You belong. You just do. You are worthy. You just are. Your very presence here confirms your worthiness and your belonging. The same energy that birthed this planet, all the planets and stars, indeed the universe… this same energy animates you. You are that.
Many people struggle in their relationships for a feeling of worthiness and belonging, but that’s not where you find the most potent versions. Two people might come together and celebrate their intrinsic belonging and worth with one another (these are the most creative and joyous relationships) but people can not give this to one another in the same way that we discover it in ourselves.
When we remove our focus from trying to obtain a feeling of belonging and worthiness from the other (or provide it to them), and redirect that focus into discovering, affirming, and celebrating it within, then we become ready for the kind of relationship that is abundance rather than scarcity, clarity rather than confusion, satisfaction rather than disappointment. But not everyone is ready for this. If you are, great, enjoy! If you are not, may this message serve as a gentle reminder, an invitation, an idea maybe worth considering.
When couples know their enneagram personality types they get deep insights into their relationship dynamics. First and foremost, I see the enneagram as a system for understanding, appreciating, and managing differences between people in relationship. Obviously this has profound implications for relationship work, and it’s become a cornerstone for my work with many couples.
If you’ve worked with me personally in the past few years, then we’ve probably talked about the enneagram together. If you have not worked with me, but have been following my writing, then it’s time for an introduction to this powerful system for self-awareness and personal growth.
I’m going to provide a brief introduction to the enneagram, and then give you links to some of my favourite enneagram resources, including the Enneagram Global Summit online event that is happening right now (it’s free, and really worthwhile).
1 THE REFORMER The Rational, Idealistic Type: Principled, Purposeful, Self-Controlled, and Perfectionistic
2 THE HELPER The Caring, Interpersonal Type: Demonstrative, Generous, People-Pleasing, and Possessive
3 THE ACHIEVER The Success-Oriented, Pragmatic Type: Adaptive, Excelling, Driven, and Image-Conscious
4 THE INDIVIDUALIST The Sensitive, Withdrawn Type: Expressive, Dramatic, Self-Absorbed, and Temperamental
5 THE INVESTIGATOR The Intense, Cerebral Type: Perceptive, Innovative, Secretive, and Isolated
6 THE LOYALIST The Committed, Security-Oriented Type: Engaging, Responsible, Anxious, and Suspicious
7 THE ENTHUSIAST The Busy, Fun-Loving Type: Spontaneous, Versatile, Distractible, and Scattered
8 THE CHALLENGER The Powerful, Dominating Type: Self-Confident, Decisive, Willful, and Confrontational
9 THE PEACEMAKER The Easygoing, Self-Effacing Type: Receptive, Reassuring, Agreeable, and Complacent
On the surface, the enneagram is a personality typing system that offers us nine primary “types”, and then many sub-types depending on how deeply you want to go into it. One of the things I love about it is that it is very accessible for beginners, and it also has enough depth and complexity to keep you engaged for a lifetime.
One of my enneagram teachers (and a leading scholar), Russ Hudson, notes that people are attracted to the enneagram initially because they see themselves mirrored in it. We find ourselves reflected in the type descriptions, and there’s an immediate and satisfying sense of being validated or being “seen”. And when a type description matches our partner, we feel amazed to see them so accurately described!
But beyond this initial intrigue, there’s a deeper challenge waiting. Once we discover our type, we (hopefully) become compelled to WORK with our type. Each of the different enneagram types is a kind of map for how we keep ourselves stuck in a particular pattern. Our personality type is simultaneously a beautiful gift, and a prison of sorts. Working with the enneagram helps us understand the gifts of our type, and can help us liberate ourselves from the limits that our type places upon us.
Interest in the enneagram has exploded in the past five years, and this popularization has had predictably mixed results, including a fair bit of misunderstanding and misrepresentation. To save you time and get you on the right track, I’ve curated a collection of my favourite enneagram teachers and resources for you here. Although there are some differing opinions and approaches within the enneagram community, the list below only includes the most well-respected people and organizations working with the enneagram.
Enneagram Resources
Enneagram Global Summit (The Shift Network) – This is happening right now. It’s free, and it features an incredible selection of the world’s leading enneagram teachers and collaborators; the best of the best. I especially liked the conversation with Dan Siegel on the intersection between the enneagram and interpersonal neurobiology. (Recordings will probably be available.)
The Enneagram Institute – This is arguably the most established and well-respected enneagram organization. This is the place to take your enneagram assessments to find your type. You can read a short description of the types here.
RussHudson.com – Russ Hudson is one of the world’s leading enneagram scholars, teachers, and authors. I recommend his seminal book “The Wisdom of the Enneagram”. Watch the short video of him describing each type; it is very sweet and gives you an immediate sense of his style.
BeatriceChestnut.com – As an author and teacher, Beatrice Chestnut provides her own welcome and unique approach to the enneagram. Check out her enneagram podcast, “Enneagram 2.0” with Uranio Paes. I also really like her videos on youtube where she organizes panel discussions for each enneagram type.
(Note – I may receive a modest referral compensation from one or more of the links in this article. This in no way influences my recommendations.)
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Many of the clients I work with report experiencing some sort of anxiety in their lives, which makes sense, as anxiety is considered to be a fairly normal part of living in this world. Normal or not, most people want less of it. Clinicians use specific markers to determine a diagnosis of an anxiety disorder (there are several types). An anxiety disorder basically means that you have more of it than is considered normal.
Anxiety is physiological, emotional, and cognitive (body, heart, mind)
Anxiety is conventionally viewed as a cognitive or “thought” disorder, but I have suggested elsewhere that anxiety is simultaneously rooted in the body, and that it can be approached through the body via nervous system self-regulation (and co-regulation) techniques. It’s also worth adding that anxiety is emotional as well as cognitive and physiological, and I believe that emotion needs to be met on its own terms (more on that another time; much to say, including why do we continue to mislabel emotional health as “mental health”? Why don’t we address emotional health for what it is, directly? So strange, and yet entirely consistent with a head-centric culture that minimizes feeling and heart-intelligence.)
Anxiety… Grief in disguise?
Here I want to make a proposition – not a definitive or universal claim about anxiety – but rather a part of the picture or piece of the puzzle: Anxiety can be a result of unexpressed grief. Unexpressed grief can become anxiety. Unexpressed grief can be carried in the body, in the heart (the metaphorical or “feeling” heart), and in the mind (mentally, as thoughts), and over time this unexpressed grief comes to take the shape of what we call “anxiety”. In other words, anxiety might be grief in disguise.
We might not instinctively think of grief and anxiety side by side. Many of us don’t tend to think of grief much at all. Instead, depression gets most of the attention, probably because it fits more snugly into categorical and diagnostic parameters. Grief, not so much. For a while the experts worked with a model that tried to fit grief into tidy stages, but that project was largely discarded. Grief is too unwieldy. Too wild. Untameable. Also, grief is distinctly feeling. Depression, on the other hand, can be squeezed into the “mental health” box. Here’s an interesting insight about another difference between grief and depression: Depression disconnects us from life. Grief connects us to life.
Grief connects us to life
Grief doesn’t connect us to the parts of life we favour or prefer, but it very much connects us to an essential and unescapable (and, come to think about it, anxiety-provoking) part of life: Loss.
Grief is loss. Pretty simple equation. We grieve what we lose. We don’t grieve everything we lose, but when we grieve it is because we have lost something; something we cared about, something we loved. So here we can see that grief is distinctly connected to love. No love, no grief. No grief, no love. We grieve the loss of people we love, relationships we love, even an identity or idea or fantasy or way of life that we have loved and lost.
Grief demands expression
Grief is expressed through the body, somatically, through an action, most notably through weeping (for some reason I prefer “weeping” over “crying” in this case; there’s a different kind of connotation or significance, and language matters), but also through shaking or trembling, writhing, wailing, screaming, fists pounding, contortions of the body, even vomiting.
When we treat grief with the reverence and attention it deserves, it can also be expressed through language, through writing or journaling, through poetry, through talking or conversation. In more traditional cultures, grief is expressed through songs, through prayer, and through ritual or ceremony. When we lack these kinds of expression grief can turn into violence, self harm, hatred, substance abuse and harmful excesses. Denied or repressed, grief can also become depression, or, as I am proposing here, anxiety.
Some writers, leaders, and activists – Francis Weller and Stephen Jenkinson come to mind – suggest that grief must be expressed within the container of community, in the company of others, in order to be properly metabolized. Other thinkers on the subject, like Thomas Moore, take a more private introspective approach (Moore was a monk after all).
Grief is an ongoing initiation
In my professional life I have witnessed how grief, expressed or unexpressed, plays a role in how relationships unfold. In my personal life – I am now in my fiftieth year – I have discovered firsthand the inescapable hand of grief. The longer we live, the more we lose; the more we lose, the more we are put in touch with the grief energy. Grief is an ongoing initiation; we are initiated into the realm of grief through time and through aging. Grief comes with age, and it ages us. It comes with maturity, and it matures us.
As a slight aside, I want to offer another idea about grief while we’re on the subject, just to make things even more interesting: Grief is not the opposite of joy. In fact, grief and joy are neighbours. They’re not really even antagonistic neighbours. They might have a somewhat uneasy relationship, but ultimately they affirm each other.
Back to my original proposition… Unexpressed grief becomes anxiety. I share this idea because many people are perplexed by their anxiety. They struggle to know the cause or the source, to understand it. I invite you to give this idea some consideration. Entertain it. Investigate it. I offer it here humbly, that it might support you on your journey.
All My Best, Justice Schanfarber
(Read the comments on this post on facebook – click here. I especially like the idea offered by one reader that grief must be “tended”.)
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