Tony Hsieh: the Dark Side of Happiness
By: Cris Beasley
Tags: Enneagram, Mental Health, Suicide, Psychology, Life Lessons

We all have some way in which we’re born inside out.

As I read through the stories that have recently surfaced around the death of Zappos founder, Tony Hseih, a familiar pattern emerged.

The way Tony was born inside out was in his desire to have a happy life. What could be wrong with that, you wonder?

What does it mean to chase fun until you’re miserable? What happens when all of your wealth and being surrounded by throngs of adoring, friends, and strangers still doesn’t fill the hole within you? It left Tony whittled down to 100 lbs. inside a carbon monoxide filled shed next to his multi-million dollar mansion chasing the temporary bliss of asphyxia.

I’m a somatic trauma therapist, which means I guide people to open the scariest, darkest boxes in their psyche. One of the tools I use is called the Enneagram. If you’ve never heard of this before, think of it as a shortcut to uncovering your blindspot on what you’re doing that’s making you hate life.

The familiar pattern I recognized in Tony was illuminated by the Enneagram. He followed in the footsteps of Robin Williams, another Enneagram Type Seven, who brought much joy to everyone he touched but could not hold onto it within himself.

Type Seven is named The Enthusiast or Adventurer. The Sevens are known for being addicted to fun. When they are unhealthy, their core strategy is to avoid pain at all costs. As best we can tell, the last six months of Tony’s life were spent in increasingly desperate attempts.

“Ultimately happiness is really just about enjoying life,” he wrote in the 2010 book. Mr. Hsieh wrote that the Zappos culture was all about the pursuit of fun. “When you need to party, you party. When you need to produce, you produce,” he wrote.

–Wall Street Journal The Death of Zappos’s Tony Hsieh: A Spiral of Alcohol, Drugs and Extreme Behavior

No amount of money can heal your fears of running out of money. No amount of adoring fans and loved ones can heal your desire to be loved and belong. Even if you find yourself surrounded by as many friends and material riches as he was… if you still deem yourself to be unworthy of love it won’t matter.

Tony’s tragic death destroys the message that billions of dollars worth of advertising campaigns try to convince us of… that we can buy our way out of the gnawing emptiness inside.

There’s no drug that will take it away either.

There is a well of deep emptiness at the core of every one of us. Paradoxically, touching that emptiness doesn’t prevent us from being happy, it allows happiness to unfold in us.

The Enneagram Sevens become restless in their search of fun because as a child, they learned that they would be loved the most if they could entertain their parents. They felt most valued when they were amusing. They learned the mistaken lesson that it was their job to entertain people even at the expense of themselves.

Enneagram 7s are planning their next vacation while the sand is still wet on their swimsuit. They are the people who, even when they’re on vacation in the most extraordinary place, find it difficult to even enjoy where they are. No one struggles with FOMO as hard as they do. “Oh, we’re in Maui” they muse, “don’t you think if we’d gone to Fiji we would be having a better time?”

Enneagram Sevens have a natural talent for making their family laugh from the time they were tiny kids. The Enneagram Three, to illustrate some contrast, got appreciation and love from their caregivers by overachieving and being brilliant. The Enneagram Three won’t ever show their mess because that would undermine their perfectionistic image, but the Seven will haul out their mess, put birthday candles and a sparkler on it to make sure you have a giggle.

As long as it makes you laugh, they don’t care how dumb they might look in the moment.

The Enneagram Sevens are the ones you most want to invite to your birthday. You’ll be especially lucky if the Sevens are the ones who throw your birthday party. It’ll probably be the best one you’ve ever had.

If they find out you like bouncy houses, you might come home to find four of them on your lawn along with half the town. The difficulty of the Seven inevitably returns once those bouncy houses have deflated. They go off once again in search of the next thing to dull the ache of emptiness.

Don’t take this article to mean the Enneagram Seven is a curse. None of the types are without shadows. None is a picnic, let me assure you.

Eventually, the path of healing for a Seven means turning their awareness inward to that which they fear the most — the dark emotions which lie right beneath the surface.

You might be quite shocked to find out your Seven friends are somber and sad behind closed doors. They rarely let anyone see them when they’re like this. If you’re close to a Seven, let them know it’s not their job to entertain you and that it’s safe to express negative feelings with you. They will probably look at you like you have three heads and then start crying.

Cultivating the ability to be with that sadness is the only thing that can ground them enough to stop running from the FOMO. The path of healing looks like getting comfortable feeling their whole range of emotions to allow them to simply be in their own skin.

It means taking Glennon Doyle’s advice –

Being fully human is not about feeling happy, it’s about feeling everything.

Once they start to integrate this wisdom, their great capacity for fun emerges a whole octave higher. They can make anything fun. There’s no one you would rather be in a jail cell, digging a ditch, or washing dishes with than an Enneagram Seven. They’ll be bouncing the latest Beyonce groove, popping your ass with the dishtowel, and cracking jokes as you go.

Some other famous Sevens include James Franco, Russell Brand, Jim Carrey, and Ram Dass. They all share a magic blend of childlike wonder with a gripping aliveness you don’t want to look away from it’s so shimmering in its light. That’s a beautiful thing the world needs more of.

I offer this little bit of insight in hopes that it will bring a sliver of understanding to the completely unreasonable and unknowable experience of someone dying in this tragic way. If we’re gonna go through hell, we might as well come back with our handbasket full of greater ability to be with the darkness.

If you are struggling, you can connect for free with a Crisis Counselor at Crisis Text Line.