What’s The Enneagram? – Deep Psychology

On this article, I wish to speak in regards to the Enneagram as a device for ourselves and purchasers.

What I’ve come to understand is that the Enneagram is not only a psychological device, for working on the stage of persona, however a non secular device, for engaged on our transpersonality, our nice Self that transcends and consists of our little self.

In that sense, it really works each as a device to steer more healthy, fuller lives within the current and to slowly faucet into our larger potential.

I’ll be quoting extensively from The Knowledge of the Enneagram by Don Riso and Russ Hudson, a ebook which dives deeply into this topic.

The principle filter we use to grasp ourselves and the world round us, to specific ourselves, to defend ourselves, to cope with our previous and anticipate our future, to be taught with, to rejoice with, and to fall in love with, is our persona sort.

don Riso & russ hudson

Uncover Your Sort

What I’ve discovered is that discovering our persona sort could make acutely aware a number of hitherto unconscious habits, behaviours, beliefs and facets of our self-image.

Our sort tells us:

how we see the world,
the alternatives we make and why,
our values,
our motivations,
our manner of reacting to others and to emphasize.

Most critically, it reveals us the assorted facets of our psyche which have remained secure all through our lives.

It may well additionally present us our defenses and the methods we compensate for childhood wounds. Our persona largely shaped as a response to the repeated difficulties we encountered in our childhood.

We adopted and automatic a small set of behaviours to deal with them. We’re now consultants in our explicit coping mechanism, which in extra turns into the core dysfunction of our persona.

Thus, from a psychological viewpoint, Enneagram remedy:

reveals our coping mechanisms,
reveals facets of our psychology that journey us up,
reveals us our limitations “after we determine with the persona, we’re selecting being a lot lower than we actually are,”
helps us see our patterns, the elements of our expertise that we’re most recognized with, and start to slowly launch them.

Figuring out oneself as one of many 9 persona varieties might be revolutionary. For the primary time in our lives, we may even see the sample and total rationale for the way in which we now have lived and behaved.

Many occasions it’s as if a three-year-old little one have been making many essential life choices for us. As soon as we perceive the character of our persona’s mechanisms, we start to have a selection about about figuring out with them or not.

Don Riso & Russ hudson

What’s the Enneagram? Religious Impression

Riso and Hudson write fantastically about how the Enneagram remedy can be a non secular pursuit. Let me share some quotes:

by serving to us see how trapped we’re in our trances and the way estranged we’re from our Important nature, the Enneagram invitations us to look deeply into the thriller of our true id.

The center of the Enneagram is the common perception that human beings are non secular presences incarnated within the materials world and but mysteriously embodying the identical Life and Spirit because the Creator.

The core fact that the Enneagram conveys to us is that we’re far more than our persona… Past the boundaries of our personalities, every of us exists as an unlimited, largely unrecognized high quality of Being or Presence… though we now have forgotten this basic fact as a result of we now have fallen asleep to our true nature.

“as we be taught to carry consciousness to our persona, it turns into extra clear, and we’re capable of expertise our Essence extra instantly.

don riso & russ hudson

Right here’s a abstract of the importance of Enneagram remedy for our non secular growth:

the Enneagram reveals us what prevents us from realising the profound fact of who we’re and provides us a path to maneuver in,
our sort reveals the methods we overlook our true nature,
the Enneagram helps us realise that we aren’t our persona; as a substitute, we have a persona,
we start to grasp we’re essentially a non secular being, one in all whose aspects is the human persona, and we start to stay as our Important nature,
our persona doesn’t disappear however turns into much less inflexible: it helps us stay, quite than dominating how we stay,
we are able to finally realise that our true Essence can’t be harmed, irrespective of how robust our persona defences have develop into.

To that finish, we’d do nicely to find our primary concern.

Uncover Your Primary Concern

In line with Enneagram principle, our primary concern is what defines our persona. We’ve carried this concern since childhood, when it developed as a result of our mother and father’ rejection of sure behaviours, which we then repressed and hid away. As a result of this concern, we imagine one thing is essentially improper with us.

Although all of us have a slew of fears and wishes, every persona sort has its personal dominant concern, and by extension its personal corresponding primary want.

I perceive this phenomenon within the following manner: as our persona develops as younger youngsters, we specific it utterly and unabashedly, with little concern for what others will consider us. However as we achieve this, we acquire suggestions from these round us relating to what’s fascinating and what’s not. A few of it’s accepted, a few of it’s rejected.

Doubting our worthiness, we adapt our behaviour to maximise the acceptance we obtain. On this manner, we slowly undertake the fears and hang-ups of these round us, in addition to their strengths, and start to resemble these round us. We’re slowly bent, twisted and embellished into the identical form as them, significantly our mother and father, kinfolk and shut household pals.

This describes the formation of our Primary Concern: it’s the weakest a part of our persona. The concern is the results of the rejection from these round us: we cease appearing a sure strategy to assure acceptance, thus loathing and repressing the undesirable behaviour.

Since we depart this behaviour undeveloped and unexpressed, it withers away and leaves a gap or weak point in our psyche. This coping mechanism appears to assist us keep away from or skirt round our primary concern however doesn’t actually tackle it or carry it to mild, although it nonetheless stays energetic. We’re now unconsciously pushed by our primary concern.

Our persona is sort of a forged that protects a damaged arm or leg. The extra excessive the unique accidents, the extra in depth the forged must be… if we by no means take the forged off, it severely limits the usage of the limb and makes additional progress inconceivable.

Don riso & russ hudson

Thus, realizing your Enneagram sort might make it easier to uncover your primary concern. Conversely, we are able to uncover our Enneagram sort by figuring out our primary concern. Figuring out this concern factors us to the wounded a part of our psyche, the half that wants most work.

That mentioned, working by this concern is deeply therapeutic. It releases all of the vitality we now have used to repress that facet of our persona and permits us to now specific that vitality by our persona. It tumbles the wall separating our true persona from our unconscious wishes and traits.

Uncover Your Primary Want

As soon as you already know your primary concern, it turns into very apparent what your primary want is. Your primary want drives a fantastic share of your behaviour. It may well usually really feel insatiable, as a result of in trying to gratify the need, you’re not addressing your primary concern. Thus it will probably result in extra and dysfunction.

In observing myself and others, I’ve discovered that our most compulsive behaviours are pretty apparent to others. These round us can really feel misery and alarm, and even start to outline us in keeping with them.

It may be surprising to grasp that this dysfunction is pretty predictable given your enneatype. But on the identical time, you possibly can really feel a fantastic sympathy for your self, realizing that this want outcomes from a coping mechanism that you simply developed for causes past your management.

And as you’re employed by that primary concern, the fundamental want might lose its grip on you. It gained’t disappear, but it surely’ll cease dominating your life and creating dysfunctional behaviour.

Right here’s a brief abstract of the Enneagram varieties, their primary concern, their primary want, and the way that want can develop into malignant.

Enneagram Sort	Fears being…	Primary Want	Deteriorates into…
1. Reformer	dangerous, corrupt, evil	to have integrity	vital perfectionism
2. Helper	unworthy of affection	to be beloved	the should be wanted
3. Achiever	nugatory, unimportant	to be invaluable	chasing after success
4. Individualist	no one, insignificant	to be oneself	self-indulgence
5. Investigator	incapable, incompetent	to be competent	ineffective specialisation
6. Loyalist	unsupported, unguided	to be safe	attachment to beliefs
7. Fanatic	disadvantaged, in ache	to be comfortable	frenetic escapism
8. Challenger	harmed and managed	to guard oneself	fixed combating
9. Peacemaker	alienated, fragmented	to be at peace	cussed neglectfulness

Wholesome, Reasonable, Unhealthy

The Enneagram varieties, being a system of classes that lack motion or change, represent a horizontal mannequin of growth. That is how they’re usually considered. However every type have a vertical part, akin to the numerous levels of progress fashions discovered by developmental psychologists.

Below this vertical mannequin, we are able to specific our sort in a Wholesome, Reasonable or Unhealthy manner. To the diploma our expression is a wholesome one, we’re freed from the downsides of our persona sort and our unhealthy egoic mechanisms, we act properly and spontaneously, and we stay within the current.

The truth is, the idea tells us that every sort degenerates into one sort when unhealthy and ascends to a different when wholesome.

We gained’t go into additional particulars on the vertical facet of the Enneagram for now; simply know that enneatypes themselves aren’t static. At any given interval in life, chances are you’ll be a wholesome or dysfunctional model of your enneatype, or someplace in between.

What’s the Enneagram? Use It

Let’s end this text by summarising how you should use the Enneagram for therapuetic ends, each psychologically and spiritually:

determine your persona sort and watch your self stay it out second to second, as if watching from afar, “make topic object”,
discover out whether or not your dominant sort is within the Head triad, Coronary heart triad, Intestine triad, or a combination.
chorus from questionable type-driven behaviour within the second it occurs,
discover after we are behaving like a toddler, defending ourselves,
when falling into senseless motion or response, take the sacred pause, enable the wiser a part of you to come back forth,
begin to deaddict your self from the dream of persona,
“observe and let go”,
create a spot between exterior stimulus and inside response.