagram 2, 3, or 4.
(Scroll down to see the transcript or to get the All Access Pass!)
I was a panelist at the EnneaSummit 2024 for the Enneagram Practitioner Panel.
In this video, we share our experiences and observations about what different Enneagram types think they need in therapy, what they actually need, and some important growth steps so they can grow beyond their type.
Panelists:
Eden Hyder (Type 2)
Stephanie Cross (Type 2)
Jordin James (Type 3)
Amanda Nagy (Type 3)
Joanne Kim (Type 4)
Boonie Sripom (Type 4)
Get the EnneaSummit All Access Pass so that you can see the 30+ other talks, including with Dr. Dan Siegel and Dr. Curt Thompson!
Transcript
Real-Life Stories of Growth
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Welcome to the Heart Types Panel here on the Enneagram and Mental Health Summit. I have six panelists with me, two type twos, two type threes, and two type fours. And the goal of this panel is to supplement the 25 main sessions here on the summit with real life stories. And these brave individuals and coaches with me are a blessing to us because they all are going to share a little bit of their story about their own mental health journey and talk about it through the lens of their Enneagram type.
And so I have here with me, here are the six panelists. I'll start with the type twos. We have Eden. She is a licensed therapist, mom, and psychology teacher out of Charlotte, North Carolina. She is an expert in attachment and works with couples and individuals as a relationship coach across the country.
Eden also specializes in treating eating disorders in teens and adults. Currently she is, she has a thunderstorm, in her city. The next two is Stephanie Cross. She lives in Lexington, North Carolina with her husband. She has worked as a writer and editor for the last 10 years.
When she's not working, go find her at the gym, traveling, exploring outdoors and hanging out in coffee shops and working on her newest interest, writing a young adult fantasy novel. Okay. We got the threes up. We have Jordin James. She is a trauma kid who has learned how to feel genuinely happy and safe in the world again.
Her home base is Portland, Oregon, but she works and lives all over the world. She has a coach who helps narcissistic abuse survivors feel safe and happy in relationships. Amanda Nagy is a certified Enneagram coach, psychology instructor, and health coach. She has three years of experience in coaching, 17 years teaching high school and college students, and 13 years of school counseling.
Amanda is a Texas native, but has lived in Idaho for the last 22 years. And last up, we have our type fours. We have a Boonie Sripom. She is a personal development coach for sensitive and creative individuals, especially geeks and gamers. She also offers worksheet workshops and consults on supporting neurodivergent learners to therapists, educational organizations, and parents.
And she lives in California. And then we have Joanne Kim. Lastly, she is an Enneagram and brain spotting therapist in Silicon Valley. And she helps people discover and grow beyond their emotional reactive patterns, massage out their painful, emotional knots that keep them stuck and transform their biggest feelings into their greatest superpower.
Okay. Thank you so much y'all for being with me. I just want to applaud your courageous hearts and wanting to share a little bit of your story so that we can all learn and know that we're not alone. So I just want to thank you right off the bat for joining us today. So without further ado, let's kick things off, with Stephanie.
So would you spend a few minutes, Stephanie, sharing what your diagnosis is or your mental health battle The mental health battle you faced and just a little bit about your story.
Stephanie Cross (Enneagram 2): Sure. I'm Stephanie and I am a two. I have struggled with mental health my entire life. First starting with depression and anxiety because I was bullied.
Then growing into, grief over the last year. I lost my brother who was like my happy place, happy person and like biggest offender and protector growing up. So, that sent my two heart into a bit of a tailspin, a little bit of like maybe even an identity crisis there for a little while. And it was so hard as a helper type to be the one who needed help all of this.
And I had no idea how to ask for that, no idea how to ask for what I needed. And it was also a huge struggle to have patience with people who didn't show up the way that I would have and to see that like, man, I didn't always do things the best way, other friends who were grieving and so it's been a huge learning process, a learning curve, um, and obviously like the diagnoses of depression, anxiety, and PTSD, like really play into that as well.
So, that's kind of where I am on my journey. It might be a little bit hard to talk about, but I'm going to try to do my best with that. It's still somewhat fresh. Um, we'll hit the year anniversary, August 25th. So still pretty, pretty new and learning to navigate all of that. But, um, yeah, so I would say as a two feeling very hopeless, I was probably the most difficult thing for sure.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thanks, Steph. what have you been doing to, just cope, make it, make it through? Like, what kind of support have you had? Can you just talk a little bit more about that?
Stephanie Cross (Enneagram 2): Yes. So, one thing I will say is like, we didn't have a huge, like, church community were involved in our church usually, but we were in a transitional period.
We're both kind of starting over in different areas of our lives. So, my husband and I, the biggest thing for us was having a huge family base of support here. We had one person, one precious person that showed up every week for a month with food. And others that would come by and say, Hey, have you been out to see the sunshine today?
Like, that's probably a good idea and would come and pick me up and say, let's go hike. Let's go for a wal, let's go get coffee. Tell me about your brother. Tell me some stories. So I think that's been really one of the most helpful things is the, you know, as a writer, like I believe in the healing power of stories and of telling your story.
So having people come in and ask like, Hey, what are some of your favorite stories about your brother? Like whether they know him or not. And that's been super helpful. That's been a really great way for me to cope. And I also write letters to him. So when I see something that reminds me of him, or if I have a really hard day, or even if our family experiences something new that I know he would have just loved, I will write it down like I'm talking to him and that's been really helpful as far as coping.
I also unfortunately have a couple of friends who lost siblings this year and so we have our own sort of weird sibling grief club and it's like the worst membership ever but I'm really thankful for them, thankful for their openness and empathy. There are also a lot of great grief communities on Instagram and Facebook that I have been a part of that have been really helpful in that journey.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thanks Steph for just being vulnerable about just going through loss. I know that's really hard. Sure. And I know it for twos, you know, for twos, nines and sevens, being a part of the positive outlook group, there's a propensity to try to stay positive, through, grief through loss, going through a conflict, try to look on the sunny side.
Have you felt that as a two and then how have you reconciled that with like healthy grieving?
.Stephanie Cross (Enneagram 2): Yeah. So, I don't know. I think everything just kind of got obliterated. Like, when I got that phone call, it was like, I don't even know who I am right now. I don't know how to feel. So, I don't know that I even really responded, like, in the typical way that a two would.
I guess I did it first, and my husband had to pull me aside and very gently say, like, Hey, I just need you to know, their grief is not your grief. You don't have to feel for everybody else. Like, everybody feels the grief differently. Your parents are going to feel it. And you're going to feel that too, because you don't like to see them hurt, but you have got to take space to feel it for yourself.
But I think for the most part, I, I was very numb and very, I kind of reacted in the opposite way, and really shut down a little bit more. And, then kind of reacted in extremes like later on, but initially right after it was more of a like silent introspective kind of thing.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah. And I know for most twos are very active in helping others and they're moving, they're always drawing toward being drawn towards others.
But, and, and I know you, as a friend, you've been one of my editors. I've been really appreciative of you. And you've communicated to me that you've sort of scaled back your work. And so I just find that very healthy. So tell us a little bit about, how you set boundaries to create more space to, to grieve and go through the season, and not overdo it and not try to just work more.
Can you talk a little bit about that?
Stephanie Cross (Enneagram 2): Yeah, sure. Sure. So, yeah, I could have had like, the desire to dive more into work. And I think there is a little bit of that temptation because you don't, when the feelings are so overwhelming, you just don't want to deal with them at all. And I only took two weeks off right after my brother died.
And I honestly think I should have taken a little bit more, but thankfully - again, because I have a wonderful husband, he was like, Hey, I've got us covered. You take the space that you need. If you only want to work five hours a week, fine, we will figure it out. So, I ended up reaching out to clients that I had, you know, current workloads with and just saying, Hey, I'm so sorry I understand if you need somebody else, I can't get this done in this amount of time. And thankfully I had really wonderful clients who were like, absolutely anything you need, we want to work with you. So we'll hang around and just do whatever on your schedule, but as far as just setting boundaries with that, I had to, I had to play around with it a little bit and figure out what I could actually handle.
And I ended up settling somewhere around like four or five hours a day. And I thought that, you know, by this time this year, maybe I would be taking on a little bit more. And I do have days where I do an eight hour day, but it's actually not. It's just not something I'm ready to dive back into. I've learned that I needed to take some space for myself to have gym time and time outdoors every single day.
That's just helpful in general, but especially when you're grieving, it gives me a little bit of uninterrupted time to think, and to really process what I've been feeling. So I'm very grateful for the ability to, like, take a step back and just know that it's, it's all going to be fine.
From Darkness to Light: Jordin's Journey of Healing and Resilience Through the Lens of an Enneagram 3
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thank you so much, Steph.
We're going to transition to Jordin and her story now, but I just want to let you know if there's anything you, you forgot or things you wanted to share, but, just didn't get a chance to so far we'll circle back and you can share at the end, but, uh, thank you for inviting us.
And to sit with you and your couch right there to hear your story. And I'm just proud of you for some of the steps you've taken to, as a two to set boundaries, um, and to take care of yourself in the midst of loss, I'm just really proud of you. Thank you. Let's, switch to Jordin.
Jordin James (Enneagram 3): Yes, thanks, Tyler. Hey, everybody. I am Jordin James. So yeah, mental health has been a real hole that I have had to crawl myself out of starting at the very beginning. My childhood, like many people's childhood was really weird. It was riddled with narcissistic abuse, emotional incest, and a lot of alcoholism.
I didn't know that it was weird until like actually looking back and being like, Oh, you didn't have to worry about inviting friends over because your dad was like, passed out on the couch. Like, oh, I guess that was a little bit weird. And so it's actually really, helps looking back to be like, oh, no wonder I was so sad.
Like, no wonder I was so depressed. No wonder I turned to self harming and suicidality early on when I felt like there was no, there was absolutely no support. Actually it's made my threeness, my Enneagram type threeness make a lot more sense because I remember having the thought back when I was, I don't know, a kindergartner of like, okay, when I go over to my dad's house this weekend, like, I'm not going to make him mad.
Like I am going to be so good. I'm going to do all the right things. I'm going to impress him. And so, so like that chameleoning that threes do was like a life or death kind of technique for me growing up from really early on. And I felt safest when I performed well. Like by far, like if I didn't perform well, my dad raised me to be like this big basketball star, which is another part of my three trauma of always needing to be impressive, but if I didn't play well, I felt like legitimately unsafe, but if I played well, I was safe.
And so like performance was, is not only like an ego thing for me. And I think for most threes, it's also like a fundamental, like safety of existing. And so, growing up, especially in high school, I put a lot of pressure on myself that turned into self harm and suicidality and depression. And, luckily, I don't know what it is.
It's just like this inherent resilience that I have that I just kept going and trying to heal. And, but what I realized is my own three tendencies trying to heal themselves. So like, I would try hard to figure out you know, what's wrong. I would try hard to get to the bottom of, of my pain. I would, you know, so I can root it out and figure it out.
I would try hard to like do all the right things to like be somebody that's healed now. And I was really just like trying to heal my trauma with my trauma and what, like eventually I realized that like my healing, like I don't actually heal myself. Like there is this force of love, there's a lot of different words that you can use for that love, there's a lot of different kinds of love, but there's this force of love that actually wants to do all the healing work for me.
I just have to let it, I just have to like feel my feelings and let love meet me in those feelings and like understanding why I'm feeling my feelings is not a substitute for actually feeling them. Which was really, really hard for my threeness, and it still is, to not just, like, try to do literally anything else other than feel my feelings.
And the other thing that I noticed as being a three and trying to heal my trauma was that threes have this tendency, I for sure do, have this tendency of, like, trying to heal everything in a vacuum. Like I'm going to go behind the curtain and I'm going to like, work really hard and improve myself really hard.
And then I'm going to like, go out and live my life. And then I'll go out and, and show up. And like, I had this, this fantasy that I can heal every, all, I could do all the vulnerable work in private, and then I could come out and like impress everybody. You know, I'll come out when I'm more impressive. And, and much to my dismay, I think it's a flaw in the universe, but.
Healing actually happens when I just interface with life exactly as I am. And like, I let people see me before I feel ready to be seen. And when I let love see me exactly as I am right now and all my mess. And eventually, like, when I, when I started doing that, when I started just going out there and failing, I learned that even in the deepest, like, most barfy pits of failure, that love is still there.
Love is still there. And so, like, failure doesn't actually equal this unsafe, complete abandonment of love. But I couldn't have understood that if I just kept trying to heal without actually, uh, living my life. So, I got really good at healing and I got really good at helping other people do the same thing.
Cause it's just like a, just a different orientation and then love does it all for you. So that's what I've been doing for the past five years now is helping other people, let more love in and let love do the open heart surgery for them.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Beautiful Jordin. I didn't want to cut you off, but I really resonated that as a fellow three. I wrote down, I don't heal myself. That is huge. And the three is listening. We need to hear that over and over again. We can't heal ourselves. That's been a constant theme throughout the summit as I continue to interview people is I don't have a lot of threes and that show up in my office, for whatever reason, threes do.
Think that we can heal ourselves and that we don't need somebody else, but we have to show up and I love, you said, like, meet with love, like have an encounter with love. That's beyond ourself from within ourselves. And I also wrote down, I'll come out, I'll come out of the hole when I'm like more impressive.
And like coming from like ministry world, there was a lot of unhealthy, like Superman Cape stories. Like people would share their story, but it would sound like, and it was very like three, like, like, you know, I was in the trenches of drug addiction and then I, you know, made this change and now I'm back on my feet and I'm a spiritual leader and I'm doing all these things.
And it's like, well, okay. Take the cape off. And just like, let's have some store. Let's research some stories on stage where people were, we're still in the thick of it where we haven't cleaned ourselves up. We haven't seen the results yet. We're just in it. That's really, really hard for us.
Jordin James (Enneagram 3): Yes. Yeah. I, I realized that healing actually happens when our vulnerability and love meet.
And like, in order for that to actually happen, that means I have to be vulnerable. It means I have to like, let people know that I'm also human and messy. And that's really hard as a three. That's like shaking in my boots kind of hard.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah. Well, that's why this is so powerful to hear your story as a three, because you're, you're giving it like an unvarnished, no Instagram filter kind of version of your story.
And I just really appreciate that. I'm sure a lot of threes I really read are just, Benefiting from like me from hearing your story. So thank you so much, Jordin, and if you forgot anything, you can circle back and, and share here, at the end too.
Okay. Let's transition now to Boonie.
If you could unmute yourself and jump in and share a little bit of your story, we'd love to hear from you.
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): Oh, gosh, I've just so immersed in other people's vulnerabilities. Let me regroup a little bit.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I love that you're not just thinking in your head. Okay. What am I going to say next?
What am I going to say next? But you're immersed with this, our stories. That's I love that.
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): Fun fact to share with other fours who are considered the special snowflakes. I did dye my hair the day before for this to stand out a little bit. Gotta, gotta be special. Gotta be unique.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I noticed it. It's great. Thank you for noticing.
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): So, I, let's see. I guess the conditions or diagnoses I will talk about are codependent traits, working through personal depression of the four and autism. So I guess I will be perhaps a unique, a double unique flavor of four because of the neurodivergence, but I'm assuming a lot of us are not.
Have some sensitivity traits differences. Anyways, I'm guessing all of us do. It's all a spectrum. And so, let's see, how do I shape this? I know when you reached out, you were talking about this one video that I made. And so I think I'll lean into it that way, where If you look at that video, it was made I think six to eight years ago and my energy, my demeanor, my wholeness was so different from how I am now and I think that's what you were mentioning Jordin earlier about being present in your vulnerability.
I think as a four, we thrive off of being the vulnerable mess, and just being a muck. And that's the only attention that we could ever believe that we deserve. Being seen as and so I doubled down on that identity and presented information as a wounded, highly sensitive, vulnerable person where people would come and try and save me or protect me and feel like, oh, poor you, like, no, I get it.
It's like, I totally understand how you feel, at the same time, because of that, it limited who I was. for a long time. I was able to, here's the gift and the strength of a four, we're able to tap into this raw feeling of how other people are experiencing pain, grief, loss, questioning who they are. And that's for us an ability to tap into the essence, right?
An essence of a person. But because of that, We're stuck in this loop of, I can only feel seen when I am pained. I can only have value because people have shown me and given me attention when I am the sensitive snowflake. And so we're repeating and having this confirmation bias of like, I need to seek out relationships.
I have this antenna now. So the codependent traits is like, I'm seeking out relationships where someone, you know, Is may not be the best for me, but because I am so wounded and I think that I can only be seen as my vulnerable wounded parts, I'm going to seek someone who doesn't understand me. And that's the core wounding of a four, right?
We feel constantly misunderstood. So I'm going to do, I'm going to damage myself even more, find someone who doesn't get me, even though I know they don't get me. Unconsciously, I know they don't understand me. And so I've been in relationships. And, um, the universe has guided me out of that. But in the past, I've constantly been seeking out people and systems and social circles where I would look for that confirmation bias of I'm close to being understood, but they said this one thing, I feel suddenly rejected.
There was this one thing that I did and they misinterpreted what I was trying to say. I'm getting so defensive and overwhelmed. I'm getting emotionally hijacked. I don't think it's worth it. I'm going to now confirm my identity as the outlier, as the alien. I'm going to run away. I'm going to hide. I'm going to withdraw.
And so it's perpetual, this pattern. It's so exhausting. I'm so tired of it. And so like, we do that as a four. And then as my wing kicks in as a five, I will double withdraw and intellectualize of like affirming just the reasoning. So like Jordin said, we're writing the reasons for why. So like, I'm really good at explaining how and why happened, something happened, but to go into it is where the truly healing works.
Right. And so I think that's interesting because like, I'm sure Joanne will probably say something similar where with other types have a difficult time of even acknowledging the darkness and the pain, the depths of their vulnerability. We hold on to it too much where I actually find it a funny life lesson for me as a four to give myself permission to feel joy, like to feel successful and to actually stand out and embrace my light and have people witness me for what I'm actually good at.
Because I've been seen as Eeyore for most of my life. Like I'm just grumpy and I'm sad, but I know there's more of that, but I struggle sometimes where if I go out and have successful moments and then people give me attention for that, is that actually me too? And so there's this integration happening over time, right?
Where it's just like, I don't know if I actually like it. Is this good? This is good feelings, you know? And so I think that's an important part of us as fours where we will double withdraw because it's this shifting of your psyche of if it's so true. You start to lean into your self betrayal and abandonment of self when you realize, Oh shoot, I've done so much of the contribution to me living a life where I have been rejected, misunderstood, and seeking someone to see me.
It's like, Oh my God. And so that's a lot of pausing to withdraw on purpose. And so the intention comes out where instead of me reacting to the moment or the incident that happened where I run away because I have to confirm that I'm misunderstood and unwanted, I don't belong. This time I will withdraw on purpose to reflect on how am I contributing to what has happened?
And is there a possibility that I saw it a certain way? So I just was rereading. Riso, Wisdom of the Enneagram, before they had to prepare, and so there was this one part of like how we feel our feelings so much that we identify with the feelings instead of actually the experience itself. So I, I thought that was a good point.
So fours can really reflect on this, where if something emotional does happen, it's this, do the emotions exist forever? And realistically, maybe for a long time for us, yes. At the same time. Not consistently forever. And so I really want to meditate on that because it is true. There's some things that we don't believe to be true, but when we allow our emotions and cognition to separate.
It gives us an ability to really empower ourselves, and I think that's something that can be a strength, even though as a quiet, you know, moody person, I know I'm always going to be moody. Like, that's the thing that I think is realistic, too. Those are things that are going to, quote unquote, trigger me or make me feel like I don't belong.
But if I separate myself from the emotion and just pause a little bit, I can come back into the circle, the social group that I thought I was rejected from. And that's like the biggest thing, I think. I can share with fours, like, just go back, like, even though you feel like you were rejected and maybe you were feel strong enough to believe that there's something that they can offer you and you can offer them.
It's just like, you cannot constantly feel rejected from the whole world. That's impossible. You know, as a gamer, it's like numbers wise, it's probability. I know that sooner or later, I'll find someone that I can get along with. And so that's what I wanted to share.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): I could, I could listen to you all day. This is I just really appreciate you sharing.
And, especially we talked about earlier, my son being on the spectrum. And so I'm just absorbing everything you're saying.
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): Do I sound like him? Like when he talks about stuff?
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): No, he's we think he's a type eight. So it's really interesting, seeing kind of the differences and we're gonna have a parenting panel on the summit here.
And we'll be talking about kind of our children and you know, what types we think they may be. You can't always type your kids too young for sure. But I just knowing the Enneagram now for a while, and my son's 10, we think he's an eight. So it's really interesting seeing, some of the, the autism traits and then also the type eight traits.
And how they mingle together. It's very, very interesting. So I'll be talking a little bit more about that on the parenting panel, but I forgot the video that you mentioned. And I just remembered it's the how to defend yourself video that I saw on YouTube. Explain why you, you did that video. Because I think it's, I think it's really important. You said you might not have been in the most healthy space or something like that.
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): No, I was not.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): But I, I saw it as a positive thing when I saw it. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I need to have Boonie say that. So what, what do you mean by how, like how you were advocating to others to defend themselves? Like, how have you felt like you needed to defend yourself?
Breaking Free: Embracing Self-Acceptance and Letting Go of Misunderstood Perceptions
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): And so identity is a really big thing for me because I want it reflected meaningfully through the relationships that we have. and the mirroring that I get in this world. It's incongruent in certain ways because if I say something or if I present a certain way and someone will look at me or say something, it's like, that's not congruent to how I see myself.
But if someone's joking about me with my autistic, like, traits or the things that I like, all of a sudden, wow, this world is completely different. And now it's kind of like a shattering of my perspective because Why is it so different? Why is mock me being mocked? Why is it made fun of so much? Or even the people in my life who were part of my life, the things that I did do and like, they were embarrassed to be around me because it was so abnormal.
And so there are these things where I was just trying to explain for me as a five wing cognition is very important to me. I try to explain my thought process so people can pick that up and be like, okay, you have a reason for liking the things that you like. Okay. Just because I don't understand that doesn't mean it's wrong.
It's just now I understand the thought process. That makes more sense. All I ever wanted to explain was the logic behind something. But because people considered it, instead of me explaining who I am, they consider it defensive. It's like now I'm being perceived as defensive instead of trying to stand firm in who I am and explain where I'm coming from.
And that would be such an incredible wounding that it would make me withdraw so often. And it's like this constant in and out process of again, the Tiredness of trying to take up space when you were afraid that someone's going to misinterpret what you say or do. And so, um, I reached this limit of I'm sure many people here have reached a limit.
I'm so sick of shit. Like, I don't want to do this anymore. And so like, what am I doing wrong or what's happening here? And so you're like, okay, what's the big thing? Being defensive, people feeling a certain type of way about your worldview and your sensory systems, and just needing to withdraw, but they're interpreting as you being egotistical, better than them, using certain language to represent yourself, and now, again, the mismatch of perception and identity, it's like, I'm so tired of this, and so the limit is like, who is allowed to receive the descriptions of who you are. Who deserves to understand the inner workings of your mind and your heart? Not everybody does. And I finally had the big light bulb go off, like, this is not working. They don't deserve this. They're never going to get it. And that's where Enneagram work, personality work comes in too.
Are they actually going to get it? Yes or no. And so the separation becomes very clear of like, oh, I don't have to explain. They're not going to get it. Like I'm free. I'm so free. And so I can go somewhere else where I can refill my cup. Like they get it. These spaces where I feel free to have joy and just be seen as who I am, like all these people, I'm sure we're going to come to the same conclusion just as we are, right?
And so there's again more space to not react of, they don't need to understand. Why am I chasing them? Why do I keep on chasing the wrong people trying to explain who I am when they don't get it, you know? And so that's part of it. And I know a lot of neurodivergent people, we will get stuck in that trap because our, we don't even understand our brains.
Most of us don't. We follow the TikToks, we follow the memes, but a lot of us don't really get the mechanisms happening. So there's like the body part component too, which I'm just going to recommend. Please go seek out occupational therapists. They will help too. Just, okay. I think I'm done. I'm done.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That was so helpful and so important, um, to teach others advocate to defend themselves and for us to pick up that torch, say, Hey, we want to defend you.
Me and my wife are constantly defending our son against neighbors. And people who don't understand him mis, misinterpret his actions. And cause you shouldn't have to do that for yourself. We talk a lot about this when it, when it comes to, people of color in, in majority white spaces. It's like they get super tired of having to constantly defend themselves.
Advocate for the issues when we can step up and we can defend and we can advocate and we can be an ally. I think the same thing is true with like autism, as well, especially, I've noticed like in movies, TV shows, there's certain traits that show up when there's like an a character who has autism.
And if they, if you don't have those kinds of common traits and people might not pick up on it. And those misinterpret all your actions, you know, like Zeke is an eight is very loud. He's full of life and he's just all over the place. So, you know, when he comes in the room as an eight, but in people, but then he still has those social interaction.
They think cues that he misses all the time. And so he, he doesn't pick, he thinks that people are constantly betraying him that are, they're constantly looking at him funny. And then that just agitates him. And then it causes, you know, an unhealthy social interaction. And then other people would draw from him.
He's constantly losing friends. So we're constantly trying to help people understand him, advocate for him, defend him. And so we just need to all do a better job of doing that for our friends and family members. So, thanks Boonie. I really, really loved hearing from you. It was moving on. I think Amanda, we need to go to you as a three, go, go back to three here.
I, missed you there on the, on the list. So can we, can you unmute yourself and share a little bit of your story?
Amanda Nagy (Enneagram 3): Sure. Um, trying to think of like the way to sum up my experience. Cause I feel like Most of my teenage and adulthood life has been struggling with mental health issues. My childhood, I was pretty easy go, performer, entertainer, loved everybody.
And it wasn't until my adult years when like a bomb went off. Um, and I definitely think in hindsight that my issues with depression, Suicide ideation, anxiety, um, eating disorder, food addiction, body dysmorphia, um, and later diagnosed ADHD had a lot to do with being a one on one, uh, three. So image being.
Beautiful having the body type or the dress or any of those things that society valued was so what I was obsessed with that, um, and not being able to ever measure up. Uh, it just imploded on me. Um, I couldn't get skinny enough. I couldn't be pretty enough. I couldn't, uh, wear the right clothes. I couldn't have that, like walk into a room and everybody look at me kind of like fantasy that I wanted to get some kind of value, um, Imploded at that time, and it just kind of kept going into my 20s and 30s.
It wasn't until my later 30s and into my early 40s that I finally started getting some insights and ahas and making connections. And just like Jordin was mentioning, I was going to figure it out myself. It was like. I, we taught my talking to my dad, who's also a three. And I was like, I think it was in my twenties where I was like, okay, I'm really tired of this and I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to fix myself.
And I'm going to have that moment, just like Jordin talked about that moment of being like, here I am. I'm healed. I'm confident. I have value come admire me. And of course that never happened and it won't happen the way I imagine it. Anyways. So that comparing to other people, the competing, I had no interest in being valedictorian or being president of a club or the best athlete, but I definitely wanted to be a attractive, magnetic, charismatic girl. Um, and I moved around a lot. And so it was the, the standard, the expectation was always changing. So it depended on where I lived, what community we were a part of. Um, and then when you're in a religious community and a secular community, then there's like, okay, how am I supposed to present myself?
In this one and then in this one and then when you get into the work world as an adult, you have religious community and personal community and work community. And it just, I didn't realize that that was, I was doing was this constant, like, trying to measure up to all these different environments I was in.
I think my success in getting through a lot of that was my ADHD masking. I think it helped me keep pushing through instead of just imploding on myself. The shame was obviously present. I didn't like it. And it was like, I'm going to figure this out. Where's this coming from? So constant exploration.
And interestingly enough, when I got into teaching and I was teaching life skills and then school counseling, and so I was counseling other high school students, kind of similar issues, you know, I was seeing things in other people, um, and it was like that. I'm going to, I'm going to. Help fix you. And maybe I can fix myself in that process.
But the ADHD thing was a total, like did not see that coming. I was just recently diagnosed at 42. That was definitely a huge gut punch. It was a, I don't know who I am. I really don't know who I am. And so it's a lot of grieving, a lot of grieving, a lot of anger. Interestingly enough, I found that most of the grief came from feeling like I missed out on years where I could have accomplished something.
Like had I known I had ADHD and I couldn't have medication and therapy and help in my twenties, my teens and twenties, I could have done so much more with my life. Like that was what I was struggling with and also the frustration of wanting to accomplish more, but the anxiety or the ADHD or, the depression like held me back from a lot of the things that I wanted to do.
Like I wanted to go do this. I wanted to, you know, be in this position or be in the spotlight for this, but it kind of was always that voice that was like, yeah, but yeah, but yeah, but, um, so there's a lot of frustration there. That push to want to perform and get value that way, but also retreating because the shame and the image and what if I can't.
And so it was this, this crazy cycle that I went through and I'm still going through working on finding value and just being me. Like, I don't have to be pretty, I don't have to be put together, I don't have to have the latest fashion, I don't have to be the best daughter, the best wife, the best friend, if I just existed.
I have worth and value and that still is really hard for me to wrap my head around. So that's where I kind of try to show up and be the best performer at is just being the favorite friend, the favorite, you know, I always tell my husband, I want to be the trophy wife for you. That would be the best thing.
I struggled with emotional eating and binge eating. And so I got quite heavy and that was very hard for me as an image conscious person, because I didn't even feel like I had worth being out in public, like as an ugly obese person, you should not have to look at me. I'm just taking up space. And so that was another like mental thing to work through.
And so I eventually was getting healthy, working out. Of course I took that too far as a three. You know, I was feeling good and accomplishing and I would get my kicks out of telling people that I got up at two 30 every morning and worked out for an hour and a half for five years until my body was like, you're done.
So yeah, so it was just in hindsight, I can just see it. Plainly out there that it was mostly that intimate one on one kind of needing to have that value in my world, whether it was my peers or my parents or friends or all those kinds of things that kind of pushed me.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thank you, Amanda. I love that you echoed Jordin's comments about I'm going to fix myself because as a three, we just need to keep hearing that, like we, we need should fix ourselves because it is rather embarrassing, to say that we are not six, not having success. We're seeing a successful, and I appreciated you, talking about your subtype that you're a sexual or one to one, three.
That's big. And that really does provide some really, uh, insight into mental health or mental health struggles, because I know the sexual three, more so than the achievements, like you said, the social threes are really into the, the success, symbols, status statuses. But for sexual three, you're really gonna want to craft desirable qualities or craft a desirable image to make others.
Once you more to desire you more. And so I can totally see how that would lend itself to really thinking a lot about body image, exercising, like doing all that you can to sort of craft the perfect image for your loved ones or the people that you really want to attract, did you feel like, and I know Beatrice chestnut teaches that a lot of times sexual threes for women, they want it to be the most like feminine, they want to fit into that feminine box that called the culture, the majority culture wants.
And then for men to fit into that masculine, boxes, did you feel a little bit of that?
Chasing an Ideal: Navigating Body Image and Identity in the Shadow of a Gentle Mother
Amanda Nagy (Enneagram 3): I had an interesting relationship with that. Um, my mother, I'm an only child. We moved a lot, weren't around family. So it was, my dad was a workaholic self pros three. So it was me and my mom. And so her energy, she's a nine.
And her body type, she's very tall and thin was my goal post for a lot of my life. And I am, I got curvy real quick. So yay, middle school years and blossoming. And so I thought I had to have that body type. I was also in the nineties heroin shake, you know? So Kate Moss and looking like you were on your deathbed was the ideal and definitely could not do that.
And then personality wise, my mom's just. friendly and laid back and kind. And I always had friends that are like, your mom is so sweet. We just love your mom. And here I am like opinionated loud, like go, go, go. I'm a fire, you know, like a lot of young kind of masculine energy. I'm also a thinker and a lot of the Myers Briggs.
So there was this. I have to be kind and meek and gentle and sweet and serve, um, and be soft spoken and not have opinions. And I also grew up in the Bible belt. So, you know, you have a lot of cultural expectations. And so there was this, like, I have to soften myself. I have to keep my mouth shut. I have to be more like her.
Everybody likes her. Nobody wants an opinionated, strong female, you know, especially during my growing up years. So I did, I did struggle with that. I had a love hate relationship because I am a girly girl. I love me some makeup and some clothes and all the things, but I also felt that like, edginess to me.
And so I did, I had a hard time kind of resonating with that. And I, I think I still do, especially my husband's a five. And so he's a little more still and quiet and reflective and, you know, I'm completely opposite of that. And so you've got those role reversals in a relationship. Cause I do the finances and, you know, and he doesn't.
And so, It is still kind of present. Getting more comfortable with it obviously is the more I learn about myself, the more I go through therapy, EMDR, brain-spotting, all that stuff has been amazing for me to work through that stuff and then having that space with a therapist where I can just let it all hang out and like, I don't have to worry about other people watching me or hearing me.
Of course, you have to get to that point as a three with a therapist to be vulnerable in front of your therapist, learn to trust your therapist, but having that space for me to just kind of be brutally honest and let it all hang out has been really helpful too.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): One more question, Amanda, you talked about ADHD masking.
That's something that came up in one of my interviews on ADHD here at this, on the summit. And so I was like, when I heard about it, I was like, that sounds a lot like threes. This whole ADHD masking thing. So, and you said you used it to cope. It was helpful for you. So as a three who, you know, we tend to wear masks, what is ADHD masking and how is it, how did it help you?
Amanda Nagy (Enneagram 3): Um, well, one, I think that's why I wasn't diagnosed until much later, because I learned how to adapt my behavior to the expectations. Um, so Matt, ADHD masking is. Um, much like the mirroring that threes do, you know, we're watching people watch us and learning what is acceptable, what is an acceptable. And so ADH doers dears do that as well.
Um, we see that, oh, this behavior is not. You know, we're getting some negative feedback from this. And so you learn to internalize, come up with, um, accommodations, ways to not get that negative feedback. For example, obviously the societal expectation is to show up on time for things, right? And a lot of ADHD people have time management, time, blindness issues and contend to be late for things so you, you overcompensate sometimes. So for example, I have no concept of how long it's going to take me to get somewhere. And that's where a lot of my anxiety stemmed from was, was coming from those things. So I will leave way earlier than I have to, to make sure that I get somewhere on time. So I will get to places. 45, 30 minutes early before I have to. And I'm okay with that because it lessens the anxiety of potentially being late. And so I'll sit in my car and like do whatever I need to do. ADHD, people also have to work on transitioning from one thing to the next. So it is helpful to sit in the car and kind of mentally prepare.
Okay, I'm going from this. I'm going into there. This is what I need to do. So it does help me, but, uh, you learn what is an acceptable. And so that's why I say being a three. And having ADHD that mirror and masking, I think was my, my life force and surviving, uh, thinking about the things that I struggled with.
I don't, I'm surprised that I wasn't hospitalized or really got into serious addictions, different things like that. But I think that was part of it is I just got in that. I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to do it on top of being concerned about the image. What would people think if they knew?
And so that kind of pushed me.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Well, the whole goal of the summit is to help us to have more self compassion for ourselves and more empathy for others. And, you know, you have the normal. Three or normal type stuff that we struggle with everyone does, and then you, the ADHD or other mental health struggles sort of layers on top of that.
So I, as you, when you say that you struggle with knowing how long it's going to take to get somewhere, I'm like, Oh my goodness, as a three, we like efficiency, really getting places. On time and quickly. I can't imagine then having that struggle on top of that, of not knowing, like, like having that value of efficiency and being good efficiency, but then not being able to control that.
That sounds really challenging, really hard. So that's a good, I mean, thank you for sharing that example. That's, that's helpful for the reason the rest of us listening in, but thank you again for, for sharing that you're 42. I'm 42 and I'm going through a crisis as well. My identity as a three, like, what did I do the last two decades for other people?
And what did I do for myself? I don't know. It's our midlife crisis. And I really appreciate you saying, Hey, I wish I would have got sought a diagnosis earlier. Cause I could have been so much more helpful. And that's one of the things that keeps coming up too, is let's, let's seek out those things.
Not be afraid to get help early on because it could change the next decade or two of our lives. Uh, so thank you for sharing that wisdom.
Amanda Nagy (Enneagram 3): Yeah. I say advocate, advocate for yourself, advocate for other people. And now that's kind of my big passion is educating how ADHD shows up for women, especially because we're the population where it's not diagnosed or it's misdiagnosed.
So now that's like I'm on fire for that because. I still, I have a couple of friends that are like I think I might have that. I'm like, well, what have you done about it? Well, you know, my doctor says that I don't have it. I'm like, no, no, no. If, if you feel like that's something you need to explore, like go find another doctor and then go find another doctor.
We have to advocate. So I think that's that three, like encouraging and cheerleading and fighting for people I find coming in now and trying to empower other people for whatever diagnosis they might think that they have or mental health issue that they might think they have. It's like, don't just sit in it, you know, go find help some form or fashion, educate yourself if that's just researching, you know,
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's good, Amanda.
Well, I interviewed Kristen Carter, who is the host of I have ADHD podcast. So go, go check out that if you're listening and you want more. And I also interviewed Nate McCord on how ADHD shows up in every type. So that would be another resource for you. Okay. Thanks, Amanda. We have two left, so we're going to go to Joanne next and then Eden.
So Joanne, would you unmute yourself and share a little bit of your story?
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So, I came into this panel. I was like, what should I talk about? And while I was listening to people sharing, I was like, Oh, I was like having like an epiphany just right now. It's like, Oh, I realized that whenever someone asked me about me, I I have like go to tracks of how I can describe myself in my life.
I can like talk about myself as, someone who's moved around a lot, had a hard time making friends. That's track number one. Track number two is growing up as a queer kid in the church. And then like having that whole thing blow up. And then a third track being like spiritual abuse, spiritual trauma, all kinds of stuff.
And so it was very interesting. Just like sitting here, it's like, very Four-ish thing to do. It's like, I can talk about myself according to these like pre rehearsed. Ways. And I think that a lot of my struggles probably came from like this. It's a, I think it's a pretty common four thing, determining the conclusion up front and then working backwards.
Like the conclusion is obviously there must be something wrong with me and that I'm fatally flawed and that nothing can never like help me. And I probably have gone through my whole life and have interpreted different experiences I've had as evidence, but there must be something wrong with me. So it's kind of like a circular argument and you know, even in the ways that I show up in life nowadays might be according to that rehearsal. And I, I just thought that was pretty, pretty weird. Oh, I haven't actually talked about this track in a while.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): So that's extremely valuable just to let us in your head already. Thank you.
For allowing us to see that that's, yeah, I'm very intrigued. I want you to talk about all of that for a couple of hours.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): I could, don't tempt me, but I think the main thing that I've learned recently is that I am important, but I'm not central. That I come with the experience of being a self preservation four.
So I'm a four that doesn't look like a four. Everyone else on the outside might interpret me or assume that I am basically every other type. It really depends on my mood. And the people who are the closest to me would be able to tell that I'm a four. And that's like, if I even reveal all the crap that's like going on behind the scenes.
And so there's a lot of masking, jury's still out whether or not I actually have ADHD, definitely have had anxiety and depression, PTSD, the full range. But nowadays there, there are two things that are happening for me in present day. One is it might be a possibility that I've identified with Being someone who has anxiety, depression, PTSD.
Then actually having anxiety, depression, PTSD. Like, I'm not going to discount that. There were several moments in my life where yeah, anxiety is like just running the show or that I've been kind of like stuck in the mud. But I think if that's like, that might be maybe like. 40, 50 percent of what was going on for me.
And I think the remaining 50 percent was what my four was doing. It's like, I've demonstrated that there must be some, there is something wrong with me and I'm just going to like squeeze every single juice that I can't add with this identity. What helped me was when I discovered the Enneagram, I thought I was a social four for the longest time because I like resonated with all the four stuff and it wasn't until my Enneagram coach sat down with me for about a year and she was like, I think you should revisit because what I actually ended up doing was to disconnect with my own suffering and outsource it.
So I thought that I was struggling a lot, but from outside observation, no one can tell that I was struggling. I grew up with major RBF, so everyone could kind of tell that there was something going on, but I would never show it. All the meanwhile, behind the scenes, I know how I'm feeling. So it was like super broody and dark and stormy and all that kind of stuff.
But what actually ended up happening was that I was very functional. So my parents had no idea that I was struggling in my childhood because I happened to be very good at school, but it wasn't that I was actually good at school. I mean, I might have had some skillsets, but nobody knew just how much, how many more hours I put towards finishing a project.
Like I would work till like three, 4 AM. And so I think in a lot of ways, like I resonate with some of the things that Amanda shared, like, I think that was a lot of the masking that I grew up operating, like the good easy child suffering silently alone was like probably the way that I survived throughout life.
To the point where now I, inadulted, I painted myself into that corner. And later on, like six, seven years ago, I met my bestie. Who is also an Enneagram therapist. She's a sexual too. And she was so gentle in the beginning, but now she kind of let me in on her initial impression of me that when we met and she said, yeah, you were just like, like a broken record.
You kept telling the same stories over and over and over and over again. And I think I had learned more about the four to realize that, Like that was probably how I was coping. But the, the issue was. I was already in a safer place. I didn't need to cope anymore. I had already left the, the church that blew up that I was working.
And I, I was the black sheep, the whistleblower, the rebel, whatever back then. And that was just like the identity that I had taken on since I left was, I was a person who founded a huge church family secret and I got cut off from my community and no one understands what the hell is going on. And I have all this power to single handedly destroy this church, but what do I do with all this power?
That was the narrative. I kept telling myself for like the first five years since I left that church, maybe seven years. And I think the more I learned about specifically the self press for type set up, it's like, okay, if I've identified with. Suffering itself, then there will be no healing. The healing will not happen because I've already eliminated as an option available to me.
And so I learned that I have an allergic reaction to joy. I remember to what Boonie shared and that joy for fours is a very threatening experience. It doesn't make any sense, I think, to other types, but I think for fours, it's living life as if the umbilical cord that tethers us to life in the universe has been severed and all of our lives is us trying to reconnect that tether by making ourselves to be very different or unique, or trying to prove ourselves and to earn our worth, or by being the most suffering person on the face of the planet, whatever it is.
And so if all of those things are a part of the type four setup and we have our type of what, but we are not our type. Namely we are more than our type. Then I have to go back to the drawing board and rethink everything. All of my premises, I need to reevaluate because otherwise I'm just recycling the same limited conclusion over and over again.
So nowadays it's more of, okay, maybe I am important, but I'm not central. I'm not the center of the universe. So maybe the world will not fall apart. If I take a break, maybe. I can actually take up more space without other people feeling burdened. Maybe it's okay for me to enjoy things. And even if I open myself up to risk of losing that good thing or whatever, maybe I'm already more than capable of handling that now.
Then I did before. So a lot of it nowadays is more of like, let me just be a single drop of water in the greater life ocean and see where things go instead of me trying to make myself or life be a certain way. So there's a lot of self preservation instinct stuff that I've been trying to work on.
A lot of my anxiety was probably from that instinct going on hyperdrive. It's like planning and predicting and practicing and all those things. And to be upset basically for the rest of the day or the rest of the week, because one thing fell out of alignment instead of just being like, it is what it is, you know, maybe things are beyond what I can perceive and imagine.
And maybe that's fine in the same way that I don't know exactly how hot it's going to be tomorrow. And maybe I don't need to know, maybe I just need to know in real time in the present and I'll entrust my wellbeing to life to take care of me as I need and also to myself to make good decisions as each situation comes up.
So I don't have to. You know, relish in the past, thinking those were the good old days. I don't have to future trip. I could just be here wherever I am. And I don't know whether or not I have ADHD. The question that my husband asked me was, what would you do next, even if you found out? I'm like, I don't know, because life is pretty good right now. I'm self employed on my own boss. Like I get to decide my life to be however I want it to be. Eventually I might find out I might not, but there's some part of me that wants to kind of keep the type four at bay that if I were to find out, let's say if I do or don't have ADHD, that I would go back from birth and be like, this is why I have been, this is how I've become who I am now.
That's a story that I think is too small. For where I am now. And so I'm kind of just rolling on by day to day. And, I think trauma, for me is kind of a more open ended thing. Like oftentimes people think of trauma as like a big, scary event, like a car crash or like rape or whatever. And those things obviously are traumatic.
But if it's the case that in each of our types that we can create our own traumatic microcosm. Then how about we give ourselves the very opposite of going beyond our comfort zone and for four, it will be learning how to recognize that maybe some goodness is readily available to me right here and right now.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Thank you, Joanne. Thanks for sharing all that you did. I was. Kinda taking some notes down and I know, thank you for pointing out that you're self preservation. Four. I know self pres four can be sunny on the outside, suffering on the inside. And so tell me, is it a little bit like threes, you know how we talked about as threes, we don't like to go and get help?
Is it true? I know that self preservation four sometimes can suffer, suffer, suffer almost in like a masochistic way. Like they can endure lots of suffering. Yep. And does, do you think other self press fours will. We'll hold on to that. And, and cause I know that I've heard that they can almost feel more special because there's, there's something in such a unique way, but that keeps up press for us from getting help by kind of holding onto that or for you, like, what were you tempted to kind of just continue to suffer in a masochistic way or, you know, what propelled you to then move towards getting help and support?
Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Counterdependency and the Pressure to Overfunction
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So there's dependency, there's counter, there's codependency, there's counter dependency. Counter dependency is like having an allergic reaction to relying on other people. It's just that in the United States, especially, we have a whole holiday to celebrate independence. And so, like, a lot of that, I think that was one of the reasons why it was so hard for me to break outside of that and still is like, I don't know what's masochistic if I'm just used to that.
That's my baseline. You know, like it wasn't until other people were like, you did what? Like you did how much work and getting that outside frame of reference that I reprocess like, Oh, what I reflexively do is more than what is actually required. What happens if I don't do what if I don't put in that much effort and then the anxiety that comes up usually is a sign for me now that it's my self press for over functioning.
A lot of it, I think that kind of, goes hand in hand with masking. I think self press 4 is like, no one can tell how we're dealing. And sometimes we ourselves can't tell. Because we are our own frame of reference. That's the self referencing bit of type 4. And so, asking for help felt terrible. I missed a step on the stairs several years back and I technically broke my foot.
And I was with my friend, I happened to catch her shoulder. So she kind of broke most of my fall, but I still ended up injured. And I was laying on the floor. And the first thing that came to mind was I asked her, is this the day where I'm supposed to cancel my clients? She's just like, was completely in shock.
She's like, what are you talking about? Of course this is. And I had to like get into a boot and everything. And it just sucked. being injured. But the hardest part of that experience was knowing that I had to ask for people to give me rights. Like the physical pain was easy.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): No, thank you for sharing more of that.
That's really insightful for us to hear about what's going on within a four, especially self press for, and thanks for sharing about your church experiences. Even though they, they weren't, you were sharing some things that weren't positive. And I just, I know that there's people who have used, uused to be in spiritual communities that aren't, and then there's people that a lot of people are watching that are in spiritual communities are going to Christian churches.
And I just want to point out that, you know, even if you have rose colored glasses and think that your spiritual leader or your spiritual community is like, so great, uh, that not all churches get mental health and that's why we're dedicating a whole session to that. When I was starting out as a spiritual leader, I was a horrible, I keep saying this, I was not a good, I did not get mental health.
And as a three, that was still needed to grow up, I kept, I had a lot of work to do in understanding mental health. And so I think it just helps for anybody to go to a counselor, to seek support and get a third party, sort of audit of your spiritual experience and tell your spiritual experience to somebody else.
And for them to be like, you know, that doesn't sound really healthy. Well, let me, let me walk you through this. Cause then, cause sometimes we get googly eyes and we, we just think our, our churches, you know, has the right teaching or has the best leaders or even, even in those situations, there might be some things that are not good.
Going well, and you need to help walking through those things. I grew up Catholic and I was telling my wife about something in terms of like, a relationship to like the, the town, the priest of our town, and she was like, that's not like, what, that, that is not healthy. And, and so like nothing bad happened, but it was just, you know, It was just an experience of like, if we need to be sharing our experiences with our spiritual leaders and community and have somebody else do a little audit of that, because there might be places that, where we need to heal.
And sometimes we can't see that. And obviously our spiritual community is biased, so they might not be able to help us see that. But an outsider might be able to help see that. And you guys are all, a lot of you guys are coaches, counselors, therapists. So you know what I'm talking about, but I'm just stating the obvious for, for those who are watching.
But also I'm going to be interviewing, Audrey Assad on here. And she's going to be talking about, telling her story of spiritual OCD. So that might be an interview that you guys might want to pay attention to or watch. So, but thank you, Joanne for, for sharing your story.
I'm going tof ollow up with you. I need to hear a little bit more of your story. So I'll follow up with you after the panel. Okay. We have Eden. Eden's back from the thunderstorm that her internet got cut off, but she is back. So Eden, can you unmute yourself and share your story?
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yes. Apologies for having to being forced off, should I say?
Right. Yeah, and, and I missed the other two. I'm so sorry, Stephanie, I missed your, your story. But yeah, I'm Eden, and I am an enneagram type two. And I'll be talking a little bit about my history with anxiety and depression through kind of my life. Now as a practicing therapist and attachment coach, I always start with the beginning, right?
Like those early attachment, those early childhood years. When I entered the world, my mom and dad and sister, older sister, had just moved to a new city. And, um, my dad was traveling Monday through Friday. There was no family or support there. My sister has down syndrome. She was maybe a year out of having open heart surgery and here I came, right?
So needless to say, I had entered into a family system that really had some pretty intense Needs and very little room for a new set of needs, right? And that obviously reinforces reinforced in me that primary type to trait of attending to other people's needs and neglecting my own So that was just it's kind of like the perfect melting pot for that Trait to really form and flourish and in me. So as a sibling, I think it's It's worth like stopping there a little bit as a sibling of someone with special needs.
Not only did it feel like there was no room for my needs out of just the circumstances, right? No one's fault, but there was also so much shame feeling a need, right? Because I have so much more than she does. How, how could I even think about? Picking up space here. So that I think added another layer to. Not being in touch with my needs.
I had to kind of work my way through the shame around that. So overall, I kind of grew to be pretty good. I became the like token friend that was the counselor, right? I can really read and anticipate people's needs and it felt a little like maybe three ish at times like I can I'm gonna kind of morph a little bit here based on what I'm seeing and I felt like a superpower really.
The shadow sid of that superpower, there was kind of an undercurrent of conditional self worth manipulation of others. So I could feel valued. That's really kind of just come around into my consciousness. Wow. Like I'm doing these things because I think that this person is going to bring me value and I'm going to create a need for myself in their life so that I can feel validated and affirmed.
That's been a fun one to kind of discover more and more. And really ask myself, okay, what do I want in this relationship with this person? Like, do I want to be friends? Do I want to be acquaintances versus I need them to need me? That's, that's kind of been really helpful. But yeah, shadow side, and then also having a really loaded self critic that can come in, when those personal needs or opinions.
Or that like stress eight, you know, kicks in, a lot of shame around that. And my, my depression, I was thinking about my childhood and I was like, I think I was good. I think I was good. And then like my twenties hit and I had left my family system. And was kind of dropped into the world, right? And it was terrifying.
Because I was then responsible for the choices that I was making. And I didn't know what choices to make because I didn't know myself. I didn't know what I wanted, didn't know who I was, what I needed. I felt like that moment from, the notebook, except without Ryan Gosling, where he's like, stop thinking about what other people want.
What do you want? Right. What do you want? Um, which is a terrifying question. So like a 20 something, but also really could and did inspire some creativity and imagination and curiosity about myself. My part of my anecdote to my own depression, obviously therapy, my own therapy, some medication, um, but really was songwriting and performing, that process.
It was something I'd been doing since a kid, but I had kept those songs totally to myself. I'd never shared, never performed nothing. So when I started writing in my depression, I just was like, well, maybe I go to a coffee shop and play an open mic or, and it, and it just started flowing. Right. and that, there's so much, there was so much power to the experience of I am standing behind an amplified microphone, right.
And there are people looking at me, hearing my words and hearing my voice and they want to listen. And so that really started building up that connection to myself, my voice, my thoughts, my feelings, um, as well as that self worth. And then, you know, I think another phase was becoming a new mom.
I think anxiety, like, just came in and snuggled up next to me in that phase of life. And part of it was just like my idea of myself being shook, right? I had this concept of myself as this eternally patient. And the token caretaker for like the whole world, right? And I was known as a very patient person and then to experience myself as like so depleted, as very limited.
Um, as resenting my kids and my partner at times, and like what felt worse than any of that, like these moments where I would lash out at my kids, right? It was just completely unacceptable, not in my framework, and there was a lot of wrestling with, you know, okay, who, who am I in this new role with these new demands?
What do I need? How do I communicate that to my partner? And how do I communicate that with my kids? So there's been a lot of, a lot of self care that I've stepped into, which, you know, that, that is like a buzzword and I don't love to use it, but it really has been moments of stillness. Oftentimes when I'm alone for whatever reason, for me being able to get to my core self requires me feeling very embodied, um, and not in my head, not paying attention to the people around me.
I do hot yoga and the room is dark. I love it. No one gets to see, no one sees your sweat, right? Like. Yeah. You feel it, but you don't see it. So hot yoga shavasana is that moment of reflection at the end of yoga class where you're laying there and just really noticing what's coming up in my consciousness, that is a way that I hear myself speak, imagery or in words or in thoughts or songs and really paying attention to that.
So finding a rhythm and working that out with my partner and my life, right? My lifestyle, working that out, finding that rhythm where I stay connected to myself in the midst of all the things that I'm doing in the midst of all the needs. We have a dog, we have chickens, we have a turtle, we have kids, right?
Like, I love being in that role. And I think that's one thing that's we're saying, like, I imagine there's parts of ourselves that we love. Right? Like, in the types that we are, I love being that nurturer and that caretaker, and I love being able to offer a patient, obviously a therapist, right? I love being able to offer that space for people, um, but it's also, it has to be in balance, otherwise I stop being as good as I can be for, for myself and for others.
So that's, that's my 2 cents here.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): if you go to a type two therapist like Amanda, or it's like Eden, you may get a reference to Ryan Gosling, to help, you know, your mental health. So just to let you know,
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. To be, to be fair, I have not, I haven't seen that movie probably since it came out.
But it was very profound when I heard those words coming out of his mouth. And you pointed out that relational anxiety might manifest as a two by creating needs that you can meet for people. A lot of the mental health anxieties come for twos is relational anxiety. And so I like how you put that.
Pointed that out. And didn't you say that you felt like you couldn't talk about your needs because you had siblings or sibling that had more needs, right? I think that was really helpful to hear because you might, especially as a two, you might minimize your own needs, especially if you can see other people who are struggling and be like, well, who am I to bring this up?
I'm just going to be more of a burden. And that's kind of a thing that a lot of you guys shared in the panel is kind of the tendency to minimize your, your struggle as it's not being a big deal. Uh, when it actually is, and you're deserving of support and help and, uh, for people loving people to come around you.
And then I liked that you pointed out that songwriting has been a really helpful, like therapy tool. I hear that over and over for twos, like I had no two who does photography and those creative outlets. When you're just going out and doing something for yourself, that's fun and enjoyable is self care.
And, I always tell twos, especially, um, in, in churches where you're, it's continually preached to be self, be selfless, be selfless, be selfless. Well, twos aren't already selfless. They need to be more selfish in the best sense of the word, uh, something that feels selfish is actually self care.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yes. And I didn't, I didn't mention that as well, but I could have gone on a whole church, path, right.
But I think that was one of my major early on. I grew up in the church. That was one of my major struggles with the church because that was not a message that I needed reinforced, for myself, I needed to be valued for myself and I needed my strengths and my gifts and my talents to be mine.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yes, that's what the Engram was so helpful to me because then I can, I'm telling nines now, take up more space, take up more space, but that's not usually a message that's, that's preached. Well, thank you, Eden. I'm going to start with you and then work back to the others on the, on the panel in closing, tell us where we can find you online, any point us to any resources that you want us To know about any work that you're doing. I'll ask that question of everybody. And then if there's a burning thought that you had, that you didn't get to share, now's your time to get it in. So go ahead and work. We find you online, Eden.
Eden Hyder (Enneagram 2): Yeah. I have a group private practice. I come on with my husband. He's also a therapist and an Enneagram Nine. It's called Inside Out Collaborative and that's insideoutcollaborative. com. And then,for coaching stuff that's edenheider. com. I have a podcast that focuses on attachments.
There's just a season out there. It's just a little, little flip, but that's called inside out podcast as well. And my Instagram is @edenheider. I'm not on as much. That's part of self care that's happened over the past couple of years as I'm not as much on social media. I'm more in my body, which is positive.
But yes, I love hearing from people. Um, And yeah, there are lots of good resources on those pages too.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): That's great. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah. Um, and I'll post the links that you shared with me. I'll post them below so that people can, can find you that way. Perfect. Uh, let's go back to Stephanie.
Stephanie, where can we find you?
Stephanie Cross (Enneagram 2): Hey, um, so I'm on Instagram. Uh, like Eden said, I'm not on there a ton. Um, but it is storycraftstuff. editor. And I have a website where you can find me for editing services. And sometimes I do blog about grief on there too. Um, but that is storycraftncom.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Awesome stuff. Uh, Jordan.
Jordin James (Enneagram 3): I am on almost all the socials. Um, it's at just Jordinjames. Um, so you can find me on there as a three. I have a lot to express and I am on social media a lot. Maybe, uh, I'm taking some self care notes. Um, so yeah, you can find me on social media. I, um, a lot of my narcissistic abuse stuff. If that's something that anybody listening is interested in.
is on my, in my writing and I write a lot on medium. com. So I think that there's a, there's going to be a link for that as well. And then my, my favorite thing that I just created earlier this year is a 30 day email program called worthy. And it is all about, reclaiming your self worth, your unconditional self worth from the inside, but it's tailored around letting love do the work for you.
So like, I'm really tired of a lot of healing stuff out there that has you working really, really hard to heal because it does not, does not actually have to be as hard as we're making it. Um, so that's called worthy. Uh, it's just a 30 day email. Um, of course it's only 33 bucks. Uh, so highly, highly recommend that.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Yeah, I found you on medium. com too. I found one of your articles and I was like, well, she is very vulnerable for a three. I, I like it. Yeah. I need to get her on the panel.
Jordin James (Enneagram 3): Yeah, actually that, that I had a burning thought as I was listening to y'all fours. I was like, Oh man, this is so good because I've got, I've got a four on me for sure.
And I've realized that like, My four parts are so gifted and special and deep, and they are weird. They are really weird, and my three parts blame my four parts for why we're so lonely. Like, if you were less weird, if you were less deep, if you could just be more shallow and fit in, like, then we wouldn't be so lonely.
So as I was listening to the, the fours, I was like, oh man, that's like the war that's been going on inside of me all this time. So thank you fours for being so vulnerable with that.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Love that, Jordin. I totally agree with that. Uh, Boonie, where can we find you?
Bonnie Sripom (Enneagram 4): So, my website is organizedmesses. com. I also have YouTube with a similar name, Organized Messes.
You can just find me there. I, So I have a disappearing relationship with my Twitch, but I want to promote content on there because of my love and support for being part of the gaming community. So I am streaming on Mondays and Thursdays. I actually just lecture because I like to info dump at people.
And it's like my history of not being able to just rant about a topic for 30 minutes on end, which is why I initially created my YouTube, but now I'm going to do it with a live. live action with people who can comment and ask questions. And so I've noticed, not coincidentally, I'm sure you all know, there's a lot of ADHDers and autistic people in the gaming community.
And so I found my people. Um, my perception of rejection is, uh, slowly disappearing and I feel like I do belong there. And so if anyone wants to come say hi, you can just lurk. You don't even need to say anything. Um, I'll be there. So, and I also have a couple lectures that I, I have. Recorded for letsplaytherapy.
org. It's through the lens of play therapy by talk about neurodivergence archetypes and video games for therapists seeking to understand the world in a different lens. So thank you.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Wow. I love that Boonie. And I found you on your YouTube channel. Thank you for taking up space and sharing your story. And, uh, I, I love that.
Keep doing that. Okay, Amanda.
Amanda Nagy (Enneagram 3): I have on Facebook and Instagram, uh, two different accounts. nagyonfire is my personal, but I, I do health coaching, ADHD, all that stuff there. And then Nagy on Fire Coaching is more specific to self awareness, typology, that kind of thing. Um, and I wanted to add that the social media actually helped a lot of my Healing because I wasn't active on social media.
I was a lurker. I didn't want to expose myself in any kind of vulnerable way. So I just watched what other people were doing. And when I started, um, health coaching and talking about weight loss and posting those, uh, not so. Pleasant photos. Um, but I didn't want anybody to see was kind of therapeutic because it released a lot of that shame, right?
Like talking about the things we're ashamed of releases the power it has over us. So I actually found it therapeutic to be vulnerable and share a lot of these things, um, in social media and speaking a little bit more about the ADHD and whatnot. So, um, Yeah, for me, it was helpful to expose myself that way and realize, Oh, it's not that big of a deal.
Like the world didn't end and you know, a lot of people are like, I've I'm there too. And so there's that, that space of feeling like, Oh, I'm not alone. And all these things that I'm going through. So
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): It's good. Thank you so much, Amanda, for sharing that. Last thought and we have Joanne.
Joanne Kim (Enneagram 4): So I have two hats on one is as an enneagram therapist and, I have a free guide that's called the emotional habits of enneagram types.
It's a free PDF. I basically explore what I call the big five feelings. Mad, sad, glad, scared, dumb. And how each type has different relationships with each of those motions. And then with the feelings translator hat on I built an online school for feelings because a lot of the work that I do with clients, people like.
Why didn't they teach us this in school? So I made a school. And so with that, I have a free guide called, The Big Feelers First Aid Kit, basically what to do when messy out of control feelings show up at what seems to be the wrong place, the wrong time in the wrong ways. So that's a free guide.
But I also have the online school where I basically share In let's say 20 or so hours of things that I actually share with my clients in session. But I've had a long wait list for quite some time and also people reaching out from out of state. And I'm like, I can't work with you in therapy. So here's this and said, but that one you can find at intelligentemotions.com.
Tyler Zach (Enneagram 3): Awesome. I think that's everyone, right? Okay. Well, thank you to all of you for having the courage to share. I know that so many people right now feel seen and are feeling like, Hey, I'm not the only one and feel empowered to go get support or seek out support. So thank you so much for your courage and vulnerability.
And for those of you watching today, before you head over to the next interview or the next panel here on the summit, remember to do things, seek support and share compassion because you are not alone.
Loved what you saw?
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© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
How Enneagram Type-Specific Retreats Help You Dive Deep into Your Personality
If you're eager and intentional about personal growth, here are 5 reasons why I think you def should consider attending one of Beatrice Chestnut & Uranio Paes' type-specific Enneagram retreats.
Transformation from the Inside Out
As an Enneagram therapist, I want to walk the talk. I’m committed to working on my own Enneagram type’s ego structures so that even the way I help people aren’t cluttered by my own Type Four biases and reactivity.
(If you don't know what the Enneagram is, start here!)
I’ve been trained by my Enneagram teachers - Beatrice Chestnut & Uranio Paes — founders of Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy — and have gone through their Personal Mastery & Professional Certification Tracks.
Here are some other blogs about inner work retreats:
Most of the prior retreats were for people of all nine Enneagram types.
This blog is about 5 reasons why Type-specific Retreats would help you take your inner work on a laser-focused level.
Reason #1: Less = More
The human brain can only take in so much information, let alone information about NINE DIFFERENT TYPES (or 27 subtypes!!).
Yes, I would still highly recommend the other 5-day retreats that cover the nine types, but there’s something about SIMPLICITY in doing the deeper dive on ONE TYPE (YOUR type!) that really hits home.
What are the central themes of your Enneagram type?
What are your type’s core childhood woundings?
What are the main psychological defense mechanisms of your type?
What is the emotional habit (aka PASSIONS) that drives your automatic patterns from behind the scenes?
What is the mental habit (aka FIXATIONS) that immediately directs your focus, to then summon your passion and its workings?
What does your type look like across all the Levels of Development? (e.g., what does a Type Four person fully stuck in ego look like vs. a Four who’s done a great deal of inner work?)
What are the three SUBTYPES of your type (Self-preservation, Social, and Sexual)?
What’s the alchemical outcome when you mix your passion with your dominant instinct?
How can you tap into all three Centers of Intelligence (Head, Heart, Body) to grow beyond your type?
Ultimately, it would still be useful for you to be familiar with the other eight Enneagram types, but for the purposes of your own growth, having a fuller understanding of your own Enneagram type inside and out is practically more immediately useful so that you’re STAYING IN YOUR OWN LANE and not getting distracted from doing necessary work!
(I’m especially looking at you Enneagram Twos and Nines who often look to everyone else except for yourselves and also to Enneagram Fives who often hoard information without taking concrete growth steps!)
Reason #2: Get Straight to the Point of TAKING ACTION
When you do a deeper exploration of your own Enneagram type, you can skip the accumulation of heady knowledge and get right to the points that really confront you with a mirror that reveals your own patterns IN REAL TIME.
Personal growth work is already hard enough as it is, but it’s even more difficult if we tend to INTELLECTUALIZE what really needs to be ACTED upon.
I love how the Enneagram is both COMPREHENSIVE and COMPACT at the same time. The Enneagram contains a wealth of information about our types in very accessible ways that are easy to remember and regurgitate.
The hardest part is catching our patterns in the act, not learning what our patterns are. There comes a point where we’ve learned enough heady knowledge about our types that it’s now time to TAKE CONCRETE STEPS.
80% ready is READY ENOUGH. Take what you already know, and RUN WITH IT! Time is of the essence, and we need to know that sometimes we DO know enough to do DIFFERENTLY starting TODAY.
Let us not drag our feet any longer on taking the important steps towards freedom!
Find out what those steps are by signing up for your Enneagram type-specific retreat.
(If your type’s retreat isn’t available yet, contact them and add yourself to the waitlist!)
Reason #3: See Yourself Reflected in Others
I joke with my Enneagram Four clients about what might happen if you have a room FULL of Fours.
Lament all they want about how they’re the MOST different, unique, exceptional, and fatally flawed person on the planet…but they can’t ALL be right!
I used to tell this to clients as a hypothetical…until I actually attended the Type 4 Retreat myself and saw for myself how WILD and WEIRD it was to see MY patterns showing up in OTHER PEOPLE in REAL TIME. (It’s not just me!)
As with the Boggart in Harry Potter who morphs into what we fear most and disappears when we see how riddikulus! it is, so does our own ego loosen its hold when we see those same patterns in someone else like in a mirror.
Not only are we able to better OBSERVE our own patterns in action (might even be triggered by this), but we are also able to cultivate better COMPASSION for ourselves in ways we can for others (especially important for people who are so self-critical, self-judgmental, or self-loathing) as we see just how much that mirroring person is SUFFERING because of their/our type.
You def can’t get that insight by reading a book! Better to experientially SEE you for yourself in real time!
Reason #4: Focus on Your Type’s Passion
All of the nine Enneagram types have a deadly sin (add two more to the Seven Deadly Sins and you have nine!):
Type 1 - Anger
Type 2 - Pride
Type 3 - Self-deceit
Type 4 - Envy
Type 5 - Avarice
Type 6 - Fear
Type 7 - Gluttony
Type 8 - Lust
Type 9 - Sloth
These PASSIONS (lit., “suffering”) are each type’s ego-driven emotional state that totally takes over someone’s life. They are a reaction to us losing contact with who we truly are (our “ESSENCE”), and are ways that our EGO tries to cope with that loss.
The word personality means MASK. Each of us HAS a mask, but we AREN’T our mask.
But what happens when we FUSE with our mask to the point of forgetting who we really are? We live our lives THINKING we know ourselves, when in fact we have no freakin clue.
EVERYTHING we do in life is driven by the passion, whether we know it or not. The issue is we usually are UNAWARE of how pervasive it is.
But what happens if we were to discover:
Everyone wears masks
We each wear a specific mask
Our specific mask looks like XYZ
Here is how the mask stays on
Here are ways to take it off
Once we have a more concrete sense of what each of our personalities look like (like knowing where the edge of the mask is), then we have a better shot at taking the mask off to reveal our true selves.
These type-specific retreats will help you know what YOUR mask looks like so that you can have that chance to know your true face.
When someone has done a lot of inner work to peel off that ego mask and reveal their essence selves, their emotional habit is the exact OPPOSITE of what it was in their ego state:
Type 1 - Anger > Serenity
Type 2 - Pride > Humility
Type 3 - Self-deceit > Veracity
Type 4 - Envy > Equanimity
Type 5 - Avarice > Non-attachment
Type 6 - Fear > Courage
Type 7 - Gluttony > Sobriety
Type 8 - Lust > Innocence
Type 9 - Sloth > Right Action
As an example, the more personal work I do as Enneagram Four (whose reputation is to constantly compare ourselves and always be in emotional chaos), where do I go?
Towards seeing myself as being EQUAL to + SIMILAR with others, and having emotional STEADINESS.
Pretty wild, huh??
Reason #5: Focus on Your Type’s Fixation
In the same way each Enneagram type has an emotional habit (PASSION), each type also has a specific mental habit (FIXATION).
Type 1 - Resentment
Type 2 - Flattery
Type 3 - Vanity
Type 4 - Melancholy
Type 5 - Stinginess
Type 6 - Cowardice
Type 7 - Planning
Type 8 - Vengeance
Type 9 - Indolence
Each type lives in a deluded/warped version of reality as we “fell from grace” and lost touch with true reality (the Holy Idea)
Type 1 - Resentment > Perfection
Type 2 - Flattery > Will
Type 3 - Vanity > Harmony
Type 4 - Melancholy > Origin
Type 5 - Stinginess > Omniscience
Type 6 - Cowardice > Strength
Type 7 - Planning > Wisdom
Type 8 - Vengeance > Truth
Type 9 - Indolence > Love
Yes, this is very jargony, but part of that is likely because of:
translation issues
this likely being beyond our current emotional & intellectual paygrade to fathom
The main thing for you to know now is that even BEFORE the passion drives the train forward, it’s our FIXATION that sets that train on the train track.
Where we look affects where we go, and what we focus on limits our reality. (Imagine the sky that you see is but a painted ceiling. What if there’s SO MUCH MORE out there?)
No matter how much work we do to peel off that personality/ego mask, if we don’t shift our attention AWAY from the mask, it’s only a matter of time until it goes back on.
We need something else to focus our attention on so the mask STAYS OFF. That is what the Holy Ideas are about.
It’s easy to get lost in all the abstract, metaphysical language, but that’s all the more reason to really hone in on what this means for YOUR specific type.
All of this knowledge is pointless unless you know what it concretely means for YOU where you are right now.
Summary
In this blog, I listed five reasons why I HIGHLY recommend that you try a Type-specific Inner Work Retreat:
Less = More
Get Straight to the Point of TAKING ACTION
See Yourself Reflected in Others
Focus on Your Type’s Passion
Focus on Your Type’s Fixation
Ready to go deeper in your personal work?
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Enneagram & Personal Styling
How we dress or present ourselves is one way our inner world shows up on the outside (for better or worse!). Check out how personal styling with the Enneagram in mind can help you discover your authentic style and build confidence in how you show up in the world!
Skittish about Being SEEN or the Center of Attention
I don't know about you, but I grew up with intense self-consciousness and was always squeamish around being seen or noticed, my wardrobe involved all kinds of loose, baggy clothes that were comfortable and functional AF but were really meant to HIDE how I looked.
(SHAME was probably my closest friend growing up.)
With the exception of an RBF (Resting Bitch Face) that has no rival, I spent most of my early life trying to be seen for what I DID (competency, knowledge) instead of how I LOOKED (image, appearance).
Enneagram Type: OVERDOING Some Parts, UNDERDOING Others
Since I discovered that I was an Enneagram 4 with a dominant Self-preservation instinct and repressed Sexual instinct, I realized that I was living out an extreme posture of hunkering down in whatever gave me the sense of security while also cutting off my source of vitality and flow.
(BTW - despite what it's called, the Sexual (SX) instinct isn't only about sex, but rather it's where our creativity, vivaciousness, and expansive energy comes from. In contrast, the Self-Preservation (SP) instinct is usually more guarded, calculated, and steady. Read this if you wanna learn more about the three Enneagram instincts and why they matter for our growth!)
Long story short, what I thought would be in my best interest (to live life in a guarded way) was actually the very thing that was CAUSING problems in my life and relationships.
(Have you ever felt OUT OF CONTROL in a certain area of your life, try to EXERT CONTROL to feel steady, only to find out that you're MORE out of control? That's generally how anxiety is.)
Little did I know that *because* I cut off the source of my power and energy (SX), I was living life more anxious, numb, and reactive than I really needed to at this point in my life.
Enneagram Growth: Returning to Balance
In order for me to become more steady, grounded, and whole, I needed to GROW BEYOND the trap of my Enneagram type by doing the OPPOSITE of what my type is designed to do. One way to do that is to dial back our dominant instinct (SP for me) and nurture our repressed instinct (SX for me).
Instead of continuing to wear things that kept me hidden or blended me into the background, I needed to practice actually DRAWING attention, fostering aspects of myself I used to dismiss as impractical or frivolous.
...through a Wardrobe Revamp & Makeover!
In meeting my bestie Melinda Olsen (Enneagram 2SX), whose type and instinct sequence is the OPPOSITE of me, I've healed a lot of deep wounds and had major breakthroughs.
One specific way she helped me was to help me discover my STYLE (how I show up on the OUTSIDE to match how I am on the INSIDE) through clothes, colors, and body posture.
Here's one example of how my vibe totally changed from before. (Yes, that's a genuine smile, and I feel comfortable + confident as hell!)
Never would I have thought that CLOTHES, HAIR, and MAKE UP would be such an meaningful part of my growth + healing journey...and yet, here we are.
Since my makeover, I've been encouraging my SP-dominant and/or SX-repressed coaching + therapy clients to consider using their wardrobe as a concrete way for them to live out their true selves beyond their Enneagram type.
So here's the cool announcement! *dun dun dun!*
Melinda is offering personal styling using the Enneagram!
If you're someone who:
Needs to up your wardrobe game but are feeling ANXIOUS, CONFUSED, OVERWHELMED, or EMBARRASSED,
Want to tap into and nurture your Sexual instinct so you can experience your wild, creative, vivacious side
Grew up in a repressed or shaming environment (especially as someone who's LGBTQ+ or POC)
...then Melinda's your gal!
Check out how Melinda can help you come into your authentically badass self!!
What's Your Relationship With Rest?
Did you know that some people can have negative reactions about REST, relaxation, stillness, vacation, play? In this blog, I share about going from being someone who rarely takes breaks to now having regular vacations multiple times a year.
In another blog, I shared about how my feelings about my birthday changed over time.
In a similar way, so have my sentiments towards all things related to REST -relaxation, stillness, vacation, play.
One of the reasons was because I have an allergic reaction to JOY. (Mine is very Enneagram 4ish, but other types have their own versions. I also hear a ton from Enneagram 1s or those who have a dominant Self-preservation instinct as to why joy is difficult for them.)
When good, fun things come up, I would feel FEAR instead, accompanied by lotsa anxious thoughts:
"What if something bad happens while I'm having a good time?"
"What if I have such a great time and then it ends? Will I be okay?"
"What if it'll turn out disappointing?"
...or SHAME:
"I haven't done enough to deserve a vacation."
"There's so much to do, and not enough time or money."
"I feel bad for leaving the people I'm taking care of."
As such, rest (and even play!) are LEARNED SKILLS, not something that comes readily to me.
So how did I go from rarely resting to now having regular vacations multiple times a year?
Nowadays, there are 6 weeks off that are just built into my calendar:
my birthday week
my anniversary week
holidays
a buncha mini vacays sprinkled in between...just because.
(The less often you take time off, the more you're FORCED to take time off because you get sick, burned out, can't focus, etc. It also takes longer time for you to decompress and get into rest mode - some might even spend half their vacation time just catching up on sleep.
The more often you take a break, the more readily you can drop into rejuvenation mode. Taking many shorter breaks throughout the year is better than taking a single extended time off!)
(From my time in Taiwan! So rejuvenating being in luscious nature... 🌿)
Here are some things that helped me practice regular rest & play on purpose:
(1) Realizing that I have Ruinous Empathy
When I overextend myself in caring for others out of guilt or shame but to the point of burnout or resentment.
Those who should pay close attention to Ruinous Empathy include:
Enneagram 9
Enneagram 1
Enneagram 2
Enneagram 4 (Self-preservation)
Enneagram 7 (Social)
Enneagram 8 (social)
(2) Inverted Golden Rule
I ought to do unto myself as I would do unto others (if I encourage others to take breaks, so should I).
I should not make myself the exception to the rule as my Enneagram 4 autopilot wants me to.
Those who are Enneagram 2s should watch out for their pride playing out by living as if you don't/shouldn't have needs.
(3) Practicing childlikeness to counter shame
If a helpless baby - who's super unproductive and contributes nothing to the world but literal poop - is deserving of goodness, fun, and joy, why wouldn't I?
Those who tend to be "extra serious/grown up" or tries to prove their worth by DOING include:
Competency types - Enneagram 1, 3, 5
Reactive (negative) types - Enneagram 4, 6, 8
Types who have a hard time letting go of control - Enneagram 1, 6, 8
"Adult", responsible types - Enneagram 1, 2, 6
Idealist types who live in the SHOULDs/COULD HAVEs - Enneagram 1, 4
(4) Following nature's footsteps
If seasons of inactivity and seasons of activity go hand-in-hand (one not lesser or greater than the other), what would it look like in my life to integrate both?
What if there's MORE to life than just what my Enneagram type tells me? What biases am I reinforcing? What's in my blind spot?
It took me quite some time to get to where I am now regarding rest, so if a 6-weeks-off-per-year approach seems out of reach for you because of responsibilities or resources - no problem.
The important thing is that you begin moving more in that direction little by little STARTING TODAY.
Some questions for you:
What's your relationship with taking time off? Do you have any emotional reactions to the topic of rest?
How does your Enneagram type feed into this? What themes might be playing into this?
How can you take one small step towards building in more rejuvenation time into your calendar?
How Different Enneagram Type Really Feels About Their Birthdays
Not all Enneagram types have an easy time celebrating their birthdays! Here are some reasons why some of us might have a hard time, as well as some tips on how to take good care of you!
Feelings about your own birthday because of your Enneagram Type
One of the most common things I see in my work with my Enneagram therapy + coaching clients is a complicated relationship with their own birthdays. (I'm looking at you, Enneagram 1s, 2s, 4s, and 9s!)
This might be because of a host of reasons:
Lack of practice in celebrating + having fun — "There's so much to do. Who has time for vacation?!"
Lack of practice in celebrating oneself, feelings of shame + unworthiness
Self-consciousness — not wanting to be the center of attention (or to be noticed, period!)
Resentment - "I did this for YOUR birthday; why didn't you do it for me?" “I thought about all the things you wanted to do for your birthday. Why didn’t you ask me what I wanted?”
Unspoken desires + expectations
Focus on OTHER people's wants + needs
This isn't from nowhere. A lot of it might stem from our Enneagram autopilot ways of living life, including putting others' needs before our own or feeling like we need to EARN love and goodness.
Years ago, I would have never imagined announcing my birthday so openly to 3,000+ people, let alone the 5 closest friends to me.
Because I felt SO UNCOMFORTABLE drawing attention (even positive ones), I used to get squeamish about my birthday, burying my head in the sand and hoping it would just blow over without anyone noticing as if it's a terrible event.
This tapped into the same part of me that would avoid, deflect, or minimize any compliments or appreciations I got.
It always baffled me how some people would not only enjoy their birthday but would want everyone to know it. How can they handle such intensity of positive attention??
In the past several years, I learned that my own Enneagram type (Self-Preservation 4) was interfering with my ability to be celebrated.
Here is what happens for Enneagram 4s:
Enneagram 4s have such a deep shame message that says, "I am bad/broken."
Anytime someone tells Fours something similar to the above message, we absorb it and won't let it go. Anytime someone says something different than the above message, we deflect it. (Self-referencing)
Here is what happens for those with a dominant Self-preservation instinct (regardless of Enneagram type):
We crave predictability, control, and planning. Anything we haven't planned/prepared for (e.g., other people's emotions/sentiments or surprises) freaks us out.
By knowing my Enneagram type, I've done a lot of deep healing to recognize that:
I, too, have goodness in me - just like everyone else.
Others don't automatically have alterior motives - some are actually excited to celebrate me.
It's okay to allow myself to be seen, loved, and held.
This does NOT mean that those who aren't an Enneagram 4SP can't ever get squeamish about getting positive attention. This just happens to be the 4SP reasons we get stuck.
Other types might also deflect for different reasons:
Enneagram 2s might crave positive attention and feel rejected when they don't get it. But when they DO get positive attention, they feel embarrassed and awkward.
Enneagram 5s might prefer to keep it low-key (maybe to even sleep in) rather than having to interact with other peopel
Nines generally feel uncomfortable being the center of attention (though they feel hurt when they're ignored or not included)
Self-preservation 1s might be so obsessed in noticing their imperfections that they have a hard time acknowledging that they, too, are good.
Social 7s might want to focus on making things fun for everyone else and put their own wants last.
Here’s a chart that might give you a sense of the internal sentiments per Enneagram type!
Years ago, I would have never imagined announcing my birthday so openly to 3,000+ people, let alone the 5 closest friends to me.
Because I felt SO UNCOMFORTABLE drawing attention (even positive ones), I used to get squeamish about my birthday, burying my head in the sand and hoping it would just blow over without anyone noticing as if it's a terrible event.
This tapped into the same part of me that would avoid, deflect, or minimize any compliments or appreciations I got.
It always baffled me how some people would not only enjoy their birthday but would want everyone to know it. How can they handle such intensity of positive attention??
In the past several years, I learned that my own Enneagram type (Self-Preservation 4) was interfering with my ability to be celebrated.
Here is what happens for Enneagram 4s:
Enneagram 4s have such a deep shame message that says, "I am bad/broken."
Anytime someone tells Fours something similar to the above message, we absorb it and won't let it go. Anytime someone says something different than the above message, we deflect it. (Self-referencing)
Here is what happens for those with a dominant Self-preservation instinct (regardless of Enneagram type):
We crave predictability, control, and planning. Anything we haven't planned/prepared for (e.g., other people's emotions/sentiments or surprises) freaks us out.
By knowing my Enneagram type, I've done a lot of deep healing to recognize that:
I, too, have goodness in me - just like everyone else.
Others don't automatically have alterior motives - some are actually excited to celebrate me.
It's okay to allow myself to be seen, loved, and held.
This does NOT mean that those who aren't an Enneagram 4SP can't ever get squeamish about getting positive attention. This just happens to be the 4SP reasons we get stuck.
Other types might also deflect for different reasons:
Enneagram 2s might crave positive attention and feel rejected when they don't get it. But when they DO get positive attention, they feel embarrassed and awkward.
Enneagram 5s might prefer to keep it low-key (maybe to even sleep in) rather than having to interact with other peopel
Nines generally feel uncomfortable being the center of attention (though they feel hurt when they're ignored or not included)
Self-preservation 1s might be so obsessed in noticing their imperfections that they have a hard time acknowledging that they, too, are good.
Social 7s might want to focus on making things fun for everyone else and put their own wants last.
Here’s a chart that might give you a sense of the internal sentiments per Enneagram type!
(I’d love to hear your experiences of birthdays based on your Enneagram type & subtype if it’s different than what’s above — shoot me an email!)
What does knowing our Enneagram types do?
It helps us see how our autopilot ways of thinking, feeling, and doing actually gets us STUCK in painful situations. Each of the nine Enneagram types show us how we create our own suffering (on top of the challenges that come with life).
I really wish I knew the Enneagram earlier in life - it totally would have helped me heal and move on from the same old narratives.
This is why I'm so driven to spread the word about it - NOT so that I tell you how to put yourself in a box, but precisely to show you how you've been stuck in a box already and help you get out of it.
Your Enneagram type is NOT who you are - it's what you've BELIEVED you are. There's so much more to you beyond that.
Some questions for you…
What has your the idea of birthdays been in general? (Some might have made it onto your Life Timeline!)
What’s been your experience of YOUR birthdays?
What made the BEST birthdays the best?
What made the WORST birthdays the worst?
How does your Enneagram type show up in what made up your best or worst birthdays?
What has your experiences with OTHER people’s birthdays been?
What feelings come up when you think about other people’s birthdays? (Excitement, envy, sadness, loneliness, jealousy, resentment, etc.)
How does your dominant instinct (Self-Preservation, Social, Sexual) show up?
What is one thing you can intentionally do differently to celebrate yourself (if you tend to shy away from your birthday)?
What is something you’ve always wanted to do but never gave yourself permission to pursue? This blog about the Fuck-it List might help.
How can you ask someone else to help you do that?
How can you celebrate others for what THEY want/need (instead of going according to YOUR IDEA of what they want/need?
(If you’d like to add your experience according to your Enneagram type, shoot me an email and I could add it here as part of a communal convo!)
The Central Themes for Each Enneagram Type
Each of the nine Enneagram types point out the universal human motivations and themes that make the “colored” lens through which we see life. Which one is yours?
It's a regular practice for me to reflect on my handy 5-Year Journal, where each page is designated for each day of the year.
I've gotten in the habit of jotting down what happens each day neutrally - the good, the not so good, the typical event, the extraordinary situation - so that I tame my Enneagram 4 habit of only looking at negative data (to then wonder why things don't ever work out for me).
Main thing I noticed?
How the emotional tone of my daily logs have shifted over time because I changed the colored lens through which I see life.
The accounts became more well-rounded, which then set me up to experience each new day in a much more balanced and grounded way.
If you notice what you notice, what comes up?
These are some go-to themes for each of the nine Enneagram types that "colors" the lens through which we see the world:
Enneagram 1 - integrity, truth, perfection, improvement, good or bad
Enneagram 2 - relationships, being liked/loved or rejected
Enneagram 3 - image, succeeding (and looking good while doing it)
Enneagram 4 - authenticity, creativity, being seen as different/unique
Enneagram 5 - scarcity, limited resources, energy levels, being encroached on by others
Enneagram 6 - safety, security, trust, authority
Enneagram 7 - novelty, freedom, fun, limitlessness
Enneagram 8 - challenge, impact, change, power/strength
Enneagram 9 - harmony, peace, ease
...and each of the 3 instincts:
Self-preservation - order, predictability, planning/prepping
Social - status, image, influence, role, position in a group, inclusion/exclusion
Sexual - being special, intimacy, competition/rivalry, being the "est" person (best, prettiest, closest) or "THE one"
What "lens" or theme you tend to see your life through!
The Nine Types of the Enneagram
Melissa Smith from the podcast “High Vibe Mindset” invited me to talk about emotional growth and the Enneagram types. Here is the transcript of our illuminating conversation spanning all nine types and how they can grow beyond their behavioral patterns.
Melissa Smith from the podcast “High Vibe Mindset” invited me to talk about emotional growth with the Enneagram types. Scroll down for a transcript.
Transcript
Melissa Smith: I've got a special Enneagram episode today. We are going to Bust some myths and talk about how Enneagram is helpful and the ways we might use it that's not helpful. You're gonna learn what the Enneagram is and how it can be used in your life as a tool for empowerment and for self reflection and growth and the Enneagram is one that I think is starting to become a little bit more popular.
But maybe you're more familiar with Myers Briggs or the DISC personality, used a lot in different workplaces, but the Enneagram is another tool. And I'm super excited for the expert guests I have on today because I love the way that she uses the Enneagram. She's a therapist and she integrates this tool into her therapy work.
Joanne is a therapist-turned Feelings Translator who helps Highly Sensitive Persons turn their biggest feelings into their greatest superpower.
The people who work with her are often the first or the only person in their family or communities that intuitively process and express feelings. And consequently, they're often judged or criticized. So they end up learning how to please, placate, or perform until they hit a wall. They're super familiar with anxiety, guilt, and shame, partly because of an allergic reaction to anger — their own or others’.
Often these super responsible, empathetic persons will reach out to Joanne after they've already burned out they're in those resentful lopsided relationships or they've been sucked into their shame spiral.
When Joanne shares her approach about how to work with feelings, the number one response she tends to get is,
“Why didn't they teach me this in school??”
She has a really awesome free guide, it's called the Big Feeler First Aid Kit.
It helps you learn how to navigate your feelings when they show up when you least expect them or want them. And you can go ahead and grab that free guide at www.intelligentemotions.com/firstaidkit.
All right, let's dive into the episode, Joanne. I'm so excited for this conversation and to kick it off. I would love for you to share a little bit of background on the Enneagram.
What is the Enneagram and how it's been used historically?
Joanne Kim: The Enneagram is a a personality framework that compared to other things like Myers Briggs, StrengthsFinders, things that often track WHAT people do as their patterns. The Enneagram tracks WHY we do what we do.
So it's more about motivations. unconscious needs, fears, longings that often like drive us from behind the scenes. And so we don't know that it's happening. Often the people around us have a clearer idea.
Melissa Smith: That makes sense. Okay. So a lot of the fears and the needs. So, I would love to talk about how that shows up for the different Enneagram types, but what are the types or what could you if you sat down and you're trying to figure out what your Enneagram type is? What does that kind of look like?
Joanne Kim: Well, I would like to say that it's a simple framework. It does become very powerful once we locate our type, though in a lot of ways there are some exceptions to the rule.
A lot of what we've heard about the Enneagram, especially like social media and recent books, only cover about the nine types. “Ennea” means nine, “gram” means points, so it's like nine points. And generally, these are nine themes that we all resonate with, we just get STUCK in one. It's just that there are some variations within the type that maybe go the opposite direction.
Sometimes it's helpful to use 27 subtypes, instead of nine. But in looking at the different types in order to find out what your main type is, we look at some of your historical triggers. Like when you look back on the times you felt the most excited or you felt the most heartbroken, what are the common denominator themes?
For some people might be feeling FOMO or feeling like they have all these big aspirations, but there's something inherently wrong or flawed about them or constantly feeling frustrated because they're trying to improve things, but just things don't quite turn out the way that they want to. And so on so forth.
So we look for the themes, and that is one of the reasons why the Enneagram is harder to type for. It takes more time than taking a quick online test, but the end result is that much more rewarding because we locked down what remained invisible up till then.
Melissa Smith: That's a helpful way to see it because I think I noticed a lot of that feeling like I resonate but like you said, but really getting down to those core themes… what's a core fear that's coming up? What's that loop in my head when I'm in a situation before we dive into maybe each of those types and the subtypes, I would love to hear what you observed as a helpful versus not helpful way of using the Enneagram. So that people can understand, you know, we're going to talk a little bit more about what it is and what the types are. To help listeners to maybe figure out their type on this episode, maybe not. It a little more work than that.
What's the purpose of using the Enneagram and what's a good, helpful way to use it?
Joanne Kim: Yeah, I would say any tool or framework that taps into people's vulnerabilities has a very deep transformational potential for our inner work. But it also is a double edged sword because in the hands of people who misuse it or their own egos take over, a lot of people can wield that power poorly or kind of against other people.
So, the discovering our own Enneagram type is inherently a very personal journey. We ought to give ourselves permission and time to really sit with the different themes and to see which one actually resonates with us, especially because some of the types happen to be more shapeshifters. It kind of depends on who we happen to be around.
But after we find out our type, Whenever we reveal our type to other people, other people ought to know that that is a very vulnerable step. We're not sharing our types with others so that others… I mean, it's like we're kind of giving other people access to kind of our biggest fears. Right? And so I would say there are some people who like announce their type on the internet.
Like, I'm such and such type, and therefore like, this is just who I am. Actually, our type is not who we are, it's what we believe we are. So it's what we've pigeonholed ourselves into. So our type is our starting point in our growth journey. Our goal is to grow beyond the type. So when we hear about another person's type, it's like we're only getting a snapshot of where they are and historically what their patterns have been. It doesn't say anything about who they can become.
Melissa Smith: Yeah, that's super important.
Joanne Kim: So, actually, the more a person's done their personal work, the harder it is to tell what their type is. Because our types are basically concentrated doses of our psychological defense mechanisms. So people who ironically tend to feel very proud of their type might actually be announcing that they're stuck in their defense mechanism.
It is a very useful framework because it gives us a lot more complexity and dimension. But again, that's part of the reason why it's harder to type for in the beginning and often a lot of the reasons why some people might just dismiss it outright. It's like, well, how accurate is it really?
We're finding more and more. It's been a framework that's been around for thousands of years. Though it's been mostly passed down through oral tradition because, you know, spiritual teachers who are teaching their pupils wisely instructed their pupils to not write this down, because in the hands of the wrong people, it can cause a lot of damage.
But Berkeley students did as Berkeley students do in that they went against their teachers, they wrote it down on paper in the 1970s. What we've known about the Enneagram since then is that version.
And so we're still uncovering more and more about the Enneagram finding out that there are bits and pieces that actually have been reflective in a lot of ancient traditions. Like the Seven Deadly Sins that's been around for hundreds of years. You just add on two more, it becomes Nine Deadly Sins. And so it is a very rich framework and it seems like it's also kind of ever evolving. And so one of the reasons why I really appreciate it instead of like a rigid fixed thing.
Benefits of the Enneagram
Melissa Smith: Yeah, there's so many layers to it. Cause I saw it online. I would see a lot of posts like this is this type strength or weakness. And then again, you know, okay, now we're all talking about the fears and the needs, the deadly sins. Give you the awareness and like you said, sit with it. A lot of layers and information to that.
We kind of spoke on a little bit of, how the Enneagram can be a tool for self growth and self awareness. It obviously has various archetypal type of themes that I need to dive into. But for you personally, what have you seen as some of those major themes and like the benefits that we can discover when we're using the Enneagram as a tool?
Joanne Kim: Well, so my Enneagram type is Type Four. Sometimes it's known as the individualist, sometimes it's known as the Romantic. Sometimes the terminology is very limited because it talks about what people do versus why. I'm also a therapist by training and it just so happens that therapy itself is like the Type Four's playground because Four's are often like the navelgazers who want to go internal and do all this introspection about who they are and what matters to them, what reflects them as an individual and all that stuff.
And therapy is actually built exactly for that purpose. It's just that a lot of Fours seek therapy thinking that they'll be able to heal or whatever, only to find that they're recycling the same thing. So I think in a lot of cases, Fours actually need more coaching than they do therapy.
But for myself, because I was already very internal, I had mistakenly assumed that I have a monopoly on what authenticity is, like,
“No one understands me”,
“Everyone's going to misunderstand me”.
“What's the point of explaining to them and all that kind of stuff”.
It wasn't until I really got into the Enneagram and I found out that this was actually a type structure. I was like, crap, I'm basically doing this to myself. I'm actually creating my own suffering but I'm not the only person who deals with this. There's like a whole subpopulation of people who all kind of operate the same way. And if they conclude that their life is tragic, but everyone around them are like, why are you so upset? Then maybe it's the person creating their own narrative of suffering for themselves.
And I think that kind of like blew open a whole process where I was just reevaluating my own experiences. And it's not to say that I haven't gone through hard things, but I definitely made it emotionally more difficult. Yeah, because my type framework identifies with being a sufferer. It's as if I have to be suffering at all times in order for me to matter, which to those who are not Fours might sound like, what how does that even work?
But if someone, if a Four is listening to this and like, wait yeah that's that's how things are, right? No, it's not. So that's been super helpful. It's definitely super charged my own healing and growth process.
Melissa Smith: Yeah, I believe I'm a Four as well, but it's really funny because at first I thought I was a Seven. But I was only a Seven for like a short period of time. I had all the depressive, self-shame, self-whatever stuff my whole life. It's funny too, because now I've been in this process of like, who am I and how do I be more like authentic?
It is my word of the year. I have the know that. It's that journey of like, am I like a seven or am I like a three? Because I am ambitious, but I also have FOMO. But when you realize, okay, but what's really happening in these interactions and what I'm striving for at the end of the day,
When I first came across the Enneagram, something told me like, oh, you could be like a Four, you were very Four when you were in elementary, middle school and high school, but maybe you're not. I saw the terrible side of it for some reason, maybe I just read into the negativity online about fours, and I'm like, oh, I don't want to be a Four. No, that's terrible. And kind of convinced myself, like, there's no way I'm a Four, you know, that ordeal. And really, I think those are the ways, too, that people can really use the Enneagram in a way that's not going to benefit them, right? Like, kind of just zero in on, oh, these traits are positive. I want the positive traits, and I think, want to be like that type.
Joanne Kim: Well, I think in a lot of ways, that's the byproduct of very simplistic teaching on the Enneagram. Right. Like the 1970s, it feels like a long time ago, but, you know, historically speaking, it's really not that long ago. And so if what we have heard about it is the more rudimentary version of it. It's like that there are nine types, what each of the types tend to look like or how they operate what happens in like their, I mean, some people call it the path to growth and the path of stress.
Right. It's very super simplistic. Since then, cause I've been trained under Beatrice Chestnut, who is also a therapist by training. She's been really taking the torch to integrate the Enneagram and psychology together and introducing also the subtypes. It's it's actually much more complicated than that.
In order for someone to have like a teaching platform, they really have to know the fuller picture of what the Enneagram, like how that framework works. Instead of taking this part of it and then disseminating that information because people will draw all kinds of conclusions. There's a ton of people who reach out to me.
Some people who know their Enneagram type and they're like, well, I'm such and such a type. And you know, this page says that when I'm super healthy, I become this type. And when I'm super unhealthy, I become this type. And then I just tell them, that's only half a picture. Right. And so there's a lot of shame, extra shame that people either put on themselves or they dump on other people based on these very elementary frameworks. That's partially why we really got to put the brakes on in really taking our time to learn about the Enneagram more comprehensively. I mean, I think that in a lot of ways.
It's becoming more popular these days. It's kind of like the next BuzzFeed quiz. It's like, what kind of cupcake are you? It's along those lines, an easy cocktail party topic. But this is probably not one of the topics that lend itself well, especially because it's dealing with people's core needs.
Melissa Smith: When you dive in and you really see it, it's like you said, it's so transformational, it will put you through that dark night of the soul, right? It's going to be like, whoa, crazy. You really get a better understanding of yourself, but it also can help you be more empathetic to other people. I think it's awesome in that way, but it is funny because those are the type of things I think that are more seen or popularized are those Enneagram posts that are a photo of someone. And I wear this type of outfit and I drink this type of drink because I'm a Seven, you know, I'm the rebel, whatever.
Okay. So let's dive into then and share with listeners a little bit about those nine types and just your observations on those different nine types.
Enneagram One - The Improver
Joanne Kim: I think it might be easiest to go through the nine themes instead of going in like deep dive. I do have a blog post that I'll share the link to if someone wants to do, like find out what their type is in a DIY format.
But the nine themes in order of type are, you know, starting with type One is about improving. So Ones I like to think of them as the idealist who has like such lofty standards and then they get frustrated because the reality of where they are now, there's such a huge gap between that and what they think things should be. And so improver that mode shows up in ways that they either improve themselves, they improve other people, they improve the situation, or they make themselves the role model that other people ought to follow.
So often the emotional energy that goes with that is anger, but not like the outward expressive kind. It's more like the seething quiet behind scenes, like stewing resentment version. And so oftentimes Ones have a very like, like stoic or stern face, with kind of some wrinkle on their brow because their attention is towards how can this be better? They often have noble intentions because they really want what's better for themselves or the other person. But, when that goes overboard, they end up accidentally becoming very critical.
And so everyone can have an inner critic, but for once the inner critic's going on 25-7. It's non stop, it's relentless, it's like the person is living as if they're always in a courtroom. Or there's always a judge. There's always a defendant. There's always a plaintiff. So, Ones can in a way always be stuck in like work mode because there's always something to do, always something to improve, something to fix. And they have a really hard time going with the flow and being at ease and resting they often get resentful at other people who take time off and things like that when it's actually a signal for them to really be taking time off themselves.
Melissa Smith: Yeah. Mm hmm. Would perfectionism be something that is an energy that shows up for them or something different?
Joanne Kim: Yeah. And so that kind of depends on like the subtypes. So there are three different kinds of ones. And so the person who improves themselves, that will be the true perfectionist. The person who becomes the role model, they often take like a teacher type of vibe.
And then, the person who tries to improve others, they're like the reformer or the zealot. They're very fiery. So, each we kind of need to learn how to round out within our type. And then also among the other types too. Because our type and our subtype is actually where we get stuck. We live as if that's the only way to live and gotta need to soften that up a lot.
Enneagram Two - The Befriender
The type Twos, I like calling them the befrienders. Sometimes they're called the givers and the helpers, but again, that's focusing on the behavior, not the motivation. I like calling them befrienders and it's a term I borrow from my teacher because the reason why Twos often are in helping roles is so that they can get something in return. Their main focus, their theme is around connection relationships being liked, being loved, it’s very other people focused.
So I would say like 95 percent of their attention probably is about other people. Rarely do they actually think about themselves, except, think about themselves in relation to someone else. Often, these are the folks who will gravitate towards helping professions, only to find out that because they haven't been thinking about their own wants and needs, eventually their body catches up with them and they get super resentful.
Similar to Ones but it's different in that it's a resentment about there being such an imbalance. in relationships. Other people are receiving their help, but that other person isn't particularly thinking about, you know, reciprocating and things like that. So a lot of imbalanced relationships. There's kind of this pride or arrogance in the two that, considers, I know the other person's needs better than they know their needs.
I have to make myself indispensable. It's kind of like a manipulative way of ensuring that there's some connection. Because the core fear is if I don't have connection I won't survive. If I'm not liked if I'm not loved then I'm gonna be devastated. Again, even those who aren't Twos might resonate with that in some ways But for Twos, that's like the central. So yeah, I would say that Twos, because they're so focused on other people and less so on themselves. Two's are probably one of the types that are the most misunderstood in the Enneagram community. Because it's really hard for everyone else to learn about someone who doesn't quite know themselves to explain what's going on behind the scenes. It just so happens that my teacher is herself a Two. And so doing her own work, she's finally like revealed what's behind the curtain.
Melissa Smith: And then they would have a subtypes too? Maybe something that's a very much like a caregiver.
Joanne Kim: It surrounds a different ways of seducing or charming others. So, one way of seducing is like being very young and cutesy, like, Oh, you know, I don't know how to take care of this thing. Like, what will I do? And then someone who's like, Oh, I can do it. They get like the more powerful, the strong or older person to come to their rescue. So it's the, the charm or seduction as if they're a child. And then there's the seduction of capturing the attention of an audience. So this is more of the if we think about the younger Two as like the princess. Then this would be like the empress, this very like power oriented, very good at in corporate settings, knowing where the hierarchies are and kind of working the room. And then my, which is the classic seductive types, like the femme fatale, like, seducing a chosen person that can be a best friend.
It can be a romantic partner meeting that person's needs so that that person can meet all their needs. So, if you think about, like, the sirens in the Odyssey, where they're singing and they're luring sailors to come towards the shore and then the boat crashes into the rocks and then that leads to a deadly ending. And that's kind of what that version of Twos look like. But all three of them have something to do with this gift to get dynamic, or this charming, seductive, shapeshifting piece. So sometimes Twos can be harder to type because they shapeshift to be more likable. Kind of depends on their relationship context.
Melissa Smith: Okay. Yeah. So the needs, you know, you mentioned it being about wanting love, wanting affection, obviously, like people pleasing, they're trying to love bomb at first, or let me do all these things for you. Let me wow you let me give you all this love. But hey, I expect to take care of me like the princess archetype or something.
Joanne Kim: Yeah, yeah, yeah. That might not actually be very conscious. For them, they might not, they might think of themselves as being super generous. It's not until like way later, they're like, after all I did for you! And so that's part of the hard thing is that if they aren't aware of that particular piece and knowing that, I mean, even acknowledging that they also have needs, that's a super difficult part for Twos. And so they could have gotten their needs met sooner, had they even acknowledged that they had needs like everyone else and that it's okay to have needs, it feels very humiliating.
Melissa Smith: Is this also kind of like a codependency thing? Like I need a connection. I need the other person I'm going to take care of you, but I need someone to take care of me. Like we need to do this together. I can't do this on my own type of thing.
Joanne Kim: There are several types that can have that pattern, just for different reasons. Two is one of them that is, out of the nine, the most obviously relationship oriented. But someone else can have that set up because they're very unsure of their own abilities. They feel like they don't have the power or the strength to do so this might might be more out of a sense of like imposter syndrome or lack of confidence instead of like, I need to be with another person, you know?
Yeah, like what I just mentioned is what type Sixes can do like a Nine version of doing that, is the person just doesn't want to make their own decisions. And so it's just easier to be around other people. But yes, type Twos tend to be more host or hostess, right?
It's like welcoming people into their home kind of thing. I think that a variation of that is the parasite host dynamic, where it's as if they have to constantly be fused with someone else in order to feel okay. In reality, what Twos don't often realize is they're actually okay being on their own and spending time with themselves, but that's like in more in their blind spot.
So when a Two hears this for the first time, they're like, that sounds terrible, but it's actually technically part of their growth work.
Enneagram Three - The Performer
Joanne Kim: Type Threes main theme for them would be the performer. Sometimes they're known as the achiever, but that focuses on what they do. The main thing to focus on is that they need an audience. It's not just about doing a lot of things. It's about doing a lot of things and looking good while doing it.
Right. And so, in a sense Twos and Threes are also shapeshifters in that they're doing things because of other people. Threes are also one of the types that are very disconnected from themselves, so they don't quite know what their own individual agenda is. They're gauging their environment and sensing, okay, what are the metrics of success here?
What are things that people admire? And let me become that. And so often Threes get a lot of accolade, they get a lot of praise for what they do, not knowing that that's actually part of the ego at work. So I'm in the middle of the Silicon Valley tech world, entrepreneurial, like there's a lot of good stuff happening here. But it's also the place where those who are type Threes hide the most. What they think is great is actually, you know, ego driven psychological defense mechanisms. And so the challenge with Threes is that the very thing that keeps them trapped is the very thing that's celebrated, at least in this part of the world.
And so, especially in the United States I think a lot of Threes would have the hardest time doing their personal word because, why would they go away from the reward system? That celebrates them for like looking good, very image-oriented brand focus, wanting to have what's the best, but the best in other people's eyes. There's a lot of sadness that's very deep under the surface, uh, and that is what Threes need to get in touch with for them to really know who they are as their own person, their own individual self.
Melissa Smith: Okay. Yeah, you mentioned for One, there's a lot of anger, underneath. Three, it's sadness.
Joanne Kim: Well, Three is they're disconnected from sadness. They actually need to be more connected with it. So it's like, there's an inverted relationship in that sadness is one of the emotions that highlight our individuality. Like, it tells us what really matters to us. But when someone's shut that down for the sake of being what other people want them to be, there's that inherent sadness that comes from losing connection with oneself. But that is part of what Threes blocked out.
It's like they're sad about not connecting with what matters to them. And they're also sad that they don't even know who they are. But that is something that Threes who've done some work come to recognize. It's still there, even if they're not aware of it. But usually it's what it's super loud when Threes have worked themselves down to the bone, their body shut down, they get sick, they're bedridden. And then what do they do in bed? All these feelings that have been buried come up. And they're like, I need to not feel like this anymore. I need to hurry up and get better so I can get back to work. Right? So it's that trap that we get stuck in.
The Twos in a sense also have a sadness theme too, in that they've also disconnected from themselves, except they probably are more in touch with sadness, or they might use it as a way of seducing in ways that differently from Threes, in that they just shut it down because it feels like a very inefficient emotion. They have too much work to do, sadness just slows them down.
Enneagram Four - The Romantic
Joanne Kim: So in comparison to those two types, type Four which I like the term the individualist instead of the romantic. Type Four overdoes sadness in that everything that other people underly feel, the Four feels extra strongly in that part of that is to be a distinct individual to be unique, to be special. It's always this sense of being the exception to the rule that really appeals to Fours. And so if you think about like in a family or an organization, someone who tends to be the black sheep.
Melissa Smith: Yep, black sheep!
Joanne Kim: Yep. Black sheep, rebel, whistleblower, the lost child, like all of those terms. Those are very Four-ish roles. That people of other types can also feel too, but type Four, that person has that as their personality. It's like even when they're in an environment where they're, you know, everyone knows that they're a very integral part of the community, the Four feels like they're the oddball out, that they're always on the outside looking in.
So, in that sense, there's like a tension between the heart types: Twos, Threes, and Fours. Twos and Threes disconnect from their authentic selves to connect with other people. Fours go the opposite direction, they choose connection with themselves, but they disconnect from other people. And so in that sense there's extra sadness. Sadness can be itself a security blankie. So Twos and Threes need to do sadness more, Fours need to do sadness less. Partially by recognizing that things aren't as bad as they think it has to be. Or that what they want isn't as elusive and far away as they think it is. It's actually maybe already available to them. It's just, that's what's in Four’s blindspot.
Melissa Smith: Anytime I make a tag, it's like creative rebel and always rebel or black sheep and all those things. But what is some of those core fears? Like, where does that sadness come from? You said being misunderstood. I think that makes sense. Or being the odd ball out. Any other?
Joanne Kim: I think that's like the outer layer. It's what's more visible. Because as a Four, like I've definitely used being misunderstood as a way of justifying the way I live my life, right? And so a level deeper actually ironically is the fear of goodness. Which is not what Fours are known for. It's being so afraid of connecting with our goodness, with goodness of life because it's like if we have connection to goodness then that exposes us to risk of losing it. Let's just skip all that risk and just assume that we don't have it to begin with.
So it makes a lot of sense in that way but it doesn't make sense in that we live as if that's like the all encompassing truth that therefore we don't deserve to have goodness. So we take the good thing and we take it way too far. So all the other types. But in that sense, like what we know about the Fours, melancholy, longing, all that stuff, that's just a surface level pattern that we see deeply buried underneath.
And often when Fours hear this, they sometimes glitch out. They're like, what does that even mean? I'm scared of goodness. I've been wanting goodness this whole time. But when they really do that exploration, well, every time something good's happened, I've sabotaged it. They have a hard time sitting with it and allowing that to actually see them.
Melissa Smith: Makes sense because I would love all this stuff or I want friends or whatever, but I'm not good enough or I'm the oddball. Obviously, we feel like we want those things. But like you said, the fear of goodness. A big lesson for me. I did a family constellation thing with my mom's Brazilian and they have, you know, people act out what's the dynamic what's going on here and my big theme was fear of success.
I'm like, that is so weird. I'm like, well, duh, fear of failure. But like fear of success, you know, and person acted me out. Laughing or looking away, being embarrassed, like not able to look success in the eye. I have some deep-seated beliefs here of, you know, success is just not, not a thing for me, or there's some fear there, like you said.
Joanne Kim: Yeah, yeah, so the central theme. I did call, of course, the individualist, and the exception to the rule, but the central theme is around suffering. And the subtypes of Fours is that there's some people who overly suffer outwardly. It's like, woe is me. Everything's terrible. So everyone else and their mama knows how they're suffering.
And then there's some people, some Fours who make other people suffer. It's like, how dare you make me feel this way? I'm going to go after you. So first is a sad Four. The second is an angry Four. And then there's the Four that doesn't look like a Four which is the subtype I happen to be, where they suffer silently alone.
So nobody around them except like the closest people has any idea just how much this person has taken on. And so this type of four actually can look like a lot of the other types. Just essential piece is it kind of depends on their mood. And so there's a lot of identifying with suffering. It's like, I need to be always suffering for me to feel like I'm okay. Again, to other types are like, why? But to Fours, it's like, that's, that's just life. That's just how it is. And so the idea of taking that off, it feels terrifying.
Enneagram Five - The Observer
Joanne Kim: Fives, I like thinking of them as the observers in that they're like the people who live in a fortress with thick walls high up in the ivory tower and they're looking down at the world from a distance and that they're very much in their heads. They engage the world through their intellect instead of actually engaging life by being in it. And in that sense, the, their strength is in seeing things more neutrally, more objectively, whereas Twos, Threes, and Fours, and like other people, have a hard time having a more balanced view. But the downside is that's at the cost of them having shut down their hearts. So Fives often feel like they're different in that they're kind of awkward, they don't really know how to interact with people.
Part of that is from this fear that if I open up this fortress door, other people are going to come in and they're going to take everything I have. They're going to take all my energy, they're going to take all my resources, and I'm going to be left with nothing. And that is probably the core fear, the fear of being depleted.
It's just that normally, Fives live anticipating depletion, so they like ration out every single part of their day to make sure that at the end of it, they'll still have enough. It's just, though, in actuality, and it's more evident for other people that the Five lives, starts their day with 20 percent battery life instead of 100 percent. And they're like, okay, I need to dedicate 1 percent to this and 2 percent to that and they're like constantly in scarcity mode. So anytime something new or unexpected happens, they're like, oh my gosh, I only have so much left. Like, what am I going to do? And then they panic and they shut down.
Melissa Smith: Do you think that starting with the 20 percent is just genuine, for whatever reason, they have less energy or is it also more like the belief of like, Oh, I, there's no way I have a hundred percent.
Joanne Kim: It's the second. Their fear is around abundance. So they need to recognize that they actually have access to the abundance of life, that they have lots of resources instead of needing to keep their fortress door locked. If they open it up, And integrate with the rest of the world, then even when they use up their rations, well, they can rely on other people to bring in more and replenish. But that is not an assumption that they have. And so often Fives, even when they're like given a million dollars. They're like, I don't know if I'm going to have enough. And this always calculating like, okay, these are the ways where it's not going to be enough. And this over rationalizing. So, their main engine is around fear, though, being disconnected from their hearts. They don't even know that it's fear because they rationalized that it's just them being smart.
Enneagram Six - The Questioner
Joanne Kim: I like the word Questioner, sometimes they're called the Devil's Advocate or the Loyalist and those things also apply too. But, for sixes, there's more active fears, more of this frenetic energy, like, oh, like I need to make sure that my radar is on at all times because I can't be caught off guard.
So they tend to be like Chicken Little, like the sky is falling or the sky can fall at any time. It's like the, what if something bad happens? And so in that sense, they tend to think about every single situation about the worst case scenarios and then prepare for all of that. So, you know, if something goes sideways in actuality, Sixes are your people. You want to make sure you stick close to them because they probably already thought about it. But the downside is they can't relax. Because if they relax and they let down their guard, what if something terrible happens, and then it's kind of that thing recycling again. So it's exhausting. Their bodies pay the toll for that and other people experience Sixes as being overly negative, even though in the Sixes mind, it's like, it's just me being rational and practical.
And again, that there again is that self-justifying dynamic of that's reflective in each type, but the sixes are around safety, security, trust. They often question authority figures, not knowing that it's because they've disowned their own power. If someone knows their own power, even if an authority figure tells them what to do, it doesn't rattle them. It's like, yeah, this is what this job requires. Instead of, this person's like trying to control me. They go too far with that.
Melissa Smith: Making me think too of a lot of someone who might, just mistrust a lot. Conspiracy theorists.
Joanne Kim: Yeah. Like with Fours, there's a lot of variation within the subtypes of Sixes. So some people are like actively questioning it. It's like the fight mode as an expression of fear. Some people though actually align with those conspiracy theories or people with a lot of power and strength. They're like, oh my gosh, if I stick with this person who's very powerful, then I'll be okay. Yeah. So Sixes are also kind of harder to type for. And so if Fives are very neutral and sixes are actively negative…
Enneagram Seven - The Enthusiast
Joanne Kim: Sevens are actively positive, and this is like everyone's favorite person because there's a life of the party. They're super fun because they're constantly looking for what's good, what's positive, what's okay, what could be, what the possibilities are.
And in that they're excellent at brainstorming things, coming up with wild dreams and ideas, but their limitation is that they get bored very easily. So they are good at starting projects, but not very good at following through with them. And on the surface, there's a lot of this high positive energy, but at the core of it, there is a deep fear of being trapped in pain.
So it's kind of the exact opposite of Fours. Fours are trapped, but Fours are scared of connecting with goodness, so they overdo negativity. Sevens are scared of negativity, and so they overdo good. It's just because the nature of how their patterns show up, they get rewarded. Everyone thinks that they're great, but the people who get really pissed off are the family members and the partners and the co-workers, people that they're working alongside. Because these folks need to be extra responsible for the ways that the Seven is not taking responsibility. So the term for Sevens is the enthusiast, seeing things in a more positive way.
Melissa Smith: I thought I was a seven and even one of my best friends of 20 years. Can see me as the Four and the Seven because it's very FOMO life of the party all this I know myself that I don't come from that everything has to be almost like that toxic positivity. I can really bring them down and get philosophical. All the time very easily, but the Seven kind of makes me think of the comedian trope or the person that has to be very outgoing trying to run away from the pain, right?
Joanne Kim: Yeah, yeah, I think because you mentioned that you're Brazilian, right? There's a possibility that it might be a cultural influence too. You know, and so I would say Brazil is a very Seven-ish country. In that even people who are not type Sevens, those who have that culture's influence might look Seven-ish So there's part of that as an option and there's a specific type of Four that actually looks like Sevens.
Melissa Smith: Okay, interesting.
Joanne Kim: So if you're looking into subtypes, every type has three versions according to the instincts, self-preservation, social and sexual. Those are the three instincts we all have, but one of them takes the driver's seat and then one of them is shoved into the trunk. And so your combination of your type Four and whatever your dominant instinct is, it might also be partially why you might show up like a Seven at some point. That's for further exploration later. Like for me, I am the self reservation Four. And so in the sense that I don't look like a four, part of that is because I definitely have big feelings on the inside, but I don't always show it on the outside. I turn on a specific mode when I'm in public. So there's a possibility that if you are type Four, then you might be self preservation Four.
Melissa Smith: Awesome. Well, people will benefit from working with you and learning more and getting into the more of the subtypes and everything.
Enneagram Eight - The Challenger
Joanne Kim: I think of Eights as sledgehammers. Where it's about big impact, maximum output. It's they're super high level, high visionaries in that they want to seek whatever has the most like direct outcome. And they tend to have a lot of impatience for the nitty gritty details. A lot of their theme is around power. Strength being active, but what's not as visible is that it's out of a fear of being vulnerable and at the mercy of other people.
And so they basically overcompensate with strength so that they don't have to get in touch with their weakness. So oftentimes people who think their Eights are very good at like tolerating like negative feedback because they don't really care about what other people think. At least that's what it seems, but on the inside, they extra care about what other people think, but they don't want to allow themselves to go there, so they kind of end up putting up this very extra tough persona.
But you know those people who act all tough, but then when someone slices them, they zero in on that person. Vengeance is one of the key themes of type Eight. So it's like the inability to let things go and to be forgiving and to start afresh. These people tend to be at high levels of a company, lots of CEOs, lots of bosses, and they tend to steamroll over other people. But as companies are designed often they're celebrated for the work because there's maximum impact.
We just don't know what the body count is, because those people probably have been fired, they probably left. And so, there are a lot of people in the Silicon Valley who probably are very Eight-ish. It's just that people who aren't Eight-ish aren't likely to stick around to actually go against them. So it sometimes ends up creating a very toxic environment because the Eight believes that their perception is the absolute capital T truth. Yeah, so it's not until they run into some situation where their body's collapsing from overworking that they then confront their own limitation and mortality. But it is not often a path that the Eight chooses voluntarily.
Enneagram Nine - The Harmonizer
Joanne Kim: And then ending it with Nines. I like the word harmonizer, even though some people use the word mediator or peacemaker, because even though peacemaking and mediating is what Nines often do, it's not necessarily for the sake of improving relationships with people.
It's really so that they feel comfortable. The deadly sin for nines is sloth and that doesn't mean laziness. It means falling asleep to oneself so that they don't have to make decisions and be an individual. So if they turn off their own attention towards themselves, they don't need to make decisions. They don't need to think hard about who they are as an individual. That takes too much work. And so an easy way of avoiding that is actually merging with other people or routines sometimes. Because if everything is set either as a schedule or by other people, then they just need to go with the flow and kind of coast along with it and they could just live more carefree.
And so often Nines look very soft, very gentle, kind of the opposite of Eights, but what they don't know is that they actually have more power and energy than Eights do. If only they would wake up. If only they would find out who they really are, what they really want. Nines, they're a force to be reckoned with. You cannot stop them once they wake up. It's just they prefer to be sleep. So yeah, all the nine types have themes that we all resonate with in some shape or form. Like at some point we've all felt vengeance. At some point we've all felt like the desire to be liked, but our type is where we've gotten stuck.
What we've identified ourselves with. And therefore, what celebrating our type is actually the opposite of what needs to happen. Otherwise, we're celebrating the trap we've put ourselves into. True freedom comes from recognizing the trap that we're in and finding the key to come out and live. Access the other parts of life that we already have ready access to.
Melissa Smith: Yeah, that makes sense. If we are wanting better relationships or that dream project, mission, career, and we're running into all these obstacles and things that we're sabotaging doing ourselves. I think that really shows us where, like for me, seeing my Four tendencies really help to see the way I hold myself back from those one or the ways I show up in relationships.
All right. Well, let's see. I have so many more questions, but I know we're basically out of time. I will end with… one of your mottos and you mentioned it too, at the beginning is growing beyond your enneagram type so that you live in love from your flow state. How did that journey look for you, like learning about the enneagram and then growing beyond it?
My Enneagram Journey
Joanne Kim: I mean, once I found out that I was creating my own suffering, it's like, I can continue living that way, but it wouldn't do me any good. It wouldn't do anyone else any good. And it's more suspending my type's belief system. It is like type four's main fear is the fear of goodness, especially my own goodness.
It's like, okay, I resonated with this whole thing. I recognize how I've painted myself into a corner. What if the things I believe in are actually only a piece of the bigger picture? What if I don't have all the information? What if instead of thinking that I'm always without something essential, what if it's actually available to me?
And that opened up the door for possibilities and opportunities kind of in a Seven-ish way, but less out of a sense of the need to be whole, but out of the out of the consideration that I might already be whole. The idea of a flow state versus a stress state is a flow state is something you engage in, you get super absorbent because the experience is itself its own reward. If great things happen at the end, that's bonus, but not the point. And the flow state is constantly generating more and more energy. And there's surplus to even be generous for other people, whereas a stress state is I have to do this or else something bad is going to happen or something good is not going to happen.
So it's like living with a guillotine or a carrot hanging out over our heads, right? That wears us down. It creates so much strife, so much stress for ourselves and other people. And this is usually where our Enneagram types live. So if we switch into flow state, it's like, okay, let me suspend what my type says I am and let me see what happens if I try something else.
Yeah. And that's kind of where my life kind of started changing in my personal life, my relationships, my businesses. And I practice just letting the data speak for itself instead of living from my interpretation of what the data means. So it's been a wild experience and I'm super thankful for the Enneagram because I don't think there's been any other resource that's brought as much healing for me.
Melissa Smith: Yeah. So that's awesome. I love that. Well, it'd be great to share a little bit, just an introduction. I know we can't go into this, but You have a freebie guide and you talk a lot about emotions as well to the Enneagram. So can you just give us a little bit of a introduction on how you do this work, how you integrate the Enneagram and emotion work and what that kind of looks like. So listeners can understand like what else they can get from the Enneagram.
Joanne Kim: Yeah. And so I have my hat as a therapist, Enneagram therapist, and my hat as a feelings coach. I like calling myself a feelings translator because in the same way we actually resonate with all nine Enneagram types, we also resonate with all the full range of emotions.
It's just that based on our type, partially, we tend to pick and choose certain emotions as good and think the rest of them as bad. And so we become very lopsided in that we overdo these supposedly good emotions and we underdo what's supposedly bad emotions. So that only reinforces our own patterns which keep us stuck and the way out of it basically one of the ways to grow beyond our type structure is to recognize what our own emotional habits are.
Finding out which feelings we've labeled as good and which is bad and dialing back what have been labeled as good. Because we're overdoing them and then summoning forth what we've underly practiced so that we can be more versatile, we could be more well rounded. So instead of feeling something because that's just what we feel, or that's what we've been trained to feel, it's like, let our emotions tell us what's actually happening in the situation and what we're needing.
And so I do think that our emotional space is one of the best sources of information, that if we shut that down, or if we only pick and choose certain data points, we end up coming up with a very distorted picture of ourselves, of other people, and of life. So I do have the freebie guide, the Emotional Habits of Enneagram types and that is with an extra emphasis on the Enneagram.
But aside from that, I also do my work as feelings translator in exploring each emotion because each emotion has a specific message about what our inherent and legitimate needs are. So whichever route you do exploration in, eventually all truth kind of ends up in the same place anyway. So it's more of, uh, what, what seems more immediately useful for now, and then you'll eventually tap into the other ones.
Melissa Smith: What are some of the tools, resources, routines, some of the things that you personally like to use to stay high vibe?
Next Steps + Resources
Joanne Kim: Yoga has been a fantastic option. As a Four, I've mostly been disconnected from my body my whole life and kind of poo pooed out like anything related to movement, exercise and things like that. So that I could resume my fetal position, navel gazing. But I started doing yoga a year ago and holy crap, it's been so good for me in staying very present and connected with my body and actually finding out what my body is capable of. And so that's been super helpful. I do that twice a week. I would do it more if I had the schedule for it, but, that's been fantastic. And also a very very good practice for focusing on the good that's available to me.
Melissa Smith: Is there a specific type of yoga that you like?
Joanne Kim: Yin yoga. Because I'm very productive and active in my typical week. And so yin yoga is super chill. Half the time it's like laying on the floor doing nothing. It's a very good remedy for me because I live my whole life, believing that I have to make things happen or else that's the stress state. And yin yoga it's like, what else is there for me to do except to just stay here and take in things from outside of myself.
Melissa Smith: Yeah, I think that's helpful too, because sometimes we can be really disconnected from our body kind of helping slow down. All the thoughts and just be present and just out. Yeah. Awesome. Love that recommendation. All right. So how can listeners work with you? Where do you want to send them to follow you and just kind of what you have going on right now?
Joanne Kim: Yeah. If you want to learn more about the Enneagram, you can follow me on Instagram at @olivemecounseling or my website olivemecounseling.com. That's where you can find the Emotional Habits of Each Enneagram Type Guide.
If you want to learn more about emotions, then I have my Instagram @intelligentemotions or intelligentemotions.com. And there you can find another freebie guide called the Big Feelers First Aid Kit. So basically when feelings show up at the wrong place, wrong time, in wrong ways, that's a good guide to pick up just so that you can take care of yourself.
What are the Emotional Habits of your Enneagram type?
This free guide reveals the patterns that keep you stuck and the next steps to grow beyond your type!
Don't know your Enneagram type? Find yours here!
The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Head Types
Joanne (OliveMe Counseling) and Melinda (Inviterra Counseling) are Enneagram therapists who love helping people grow beyond their reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing. Listen to part 4 of their 4-part series as they discuss the Head Triad and their central emotion of fear.
Joanne Kim (OliveMe Counseling) & Melinda Olsen (Inviterra Counseling) are Enneagram therapists who love helping people grow beyond their reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing.
Our Enneagram type patterns used to be helpful when we were actually vulnerable and powerless (often in childhood), but when we grew up, our autopilot patterns didn't update accordingly. What used to be our greatest strengths eventually become some of our greatest liabilities.
In this 4-part series on The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types, learn about:
The main themes of the Head Triad
The central emotion for Head Types: Fear
How Enneagram Fives, Sixes, and Sevens navigate fear
Growth steps for each Enneagram Type
Watch the video below for Part 4: Head Types (or keep scrolling past the downloadables for the transcript!)
Downloadables
Grab each of these guides separately!
Video Transcript
Joanne: Welcome to our part four in this four part series, “Enneagram Emotional Habits”.
Melinda: Hi, everybody.
Today we're going to talk about Head Types, which interestingly are the Types that mystify us the most. But we love them. We've done a lot of study around them. I am married to a Head Type, so I have a little insight into Head Types.
Joanne: A lot of our main coaches and therapists have been Sixes.
Melinda: We're super grateful for that because we really need that as people who tend to undervalue the head.
Joanne: Regarding all the Triads they have their own corresponding themes. The main themes for Head Types, in particular, are around safety, security, certainty, trust and mistrust, and making sure they're okay. The way that each Type goes about it is different. The central emotion for all Head Types is around fear.
I think Fives tend to be in conflict with their fear, Sixes tend to overdo fear, and Sevens tend to underdo fear.
Would you like to share with us about our lovely Fives?
Melinda: I really would. I love Fives, not just because I'm married to a Five, but because I feel like Fives are really misunderstood. As a Two, I relate to that because I think we're also misunderstood.
Fives, like I mentioned, though they are cut off from their feelings, because of them being Head Types they tend to actually have a quite conflicted or chaotic relationship with sadness. They tend to be a Type that leans more toward depression than the other two Types, and that's because they tend to isolate themselves.
I love this metaphor that Joanne came up with. It's like Fives are in a fortress with doors that are barred and locked. They are looking out and sometimes feeling the sadness or longing, wanting to be included, but terrified of allowing that door to open because they don't want to be overtaken or overwhelmed.
The themes for Fives often are around feeling fear that they're going to be overwhelmed by others. Their energy is going to be depleted. They won't have enough resources to get through the day or get through their lives. So they tend to be very protective of their energy, their time, even their stuff, and their knowledge. They tend to be very locked in.
If we take that metaphor of the fortress with the doors locked, unfortunately, what they don't realize is that if they were to just open the doors they might be able to get the resources they need to get through the day and the connections that they need. But unfortunately, fear keeps it locked.
Fives aren't really always in touch with their fear. They've cut off their heart and their bodies and tend to live in their heads because they protect themselves from this fear by knowing things, through knowledge. Fives collect knowledge. They store it up. The one thing that they allow in through those doors is the knowledge of everything. The things that they're really passionate about, their jobs, certain subjects, whatever. They bulk up on knowledge to defend themselves against being insecure. To defend themselves against feeling afraid in the world and to make themselves safe. Unfortunately, that means that they miss out on their emotions and connections. Emotions are the things that connect us with other people and connect us with ourselves. Fives really have an experience of not being connected with themselves and others.
I actually think more than most people admit, Fives really on some level understand that, which is why they tend toward depression. They understand that they're cut off and they isolate and they have a very hard time reaching out. It's almost like they're frozen. This is why I feel so sad about Fives because they’re so beautiful and sensitive and they themselves don't know that and the people in their lives tend to not know that.
Joanne: Of the BIG Five emotions, MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, NUMB, NUMB is probably their favorite emotion. Also in that they're very good at rationalizing why they should stay NUMB. Also pursuing things like careers that tend to be right in alignment with their giftings. It's like, in a lot of ways, it kind of is a mutually reinforcing echo chamber.
Melinda: Yeah, I also find with Fives, much like Ones, they tend to somaticize their emotions. Like when you’re NUMB emotions have to come out. It means you're overwhelmed. Emotions have to come out some way. Often with Fives they come out with stiffness or issues with their back, feeling achy, sometimes nausea, and sometimes with depression. Fives are deeply sensitive people.
Joanne: That might be the growth step. You could actually use the body as a backdoor way of connecting with the heart. Noticing that you feel a certain ache or tension or whatnot and trying to translate that into corresponding to whatever feelings they might have.
Melinda: You might want to ask a close friend, should you have that, or your partner, if they are more feelings conversant. It might be helpful to let them know like, “Hey, I have this ache or I have this nausea. Is there a corresponding feeling with that?” You might not be able to connect the two but they might be able to help you. That actually is a secondary growth step, which is asking for help, which I know is difficult for Fives, as well.
Joanne: Let down that drawbridge, man.
Melinda: Yeah, because there's so many resources that are there and ready for you if you allow things in.
We love you Fives. Good luck with your challenge. Do we want to move on to Sixes?
Joanne: Sixes are hard to peg in a lot of ways and I think that comes to the territory of the Type itself. There's a lot of shifting going on on the vagrant side, especially in their heads.
Sometimes they're known as “The Contrarians” or “Devil's Advocate”, “The Questioner”, “The Loyalist”. All these contradictory terms, ironically. I think that also shows up when it comes to their own emotions, too. It’s just that there's always this questioning and never a settling. So, I would say that as a Head Type they're the feelers of the Head Type. They tend to be most driven or most obviously connected to fear as an emotion but they intellectualize it so much that they might not even register it as a feeling.
Melinda: Yeah. It depends on the subtype usually. With Sixest there tends to be a pretty big stratification of how you experience the feeling based on your Subtype.
Sexual Instincts tend to face fear head on, so they might be the type that are less connected with their experience of fear. Though I've found that fear is still something pretty dominant for Sexual Subtypes and Sixes. It's just that they're like, “Fuck you fear, I'm gonna go at ya.”
Joanne: Fight mode.
Melinda: Socials tend to be pretty removed from their fear.
Joanne: More NUMB.
Melinda: It's a more NUMB kind of feeling. They might do the things that the other two Types do in terms of fear. They might have some conscious understanding that they feel it, but I think they tend to withdraw from it a little more, tend to be a little more distant.
Self-preservation Sixes are the ones that we're kind of going to peg as the stereotypical Six. They tend to be very anxious. That's how we talk about Sixes. Overdoing fear. Self-pres Sixes are going to be the ones that are really obvious about it. Whichever one you identify with, we would say that you have kind of an over-active relationship with fear. That tends to show up for Sixes regardless of Type or Subtype as kind of the catastrophizing and the over preparation, just in case something bad happens. Would you say that's your experience with Sixes?
Joanne: Totally. Being more future oriented, they focus on what could happen and what could happen is more negative.
Mistrust is what leads the way and the emotion that I think Sixes have the hardest time connecting with is probably joy. And that like, “When's the other shoe going to drop?” as if there's always another shoe. Or like, “What does this person want from me? Are they being honest?” There's always like frenetic energy to them.
I think even though Sixes are driven by fear they might not consciously be aware of it because they're so in their head and they're very good at justifying things. If you tell a Six they're being pessimistic, they would say, “I'm just being a realist.”
Across all Head Types they're so good at justifying their own position. I think that only reinforces the disconnect from the heart.
Melinda: For Sixes, I think one other thing to put out there is that the way that they try to find security, again is probably different per Subtype, but I think the thing that holds true with all of them is that they have a very difficult time finding security. Even when they either reach out, no matter how they try to do it, either finding security in their connections or other people, finding security in an authority or a dogma, or a way of viewing the world, or finding security and going at your fears, like balls to the wall. Whatever Sixes try to connect with and try to find security in, what remains true, is that they have a very hard time trusting and finding security within themselves.
The world out there is scary and the world in here is scary. I can't trust anybody out there and I can't trust anybody in here. That causes a huge, huge amount of insecurity and fear. Of course it would, because if you can't find safety anywhere, then you have to work really hard in order to make it happen. It's tenuous at best. Sixes kind of find themselves in a jam. I feel for them. That's really hard. Onto our growth step.
Joanne: I think being in touch with your fear. Being honest about it is one thing and allowing yourself to temper the questioning a little bit more, 5% less questioning than before.
Melinda: Dialing it down just a tad.
Joanne: Because you might be creating your own anxiety, ironically. If that's the case it can also go the other direction. If you look for what is okay, even though things could go bad, then you might actually create another feedback loop where you start noticing things that are actually okay, even though it could be bad or it could be worse. So, giving more attention, more room towards things still being okay, being steady, being secure, that would be the recommendation.
Melinda: We hope that you feel like you can engage that challenge Sixes. Good luck. We Heart Types love you.
I think we're going to move on to Sevens.
Joanne: In a lot of ways, Sevens are the opposite of Sixes in that Sevens also focus on what could be, but towards the positive. I think whenever people find out what their Enneagram Types are, everyone else except for Sevens are like, “Oh, it's terrible. Why are you so negative?”
Sevens are like, “This is great. I love my Type.”
Usually those who are in close relationships with Sevens are like, “Oh my god, I'm so tired. I feel so resentful and negative because Sevens tend to be positive.”
GLAD for Sevens is a defense structure in that it's an overdoing of the positive emotion as a way of downplaying or ignoring the negative stuff.
Melinda: Especially fear. Of the Triad, I think they underdo fear.
Joanne: I don't think Sevens are as aware or conscious about their fear. One way to find out is they still look for the exits too when it comes to difficult conversations or whatnot. They just rationalize. That is the main defense mechanism, rationalization. They find their way to sweet talk their way out of focusing on difficult things, responsibilities, things that are boring, etc. Not knowing that they're weaseling out of things is actually what makes situations harder.
Melinda: I think that's the way that Sevens actually act out their fear. If you're a Seven, think about things being sad, feeling trapped in that sadness, never being able to get out of your sadness. That's fear, right? Sevens have a fear of being trapped in negative emotions. Actually, Sevens have a fear of being trapped in general.
Joanne: Keeping your options open, making sure you get to choose into the more fun or exciting or better thing.
Melinda: Exactly. What Sevens have a hard time doing, I think every Enneagram Type has a hard time with this, but being in the present. What they fail to understand, sadly, is that only when we're open to every emotion in the present and what's happening in the present do we actually connect with JOY. I think JOY is what Sevens are trying to connect with, but unfortunately, it doesn't happen if we're not connected with all of the feelings.
Joanne: Lower hanging fruit growth stuff for Sevens, because I'm not sure if y'all are eager to jump into the deep end just yet.
Melinda: And that's okay.
Joanne: Is to practice alternating between doing something exciting and something that is a little bit more blah. Just so that you still get the stuff going but you're not going to be completely trapped in it. There is an overemphasis on seeking freedom by resisting limits. But freedom and limits actually go hand in hand.
It's kind of like the fencing around a playground structure. Within the fencing you can go wild and do whatever you want, but you’ve got to make sure to stay within so that you're not at risk of danger. It’s the same thing with our life's experiences. There are responsibilities and things that must be done but that is actually what empowers you and frees you up to actually really engage things and enjoy the deeper things in life without this nagging thing in the back of your head. Like, “I know you shouldn't be doing this.” Make it easier on yourself.
Someone said, “Swallow the frog.”
Do the thing that you don't want to do first and then you can reward yourself with a fun thing.
Melinda: That's a great challenge.
I think also remembering too, in the same way, engaging all your emotions eventually is the thing that leads to true JOY and freedom. I know it sounds very counterintuitive, especially for Sevens, but allowing yourself to be able to be present with what is, whether it be good or bad or neutral, is the thing that then frees you from actually being enslaved to positive or good vibes. Which actually is what Sevens are. You actually are trapped. That's the reality.
Joanne: The bias of Head Types is that there's such a high emphasis on reasoning, rationale, the intellect, et cetera. Often all Head Types tend to think that they're just being mature, reasonable, grounded, and everyone else, especially those with feelings, are being immature, irrational, whatever. It's just that the ironic thing is, if our body and our heart are also other legitimate sources of really important information the irrational thing is to lop off or close off access to those other centers of intelligence.
Melinda: How rational are you being if you lop off two incredibly important ways of viewing and interpreting the world.
Joanne: It's actually irrational for you to only favor certain data and ignore everything else.
High recommendation for all y'all Head Types to really get to know emotions and also your body experiences as a really important source of information. It seems irrational on the outside, but that's because no one really trained us on how to do feelings well. It is a huge, strong belief of mine that each of the BIG Five emotions, MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, NUMB, and also SHAME as well, have their corresponding themes and messages about what we're needing and what we're wanting, who we are, et cetera. So, to close off the door to your heart space is a huge disadvantage for you because you're basically living life blind. It's a huge part of you.
We have a couple of resources for everyone. We have a quick, at a glance view of how each Enneagram Type interacts with each of the BIG Five emotions. Also a more in-depth guide, because I know y'all want to do your research, right? This guide, “The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types”, has a more thorough look as to what's really going on, not just with the main emotion of the Triad, but what each emotion actually means and what they're for.
Melinda has created another guide for us, “Growth Tip of the Enneagram Types”.
Melinda: I made this especially for y'all who are really just wanting to get into the nitty gritty of growth and deep transformation. The Enneagram is amazing for that and it's so much more than just descriptors of our core Types. I hope that these tips and challenges will help you to get even deeper into knowing your essential self and fighting against and becoming more aware of your ego patterns. As you get to know your essential selves, I think you'll find that they actually look a lot different than your core Type, which is pretty surprising. I developed this guide with a few tips for y'all who are really wanting to grow more deeply in your Enneagram journey. These have been helpful for us so I wanted to pass this on to y'all with more to come.
I think you're Big Feelers First Aid Kit might be a good thing for our Head Types, too.
Joanne: I also made a separate guide specifically for those whose feelings tend to show up sideways and show up at the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, like a lot of Fives tend to call out sick from work because they stuffed their feelings so much that the body somaticized it. In order to prevent people from just locking up their feelings, this is kind of an alternative where you can buy yourself time if your feelings are showing up in more sideways ways. The point is to actually dedicate a specific time and space for you to actually sit with and process your feelings, not just way after the fact because they get more confusing. I'm sure y'all don't like that. Also grab the Big Feelers First Aid Kit as an additional resource, a handy tool to put into your library.
In general Head Types, one of the main areas of challenge is around relationships. So, don't just study about your own specific Type patterns, but also listen in on the Body Types and the Heart Types, as well.
Thanks again for joining us here for our series and we'll catch you next time.
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type? Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types (Part 1: Introduction)
Joanne (OliveMe Counseling) and Melinda (Inviterra Counseling) are Enneagram therapists who love helping people grow beyond their reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing. Listen to the introduction of their 4-part series as they discuss emotions, the Enneagram, the three Centers of Intelligence and dominant instincts.
Joanne Kim (OliveMe Counseling) & Melinda Olsen (Inviterra Counseling) are Enneagram therapists who love helping people grow beyond their reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing.
Our Enneagram type patterns used to be helpful when we were actually vulnerable and powerless (often in childhood), but when we grew up, our autopilot patterns didn't update accordingly. What used to be our greatest strengths eventually become some of our greatest liabilities.
In this 4-part series on The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types, learn about:
Why emotions are important for personal growth, relationships, and professional development.
What the BIG 5 Feelings are.
Why feelings are important for Enneagram inner work.
The main emotions for each of the three Centers of Intelligence (Body, Heart, Head)
An overview of the three instincts (SP, SO, SX).
Watch the video below for Part 1: Introduction (or keep scrolling past the downloadables for the transcript!)
Downloadables
Grab each of these guides separately!
Video Transcript
Melinda: Sup, everybody. What's up, Joanne? How are you doing today?
Joanne: Good! Good to see all of you on the other side of the screen. My name is Joanne from OliveMe Counseling, and this is my lovely BFF, work wife, Melinda Olsen from Inviterra Counseling. We are both Enneagram Therapists here in Silicon Valley, and we are super excited to share with you about our topic today which is the emotional habits of Enneagram Types.
Melinda: Wooh!
Why Feelings Matter for Personal Growth
Joanne: Generally, why emotions are important is that they're super important sources of information for us. They're essential for our personal growth, our relationships and also, surprisingly, our professional development in terms of you finding out what really matters to you, what trajectory you want to take in life.
A side product that I'm doing is called Intelligent Emotions. I do cover the basis of how feelings operate and actually that each feeling has its own corresponding themes, messages, action steps, etc. So, we're going to be integrating the Enneagram, the Nine Types of the Enneagram, with what I call the BIG 5 Feelings: MAD, SAD, GLAD, SCARED, and NUMB, and how each Type basically does each of these guys. For the sake of this particular video we're going to add one extra piece in the BIG 5 and it's SHAME.
If I had a sixth finger then it will be BIG 6 feelings with SHAME attached. It's super important of a topic, but it has some extra nuance information, especially when it comes to identity, authenticity, relationships, et cetera, which is a very central theme for the Heart Types, Twos, Threes, and Fours.
So I'm going to add, MAD, SAD, and SHAME, GLAD, SCARED, and NUMB. We're going to be covering each of the Nine Types in triads, Body Types, Heart Types, and then Head Types.
Why Emotions Matter for Enneagram Growth Work
Melinda: I don't think Enneagram work can happen without us exploring our feelings.
Every type does feelings in a different way, as Joanne mentioned. For example, y'all who are in the Heart Triad, Twos, Threes, and Fours, don't think you're getting out of this. Though we do feelings a lot, and we have our own relationships with feelings, it doesn't mean we do them well. We can attest to that.
Joanne: She's a Type Two. I'm a Type Four. We got a lot of feelings between the two of us.
Melinda: I say we're recovering types. So, don't think that we're letting you off the hook. In fact, all of us have a lot of work to do with emotions and the Enneagram. That's how we actually do the deeper work of the Enneagram, which is what I jam on. It's so important.
Let's talk about how each Type, or at least in the Triad, kind of engages emotions. What we've found is there's one Type that either overdoes the emotion, there's a Type that underdoes the emotion, and then there's a Type that has a conflicted relationship with the emotion and internally that can feel like a chaotic relationship with emotion.
So if we think about the Heart Triad, right? And we talk about sadness and shame, right? We have Type Fours that overdue sadness and shame. We have Type Threes that really don't keep in touch with sadness or shame. And we have Type Twos who, if I can say so myself, we have a conflicted relationship or a chaotic relationship with sadness and shame, and we found this similar pattern with every Triad. We think it's important to talk about that.
Joanne: One piece we forgot to mention is that each center of intelligence has its own corresponding thematic feeling. The Body Types, Eights, Nines and Ones have a particular relationship with anger. Heart Types, Twos, Threes, and Fours have a particular relationship with sadness and shame. Head Types, Fives, Sixes, and Sevens have a particular relationship with fear. As Melinda mentioned, one of the Types in that Triad one overdoes the feeling, one underdoes it, and the other one tends to have a complicated, mixed relationship.
Melinda: Absolutely. Then things can get even a little more complicated when we add in instinct and subtype. Everybody has an instinct or subtype. You might already know about that as you've engaged Joanne and my other materials and resources around that. What we found is that Self-preservation instincts tend to, if we're talking about the BIG 5 emotions that Joanne mentioned, they tend to favor SCARED or NUMB as emotions that they tend to go to automatically. This is Despite type, like your core Type.
Social Instincts tend to overdo maybe SAD or SHAME. SHAME being an emotion that's associated with social situations. That's kind of developed in society.
Then we have the Sexual Instinct. Which tends to favor, if I do say so myself, as a Sexual Instinct, the GLAD and MAD, which are kind of on opposite ends of the spectrum. We tend to go back and forth.
Joanne: Both very vibrant and expressive feelings.
Melinda: Yes. Self-preservations tend to shut down and be more internal. Social Instincts tend to be more external, but diffused as they try to engage and fit in to the larger social context.
Joanne: All of us have one of the Nine Types. Within the Nine Types we have three different versions according to the three instincts, Self-preservation, Social and Sexual Instinct.
One tends to be the dominant emotion. So regardless of your type, if you happen to be a specific dominant instinct, it's as Melinda mentioned. There's also a repressed instinct as well. So, one that's in the top of the stack, one that's at the bottom of the list and the repressed Instinct also has its own corresponding emotional patterns as well.
Basically, the feelings attached to that instinct, when it's repressed, tend to take the most amount of energy and deliberate effort for you to summon that forth.
To give you an example, Melinda and I, we're different types, also our instincts are the exact opposite. Sometimes just between our two stackings, because of the opposite, she tends to be really good at what I suck at and then vice versa.
Being Self-preservation dominant, that means that I tend to be very practical, steady, focused. So, leading with anxiety and numbness, which happens to be in Melinda's repressed, and saying it's something that takes a little bit more dedicated effort for her to summon. In the opposite way for her being Sexual dominant, very easy attunement to joy and anger. That took a lot of work for me, not just because I'm a Four, but because the Sexual instinct is also my last place, too.
For you, regardless of where you are in your Enneagram journey if you don't know your Type, then we'll add a link as to the step-by-step approach of how you can identify yours. Even if you do know your Type, the next step might be for you to find out what your instinct sequence is. Then coming back to the subsequent videos we'll be releasing in knowing what your type and your particular instincts and emotional habit is because our Enneagram Type, our autopilot, are ways that used to be helpful before but are now what's creating problems for us.
Melinda: Causing our suffering.
Joanne: So, whatever emotions we tend to overdo, we need to reign it back. Whatever emotions seen most foreign or repulsive to us are what we need to dial up so that we can be more well-rounded, more balanced, more integrated, instead of being lopsided and getting caught on things.
Melinda: I think it's really important too to just mention that every emotion, whether it's labeled positive or negative, they're important. They contribute to a vibrant life. If we shut down or overdue any of these feelings, it leads to suffering. It's really important to mention even something like scared or sad is really important in our journey of understanding who we are and who we are in the world and our essential selves.
With all of that said, let's talk a little bit about our upcoming episodes that I hope that y'all tune in to. We are going to be going over every Triad and talking about the emotional habits of every Triad. Starting with the Gut Triad, Eights, Nines, and Ones. The Heart Triad would be next, Twos, Threes, and Fours. Then rounding us out with the Head Triad, Fives, Sixes, and Sevens. We're really excited!
Joanne, of course, has made a chart because she is a Self-preservation dominant person, that she shall be sharing with you. And we have some more resources as well.
Joanne: This is what it looks like. We have the BIG 5 emotions on the side that shows up differently for each Type and also some variations depending on the dominant instinct. That will be available in the section below this video.
Melinda: We want to call you to watch all of our videos on the Types, find out more about your Type and the Types of your loved ones. Then I think we have a few other things for you to explore.
Joanne: If you want to learn more about emotions in general, I have what's called the Big Feelers First Aid Kit. So, especially if you're the emotionally expressive types, either the Heart Types, especially Twos and Fours, or Sexually dominant, Sexual repressed.
Basically, if you tend to have emotions that show up when you least expect it, because you might've repressed it, I’m calling out to Ones and Twos, this will come in super handy because not every situation is safe or the best time for you to be actively processing those feelings. Grab one of these and you'll be able to learn a little bit more about the nature of each specific emotion.
Melinda also has given us a fantastic guide as well, "The Growth Tips of Each Enneagram Type".
Melinda: "The Growth Tips of Each Enneagram Type", I'm going to hold my own because I designed it, it’s so pretty! I'm very proud. Basically, I found that in the Enneagram work that we do we don't tend to push past understanding the habits of our Type. I think it's really important to use the Enneagram to do the depth work, the growth work.
So, I have developed this handy dandy little guide for you to get a bite size, just a taste of the things that you can do to grow more deeply out of your Enneagram Type and get to know your essential true self, which interestingly might not look a lot like your core Type. Pick this up!
Joanne: Thanks again for joining in today on the introduction. Tune in, the next episode up will be about the Body Types, Eights, Nines, and Ones, and the others will follow, just in suit.
Melinda: Looking forward to it!
What are the emotional habits of your Enneagram type?
Grab this free guide that highlights the patterns that keep you stuck and the next steps to grow beyond your type!
Don't know your Enneagram type? Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
The Enneagram at Work: 3 Professional Tips for Each Type
Each of the nine Enneagram types have autopilot patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing that also show up at work, for better or for worse. Learn what your strengths, limitations, and growth steps are so you can have deeper, greater impact as your own type of leader!
The autopilot at work
Here's a juicy topic: how each Enneagram type shows up in the professional realm.
Though most people reach out to me because of their relationship with others or with themselves (*cough* the "prosocial" types on the right side of the Enneagram symbol, 9 through 4), a huge chunk of people's stressors are based on what's happening with work, job, career, vocation, etc.
Each of our Enneagram types inform our autopilot reactive patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing. These patterns USED to be helpful when we were actually powerless and vulnerable as kids, but they didn't upgrade accordingly as we grew up and gained more resources and skills.
Our professional arena is one of the main ways we see the out-of-dateness of our patterns, as we see that the very patterns that were once helpful now start creating fires and dumping gasoline on them.
For each Enneagram type, I'll describe the type's:
Motivation
Working style
Professional limits
Professional growth tips
Take a look at yours, then tell me what you think!
(Don't know what your type is? Start here!)
Type 1: The Improver
Motivation
To improve, "fix", refine, or perfect oneself, others, or the world to close the gap between the ideal and the actual.
"If I am perfect without flaws, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Focus on whether things are right or wrong, good or bad.
Seek the highest standards of quality
Have integrity, high work ethic, and commitment
Professional Limits:
Stuck in the weeds because overly focused on details
Perfectionism, which leads to procrastination (difficulty getting started because you want to make sure the process is perfect before even beginning)
Critical of self and/or others
Overly rigid - has difficulty adjusting to changes
Frustration towards others for not having integrity or strong work ethics
Resentment when others are taking it easy, making up for their lack
Difficulty "clocking out" emotionally to rest, relax, and enjoy time outside of work
Professional Growth Tips:
Your ideal standards are a moving target - What is perfect anyway? Are your expectations and standards realistic? Appropriate? Necessary? Done is better than good.
Recognize that some of your anger is a byproduct of you underly resting and relaxing. Rest & relaxation is a deliberate spiritual/emotional discipline (that it's hard is no problem - do your best anyway)
Aim for a work quality of 80%, not 140%. (Your 80% will probably still be higher than others' 100%.)
Focus on how things are better than before, less on how you could be better going forward.
Type 2: The Befriender
Motivation
To feel liked and loved. Heavy emphasis on relationships and on using connections with others to get your own personal needs met.
"If I am easily lovable, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Relationships are central - "It's not what you know, but who you know."
Emotional sensitivity and empathy. Sensing how others are doing and adding the human touch to projects and communication.
Use charm and warmth to make positive connections with others, using friendly or softer language
Strategically aligning with or helping others to making oneself indispensable.
Professional Limits:
Difficulty asking for help - not knowing what one needs, being scared of being rejected or judged
Difficulty receiving feedback - take it personally, get offended, spin in shame
Difficulty being direct - softening one's language so as to not upset others
Being the second in command, but rarely (if ever) the actual leader. Challenge of stepping forth as an individual, instead of as someone in relation to someone else.
Professional Growth Tips:
Take out any words/phrases that soften and dilute the main message in emails.
Ask for help and feedback. Don't take others' responses personally (their NO is more about THEM, not YOU). Take in their messages neutrally. Sometimes you'll get a yes, sometimes no.
Take a solo personal retreat. (Recommended by a fellow Enneagram 2 + business owner Melinda Olsen!)
Write down your what your ideal day would like, with lots of details from the time you wake up to the time you to go sleep.
If you’re not sure what you would like, start writing down what you DON’T want.
How can you practically make this coming week 5% closer to your ideal day than last week was? What do you need to introduce? Eliminate?
What time of day do you feel the most energized? Inspired? Set aside that time of the day for you. Protect that time for yourself as fiercely as you would protect your time with a loved one — no meetings, no one else’s agenda/needs, etc.
Type 3: The Performer
Motivation
To gain high social status by performing, achieving, and being (seen as) successful.
"If I am seen as successful, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Goals & tasks-oriented - focus on being productive, effective, efficient.
Avoid anything that slows them down - feelings, other people, physical illness, or anything that doesn't fit their goals
Reading the audience to intuit what would be seen as valuable
Competing to win/be the best
Shapeshifting and image-managing, impressing others with competence and attractiveness.
Professional Limits:
Can be aggressive and run over other people, pushing them too hard
Overly seeking the spotlight and taking the credit
Overworking, not stopping work until life stops them
Cutting corners or reducing quality or integrity as long as you look good
Not learning from mistakes or errors because you avoid the pain of failure
Professional Growth Tips:
Slow down and rest, because you're far more than what you do or how you're seen.
Acknowledge that failure doesn't make you bad - it's human. Failure helps you grow beyond your limited perspective in life.
Spend more time to yourself so that you see who you really are and what matters most to you. Who are you when you're not in the spotlight?
What if emotions aren't things that slow you down, but make you more whole?
Type 4: The Individualist
Motivation
To sense and seek what's missing, to see how things aren't what you could have been.
"If I stand out as an individual, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Focus on whether things are deep, authentic, or meaningful.
Point out what's inauthentic, not going well, or could have been better
Being (only) motivated by what's personally meaningful
Putting a special personal touch on projects
Professional Limits:
Working based on one's mood (which is often negative)
Stuck in the weeds because overly focused on meaning and significance
Self-doubt, self-sabotage, and resignation - not seeking what's good out of the assumption that it's not going to work out anyway (What's the point?)
Judging others for being fake, shallow, or inauthentic
Mistrusting, minimizing, or deflecting others' positive feedback/support (while wondering why you feel like you're not enough)
Indirectly pushing back against authority or not wanting to be told what to do
Professional Growth Tips:
Your blindspot includes what's GOOD about you. Your sense of self isn't accurate (though you feel it's authentic) if you only focus on what's lacking in you. Take in positive feedback from others without deflecting - they might see sides of you that you can't see yourself.
Do things because the task needs to be done, independently of how you feel.
Notice what's present (not just what's missing).
See yourself as an important (even if not central) part of the group. Your presence and contribution matters, even if it doesn't stand out.
Type 5: The Observer
Motivation
To gather knowledge and information so that you won't need or be needed by others. To not be deprived or imposed upon by others.
"If I am self-sufficient and knowledgeable, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Focus on data and facts than people and feelings.
See things objectively and neutrally, detached from emotions.
Work independently and be very private.
Work on what is intellectually stimulating.
Professional Limits:
Take too much time in making decisions, rationalizing the need to do more "research"
Get backlogged and building stress by putting off decisions
Downplaying emotions as a source of valuable information because it's hard to "master"
Difficulty in building trusting and effective working relationships with others
Shutting down and withdrawing when overwhelmed, reinforcing the vicious stress cycle and creating further problems.
Professional Growth Tips:
See how your own stress is caused or amplified by not being in touch with your feelings and not sharing how you’re doing with others so that they might help you.
Consider what information emotions might convey (i.e., they tell us what we need). Learn to reconnect your own emotions and those of others so that you have ample resources and support - you don't have to be self-sufficient.
Without rationalizing, give yourself half as much time as you normally would take researching about a topic before making a decision.
Spend 5% more time interacting with others, sharing 5% more personal information than before for the sake of building better working relationships.
Type 6: The Contrarian
Motivation
To seek safety and security by aligning with others, following the rules, pointing out threats, or facing fears head-on.
"If I am safe, secure, and certain, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Scan for signs of danger, risk, or untrustworthiness
Anticipate and preemptively solve potential risks - great at troubleshooting when things do go wrong
Play devil's advocate and present the opposite statement
Ask lots of questions and draw attention towards potential problem areas
Professional Limits:
Stuck in the weeds because overly focused on what could go wrong
Spend so much time and mental energy thinking, not doing - analysis paralysis, perfectionism, procrastination
Question your own strengths and achievements, leading you to miss out on great opportunities you actually are capable of - imposter syndrome
Create stress or tension within yourself or your coworkers because of your difficulty acknowledging when things are going well
Professional Growth Tips:
Verbalize to teammates that your intention is to strengthen the project by identifying potential problems upfront, not to shoot it down or criticize it. You are on the same team.
Notice when your negative read on each situation is actually you projecting your own fear outwards. Ask for feedback to get a reality check.
Gather information of all of your strengths or good decisions as much as you focus on your limitations or weaknesses. Round out your perspective of yourself and your leadership ability.
Learn to own and lead from your power and authority, not just looking to others (and then questioning them).
Type 7: The Enthusiast
Motivation
To avoid being trapped in pain by seeking pleasure and wanting options/freedom.
"If I have fun + freedom, then I'm okay/worthy."
Working Style:
Enthusiastic, fun, energetic - great at keeping spirits up
Focus on how things are going well, what good is ahead; avoid looking at the negatives or problems or just reframe them into positives.
Great creative brainstormers, idealistic idea generators, and synthesizers of seemingly unrelated information.
Great at starting; difficulty in finishing what they started. Strengths in vision casting; limitations in picking one option and following through til the end.
Professional Limits:
Avoid doing things that are boring or lacking intellectual stimulation.
Rationalize downplaying or avoiding responsibilities.
Collapse power hierarchies with those above and underneath you - "I won't tell you what to do, so don't tell me what to do." (Indirect rebellion)
Ignore problems or rationalize why things are fine when they're not.
Leaving a bunch of unfinished projects for others to deal with (and feel frustrated, confused, or resentful about).
Professional Growth Tips:
Limits are not the opposite of freedom. Imposing self-limits (i.e., self-discipline) can help you avoid unnecessary issues that get created from being non-committal and helps to actually bring about deeper, lasting rewards.
Recognize your unintentional negative impact on others; when you're too positive, you're pulling others into be extra negative. They're not imposing their limits on you; you've painted yourself into a corner because you've neglected your post. Don't make them the bad guy.
Reduce the polarization between you and others and increase balance and harmony within your team by also seeing the negative data so that others don't have to do it on your behalf (they might see more positives themselves). Meet each other in the middle.
Give more room to the grownup part of you; there will be plenty of chances for your inner child to play if important things are taken care of too. Not either/or, but both/and.
Type 8: The Challenger
Motivation
To avoid being in a vulnerable or unsafe position by stepping forth with big presence, power, and strength.
"If I am without vulnerability, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Focus on the big picture and massive action/impact.
Seek forward movement, and will move obstacles out of the way to make things happen.
Focus on whether power is being wielded well; if not, you will challenge authority and step into the power vacuum.
Professional Limits:
Take action first, rarely aim before or reflect after. Rather than acknowledging poor decision making, justifies your own decisions or blames others for negative outcomes.
Lack of patience and aggression in your approach and communication style, steamrolling over other people if they get in the way.
Overly assumes that your perspective is right (and everyone else is wrong). Deny any other perspectives that doesn't fit yours.
Create unnecessary tension, conflict, and ruptures in your working relationships that get others to question your authority, turn on you, or leave you to your delusion that you're the best leader (when you're not).
Professional Growth Tips:
Check your own denial and delusion that your perspective is automatically the best/right perspective. Invite feedback from others without reactivity or pushback, and find a decision that's more integrating of the various perspectives. Slow down for better long-term efficacy. Ready, aim, THEN fire.
Recognize when you judge others as being weak (and therefore bad) just because they're not like you. Vulnerability is a strength of its own right. Learn to exercise your own vulnerability muscle so that you'll be a much better leader that others would happily and readily follow.
Change your body language to be more containing of your energy because you might be unintentionally intimidating for others. Rather than leading with an open chest, direct eye contact, and a louder voice, curl your shoulders inward, soften your voice, and look down and away. See what happens in the end professional outcome of you practicing softness.
Type 9: The Harmonizer
Motivation
To seek harmony and comfort by blending in, merging, not considering yourself or living as an individual.
"If I can go with the flow, then I'm okay/worthy"
Working Style:
Focus on how to dissipate tension or conflict by smoothing things out, highlighting common ground, and exercising diplomacy.
Easy-going, easy to work with, likable
Focusing on the collective well-being, harmonizing with others to further the collective's vision.
Have integrity, high work ethic, and commitment
Professional Limits:
Forgetting and even sacrificing your own well-being to avoid stirring the pot; people-pleasing and placating to the point of burnout
Procrastinate because of the difficulty in prioritizing, choosing one thing among many.
Getting carried away in the moment, zoning out or merging with the person or project in front of you.
Underly advocate on behalf of yourself or state your ideas so as to not rock the boat or stand out.
Passivity or passive aggression that leaks out through indirect means (lack of responsiveness, procrastination, distractions)
Professional Growth Tips:
Practice seeing yourself as an individual with your own valuable identity, vision, values, and strengths, and less as a cog in a machine. Allow yourself to be highlighted as an individual (seeking/receiving promotions, receiving awards, etc.).
Take more time to yourself to identify your priorities, agendas, and decisions (and write them down), then practice stating them first before hearing other people.
Recalibrate seeing conflict as a good and merging as a not great. Anger helps us focus and take effective action; placating only reinforces the time-bomb.
Next Steps
If you're wanting some more in-depth tips, I would highly recommend the book "The 9 Types of Leadership" by my Enneagram teacher Beatrice Chestnut.
Beatrice talks about how there’s no one right way of being an effective leader. All of us have a great capacity for meaningful impact, but only if we also recognize our blindspots and pitfalls that get us into trouble.
This book also covers how each of the 27 subtypes show up in professional or organizational contexts.
Work with an pro who can help you grow beyond your type!
Reach out for 1:1 support today! (I currently have a waitlist, but will make announcements of new openings when they arise.)
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type? Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Integrating the Three Centers of Intelligence
Though we have all three Centers of Intelligence (head, heart, body), there's WAY too much emphasis on Head Center especially in the Westernized world. Read the blog to learn how to reconcile and integrate all three.
Centers in Imbalance & Disharmony
Though we have all three Centers of Intelligence (head, heart, body), there's WAY too much emphasis on Head Center especially in the Westernized world:
Logic + reason = maturity
Science is truth (even though science is itself an ever-evolving PROCESS)
The only thing that matters is what's concrete, visible, measurable, actionable
Whatever is abstract, etherial, immeasurable DOESN'T matter (or exist)
Emotions = immature
Energy = DNE (does not exist)
In recent decades, there's been more room for the Heart Center themes (it's no surprise that there's been a surge of EQ trainings and that Brene Brown is now a household name):
Feelings not only exist, but they are valid and essential
It's all about empathy, connections, vulnerability, and authenticity
Let feelings come, let them go - they, too, shall pass*
(*I just think that this development stopped shy, so I've taken that on as a personal mission through Intelligent Emotions to highlight what people do next besides just tolerate feelings.)
We in the Western world are still WAY behind when it comes to integrating the Body Center. So many questions, not a lot of answers...
If the currency of the Head Center is thoughts and of the Heart Center is emotions, what is it for the Body Center?? (sensations? energy?)
A lot of the Body Center experiences are a mystery...How exactly do body types just *know* what needs to be done?
Is it really only that Ones are just super judgmental, Nines are just super pushover-y, and Eights are just assholes?? (So much misunderstanding...)
Body types are action-oriented so they're spending energy doing/not doing...instead of contemplating deeper truths of life (hello, Enneagram 4s and 5s) or trying to navigate/explore the world around them (Enneagram 2s, 3s, 6s, 7s)
Perhaps we could learn a lot from the Eastern traditions beyond just doing yoga as a form of exercise to improve our image/physique or because it's a trend to follow.
More to come later on Body types specifically, but for now, the question is:
How do we reconcile + integrate all three Centers of Intelligence?
(Skip to the end for one practical application. If you need some explanation as to how and why this matters, keep reading.)
Moving Towards Integration
Whatever we FOCUS on determines what we DON'T focus on. The latter is what we need to nurture so that we're more in balance.
Think of a 3-part wheel (Head/Heart/Body) where some part of the wheel is bigger, another is smaller. Because the wheel is uneven, it doesn't roll well and even gets stuck more often.
To get a well-rounded wheel, we gotta find out make the big part smaller AND/OR make the small part bigger. Sometimes it's okay not to know which one you should do first - pick one, and you'll find out the other eventually.
(The following is an art, not a science. There's WHICH box (Enneagram type) we're stuck in, and there's HOW stuck we are. Pick whichever portion stands out to you and focus on just that for this season. If you're pursuing growth, your other steps will eventually be revealed -- no need to know all the steps now.)
Here are three options for how you can integrate your Centers.
Option 1: Find out what your dominant Center is, and focus on the other two Centers.
All of us in our respective Enneagram types have biases towards certain Centers.
Body Types (Sensing/Doing) - Type 8s, 9s, 1s
Heart Types (Feeling) - Type 2s, 3s, 4s
Head Types (Thinking) - Type 5s, 6s, 7s
Example: If you're Type 2, your dominant Center is the Heart. Your work involves nurturing the Head & the Body Centers through activities like:
Head Center - being more curious about the world that DOESN'T involve feelings or relationships
Body Center - being more in tune with your body's experience of food, movement, physical sensations...or seeing the doctor for an annual physical
(If you don't know your type, start here.)
Option 2: Find out what your dominant instinct is, and focus on the other two Centers.
Our instincts also have biases regarding the Centers. If you don't yet know your type, but know your dominant instinct, these will come in handy.
Self-preservation instinct
Favors Head/thinking (rational) + Body/doing (practical)
Against Heart/feeling (too amorphous, messy, chaotic)
Social instinct
Favors Heart/feeling (image, status) + Head/thinking (bird's eye view)
Against Body/doing one's own agenda (too selfish, individualistic)
Sexual instinct
Favors Heart/feeling (relational) + Body/doing (intensity)
Against Head/thinking (too rigid, complicated, convoluted, boring)
Option 3: Do an activity that involves all three Centers, and notice what you notice.
This is the catch-all option. There are some experiences in life that inherently tap into all three Centers. Here are some examples (by no means an exhaustive list):
Music
Art
Sex
Food
Basically, the richer things in life that are inherently personal, relational, sensory-oriented, etc. are good options.
None of us can change what we don't know is happening. So notice what you notice, and you'll also be open to things that don't typically occur to you.
(If you need help, ask a trusted person what stands out to them just as another reference point. Then notice what they notice.)
NOTE:
All of these activities *can* be done very passively (often to someone's detriment) but are meant to involve a lot of dedicated presence.
There's also no inherent good or bad, right or wrong way of doing these. (Type 1s, notice what immediate reactions come up to that sentence. Take your reaction as good information, be in your body, and breathe until you settle again.
Pick one of these examples for the week, and do your best to be fully present and engaged with all your senses, all your attention, all your being.
Here are some of what each Center might notice around these experiences:
Body Center
The 5 senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell
GO vs. STOP (yes! no!)
Agency, Freedom, Will - Can I do this or not? Is there something in the way? How can I clear obstacles?
Choice, Desire - Am I being controlled? What do I want? How can I get what I want?
Heart Center
Image - How do I look? How do others see me? Do others see me?
Status - Is this the best? Worst? Popular? Unpopular?
Relationships - Who do I do this with? Do I do this solo?
What do I want? What do others want? What if what I want is different from what others want?
Connection vs. Authenticity
Head Center
Possibilities - What are the positive/negative/neutral options? Which is the best option?
Safety/security - Will I be okay? Will I have enough resources or experiences?
How do I keep my options open?
Abundance vs. scarcity, danger vs. safety, insecurity vs. security
Using Art as a Medium for Personal Growth
Here's an example of how I as a Type 4 might try watercolors.
Instead of focusing on Heart Center themes (image, authenticity, status, comparison), I might focus on:
Body Center
How do the different brushes feel?
What are the different strokes I can try?
Can I achieve what I have in mind? What body sensation kicks in when I can't?
Head Center
What are the different shades that come out of mixing different colors?
What happens when I mix more drops of water?
Or if I wet the paper beforehand and then drop the paint?
What can I learn from this?
Pick one of the four options (music, art, sex, food) as an exploration of your Center of Intelligence or a growth challenge to integrate all three Centers!
What are the emotional habits of your Enneagram type?
Grab this free guide that highlights the patterns that keep you stuck and the next steps to grow beyond your type!
Don't know your Enneagram type? Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Reflections of an Enneagram Type 4 at an Inner Work Retreat
Read this blog to learn some of the things that stood out to me personally at the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy's Retreat.
I wanted to share a little bit about some of the things that stood out to me personally at the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy's Retreat . You can watch the video below or keep scrolling to read the transcript.
My Inner Pendulum
As someone who's recently taken on the practice of yoga, whenever I sit cross legged on the floor, I visualize a pendulum that's inside of my heart. There's something about sitting upright and very still, quieting my self, my thoughts, my heart. It feels like the pendulum is very still, centered.
I was wondering why that imagery stood out to me. I am now realizing that it's because, as a Four, having a very internal turbulence and lots of moving thoughts and feelings and basically being everywhere else except where I am. That's the passion of envy.
My pendulum, on the inside, is always constantly moving. Shifting. Never quite still. Always seeking what's on the other side.
As we all do, we put outside what we feel on the inside. I realized that the vast majority of my life I've been living as if I'm this swinging pendulum, always on the extremes never settled, never steady.
So at this retreat this visual came up to me again.
Slow & Leisurely
Being at a very beautiful retreat center, I'm surrounded by trees and quiet, I decided to be very intentional and deliberate about moving. Like literally moving my body very slowly. So, when going on strolls around I imagined myself moving through molasses in a very steady and slow way, as if time was slowing down.
There's something that happened inside of me where I felt that pendulum being very still and I'm moving so slowly so that the pendulum stays centered and grounded and that felt so freaking good. To be very steady and still and quiet, not constantly on this chase.
In previous retreats I knew what I want to work on. I knew what I want to get out of it. I knew the things that I wanted to jump right into. Let's go, let's make it happen!
And this time around it was more like I don't have any particular thing that's stirring up inside of me, there isn't any particular thing I want to work on. That's not to say that I don't have things to work on, but in that moment, it felt as if I deeply feel okay and content where I am, as I am.
And I gotta say, that is not the typical experience that is attributed to Fours. That's how I knew that this was from outside of myself. It's not anything that I was particularly trying to conjure up. But maybe built on the foundation of all the work that I've done in prior years. Like maybe I am ready to be very present and centered.
Floating, Unanchored
The Type Four experience is like someone who is floating out into the middle of the ocean, and they have no idea which direction is which. Sometimes they go underwater. Sometimes they're above water. It's a lot of feeling lost or disoriented. Unanchored.
Another imagery coming up is like someone who's floating out in space. There's no up or down, left or right, and their tether or umbilical cord is severed. I think that's kind of what describes a lot of the Four experiences. Feeling very aimless, lost, constantly confused and disoriented. Not really feeling tethered or connected to anything and so constantly having this sense of needing to reconnect or to find that supposed connection that was lost.
I feel like I'm in a very different place right now. Or maybe a more accurate way of saying it is I feel like I have access to a different place.
What’s next?
I don't know yet if this is here to stay. If this is going to be the new baseline. But honestly, I never really thought that I could ever be here before. I always thought that I would be constantly needing to be on the chase for something outside.
I'm sharing this with you partially as a way for y'all to get to know me. A lot of people get the impression that I have all my shit together because of the work that I do or the things that people see on my website or my blogs or Instagram or whatnot. A lot of that has been out of a sense of this Self-Preservation Four like, "Let's go, let's get things done, let's make things happen!"
Seemingly effortless, but really striving
I've realized over the years that I've accidentally created this image for other people, especially those who are in the same industries, that I do things very effortlessly. That things come very easily and very naturally to me. Half the time when I do coaching calls with other fours they are like, “I don't know how you do what you do. It seems so polished and put together.” Internally I'm thinking, if only you knew just how much work I put into it.
I don't know what will come up in what I create as I choose into this state of being steady and connected. I'm hoping that a lot of the frenetic energy and this sense of, I better hurry up and do this or else. That state, I hope it will settle down a lot more.
What that means as to what all of y'all would be hearing from me, there's a possibility that I might change the pace, or the direction or, I don't know.
I don't have a whole lot of particular strategies or anything of what I want to write for y'all, but something in me tells me that maybe this is the direction to go in allowing myself to show up like this more often. Being a fellow traveler with you in your own journey, in your own growth process.
I have to share a lot more with you regarding different aspects of the Enneagram, and I don't want to share these things with you as someone who is like above or anything. Or set apart as if I've like mastered anything. It's more like here are some things that I've come across along the way in the ways that I've connected with this deeper truth.
And I hope that some things really resonate with you and call you towards whatever is your next step.
If you’re thinking about going to one of these Enneagram retreats for your own personal growth, here’s a blog about 5 ways the CP Enneagram Retreats can supercharge your growth.
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
How Enneagram Retreats Help You Grow
If you're eager and intentional about personal growth, here are 5 reasons why I think you def should consider attending one of Bea & Uranio's Enneagram retreats.
Transformation from the Inside Out
As a huge part of my training in becoming an Enneagram therapist, I wanted to work on my own type’s ego patterns through personal inner work.
(If you don't know what the Enneagram is, start here!)
I wanted to do this with my Enneagram teachers - Beatrice Chestnut & Uranio Paes — founders of Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy — through their Personal Mastery & Professional Certification Tracks.
The Personal Mastery Track involves 3 retreats:
The Experiential Enneagram
The Psychological Enneagram
The Alchemical Enneagram (here are my reflections on this one)
Even though I've completed the Personal Mastery Track, I intend on attending these retreats as as part of my heart cleaning annual tradition.
If you're eager and intentional about personal transformation using the Enneagram, here are 5 reasons why I think you def should consider attending one of their CP Enneagram retreats.
(Btw, I'm not getting paid to say any of this...Just really want for you to see for yourself what this form of transformation is like!)
Reason #1: More than just head knowledge
You can read all the books and watch all the seminars about the various Enneagram types and growth steps, but there's nothing that beats seeing things firsthand and hearing about what each type takes away from the exact same activity or prompt.
You might conceptually know about how Heart Types (Enneagram 2s, 3s, and 4s) are image-oriented shapeshifters, but to visibly see in real time just how they shift their body language, facial expressions, tone of voice, and gestures to get people to like, admire, or understand them...that's a whole 'nother thing.
You might have heard Enneagram 6s be called "The Contrarian" or "Questioner" but might not understand why until you hear a Six say, "But why??" for the fifth time in a single conversation, constantly pushing back against what was said immediately before.
You might know that Body types (Enneagram 8s, 9s, and 1s) exist, but might not know what that really means until you hear them talk about how they respond to a new situation or decision, that they have a sense of "right or wrong" they sense instinctually in their bodies.
Even Enneagram concepts like arrows work or subtypes come to life when you visibly see them played out concretely.
How do the different Enneagram subtypes differ from each other?
What does "taming" the dominant instinct look like?
What about "nurturing" the repressed instinct?
How is the Enneagram symbol itself useful for growth?
Reason #2: Growing in the company of others
For various reasons, so many of us tend to try to heal and grow in isolation. 'Tis an overgeneralization, but this is what I've observed of the following groups:
Heart types (Enneagram 2s, 3s, 4s) tend to feel embarrassed to be exploring their inner pain and struggles in front of others and thus tend to put up an image (or not know who they actually are)
Head types (Enneagram 5s, 6s, 7s) tend to get stuck in their heads or have a hard time connecting with their own or others' emotions
Body types (Enneagram 8s, 9s, 1s) tend to influence (or be influenced) by others
Self-preservation (SP) dominant folks tend to avoid situations where they don't know what to expect
Social (SO) repressed folks tend to be mistrusting of groups
Sexual (SX) dominant folks tend to prefer 1:1 interactions
Because our Enneagram types, subtypes, and instinct sequences reveal how our defense mechanisms (which used to be helpful) eventually create problems, a lot of our present day struggles may arise precisely because of an avoidance of connections with individuals and/or groups. Therefore, reengaging connections might be the very thing to help us get out of our own mess.
We can only heal relationship wounds in relationships. We can't "just get over it" by analyzing, avoiding, ignoring, or controlling relationships.
In these retreats, you're in the company of 20-25 individuals who are there to really do the hard inner work. Inevitably, you'll bump shoulders with SOMEONE in SOME WAY during those 5 days, but might also realize that this is similar to the kinds of struggles you experience in normal life.
Consider these retreats like a safe laboratory where you can:
learn more about your own patterns and reactions
see them happening in real time (so that you might try something different)
gain feedback about your actual impact on others (and compare them to what you assumed about yourself)
receive encouragement or recommendations of what else to try
(For example, one of the other participants might have the same subtype as your mom who is so suffocating...This might be a great chance for you to do some deep healing as you interact with that participant differently than how you would with your mom.)
In normal life, you don't have any guarantees that the people you're bumping shoulders with are safe or well-intending. Precisely because people seek these retreats with the intention of truly growing beyond their respective bullshit patterns, you're in good company. What better place to try doing things differently? Sign up here!
Reason #3: Tuning into the Body Center
There's so much emphasis and bias towards Head Center experiences especially in the Western world. Those already intellectualize and also dampening their emotions or body experiences are often celebrated as "good", "mature", etc., whereas those who tend to be emotionally or energetically driven or outwardly expressive tend to be punished more severely.
In recent decades, there's been more welcoming to the Heart Center experiences, with people like Brene Brown or Susan David becoming household names. It's a great thing that there are more literature and media about Emotional Intelligence, nonviolent communication, empathy, etc. because it balances out the heady ways of life.
However, it's gonna take a long while until the Body Center experiences become just as integrated into society (the yoga & meditative movement is just the tip of the iceberg). Think about it - out of the three Centers of Intelligence (Head, Heart, and Body) how much more difficult is it to describe what exactly a Body type is?
More to come about the Body types, but in a nutshell, here are some contrasting concepts to illustrate different Centers of Intelligence:
Head - thoughts // concepts, security, certainty // fear
Heart - emotions // connections, image // shame/sadness
Body - energy // agency, action, will, justice // anger
CP Enneagram Academy's retreats provide opportunities for you to see firsthand how each of the Centers show up and how you can become more balanced in all three. You'll also witness the nature of energy that is more normal for people who are familiar with Eastern traditions that we don't often see in the Western world.
Reason #4: Collective experiences
In Reason #2 (Growing in the company of others), I talked about the growth experience that comes from literally engaging other people. There is another dimension of this too that deserves its own section.
Another limitation to the Western world is the emphasis on the individual - Life is about ME, MY, MINE, including in personal inner work. There is less of an emphasis on WE, OUR, OURS, much to our detriment. So many of society's ailments (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.) might have been averted had we been more familiar with having a collective consciousness.
As an Enneagram 4 (which is literally called the Individualist), this has been a huge blind spot of mine. I used to think that as long as I put in the work - if I read the books, attend the workshops, learn more concepts, and do the exercises), I would heal and grow. Only when I learned AMONG others in these retreats did I experience a whole new level of transformation that was impossible for me to attain on my own.
(For example, how can I move beyond my Enneagram 4 shame that says "I'm the ONLY person who struggles with this" until I hear 3-6 other people also say it's their struggle too?)
Discovering collective experiences is one thing...healing collectively is another. When ONE person heals a specific pain, OTHER PEOPLE might also heal in that area by virtue of being present in seeing that happen.
When I connected with and expressed my inner rage in a primal, gutteral scream, a ton of others in the room also unlocked something within themselves.
When I saw one woman (with whom I share very little in common) connecting with her grief in realizing how much time she lost in her reactivity -- I FELT that, too.
What does this mean? When you are present for another person's pain & healing, you might heal yours too (and vice versa). How much time, opportunities, and money could we save by sharing the healing load?
Reason #5: Limits to therapy & coaching
Obviously, as an Enneagram therapist & coach, I have a bias towards these fields. Tons of people across various types experience powerful life-changing transformations through these individualized sessions.
However, here are some of the drawbacks of therapy and coaching sessions.
Hub & Spokes
Sometimes I literally have the same conversation with 4-5 other within a week, with each person feeling like they're the only person who struggles with this or that they're going crazy. The nature of being a therapist is that everyone shares their deepest darkest secrets with me...not knowing that the person from the previous hour might have felt the same. I really wish I could connect y'all to each other!! Alas -- confidentiality is the law of the land.Unidirectional
There's an uneven distribution of vulnerability (and therefore power) between me & my clients. I know WAY more about my clients than they do about me, and that might make some people feel more nervous or embarrassed in sharing things. How much more growth could happen if y'all were to know what I'm processing too so that you know you're not alone or crazy, that I wouldn't judge you bc you know that I know what it's like!Asynchronous
People share what happened AFTER shit already hit the fan or BEFORE an important event (you can prepare for your interview all you want in session, but what will really happen when it's game time?)Expensive
As much as I believe that therapy & coaching is worth it for many people, what if you could get the same degree of work for a lot less? A 50-min session with me is $275...Weekly sessions skipping holidays & vacations might come to $12,000+ per year. A single 5-day retreat where you get SO MUCH processing done (again, also because you're healing vicariously through others' work too) is $1,500-$2,400. I don't know about y'all, but sometimes retreats might make more math sense depending on the topic.
There's def a time and place for therapy or coaching...but DO consider retreats as a great supplemental option for deeper work. Retreats don't replace therapy (in fact, Bea & Uranio would probably encourage some people to seek therapy to continue the work after these retreats), but they can definitely help heal or focus our attention on important areas that we might otherwise wander aimlessly around.
A word of caution
Now before you sign up right away, just some things to consider...
Only consider these retreats if you're NOT currently in any form of crisis (recent breakup, job loss, bereavement, psychiatric emergency, etc.). You might want to wait until your life feels somewhat steady before you dive into the depths.
Especially if you've NEVER done therapy before or come from a conservative religious background - there's a chance that what happens in these retreats might feel so out of left field, so different from your worldview, or so beyond your comfort level that you might feel overwhelmed, confused, or disoriented.
If after one of these retreats you need to process, reach out and let's do a coaching session so you can make more sense of what to do next.
It's totally okay to have lotsa feelings - sometimes that's a sign that a huge blind spot has been illuminated.
Have I convinced you enough about these retreats? Here's the link again if you're intrigued!
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
My Annual Heart Cleaning
Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes Enneagram workshops and retreats became the milestone markers of how I've healed and grown over time, as I vividly remember what I was working through each of those moments.
Every year, I'm digitally offgrid for several days at an inner work retreat with my Enneagram teachers Beatrice Chestnut & Uranio Paes, who founded the Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy.
Some of these retreats, which are a part of their Professional Certification Track & Personal Mastery Track, became the milestone markers of how I've healed and grown over time, as I vividly remember what I was working through each of those moments.
Here’s are some things I worked on at these retreats:
Recognizing my Enneagram 4 SP autopilot habits of:
Getting sucked into melancholy
Monologuing about past hurts (much like a broken record)
How I create my own suffering
Push/pull dynamics in relationships
Connecting with my physical body
Tapping into & releasing pent up rage that's actually my ally
Connecting with the flow of life, rather than trying to control everything
Since starting my Enneagram journey, my life did a total 180. I barely recognize myself from when I was younger, and now have dimples to prove it!
This is a snapshot of how I used to be:
"I AM how I feel."
The "good, easy kid"
Emotionally shut down, trying not to be a burden
Closeted queer kid who grew up in the church
MAJORLY repressed in all the ways
Withdrawn, disconnected from myself & others
Queen of RBF (Resting Bitch Face)
An intensity, drama, and complexity junky
Way too familiar with anxiety, guilt, shame (partly bc I was allergic to anger)
Depression, anxiety, panic attacks, loneliness, shame
Suffering silently & solo
...and how I am nowadays:
"I have feelings, but I'm more than my feelings."
Anger is one of many feelings that tell me what I need or want
Open, flexible, light & easy
Guilt-free rest & play as part of my normal rhythm
Open heart to receive whatever life has in store for me that day
Nurturing and pursuing my desires (rather than swinging between repression & resentment)
Mutually nourishing relationships
Having the time of my life
Here’s a video of me sharing my takeaways from a past inner work retreat.
If you're wanting to supercharge your own inner work journey (I'm specifically looking at all y'all who tend to hoard heady knowledge about personal development without actually taking action), I HIGHLY recommend CP Enneagram's personal retreats.
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Why Self-Judgment Doesn't Help But Actually Keeps You Stuck
It's so important to not judge ourselves for having done what we said we wouldn't do, or not doing what we said we would do. We can’t change by shaming ourselves.
Judging Yourself: Understandable But Not Helpful
I came across this beautiful quote by Dr. James Rouse that summarizes why it's so important to not judge ourselves for having done what we said we wouldn't do, or not doing what we said we would do:
"We cannot shame ourselves into change, we can only love ourselves into evolution."
Here is a 5-minute video that was such a needed reminder for me this week.
Well-Meaning But Misguided
You have your Enneagram autopilot patterns of thinking, feeling, and doing because this is what you needed to navigate times in your life when you were actually powerless, resourceless, and/or supportless.
The very cage that protected you from the scary, shifting outside world when you were younger actually restricts you and causes suffering when you grow bigger in size. Your body grows up and your abilities expand, but your autopilot survival mode doesn't upgrade accordingly.
Hence it's really important to be gentle with yourself that your Enneagram autopilot is still on - it's trying to help you, but with outdated information.
(Think of an employee who out of fear of being fired keeps creating problems it knows how to solve...If that person has reassurance that they're safe and okay, they might actually direct their attention and energy towards what is actually needed and beneficial and become a fantastic worker.)
Time To Grow Beyond!
If you're feeling like your approach to life just isn't working the same way for you anymore (or that it's actually creating problems), it's time for you to take the next step in taming and peeling back your autopilot (open the doors to that cage) so that you can spread your wings and explore the wondrous skies that you were always meant to enjoy.
Here are some options for next steps:
Learn more about your Enneagram autopilot through these blogs or other resources
Schedule a 1:1 Enneagram coaching session for you chart your next growth steps beyond your type
Join the waitlist for my BFF Melinda Olsen's type-specific growth groups (for 2s and 4s)
Check out one of the Enneagram inner work retreats led by my teachers Beatrice Chestnut & Uranio Paes
Wherever you are in your journey, I am so proud of you and happy that you're here. It's not an easy journey to grow beyond your patterns, but so so worth it.
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
What is Self-Referencing + Others-Referencing?
All of us have the capacity of being self-referencing or others-referencing - using ourselves and others as reference points for life, respectively. But what’s the difference between being self-referencing and being selfish, and being others-referencing and being generous? How can we grow beyond our Enneagram type by practicing both options?
What is Self-Referencing?
Self-referencing means using your own perceptions and experiences as the main - sometimes even final - reference point with which you process through things or make decisions. Other reference points (like other people's experiences or perspectives) often don't even occur - an afterthought if it occurs to them at all.
The Enneagram types most likely to do this are Types 4, 5, 7.
Enneagram 4s often get into such chaotic, push-pull dynamics is because they're basically living out a relationship with their IDEA/fantasy of someone instead of the actual person.
Enneagram 5s often take on a passive observer, gathering information of the outside world from their ivory tower within their fortress for them to then process (and come to conclusions) on their own without others' actual input.
Enneagram 7s are often focusing on pursuing pleasure/avoiding pain, and in doing so, they are often less likely to give much weight to other people's experiences.
Self-referencing ≠ selfish.
It's just that those who are self-referencing are more likely to go through life thinking that they're the main character and that everyone else is a NPC (non-playing character) or a faceless, storyless extra.
Someone can be incredibly caring of others, while still seeing life through (mostly) their own lens (ex: Self-pres 4s or Social 7s).
GROWTH TIP for Self-Referencing types:
Practice OTHERS-referencing by asking other people questions (and NOT answering for them!). Practice living as if what others are saying are true and see what happens.
What is Others-Referencing?
Others-referencing means using other people's perceptions and experiences as the main (sometimes final) reference point. Enneagram 2s, 3s, and 9s are generally others-referencing that they often have a difficult time knowing their own perspectives, opinions, wants, and needs.
Others-referencing ≠ generous.
Thinking about other people's feelings and needs does not automatically mean that someone is considering their well-being over one's own. There are instances where someone can be thinking about others as a way to fill one's own needs (Type 2s & 3s are more likely to do this by shapeshifting.)
Type 9s would think about others as a way of not thinking about themselves - this seems selfless, but more in the ego-driven sense and not the actual selfless sense. Nines need to actually reconnect with SELF.
GROWTH TIP for Others-Referencing types:
Practice SELF-referencing by NOT asking other people questions about what they think but making decisions for yourself. Notice the outcomes and your reactions.
What did you learn from that experience about yourself - your wants, needs, opinions, and values?
What about Types 1s, 6s, and 8s?
Types 1, 6, and 8 are a mix of both self-referencing and others-referencing. It depends more on their dominant instincts (see below).
How does Enneagram subtype play into self- or others-referencing?
A person's subtype (Enneagram type + dominant instinct) is likely to impact how strong someone is self- or others-referencing.
Self-preservation dominant folks are more likely to be self-referencing than other instincts of that type.
Social dominant folks are more likely to consider group dynamics, agendas, and perspectives.
Sexual dominant folks are more likely to give weight to their significant people's experiences and preferences (e.g., parents, partners, children, best friends, etc.)
Of course, we have all three instincts, so this is not a prescriptive rule, just an observation.
Part of using the Enneagram for personal growth means dialing back the dominant instinct and practicing more of the repressed instinct so that we would be more rounded out and holistic in how we see life, ourselves, and others.
Why is this important?
A car with only gas OR brake pedal is no good - it needs BOTH pedals to function to its full potential.
The goal is to have ready access to BOTH self- AND others-referencing, instead of being stuck on just one OR the other.
Wherever your Enneagram autopilot leans, take some steps this week to balance yourself out!
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
Find yours here!
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Growth Tips for Each Enneagram Type (Part II)
Read this blog for another set of growth tips for your Enneagram type.
In a previous blog, I gave one exercise for each Enneagram type to try as a way to grow BEYOND your type.
Have you tried yours?
Here's another set of growth steps.
Type 1 (The Improver)
When I'm on vacation, am I in:
Work mode - optimizing your schedule, trying to be efficient, doing what you think you "should" do, etc.
Play mode - being present with how things actually are (instead of what they SHOULD be), relaxing, and enjoying the moment
What feelings, sensations, or reactions come up when you reflect on relaxing/taking a break?
Type 2 (The Befriender)
Set aside 1-2 hours each week doing something BY yourself, FOR yourself, and WITH yourself - something that doesn't benefit anyone else but you. Some examples:
go to the library and read a book
take yourself out to a coffee shop or restaurant on a solo date
do what you used to enjoy as a kid (or always wanted to do but never got around to it)
get a massage
If these ideas sound AWFUL, what feelings, thoughts, or reactions come up? Why do you suppose that is?
Type 3 (The Achiever)
Ask 5 people from different parts of your life to describe you with 3 words.
How varied or similar are the responses? Do others see the same version of you from place to place, or do they see different versions of you? Why do you suppose that is?
Type 4 (The Individualist)
How often do you feel bored? How often do you lose interest in something or someone you've been chasing for so long and you actually manage to attain? Why do you suppose this reaction is?
Type 5 (The Observer)
How would you describe your relationships with a diagram? What are the advantages and disadvantages of this relationship setup? How does this relationship style impact your stress levels -- for better and for worse?
Type 6 (The Questionner)
When have there been moments where something terrible DID happen and that you were able to survive (maybe even excel in) that moment? How can you give yourself more credit for your STRENGTHS?
Type 7 (The Enthusiast)
What have been some ways that your pursuit of positives/downplay of negatives has led you to LESS positives and MORE negatives? How can you practice connecting with the negative side of life a bit more than before SO THAT you can have fuller, deeper access to the truly joyful things in life?
Type 8 (The Challenger)
Write down the impact you think you have on others. Ask 3 people you trust for feedback. Read the feedback when you're alone -- the point is for you to gather & sit with new information, not to react in front of others. Allow whatever reactions to come up (move your body as you need), and when you're more grounded, then use your head & heart to really consider the gravity of the content. Make 5% more room in your life to accommodate the feedback.
Type 9 (The Peacemaker)
Practice initiating hangouts with other people, rather than only waiting for someone else to initiate. It's okay for them to say no -- if so, go ask someone else!
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
Grab this free guide that shows you how to grow beyond the patterns that keep you stuck!
Don't know your Enneagram type?
© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
Growth Tips for Each Enneagram Type (Part I)
The Enneagram tells us 9 different ways of seeing and responding to life that used to be helpful coping strategies when we were younger that now keep us stuck in painful situations. Read this blog to learn two growth tips for your Enneagram type.
The Enneagram tells us 9 different ways of seeing/responding to life that USED TO be helpful coping strategies when we were younger that NOW keep us stuck in painful situations.
(If you don’t know your Enneagram type, here’s a blog to help you find it.)
Here is one quick growth tip to help you grow BEYOND your Enneagram type!
Type 1 (The Improver)
Go out in nature and observe how the trees & wildlife are imperfect AND YET are still worthy. Entertain the idea that the same might also apply to you.
Type 2 (The Befriender)
What percentage of your time this week did you spend focusing on or doing something for other people?
What's your guess as to what percentage of time non-Twos spend on others?
Go gather info - ask 3 people you know (ideally non-Twos) this question and hear what they say.
Notice the difference - What are the BENEFITS of spending less attention on others and more on themselves?
Type 3 (The Achiever)
How often have you felt the emotions of impatience or frustration this week around tasks?
What might be the BENEFITS of things moving at a different speed or way that you would like?
Type 4 (The Individualist)
(Without judging yourself) What is your guess as to the kind of impact you have on other people? (positive? negative? big? small? neutral?) Write the guess down.
Ask 3 other people this question, then compare their answer to yours. Do their answers align with yours?
If yes, what's that like having accurate self-assessment?
If no, why do you suppose their responses are so different from yours?
Type 5 (The Observer)
What's your reaction when you find out that you DON'T know something? How comfortable are you with the state of not knowing about a topic or not knowing how to do something?
Does it matter whether other people know whether you do or don't have knowledge in an area? Are there ever moments when it's okay that you don't have all the information or know-how?
Type 6 (The Questionner)
At the beginning of the day, write down what you anticipate happening in the day. At the end of the day, write down what actually happened.
Focus on the ACTUAL, not HYPOTHETICALS.
Type 7 (The Enthusiast)
When thinking about what to do over the weekend, write down 5-6 options of activities, put them in a jar, then draw one card.
Consider what else remains in the jar as irrelevant until the following weekend.
This one option is the adventure of the weekend!
Type 8 (The Challenger)
When has your reliance on your power and strength backfired?
When something goes wrong, how likely are you to assume that it must automatically be because someone else messed up?
How often do you take ownership of your own impact on the outcome or on relationships?
Type 9 (The Peacemaker)
Coin Flip - When making a decision, flip a coin. When the coin lands with its assigned outcomes, notice your immediate reaction. Did you feel relief or tension?
Relief means go with the outcome of the coin toss.
Tension/dread means go with the other option.
After you try this, leave a comment letting me know what you think! Since I only have firsthand familiarity with the ways of Type 4, I would love any feedback from those of other types!
What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?
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© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.
JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT
Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.
Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)
The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:
“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”
“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”
See how the Enneagram and genogram reveal trauma, boundaries, and generational patterns in families like the Bridgertons — and maybe yours too!