On this article, I wish to discuss Enneagram remedy: how we will use the Enneagram as a instrument for self-transformation each by ourselves and with purchasers, if that applies to you.
What I’ve come to understand is that the Enneagram isn’t just a psychological instrument, for working on the stage of character, however a non secular instrument, for engaged on our transpersonality, our nice Self that transcends and contains our little self.
In that sense, it really works each as a instrument 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 e book 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 character kind.
don Riso & russ hudson
Uncover Your Kind
What I’ve discovered is that discovering our character kind could make acutely aware lots of hitherto unconscious habits, behaviours, beliefs and elements of our self-image.
Our kind 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 elements of our psyche which have remained steady all through our lives.
It may additionally present us our defenses and the methods we compensate for childhood wounds. Our character largely fashioned 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 specialists in our explicit coping mechanism, which in extra turns into the core dysfunction of our character.
Thus, from a psychological standpoint, Enneagram remedy:
- reveals our coping mechanisms,
- reveals elements of our psychology that journey us up,
- reveals us our limitations “once we determine with the character, we’re deciding on 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 character varieties could be revolutionary. For the primary time in our lives, we might even see the sample and general rationale for the best way now we have lived and behaved.
Many instances it’s as if a three-year-old baby had been making many essential life choices for us. As soon as we perceive the character of our character’s mechanisms, we start to have a alternative about about figuring out with them or not.
Don Riso & Russ hudson
Non secular Affect of Enneagram Remedy
Riso and Hudson write fantastically about how the Enneagram remedy can also 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 reality that the Enneagram conveys to us is that we’re rather more than our character… Past the bounds of our personalities, every of us exists as an enormous, largely unrecognized high quality of Being or Presence… though now we have forgotten this basic reality as a result of now we have fallen asleep to our true nature.
“as we be taught to deliver consciousness to our character, it turns into extra clear, and we’re in a position to expertise our Essence extra straight.
don riso & russ hudson
Right here’s a abstract of the importance of Enneagram remedy for our non secular improvement:
- the Enneagram reveals us what prevents us from realising the profound reality of who we’re and offers us a path to maneuver in,
- our kind reveals the methods we overlook our true nature,
- the Enneagram helps us realise that we’re not our character; as an alternative, we have a character,
- we start to grasp we’re basically a non secular being, certainly one of whose aspects is the human character, and we start to dwell as our Important nature,
- our character doesn’t disappear however turns into much less inflexible: it helps us dwell, reasonably than dominating how we dwell,
- we will ultimately realise that our true Essence can’t be harmed, irrespective of how robust our character defences have turn into.
To that finish, we’d do effectively to find our fundamental worry.
Uncover Your Fundamental Worry
In accordance with Enneagram principle, our fundamental worry is what defines our character. Now we have carried this worry since childhood, when it developed as a result of our dad and mom’ rejection of sure behaviours, which we then repressed and hid away. Because of this worry, we imagine one thing is basically incorrect with us.
Although all of us have a slew of fears and wishes, every character kind has its personal dominant worry, and by extension its personal corresponding fundamental need.
I perceive this phenomenon within the following manner: as our character develops as younger youngsters, we categorical it fully and unabashedly, with little concern for what others will consider us. However as we accomplish that, 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, notably our dad and mom, kinfolk and shut household buddies.
This describes the formation of our Fundamental Worry: it’s the weakest a part of our character. The worry is the results of the rejection from these round us: we cease performing a sure approach 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 fundamental worry however doesn’t actually handle it or deliver it to mild, although it nonetheless stays energetic. We’re now unconsciously pushed by our fundamental worry.
Our character is sort of a solid that protects a damaged arm or leg. The extra excessive the unique accidents, the extra intensive the solid needs to be… if we by no means take the solid off, it severely limits the usage of the limb and makes additional progress not possible.
Don riso & russ hudson
Thus, figuring out your Enneagram kind could aid you uncover your fundamental worry. Conversely, we will uncover our Enneagram kind by figuring out our fundamental worry. Figuring out this worry factors us to the wounded a part of our psyche, the half that wants most work.
That stated, working via this worry is deeply therapeutic. It releases all of the vitality now we have used to repress that side of our character and permits us to now categorical that vitality via our character. It tumbles the wall separating our true character from our unconscious wishes and traits.
Uncover Your Fundamental Want
As soon as you realize your fundamental worry, it turns into very apparent what your fundamental need is. Your fundamental need drives an awesome share of your behaviour. It may typically really feel insatiable, as a result of in trying to gratify the need, you’re not addressing your fundamental worry. 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 line with them.
It may be stunning to grasp that this dysfunction is pretty predictable given your enneatype. But on the identical time, you may really feel an awesome sympathy for your self, figuring out that this need outcomes from a coping mechanism that you simply developed for causes past your management.
And as you’re employed via that fundamental worry, the essential need could lose its grip on you. It received’t disappear, nevertheless it’ll cease dominating your life and creating dysfunctional behaviour.
Right here’s a brief abstract of the Enneagram varieties, their fundamental worry, their fundamental need, and the way that need can turn into malignant.
| Enneagram Kind | Fears being… | Fundamental Want | Deteriorates into… |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Reformer | dangerous, corrupt, evil | to have integrity | crucial perfectionism |
| 2. Helper | unworthy of affection | to be cherished | the should be wanted |
| 3. Achiever | nugatory, unimportant | to be useful | 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 joyful | frenetic escapism |
| 8. Challenger | harmed and managed | to guard oneself | fixed preventing |
| 9. Peacemaker | alienated, fragmented | to be at peace | cussed neglectfulness |
Wholesome, Average, Unhealthy
The Enneagram varieties, being a system of classes that lack motion or change, represent a horizontal mannequin of improvement. That is how they’re usually seen. However all sorts have a vertical part, corresponding to the numerous phases of progress fashions discovered by developmental psychologists.
Underneath this vertical mannequin, we will categorical our kind in a Wholesome, Average or Unhealthy manner. To the diploma our expression is a wholesome one, we’re freed from the downsides of our character kind and our unhealthy egoic mechanisms, we act correctly and spontaneously, and we dwell within the current.
In actual fact, the speculation tells us that every kind degenerates into one kind when unhealthy and ascends to a different when wholesome.
We received’t go into additional particulars on the vertical side of the Enneagram for now; simply know that enneatypes themselves aren’t static. At any given interval in life, you might be a wholesome or dysfunctional model of your enneatype, or someplace in between.
Do Enneagram Remedy
Let’s end this text by summarising how you should utilize the Enneagram for therapuetic ends, each psychologically and spiritually:
- determine your character kind and watch your self dwell it out second to second, as if watching from afar, “make topic object”,
- discover out whether or not your dominant kind 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 once we are behaving like a baby, 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 character,
- “observe and let go”,
- create a spot between exterior stimulus and inside response.
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