How the Enneagram Adds Dimensions to the Genogram (ft. the Bridgertons)

Your Family Tree Tapestry has Texture

Have you’ve ever looked at your family members and thought,

“How the hell are we even related?!”

If so, you’re not alone, and there’s a whole picture that show us how the pieces fit together.

Introducing the Genogram.

A genogram is like your family tree’s emotionally intelligent cousin that give us a whole lot more information than just the names of each member.

It gives us the structure, the who’s-who, the space between individuals, and the major plot points of our family stories across generations.

Here’s an example from the show FRIENDS, centered around Ross Geller (read the blog):

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At a glance, you can literally see generational patterns, roles, expectations, ripple effects of traumas, and emotional legacies.

The genogram also maps out not just people, but also patterns — conflict, closeness, trauma, cutoffs, alliances, enmeshments, and triangulations — the nature of the relationship between members of the family.

Because we’re also seeing the bird’s eye view at a glance, LACK of information is also information — for example, if there’s a ton about your mom’s side about the family but nothing about your dad’s side, this is not nothing.

Why the lack of details? Is it emotional cutoff or estrangement? Is it that your dad doesn’t have a connection with his family or that you don’t have a relationship with him?

What’s NOT present is just as informational as what is.

The Genogram reveals a ton already. But when you also throw in the Enneagram?

That’s when things get real juicy. It’s switching from black-and-white to full color, or from outline sketch to textured tapestry — so many more dimensions are evident at a glance, just by adding a few more letters.

Birth order and gender (a la genogram) matter, but they don’t guarantee certain experiences.

Each person’s own personality (a la Enneagram) play a HUGE role in how each actually interpret and react to various experiences.

This is especially evident for identical twins. (Think of Phoebe & Ursula from FRIENDS: everything is the same except for personality — and see how drastically contrasted their relationship patterns & life trajectories are!)

Personality is in the Enneagram’s wheelhouse, zhuzhing up the genogram without taking up much space on the page.

(Here are blogs about the 9 Enneagram types, 3 instincts, & 27 subtypes.)

Enter the Bridgertons: Family Roles, Public Reputations, & Internalized Responsibilities

In this blog, we’re diving into how the Enneagram reveals the emotional fabric of family dynamics — and what better example than the drama-laden, emotionally dynamic world of the Bridgertons, where we meet the picture-perfect family of 8 children, 1 widowed mama, 1 GINORMOUS estate, and WAY more expectations than anyone knows what to do with.

SPOILER ALERT: This blog covers content up to the beginning of Season 3 in the Netflix adaptation. You have been warned!

We’ll be zooming in on three characters in particular,

• Daphne (Enneagram 2, SX/SO)

• Anthony (Enneagram 1, SX/SO)

• Violet (Enneagram 2, SO/SX)

…exploring how each of them:

• Engage life in alignment with their Enneagram type

• Occupy specific roles in the family (context matters!!)

• Could benefit from some serious therapy to heal their relationships, especially with themselves.

Here’s the the Bridgerton Family Tree:

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In the eyes of the Ton, the Bridgertons are a loving family that screams unity, perfection, & class.

But behind the scenes?

Anxiety. Pressure. Comparison. Loneliness. Burnout. Grief. Resentment.

…and roles so entrenched that they’re practically titles in and of themselves:

• The Matriarch/Puppet Master (Violet)

• The Third Parent (Anthony)

• The Failure-to-Launch Backup (Benedict)

• The Carefree Kid (Colin)

• The Golden Child (Daphne)

• The Rebel/Black Sheep (Eloise)

• The Recluse (Francesca)

• The Twins/Babies (Gregory & Hyacinth)

Here’s what the Bridgerton’s genogram looks like, and how much more info it has than their family tree, especially in the space between members:

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No One’s Patterns Exist in a Vacuum

…but within a very specific social context. These roles (influenced by birth order, personality, gender roles/expectations, medical needs, trauma, etc.) reinforce each other — namely, they come as a set, fulfilling very specific emotional roles for the collective/family.

Hence, anytime there’s an addition or removal of one member (e.g., through birth, death, marriage, moves, or physical/mental health issues), the equilibrium is shaken up so that the roles may be redistributed according to who’s left. (If the Peacemaker in the family marries off and moves away, who’s going to fill that gap next?)

Each Bridgerton already had a personality leaning for certain family roles, but these roles became deeply established & entrenched especially after one major traumatic family event: the sudden death of Edmund Bridgerton, beloved husband, father, and 8th Viscount.

The Original Crisis that Solidified Family Roles

An idyllic father-son bonding time ended in a very traumatic, tragic, and disorienting shakeup for the whole family for years to come.

Watch the moment that knocked down the first domino:

Everyone in the Bridgerton family felt the gaping hole Edmund left behind.

But the tragic event’s impact is most evident in three key members who form the major family triangle:

• Daphne (Enneagram 2, SX/SO)

• Anthony (Enneagram 1, SX/SO)

• Violet (Enneagram 2, SO/SX)

Here’s the simplified genogram that reveals this triangle (green):

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Let’s set the scene & characters, shall we?

Daphne vs. Anthony:
Same Stimulus, Different Response

Birth order & gender experiences matter, but Enneagram personality (which we’re born with) matters even more in influencing how each interprets & responds to the same event.

Even if Anthony had been the second or third child, he would have still somehow become a pillar in the family because of his Enneagram type.

The direction a domino is set (NATURE) influences which way it’ll fall upon impact (NURTURE): same objective event, different subjective reactions.

Let’s first zoom in on the eldest daugther & son to see how this plays out, starting with Daphne (bc let’s be forreal — Daphne is likely to reach out to therapy long before Anthony does).

The Flawless Golden Child: Daphne
(Enneagram 2, Sexual/Social)

Poised, pretty, & practically perfect. “The Diamond of the Season” whom everyone sets as the golden standard — especially the next-in-line daughter Eloise, who considers herself a disappointment in Daphne’s shadow.

But unlike with Eloise (what we see is what we get), there’s much more happening behind the scenes with Daphne.

Behind Daphne’s halo? We find a spicy, masterful relationship engineer who skillfully shapeshifts into becoming the ultimate object of desire & envy (different spices to make herself appealing to different palates).

All Enneagram 2s (the Befriender) focus so much of their attention towards others (and away from their own inner world), intuitively sensing what makes people tick or turned on & deftly molding their relationships to their liking.

Compared to many other Enneagram types, Type Twos tend to be more romantic and idealistic, in pursuit of a love match (much like the one that Daphne’s parents enjoyed) as if that’s the #1 most important thing in life.

More specifically, Daphne is an Enneagram 2 SX/SO, meaning she has:

• a dominant Sexual (SX) instinct

• a secondary Social (SO) instinct

• a repressed Self-Preservation (SP) instinct

(Here’s more about the Enneagram instincts & subtypes.)

Here’s how this subtype shows up, compared to her mother Violet (also Enneagram 2, but different instinct sequence. More on Violet later!).

Dominant Sexual (SX) Instinct

As is the case for all Twos, Daphne's core need is to be loved, chosen, and indispensable. With her strong Sexual (SX) instinct in first place, her focus hones in on one meaningful, intimate, INTENSE connection (Hello, Simon!).

2 SXs are known to be the Queen (vs. 2 SO — the Empress, 2 SP — the Princess) who use their physical beauty, body language, and emotional dynamism to find and attract (*cough — seduce) their partner of choice.

Here’s an example of Daphne utilizing her wiles and to get the freakin’ Prince to KNEEL (Also to passive aggressively get back at Simon):

Among all the Bridgerton children, Anthony & Daphne share a particularly close bond, partly because of their positions as the Eldest son & daughter, but also because they both have a dominant Sexual instinct, which is focused on intense, 1:1 attachment with special individuals — partners, best friends, parents, kids, etc. (The SX isn’t always about sex. “Special” is the key word.)

A & D just GET each other, no words necessary. This is also why both of them form 2 corners of the triangle, their mother Violet being the third.

(Triangles (or triangulation) are the go-to relationship dynamic for those who have a loud SX instinct. More to come on this later.)

Second Social (SO) Instinct

In addition to being very vivacious & energetically dynamic, Daphne’s Social instinct prompts her to uphold a specific image, not just in the eyes of that one special person, but also in the collective: the Diamond of the Season for the Ton and the Perfect Daughter/Golden Child for her family.

Similar to the eldest son Anthony (Enneagram 1 SX/SO), Daphne is very aware of her position in the family as the eldest daughter and crown jewel of the Bridgerton household, seeking a suitable marriage match in order to:

• Alleviate the pressure on her dear brother Anthony’s shoulders

• Please her Mama

• Set a good example for her younger siblings

• Secure her family’s position in society

(Ultimately, the winning factor for her marriage is the SX value of love & romance, not particularly the SO value of duty & responsibility — that Simon is a Duke is a happy bonus, but not really the point.)

Like her mother Violet (2 SO/SX), Daphne is also a master image manager and relationship architect (i.e., meddling), but the latter isn’t as prevalent and extensive as it is for her Social-dominant mother.

Repressed Self-Preservation (SP) Instinct

Unlike Edwina Sharma (Enneagram 2 SP/SX), who takes on a very cutesy, childlike posture and is overly generous with flattery (Princess vs. Queen), Daphne is more spicy and ready to bite back at those (special) individuals who look down on her or consider her fragile (i.e., Anthony & Simon).

Her fiery Type 2 Pride + the lack of Self-Preservation guardrails leads Daphne to even LITERALLY jump into a duel (yes, with guns!!) meant to preserve her honor (because dumbass Anthony & Simon thinks she’s a helpless damsel in distress and that they’re each the valiant hero 🙄🤬).

Enneagram 2 Identity Crisis: Who Am I Now?

At the end of Season 1, Daphne becomes the family’s “success story,” the one who captures the Queen & the Ton’s attention, gets married first (to a freakin’ DUKE!), makes her Mama proud, and follows the rules…(mostly).

Even though she successfully snagged herself a titled husband by marrying Simon (4 SX/SP) in a very dramatic & emotionally turbulent way (typical for Enneagram 2 & 4 relationships), in Season 2, Daphne is confronted with a brand new problem never faced before:

• Now that she accomplished her family role, who is she now?

• Who is she when she’s no longer needed or in the spotlight in society?

• Now that she “won/conquered” Simon already and he’s focused on his business, who is she in his eyes?

Daphne built her whole identity around being desired. Wanted. Cherished. All for the sake of attaining love.

Turns out, being a wife or mother or a shiny success story doesn’t actually guarantee the feeling of love or intimacy. Though she always had this hole inside her, it’s more obvious now that she’s accomplished her Enneagram type-informed life mission.

After getting married & having a child (the first grandchild), Daphne switched gears away from the SX/1:1 focus and towards the SO/collective focus by trying to make herself indispensable in OTHER people’s lives.

Following in her mother 2 SO/SX Violet’s footsteps, Daphne injected herself into her dear brother Anthony’s love life, vetting Edwina for him (even though he never asked either of them for help) and trying to get him to pay attention to his REPRESSED AF feelings for Kate.

Mission accomplished? Yes. Anthony also gets hitched to the love of his life, making his Mama & sister’s hearts purr with delight.

…But NOW WHAT? What happens with Daphne now that Anthony too is wed? What’s her place now? Just go down the list of all the siblings that she’s not that close with? Or go back home and lean into motherhood, pining for Simon to return home from his business ventures?

Who is Daphne REALLY? *Cue existential identity struggle.

At the end of this blog, we’ll go into what Daphne might reach out to a therapist for. (Click here if you wanna fast forward to that section.)

But enough about the eldest daughter. Now’s time to zoom in on Anthony, the oldest son, the next Viscount, and the head of the Bridgerton household.

The Self-Abandoning Parentified Child: Anthony
(Enneagram 1, Sexual/Social)

When Edmund died, his mother completely collapsed under her grief, inadvertently dumping the entire weight of the whole household onto Anthony’s shoulders.

In the span of minutes, Anthony's status changed into the roles of:

• The 9th Viscount

• The head of the household

• Emotional Orphan

• Doubly Parentified Child

(How many 18-year-olds know how to handle taxes, let alone an entire estate, or lead an entire family?)

In Enneagram 1 fashion, Anthony didn’t even push back against this mantle but completely assumed responsibility on behalf of the whole family, obsessing about doing things “properly” while emotionally white-knuckling his way through his own grief and trauma.

His inner dialogue went probably like this:

Who has time for feelings? It doesn’t matter what I want. I have shit to take care of…especially because everyone else is a mess and/or completely unreliable.

(Do you hear the resentment?)

Dutiful, self-denying, workaholic, rigid, grumpy as hell…and terrified of messing it all up.

It wasn’t just because Anthony is the oldest son that he became the pillar of the family — even if he were second or third in the birth order, he would have likely ended up taking on WAY more responsibility than his share, because that’s built into the Enneagram 1 personality makeup: doing the rightful, responsible thing.

Had he been a firstborn son of another type (like Enneagram 4 or 7 — types that tend to avoid responsibility), the entire Bridgerton story would have turned out VERY differently.

(Think of eldest Featherington Prudence, whose father also suddenly died and whose family was in a more financially precarious situation, but her inclination was to do the LEAST amount of work possible and had zero problem letting other people take responsibility. She’s obviously not Type 1.)

Dominant Sexual (SX) Instinct

Like Daphne, Anthony has a dominant instinct that makes him very intense, passionate, and impulsive especially in one-on-one dynamics. This is most obvious in his relationship with mother Violet, favorite sister Daphne, and his (begrudgingly admitted) love interest Kate (Enneagram 8 SO/SX).

Unlike for Type 2s (whose type & SX instinct are in alignment), Type 1 goes the OPPOSITE direction as the SX instinct, making 1 SX into a countertype: the Type One that looks the least like Type Ones, compared to 1 SP & 1 SO.

More so than typical Type 1s, Anthony can exhibit 7ish and 4ish tendencies more readily, for better (his feelings are less repressed) and worse (his impulsive reactive tendencies spill over more).

Anthony is still (mostly) rigidly in control, but his passion and fire erupts more readily — what he thinks is to his detriment, but ultimately might be for his highest and best interest. (Thank goodness he married Kate!)

On the shadow side, the Improver energy of Type 1 gets directed OUTWARDS towards other people more than on himself, leading him to put pressure on others and and also more hypocritical than 1 SP & 1 SO would. (Daphne totally calls him out on this after she catches him & Kate in their almost-kiss.)

Secondary Social (SO) Instinct

Built into both Type One and the Social instinct are the central themes of roles, responsibilities, position, status, and influence.

Whereas Anthony’s dominant SX instinct dampens some One-ness, his secondary SO instinct reinforces it. As such, Anthony had a fairly easy time occupying the responsibility vacuum left behind by both of his parents upon his father’s death.

Social-dominant Ones are the “cool”, level-headed Ones who also become the Perfect Role Model for others to follow suit (think Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter), so Anthony tries hard to be the good older brother, the Viscount, and the head of the household, out of a fear of tarnishing the Bridgerton name and disappointing his late father.

But (as was Daphne’s case) the SX instinct still wins out over the SO instinct in his whirlwind of a love/hate romance with spinster Kate, overriding his duty-based intentions to marry her sister Edwina (the second Diamond of the Season).

Repressed Self-Preservation (SP) Instinct

Anthony’s fiery dominant SX instincts also occasionally hijack his Type One intentions because his guardrail, practical Self-Pres instinct is nowhere to be seen: his illicit hot/cold affair with Siena, being late to Daphne’s debuting first ball of the season (way to go, big brother!), and the reckless duel with Simon (that led to her sister literally getting caught in the middle).

Even though Type Ones are known for the Ready-Aim-Fire stance, Anthony occasionally accidentally FIRES first, and cleans up later. Hence, even though he’s very much a Type 1, his chaotic tendencies of swinging between extremes makes him seem very Enneagram Four-ish. (Great for TV drama!)

Enneagram 1 Emotional & Relationship Crisis:
When is it time for MY Wants & Needs?

Anthony’s resistance to admitting (let alone attending to) his wants & needs leads to him overinvolve himself in his others’ affairs — especially the firstborn daughter Daphne but also the second-in-line Benedict, regularly reminding them of their duties to support the family and set a good example for the younger siblings — while also getting resentful.

This also leads Anthony to clash with his 2 SO/SX mother Violet (who shares the same goal of marrying off the children, but for wildly different reasons — less duty, more romance — and different approaches — a more behind-the-scenes orchestration & emotional nurturing than criticism & orders).

Even though Violet finally reassumed her role in the family as Matriarch and in society as Dowager Viscountess, her emotional collapse & absence left indelible marks on the children, especially her firstborn.

Resentment simmers beneath Anthony’s stern, responsible front, especially towards his mother who both emotionally abandoned & saddled him with the dual parental role — not only is he the Big Brother & “Father”, but he’s also very “maternal” & emotionally involved.

Cold & distant is not a term to describe how Anthony shows up for ALL of his siblings, even the youngest brother Gregory despite the 16-year-age gap.

Watch Anthony’s warmth & tenderness for Gregory (in contrast to Gregory’s relationship with Violet throughout the Seasons — overlooked unless scolded for his playful pranks):

Anthony steps in, because Violet stepped back. (Another triangle!!)

This emotional backdrop of taking care of others’ at the expense of his own is what Kate Sharma steps into.

As a fellow oldest sibling + orphan + family pillar, she is the first/only person who deeply GETS him.

Part of the reason why Anthony’s passions stir out of control when she enters the scene is because her some of her Enneagram 8 SO/SX patterns of wildly defying social roles & expectations, not playing by the rules, defining her own path, and having her own one-up power stance to see him eye-to-eye (as EQUALS) shakes him out of his default overresponsible, Martyr + Savior + Protector stance. (That he doesn’t know what to do with her is good for him, even though he (love) hates it.)

For the first time in his life, someone really SEES Anthony’s grief & pain behind his strong, judgy exterior (think his panic attack triggered by Kate’s bee sting).

Anthony’s frozen trauma begin thawing, creating a messy slurry of feelings that he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with.

That he finally relents to love in marrying Kate isn’t the end of his redemption story. His healing journey continues long after they’re married and have their child.

There are a ton of things that might bring Anthony into therapy — keep reading! (Click here if you wanna jump to that section.)

Enough about the main characters of Seasons 1 & 2 (Whew!).

Now let’s focus on the third leg of the family triangle — Mama Bridgerton.

The Master Relationship Engineer: Violet
(Enneagram 2, Social/Sexual)

Even though Violet is not a main character (yet 🤞 — let’s hope she gets her own spinoff story!), she plays a MAJOR role behind-the-scenes.

Without a focus on her, we can’t fully understand Anthony or Daphne, as she is the one who singlehandedly reinforces both her eldest son & daughters’ Enneagram patterns.

Violet's grief after Edmund's death wasn’t just about loss — it was about an entire identity collapse. Her role as a wife vanished overnight.

After the initial grief shutdown (relationship losses for Enneagram 2s cut differently), she doubled down and threw herself entirely into her children’s lives, especially matchmaking. Why?

Because Social 2s derive worth from being indispensable to a group — in this case, her family and society at large. This is a much louder theme than for Daphne (2 SX/SO), who directs more energy towards 1:1 relationships.

Violet is warm and loving, but she also often blurs boundaries by injecting herself into her kids’ personal lives to feel connected with them (but then feeling hurt, bewildered, or at a loss when they push back — What to do with Eloise or Francesca?).

Her love seems generous (it’s clear she does care for her children), but it’s also a form of control and an expression of her own ego workings — about her centrality in the lives of those she loves.

Sometimes her well-meaning efforts to help leads her to inadvertently overriding her children’s experiences — most evident in the frustrations that Anthony, Daphne, Eloise, and Francesca feel & express to her.

Violet can’t fix her own grief, so she micromanages her children’s lives by engineering relationship opportunities behind the scenes with her partner-in-crime Lady Danbury (Enneagram 8 SO/SP), while still nudging them to seek romantic love above all else. (Mixed messages, much?)

Her overcompensating overinvolvement in her children’s lives puts her in a subtle power struggle with Anthony (vying for the head of household role), dragging the eldest daughter Daphne in as the battlefield and prize.

This puts all three members into a triangle deadlock in Season 1 — Daphne is triangulated into Anthony & Violet’s relationship with each other.

(In Season 2, Anthony becomes the target of Violet & Daphne’s attention, because Daphne simultaneously fulfilled her role in Violet’s eyes and initiated her own identity crisis by getting married.)

The Bridgerton Family Triangle:
Anthony, Daphne, & Violet

Here’s what the relationship between the three looks like in genogram form (the green triangle):

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Triangulation is a unhealthy but very common relationship dynamic when Party A & Party B don’t deal with each other directly and instead loop/drag in a third Party C to be the peacemaker, distraction, and/or prize. Party C serves as the pressure valve build up by A & B.

Usually the triangulated party ends up feeling controlled, burned out, and frustrated (because they’re objectified by the other two). Daphne eventually snapped back at both her mother & brother for meddling in her romantic life, feeling seen for just what she does, not for who she is/what she wants.

Had Edmund still been alive, he would likely have been the third Party between Anthony & Violet (purple triangle), since the relationship between the latter two even before his death was nowhere near as close/solid as each of their relationships with Edmund.

Triangles don’t form only from trauma or conflict — sometimes it’s just relative. The triangulated party is usually the path of least resistance.

If there were conflict between Anthony & Violet, they might have each attempted to get Edmund involved by lamenting to him rather than directly to the other party. If Edmund was emotionally mature, he would extricate himself from the triangle (detriangulate himself) and encourage them to hash things out with each other directly. But I guess we will never know…

Triangulation is a favorite dynamic especially for Enneagram 2s, but also for the Sexual instinct, as it’s the main instinct of rivalry and competition for a common prize (*cough prey).

Of these three characters’ Enneagram type & instinct setup, we have 2 Twos and 3 loud SX instincts:

• Anthony — Type 1 SX/SO

• Daphne — Type 2 SX/SO

• Violet — Type 2 SO/SX

After Daphne gets married to Simon (Enneagram 4SX/SP — that’s a whole ‘nother story of relationship drama…Double SX-dominant types + Type 2/4 combo!) at the end of Season 1, Anthony becomes the new focal point of attention in Season 2. The triangle continues, now with Daphne being the meddling one in Anthony’s love affairs.

When Anthony too finds his love match and he goes off on his honeymoon (taking off his head-of-household + parental + Viscount + older brother hats), this triangle loses steam.

Anthony’s attention is (entirely) elsewhere towards a new party D (Kate) and he (finally) gives himself permission to focus on fulfilling his own wants & needs.

Without this triangle to consume her time & energy, what is Violet Bridgerton to do next? Eloise hasn’t shown the faintest interest in finding a love match…so it must be Benedict (who’s very slippery) or Colin (who seems so confident that he might not need help?)…right?

With Anthony on his honeymoon & Daphne off to her duchy with her husband and child, Violet needs a third corner of the triangle so that she doesn’t have to think about herself & her own needs (*cue Enneagram 2 nausea 🤢).

Fortunately (?), her trusty bestie Lady Danbury (Enneagram 8 SO/SP) also has all the time in the world with no drama to keep herself entertained and no new chess pieces to maneuver.

And so another triangle is formed in Season 3…with Francesca (Enneagram 5 SX/SP), the latest Diamond of the Season….and Violet’s latest project.

The Enneagram: The Cage That Used to Protect Us that Now Keep Us Stuck

At its core, the Enneagram points to nine different themes that serve as speed-dial reactions to life’s challenges.

Each type’s patterns are coping strategies & defense mechanisms that USED to be helpful when we were actually vulnerable and without many resources and opportunities.

But as we grow up & gain more abilities, our autopilot patterns don’t always upgrade accordingly, especially when there’s trauma.

We don’t realize that we’re STUCK in one of nine patterns until our handy go-to tools just don’t work anymore, but actually start CREATING problems.

How Enneagram Patterns USED to Help

With our beloved Bridgerton trio, this is how their Enneagram types & subtypes used to help them feel secure in the wake of Edmund’s death:

• Anthony (Enneagram 1 SX/SO) — Being right, strong, competent, responsible, and in self-control gave him a sense of purpose & orientation in the midst of crisis & chaos from loss. Directing that Improver energy outwards (SX/SO) “protected” him from directing it towards himself (SP), because he might have completely shut down & collapsed alongside his unraveling mother when his family really did need someone to take charge.

• Daphne (Enneagram 2 SX/SO) — Being attractive, beautiful, pleasing, and magnetic gave her a toolbox of soft power, molding her image (and therefore her relationships) so that she can simultaneously fulfill her duty as the eldest daughter, take care of her mother & siblings, and also enjoy a romantic & emotionally fulfilling relationship like her parents did — all to avoid ever feeling unloved or alone.

• Violet (Enneagram 2 SO/SX) — Being emotionally attuned and able to discern & navigate behind-the-scenes social dynamics gave her ways of engineering/fostering relationships so that she’ll always have a place in their lives and have something to fill her broken widow heart. As an only child who yearned for connections while growing up with an emotionally cold & critical mother (Lady Ledger), Violet always dreamed having a large & actively interconnected family, with herself at the center.

How Enneagram Patterns now lead to Hurt

Unfortunately, these very entrenched patterns are the very things that prevent us from getting our true needs met.

• Anthony — Having sworn off his own wants & needs, he became more bitter, resentful, and rigid in controlling others. His inability to relax made him more judgmental of others, creating further chasms in his relationships and actually sabotaging his ability to provide for & protec the family. Because he was so (overly) responsible, his next siblings in line Benedict & Colin were able to spread their wings freely to pursue their interests without worry. They got a chance to indulge in their own desires freely, leaving Anthony feeling further alone and trapped the eldest son role & head of household responsibilities.

• Daphne — Once she accomplished her mission of getting married, Daphne lost her spotlight society as well as her identity as the Golden Child. Having also “locked” Simon into marriage, there wasn’t someone whose attention to attract anymore, meaning her soft power toolbox was becoming less and less relevant each day. Her attempt to make herself indispensable again by involving herself in Anthony’s love drama and creating a new triangle with her husband & child only bought her so much time until she was back to her identity crisis of “Who am I?”.

• Violet — Though she still has a number of children to marry off to buy herself time from also dealing with the Type 2 identity crisis, Violet was deeply shaken up to lose the Viscountess title to Anthony’s wife Kate. What happens now? Where do I even physically live? Will I still be invited to society’s balls without a title or any more children to marry off? What will I do with myself when my children no longer need me?

The Next Generation: Tectonic Shifts in Roles & Relationships

With new marriages (& new babies!), the family equilibrium has been completely shaken up — the Bridgerton family will never be the same again, and it’s time for role reconstruction.

The original triangle between Daphne, Anthony, & Violet has dissolved, and it’s TBD as to how these roles will shift or be redistributed within the now three nuclear families:

• The Bridgertons: Anthony, Kate, baby

• The Bridgertons: Violet, Benedict, Colin, … , Hyacinth

• The Bassetts: Daphne, Simon, Augie

The genograms for Before (Season 1 & 2) & After (start of Season 3):

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Before (Seasons 1 & 2): A triangle between Anthony, Violet, & Daphne, with Daphne as the main focus of Season 1 and Anthony the target of Season 2. The other children are more in the backdrop.

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After (start of Season 3): Anthony & Daphne on the periphery, Francesca the main focus of Violet & Lady Danbury’s attention. Violet has generally been more focused on her daughters and less involved in the lives of her other sons — Benedict & Colin. The youngest — Gregory & Hyacinth — are also rarely the focus of her attention.

As Anthony & Daphne fade more into the background of the extended Bridgerton family as they direct their attention & energy towards their new nuclear family with their partner & child, forming new triangles.

Here are Anthony & Daphne’s genograms with their partners & child:

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Start of Season 2: Daphne (Enneagram 2 SX/SO) with Simon (4 SX/SP) who has a turbulent triangle in his own family of origin (red) with his cruel father and Lady Danbury — who steps in as his godmother after his mother dies in childbirth).

As is common for double SX-dominant couples and also Enneagram 2 & 4 combos, Daphne’s relationship with Simon is very emotionally intense and wild. Since Simon also has some childhood attachment trauma and previously vowed to never have children, it’s TBD how his relationship with his own child August (and by extension his connection with Daphne both as a partner & coparent) will be.

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Start of Season 3: Anthony (Enneagram 1 SX/SO) & Kate (8 SO/SX) have a very vibrant, thriving relationship that’s based on several factors: both have common experiences being the responsible, firstborn pillar of the family, have very strong one-up personalities (good equal power dynamic), and similar instinct stacking (both SP-repressed).

Anthony has a lot of complex trauma wounds to heal, but his relationship with Kate and their soon-to-be born child might be very healing as he learns to rest, play, and rely on others again.

Btw, not all triangles are bad — usually new parents naturally form one with their firstborn or only child. The issue isn’t that there’s a triangle, but that sometimes there’s a rigidity & lack of flexibility when new members enter the scene or when two parties insist on not working out their issues directly and overrely on the third party as a go-between.

With Anthony & Daphne (the two corners of the original triangle) fade away, Violet forms a new triangle (pink) with Lady Danbury, both double-teaming on matchmaking for Francesca.

(Try as she might, Violet has been unsuccessful in locking down Eloise as her new project.)

WOOHOO, Congrats!! You finally made it to the final stretch:

 

Time to Heal, Adjust, & Grow:
The Bridgertons in Therapy

Let’s pretend for a second that the Bridgertons lived in present day, and that they were self-aware enough to realize that they got some deep inner work to do.

Here are the kinds of things each of them might reach out to a therapist for:

Daphne (Enneagram 2 SX/SO)

Relationship Crisis:

• Loneliness, difficulty with solitude: Why does Simon work so much? Does he love me?

• Push-pull & hot/cold dynamic: Why won’t he just tell me how he feels?? He keeps avoiding me…Does he love me?

• Overinvolvement in others’ lives, managing others’ relationships: Why isn’t he involved more in Augie’s life? Doesn’t he love Augie?

• Resentment about tasks: Why isn’t he helping more with Augie?

• Relationship Anxiety: Will my family love me even when I’m not the Diamond?

• Resentment about connection: Why do I have to always be the one visiting them??

• Emotional dependence: Why am I so needy? Why can’t I just be okay being by myself?

Identity Crisis:

• Who am I if I’m not the Golden Child or in the spotlight?

• Who am I outside of my relationships?

• I should be happy now that I have the relationships I want. Why do I keep feeling this way?

Anthony (Enneagram 1 Sx/SO)

Emotional Crisis:

• Panic attacks, especially around bees

• Dissociation — being checked out

• Workaholic tendencies: working more than resting/playing, feeling guilty for not being productive

• Irritability, annoyance, impatience, resentment

• Moodiness, especially around the anniversary of Father’s death

Relationship Crisis:

• Unfamiliarity with new power dynamic of being with an equal (Kate): She’s very self-sufficient and capable…I’m not sure how I’m supposed to interact with her or make decisions together…

• Counterdependency: Difficulty letting other people care for him eceiving care

• Codependency: Taking care of others’ needs that they can/should take care of themselves

• Learning that control ≠ love, vulnerability ≠ weak

• Repairing his relationship with his mother

• Being equals with his siblings, who don’t need him the same way

Violet (Enneagram 2 SO/SX)

Emotional Crisis

• The house feels so empty…Will my children visit me?

• Grief: I miss Edmund…

• Loneliness: I miss having a partner. Who will love me for me?

Relationship Crisis:

• Where do I belong in society now that I’m no longer Viscountess? Will I be forgotten?

• Power dynamic shift: How do I handle my daughter-in-law being the decision maker in the house?

• Relationship shift: How do I interact with my all-grown children now? I don’t know what to talk about rather than their kids or relationships…What’s okay and not okay for me to do?

• Desire: What do I do with my blooming garden?

• Boundaries: Why don’t my children want my advice on how to be a parent? Why can’t I see my grandchildren more?

Identity/Existential Crisis:

• Impending Empty Nest Syndrome:

  • Who am I now that everyone else doesn’t need me and is living their own lives?

  • What do I do with all this time?

• Second Act:

  • What will the rest of my life look like?

  • Who do I want to be?

  • Who do I want to be with?

Seeing the Bigger Family Picture in 4D — Past, Present, & Future

Here’s the recap on what we explored in this blog:

• Genograms show us the structure of the family: the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, and HOW.

  • Significant events — traumas, immigration, addictions, etc.

  • Family roles & dynamics — triangulations, boundary issues, emotional cutoffs, etc.

  • Generational patterns — titles, socioeconomic/class issues, gender roles & expectations, etc.

  • The genogram is a cross section of the family at a specific point in time, and will change as time passes with births, deaths, marriages, estrangements, etc.

• The Enneagram shows us the texture of the family fabric: the WHY each person does what they do.

  • Central themes or values — intimacy, identity, responsibility, freedom, harmony, etc.

  • Defense mechanisms, go-to reactionary patterns that used to help but lead to self-sabotage later

  • Difficulty with certain roles & responsibilities, individuation or setting boundaries, etc.

  • Stuck points & areas of healing/growth

You’ll get a ton of mileage from using a genogram to better understand how each person in your family has come to be where y’all are today (past ‘til present).

Add to the mix the Enneagram, and you get an insiders’ look into powerful yet invisible forces within each person (that drive us to do all kinds of crazy things) so that you can:

• Deepen your understanding & empathy for yourself & others

• Map out your next growth steps so you can break generational curses and create new generational blessings

None of us live in a vacuum. Part of the reason why it’s sometimes so hard to change is because our relationship context remains the same.

You gotta change individual issues individually, and systemic issues systemically.

The genogram shows you the systemic context. The Enneagram shows you your specific individual work.

Start Mapping Your Outer & Inner Worlds

Your patterns didn’t start with you — and they don’t have to end with you either. Learn more about your social context (genogram) and/or your inner motivational engine (Enneagram)!

Genogram

Enneagram

---

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!

What are your emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

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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 Brainspotting can Strengthen Your Relationships

Healing Unresolved Emotions can Improve Relationships

Human connections are the heart of our lives — offering some of our greatest insights, intimacy, growth, and joy.

But they can also be sources of our deepest pain, confusion, and conflict, especially when past wounds, unresolved emotions, or trauma subtly leak out out from our subterranean subconscious parts, warping the way we interpret new situations and respond to our loved ones.

Especially for people who feel deeply — Empaths, Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs), and those with strong emotional intuitions like Enneagram Twos and Enneagram Fours — these relationship dynamics can be even more intense and all-consuming.

Fortunately, our amazing bodies come with inherent ways of healing itself. One such approach that has actually been created as a therapy approach is called Brainspotting, a trauma therapy approach that emerged from EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization & Reprocessing).

Read more about what Brainspotting is or how Brainspotting works, so we can get to the juicy stuff about relationships here!

When Past Relationship Trauma Wounds Spill Over into the Present

Most people who reach out to me for therapy do so less to work on past traumas (especially from childhood), but because a CURRENT relationship is in crisis:

• They can’t shake off the feeling that their current partner is cheating on them like their exes did, even though the partner has been nothing but present, truthful, and supportive.

• They have intense reactions when their 2-year-old throws food onto the floor, and they’re so so frustrated but also don’t want to blow up on their kid for doing what 2-year-olds do

• They feel constantly overlooked at work, but also don’t have the confidence to actually speak up for themselves for fear of criticism or judgment

• They have a hard time opening up to others because they’re waiting for the shoe to drop and be abandoned by others or assume that every gift comes with strings attached

The likelihood that these reactions are based on old relationships and experiences are very very VERY high.

The pickle is when people KNOW they have old trauma to work with because they read all the books and even did therapy before, but they still have no idea how to actually move on or deal with their feelings (like Whack-a-Mole).

Even if you intellectually "know" something isn’t a threat anymore, your nervous system may still react as if it is.

This leads to emotional triggers in relationships. A partner’s raised voice, a delayed text, or a perceived rejection might set off old buried memories or emotions you’re not consciously aware of.

You may lash out, shut down, over-apologize, or spiral into anxiety — not because of what’s happening in the present moment, but because of the ghosts of unprocessed past experiences that are still reverberating in your nervous system.

Namely, your body brain can’t tell the difference between the past and present.

Brainspotting Heals Old Wounds and Clears Outdated Messages about Life & Love

For better or for worse, when intense feelings “leak out” (i.e., we get triggered), we have a window of opportunity to excavate those deeply buried memories (think of the colored core memory orbs in the movie Inside Out) that we don’t have conscious awareness of.

Brainspotting Therapy helps access and clear out those echoes by giving the brain space to process what it couldn’t before. It bypasses the analytical, thinking brain (top-brain) and goes straight to the root — the mammal/emotional mid-brain and lizard/reflexive root brain.

Brainspotting helps us locate those buried orbs, release the emotional charge, reconfigure those memories, and reorganize where those newly processed memories are stored.

By the end of the movie Inside Out, those intense, simplistic single-colored orbs (preprocessed memories) become more nuanced and complex multi-colored orbs (processed, integrated memories) that are much more useful in helping us navigate new experiences with greater wisdom and emotional balance.

It’s hard to describe Brainspotting because it can be such a body-based, nonverbal, primal experience, but here’s a blog that explains how Brainspotting actually works.

…or sometimes it’s easier to just try it for yourself. Actually, if you’re an Enneagram 4 or Highly Sensitive Person, you might already accidentally be doing Brainspotting yourself out of just sheer intuition.

How Brainspotting Helps Relationships

So how does healing old painful experiences actually translate into better, healthier, deeper relationships?

1. Healing Attachment Wounds

Most relationship struggles are rooted in early attachment patterns. If your caregivers were inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, overly controlling, or unpredictable, you may develop anxious, avoidant, or disorganized attachment styles.

These styles often play out in adult relationships—creating cycles of clinginess, withdrawal, fear of abandonment, difficulty with trust, or a strong need to "fix" others.

The Enneagram — a personality framework that I also specialize in — speaks to 9 different ways of seeing and responding to life experiences, including how we relate to other people. The Enneagram speaks to WHY we do what we do — our core needs, fears, and interpretations of life.

Think of the Enneagram revealing those painful muscle knots that put your whole body out of alignment and created other issues, and Brainspotting being the deep tissue massage to “work out” those knots so that you can gain full access to your whole body again.

Brainspotting does this “massage” by:

• Uncovering and processing childhood attachment wounds from our deeper brains

• Recalibrating our nervous systems to feel safe and steady again

• Reorienting our views on life and relationships

• Helping us bring our healing wins into daily experiences, so that you can actually access the hard won peace and courage

When you resolve your old ghosts of past wounds, you’re able to be present, see life, yourself, and others clearly for what they are, and to respond accordingly with all of your internal resources and strengths.

Instead of being bogged down by familiar fears, you’d have more clarity and boldness to fully show up in all areas of your life, including your relationships with loved ones!

2. Reducing Emotional Reactivity

Whether you like it or not, relationships are emotional mirrors. We’re constantly being triggered by others, often in ways that seem disproportionate.

• A simple disagreement can feel like a betrayal.

• A missed call can ignite panic or shame.

These reactions are signals that unprocessed emotions are driving the bus and that we need to resolve them sooner than later, lest they make hard things WORSE or even create MORE problems.

Because Brainspotting allows deep emotional processing without needing to "talk it all out", it helps:

• Reduce intensity and frequency of emotional triggers

• Soften trauma responses like fight, flight, freeze, or fawn

• Increase emotional regulation and self-awareness

(Actually, did you know that you can do Brainspotting without ever saying a single word? The therapist doesn’t even need to know what exactly you’re processing, so it’s great for those mortifying memories that you feel deep shame around!)

What would happen if you were to buy yourself even 1-2 more seconds to slow your reactive roll? It might not seem like much, but even those few seconds might be the guardrails preventing you from sending that vitriolic email to your partner or boss.

What would it be like for you to feel like you’re in SELF-CONTROL, not OTHERS-CONTROLLED or OTHERS-CONTROLLING? How would your life be different if you led with calm wisdom, not chaotic panic?

3. Clearing OUTDATED, Unconscious Beliefs About Love, Worth, & Belonging

A lot of people I work with carry deep-seated beliefs like:

• "I’m TOO MUCH."

• "I’ll be abandoned if I express what I need."

• "Love has to be EARNED."

• "Conflict means rejection."

These beliefs aren’t just mental — they actually live in the body in the form of emotional reactivity. Brainspotting brings these belief/feeling capsules up to the surface so we can dispel their power.

Doing this creates an opportunity for you to bring in more realistic and healthier beliefs, such as:

• "I can be fully myself and still be loved."

• "My needs matter, independently of whether others can meet them."

• "I don’t have to fix others to be worthy."

These internal shifts radically change how you can show up in your relationships. Even switching from an extremist, all-or-nothing perspective to a more nuanced one can do WONDERS in helping you navigate through different situations in your personal and professional relationships.

4. Improving Communication and Intimacy

When you're not overwhelmed by unresolved emotion or unconscious fear, you're more able to:

• Speak your truth without wilting in shame or aggressively blaming

• Hear others without getting defensive or flooded

• Be vulnerable without shutting down

• Set boundaries without guilt (this is a tough one, but you can do it!)

Not only does Brainspotting help you resolve painful experiences, but it can also help you access positive internal resources like peace, courage, and wisdom.

Because of this, Brainspotting strengthens your internal capacity to stay present and steady during difficult conversations or emotional moments, which expands your horizons as to what’s possible in your relationships: deeper intimacy, clarity, and mutual understanding — all without sacrificing yourself.

5. Reconnecting With Your Authentic Self

At its core, Brainspotting (and the Enneagram) isn’t just about healing trauma; it’s about coming home to yourself — your TRUE self.

When you clear out all the mental cobwebs and emotional clutter, you're able to reconnect with your inherent compassion, creativity, and wisdom.

This authentic self is the foundation of all healthy relationships, because you can’t have a relationship between two fragmented people.

Relationship math isn’t 1/4 + 3/4 = 1, but 1 + 1 = 1.

A WHOLE self with another WHOLE self creates a WHOLE relationship.

When both parties are free to be yourselves without the need to perform, people-please, or self-abandon, you can create vibrant, sustainable relationships that are resilient and immune to things like burnout or resentment.

In this way, Brainspotting supports not just relationship repair — but relationship revitalization. You’re no longer relating from old patterns, but from a place of wholeness, with endless possibilities of fulfilling experiences that help both of you feel seen, known, and loved — FULLY.

Why Brainspotting Works So Well for Highly Sensitive People, Empaths, and Enneagram 2s & 4s.

For sensitive folks, traditional talk therapy can sometimes feel overwhelming, too surface-level, or too embarrassing (“Ahhhh — I don’t want someone else to see me like this!! What will the therapist think of me?”).

Another trap is that sometimes sensitive people mistake introspection with processing or resolution. You may understand your patterns intellectually but still feel stuck emotionally. Just because you have a LOT of feelings doesn’t mean you’re actually processing them!

Brainspotting honors your depth, while also making room for your WHOLE brain — thinking, feeling, and being. It doesn’t ask you to explain or rationalize your pain. Instead, it invites you to feel whatever comes up, notice it in your body, and release it in a safe, contained way.

It meets you where you live—in the emotional, sensory, intuitive spaces of the body and soul. So many of my clients who also have a very rich imaginary or spiritual inner world can easily weave them into their Brainspotting session!

There’s no one right way of doing Brainspotting, so the pressure’s off — give yourself permission to do feelings the way that works best for you & your sensitivity without getting lost in the depths! As the person sitting in the boat, the Brainspotting therapist can help pull you out when it’s time.

How to Start Brainspotting

If you're curious about trying Brainspotting to improve your relationships, here’s how to begin:

• Find a Brainspotting practitioner in your state: Look for someone with training in trauma-informed care and relationship dynamics. If you’re in California, here are some fabulous Brainspotting therapists!

• Clarify your intention: You don’t need to have it all figured out — just bring a specific emotional issue or pattern you’d like to work on. (If even that’s unclear, you can even say something like, “I don’t know why, but I just feel…’OFF’. Like there’s a fog around my head.” You’ll be surprised what Brainspotting can work with!

• Stay open: Let your body lead. You may cry, yawn, feel sensations, or just be still. All responses are valid, and none of it needs to make sense (remember, we’re not using the analytical top-brain, but the dream-like emotional and lizard brains!).

• Practice integration: After sessions, give yourself time to rest, reflect, and journal if needed. The work continues unfolding even after you leave the session, so if you have some more involved dreams afterwards, no problem — let your body continue to metabolize.

Brainspotting to Repair Your Relationship with Yourself First, then with Others

At its core, Brainspotting helps you heal the parts of yourself that were hurt in relationship and went into hiding (in Internal Family Systems, we call these the “Exiles”)— so you can thrive in connection with others.

By accessing the body’s wisdom, clearing out emotional blocks, and soothing your nervous system, Brainspotting helps you become more present, resilient, and open-hearted. You don’t have to stay stuck in old patterns or reactive cycles. Healing is totally possible.

That scary moment or relationship doesn’t have to hold you back anymore — instead, you can use your hard earned wisdom as a way to create the kind of relationship that has enough room for you and your needs, too.

With that healing comes a powerful ripple effect: deeper intimacy, healthier boundaries, more honest communication—and a profound return to love, both for yourself and for others.

Ready to Help Your Heart Heal?

---

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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

Loading...

Woo hoo!!

Check your inbox for your free gift guide,

"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© 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

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!!

How Different Enneagram Type Really Feels About Their Birthdays

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:

1. 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.

2. Enneagram 5s might prefer to keep it low-key (maybe to even sleep in) rather than having to interact with other peopel

3. Nines generally feel uncomfortable being the center of attention (though they feel hurt when they're ignored or not included)

4. Self-preservation 1s might be so obsessed in noticing their imperfections that they have a hard time acknowledging that they, too, are good.

5. 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:

1. 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.

2. Enneagram 5s might prefer to keep it low-key (maybe to even sleep in) rather than having to interact with other peopel

3. Nines generally feel uncomfortable being the center of attention (though they feel hurt when they're ignored or not included)

4. Self-preservation 1s might be so obsessed in noticing their imperfections that they have a hard time acknowledging that they, too, are good.

5. 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!

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(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!)

What is Your Relationship Model?

It's a recent discovery that I LOVE hosting and connecting people with each other. I don't care so much that people would come to see ME...I LOVE helping people connect deeply with themselves and others. 

Given that the vast majority of my life as an Enneagram 4, I struggled with feeling like I'm always on the outside looking in, this is quite the plot twist.

The main reason why I was able to make this internal shift was realizing what my default relationship model was that was getting me into trouble a whole lot of the time.

Before I explain the different relationship habits of Enneagram instincts, here's a question for you:

If an image or object illustrates what relationship model you have, what would it be?

Here are at least 10 different options (pick 1-2 that most stand out!): 

Hub & Spokes - this was my default! 

You have many 1:1 relationships with others, but don't like when those "spokes" connect with each other directly. You often find yourself controlling/being triangulated in other people's relationship with each other. Each relationship is individual - everyone is so different, hence each relationship is so different, hence there really isn't any basis of comparison between one person and the next.

Silos/Towers

You compartmentalize each arena of your life. Each of these silos operate independently of each other. What happens (positively/negatively) in one arena doesn't have any impact on another.

Concentric Circles - Spouse's Default

You have "tiers" of people who have the same kind of access to you depending on what "level" they're in. There's not a whole lot of focus on individuals within each tier, just the tiers themselves. You also want people within each tier to get to know each other so that no one is left out (interacting with 2+ people across tiers feels weird so you go with the lowest common denominator). You tend to take on a "role" in these tiers and stand out more than being a belonging member.

Spiderweb - Work Wife's Default

The opposite of Hub & Spokes; you like the interconnection between different relationships (and often like being the one to connect someone from one area of your life with another elsewhere). There is more fluid movement between your relationships. Still, you prefer that two of your people don't get closer to each other than they are to you.

Dumbbell

You (overly) attach to ONE person and to NO ONE ELSE. This chosen person is your EVERYTHING. You also expect for them to see you the same way. Often, there is way too much pressure put on the other party. This is often the source of conflict, which gets the person to sometimes double down on the overexclusive reliance on the partner until maybe the relationship falls apart.

Electrons

Your connections with people are fleeting and ever-changing. There's a lot of energy and excitement, but not enough stability and consistency. It's super fun and engaging, but hard to sustain. It's hard to tell who's close to you because of the shifting connections. Everyone comes and goes, and there's not a whole lot of attachment to any particular person.

Fortress

Everyone is seen as a threat, invader, or enemy - no one is exempt. Relationships are barely existent except as a trade agreement (give-to-get) - whatever connections do exist tend to be incredibly utilitarian or transactional. Other people need to repeatedly demonstrate that they're trustworthy, but one strike/they're out.

Fog

It's hard to tell what connections are because it's not clear where you begin and the other person ends. There's little to no definition in the relationship -- are you close? not? Together? not? Exclusive? not? There's not a lot of movement that happens in these relationships because there's a lack of substance or definition. There's just floating...forever.

Host/Parasite

One person (the host) carries the majority/entirety of the relationship responsibilities, and the other is a moocher (the parasite) that sucks the host dry (after which, they just find another prey).

The host doesn't value oneself much and allows the parasite to exploit them because the former doesn't know a life without parasites - it's so unfamiliar that a parasite-free life seems scary...

When the host does try to knock off the parasite, the parasite fights back even harder (for them it feels like life-or-death) until the host just gives up and submits. In order for this relationship to "die", the host needs an entire transformation of their life circumstances and environment - once rid of pests, they cannot go back to old habits lest they be reinfested.

Symbiotic/Interdependent

Unlike the one-sided parasitic relationship, symbiotic relationships are ones that are mutually beneficial. Each party has their own strength that covers for another's weakness. They're DIFFERENT but EQUAL - neither is inherently good or bad. They can coexist without any competition or comparison - there is room for both of their needs.

In true interdependence, you recognize that some needs are meant to be met by you, some by others, some by either, and some by both. There's flexibility in meeting your needs - if for some reason the other person isn't available, you can still find some ways to get your needs met. Consequently, there's not a lot of pressure buildup in one specific relationship, and there's an opening up to other options.

Which of the ten do you resonate with? Would you add any?

• Why do you suppose you gravitate to this model? What BENEFIT do you get? How does it LIMIT/COST you?

• What's one thing you can do to soften your default option? What other models seem within your stretch zone so that you have more options?

The Relationship Habits of Dominant Instincts

Each of the human survival instincts - Self-preservation (SP), Social (SO), and Sexual (SX) - have their respective bias towards certain relationship habits.

This is what it looks like when each instinct is DOMINANT (i.e., it's showing up WAY MORE than it's supposed to and needs to be DIALED BACK):

Self-Preservation (SP) dominant instinct

• Themes: safety, security, control, predictability, order

• More guarded, rigid, controlling

• Hard for other people to read and/or connect with

• More connected to oneself than to others

• Favorite models: Hub & Spokes, Silos/Towers, Fortress, Fog, Parasite 

Social (SO) dominant instinct

• Themes: status, image, influence, power, privilege, hierarchy, belonging 

• More diffuse, no single person is "it"

• Close to the group as a whole but not to individuals; breadth > depth

• More connected to the group's needs than to one's own interests/needs 

• Favorite models: Concentric Circles, Spiderweb, Electrons, Fog, Host

Sexual (SX) dominant instinct

• Themes: chosenness, specialness, intensity, exclusivity, intimacy, passion, competition, rivalry, dominion

• Depth/intensity trumps everything else

• Underly AND overly boundaried - fused/merged with chosen others, excluding everyone else 

• Rivalry/competition, being the special "-est" one (best, prettiest, smartest, richest, wealthiest, etc.)

• More connected to chosen others than to self - lose oneself in the other 

• Favorite models: Hub & Spokes, Silos, Spiderweb, Dumbbell, Parasite/Host

TAME the Dominant Instinct,
NURTURE the Repressed

Don't know if you noticed...none of the dominant instincts lists Relationship Model #10 (Symbiotic/Interdependent). This is because this model happens when all three instincts (Self-pres, Social, and Sexual) are in BALANCE and HARMONY with each other. There is a balance between self (Self-pres) and others (Social / Sexual). 

There's also flexibility and fluidity in shifting between meeting your needs by yourself (Self-preservation), from others in general or groups (Social), or from chosen others (Sexual).

There's a ton of LIFE-GIVING things that happen when our instincts are in balance/harmony, a shit ton of CHAOS that happens when they're out of alignment.

The dominant instinct is one that goes on OVERDRIVE and needs to be TAMED. If your dominant instinct is any of these, these patterns need to be reined in (partially by trying out models that are less familiar).

If any of these instincts are your REPRESSED (i.e., you UNDERLY summon this side of you), you actually need to do these experiences MORE so that you're more balanced (you might be out of alignment right now). Whichever instinct (SP, SO, or SX) you have a visceral *throw up* or judgmental reaction to -- that's your growth edge.

(Part of the reason you might be intensely judgmental towards other people *might* be because this is in your shadow and you're PROJECTING. Maybe they're good at what you abhor. The solution is for you to do what THOSE PEOPLE do ON PURPOSE.)

The Crucible for Growth

For better and for worse, the people who are in your vicinity will challenge your relationship model, especially when you hold a pattern that functions exactly in the opposite way as theirs.

My default pattern used to be Hubs & Spokes, until I just butted heads so often with my spouse (Concentric Circles) + work wife (Spiderweb) that I learned to do what they do and vice versa.

We three are better for this expansion of models, since it's like we each learned another language or two on top of our native tongue. Life is smoother, there's less reactivity all around, and there's more time nurturing our connection with ourselves and each other. 

The people closest to you might drive you crazy, but it might not be THEM that's causing troubles for you. They may just be revealing YOUR growth edge. How do you know? Try doing what they do on purpose, then see what new riches you gain from growing beyond your autopilot and gaining access to life that was once unfathomable to you.

Next Steps for True Interdependence

What is ONE thing you will do this week regarding your relationships to either:

1. Dial back the dominant instinct (do LESS)?

2. Summon the repressed instinct (do MORE)?

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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

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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 to Set Boundaries over the Holidays

"I KNOW I need to set boundaries, but I CAN'T."

This is what I hear often when I'm working with people who learned how to people please, placate, and repress their own feelings/needs to survive their significant relationships. All of these are examples of "FAWN" responses (in addition to FIGHT, FLIGHT, and FREEZE) to (even anticipated) scary or risky situations.

Why the resistance to setting boundaries? Here are some reasons:

• I don't know how.

• I feel guilty/bad. (BTW - "bad" is not a feeling, but you get the idea)

• I don't want to because it's too scary.

• I don't want to because I don't think I'm worth it.

• I don't want to make them mad.

The majority of the people I work with have some strained relationship with family members. Unlike friends, whom you can choose or leave at will, family is what you're born into without any say.

As the holiday season rolls around (and also around family holidays like Mother's Day or Father's Day), old wounds are poked, stirring up feelings of anxiety, guilt, overwhelm, shame, irritation, resentment, etc.

Even relatively healthy relationships with family might stir up stress as people navigate spoken or unspoken expectations, travel plans, financial strain, and limited time.

Questions to prepare for the holidays

If you're feeling DREAD around seeing some people over the holidays, consider up front:

How can you keep from overextending yourself?

What are your realistic limits in terms of mental, emotional, physical, or financial energy? How can you build more down time into your schedule?

During the harder times of the year, plan to do 70% of what you usually do so that you have a greater buffer. Operating at the full 100% makes it so that any extra pain starts depleting the resources you need to just get by a “normal” week.

When things are harder, make it EASIER on yourself. DO NOT TRY TO TOUGH IT OUT - YOU’VE ALREADY DEALT WITH PLENTY OF SHIT.

Who are some people who drain energy?

What's the maximum amount of time you can hang around someone without becoming reactive?

PRO TIP: Schedule 1-2 hours with that person and schedule something ELSE at the end of that time period.

Give the person a head's up that you have something afterwards ("I have other things I gotta do while I'm here" or "I have other people I need to also meet up with"), and when time's up, say "I gotta go!"

How can YOU initiate an activity?

You might have some people you’re not super excited to see but feel like you HAVE to (like a nagging relative who keeps saying, “Why don’t we ever see you?”).

They keep reaching out to you, and you feel like you have to either maneuver your way out of that invite (and feel guilty) or endure that experience (and feel trapped, anxious, and ashamed).

PRO TIP: Sometimes, if YOU initiate an activity you feel better or safer about (bowling, watching a sports game, or shopping), then THEY would be in a position to say yes or no. If they say yes, it’s at least on YOUR terms and timeline. If no, oh well! At least you tried.

Who are people you need to steer clear of completely?

Or hang out only in public spaces? Or only when other people are around?

Don’t force yourself to hang out with them. You don’t owe anyone your time, energy, or sanity.

Let them throw a tantrum or get upset. You’re not the asshole for not making their drama your drama.

Who keeps asking inappropriate or uncomfortable questions?

Some people are freakin nosy, digging for deets about whether/who you're dating, whether/when you'll have kids, how much money you're making, etc.

PRO TIP: Pick some neutral/shallow topics you can purposefully redirect the conversation to. Not everyone deserves to have access to you. YOU get to choose - not letting others into your life does NOT make you a bad person.

Who are some safe people who can care for you?

Who can you ask keep you company during those scarier situations?

Who can help you decompress afterwards?

Here’s a blog that describes who’s a safe vs. unsafe person.

PRO TIP: Ask one of them ahead of time to call you with some urgent matter partway through if you need an out of an unpleasant meetup.

If you’re feeling guilty

Obviously, some of these things I'm encouraging you isn’t 100% ethical. Save your ethics and morality for situations where you actually have SAFETY and FREEDOM - not when you're pressured, bullied, or guilt-tripped.

When you're dealing with unhealthy, manipulative people, you do NOT need to expose yourself to being exploited or hurt again. YOU ARE NOT A BAD PERSON FOR KEEPING YOURSELF SAFE.

If you’re playing a game where the other parties keep cheating or changing the rules, there’s no fair play. No need to follow the rules; you may stop playing the game altogether.

To butcher a Henry Cloud quote: If you set boundaries and the other person gets mad, it's NOT a sign that you're doing something WRONG. In fact, it's CONFIRMATION that boundaries were necessary in the first place, because this person has been benefitting at your expense this whole time. 

MAD: The Emotion of Boundaries

ANGER is a good self-protecting and self-honoring emotion right about now. Not all anger is bad, and not all love is good. The healthy versions of both create relationships where there's enough room for BOTH parties, not just one at the other's expense.

If you're wanting to know more about the HOW-TOs of boundary setting and assertiveness, check out the following:

• A blog I wrote about Radical Candor (from Kim Scott's book).

• An interview I had about toxic relationships

• A blog about assertiveness

• A blog about resentment

• A blog about safe people (from Henry Cloud and John Townsend's book)

• These Instagram posts about anger (bio page > “MAD” highlights)

I’m really rooting for you. Hang in there.

After this season is over, I encourage you to use the non-holiday months next year to build towards a year-end time that suits and honors you. Perhaps it might be time for you to find yourself a therapist.

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Do your BIG Feelings always TAKE OVER, ruining important moments or derailing your goals?

Grab this free guide that helps you handle feelings like a pro when they show up at the "wrong place" or "wrong time"!

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© Copyright 2022 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!”

Counterdependence: Why It's Hard to Ask for Help (and How to Heal)

Sooooo…I hit a deer. Actually, the deer hit me when he and his buddies just ran out from the trees onto the single lane I was driving. 

(I’m fine, the deer’s fine, but my bumper is not.) 

I put it in the shop to learn that, no, it’s not a single day job, and I gotta either be carless or take a rental.

Do I pay for a rental to just to commute to work, do I share my partner’s car, or do I ask for rides?  

Here’s the (main) problem - I HATE asking for help.

…and so do a lot of the people I work with. 

The reasons are plentiful:

• “I don’t want to burden anyone.”

• “I don’t want to rely on anyone.”

• “I want to do it all.”

• “I don’t need anybody.”

• “I don’t deserve it.”

• “I haven’t done anything to earn it.”

• “What are they going to ask me in return?“

• “I don’t know what I need.”

Obsessed with DIY

I live in a country that values independence to the point of even having a holiday for it. Rugged individualism, bootstrapping mentality, and strength without vulnerability are the treasured values here in the United States, and especially in the Silicon Valley.

Those who can’t do things for themselves are seen as weak, lesser, and immature. It’s as if it’s a crime to even have needs, let alone share them with others.

This is NOT being independent, but really counterdependent - being averse to needing anyone else. 

Independence and dependence are neutral; they are neither inherently good or bad, but both are essential aspects of being human. There are some things we ought to do for ourselves, some things we ought to do for each other, and some things where it doesn’t really matter who does it, as long as it’s done.

(BTW, when someone overly does something for another that the latter ought to do for themselves, that’s codependent.) 

Every human being is worthy of living in a smooth rhythm between dependence and independence. No one is better or worse than another. We are all equally capable of doing things for ourselves and others, and we are all worthy of being carried by others. 

We all need and deserve to be interdependent.

How do I know whether I’m counterdependent?

Here are some questions to consider:

• When was the last time you had someone else help you? (Was that deliberate or begrudgingly?)

• Did that happen because you asked for it? (Did you have any other options otherwise?)

• Would you have wanted to do it yourself? Why? 

• Do you have strong emotions (like guilt, anxiety, shame, or frustration) when someone else helps you? Do you feel lesser of a person or lesser than them? (What’s that about?)

• Are your relationships balanced or lopsided? How often do you feel resentment towards others, or feel anxious on their behalf?

• When you’re not managing or planning things, how tense do you get? How difficult is it for you to be present or enjoy things when someone else is in charge?

If you feel stressed even at the IDEA of relying on someone else, chances are you have a counterdependent stance.

Double-standards?

Who do you judge more harshly: yourself or others? Do you use the same or different standards? If not, why?

Judging others is already considered a no-no, but judging ourselves is sometimes considered a sign of maturity. Ironically, treating ourselves worse than we do others is also a manifestation of pride. 

If I have higher standards on myself (as if I ought to be stronger, less weak, less “needy”), then I live as if I am/should be superhuman (only to judge myself as a subhuman when I can’t follow through). 

(Read more about pride and shame.)

Any way we treat ourselves as NON-EQUAL with others leads to comparison, judgment, pride, and shame - all of these feed into reactivity, stress, and internal/external turmoil. 

Equanimity (“equal” + “mind”/“life”), or having evenness of emotions or mental balance, is what we’re going for. The way to do that is to live in equality with others - no one is greater, no one is lesser.

How do I move towards interdependence?

Acknowledge the ways you REFUSE to be on an equal level with others. 

If you put yourself in one-down positions (making yourself more helpless/vulnerable than others), step up. If you put yourself in one-up positions (making yourself better/stronger than others) step down. 

If you resonate with being counterdependent (allergic to being helped), practice asking for (and really taking in) help.

Give room to the emotions that bubble up - don’t shove them back inside. Let them come, and move your body to release the energy out. (Better out than in!)

Learn new muscle memory as a fellow human being who is also worthy and who also has legitimate needs.

Those who’ve learned to be counterdependent grew up too quickly being a “grownup” for the majority of your life, skipping ever really being a kid.

If you find this to be super challenging, no judgment! There’s a good reason why your body is used to this. (This might be a great time to explore this in therapy and/or learn about your Enneagram type!)

Practice being innocent, tender, playful, and joyful like a child, despite the internal judgments of you being “selfish” or “childish” (chances are, you absorbed BS messages that belong to other people and aren’t yours to carry). 

Practice being light, easy, and carefree. Allow yourself to be emotionally, physically, practically, and/or financially “carried” by those around you who (more often than you think) are wanting to care for you well. 

(BTW - if you don’t explicitly tell others what you need, you’re leaving it up to THEM to fill in the blanks according to what makes the most sense to them. Most likely, they’ll be wrong, but that’s not particularly their fault. Don’t set them up to read your mind, because you’re setting up a LOSE-LOSE situation.)

Connect with your humanity and your equality with others. Live a life where YOU MATTER, TOO.

How can you ask for help this week?

(I asked for the two weeks my car was in the shop, and my relationships are the richer for 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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

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Woo hoo!!

Check your inbox for your free gift guide,

"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2022 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!”

3 Lessons Plants Taught Me

I speak as if I’m a natural green thumb. I’m not. I’m genuinely surprised that my plants are still alive. I believe they lived this long DESPITE me, not BECAUSE of me. 

At first, I got plants for my office as a way of bringing in more greenery into my space. (As a Highly Sensitive Person, I am easily impacted by my physical environment.) 

Never did I imagine that tending to plants would a fantastic way of taming my autopilot tendencies to:

• Be perfectionistic

• Be anxious about what’s not going well or might go wrong

• Overwork

• Have difficulty sitting still

• Live disconnected from the present

• Seek intensity and novelty

Here are three things plants taught me about how to do my life differently. 

Imperfect, but nonetheless worthy

No two plants are the same. No two leaves are the same. More often than not, you see asymmetry and imperfections of color, size, and shape. 

Go outside and look at the trees, bushes, and flowers - if you’re looking for it, you will find blemishes, broken branches, and ways it could be “better”. 

…So what? Plants are still beautiful and valuable as they are, and rarely do we think about how they’re so even though they’re imperfect. 

You probably didn’t even notice those plants’ disfigurations all that much until you were prompted to look for them. You go about your day having enjoyed them, as if it’s not a problem, because it really isn’t. 

Why do we place so much emphasis on ourselves and others as if perfection is what makes us worthy and acceptable?

See yourself as a plant. It is what it is, and it’s already beautiful. 

Here’s a mantra for you:

I am how I am, and I am already good.

Are your needs met?

I get the main point of the idiom, “Bloom where you’re planted.” You’re to take advantage of the opportunities that your present circumstances provide and learn to be grateful.

That’s definitely an important skill to have in life, but as with all adages, there are limitations. 

If you have an autopilot that makes things seem worse than they actually are, and if being critical and unhappy is your baseline, do practice blooming where you’re planted. 

But useful also is the skill of attuning to yourself and knowing what works best for YOU. What works for one plant doesn’t work for another unless they have similar needs. 

Some plants need direct lighting; others would shrivel if they’re in the same conditions. Some plants need frequent watering; others are susceptible to growing root rot (RIP my olive tree). 

We are all individual and unique. Sure, we have some universal needs like food and sleep we share in common, but even in those things we have differences is how much or in what way. 

Know your own distinct needs and take steps to meet them, rather than judging yourself for not “growing” or “performing” in the way someone else is. Both of you are neither inherently better or worse; y’all are who you are, you’re both worthy, and each of you have specific needs to flourish well. 

Know thyself. Know thy needs.

Do an audit of what are your specific needs in these arenas:

• Physical

• Emotional

• Relational

• Environmental

• Intellectual

• Professional

• Spiritual

• Financial

What steps will you take this week to get these needs met?

Blame the bug, not the plant

Sometimes a plant languishes or is stunted in its growth because of pests that extract its valuable nutrients. When that happens, we are ready to see the pest (not the plant) as a problem, remove the parasites, and give the plant some good TLC so it can recover.

The same ought to be done about ourselves in some of our relationships, because there ARE people in our lives who operate like parasites. 

In my therapy practice, I often work with people who are in one-sided relationships with parents, partners, friends, or coworkers who seek a “host” to exploit, meeting their own needs at the expense of my clients’. We explore the topics of emotional abuse, manipulation, power dynamics, resentment, dependency, and codependency. 

Sometimes this exploitation is deliberate - the “parasite” consciously takes advantage of the other person or is vindictive, cruel, or petty with utter disregard for the recipients’ wellbeing. As Henry Cloud describes in his book, “Necessary Endings,” these are the “Evil Persons” who we must limit their access to us ASAP.

Then there are those who are accidentally exploitative as a byproduct of some other pattern. For example, when a person doesn’t take responsibility for meeting their own needs or see themselves as helpless, they create a power vacuum for someone else to step in for them. 

(Imagine the kind of relationship between one housemate who doesn’t clean up after themselves and another who just can’t stand the mess. Or the imbalanced relationship between someone who cries at the thought of figuring out the internet and a family member whose heart string is pulled and calls the internet company for them.) 

Are you a “host”?

The party who steps in often has a soft spot for others who are struggling, even if the pain is of their own making. Those who have a higher likelihood of being a “host” include:

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• Those who are conscientious, responsible, empathic types

• Empaths, Highly Sensitive Persons

• Enneagram 1s, 2s, 4s, 9s, and some other subtypes (all for different reasons)

• Oldest siblings (especially women)

• Children of immigrants

• Those who are in caregiving roles or professions (teachers, therapists, nurses, etc.)

Those who live as if they’re hosts often:

• Have a hard time knowing what they want and need (and ignore them)

• Find it difficult to say “no”

• Is scared of conflict or asking for help

• Overly focus on what other people are needing

• Feel guilty about taking care of themselves

Eventually, because the “hosts” have their own valid yet unmet needs, usually these imbalanced relationships leave them feeling fatigued, depleted, and resentful. 

(In this case, resentment is very GOOD, as it signals the need for boundaries, reciprocity, and care.)

We ought not to judge the depleted host for being tired, but rather remove the exploitative agents. If you’re having a difficult time flourishing where you are, consider whether it might be because someone else is sapping your energy, time, resources, and money. 

Remove the parasites ASAP (don’t let them grow), clear your environment of toxicity, and nourish yourself with what you specifically need. 

(BTW - just to be clear, this is NOT about judging others for being LESS THAN, but rather holding them accountable for their own needs and actions. You providing them nourishment that they need to give to themselves is NOT helping them, but is ENABLING them in being dependent upon hosts. Win-lose relationships are LOSE-LOSE.)  

I highly recommend you grab a copy of Henry Cloud’s book, Necessary Endings, so you know how to tend to yourself well by pruning away things that sap your strength and eliminating harmful influences. 

How will you set boundaries with others this week? 

---

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!

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What are your emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2022 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!”

Which Enneagram Types are Romantically Compatible?

This is one of the questions I get asked ALL. THE. TIME.

I get it — relationships are freakin hard already, and people wanna know which combos got the best shot in making it through the rocky terrain to arrive at the luscious promised land of intimacy.

But I hate to break it to ya—it's NOT about which Enneagram types are compatible with each other, but more about how much personal work each person has done. It's about how healthy and nonreactive, and wise both parties can be, rather than what personalities they are.

There is no "perfect match" between Enneagram types.

Each combination can be REALLY GOOD and REALLY BAD and everything in between, depending on how much each person has worked to grow BEYOND their Enneagram type.

(By the way, the word "compatibility" literally means "com" (with) + "pati" (pain) + ability = the ability to struggle together. If that's the definition being used, then, yes, all 9 types can be compatible with each other.)

Stuck in Autopilot

The Enneagram speaks to 9 different ways people cope with and navigate through life. Each person's type is their own "autopilot mode" of thinking, feeling, and doing as a way of dealing with stress. Our autopilot survival skills have helped us move through vulnerable times in our lives, especially in childhood (when we really couldn't control a lot of our experiences).

But the very cages that have protected us from scary things when we were young are the same bars that keep us stuck when we've grown up and don't need the same protection anymore.

If we cling to our personality types (for example, by being proud that we are a certain Enneagram type, we are staying inside that tiny cage and are wondering why our hunched backs are aching.

If we stay inside that tiny cage, there's no room for another whole person - just whatever pieces of them "fit" our idea of how they "should" be.

Because we are still WHOLE persons, regardless of whether we're willing to acknowledge that, we're in for a rude awakening when the rose-colored glasses come down (because they will) and we realize that WHOA - this person is NOT who I signed up to be with.

The Enneagram: a Map for Personal Growth

Our Enneagram types tell us what path of inner work we have. Unlike how the Enneagram is used nowadays (in pigeonholing people and trying to find what type of holiday gift to get each type), it was originally intended on revealing to us our blindspots and shadows in how we get ourselves stuck (and pull others into our muck in the process). We were all meant to grow beyond our coping skills.

The Enneagram is not a horoscope system to see what kind of day we'll have or what our fate will be. The Enneagram shows us a map pointing to where we COULD go IF WE DO and DON'T DO OUR PERSONAL WORK.

Our Enneagram type doesn't dictate the ending - it just reveals the possibilities. Whether a particular POSSIBILITY becomes an ACTUALITY is up to you.

• Are you willing to do the work or not?

• Is your partner willing to do the work or not?

• Is your family member or leader willing to do the work or not? (Because this is not just for romantic relationships!)

So Who do I date?

The simple answer? Anyone who's willing to do their personal work, so as long as you are also willing to do yours.

Doesn't matter what Enneagram type y'all are - that just shows some details about how your respective autopilots show up and interact with each other. If both of y'all are doing the work and become more flexible and grounded (instead of constantly triggering each other), y'all will do just fine.

As long as each person in the relationship is willing to:

• learn about their own respective autopilot patterns,

• acknowledge that they have blindspots and flaws,

• and take personal responsibility to work out of reactivity,

then ALL combinations of types have a fantastic chance of having a phenomenal relationship - romantic, platonic, familial, professional, or otherwise.

Remember the true definition of compatibility? Learn how to STRUGGLE TOGETHER so that you can experience true intimacy. It's not all pain and no gain - it's through the hard work of waking up out of reactivity that y'all can truly BE PRESENT to ENJOY each other's company to the fullest.

Learn more about your Enneagram type!

Buy on Amazon

Read a blog about each Enneagram type.

• Enneagram 1

• Enneagram 2

• Enneagram 3

• Enneagram 4

• Enneagram 5

• Enneagram 6

• Enneagram 7

• Enneagram 8

• Enneagram 9

---

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!

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Two Quick Tips to Be Assertive

The Value of Assertiveness in Relationships

Many of the people I work with (myself included) have trouble being assertive in relationships. We tend to focus our connections on empathy and meeting the needs of others, but that focus on the other OVER the self can really impact the relationship and yourself. Such a dynamic is what Kim Scott calls “Ruinous Empathy,” a dynamic that takes empathy so far that the relationship no longer has room for the self. Such relationships cultivate resentment and lead to easy burnout. (You can read more about Ruinous Empathy in my blog post on Radical Candor.) Practicing assertiveness is a tool for building BALANCED relationships where both YOU and OTHERS matter.

Tip #1: Use the Sentence: I am open to “____”; I am not open to “____.”

One way to be assertive is to use the sentence, "I am open to 'blank;' I am not open to 'blank.'" Sometimes when someone else makes a request or a demand of us, we might find ourselves feeling stuck between the options of:

• Saying YES, going along with their demand or request, OR

• Saying NO, where we're in the position of rejecting.

So, the template, "I am open to blank, I'm not open to blank," provides an alternative option. An example is if someone asks, "Hey, can we go to San Francisco and do X Y Z things." I might not be up to that because I tend to have low energy, so I may say, "Hey, I'm open to grabbing coffee for a couple of hours with you; I'm not open to spending the whole day in SF." That might be enough.

Instead of you being in a position of going with the other person's request exactly as it is or denying their request completely, you pitch a THIRD OPTION. Now there's room for negotiation here and that's totally okay. The idea is that you're not stuck in an all-or-nothing arrangement.

The converse can happen as well when you're making a request to someone else, and they're in a position of saying yes or no. If they say no, you can follow up with, "Well, what are you available to do?" You give them an opportunity to speak for themselves. That way, you don't just have two options. It opens up that conversation.

Tip #2: Don’t Over-Explain

The second way of being assertive is to NOT over-explain yourself. Now if you're like me and a lot of people that I work with, we tend to feel bad about putting forth our needs. We feel guilty or we're scared that the other person may say no or get mad, and when we finally muster up the courage to make a request, we provide this lengthy explanation as to why that request needs to happen or why it's a good idea.

It's totally understandable why people might feel the need to over-explain. The downside is the more you explain yourself, the more you actually dilute down the effect of your request. You water it down. So sometimes when you over-explain, the listener may have a harder time keeping track of what your initial request is. An example might be instead of saying "I'm not available on Friday,” you say something like "I'm not available on Friday because I need to go to the grocery store, because I need to gather all this food to prepare because my in-laws are coming tomorrow and they have high expectations.” The other person is like, well, that's way more much information than I needed.

The over-explanation might not be necessary and sometimes it's just generally good practice, especially if you have a hard time with boundaries, to hold back on sharing more than is actually concretely necessary for the question at hand. The main question is, "Are you available on Friday or not?" So instead of over-explaining yourself, stick to the point. Stick to the action item saying, "I am available on Friday," or "I'm not available on Friday," and notice how often you do over-explain and see what tends to happen in those conversations. More likely, the other person you're talking to may feel or sense that you are more defensive or you are more insecure because in effect you're kind of backtracking.

So, state the request very clearly or state the boundary very clearly. You don't owe anyone an explanation for anything, for any of your decisions. If you happen to be interacting with someone who tends to push boundaries, like they say, "Well, why?" Well, that might actually be a reflection of them being a less safe person than you thought they were, and that might be a signal for you to start dialing back for that very reason. If you're interacting with someone who demands to know the very reasons or justifications for your actions, that's kind of a sign that they don't really respect you all that much. So, to develop respect, instead of giving more of yourself, you give them less access to you; that's generally a good practice.

Being Assertive in Your Connections

So in summary, there are two quick ways of being assertive.

One is for you to say the sentence, "I am open to blank; I am not open to blank."

The second one is to watch when you over-explain yourself and practice dialing back.

You don't have to do a full 180; just practice dialing back 5% and then see what happens. Sometimes people might be okay with a simple yes or no. We don't know. So go test out these assertiveness tips and see how they might improve your relationships.

---

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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Concentric Circles of Connection

Shifting Relationships

Every time we go through any major life event (positive or negative), it's good to check in with the nature of our current connections.

Such shifting points include:

• Getting a new job

• Starting or ending a relationship

• Upgrading to the “next level” of relationships

• Moving to another city, state, country

• The pandemic

• Losing (or gaining) a job

Sometimes we find out through life experience that our connections maybe aren't as sustainable as we might think of them to be. With some people, we may not actually be as close to as we would like.

Instead of constantly putting yourself out there and then feeling disappointed, or hurt, or realizing that your relationships are super imbalanced, it's good to do a check-in every now and then.

Ask yourself, "Is my connection with someone able to sustain the level of intimacy as I would like?"

The Concentric Circles of Connection

There are many different kinds of friendships. It's not a matter of “Yes, I have friends” or “No, I don’t have friends,” but “What kind of friends do I have?”

Imagine that there are several levels or tiers of friendships.

(The number of levels may change over time, but here’s one way of distinguishing them.)

View fullsize

• +: Positive experiences

• —: Negative experiences

Tier 1: BFFs (+++———)

At the innermost circle are those who are our Ride-or-Die people. These are the people who know ourselves the best, those with whom we can share our deepest darkest secrets with and they will show up.

The relationship is consistent day after day. They're going to be there for you, no matter what. They’ve explicitly made that commitment clear.

You've cultivated a lot of connection and trust and rapport, and they're also able to sustain the difficult emotions. So, it doesn't mean that you have an equal amount of positive and negative interactions with each other, but this is the depth of experiences that you share with them.

When the best and worst things happen, these are the people you call first.

Tier 2: Close Friends (++——)

These folks have demonstrated that they're trustworthy. They share in your personal hardships and also celebrate your wins. You can have great dinners and heart-to-heart talks.

You're still close to them and deeply enjoy their company, but they're not the first people you would call if something happens. (You’ll eventually catch them up when you do meet.)

Tier 3: Fun Friends (++—)

These are people with whom you have mutual interests and have fun. You might like going to concerts, play board games, or do wine tastings, but when something hard goes on in your life, they're nowhere to be found.

That doesn't mean that they're necessarily a bad friend, but they're just not in your inner circles. That’s okay.

It's important when we come across these kinds of connections that we release them from any expectations for us to rely on them, so that THEY don't feel trapped about what we're going through, and WE don't rely on people who are not readily available for us.

But we can still have a good time! Relationships don’t have to be all-or-nothing, eggs-in-one-basket, intensity-or-bust (Take heed, Enneagram Fours! Not all experiences we have in life are super serious and it's good to learn how to lighten up and to enjoy things.).

It’s good to have a wide range of relationships, even ones where surface-level convos are the norm and where activities serve as the core.

Tier 4: Neighbors (+—)

These people can be co-workers or literal neighbors—people you see pretty often. You know each other's names, how many kids or pets y’all have, generally what might be going on in each others’ lives, but you're not necessarily going to call them up to hang out all the time.

You might share, "Someone hit my car bumper last night, and I'm kind of feeling frustrated," or "Yeah, like my kid is about to do a major performance and super excited about it."

Sometimes, to avoid repercussions in your daily life, you may opt NOT to share things.

You might connect every once in a while, but mostly you see each other in passing, say hello, be polite, be gentle. Other than that, they're not necessarily involved in your lives.

Tier 5: Acquaintances (~)

These are people who are neutral and you don’t share much with at all, good or bad. You know of each other, from a distance. If you don’t hit it off, oh well. It’s not (necessarily) a problem.

Tier 6: Blacklisters (——)

These are people who have demonstrated over and over again that they are NOT trustworthy, and they hurt more than help. They often take way too taking up way too much space in the relationship. It’s all about them, and there’s little room for your own feelings or your experiences.

When you try to speak up for what you need, you get shot down or you get dismissed, minimized, gaslit, etc. As these people are toxic, it's generally good to have strong walls up and give them minimal information.

Sometimes these people are those who used to be your closest friends, and sometimes they're family members. It's really really hard and painful in those situations, but the cost for not putting up those boundaries is that you get more and more diminished.

Emotions like resentment, guilt, shame, anxiety are all evidence that someone who belongs in the outer tiers are too close to you. Sometimes they barge in, sometimes you give them an inch and they take a mile.

They may still be valuable as human beings, so they deserve a base level of human dignity (don't be mean to them), but don't give out your personal information (including what’s going on in your life) because they might use it against you.

These are people you interact with where afterwards you feel bad about yourself or your life. THESE ARE NOT YOUR PEOPLE; GTFO.

Is everyone in their rightful tiers?

To maintain health and longevity, do an audit of your current relationships. List 10 people you often see these days, and indicate what your general interaction is like with + and —.

• Tier 1 (BFFs): +++——— (can handle both strong positive and strong negative experiences):

• Tier 2 (Close Friends): ++—— (similar as BFF, but not first pick)

• Tier 3 (Fun Friends): ++— (mostly pleasant, but not as deep)

• Tier 4 (Neighbors): +— (neutral, frequent but surface level)

• Tier 5 (Acquaintances): ~ (neutral, little sharing)

• Tier 6 (Blacklist): ——— (consistently negative)

Plot these individuals onto the Concentric Circles chart (download here). What do you notice?

Some questions to think of:

1. Are there people who have more access to you than they deserve?
   If you keep experiencing more pain than good with someone (and they refuse to change), it might be time for you to bump them into outer tiers.
   This does not make them lesser of a person, but just relocates them to where the relationship can actually handle the level of intimacy. When people stay closer than they’re supposed to, that increases the risk that the relationship will implode or explode, resulting in that person being sent to the Blacklist.
   Find the right amount of intimacy that is sustainable.

2. Are there some people who have demonstrated trustworthiness that you can give more access to?
   Sometimes, those you never expected to be close to may become some of your closest people. Be open to trying out new levels of intimacy until you hit a limit - that might be the new equilibrium point for the next season of your life.

Changing Needs, Shifting Tiers

You may find that there are some people who kind of move back and forth between different tiers—that's totally okay!

Be open to having relationships of varying mobility. Remember, it’s not all-or-nothing.

As we change and grow in life, our needs and wants change. We need to shift our connections to match the new level of personal 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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

Loading...

Woo hoo!!

Check your inbox for your free gift guide,

"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Therapy with Ibi - Anxiety, Insomnia, Relationships

Introducing…Ibinye Osibodu-Onyali, LMFT

Joanne: This week we have a special guest who is sharing about her practice today. Let’s just jump right in. Can you share about yourself, the things you love, what you focus on, a bit about your journey.

Ibinye: My name’s Ibinye. I’m a licensed marriage and family therapist for women and couples in California. I like to focus on anxiety and insomnia. I also focus a lot on people who were raised in toxic environments—teaching them how to break those generational cycles, speak up for themselves, be assertive, and just live a life out of the box. I also help couples move their relationship from boring and feeling like roommates to actually feeling passionate and feel like lovers again.

Who Is Therapy For?

Joanne: During this pandemic period with things kind of rolling back, in your work with people, has there been one question that you’ve been getting asked often with that?

Ibinye: Yes, two questions actually.

1. “Can Black women go to therapy?” They usually whisper when they ask. “I’m Black, can I go to therapy? Is that a thing?” Yes! That’s a thing!

2. “Is it okay for Christian to go to therapy?” People want to make sure. And I’m like, “Yes! I’m a Christian! That’s fine. Yes, you can see me; you can talk to me.” There’s nothing unbiblical about therapy.

Joanne: A lot of hush hush. What do you sense that’s about?

Ibinye: It’s about the shame, the rules, the legalities, and the upbringing that says:

• Keep all your business within the church.

• Keep all your business within the home.

• Don’t tell anyone your problems.

With the faith-based shame, it’s this idea that if you have any struggles, if you’re anxious, if you’re depressed, if you’re crying, then you’re not reading your Bible, or you don’t have the holy spirit within you, or you’re clearly not going to church enough. Something’s wrong with you. There’s a lot of shame that I see.

How Therapy Works through Shame

Joanne: The message that something’s wrong with you, you need to be better, all the variations of that. And within your work of the people who reach out to you, how do you help them get unstuck from that? It’s great that they’ve already got unstuck enough to reach out, but how do support them?

With the Christians—for those that want Biblical-based counseling—we go into scripture. My favorite person that we talk about is David. He seems sad a LOT. He was struggling a lot, there was a lot going on with him, his life isn’t perfect, yet we read that he was anointed by God. Then they’re like, “wait a minute, that’s true.” Then it’s okay to seek out help.

For intergenerational stuff, I ask them some questions about their relationships and families. Things like:

• Let’s look at your grandma’s relationship with grandpa, or grandma’s relationship with mom.

• How has that worked out for them?

• How has that worked out for you?

• What you’ve been doing for the past 50 years, 40 years, 30 years, does it feel like it works well for you?

A lot of times they’ll respond with, “No—even though that’s the way I was raised and I’m just trying to walk the line, it doesn’t really work well for me.” I say, “Well, would you be open to trying something that possibly could work for you.” And they’re like, “Yeah, as long as you don’t tell my mom!” Legally, I can’t tell your mom anything anyway, so you get to do whatever you get to do. As they get to start trying new things, they find they start feeling a lot lighter and a lot happier. The anxiety isn’t feeling so heavy anymore and their families get used to their new behavior like, “Okay, I guess this is how she is now.”

Joanne: I kind of imagine that with a lot of these entrenched patterns or ways of experiencing and responding to life, it would be great if families responded well with, “Oh this is how it’s going to be going forward,” but I imagine there are some people who don’t have that experience. For those folks whose families or communities are not as supportive, what would you say to them?

Ibinye: We talk about the depth of tradition and how difficult it is to break from tradition. Everyone is just trying to play this role, whether it’s a church role, cultural role, racial role, whatever that is. I talk to them about finding support from like-minded people. I think that’s so important because sometimes your family or your church or religious body is not your support system. Sometimes they are the ones who are doing harm to you. Sometimes they’re the ones that trigger a lot of the difficult emotions you are going through. I empathize with them and help them understand that those are very common patterns, unfortunately. But outside of that, I ask questions to get them thinking about new connections:

• Who are the people who are adding people to your life?

• Who are the people who are filling your cup?

• Who is helping you feel great?

Those are the people to run to. I don’t say cut off your family or stop going to church, but how about building new relationships? Once they start to experience what those positive relationships look like, it really helps in the healing process. It doesn’t mean that everything is going to end with a bow wrapped on top of it. There’s still a lot of grief work left to be done. But they realize the pain of staying in that tradition is sometimes much greater than the joy of finding this new life and finding your voice and new ways of being, and just being yourself.

What Are Toxic Relationships?

Joanne: In a lot of moments, there are some terms that people have a certain understanding of, and I think toxic relationships are one of those words. They have some idea in their mind of what it looks like, but it might be more much multifaceted and varied. Same with anger—that it’s not just always the rage-y explosive types. There are so many other ways anger can show up. So how would you define and describe toxic relationships? What does it tend to look like in the people you work with?

Ibinye: Toxic relationships FEEL DAMAGING. They are relationships that feel uncomfortable and they often feel like they’re being done maliciously. Very often when clients come to see me, I ask about family relationships, like “how is your relationship with family members?” They say “Fine, everything’s fine.” And then after a while, they describe toxic relationships they’re in without realizing it. Things like:

• Every time I leave this person’s presence, I feel exhausted.

• I can’t wear that to this person’s house because she’s going to make a bad comment.

• I have to change who I am.

• I have to be extra quiet when I’m in the presence of this person or else she’s going to say something negative.

Decorative. A child has duct tape over their mouth.

It’s almost like feeling like you cannot be authentic, you can’t be you in the presence of someone, feeling drained after you leave that person. That’s how people typically experience toxic relationships, and sometimes it’s not even overt. Sometimes people aren’t actually saying direct things or throwing direct jabs. It might be a look, a glance, a whisper, or a passive-aggressive comment that they make constantly. You feel like you’re drowning when you’re around them, and nobody around you can see that. Or sometimes it feels like you’re drowning and they’re the ones who pushed you to the deep end and they’re standing there with their arms crossed like, “Oh well, let’s see if she can get herself out of this.”

Joanne: Are there instances where someone’s in toxic relationships and they don’t know?

Ibinye: All the time. We think that you cannot love someone who feels toxic to you. Sometimes it’s the very people that we love. It could be spouses, best friends, family members, people in your religious organizations, coworkers, bosses you respect—anyone around us can exhibit toxic behavior. So I often say, go by that feeling that you get:

• You can’t hold your head up high.

• You feel exhausted when you’re around them.

• You feel like you have to put up a show or put up an act when you have to be with that person.

If that’s what you feel when you’re around a person, then something’s off about that behavior. But I always say don’t tell people that they’re toxic. Like, don’t walk up to your mom and say, “Dear mom, you’re toxic.” It’s not going to go well.

Joanne: One of the things I’m hearing is one sign that of whether you’re in a toxic relationship is how you feel while anticipating meeting with a person or how you feel during and afterward. Are there people who feel numb?

Ibinye: Absolutely. Some people feel nothing when they’re with toxic people. Other times you find that there’s lots of jealousy and competition in toxic relationships. So there sometimes will not be this spirit of cooperation that we all want to be able to have, that support around us. In toxic relationships, it’s almost like somebody has to be in charge. There’s a dynamic of power and control sometimes where somebody always has to get the last word in; it’s difficult to agree to disagree.

Sometimes there’s this back and forth of:

• “You’re wrong and I’m right.”

• “But are you open to—?”

• “No, I’m not open.”

Or there’s the thing with tradition:

• “This is how it’s always been.”

• “But that’s hurting me.”

It’s shutting down those feelings saying they aren’t real. “It’s not my fault you’re sad. You’re sad because something’s clearly wrong with you and you’re too sensitive. If you learn to stop being sensitive, you won’t be sad when I make these aggressive comments to you.”

Joanne: I’m hearing that one sign that someone might be toxic is that they’re so rigid and one-sided, not open to hearing the other person’s experiences, let alone validating them, controlling, telling the other person what to do, the other person doesn’t have a say, their feelings don’t matter, their emotions don’t matter, etc. What does someone do when they find out that they’ve been doing those things?

Ibinye: Sometimes that’s how we’re raised and that’s what we see around us, so that’s just what we do. It’s not easy because if you’re used to that dynamic of being cutthroat and cutting people down—all of those difficult behaviors—then I say, “Okay, take a moment to pause and think how would you feel if that were done to you.”

The interesting thing is even when you exhibit toxic behaviors, you don’t enjoy it when the behavior is done back to you. You don’t feel warm and fuzzy when someone has that aggressive interaction with you. Even though that’s all you know, it doesn’t feel great on the inside. So take a moment and pause. I ask, “How would you feel if someone did that to you?” And they’ll say, “I’d be upset and I’d attack them back.” Okay, if that behavior triggers that big emotion back in you, then maybe let’s think of another way to talk about this.

We do a lot of practice in assertive communication as opposed to aggressive communication. We also talk about making amends because it’s very important. Not necessarily in the AA way, but it’s okay to take responsibility for your behavior. It’s okay to go back and apologize and say, “I noticed that I’ve been damaging to you, toxic to you, hurtful to you. I noticed that you’ve felt uncomfortable in my presence and I’m sorry.” We also talk about “I” statements. Not “because you’re so sensitive, that’s why I was so damaging to you.” No, we can’t do that. How to really talk and communicate with people and to attune with other people’s emotions we learn how to do some of those things.

Joanne: So some signs of someone who is not toxic and who is safe and quality are those who are able to consider another person’s experiences, their own impact on the other person, being able to articulate their own experiences (those “I statements”), and—I think this is a pretty significant one—taking responsibility for your own stuff. The world would be so different if more of us knew how to do that.

Ibinye: Absolutely. You don’t have to be perfect. So, safe does not equal perfect. Nobody is perfect. We make mistakes and mistakes are quite okay. I find when people are raised in toxic environments, it goes hand-in-hand with perfectionism because if you’re anything short of perfect, you will be attacked or shunned or something will happen to you that won’t feel good. So there’s this idea of “I need to be perfect because I don’t want anyone to say anything negative about me, I don’t want to be the butt of anyone’s jokes, I don’t want anyone to look down on me.” It’s about learning that imperfections are just a part of the human experience. Some things you do great, some things you don’t do great, and that’s okay.

Joanne: So perfectionism can be a way that a person is trying to take care of themselves, but it usually doesn’t lead to that outcome.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Insomnia

Joanne: You and I could talk about toxic relationships all day because that’s my jam too. Relationships, emotions, all that. But I noticed you focus on other areas as well, like insomnia and supporting couples in their relationships. Could you share a bit more about each of those?

Ibinye: With insomnia, I do cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for it. The idea behind it is, the way you think about sleep can greatly affect your sleep. The people who struggle with sleep have a lot of anxiety behind their sleep, and all day long, they think, “I wonder if I’m going to sleep” or it’s negative, “I know I’m not going to sleep tonight.” Sometimes they walk into their room, see the bed, and think, “I’m going to be tired tomorrow.” Already thinking future-focus negative thoughts about sleep, which stirs up anxiety and most of us cannot sleep when our bodies are under that kind of sleep. Or you’re laying in bed and willing yourself to sleep. “I’m closing my eyes really tight and I will force my body to shut down.” These unconscious thoughts and behaviors unbeknownst to us are increasing insomnia. With CBT insomnia, I teach clients how to create a great sleep environment, how to change behaviors so they can support sleep, and how to work on those unconscious, automatic thoughts, so we can start to think positive, sleep-promoting thoughts.

Joanne: I should’ve done this Live with you a couple of days ago because I could’ve prevented this last night! Trying harder to sleep makes it worse! I know that you have a useful resource you’ve put together, can you talk about that?

Ibinye: I have a free download and it’s just five myths that are keeping you awake and how you can finally sleep. 5 myths most people with insomnia believe are the golden truths about sleep—those are typically keeping us awake, and then I answer, “let’s debunk this myth” and here’s how you can finally sleep.

Couples Therapy: How to Love and How to Communicate

Joanne: And what’s been fun about working with couples?

Ibinye: I enjoy working with couples because when they come to me, they are like, “we are not communicating, we are arguing all the time, but we want this to work.” Or sometimes one person is like, “I don’t know, I’m on the fence” and one person is like “I really want this to work.” It’s really about teaching them how to respect one another, how to find friendship again, and how to communicate. That is key. How to communicate, how to respect one another, how to see your partner, and how to love your partner how your partner wants to be loved, not the way you think they need to be loved. I think a lot of couples get into trouble with that one.

Joanne: What is an exercise you might do with a couple that comes in having trouble loving the other person well?

Ibinye: I always point to the 5 love languages. They take the quiz on the 5 love languages together so that they can understand what each love language is, and then in session, we talk about the results of the quiz and each partner will explain examples of things that fill their cup. Some questions I ask them are:

• What are some things that your partner does that you truly enjoy? (We always try to play to each person’s strengths and things that ARE working. It’s not about, “You don’t know your partner and you’ve dropped the ball.”

• What are some things that your partner is already doing that really excited you and make you feel seen? (Then we talk about how the partner can do more of that.)

• What are some other things your partner can do?

• Then I go to the other partner and ask, “So, now that you’re hearing their perspective, what are two things things that you think you can do that can make your partner happy and loved?” And then that’s their homework.

Couples are typically busy and cannot find time, so I encourage them to prioritize “couples time” by pulling up their phones and putting it in their calendar. We also set rules together, but I don’t set the rules for them. They set the rules for themselves. Some of those rules might look like:

• No phones

• No social media

• You have to sit with me

• You have to hold my hand

Once everyone is in agreement, I teach them how to speak up for themselves, how to communicate, and then it’s always about validation. We talk about how to validate each other even when they don’t agree with each other. I also normalize that disagreements are going to happen. Because you are a couple doesn’t mean you have to be one mind and love all the same things. But everything doesn’t have to be an argument. If one person loves red, one person loves blue, “It’s fine. Okay, I can see how you love red; I happen to love blue.” It’s fine and doesn’t have to be an argument.

The Five Love Languages

Joanne: Can you go over the five love languages?

Ibinye: Love languages aren’t just for people who are coupled up. They are for kids, for coworkers, friends, loved ones. All humans have love languages, which is just the way they like to be loved.

• Quality time. It’s basically spending time with your partner but in a way where your partner is attuned with you. People who’s love language is quality time, they like people to spend time with them where you’re actually looking at them, you’re chatting with them, listening to them, and that’s how they also love other people.

• Acts of service. “You made my bed for me, you brought my meal to for me, you fixed my bike for me.” Doing things for the other person. They don’t have to be huge tasks, just simple things like “I loaded the dishwasher today.” perfect!

• Touch. That would be people who are huggers, people who love to kiss, hold hands, and things that just feel physically. You can tell kids whose love language is physical touch—they’re the ones who’ll come and give you a hug. Some people when they talk touch your arm lightly or tap you—that’s physical touch.

• Gifts. When we think of gifts typically, when I have a couple do the quiz and one of them gets gifts, the other partner is “Oh my gosh, this is about to get expensive.” no! It doesn’t have to be expensive. It doesn’t even have to be something you buy. Just the thought behind it that knowing your loved one has spent time crafting or getting something for you. It can even be mixing them a drink and giving it to them.

• Word of affirmation. People who want to hear that you love them wanna hear that they’re doing a great job, that you’re proud of them. So, your words are affirming them, loving them, validating their emotions.

Typically I find that couples have different love languages. One could have acts of service and one could have quality time. That’s why it feels like “I don’t feel loved” or “you don’t love me, you don’t appreciate me.” Typically, we love people and show our love in our own love language, so once we learn how to speak our partner’s love language, then they feel like they’re seen and loved.

Joanne: So it’s a way of turning into a person for how they actually are, not how we think they are or how we think they should be. It leads to an acknowledgment and accepting the other person.

Therapy and Therapist Misconceptions

Joanne: So when it comes to the process of therapy, what are some of the myths or misconceptions about therapy that you’ve heard?

Ibinye: I’ve heard a LOT.

• Therapy is judgmental.

• Your therapist will tell you what to do.

• Your therapist will shame you and judge you.

• Therapy is exactly like talking to a friend, so what’s the point? They aren’t going to teach you anything.

• If you go to a therapist, then they’ll put you on medication, and then you’ll be on medication for the rest of your life.

• Therapists just want to stick you to a very strict diagnosis.

I think sometimes how TV portrays therapists, people are surprised that I laugh a lot or they didn’t expect me to be this nice. I’ve heard people be worried that I will tell everyone their business and put it on social media. No! There’s confidentiality'; I don’t do that.

Joanne: So what would you say therapy is?

Ibinye: Therapy is a process of getting you to where you want to be. The reason I’m keeping it so vague is because we don’t tell you where you need to be. The way I work is; I ask what you would like your life to look like in 6 months or a year, they tell me, and we work towards that. We start by exploring different aspects of their lives:

• What would you want your social relationships to look like?

• What would you like to feel when you wake up in the morning?

• We talk about career. What do you feel is standing in your way?

It’s a process of really getting to know yourself. A process of getting to heal difficult emotions that keep us stuck or afraid or stagnant. Learning how to create relationships with yourself and with those around you so we can learn how to thrive. I know it’s sort of nebulous how I’m describing it, but that’s the best description I can come up with.

Joanne: There’s such diversity in individuals anyway. Everyone’s goals and desires are different and there’s no need to pigeonhole people into one way of growing or healing. For example, one person’s work could be how to do anger less or how to have better ways of doing anger, but for another person, it might be how to practice anger more. Either one could be really healing for a particular person and their relationships. What other resources do you have available apart from?

Ibinye: Currently, I am enrolling for the women of color online support group. It started because when the pandemic hit, I kept hearing from women of color say, “I just feel alone. I feel like there’s so much going on and I have no one to talk to.” But they weren’t just talking about seeing a therapist, they were talking about a community of women who knew what they were going through. So, it’s a place where they don’t have to be so perfect and don’t have to be the caretaker all the time.

You get to sit, connect with other women of color who understand some of the struggles you are going through, get to support you through it. We tackle different topics; we talk about race and racism and how to maneuver that. Of course, we aren’t going to solve racism in 8 weeks, but we talk about how to maneuver that so it doesn’t feel like something that’s strangling you all the time. We talk about ways to take care of yourself. What can self-care look like? How to build self-care, self-confidence, and how to ask for help because most of the majority of the women that I talk to do not ask for help ever. It’s an 8-week group, we meet once a week for 8 weeks and you just leave feeling like some of the burdens have been taken off your shoulders. That’s why it’s called Lay Down Your Burdens.

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© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Moving on from Toxic Relationships

Here’s a video about moving on from toxic relationships. Melissa Moore from the podcast “Faith Hope Love with Melissa Moore” invited me to talk about dealing with trauma. Scroll down for a transcript. Follow Faith Hope Love on Youtube.

What is a Toxic Relationship?

I’ll start from what a healthy relationship is and then work backward. If we think about ourselves as images of God, everyone is SO DIFFERENT even though we’re all uniquely created. We’re given reflections of different aspects of God. Some of us reflect back His passion, some of us reflect back His holiness. With each of our differences, it’s not necessarily meant to be opposed to each other. It doesn’t have to be an either/or arrangement. IT CAN BE BOTH. So we think about healthy relationships through that vantage point. These connections are one where there’s ENOUGH ROOM in the connection for each person to be themselves. Have their own needs, own values, own opinions, and still be powerful sons and daughters in the Kingdom.

If there isn’t enough room in those connections for each person, this is how we go down the toxic relationship route. There are two different options (although we tend to see one as an example of toxic relationships more than the other):

1. APATHETIC Relationships

2. ENMESHED Relationships

Apathetic Relationships

When there isn’t enough room in our connections for both people to be fully themselves, then sometimes there’s enough “room” in the relationship by both parties going off and doing their own thing. In a marriage, for example, that might be a couple living under the same roof as if they’re roommates, but they don’t spend a lot of time together.

This could also be with other kinds of connections, like family members where there’s barely any interaction throughout the year until the holidays roll around. And when the holidays roll around, it’s super awkward. So that is an example of a relationship where there isn’t enough room for them to coexist at the same time. Because there’s not a lot of interaction, there isn’t really a knowing of each other or revealing of oneself.

That type of relationship is what I call an “apathetic relationship.” There’s a huge wall between the two people and both parties are going off in opposite directions. The main message is, “I am me; you are you. There’s no we.” That is an example of a toxic relationship, but it doesn’t usually get labeled as one because it isn’t usually labeled as a relationship. But when there are situations where the connection is forced, for example, with family, that’s how it shows up.

Enmeshed Relationship

The second example of a toxic relationship is what often gets called an “enmeshed relationship.” Sometimes, though, that word enmeshed gets used to describe different relationships that are more culturally informed and more collectivistic. In certain parts of the world, there’s more of an emphasis on society as a whole or the collective. Through our Americanized/Westernized individualistic lens, that gets labeled as being bad. It’s not bad. I want to make that distinction between enmeshed and collectivistic.

What I mean by the “enmeshed dynamic” is when two people are in close quarters and there isn’t enough space between. There’s not enough space for each of them to be. Think of two circles where one is kind of swallowing the smaller one. A lot of ANXIETY, GUILT, SHAME, ANGER, FRUSTRATION—that’s the emotional evidence that there’s way too much fusing of the two people and there’s a lot of reactivity. Each person is not allowed to have their own opinions, but they’re kind of eyeing at the other person to see what they’re going to do.

Often when people think of toxic relationships, they think of this latter group of enmeshed relationships where there’s a lot of controlling, yelling, screaming, throwing objects. Yet, even within that enmeshed dynamic are things like guilt-tripping or not allowing the other person to have time with their own friends, etc.

So, this is a spectrum; there’s not categorical difference. It’s just that more often than not in a “toxic” couple, it’s likely that one person is leaning more towards enmeshed and one leans more toward apathetic. So in other words, we call this the PURSUERS and WITHDRAWERS. This is a common couple that shows up in couples’ therapy where one person is like, “we need to spend all of our time together,” and the other person is like, “we don’t need to spend all of our time together.” Usually, they come in a set.

Everyone Has Their Own Individual Needs

I work with a lot of healers, and there’s a reason for that. It’s because how they serve others often is a reflection of them trying to do their own trauma work. They just do it accidentally. Because of their own families of origin or childhoods, they haven’t been given a lot of experience of having their needs recognized as valid and being given space and permission to cultivate their individuality.

These individuals find their worth and value being very much connected with how they connect with other people. So, BURNOUT, RESENTMENT, feeling GUILTY about doing self-care—those are the common reasons why people reach out to me. It’s not because they want to be a better healer per se, but it’s because they’ve done that too much to the point of depleting themselves. However, they still have needs, and that might be a rude awakening for them. So, in their work with me, we unpack like, “okay there are some relationship dynamics that have been celebrated in your family of origin or maybe all of society, and that’s not sustainable.”

So how do we go from whatever your relationship dynamic is (enmeshed or apathetic) where there isn’t enough space for both of you, to shifting towards and creating a different kind of relationship where there is space for both of you to fully exist in your individuality. Neither party is inherently good or bad, but when there is empathy or connection, it’s a true connection. It’s not a result of someone having to sacrifice themselves for the other party’s needs.

Using Outside Information to Understand the Self

The healers who reach out to me tend to be depleted because they’re doing two people’s work instead of just their own and having their partner or family member or friend do their own respective work. That part is super hard because their bodies have been trained to OVERLY take on responsibility. That’s a conversation in of itself, but it is a way for the person to feel in control in some sense, but they accidentally end up stealing the other person’s opportunity to do their own work and grow.

We tend to connect with other people in the way that we're used to in life, so it’s really hard to change ourselves and our ways when we’re using ourselves as a reference guide. It’s not going to work because the reason why we got to where we are now is because we got here by consulting ourselves.

Often, anything that involves a person learning or gaining information from the outside—books, podcasts, seminars, therapy, other relationships, etc.—are all fantastic ways by which we get to learn about ourselves.

To give you an example, I am a first-born, second-generation Korean American, meaning my family moved to the States from Korea, and I thought for the longest time that it was totally normal for dads to live part-time in the States and part-time in Korea. In Korea, there’s a word for this, it’s called “albatross dad.” A lot of it happens to be when the father is like a traveling professor or based on work. I thought that was super normal until I was in college, Thanksgiving was about to come around, and my friends were telling me what they were going to do with their family. It was the weirdest thing hearing them say they’re going to hang out with their dad. I was like, “how does that make any sense.”

Sometimes we learn more about ourselves when interacting with other people or gaining information from the outside.

Resources to Help You Move on from Toxic Relationships

There are some books/resources I recommended. The two favorite ones are called Safe People written by Henry Cloud and John Townsend (the same people who wrote the book on boundaries) and Radical Candor written by someone who worked on a lot of companies in Silicon Valley.

Radical Candor is when a person is able to have HIGH REGARD for BOTH themselves and others at the same time. And when one is missing, you get one of the other three arrangements. Those three arrangements are:

• Obnoxious aggression—when there’s only room for one’s own needs and not for others.

• Insincere manipulation—when a person is neither particularly caring about themselves or the other person.

• Ruinous empathy—where there’s a high regard for other people, but very low regard (fi at all) for themselves. This group is mainly the people I work with.

All three of those don’t fall in the radical candor category. Part of the work that they do in therapy is to learn how to balance out how to regard for themselves just as much as they do for other people. Often the fear is “if I take care of myself, I’m taking away from other people. No, you’re taking care of yourself JUST AS MUCH AS you do for other people.

There’s some retraining from messages they’ve picked up growing up or from their own churches or society at large. A lot of women and minorities fall into that category. It is an example of empathy is not always a good thing in the same way that hope is not always a good thing. There are healthy ways of doing it; there’s an unhealthy way of doing it. In the same way, there are definitely unhealthy ways of doing guilt and anger (which is how most people know them), but there are instances where anger and guilt are absolutely necessary.

Rounding out the full spectrum of emotions, considering oneself as just as important as the other person, it’s not EITHER/OR, it’s BOTH/AND—Safe People and Radical Candor are my go-to resources for that.

Process of Cultivating Healthier Relationships

Transitioning from toxic relationships to cultivating healthier ways of maintaining connections is a very gradual process. If people could simply choose healthy relationships, they would’ve done it already. It’s a very gradual process because our own bodies resist sudden changes. It’s the reason why dieting programs don’t work.

It’s an equilibrium point where healthy people are not drawn to unhealthy people and unhealthy people aren’t drawn to healthy people for very different reasons. Healthy people aren’t drawn to unhealthy people because it’s too chaotic; unhealthy people aren’t drawn to healthy people because it’s too boring. People have a very visceral reaction internally, where sometimes—even for people who lean more towards unhealthy even though they’re wanting to grow—their bodies RESIST something that would be more lifegiving because the nervous system has been so trained to object that upfront as a way of preventing an even deeper, scarier, pain.

I work with a lot of ruinous empathy, a lot of healers, a lot of compassionate responsible types. A lot of people have opportunities to choose a healthy relationship where the other person really cares about them, but they turn that down because it’s scarier for them to be an actual healthy relationship because what happens if it falls apart? That means it confirms that “nobody is going to love me.” That happens on a very subconscious level; it’s not something people deliberate, but that’s the degree to which there’s such deep physiological wiring within the brain.

In the last episode, we talked about how the brain isn’t just one brain, the thinking part, but it’s also the emotional and reflexive part, all these parts are interconnected, so you can’t just pick and choose what to focus on. Some people will have very visceral reactions where they push away good things. This probably shows up in the way people do their own faith relationships with God. God is trying to give them all these good experiences, but the person is like “no, I’m unworthy” and reject it upfront. So you can take the relationship with God as a significant attachment relationship, so the stuff I’m talking about applies there too. It’s fascinating especially with Christian circles how much that ruinous empathy piece kicks in. It’s not healthy y’all. There is something that’s far, far, greater and deeper, but we’ve assumed that that is what is healthy.

Toxic Relationships in the Bible

I think there are many more examples of toxic relationships in the Bible than there are healthy ones. I do want to quickly touch on the fact that toxicity doesn’t mean the same thing as abuse. There is a kind of toxicity in relationships, and it’s called neglect. Oftentimes abuse and neglect get lumped together in one, but they are very different. Abuse is the PRESENCE of a BAD thing; neglect is the ABSENCE of a GOOD thing. We must consider both of those things at the same time.

Let’s consider the first book of the Bible, Genesis. I think the bulk of that book is about Joseph. We cover several generations of his family—Abraham, Issac, Jacob, and Joseph at the end. I think that’s one of the clearest examples of there being so much drama between family members. There’s lying, cheating, favoritism, exclusions, rivalry, competition, all kinds of stuff. That happened because each generation didn’t do their personal work.

Now, these are the fathers of the faith, Abraham, Issac, and Jacob, people will speak very highly of them, but actually, the chapters that describe what happened in the subsequent generations is because the previous generations didn’t do their work. There are patterns in these dynamics, like lying, cheating, etc. So when it comes to Joseph, I think his experience shows why it’s so important for people to do their own personal work and what happens afterward.

We see Joseph after he has been sold by his brothers and spent all this time completely cut off from his family. His parents thought he was dead, but in seeing and reconnecting with his brothers as the second in command in all of Egypt, I think if I was in his position, I would’ve made some very different decisions with all that power. There could’ve been moments of retaliating and punishing, and I wouldn’t blame him. But there is one particular section where it talks about how he sent his brothers out, and he just cried. I would say he probably wasn’t crying solely because he was sad, crying isn’t just about sadness, he was probably full of rage, full of hurt, feeling hopeless and powerless, and he wrestled with God when he was thrown into the hole in the ground and into the prison, he had a really rough life. In each of those moments, he struggled with God like, “how do I make sense of this awful thing that happened” that he had no control over and nothing to do with. The worst thing he did was maybe brag to his brothers that he had a cool coat. There’s nothing that he’d experienced that was warranted from what he did when he was a child.

By the time we get to the end of Genesis and before we read about his sons going forward, there’s that scene that’s so moving about how he was so struggling internally while he was trying to do the right thing. If I were to choose any Bible story to highlight why therapy is so important, it would be that. It’s saying that you have a responsibility to shift how things go going forward. It is not your fault that you experienced all this stuff, but you technically have power and influence in what happens going forward, so will you take that shot or not? That’s the big question a lot of people are presented with, especially for parents.

Tools for Understanding Your Relationship History

A big part of helping people through toxic relationships is helping them understand their relationship history. Most people will be able to recall certain events that have happened in their life, but they will probably consider those events in isolation and unrelated. There are a few exercises I do for this. One is the Top 10 list. They write down their top 10 best memories and top 10 worst memories. They put it all on a single sheet of paper, and after they’re all done, they zoom out and see if there are any patterns between those different events. Because sometimes, when we’re stuck in our ways, it’s hard to tell how those things influence us.

They put those things on a Life Timeline, positive memories above, negative memories below. It gives them a bird’s-eye-view. It helps people draw connections that were always there but just didn’t show up in the same way as they do in these exercises.

Similarly, there is another exercise called the genogram, which is a fancy family tree. Instead of writing down names, there’s information regarding different individual traits—each member of the household, parents’ generation and grandparents’ generation, any big events that any of the family members went through, things like immigration, wartime experiences, traumas of actual events or growing up in a very harsh neighborhood, etc. All those things get added onto this diagram that reveals also the relationship dynamics between individuals. It’s a very visual image.

I have one for Ross Geller to see how there are so many things that are going on between different members that are not always visible. It’s not always a physically explicit event, but when grandpa shows up, everyone turns their heads elsewhere. Those things, when we see it in visual form, it’s like, “okay now I can take my genogram and next time I see my family for Thanksgiving it’s like, oh yeah, there’s a lot of stuff happening that never occurred to me because this is the air that I breathed growing up.”

These are the exercises are super helpful so instead of me telling people what to do differently, unless they know how they’ve been up to this point, it’s really hard to change what you don’t know. The other two resources, the Safe People and Radical Candor books are other frameworks for people to locate themselves and know what to do going forward.

In the last post, I talked about the Enneagram, which people may have mixed feelings about, but it’s one of the ways by which I’ve supported people connected with their core needs, fears, experiences, it’s also what happens in our physical bodies on a nervous system level.

I have videos about relationships and I have a blog page filled with posts about relationships. So, if you’ve connected with some of the things in this discussion today, check out those resources.

---

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JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Moving on from Trauma

Here’s a video about moving on from trauma. Melissa Moore invited me to talk about dealing with trauma on the podcast, Faith Hope Love in the Momentum Series. Scroll down for a transcript. And follow Faith Hope Love on Youtube.

Defining “Trauma”

My definition of “trauma” is broader than how it’s formally utilized in the mental health spaces, and part of that is because a lot of the people I work with haven’t necessarily experienced what people consider to be “big traumas” like car accidents or parents divorcing. Since many of these individuals are internally oriented, a lot of them are Highly Sensitive People, etc.

I define “trauma” more openly, so it’s not just the big “T” “Trauma” like those really big, observable events on the outside, but also it could be a LONG, EXTENDED PERIOD OF IRRITATION OR AGITATION. So for example, someone grows up in a home where nobody really acknowledges emotions, or where there’s a lot of criticism. If a person has grown up living and breathing that as the norm, they just assume that that is the normal experience. It’s not until they interact with someone who’s grown up in an entirely different environment where they’re like, “Oh, wait.” Then they look back on their own experiences and redefine or redescribe what they’ve been through.

If I have a formalized definition of trauma that I use with my own clients, I would say that it’s any experience— either OBJECTIVE (being on the outside or observable from the outside) or SUBJECTIVE (meaning felt on the inside) that stirs up HEIGHTENED, intense feelings of feeling OUT OF CONTROL, TRAPPED, OR ASHAMED.

Different Reactions, Same Event

This definition I use is not according to the bible for therapists, the DSM, so it’s not a mental health diagnosis definition, but the reason I expanded the definition is because two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways. For example, two people can be in the same car when there’s a car accident, and one person will have a really hard time and that’s going to mark how they move forward for the rest of their lives where they feel really guilty or really afraid, whereas the other person in the car is like, “Oh, I’m so thankful I’m still alive!”

That’s one example. Another is, let’s say for a non-intense event, someone who is called out in the middle of a classroom by their teacher in fifth grade and asked to answer a question on the board. Some kids will be like, “Alright, I’ll rise to the challenge and show off what I can do!” Whereas another kid is going to go bright red, fumble over their words and shut down, and that is what might be driving a lot of the things they do as an adult—working really hard so they are never caught in that position again.

I hope that my definition makes it so that a lot people can consider their own experiences and be like, “Oh, yeah that was a hard experience for me, maybe I do need some more support for that, I’m not the only one.”

Symptoms of Trauma

In terms of trauma symptoms, I can use what the DSM uses as indicators. The four main indicators are:

1. Re-experiencing

2. Avoidance

3. Negative cognitions and feelings

4. Heightened reactivity

Re-experiencing

With re-experiencing, a person in the present is going through a brand new situation with new people, new details, etc., but the situation reminds them or reminds their body of this scary thing that happened in the past. So, this can come in the form of intrusive thoughts, memories, sometimes people may re-experience similar situations in their dreams when they’re sleeping, or they’re in the middle of their workday, and they have a very sudden shift in their thoughts and emotions.

Avoidance

Because it’s so uncomfortable to feel those feelings, people try really hard to avoid anything that remotely reminds them or their body of that situation. So for example, a person experiences a really harsh breakup, and they try really hard to never even drive down the street that they drove down with their previous partner. They are spending a lot of energy and effort trying to not engage with that scary experience or anything that reminds them of it.

Negative Cognitions and Feelings

Understandably, if a person spends a lot of their energy trying to avoid these difficult experiences (even perceived ones), then it’s going to shape how they feel about themselves, how they feel about others, the world, etc. Things like “I’m always going to be in these kinds of relationships,” or “I just can’t trust other people because other people are untrustworthy,” or “the state of the world is not great and it’s always going to be this gloom and doom out there.” Most people who’ve had at least one big trauma or multiple small traumas can live in a way where their perception is colored by their experiences, not reflective of what’s actually happening in front of them.

Heightened Reactivity

With heightened reactivity, the person is generally very irritable, they can be jumpy at different sounds, their moods can change very rapidly. On a nervous system level, their bodies are in this heightened sense of something is going to happen and they have to be extra cautious, which is exhausting to live like that. Even when things are actually okay on the outside, when a person’s body is always tense, even small things may be enough to tip the scale.

Finding Relief for Trauma

It’s helpful for people to know that their well-intended efforts to avoid negative feelings or experiences usually backfire. It’s like trying to stick a beachball underwater. The further down the ball gets stuffed down, the more pressure buildup there is. Eventually, you lose control of it, and it will just pop back up, make a huge splash, everything gets wet and messy.

So, with trauma’s heightened sense of feeling out of control, trapped, or ashamed, our bodies are designed to heal themselves, and triggers are actually attempts for the body to try to heal itself. It’s just that the way by which it’s trying to do so doesn’t always happen at the most convenient moments or in the most helpful ways.

Let’s say a person gets triggered by a word that a friend says. The friend didn’t do anything to cause the pain, but the body is like, “Uh, oh, we’re going to that place again.” When the person gets triggered, if we label that as a bad thing, then yeah, the person should avoid the situation at all costs, but if we re-interpret that as the body’s attempt to try to heal, we get the memo, take it and say, “okay, something inside of me is trying to get my attention. I need to attend to this as soon as possible. It might not be while I’m in the middle of a conversation with my friend or doing work, but I still need to give space to this. Otherwise, it’s going to be that beach ball underwater.”

So part of the way to help oneself heal from trauma is to give more space to the uncomfortable experience, not less. It’s kind of like being on a roller coaster. It’s really intense, there are lots of loops and lots of dizziness, and it seems like it’s going to last a long time, but really it’s two minutes long. The issue is that when people’s bodies get triggered, it’s like being a roller coaster, but the roller coaster gets stuck at the top of the ride. It doesn’t actually make it through to the other side. Because that experience is so intense, people try to get really hard to get off the rollercoaster in the middle of the ride, and it’s just not going to go down well.

Things like brainspotting as a type of therapy is one way for people to get to the other side of resolving the difficult intensity of experience, but there could be many other ways of doing so as well, like performance arts, bodywork like yoga, any kind of journaling exercise where the person is giving intentional space to it. It’s important to manage how much intensity they’re giving to it at a given time, but it’s still important to give more space to it than less. It’s a little bit counterintuitive than what people may expect.

Re-Training our Bodies

The thing is that with trauma, the worst thing has already happened. It’s in the past, it’s one and done. Now, if a person is still in a triggering or traumatic situation, yeah, get out of it as soon as possible. But for most people who’ve had trauma, the trauma is a past event. The worst part has already happened; it’s just that the triggers that our bodies engage in say, “we’re not sure whether that bad thing has actually come to an end.” And so, what’s more likely is that what’s happening right now, the current relationship you’re in, the current work relationship you’ve gotten yourself into, is more likely to be technically better than what’s happened back then, but your body just doesn’t know how to tell the difference.

It’s really hard to make sound decisions when we’re in a lot of confusion. Connecting with a therapist is one way we can have other frames of reference to retrain our bodies to know that what’s happening in front of us should be considered a brand new event, not as an exact replica of what’s happened back then.

I work with a lot of people who are in romantic relationships and their partner has a way about them that ignores emotions. Yeah, the partner has to do their own work for sure. But the way the body interprets what’s happening is as if it’s the same as when they’re getting criticized growing up. Back then, when they were really vulnerable, they really didn’t have any way of soothing themselves. And that’s hard to expect the partner to be able to do the heavy lifting on behalf of those old relationships and previous people.

Body, Mind, and Emotions in Scripture

There’s such intricacy in how our bodies are meant to work together. It’s not just about thinking soundly, addressing emotions, or doing the right thing, all of these are very much interconnected. That’s even reflected in several parts of scripture.

One of my favorite parts is in Romans 12. People have memorized parts 1 and 2. First, it says something like, “Therefore, brothers in view of God’s mercy, offer your bodies as holy sacrifices.” And then verse 2 is like, “make sure to renew your minds so that you don’t align with the way the world operates.” The first 2 verses are talking about the body and the mind, and the emotions kind of come in at the end in verses 5 and 6. But even then, it’d be doing a great disservice to us, and in a way, a dishonor to God, to consider that only one part of us is important by ignoring the rest.

So it’s kind of like splitting hair sometimes to think about our thoughts, our emotions, and our body experiences as being distinct. They definitely have different roles, but there’s so much interconnection and so much order to them that I think it does highlight the majestic work that God does. It’s not just about memorizing and reciting the proper verses. It’s not about giving full control and full reigns to our emotions, but that we’re supposed to heal in a very intricate way.

An example of that is Jesus with the Bleeding Woman. There’s a lot of layers of healing in that one particular experience. Jesus could’ve just fixed the physical ailment of it; she probably would’ve been happy with that portion of healing. But there’s this whole interaction with making sure she hangs out a little bit longer in a huge crowd of people—that’s healing for the soul portion.

She has been pushed to the side on the outskirts of society and is now given center stage for everyone to see that she is a beloved daughter. That is retraining the mind on how she sees herself and retraining everyone else’s mind on how they should consider her. It’s also a very heightened, emotional, intense experience.

One of the things I mentioned as a marker for when an event is traumatic is heightened, emotional, intense experiences of feeling ashamed. Well, Jesus put this woman front and center saying, you are beloved, you are worthy. It’s not because your bleeding problem has been resolved, but it’s because she is who she is. If you read through parts of the Bible through that lens that our thoughts, emotions, bodies are CONNECTED, then you won’t just see physical feelings for people. When Jesus interacts with different people, you’ll see that there are so many other aspects of pain that Jesus also healed.

Healing Inside and Outside

God wants our healing more than we want our own healing. It’s not just like, God changing our citizenship status to being citizens of heaven. That’s easy. But it’s us about catching up with what our status really means. Not just technically having access to His kingdom and some perks that go with it, but really being inhabitant.

I think the language around adoption is another example of that. I’ve heard a story of adoptees who technically became sons and daughters of a family. But it took a long time before they were able to live knowing that they’re sons and daughters. It’s an entirely different experience altogether. I don’t think it’s just about having a technical change in one’s status or getting enough trauma therapy that you no longer have a mental health diagnosis of PTSD. There are so many needs that are really important beyond just symptom management. God really wants people to receive His powerful healing from the inside out in all areas of our lives.

Healing with the Enneagram and Brainspotting

One of my favorite techniques is the enneagram. As I mentioned earlier, two people can go through the same event and have very different takeaways because their personalities are very different. They’re focusing on different themes, different needs, different fears. So unless we attune to each person for who they actually are, it’s going to be hard for them to find the deep healing that they need.

They both have anxiety, but for different reasons. One person is because they’re comparing themselves to an unbelievably high standard and they will never find themselves able to hit the mark, whereas another has anxiety because they’re super self-conscious of how other people see them. Unless we really know what is going on internally with a person’s personality—which is the way that the person has coped through life—it’s going to take a while. Otherwise, it’s kind of like throwing a bunch of things at them and hoping something sticks.

The metaphor that I use with the enneagram is that you go to the massage therapist and they ask a bunch of questions like, “what would you like attention around today? Are there any areas you want to avoid? Let’s look for some knots that are built into your body and let’s massage them now so you can full access to your whole body all over.” Otherwise, those knots are just pulling away at different areas for extended periods of time.

Brainspotting, which is a form of trauma therapy, is the actual massaging out those knots. It’s a type of trauma therapy that our bodies naturally know how to do. Imagine having a hard experience, and then you go to sleep, and then in the deep, dreaming process, your brain is coming up with all kinds of weird details and scenarios that don’t really make sense, but then that’s kind of how your body metabolizes and works through a lot of those difficult emotions and situations. Brainspotting is when a person does that while they’re awake in therapy.

Instead of falling into the deep end, the therapist is able to pull them out of the deep water when the session is about to end because time’s run out or when things get really intense. So, those are the main two resources that I use when supporting people with different kinds of traumas—brainspotting and the enneagram. A lot of the work that I do is around relationships and difficult emotions. I also do a lot of teaching too about what each emotion means about the person needs. They aren’t as chaotic and random as people think they are. There is a logic to it; it' just doesn’t follow the same rules as intellectual logic.

Borrowing Hope on the Road to Healing

As I mentioned earlier, the worst part has already happened, so even when we experience reminders of that, they are short. They can be overcome, but a lot of it involves courage and encouragement. We were never meant to heal from our experiences alone. So, really connecting with a lot of safe people where you can take off all your masks, and you can show up as yourself, and you know you’re not going to be judged. It’s a really important, essential factor that people need to do the healing work.

Aside from a therapist, friends, or sometimes a family member, our partners might be a huge agent of healing for us. It’s definitely is possible to work through these super scary experiences, and it’s so worth doing the work, and until then, it might be hard to imagine it. So until that time, your safe people—including your therapist or pastor or whoever—you may borrow the hope they have on your behalf. It’s okay if you feel scared or unsure.

---

What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?

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What are your emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

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© Copyright 2021 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Therapist in San Jose, CA, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Enneagram Type Six: What It's Like

My therapist colleague Melinda Olsen (Inviterra Counseling) and I are writing several blog series about the Enneagram, a comprehensive yet compact personality framework that reveals our reactive, “autopilot” patterns of thinking, feeling, doing, and relating.

In this series, someone from each Enneagram Type (Types One through Nine) will be sharing about their own journey of discovering and using the Enneagram for deep healing and personal growth.

In this post, fellow therapist, Jonathan Siu (husband of Lorren, Type 9) shares what it’s like to be a Type Six.

Here are the other posts in this series that are published so far:

• Type 1 - Josh Chan

• Type 2 - Melinda Olsen, LMFT

• Type 3 - Morgan Hancock

• Type 4 - Joanne Kim, LMFT

• Type 5 - Alyssa Harris

• Type 7 - Stefie Dominguez

• Type 8 - Marianna Torres

• Type 9 - Lorren Siu, LMFT

What does it mean to be an Enneagram Type Six?

Skilled at Preparation, Readiness in the Face of Things that Might Go Wrong

My biggest fear is being unprepared when something goes wrong. There is risk in everything. I can take any scenario and list the risks involved. I can also tell you the good things that are possible, but there are so many things that can go wrong and circumstances can always take a different direction. At home, I ask a lot of “what if’s”. What if we overspend this month? What if someone breaks into the house or it gets burned down? What if our pets get sick or injured?

But I don’t just ask the “what if’s”, I also take a lot of precautions. To help with money management, we use a budgeting app that tells us when we overspend, so we know to spend less the following month. I always triple-check that the doors are locked, the burners on the stove are off, and that the oven is not on. My wife says that I am crazy sometimes. But, on a rare occasion, I catch a door left unlocked, which is exactly why I check all the time. We still haven’t found a solution for pet injuries yet, but we just pray to God that they are safe and don’t get into trouble.

Good Troubleshooters

Not only do I assess the risk, but I also try to figure out what went wrong. I work as a data analyst, and the slightest difference—such as an extra comma—can take an extra afternoon to fix. At home, I spent hours watching Youtube videos trying to figure out how to repair the garage door just to make sure I didn't waste money hiring a repair person.

Don’t get me wrong, it also frustrates me when I don’t get the solution immediately. But, I try to use it as an opportunity to take a step back to breathe, think about the problem more on a macro level, and then come up with a plan for debugging. As my boss says, “There is a logical explanation to everything. We just don’t have the answer yet.” The way I see it, without taking the time to troubleshoot the situations, we will always be stuck in the same situations without a way to move forward. 

Protective and Supportive of the Team

I am often the glue of my team. I love to engage in communication one-on-one or in small groups so that I can really get to know people. My teammates were surprised at first with how many details I remember about things that are going on in their lives, but now they have come to know that’s just how I show that I care.

I am protective of my team and anything that may happen to it. If anything goes wrong, I make sure to take the lead and pick up the broken pieces. Because I know my team so well, I know what my team members may be needing and do my best to fill in those gaps. On the flip side, when my team is thriving, I feel broken. I feel that there isn’t a place for me in the team anymore. Similarly, I am very protective of those who I call family and I bend over backward when they have any kind of need. Even if they do not ask for help, I like to find ways to be of support. For example, when my sister was not feeling well, I offered to cook dinner and clean her house for an evening.

When did you first learn you were Enneagram 6?

I found out about the enneagram about 2 years ago. My now-wife was learning about it and typed me as a five at first. A few months after that, we took the enneagram test for pre-marital counseling. It turned out I am a six with a strong five wing. When I found out about my number, my mindset on life suddenly made sense. The reason I am so pessimistic in life is just because I feel insecure and wish to find security.

What do you wish people knew about Enneagram Type Six?

I think many people view sixes as being too cautious or Debbie-downers. They have their point sometimes, but taking a step back to assess the situation is very important to me because it is how I make sure that I am protected. It’s not that I am trying not to have a good time, but it’s a lot easier for me to enjoy myself when I feel like I have my bases covered and am prepared for what might go wrong.

I think making lists is also something about sixes that gets misunderstood. When I am stressed, I also make a lot of to-do lists. However, the lists only temporarily relieve my cognitive load; they don't solve the issue. Things can go wrong, and I need to know what can go wrong. The lists help me think through the issues logically, helping me feel ready for all possibilities.

Lastly, it is hard for me when people get annoyed or frustrated when I take longer to explain my idea or when I may talk in a roundabout way. When this happens I shut down and retreat because I feel that my ideas are not welcomed. I need to know that my thought process is understood, even if it is not the same as yours.

One thing you’re working on to grow beyond your type?

I can definitely be too cautious. My wife has helped me step out of my comfort zone in trying things that I deemed too dangerous. I’ve gone ziplining (the wooden platforms are janky), hiking (you can fall off of a cliff), learned how to drive (as our former pastor said, cars are just metal death traps.) While understanding the risks, and sometimes even hyperbolizing them, I am growing into becoming more okay with adventures. The world is a scary place, but instead of being paralyzed, I am understanding that I have been limiting myself. 

---

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!

What are your emotional habits?

Get the Emo Habits Guide!

Loading...

Woo hoo!!

Check your inbox for your free gift guide,

"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Enneagram Type Nine: What It's Like

My therapist colleague Melinda Olsen (Inviterra Counseling) and I are writing several blog series about the Enneagram, a comprehensive yet compact personality framework that reveals our reactive, “autopilot” patterns of thinking, feeling, doing, and relating.

In this series, someone from each Enneagram Type (Types One through Nine) will be sharing about their own journey of discovering and using the Enneagram for deep healing and personal growth.

In this post, fellow therapist, Lorren Penner, shares what it’s like to be a Type Nine.

Here are the other posts in this series that are published so far:

• Type 1 - Josh Chan

• Type 2 - Melinda Olsen, LMFT

• Type 3 - Morgan Hancock, LMFT

• Type 4 - Joanne Kim, LMFT

• Type 5 - Alyssa Harris

• Type 6 - Jonathan Siu

• Type 7 - Stefie Dominguez

• Type 8 - Marianna Torres

What does it mean to be an Enneagram Nine?

Lovers of Comfort 

My “happy place” is a crystal-clear, glass-smooth lake surrounded by tall redwood trees that block out the noise from the rest of the world, making for a quiet, truly serene environment. I want so badly for my entire life experience to match that tranquil lake scene. 

This leads me to do things such as ignore my own anger in an attempt to keep my inner lake from turning into a boiling hot spring. I might also stick my head underwater for a bit when I feel something unpleasant arising, in hopes that the disturbance will have passed by when I resurface. 

Other times, I might stuff my desires away when they contradict someone else’s so that a stone of conflict is not thrown into my lake, causing ripples to spread across the entire surface. I like my life to be comfortable and peaceful, making any change difficult, even when it is something that I strongly desire.

Tendency to Merge

As a peacekeeper, it is so easy for me as an Enneagram 9 to go along with everyone one else in order to not stir the pot. It is so easy that I often forget to even stop and ask myself what I want - I tell myself that all I want is for those around me to be comfortable. If they are comfortable and at peace, I am comfortable and at peace. 

It’s like that saying, “happy wife - happy life,” except for 9’s it’s more like, “happy partner, family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances, grocer at the supermarket, and guy passing you on the street - happy life.” Just writing that out feels a bit exhausting, but that is how I can tend to spend most of my time if I am not making an effort to tune into my own experience. 

It can feel so essential to me that the people around me are taken care of that I forget about the fact that I have feelings and needs as well. If how I feel or what I want goes against the feelings or desires of those I care about it feels incredibly risky to make that fact known. 

• What if I upset them when I disagree? 

• What if they cannot accept how I feel? 

• What if we cannot come to a compromise? 

• Will this state of disagreement/conflict last forever? 

• Can I handle that? 

If I am completely honest, it is so easy for me to go to this space. And that is when I tend to merge with everyone else because possible negative consequences of being different feel too overwhelming. 

Learning how to be more authentic myself, especially when that involves disagreeing with others has taken a lot of practice. Having safe people in my life to practice with has allowed me to discover the gift of being loved and accepted.

Passive Resistance

Just thinking about my own passive resistance makes me cringe! Enneagram 9’s are generally thought of as easy-going, understanding, patient, accommodating, and the like - which we are! But, we also have a very stubborn side to us, and it usually shows up in passive resistance. 

Passive resistance is my way of not being controlled by others or made to do something that I do not want to do. I might not tell you “no” outright, but you will soon come to find out that whatever it is you were hoping to have me do is NOT going to happen. Just ask my husband, he’s unfortunately been on the receiving end of this behavior more than I would like to admit. 

For me, this tends to show up as taking my time to respond to a question or situation, or not giving an answer at all. On the occasion that I do have to (or choose to) do whatever it is, it looks like carrying out the task in a way that will make you regret that you even asked. See why I cringed? It’s not easy admitting to this stuff! 

It is so easy to tell myself that I am a loving person because I do so much to keep others happy. But all of the things I do or do not do in order to keep the peace are for my own selfish gain - to avoid facing uncomfortable feelings. 

Living authentically and being in a true community with others very often requires facing uncomfortable things. I have had to learn how to do this first for myself before I could extend this gift to others in my life. Admitting when I feel angry, sad, hurt, embarrassed, or ashamed is so hard for me to do. But it is necessary if I want to avoid inflicting those same feelings on others, intentionally or not. Being honest about my “negative” feelings with myself first gives me the freedom to choose not to act out of passive aggression and instead choose authenticity.

When did you first learn you were Enneagram 9?

I became aware of the Enneagram about four years ago while I was working at a therapy center. Everyone there seemed to be talking about it and knew exactly what they were. It was hard for me to figure out my number at first. I took a few online tests and came up with different results at first, similar to other personality tests I had taken before such a Myers-Briggs. I could identify with aspects of each number and did not really know which one was most “me.” 

Once I learned that 9’s tend to identify with all of the other numbers before they identify with themselves, I was pretty sure I was a 9 since that was exactly what I had been doing. I also strongly related to being a peacekeeper and could see that throughout my life I had taken on that role in almost every setting I had been a part of, sometimes at the expense of my own sense of self.

It really hit home for me that I was, in fact, a 9 when I learned about the 9’s tendency to avoid their own anger in order to maintain a sense of inner peace. I really did not want to admit that this is something that I do. “I am accepting of everyone and every feeling,” I told myself, but when I took a deeper look I saw that anger was actually something that I avoided like the plague. Whether it was my own anger, or someone else’s, I had convenient ways of tuning out or just removing myself from the situation. 

I had heard that it is often through a dislike or denial of certain aspects of your number that you can confirm what you are. The 9’s relationship with anger and tendency toward sloth did that for me. The sloth part is still something I am in a bit of denial about!

What do you wish people knew about Enneagram Type Nine?

Any little thing you do that might brush aside our preferences or ideas feels 10 times stronger than it may have been intended. Because we tend to live in a space of denying ourselves, when we are brushed aside it feels as if it really is best for the world that we do not have our own thoughts/feelings/desires. We need constant invitations and reminders to show up as ourselves and share our gifts/ideas/talents with the world. And we need you to be ok with us showing up as different than you.

We are not trying to be difficult when we say we don’t know - if we haven’t taken the time to really check in with ourselves we honestly don’t know how we are feeling or what we want or need. Our default mode is to be aware of all other perspectives and go along with everyone else. It is what feels like the best way to keep things calm and steady. We are not used to having our own agenda, so please be patient with us as we figure out what we want or how we feel.

It can be hard for us to recognize when we are tuning out our anger or acting in sloth, and we need you to be gentle with us when you call it out. It takes effort for us to connect with our own experience, and we can easily feel overwhelmed. 

When we tune out or stop doing the things we need to do, we need a safe space to connect with ourselves and figure out the source of our overwhelm. A gentle acknowledgment of our experience when you see us acting out our overwhelm can help us move into processing it - harsh words will likely cause us to spiral deeper.

One Thing You’re Working on to Grow Beyond Your Type

I am working on being more tuned into myself so that I can live more authentically. I am trying to see this as a gift, not only to myself but to the world around me. When I can hold space for all of my feelings, including anger, I can choose how I want to show up in the world. When I can admit my feelings to myself and others I can have honest conversations that deepen and strengthen relationships rather than passively sabotaging them. If I am to be truly present as myself I have to include all of my feelings and desires. 

Keeping the peace at the cost of showing up authentically with all of me is not really keeping the peace, it is putting up a facade. Things might look peaceful, and they might even feel that way for a bit, but the turmoil is still there. 

In order to create true peace, I have to be brave and face the things that scare me. I have to accept that peace does not mean my inner lake is never disturbed, but that I can be ok even when the water gets rough.

---

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© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

How to Have Great Conversations

Much like rallying in tennis, great relationships are built on back-and-forth conversations. One person can’t do all the work, and both parties must be engaged and take responsibility in continuing the connection.

However, different ways of “serving” or “hitting” the conversational ball make a huge impact on whether your partner can return the volley, which influences how well you can do the same, etc.

These “serves” show up in what’s known as the Journalistic Six Questions, AKA the six “WH” questions:

1. WHO

2. WHAT

3. WHEN

4. WHERE

5. WHY

6. HOW

These journalistic questions are designed to gain more information about the other person. However,

🔴 ONE is a bomb that blows up the convo with collateral damage,

🟡 THREE/FOUR are duds that lead to dead ends, and

🟢 TWO are gems that lead to greater intimacy.

So, which one is which?

WHO, WHEN, WHERE: These Lead Nowhere

The three questions, WHO, WHEN, and WHERE are what’s called CLOSED questions: once the other party answers the question, the conversation’s done and you’re basically stuck with needing to ask another question if you want it to continue.

Some examples?

• WHO - Who did you have lunch with the other day?

• WHEN - When was your doctor’s appointment?

• WHERE - Where are you from?

Sometimes WHAT joins into the mix:

• WHAT - What’s your major?* What do you do?*

*This the most commonly asked question in college and post-grad and is the MOST BORING QUESTION EVER.

These questions are useful every once in a while, but try not to rely on these as the conversation becomes very dry and your convo partner doesn’t know what to do next (except maybe to ask YOU these same questions).

*Cue awkward silence*

WHY: AVOID the NUKE

One of the most commonly asked questions is also one of the deadliest. WHY is intended to ask about the other person’s intentions or reasons, but often the convo explodes and goes a completely different direction, leaving a trail of dead bodies in its wake.

WHY is this? It’s NOT because the contents of the question itself are bad. Rather, it’s because often the underlying tone (whether the asker actually meant it or not) leads the listener to feel like they’re feeling interrogated.

Let’s say that someone asks you these questions:

• Why did you go to the store?

• Why did you call me?

• Why did you choose your major?

• Why do you like chocolate chip cookies?

Even innocent-ish questions can feel sharp when you’re on the receiving end. Generally, we don’t always react to the literal CONTENT of the conversation (i.e., the words spoken - WHAT was said) because our brains process nonverbal cues (e.g., tone, body language, facial expressions - HOW it was said) MUCH more quickly.

(This is because the THINKING brain - which focuses on content - is MUCH SLOWER than the FEELING brain - which focuses on relationships).

So if you’re using WHY questions, don’t be surprised if the other person gets defensive! They may feel like they’re being put on trial, i.e., that they need to explain or defend themselves.

It’s as if the answerer needs to provide a “legitimate” response or justification, which can be really painful for those who already struggle with low self-esteem. (And who gets to determine what’s legitimate?)

Defensiveness is one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse that signals the end times of a relationship. If someone is often defensive, they can put a strain on the connection.

However, if you ask questions in a way that seems to frequently elicit defensive reactions in others, perhaps it’s the questioner (rather than the questioned) who needs to change.

WHYs are TERRIBLE questions for cultivating relationships, which ought to be built on safety, trust, and closeness. When WHY is asked, the asker (accidentally) takes a one-UP position (the interrogator) and the listener (accidentally) takes a one-DOWN position.

Rapport is hard to build when there’s an inherent power dynamic - one person being ABOVE/UNDER the other - because it’s as if there’s one winner and one loser. Competition or comparison is NOT a great setup for intimacy.

HOW & WHAT ABOUT:
The Magical Questions

You may have genuine curiosity about your conversation partner’s WHY. The reasons or values that go into making decisions are truly personal - getting to know them about each other is what creates intimacy!

However, precisely because these things are personal (and thus more vulnerable), it’s important to INVITE your partner to voluntarily share about themselves, not try to FORCE them to open up. In order to foster connections, it is important to try and BE trustworthy rather than try to DEMAND trust.

Signal to the other person that they ARE good, respectable, worthy and that their interests, opinions or thoughts DO matter. Instead of interviewing or interrogating them, it’s good to ask questions to understand them on their own terms/timing.

The thing with the two questions HOW and WHAT ABOUT is that you have no clue what the person’s answer might be. Instead of making YOURSELF the expert of their experience and judging what’s good/bad, you are making THEM the expert with you as the student.

By going into a one-DOWN position, you are voluntarily relinquishing authority to the other person by indirectly saying that their answer DOES matter, that it DOES have weight, and that you will SUBMIT yourself into receiving their answer as it is (not what it “should” be).

Fortunately, WHY questions could easily be converted into HOW and WHAT ABOUT. These two also keep questions OPEN (rather than closed), so they keep the convo going in a much more interesting way.

An Example:

Let’s go with the BORINGEST question: “What’s your major?“

If you were to just stick to that question, the convo would end (boringly).

If you were to follow that up with WHY (“WHY did you choose your major?”), the convo *might* lead the person to feel more nervous or even turn sideways.

Alternatively, if you were to follow this up with:

• HOW (“How did you come to decide your major?”) or

• WHAT ABOUT (“What about your major do you enjoy?),

the listener would feel like you’re interested and respectful and would probably open up more about themselves. Feeling seen, known, and understood, the listener would likely move TOWARDS you (vs. AWAY FROM or AGAINST).

Here’s the template on how to use these two questions:

• HOW did you ______?

• WHAT ABOUT (topic) do you (emotion)?

Any typical closed question could be followed up with either of these to spice it up but without the flammability.

“What about key lime pie do you enjoy?” is literally asking the same thing as “Why do you like key lime pie?”, but because the listener’s brain is hearing a softer, welcoming tone, they are likely to remain calm, connected, and open.

Keep the Rally Going

In summary, here are the six journalistic questions:

🔴 The Nuke Question: WHY

🟡 The Closed Questions: WHO, WHEN, WHERE, (WHAT)

🟢 The Inviting Questions: HOW & WHAT ABOUT

The way to cultivate intimate relationships is through respect, safety, and invitation. Experiment with these six questions to see which helps you move TOWARDS, AWAY FROM, or AGAINST each other.

---

What are your Enneagram type's emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

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© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Frequently Asked Questions about Therapy

How do I know whether I’m making progress in therapy?

It’s easier for people to know that they’re going in a general good direction when they set a general destination or a goal. An actual question that I have clients answer in their intake forms is: “If this space were to be helpful for you (“space: meaning “therapy”), what would you see in your life being different? What would be some signs and indicators that things have actually changed for the better?”

• E.g., someone comes in, they want to work on relationship issues, they might say, “I would like to directly ask for what I need without crying.”

• That’s the set goal, and tracing back from that goal with reverse engineering, we’d be able to see some steps in between. Those are called the metrics.

• An example of an indicator of this person going in a healthy direction is:

  • First, do you know what needs do you have?

  • Do you know what needs you tend to have?

  • Do you recognize there probably was some time in the past were you able to successfully do that? What was it about that situation? What was it about that person you were talking to? What about that need made it possible to do that? And so on.

So again, if you set your goal and destination clearly, it’s easy to set the metrics in between. You can write it out before you even begin therapy and hold onto that while you go through the therapy process to have a sense of “Alright, I’m still may be far away from where I’d like to be, but things are moving in a helpful direction.”

On the other hand, if you find that the conversations with your therapist are getting pretty repetitive or you’re running out of things to talk about, that might be an indicator that the therapy space is not working. You need to have conversations with your therapist to make adjustments so that it’s more aligned with what you need and that hopefully, things get better for you.

OR it’s an indicator that things are actually working because you might’ve gotten to where you wanted to be sooner than you might’ve expected. If you’re running out of things to talk about and things are repetitive, and it’s indicative that things are actually working, perhaps it’s a good idea to talk with your therapist to transition out of therapy by graduating through what’s called “termination,” or to space out your sessions, which is called “maintenance mode.”

How do I know whether a therapist is not a good fit?

It’s really important for there to be a good fit between you and the therapist. If you’ve defined your goals, then it’s easier to tell whether or not the therapist is a good fit. If you’re going in a different direction than what you signed up for, it’s good to have a conversation with your therapist about it. Sometimes what they offer and what you need may not be aligned, and that’s okay. Therapists are trained to be professional listeners, but we don’t have the ability to read minds, so it’s very helpful if we can have those explicit conversations. Sometimes adjustments are possible; it’s better to bring it up sooner rather than later down the line.

Another sign that things are or aren’t a good fit with a therapist is based on gut reaction. I send out quarterly surveys to ask clients how they feel in sessions, and for clients who have been great fits, the number one emotion they report feeling in that first session is RELIEF. They felt seen, heard, known, less confused, had a deeper understanding—those are all pretty good signs a therapist is a good fit.

The opposite of those emotions will be feeling confused, overwhelmed, or nervous. It’s OKAY to be nervous about starting a new thing, but if that nervousness doesn’t dissipate over the first couple of sessions, you might want to check out someone else that your body feels more at ease with. When you’re tense, therapists are not likely to get to the heart of the matter as easily, which means you might be taking more sessions than you need to. You should find someone with whom your body can feel at ease. If you check in with your body, and you feel more relaxed, you’ll be able to go at a much greater depth than with someone with whom you are guarded and reserved.

Therapy is about YOUR Needs, not the Therapist’s

One last point is that therapy is about YOU and YOUR NEEDS. It’s not about the therapist; it’s not about what the therapist needs or feels. Don’t spend your precious resources like your time, energy, and money trying to navigate how the therapist might feel if potentially you don’t feel like it’s a good fit, or you want to transition out. This space is meant for YOU. You don’t owe an explanation. If you feel more comfortable having a closure conversation with your therapist, power to you! That could be a good part of your own process. But let’s say you feel unsafe with a therapist, feel free to not have that closure conversation. You don’t owe them an explanation. Maybe you’ll just email them or send a message that going forward you’ll no longer be working with them—that’s okay.

If you’re currently looking for a therapist, check out my post about how to find a therapist in San Jose and how to prepare for a consult call to gauge whether or not a potential therapist will be a good fit for you.

---

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!

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What are your emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

What is Compatibility?

Am I Compatible with the Person I’m Dating?

I live in the Silicon Valley, there are tons of young professionals in the area, and one big topic that’s on a lot of people’s minds is around relationships. “Whom am I going to date? Whom am I going to spend the rest of my life with? Whom am I going to buy a house with?”

Either through online dating apps OKCupid or Coffee Meets Bagel, or asking around from friends and family members, “Can you set me up with somebody?” A lot of people are thinking, “Is this person that I’m considering a fit? A COMPATIBLE fit?” The topic of compatibility is a big thing that comes up.

What Does “Compatible” Mean?

Generally, the way that the word “compatibility” is understood is that “this person and I are going to jive well together.” But I did some digging in dictionary.com the other day to find out what the word ACTUALLY means. I learned that in the Latin form, it doesn’t mean that this person and I are the right fit, but it means that we learn how to STRUGGLE together.

• The root “com” means together

• “Bility” means ability

• “Pati” in the middle literally means “pain.”

Why is Compatibility Important?

Contrary to what a lot of people assume to mean about compatibility, if you want to find someone who is a good, compatible match, you want to make sure that YOU are someone who is doing your own personal work, and that you’re willing to find someone who is also doing the same for themself.

The reason why this is the case is because most likely, one or both of you are going to change at some point. Just because they are a good fit now, doesn’t mean you’re going to be a fit for the long haul. So, if both of you don’t know how to make adjustments as you change or grow, the relationship is going to experience more strain down the line.

So again, I want you to find someone who is compatible, but also someone who is willing to do the work. If you want to know how you can do your own portion of it, I have a bunch of blogs around relationships and personal development to help you get started on your own journey.

---

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!

What are your emotional habits?

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"The Emotional Habits of Enneagram Types"!!

---

© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”

Does this resonate?

Who is the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)?

Who are Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)?

I don’t know about you, but I have been told many, many times that I am just too damn sensitive because my mood changes very often, or I notice the slightest changes in lighting or notice lint on the ground, and I can’t “just get over it.” So I’m here to talk about the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) trait, and I’ll describe the four main distinctive features of the HSP.

HSPs comprise 20% of the population. That’s a BIG amount of people. It’s not a diagnosis, and it’s not a problem. But a lot of the challenges that HSPs like myself face is that technically, we’re in the minority. We’re the minority in a country and a context that’s not very kind to minorities, so often HSPs feel very misunderstood. They feel judged and shamed because they don’t fit the mold for what the rest of the population tends to experience just fine.

D.O.E.S.: The 4 Traits of HSPs

The acronym D-O-E-S, these four letters correspond with the traits that distinguish HSPs from non-HSPs. So they are:

• D is for DEPTH of processing.

• O is for OVERSTIMULATION

• E is for EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY and EMPATHY

• S is for SENSITIVITY to subtle stimuli

D: DEPTH of Processing

HSPs tend to take in a lot more quality and quantity of information from the world around them. Imagine a person being a blu-ray imaging in a DVD world. Compared to the vast majority of the population, HSPs take in far more stimuli like what’s happening, sensory information, emotional information.

Not only do they take in a lot more quality and quantity of data, but they also run that through a very fine sieve internally. They are very deliberate, very thoughtful, very reflective and it takes a while. Usually, you can’t just throw information at them; HSPs usually need some time away to process and digest everything. They’re not as speedy as some of the rest of y’all might want HSPs to be.

O: OVERSTIMULATION

Due to Depth of Processing, HSPs often get OVERSTIMULATED. Because of all the stimuli that’s taken in from the outside and all the churning that’s happening on the inside, HSPs get overwhelmed very easily. As a result, the nervous system tends to shut down more, causing HPSs to overwhelm easily. Their minds get very fogged, their eyes glaze over, they are very frazzled and irritable. This happens not necessarily because they are angry, but they are trying to take in and digest all the stuff their bodies have absorbed from around them.

To deal with this, HSPs may need to have some dedicated time in very low-stimuli environments—silence, solitude, and stillness. They need to get away from all the noise and all the people. For myself, after a long day, I need to take a good 10-15 minutes with the lights off, in my room, by myself, under a weighted blanket. It helps my body come back online. So if HSPs withdraw, it might not necessarily be because they don’t want to talk to you, it might be because they are overwhelmed.

E: EMOTIONAL REACTIVITY + EMPATHY

I mentioned HSPs take in a lot of outside information. Part of that information is around EMOTIONS. Because they notice subtleties in facial expressions, tone of voice, or body language, they’re able to pick up on the emotional cues of other people. This is not something they do on purpose. It’s very reflexive; it happens without them knowing it. But because they are attuned to the emotional feelings of other people, they might feel feelings about other people’s emotions, not just because they might sense some of the pain they are experiencing, but because if they see an angry or grumpy expression in someone else, their own nervous system starts responding accordingly.

Not only that, HSPs tend to be very reflective internally, so they can even notice the nuances in their own emotional experiences. Sometimes HSPs can have feelings about their own feelings, so they may find themselves in an emotional feedback loop. They start looking internally, and the more they focus on the different nuances of emotions, they build up like a snowball. All this focus on the details starts amplifying themselves, which is why HSPs are often seen as being very sensitive or very emotional.

S: SENSITIVITY to Subtle Stimuli

If you think about the 5 senses — sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing — HSPs pick up on those really readily. This is a great thing in some instances, like they are very good with the arts or aesthetics because they have a dedicated focus on making sure things are in good harmony or aligned well. This can also backfire, like noticing the scratchy tags on the back of the shirt or being really bothered that a particular picture frame is out of alignment, etc. The sensitivity can be a double-edged sword.

Resources for the Highly Sensitive Person (HSP)

Remember the 4 traits that distinguish HSPs from non-HSPs, D-O-E-S (Depth of processing, overstimulation, emotional reactivity and empathy, and sensitivity to subtle stimuli). If all these 4 things (to varying degrees) resonate with you, there’s a good chance you might be a Highly Sensitive Person. Again, this is not a diagnosis. And HSPs are also different from each other, so you’ll resonate with these things on a spectrum.

The reason it’s important for people to know whether or not they are HSPs is because the things that the rest of the world needs for themselves as non-HSPs don’t always apply to HSPs. Being an HSP in a non-HSP-dominant environment presents some very difficult circumstances. I live in the Silicon Valley in the United States, and there is a high emphasis on being the best or having things be bigger, better, louder, faster. Those are values that don’t often align with the HSP trait. So, if that same person were to live in Japan or another country that is very HSP-friendly, those people will be celebrated, whereas, in this environment, they might have a really hard time.

Find out what your specific needs are because they MATTER. It’s just because they are often misunderstood, it may take a little bit longer for you. If you’re interested in HSPs, you can check out my resource page for HSPs or pick up a copy of the book The Highly Sensitive Person by Dr. Elaine Aron, which is a fantastic resource. She also wrote some books that specifically serve HSP children and being in love as an HSP or with an HSP.

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© Copyright 2021 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, who loves helping people create emotionally thriving relationships. 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)
(4) adult survivors of emotional abuse and neglect

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!”