Episode 107 - The 27 Subtypes of the Enneagram - The Gut Center

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[Music] hey everybody i'm michael gunger welcome to the liturgists podcast the show where we explore the most interesting topics that we can think of through lenses like science spirituality art philosophy today we're trying something a little different we're giving you three episodes in one day i'm not sure we've ever done that before so hope you enjoy that the reason we're doing this like this is because there's so much information in these episodes and they all go together you kind of need them all if you're gonna get the whole picture of it and it just happens to really naturally break into three different episodes quite swimmingly so because we're talking about what we're talking about which is the enneagram and the different instinctual centers of the enneagram uh we're releasing it in three different parts so if you don't know what the enneagram is by the way this might not be the episode you want to start with you might want to start with our episode called the enneagram it's actually one of the biggest no i think it is the biggest episode we've ever had i think a couple million downloads and that's a great intro to the enneagram this one is much more nuanced it gets in a lot more depth not just about the nine types but the three instinctual centers which they'll go into in this podcast but these centers and the subtypes that they create actually makes a big difference in how effective the enneagram can be for people but it also makes it more complicated because with all those centers there becomes 27 subtypes rather than just the original nine so these episodes go into all 27 subtypes and thoroughly explain each of the instinctual centers so it's a lot of information but we know from the download numbers that there's a lot of you out there that really love the enneagram so we hope that you drink these episodes up make the most of this powerful tool of personal development and self-discovery science mike will be the host on these episodes and he's joined by our good friend annie diamond who is a professional badass at all things enneagram in fact if any of you ordered our enneagram video course which you can always get at the liturgists.com by the way you already know how amazing annie is for the rest of you you're in for a treat these episodes also feature music from ryan o'neil for sleeping at last with his enneagram music i i would like to personally offer a quick production note that there were some microphone issues with hannie sometimes she doesn't sound quite as clear as we usually shoot for on the show so sorry about that it's still listenable though and so you know we are working on solutions to make sure that all of our guests when we record them um remotely like any was recording that we make sure we can get as clean and clear audio as possible all right that's it for me all the love hope you enjoy these three episodes of the liturgist podcast annie why do you think people love the enneagram so much well i think that for the people who love it it's because they've experienced a sense of resonance and it's given them language and companionship and invitation to a part of themselves that maybe they knew before but they didn't know how to encounter they didn't know how to describe and they didn't know that there was anyone else that was trying to encounter and describe the same thing so i think people like it for that reason just the resonance of it and the truthiness of it um just that and i mean yeah i guess uh truthy is the reason that people don't like it too for some people they don't quite have that sense of deep resonance they're like yeah it kind of sounds yeah sure like it sounds like any other kind of personality tool yeah you could throw anything up against a wall and find something that looked like something right and i think there's a few different reasons for that i think sometimes people are haven't heard themselves well represented in the enneagram and the way that it's presented sometimes they're intimidated by the energy that people bring to it sometimes they've been hurt by the energy that people bring to it and people bring that energy to it because they've had a resonance with it but you can't force resonance right so even when things are described well or correctly there's a difference between description and accurate pictures and knowing how those pictures are something you can engage with and use in your life hmm one thing i've noticed that happens a lot is people will start the enneagram journey and they will start to identify as a type and that you know becomes something that unlocks some introspection and some learning and then when they get into a social space and talk about their type they'll say oh you know i've learned that you know i'm a five and i you know have this tendency to look at the world and try to take it apart into small pieces and distance myself that way and feel safe and then someone will go you're not a five you're a total four and then there's this cycle of instead of feeling more hurt and more known the person feels unheard they feel minimized they feel their experiences ignored and i feel like often that kind of an energy where we not only distill ourselves down to a numeric label but then start to reduce other people's identity to our perception of them as represented by a number is part of how that enthusiasm you know becomes a a cycle that leads away from self-knowledge and away from connection and in fact in the opposite direction how how can people like use the enneagram in a more healthy way that doesn't lead to that cycle what's funny is that a basic premise sort of of the enneagram is that we're all trying to work towards a kind of freedom but our freedom isn't external we don't have a freedom to change other people we have a freedom to influence situations we can influence other people but we can't change them and often we come to these kinds of encounters with an eye towards changing other people and all of our work even with ourselves can only be done through compassionate encounter i believe and it's in those compassionate encounters and the ability to create space and create space for surprise that we're able to ask the kinds of questions that we need to ask and see the kinds of things we that we need to see but we can't show people these kinds of truths like these are the kinds of things people have to encounter when you hold on to something so dearly and we just forget that with the enneagram we're not just describing behaviors we're describing orientations towards reality this piece of the divine and holy that they love so much that they're grasping so tightly onto and that they're so afraid of losing that they develop a way of being in the world that is encased in sort of fear around losing this and so these things are so deeply in us i don't know why we think that we can just start banging around in a room saying like no look at this you you definitely are like this and you definitely are like this we have to be gentle i think it's parker palmer who says the soul is like a wild animal you can't go banging around in the forest screaming for it to come out you have to sit and wait at the base of a tree and listen and wait and i don't know of any other way to do enneagram work than gently and quietly it's why i hate it when the enneagram gets brought up in just sort of like casual conversation in the coffee shop which is probably where it's being talked about right now and probably where people will tell people to go listen to this podcast which is fine it's not that it's bad and also i learned the enneagram in a coffee shop i literally worked in a coffee shop where i had people sit on a stool when it was quiet and i would read to them aloud from the chapters of riso hudson's book so i i'm not defaming that as bad or as part of a process learning process but we can't be surprised if people are put off by it or can't do the deep work if the way we're introducing it to them is in this loud violent assertive coercive kind of way because we are instinctual beings as we'll talk about and as such even if it's not overt or spoken we can tell when we're being coerced into something and that's not how we want the work to happen not transformational work and not not work that really puts people in a in a place of agency in their lives there is a real wisdom and discernment to really encountering something when you have the space for it and not when you're gonna play it like a game or use it to get people to become who you want them to become what you've described uncannily describes how i first encountered the enneagram people in my life had learned about the enneagram and were very enthusiastic about it and in very casual informal settings almost witnessed to me with the good news of the enneagram and its ability to create self knowledge and transformation but it actually felt pretty coercive and and high pressure and confusing and actually made me resist the enneagram for months and months and months and not engage it seriously because of like how passionately and how over the top it felt like i was being sold snake oil right like this miracle cure to all my problems and and i get that i think both well i think both of us um are a little bit traumatized by a kind of evangelical culture where that this is just sort of what happens but obviously with another kind of good news and so i think that probably both of us are particularly attuned to that and not interested in that kind of pedagogical environment it never accomplishes the the kinds of things that you and that you really want it to accomplish but i understand the way that like language communities develop and often those expressions of excitement or joy or oh my gosh you have to hear about this thing that i learned about you really need it it's really like partially someone saying i encountered this thing and it was really cool for me sometimes i wonder though if we can't speak from that sense of i like oh here's here's what i encountered here's why it's interesting for me because we don't actually know how it fits into our story yet we're just like oh i have this resonance this is really true but it's hard to really say like what it's doing or what purpose it's serving and so we just say hey you should be interested in this you get interested in it and it's like then we all have this language and instead of doing the work we need to do with our type we just sort of like externalize um type language and it becomes all about identity again instead of about the invitation to our deep worth and belonging or belovedness or security like these these invitations of each of the centers i'm with you like on the one hand i'm like okay we gotta stop and on the other hand i'm like this is just the way that we make meaning this is the way that we explore things but i think there's a we've reached like a quorum here in terms of enneagram interest where we can look at the enneagram community of practitioners and say hey let's let's do this better let's be a little gentler let's like interrogate and be interested in why we have to talk about this and and also be interested in whether or not our talking about it is also aligned with the kind of transformation that's actually happening in us when we use it because i'd be interested in hearing about that how much has this just become like meme culture i want to know like what are the stories what are the actually conscious enneagram abby robbins they have a really cool series right now about their practice and that would be interesting for people to check out because i really appreciate that it's very much about encountering themselves in their process and not just naming things not that naming's bad love a good name so what's interesting to me is when you talk about the enneagram as meme culture and as coffee shop conversation you know that's really true to the ways i've experienced it until i met you and i was reflecting back on when i first encountered you and that was our mutual friend caroline hosted like an enneagram workshop that i was really resistant to attending but i really trust caroline and i i didn't think caroline would be doing it in kind of the post-evangelical adjacent manner in which i was used to uh or accustomed to encountering the enneagram and so i ended up going to this seminar that you did and you immediately ratcheted the enneagram to another level of depth and dare i say complexity with something i'd never heard of and because of that kind of additional layer number one helped me find the enneagram as much truer to my experience because the number i thought i might be nine seemed to make a lot more sense with the context of another i have no language other than data point layer another layer thank you that's much better so you add this additional layer and i watch the whole room of people kind of open up in a very you know vulnerable way and a deeper and richer experience with the enneagram and that key insight was this notion of instinctual centers which is crazy because if there's three instinctual centers the nine types we're all used to that are already pretty complicated because you can move to toward another number and stress and another in times of less stress or this takes the total number of subtypes to 27 27 which is crazy uh so i'd really love it annie if you could tell the liturgists a little bit about these instinctual centers and how that modifies someone's existing understanding of the enneagram yeah absolutely and first let me say there's not a whole lot written about them um the best book that i know of is by beatrice chestnut called the complete enneagram and it's excellent also i've my training in this is through the narrative enneagram and so a lot of the resources and things i'm drawing on as i explain these really i'm so thankful to particularly one of the teachers peter o'hanoran for just his extensive work in this area so i do want to say that because there are great resources out there to continue to dive deeper also the the way that i continue to learn about this is through interacting with people both in the workshops that i've gone to through the narrative enneagram and the training as well as through my coaching clients i really i mean the way we learn about the enneagram not just through books is through encounter as i said before so um the narrative enneagram is amazing because it's all about storytelling and sort of inductive reasoning based on people's sharing and how type shows up in their lives in particular ways with the scaffolding of both the type and the subtype instinctual energy so instincts let's see so before i say kind of exactly what the instincts are i want to say that i'm a person and maybe you are as well who i knew i was a type four when i um encountered the enneagram or i was pretty sure i was um but the more i got into it actually the more i heard from people you're not a type four right as we were talking about earlier you're too happy to be a type four and that's interesting right um it's like as if i was denied access to what i found as resonant language because um somehow i was happy and not that i am all the time but that's interesting and everyone has this sort of suffering artist dramatic kind of view of the four but there are types of fours that are not that way um or not that way that have been not sort of the cultural archetype way there are archetypes for them but they're not culturally utilized um and so we'll go through those today similar things happen right with like the counterphobic and the phobic six like a lot of people are used to the image of a scared six kind of cowering in the corner but the six that didn't even know they had anxiety until they were 40 years old is like a harder one to understand and so we'll go through that and actually i'd be interested as we go through these types for you to tell me which of the subtypes don't sound like the type as you came to know it or as you've experienced it culturally because i i think that's important for us to name and to sort of give space to those people who've felt like on the outside of resonance for the for the lack of kind of clear description yeah and i guess the other thing is that as a sort of prolagomina to um introducing the subtypes is that often people want to talk about wings like that's how we qualify our type um and it's a behavioral qualification so as a four if you see me and i look sort of active happy and outgoing you might be like oh sh she's and she works kind of hard okay so she she must be a four-wing three right um but then you're like oh but she's like in academia and so she's doing a phd and so she really likes i guess she has to read a lot and write a lot so maybe she's a wing five and i not that i don't believe in wings but i believe that the wings themselves are part of what create the type and so i don't and i think we all lean into both wings at different times in our life and i think our our use of wings is generally just to qualify like when our type doesn't quite fit or we don't have a version of our type that fits in the way that really resonates and so so then i guess to introduce what the instincts are they are so if type is sort of what we might do and why we do it subtype is where and how so if the passion of our type sort of the energy and even the suffering of our type is is part of what connects us to a particular project in a particular center and there's nine of those add to that three different places and or ways to direct that energy so actually peter hannahan talks about you know we all have a passion but then within the type so for me envy belonging within type four there are three different passion force so a passion of envy becomes passion for self-preservation passion for sexual or one-to-one connection and or passion for social structural work and so i'll explain each of these instincts but essentially what happens when we get 27 subtypes is we get the nine passions spread out over these three instinctual areas the instinctual area of self-preservation sexual or one-to-one relationship or bonding and social or social structural yeah maybe uh for anybody who this is their first time uh could we just dig a little deeper into each of the instinctual centers so self-preservation this instinct it's a nest building instinct if we want to think of it as like connected to animal behavior it's a nest building instinct it's a sheltering the basic need of shelter it's connected to the need for home food comfort warmth material security a focus on the environment people who find themselves most sort of fixated on self-preservation are concerned with the meeting of physical needs and the need for material security and they have a sort of conserved energy that's grounded solid and consistent and their attention is generally inward or singular they're people who even the heart types right so we think of the heart types the twos the threes and fours as these connectors and people who are really concerned with being loved and relationships and all that and that's true but self-preservation combines with that so this is a different kind of this is a place that those desires and those needs of the heart type and the project of the heart type are taken too right i mean and this can happen of course there's self-preservation subtypes within each of the centers of intelligence but self-preservation these are our people concerned there are warm people concerned with home food comfort think of a home that you went into growing up or even now where you just walk in and there's like blankets everywhere and comfy chairs and it looks like somebody's really just taken the time not just to make a space beautiful though maybe these types care about that but also just thought through like what is what is comfortable um what there might be more of a focus on multiple options for food and drink and those kinds of things i remember actually once mike when we were talking and you and vishnu were discussing what kind of events you would go to and you were like wait i if i got invited to my favorite concert and i had to stand i just wouldn't go like i would just stay home and i'd prefer like eating at home and then going to bed at a good time and maybe not everyone would make that decision every time but you're concerned with that that's a you would think about the discomfort of going to a concert and standing the whole time that that's literally my primary consideration um me too i'm a self-preservation subtype the way so the way that we learn about these in my training is that um during the instincts and subtypes training weekend instead of being grouped by type you're actually grouped by subtype so me and all my self-preservation friends went and sat in a circle and it was like when you came over to witness our group it was like this warm family environment um where and but everyone was sort of sitting in ways that like they were shifting to be in more comfortable positions um and there was like a side by side kind of togetherness that was wasn't super intense but it wasn't super structured it was somewhere in between that's self-preservation and we often say yeah that these types burn warm the warmth and the um the warmth of this type and their attention um and their energy blends with the need and the passion of the type to create a specific subtype which we'll get to later the sexual subtype or the sexual instinct or the one-to-one instinct as my mother prefers that i call it when i call her this is connected to our like procreative instinct and and our basic need for connection and intimacy these are people who are often intense in their own way charismatic who love eye contact interested in bonding union intimacy yeah and they haven't they have a need for intimate connection and that's not just with another person it it could also be um with a project with an audience with god these are people who are hyper focused as i said they love they often love eye contact as is evidenced in that same retreat that i was on where i learned and sat with all my self-preservation people if you were to go to the circle where all these one-to-one sexual subtypes were talking they weren't all talking together they were talking to one other person in the circle um locked on and it's and it's fascinating i mean it's also like when i drive with my mom in the car it's really hard for her to keep her eyes on the road because she's really i mean mom you're a great driver you've never had an accident we all know you've never had a ticket you're a great driver but she does love to make eye contact in the car right because i'm there and she wants to connect with me and she's also connecting tight so that affects it as well so these are the types that we say burn hot so that kind of intensity that hyper focus means that these people kind of vibrate at a higher frequency if you will if if the self-preservation types are kind of about having kind of a right to exist in a space sexual subtypes are kind of about this right to be loved right to connect and lastly social subtypes the social instinct is not a social this is this is a misconception of the social instinct it's like oh yeah i'm social i love to talk to people or like when i go to a party like i like it that's not where what we're talking about here actually social is more like social structural these are like this is like the community organ or communal organization instinct uh fulfills a basic need for social belonging these are people interested in group dynamics norms having a role the big picture they often sort of see themselves as citizens like as members of a larger group i know i'm a citizen and i practice thinking of myself as a citizen but my default as a self-pressed type like i think of myself as a part of my family more than i do about the larger community though and so that's a bit of a blind spot for me but for social subtypes group membership is just pretty natural because they're interested in status participation structure yeah these are the these are often the people who want to think through the process of how a party might go really like i have a good friend who's a social too and i know she's really attuning to um making sure that like the right things happen at the right times to make sure everyone's having a good time right so even if the party is going well we want to make sure like did we sing like happy birthday and did the person get the kind of affirmation that they needed at the right time those kinds of things and not everyone again cares about it in that way but it's participating and thinking about group dynamics and norms maybe even rules for a group because they're they want to have a place in a group but they see themselves in sort of a role and their attention is outward and inclusive they're actually often cooler so we say self-preservation burns warm sexual burns hot social structural burns cool that's not the same as cold though it could be cool is is more like when you even the language around this right if you think about group dynamics norms big picture citizen status participation these are a little bit cooler words than like intimacy intensity charisma eye contact bonding union if that makes sense like there if you see yourself as a part of a group you couldn't actually vibrate at that very high frequency all of the time because you would all the energy would be concentrated in in a way that you actually are not trying to attune to you're trying to have an inclusive energy and attention so at that training that i went to when this group sat together in their circle um we all had we had things we were meant to share about during that time and they had a very structured way of sharing so the self-prize we were like warm family maybe even interrupting each other but in like a warm way sexual subtypes are all sort of intensely connecting with one another and the social subtypes are making sure that everyone gets a chance to speak and they have a real kind of system for how they're going to organize their time together all of those things are good and it's important to know that a few things when we begin to talk through each of these as they look with type they're all good they're all necessary we all need we all need shelter we all need intimacy we all need belonging as those three instincts would tell us and as we know from being human but we focus on them to a different level and degree we don't need the goal here is not to make sure that all of our instincts are perfectly balanced in the same way that with type the goal is not to be like well i'm a heart type but i need to make sure that i'm like as much like a head type or a gut type as i can be or something it's not about perfect balance it's about i mean if the work of the enneagram is about waking up to reality as it is the reality just is that we need to care for our bodies we need to care for our connections we need to care for our community and we're a person in the middle of all of those things navigating all of those things and when we get our blinders on and we only look towards one of them then or even two of them then we lose sight of one that's pretty important and we might miss out on something good and we also might do damage actually so it's about waking up and so we use them for that as well because they tend each of these um and whichever one is primary for for us tends to be a place that we most easily fall asleep and get lost in the project of our type yeah so then the other thing i think to mention is that these are an enneagram sort of theory these are stacked so we have all of them we have all of these instincts we need them but usually we have a primary one a secondary one and one that falls out of view yeah and and these are if you if people are interested in in this i mean if you are confused about like nature the nature nurture debate with the enneagram not that this solves it but often we talk about type as somehow more inherently kind of nature and instinct as somehow more nurtured so like families often family family systems often have a primary instinct or primary two instincts so like my family is a self-preservation sexual family we are all one or the other because that's what each of my parents are and so we were taught to move and look in those directions had i been in a family with a parent who was a social subtype maybe i would have taken my energy more towards that and i would have found a way to work with my needs and desires and passion in that different area but i didn't um and so that's often how we talk about kind of nature and nurture with regard to these too um but i'm not gonna die on that hill and i don't think that i need to i'm not really a a student of those kinds of questions in psychology so i think for anyone who this is new and this is a lot of words to hear i just want you to take a deep breath and realize that in the show notes of this episode on the podcast player you're using right now we will have listed out the three instinctual centers with a brief description so you can read that and reference it throughout the episode as we continue to talk about not only the instinctual centers but how the instinctual centers then start to intersect with an influence type since you might not know annie i'm going to share my relationship to the instinctual centers because so many of you know me well you've been listening to me for some years now in some cases and you know a lot about how my life unfolds and when annie talks about that primary instinctual center i am so self-press it's ridiculous my house is completely focused on comfortable chairs when we moved to california my wife and i made some concessions to buy furniture that was more visually attractive and we both grieved the fact that better looking furniture is universally less comfortable because our primary focus in our home is people's comfort we when people are coming over to visit we buy every kind of drink we can imagine we get lots of handheld foods we have lots of blankets outside we have umbrellas for when it's sunny and a heater for when it's cold on thick padded furniture we connect to people and find grounding ourselves when you're in a hospitable and comfortable environment that's really important but then i do have that secondary instinctual center as well although it's it's more of a distant second than a close second for me but i am social subtype in my secondary instinctual center i care very much about the structure of social systems and their ability to promote fairness that's one of the driving instincts behind my work in the liturgist podcast actually if you go back and re-listen to every episode you're going to hear a lot of me trying to subtly and non-prescriptively drive people to examine social structures in a way that produces equality and a lot of that for me comes from that instinctual center and then the one-to-one connection or sexual uh instinctual center is the one that falls out of view for me i instead of craving eye contact and positively terrified by it and uh i'm most comfortable in small groups one-on-one interactions can actually be too intense for me and the perfect situation for me is a comfortable space where there's plenty of food and drink that it's not too warm or not too cold that the social structure allows every voice to be heard except for mine i like it when i can fade into the background and just listen to everyone else and that really helped me understand the nine in a big way because a lot of you know when people describe knobs names probably are maybe a stereotypically self-preservation subtype but i would meet different nines and they would seem so so radically different than me and it was because they were sexual nines or they were social nines and the intersection of of me trying to distance myself from conflict and avoid my own anger and then kind of narcotize through warm comfortable environments and possessions self-pressed types can get really into little collections i'm a collector of books and i put great great great importance and love into my books and so for this nine learning that i was a self-preservation nine is actually the first time i went oh wow the enneagram really can help me understand myself and more importantly understand the dynamics i use to relate to other people yeah absolutely i think that really expresses um the fact that you just for nines and and for all of us we don't fall asleep everywhere like there are certain ways that we all marketize ourselves put ourselves to sleep and it's interesting and important to not make assumptions that all all people all people of every type even all people of every subtype put ourselves to sleep in the same way because if we do that we make those assumptions and we make those assertions then we don't create the most fertile ground for people to begin using the awareness or uh asking questions from the enneagram so like if if the question if a question for the nine is like how do i fall asleep to myself then if we just say to you um oh will nines uh fall asleep through for you it might be like uh oh yeah this makes sense like through food and drink and through comfort they just try to be comfortable and whatever that might make sense for you and you might be like oh yeah okay that that makes sense um but if you're and we'll get to this more in depth but if you're a social subtype who with self-preservation as your last like the one that falls off those kinds of nines will not understand comfort in the same way and in fact often they're very very active people um who've fallen asleep to themselves um through attending to the group and so actually what if we do that why don't we just start with nines how does that sound that sounds amazing [Music] so i'm an enneagram nine and that has impacted my life and my relationships in a massive way i have a crippling anxiety riddled fear of confrontation or people being angry with me but i think above that i have a fear of me being angry with other people and so i'm often misunderstood when something happens because i don't speak my truth i can be passive aggressive or i can completely put on the mask that says this is fine everything's fine but internally i'm having a panic attack i often use a lot of mental energy remembering situations where i wish i would have said or done something differently but i'm just panic stricken in moments when anger or confrontation are possible so that has impacted my relationships in a big way i've been very codependent with people i have been taken advantage of i've also been kind of nasty when things bubble up inside of me and i don't know how to appropriately express anger so i'm fine until i'm not and it's been it's been difficult and i'm trying to i'm just now trying to figure out how to navigate the world and my relationships as a nine and i can understand why they have least amount of energy for sure yeah i'm patrick i'm a nine and i'm really not good at conflicts and arguments so for example when my wife uh has a problem and um there's a disagreement um about something with my wife uh she it will turn into a monologue basically and i i will feel like i've been wiped out at some point and i just can't answer i can't i can't keep it up i can't i can't um enter any verbal conflict even though i am a very verbose person i can i can talk i can um i can write i can i know how to express myself but as soon as there's conflict involved it's like i just go silent um it's like i'm frozen on the inside like i'm like i'm wiped out or something um yeah so it just costs so much energy for me um arguing and having a conflict just costs a lot of energy uh and so i just shut down on the inside [Music] i resonate pretty strongly with the type nine and i think over the last couple years as i've kind of been on the journey of self-discovery through the enneagram one of the ways that i feel probably most misunderstood is in the way that people make an assumption that uh i am always on their side when we're having a conversation um and i guess that i've grown to love that in a way in the sense that i think i make and help people feel safe and known when they're speaking with me but uh it's i do find it ironic that no matter who i'm speaking with even if uh it's only minutes apart in conversation and there's two wildly different sides of things people kind of naturally assume that when i don't say anything when i just listen that i agree and this seldom a question of so what do you think or what are your thoughts and it just kind of goes to show i think how much we seek validation and we want other people so badly to say yes you know me too and um i think it's the way that i feel most misunderstood i'm growing to love that part about the element of being an iron but also there's definitely a misunderstanding and i think frustration there as well life is hard [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through better help you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions betterhelp has licensed 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on the link in this episode [Music] with with nines we have in case you all don't know i mean i imagine most of you know about what the passion is of the type but for nines we have a fear of unworthiness and it arises in the possibility of being in conflict so laziness and inattentiveness sort of energizes the pursuit of their own worth through through merging with something right but the question that the subtitle help answers helps to answer is where do they merge and how do they avoid attending to themselves because not all nines merge with the same things and they don't all avoid attending to themselves in the same way so as you were describing mike the self-preservation nine if the passion is laziness then these types develop a passion for as peter hannahan talks about it a passion for appetite or collection and so they attempt to get sort of caught up in the material flow collecting goods and people attending to food and material consumption they can often be this consumption can can sometimes be well organized and sometimes it can be sort of in piles and these are the kinds of things that divert their attention from their real priorities they fall asleep through really merging with their physical environment and physical needs such that other needs fall out of view for instance perhaps one-to-one bonding needs or social needs or any number of other needs that just aren't in their view when they're thinking about how how their body feels and what they're hungry for and whether or not they brought enough sun cream right also that was very british of me that doesn't happen very often i think this is a pretty standard way of describing the nine so these are types that actually that can that can look lazy um they don't have to and remember self-preservation types are also the inward or singular focus type so you could think about it this way you could think as we go through each of these the type nine that laziness and inattention to the self combines with also an inward attention which is funny right because you're like oh these are people who don't attend to themselves but actually they're just not attending to certain parts of themselves and certain kinds of needs that they have and their priorities because they are attending to and falling asleep to their own needs through one other kind of specific kind of need that they have which is comfort but thankfully you can wake up from that um and that and this self-preservation language helps you see oh you can look at sort of this area of your life and see how when you're sort of fixating on it and it's taking over maybe there's something else that actually that you're trying to thought you don't want to attend to it it might create some conflict so instead you're just diverting all this attention and energy towards home food warmth maybe work and material security these kinds of things the sexual nine this need to merge and to fall asleep to their own and be lazy about their own priorities and needs um combines and becomes a passion for union and and these are types that merge and avoid attending to themselves in a relation they get caught up in a relational flow so they're looking to sort of find themselves through intimate connection with another person or with god these are the union is a way they run from sort of separation or division and have a difficult time knowing what they want because they've so merged with the partner or the other's agenda yeah so relationships are where they forget themselves and they can they can sort of become passive aggressive when they realize they aren't getting their needs met they can kind of look like a four or a two sometimes because of this relational right because it's because it's the connection merged with the type 9 um laziness so it's sort of like they're they could look like a heart type maybe because they fall asleep through being in relationship um and through the the doing of relationship the social nine has a passion for participation so if they're if they're suffering is uh laziness and an attention to themselves the way that they cease to attend to themselves is by participating and getting caught up in the flow of the group so they have this sense of self that arises from submerging themselves and in the group needs an agenda and the thing with a group is that there's often a lot to do and groups have a lot of needs and so these types don't look lazy at all they actually look super active sometimes they look like twos or threes because they're so busy attending to so many different things yeah they're very active very productive social people with a social role um they don't always know or they're kind of ambivalent about their group participation but they're very agreeable i'm sorry you're just reading my mail here it's it's a yeah [Music] yes yeah so i mean as you can see like the this kind of nine can range so a tendency that we might have if we just look at the enneagram through behaviors is to look at these types and to say oh okay nines struggle with laziness so self pres9s actually kind of look like the least healthy and the social nines maybe we want to be like oh they're the most healthy because they're not lazy they're doing a bunch of stuff but hey actually that has nothing to do with the health of the type how much you're doing or not doing it's all about the laziness actually names an inattention to the self which can happen through merging with any number of things if you merge with the material world the material world doesn't move super quickly and ask for a lot and so it's a little bit easier to look lazy because you're just sitting on the couch merging with your warmth and your food maybe and if you're merged with a group you're still equally inattentive sometimes to yourself but it's because you're attending to what the group needs so you're really actively lazy and so that's a reason i think it's really important to get into this layer i mean i yeah i experience this all the time even as a like sort of quote sunny four people will often be like oh you're such a healthy four and i'm like what like what does that mean um and and what it means is oh my understanding of a four in unhealth is that they're always they look really kind of like envious and longing and super dramatic and so since you don't look that way then you are healthy which is just not true i would actually just be an advocate for cutting out all of our language of health and unhealth in this but that's just a personal preference i don't know how sort of static things like that help us to do the work we need to do anyway so with those is there i mean you're a nine so tell me as you hear those like what has been your experience of being known to be a nine um being known by some people to be a self-preservation nine do you have anything else you wanna add to this it's just all the time when i say i'm a nine and i'm a self-pressed nine people say but you're not lazy yeah you work so hard yeah and that just rings so true to me i i i've experienced that so many times sometimes i am lazy by the way when my like go along to get along with the group and my uncontrollable desire to be the shock absorber and relational tension in groups like throws a circuit breaker then i go into self-preservation catatonia where i just kind of yeah shut down and it's netflix and ice cream time uh until i can kind of reboot but then i i jump in with the same really unhealthy pattern and i mean this is influence the liturgists incredibly my tendency to be aware when people are in conflict and not step in the middle and own it no certainly not but my non-judgmental and agreeable manner people want to come and talk to me because i'm the guy who won't react or judge and so i end up absorbing conflicts between people and uh falling asleep to the emotional cost that has for me and like the most difficult work in the last year for me has been learning to not fall asleep to that cycle and instead of just saying hey you know maybe you should talk to the person directly and when someone says i don't feel comfortable instead of just agreeing and agreeing and saying well you know i'm happy to talk to you now but ultimately you and i talking is only useful if it leads to some productive action and that productive action actually should probably come from you and not me and that wow is that hard because i'm happiest and most comfortable when i can fall asleep to myself and merge with a group and so i make a lot of podcasts and i write a lot of books and i travel and do a lot of appearances so i don't look quite lazy unquote but gosh am i asleep to myself and my own needs all the time thank you thanks so much who am i to say [Music] what any of this means i have been sleepwalking since i was 14 now as i write my songs i retrace my steps honestly it's easier to let myself [Music] is i've been left in half myself for more than half my life [Music] again wage war on gravity there's so much worth fighting for you'll see another domino falls either way [Music] he looks like empathy to understand all sides but i'm just trying to find myself through someone else's eyes [Music] so show me what to do to restart this hard how do i forgive myself for losing so much [Music] roll up your sleeves there's a chain reaction in your heart [Music] muscle memory remembering who you are stand up again and again and again there's so much worth fighting for you'll see [Music] and another don't know a little at a time i feel more alive i'll let the scale tip and feel all of it it's uncomfortable but right and we were born to try to see each other through to know and love ourselves and others well is the most difficult and meaningful work will ever do [Music] so the thing that is important in working with the instincts is noticing how we take that passion and where we take it so we know where to look instead of how to behave because when we know where to look we're invited immediately into discernment and that's what i hear you describing from the last year is like oh the enneagram has sort of invited me to look at the way that i merge with the agendas of other people and fall asleep to my own needs and i do that in in multiple ways but one of those that i heard you describing was in groups so when you when you look at that it's not just to sort of name it it's to create a space where you can transform where you can learn how to do this a different way where you can stay awake to your own needs and also remain without without having to disappear to a comfortable place you can learn how to both stay awake to your own needs and listen to the conflict and this takes practice but thanks for sharing that because that's a beautiful invitation for all of us i think well thanks for asking me ostensibly i'm i'm hosting this conversation but in my very nine way as you are comfortable and you elucidate so well and explain so well then i start merging with you in mid podcast and just like let's go let's follow the annie river wow please feel free um what is it the unimpeded river doesn't sing so maybe there's unlocked potential in my speaking and i just need a little conflict from you so let's go mike let's go i'm a queer woman who lives in one of the reddest parts of alabama i am also an aide on the enneagram this being an aid gives me the ability to advocate for minorities and the marginalized it also has caused me a lot of pain in situations where i am standing up for people who um are not welcomed in areas i have like put myself out like okay i'm gonna go to this place and be a face and you know be making communities these people show them that you know gay people can love god and love their community and be productive however going to these places have caused a lot of harm my wife and i have been stared at have been told to leave the church have been told that we're not welcome there and every time like with my eight-ness when i hear that like i come back from a place of like no this is injustice we this is not right and um unfortunately i think it has caused people to think even more negatively about me and about gay people [Music] one of the spaces in which i feel most misunderstood is during conversation with friends and family i can be speaking in what to me is a perfectly normal volume using language that's more than acceptable and in return for my friends i get hurt looks and bewildered expressions even though the energy that i feel like i'm putting out is not negative or hostile in any way it's often received that way and this is something that's always been frustrating to me i spend a lot of my time convincing other people that i'm not mad at them or upset i'm just being me [Music] i am an eight an introverted social eight so i exhibit the tendencies of the eight as a challenger and i have the willingness to take a stand when i feel injustice is at play but this is not something that i'm excited about or love to do i truly value justice but as an introverted social aid i don't like being the only one or being the one who's selected to stand up and take the heat i'm often misunderstood by my family and closest friends because they've assumed that i enjoy taking on the challenge since it's natural for me my family's labeled me as aggressive and angry i often get taken advantage of in friend group situations because i'm the go-to person to take the heat for something that the majority of us agree upon when i would really just love it if someone else would stand up and i could stand beside them my friends and family mistake my willingness and conviction for desire as innate i value loyalty above other virtues so it hurts me deeply to be misunderstood by my family and my closest friends because they see me as an angry fighter and not as a lover of justice [Music] okay let's go to eights these types are also gut types and so their basic project is around creating a sense of worth through their activities and they do that while also they they fear being overpowered or weak and so their sense of strength is is how they are moving in the world they're trying to be strong um and and lust is actually the passion that we say for this type that's what energizes this pursuit of worth through establishing their strength and power so the question for the eights is where do they focus their pursuits and how do they use their strength because they don't all do the same things sometimes because we're like culturally afraid of the the eight's energy in america i think well definitely here in the uk wow um i can't imagine an eight sort of getting a lot of air time here in this culture um so so if these are types that want to be strong they and want to pursue something sort of a lustful pursuit what in order to be strong right so that becomes a passion for satisfaction a lustful pursuit of satisfaction for the self-press aids they use their strength for their in-group and to collect resources they're they're a collector and defender of resources and they can be really generous with the people that they love they're bear like defenders of both their people and their spaces sometimes this can become kind of like a scarcity mindset and they want to be self-reliant so if you think about sort of self-reliance in a really physical way like they want to be free of relying on other people for like material things and and just practically um they can become people who people rely on and so yeah they they really care for those that are close to them they're a very physical type person because they have this inward sort of down in and down um kind of energy grounding energy and they're they're less of a feeling type uh there's not as much space for that in in this kind of posture towards the world and and maybe you wouldn't think that when you hear lust as a struggle but it's it's lust is really just about kind of an object of desire and moving towards that object of desire and so here that that object of desire is satisfaction and resources for them and for if they have people that are really close to them for those people as well the sexual subtype here is they use their strength for impact and they focus their pursuits on individuals or individual projects they have we call a passion for possession or surrender so this isn't like a really intense character who wants to engage and affect a person or a group and also wants to be engaged and affected but often they have really high standards and they don't trust to let go of control really easily so it would take and they're kind of impatient with the slow in the week because they have this intensity and they have this if you think about intensity and hyper focus of the sexual subtype combined with this lust and moving towards these are people who move quickly towards things they charge ahead powerfully and they they give up their energy towards this passionate pursuit and they could intentionally disrespect rules and laws they can be possessive kind of of everything is sort of theirs to possess but they do have this deep sense that they also want to be possessed which is that kind of one-to-one desire for intimacy and connection but sometimes they can be so sort of forceful that it creates it's hard for them to be in a receiving posture right and i mean that's the same with the self-press if you're the one collecting everything and you're the one providing everything there's not a lot of receiving space either but just in a different area and then lastly the social eight these types use their strength in like the service of the marginalized or the weak or the people who don't have power um they're very attuned to group the group and the dynamics of the group and so and so they're sensitive to the way that power works in groups and we say they have a passion for solidarity they devote themselves really loyally to to projects that criticize and move against any framework that diminishes or disempowers people on the margins they're directly acting to support other people but they don't necessarily have that same intensity of energy that the sexual subtype does although you know stacking wise if you're a social if you're a social subtype with a sexual subtype or sexual instinct stacked right below it it's not so hard to convert into that energy especially in a time where there's a particular social ill or thing you're really fighting hard against with the community they also can be a little bit more intellectual and practical of a type so they might try to seek power in ways that are not through just like taking it but through maybe more they might sometimes respect the process a little bit more so that they can gain the power to do the things that they want to do and so in some ways uh they can be a little bit slower moving than the sexual type and can create a different kind of change because of the way that they go about making a change but in all of these cases lust when lust is the thing that drives it when it's this this is my object of desire this is what i'm trying to do all of them can make it such that it's hard to be in any kind of receiving posture towards anything in reality because if reality is yours to sort of dominate or take it can be really hard to then i mean if you just think about the posture like what it the way that you stand when you're moving towards something um it can be really hard to be also postured to receive at the same time so that's the work for them waking up to where they deny their own needs and their own weakness in order to make an impact or have a sense of control so those are the eights i've had this recent renaissance you know when i first learned about the enneagram i thought of eights as my kryptonite and i was just terrified of them as a as a nine when i would take an engram test it would kind of say oh you're all of the types but definitely not the eight [Laughter] and you know more recently i have a few friends who are eights and who are dear friends and their capacity to show up and even to be a little assertive in relationship has actually been a really helpful dynamic for me to encounter and i think i'm really lucky in that i have friends who are eights who are in each of the instinctual centers and i've really gotten to feel you know that difference in relationship ironically as a self-pressed person i think it's actually uh the social and sexual subtypes in the eight that are the best at drawing me out of my shell so to speak and to show up in a relationship in a way that's not just like some kind of comfortable mutual self-sufficiency uh but an actual interdependence and reliance yeah yeah i mean they're the kind of people who care about connection and belonging i mean yeah yeah and that's amazing um i i think that is really interesting that you said that it's those other two subtypes that kind of call you into that and i think isn't that so true like it's so easy to become comfortable when you speak some of these some of these subtypes even speak a really different language sometimes like they have just such a different way that they're postured towards the world that even the words that they use can be really different and so sometimes it's that difference and that diversity that is sort of uncomfortable but also adds the kind of dynamism into a relationship that is a really cool invitation and helps us see reality in a totally new way that helps us wake up in areas that it's hard to even know we're asleep so i agree i'm with you i really cherish those people who have dominance in the other instinctual variants but also great to talk to you my self press friend i remember the minute the psycho switch was flint was just a kid who grew up strong enough to pick this armor up and suddenly that was so long ago long ago long ago i was little i was weak and perfectly knife and i [Music] and all i've lost in the fight to protect it [Applause] [Music] rejected [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] but i can't let you see [Music] i can't afford to let myself be blindsided i'm sitting here [Music] is [Music] [Music] i'm just a kid who grew up scared enough to hold the door shut and buried my innocence but here's a map here's a shovel he's my achilles heel i'm all in palms out i'm at your mercy now and i'm ready to begin i am strong [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] together [Music] [Music] as a type 1 i have often felt misunderstood in regards to how i express my emotions so on the inside my emotions whether it's sadness or anger i feel them very very intensely it's almost like sitting on a cauldron of those emotions trying to hold them in yet on the outside i find it difficult to express the emotions in a healthy way and so i've been accused of being cold or robotic or even uncaring when nothing could be further from the truth internally and that makes me feel like i'm a liar like i'm a bad person another way i felt misunderstood as a type 1 is at work where co-workers might assume that i want to take the lead on some initiative or that i want to lead some sort of group project or team task and uh maybe the only reason i am stepping up to the plate to do that is because i feel like i should or i feel like morally i might let someone down if i don't even if maybe i'd rather just sit back and have a beer [Music] i'm an enneagram one and i think what people really don't get about me is that when i offer advice or when i can be critical uh what i'm doing is i'm actually showing someone or trying to communicate to someone that their work is so incredible and that what they do is so beautiful that it deserves investment that it deserves workshopping um that it deserves that final a layer of paint to make it even more perfect of course this can end up hurting people it can end up making people feel like they're not good enough that they are not worthy and that their work is not um that it's not up to some kind of standard that i might hold for them but really really what we're trying to show what enneagram ones want to communicate whenever we're critical is that this is something that we believe in enough to also involve ourselves and to involve our energies [Music] the assumption people make about type ones that gets to me the most is that we'll be critical of them or uptight or not fun the ones so the ones that have a fear of being unworthy because they're wrong or bad and so they have this sense of anger or frustration which energizes the writing of things so that they can be good and that mixes with one of these instincts to and then we have to ask where do they want to find worth and where do they direct this anger and how or what do they reform what are they attending to for the self-prez one they have this the self-preservation attention which is inward and singular and so you can imagine that these types actually do a lot of get frustrated with themselves and they do a lot of self-criticism and they actually become if the passion is frustration or anger here they actually also have a passion for worry because they are afraid that they're not going to meet their own expectations and worry keeps what needs to be done at the forefront of their minds because they're very like practical people so they focus on personal and environmental perfection so they're warm people who also seem kind of yeah worried because that that keeps them focused on what needs to be fixed in their environment they have high expectations of themselves they're vigilant about keeping home and work going well about their hard workers they're organized and we don't generally see their anger because it's mostly directed inward and yeah held in there held in their bodies they can look a little bit like sixes because they have like this anxiety of perfecting um and sort of they're they're questioning in a sense we're constantly working on their own perfection so they see what's sort of missing in that yeah that's the it's a self-pressed one usually they're the work that they produce is like really good because they spend a lot of time perfecting it this this would be probably a type so sometimes the type one archetype gets called the perfectionist which doesn't actually fit for the other type ones in the same way but it actually probably fits a little bit more for the self-press one and then the sexual one they reform and they bring this incredible sort of energy about what needs to be changed or fixed in into kind of zealous and transformational encounters i would call it sometimes they're called the evangelist so whereas you don't see much anger in the self-prez one in the sexual one it's a lot more on the surface in fact it runs counter to what we usually know of ones which is that they think being angry is bad but actually sexual ones are a bit more comfortable with their anger because it's like this energy that's moving them to action into writing things when i say writing i'm saying r-i-g-h-t not w-r-i-g yeah so their their anger is outward focused and hyper-focused remember this one-to-one this sexual instinct is about focus and hyper focus so and connection so they actually fixate on what's wrong externally with with people and situations so they have a sense of this like higher calling leading them to like passionately transform other people they can look like people on a mission they can be confrontational they can be intense they can look a little bit more like eights it's that high intensity externalized criticism instead of internalized criticism they are people like this higher calling there is a sense with a lot of these sexual subtypes too they're just really aware of like relationships and the possibilities in them and so that sense of like higher calling too like i know a lot of ones who are people of faith and who have pretty radical and intense relationships with the divine with god and that is then sort of also transferred into how they interact in the world and how they connect with how things should be yeah they're passionate about transformation and they're they're moving towards that in a really intense kind of way in a really focused kind of way then the the social one they reform through teaching and really teaching in a particular kind of way like teaching by example they unlike the self-prez one who is really self-critical the social one actually often thinks that they really do know the right way because they're comparing themselves to in a sense like other people in the group and so they want to teach others how to be good or right so instead of criticizing overtly like the sexual one might do social ones become kind of like a model for others to follow but they're kind of a model that's not very like adaptable they want to reform the group by showing them how the group needs to reform itself so there's a real confidence about this type that's not really there is a confidence in the sexual one but there's not really as much in the self pres one in the same way yeah it's hard for them to adapt or move on because they're pretty sure that their way of being is the right way and honestly sometimes it really is like they've really thought it out and studied it really well and so they can be kind of like a cooler knowledgeable person with anger kind of simmering a little bit below the surface they also wouldn't be ones to externalize their anger but they are sort of frustrated by the environment so they can look a bit like fives but they have they still have a little bit more of an intensity than fives have so ones ones are competency types and i find i often find ones to be sort of incredibly competent and the the question here is is not whether or not they are um right it's it's about whether or not they can learn to live like be wise right with how they direct their anger and frustration and also be open to being acted upon by by the outside instead of being sort of in control so they all do that in really different ways they all kind of take control of writing what they're interested in making right in different ways so they all have different kinds of invitations to come back to the goodness of reality um and find their worth outside of making everything right because honestly they won't and so it's a sort of self-defeating project [Music] hold on for a minute cause i believe that we can fix this over time that every imperfection is love or at least an interruption now hold don't let me finish no i'm not saying perfect exists in this life [Music] but we'll only know for certain [Music] [Applause] [Music] i [Music] [Music] transformation a melody of reformation the list goes on forever for all the ways i could be better in my mind [Music] as if i could earn god's favor given time [Music] is everything i've spent my whole life searching death's belief to find out grace requires nothing of me i wanna sing a song were singing [Music] transformation ain't somehow to find out the grace requires nothing grace requires nothing of me everybody michael gunger here again we hope you've enjoyed this episode of the liturgist podcast remember there are two other episodes that go along with this one that talk about the heart and the head types and now it's time for some credits your host for this episode has been mike mccarthy the guest has been annie diamond editing and sound design by jayden lee special thanks to ryan o'neal again for the music that he allowed us to play production manager corey pig producer victory palmisano talent management by brent cradle thanks for listening everybody [Music] you