Episode 37 - The Enneagram

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hi i'm tiffany and i'm type number four um i feel like i'm a poster child of type number four because i'm a watercolor artist and a singer songwriter um what it means i am an enneagram type four [Music] howdy howdy my name is melissa and i'm from dallas texas i am a seven um and i'm a nine on the enneagram a peacemaker my underground number is one i'm a five uh sometimes with a seven in the wings [Music] welcome to the liturgist podcast everyone today we're talking about the enneagram to kick off season three of the program and it's one of the most requested topics in the history of this podcast for those of you who haven't heard of it the enneagram is a personality typing system its name literally means nine pointed figure which is a symbol associated with the enneagram and its nine personality types now most people who teach about the enneagram claim that its roots go back thousands of years to teachings in the early church muslim sufis and buddhists but there's not a lot of documentation out there to support those claims instead the enneagram's history really doesn't become clear until the 1950s and 60s when a man named oscar is joe started codifying human behavior using an enagon of ego fixations which itself was based on the inclusion of a nine-sided figure in the teachings of g.i girjeff in the [Music] 1920s the enneagram became more widely known in the 1980s and 90s when authors and teachers like richard rohr don rizzo and helen palmer started writing about it in the last few years interest in the enneagram has started to grow again and hence this podcast but it's really important to point out that the enneagram is not scientifically driven and it's not based on any clinical psychology there's no research citing its accuracy or effectiveness so why do so many people love the enneagram why do people like to talk about their numbers so much i came across the enneagram the first time i think four or five years ago and when i came across it i was personally in kind of a dark place in my own life as a five on the enneagram which you'll hear more about later in the program i can often live in my own head and i always felt kind of alien to the world like there was something fundamentally wrong with me that i was broken and not just broken in a general sense but uniquely broken and alien to the world and the enneagram helped me see some of the things that i thought were broken about myself in a context that gave me hope hope that i wasn't alone in my eccentricities and hope that there was a way of integrating the way my ego was into something more whole and healthy and transcending the natural inclinations of my ego and a lot of people that i've come across this is how the enneagram has helped them as well that they've [Music] felt understood and seen and that there's a path that's possible to move into a fuller human existence the enneagram's complexity makes it very dynamic it helps people understand how to have self-awareness about how their behavior and outlook may change in different times and situations whether they're in times of stress or times of health to help us explore the enneagram its usefulness and limitations we sat down with two experts susan stabile and ian kron [Music] how's it going guys going great well we don't know anything about the enneagram so if we do the show be like well here's some stuff i read on the internet well that's a good start kinda so for something that's apparently so ancient it certainly seems that a lot of people are talking about and learning about the enneagram now in the 25 years that i've been working with it and teaching it i've seen increased interest exponentially in the last four why do you think that is i think we feel a little more free to explore things that are not necessarily part of our tradition without being threatened by those things or without feeling like they are going to negate the tradition that we come from in some way and i also think people have more time modern conveniences cost us a lot of time but they save us some space too i think and it gives us a little time for reflection about who we are and why we're here and what we're supposed to do i'm older than you guys so i'm 65. and the big question in the 60s was why am i here and what am i supposed to do and i think there is a missing element there in us not knowing ourselves before we try to figure out why we're here and what we're supposed to do and the enneagram fills in that piece i first did this about seven or eight years ago and it was just something for fun i did this with a friend of mine who was my pastor at the time and my wife took the test and he and his wife took it and it was it was fun it made for good conversation but about three years after that i experienced a really deep dark period of depression and understanding some things that i learned about myself through the enneagram became an integral part of helping create like more healthy relationships uh with people around me the enneagram has kind of helped me uh become a more complete person and i think more of the person that god created me to be at my best i think everybody's looking for a shortcut i think people don't have much time and they kind of look at other people and think i would never do that all right i would never say that and the enneagram once you understand the nine ways of seeing things it's a shortcut to all that confusion about why other people aren't like you [Music] if i had to guess and that there's like a huge part of the liturgist audience that knows a bit about the enneagram has a suspicion about what type they are and is really engaged in the conversation but i bet there's like at least a decent slice who literally has no idea what we're talking about has been confused every time we've dropped enneagram references in an episode and so what we're talking about is a personality typing system that has uh rather ancient origins and is divided into nine primary types of what personalities archetypes i don't know what language you would use as people who actually know about the enneagram and it's also got different practitioners and schools of thought among people who discuss and use the endogram for introspective purposes correct that is true so i'm curious still about i mean i know you're saying it has ancient roots how developed were those ancient roots and if it wasn't written down how do we know about those ancient roots the first thing to know about the enneagram is that it it really was an oral tradition up until the 1970s and so this was transmitted orally from teachers to students and actually until the 1970s you know people were encouraged not to write it down for fear that you know people would get their hands on it and it would end up becoming sort of a parlor trick you know or a game where people sat around and you know oh i'm a six or i'm a five which apparently you know as we all know has sadly kind of happened at this point you know after people started publishing it you know as an oral tradition things kind of get bolted on over time and because you don't have anything written down you're not able to trace the history of development since the 70s i think you can there is a since that time been an infusion of quite a bit of modern psychology into the work of the enneagram so it's not just this kind of airy fairy sort of esoteric sort of material it's very practical and in fact i've read dozens of phd papers from major universities of you know people beginning to do you know statistical work to see if you know the degree to which is accurate and useful from you know a clinical standpoint and a lot of it's really really promising so i go back to this ideas the question isn't so much about scientific accuracy and you know all these sort of quantitative analysis and sample sizes the question is is it useful does it ring true and is it useful and and we found it to be incredibly useful for people's personal development if you look at some of the uh psychological studies done on myers-brigg which is broadly used in corporate environments that is not really respected as a truly scientific typing system or methodology and it scores really low actually on most measures of reproducibility that a lot of people don't score consistently that's true yeah and so for use as some kind of like psychologically diagnostic tool myers-brigg is not very helpful or useful as a means by which it's a scaffold for someone to do personal growth or development work though i think myers-brigg is still useful it's a useful shorthand for making statements about yourself against a shared framework or understanding and to me uh after studying kind of the rizzo hudson view of the enneagram it's like that only maybe with a little more depth and a little more flexibility allowing people to more precisely define how they understand themselves in a shared framework or common understanding if that makes any sense i think that for me one of my favorite things about the enneagram versus some of the other personality typing things that i've done is how it shows you kind of how you tend to move in stress versus an integration and that was a really key thing for me when i see certain things creeping up in my behaviors and attitudes and perspectives during you know let's say an unhealthy time or stressful time it's been helpful for me to be able to see that and understand oh that's that's my ego doing what it does and that's the tendency of my ego is to move in this direction and seeing it that way kind of takes some power away from it if there's any danger of this sort of thing to me i think it's it's a construct it's a it's an idea any constructor idea i think you have to hold loosely somewhat you have to have a little bit open hands otherwise you can reduce reality any construct any model never fits the fullness of reality what it is it's a constructor model so this is a construct it's a model it's it can be a helpful one but the potential reduction of the self to just a personality first of all i think is a potentially reductionistic way of seeing a human being people can change based on their environments and their circumstances and and i think within the enneagram what's beautiful about it is it seems like the individual has the ability to transcend um just that one number this the one way of seeing things but i think that's a you know when when you start turning people into numbers or things in your own mind including yourself there's a reduction of the fullness of what a human being is or what reality is on some level so that would be the one caution i think in one caveat that i would offer in engaging with it hold it with loose open hands but when you engage with it it can actually be quite healthy and helpful yeah i mean susan i couldn't agree more i think uh you know these are models and being models they're they're wrong but they're useful right you know the enneagram is an imprecise map of you know how the the human personality works if i were to give you one of those old-fashioned paper hagstrom maps if you got lost somewhere you'd pull it out of the old you know glove compartment this is a million years ago before we had gps well i mean those maps are imprecise they don't show you the roads precisely they give you an idea of where roads are and where they go but the good news is as imprecise as they are they'll get you back on the right road so i i'm with you i think you know you hold it lightly you never want to use it as a way to pigeonhole people by saying oh you're being such a six or you're being such a three it's like no that's not true you know every human soul is is a individual expression of the image of god and we can't reduce people down to numbers i mean by way of shorthand that's just relational laziness [Music] i don't think ian we could count the number of uh families who have talked to us about how much it helped their marriage or how much it helped their relationships with their children or how much it saved them in money that they would have spent on therapy that doesn't happen to us occasionally that happens to us every time we teach all right let's do this let's go through the nine types obviously in a program of this length we can't get super detailed into everything but i think we could get a good start and let's see we can get done let's start with number one my anagram number is one the reformer it's been a really great thing to have during uh deconstruction and coming into new thing because there's so much especially these days to reform there's so much to reform so much to reform so much to perform so much so much so much so much the ones on the enneagram are called the perfectionist or the reformer and they literally see everything in terms of how it could be improved how it could be better that includes themselves it includes other people it includes rooms that they're in and processes that they work with and when that's your way of seeing you tend to try to redo or perfect or come behind people and make things better now for numbers who don't see that way that feels critical it feels like you're not good enough somehow that somebody has to thinks they can do better than you ones are burdened with uh an inner critic that works pretty hard on them to tell them constantly how they could do things better [Music] and without them the precision that we have in many things in the world we would not have once you know that and they come behind you and reload the dishwasher it's just much less offensive than before you knew that they actually know the perfect way to load the dishwasher well any examples of ones who who might who's some famous ones oh boy yeah richard rohr uh i uh steve jobs i think was a one but i put a little bit of a caveat on i think he had some unhealthy dimensions too but he really has that driving that perfectionism that that wild passion for perfect design oh and i say you know who's the perfect one of the perfect healthy one uh would be atticus finch from to kill a mockingbird yeah so much to reform so much to reform so my enneagram number is one as both a deconstructed christian and an enneagram one my conscientious and fairly principled nature drives kind of an impulse for justice for the oppressed and the vulnerable so i really strongly identify with the stories about jesus that talk about him speaking kindly to a samaritan woman or healing lepers or when jesus talked about the idea that when we love the least of these we do those things for him so in the modern day i believe really strongly in gender equality racial justice equal access to health care and education and marriage equality hey this is matt in san diego and personally i am a two which is the helper on the enneagram i love you oh just let me serve you it's all about you and that makes me proud i'm somebody who is prone to being very emotionally codependent uh with others one of the hallmarks of a helper is somebody who will do things genuinely out of care for other people but that is easily morphed into somebody who will do things in order to be needed by other people twos are helpers and their way of seeing is based on sensing and meeting the needs of other people they don't think you would have a place in your life for them if you didn't need them so they walk through the world looking for ways to offer advice and to be helpful and to give to you and then they sadly usually unconsciously expect something in return they are unaware that other people don't sense what others need like they do and so they have to learn that they're going to have to ask to have their needs met because they're the only number that really walks into a room and can read who needs what and who's doing well and who's not they know the stories that make up people's lives and they kind of hold us together uh socially and teach us about relationship and intimate connection [Laughter] so as i was putting together uh some edits on this i realized that the two section is by far shorter than everything else and that's because we let i'm pretty sure it's because we let a two talk about twoness which is like uh dudes that like to talk about themselves yeah twos aren't terribly interested in just focusing on themselves that's kind of the whole deal ah so here's lisa gunger hello hello my lovely wife who is a two maybe maybe either a two or some other number that uh that christianity repressed her into being a two for most of her life so much repression just on the price that's the thing i'm an oppressed woman no it's a real thing that um women are often subjugated into being some sort of helper role that's true because you know adam adam was created first and he was first and i mean that's the way that it evade the fruit it's the way that it's supposed to be we're supposed to follow and do the laundry and the dishes and all the things that you know just beat the supporter i personally think that she's a two that has been uh just having two that had children that had children and then has a little bit of like uh fire burning burning in your bones fire's a good good choice of words husband [Laughter] yeah but for most of her life i mean and most of the time if if people are in the room lisa's very aware of them she's very good at gifts well thank you very good at being aware of others needs someone like myself as a five is not so aware of such things i thought it would be interesting for you to tell because of all the people that i've ever seen see their results from the enneagram as they've kind of discovered their ego most people have a mixed reaction a lot of people are like a lot of fives are super excited about it like because they don't feel so alone and alien uh your response when you read through the twos a description was not so uh excited just talk a little bit about well yeah i don't know it's when i read through it i um i mean i was reading through richard rohr's book on it and i had this feeling of like oh no and and from what i read in the intro of the book it was kind of kind of like you know whatever you're as you're reading through this whatever's ringing true that's that's what you are and but i was in a really dark place um was going through the falling out of a very dear friendship and couldn't quite figure out why it was all happening and kept trying to pick up the pieces of it and um when i started reading it it was yeah i mean it was like reading my mail of um you love and you care deeply relationships are like the core of who you are but the dark side of that is there's all these strings attached to it and there's all this stuff that you expect back when you love somebody and i hated reading that part i hated seeing that in black and white um it was really hard and i i threw the book away and i think i cried for about two weeks because it was it had become a thing of pride right of well i loved i didn't think it was i thought that it was very pure and unhealthy and good and it wasn't until i was reading about it that i i saw it for what it was and saw how it could be harmful for someone else and i saw that in my marriage you know like i do i do this for michael and i have it with all the best intentions like a gift or a date and i or some planned thing where i've like sacrificed my time and gone out of my way for him but then if that's not reciprocated i get really hurt by that and so i realized no i'm not it's not just pure intentions there's there's this thing behind it where i'm always expecting something else and that was really hard to give up that was uh it's hard i think for a while i thought that that's how love was that's how relationships work i sacrifice here you i do this and then you do this in return um and love just doesn't work that way [Music] i am a three [Applause] i've been pretty successful i put a lot of weight into being externally validated by others i need to do a lot of things [Music] i've been pretty successful i'm a super image conscious person i need to do a lot of things to earn that validation threes are called the achiever uh their need is to succeed or to appear uh like uh like a success you know they just wanna project this image of being this performer who just is a production machine what matters to threes is is that they avoid failure at all costs and that they they really have to be the star performer they got to be the star of the room really when a three walks into a room full of people the first thing they do is they they look around and they sort of instinctively begin to ask themselves who do i need to become in order to be perceived in the eyes of everybody in this room as the star as being the icon of success of being the poster child of all the people in this room and then once they know who that image is they literally it's like a superpower i like to think that actually every number has its own like you know x-men superpower and the super power of the three is they literally can morph or project the image of whoever it is they need to be in order for the group to love them now it's kind of this by way of maybe just um putting numbers side by side which is really helpful for me and learning about them so twos threes and fours are all in the feeling triad that's what that's called they're the most image conscious numbers on the enneagram and twos when they walk in a room they go right to individuals they just zero on a person and they they go right up and they look in your eyes and i swear you guys aren't old enough to remember radar o'reilly from mash you know where this guy would just show up knowing what this this one kernel on the show needed right away so a two goes right up to someone and they look in their eyes and they go okay what do you need what do you feel you know they're they're zeroing on a person versus you know and when the two does that by the way they're looking for approval and and appreciation and what a three is in the room looking for is admiration they're really hungry for admiration they are they make great sales people they are so good at becoming whoever they are with and oftentimes you know when they're unhealthy they'll do it because to advance their own uh place of success in the world so they are absolutely valued by corporate america they are all about productivity efficiency and achievement they are the classic workaholic uh driver driver type a personality we live in a three country so we all have some of that in us oh yeah i happen to live in a three city so i read once that both muhammad ali and oprah winfrey are its threes which that makes it a pretty powerful category if you ask me dorothy day was a 3-2 for threes you know we tend to think of all threes as being like investment bankers or people who want to get rich and although there's there's plenty of those people because threes do want to have the symbols of of success to be on display like peacocks for everyone to go ooh that's one of the successful people it's purely contextual so if you think of dorothy day dorothy day who was the founder of the catholic workers movement and embraced poverty really as a way of or identifying with the poor um you know it wasn't for dorothy day it was really important to be the best social justice advocate of that time in the in in her catholic context so she did great work and she was a very self-aware person but she was keenly aware of her own need to be approved of and noticed and admired i was class president i was always encouraged to get straight a's uh to you know join um my college tennis team you know do always achieving these these different heights all these kind of superficial things and oftentimes what can end up happening is that a three can have these kind of superficial levels of relationships and not really go deep and allow people to access their lives is something that i've had to overcome and it's made me see that in myself and want to change and transform so you know people often say you know nine numbers this is incredibly reductive and silly like how can you say that there are only nine personality types in the world and and mike i agree with you i like the word archetype although i think it's confusing for people sometimes but i like archetype a little bit better myself but what i like to say to people is you know on the color spectrum let's just take the color red and say that it's a it's the equivalent to the number four okay well on the on the spectrum there's an infinite variety of reds i mean just go look in a ralph lauren paint catalog you'll find out how many reds there are um but but literally there's there's an infinite variety of shades or hues of red and so what i like to tell people is is that you know if you're a four or red let's say in terms of your personality um you are a a unique hue or shade of red that is not to be repeated but but they're because there's an infinite number of possible reds for you to inhabit as a human being and that goes for every single number on the on the enneagram you know if you think of it more as colors than as you know locked boxes i like you know i think it's kind of this weird infinite variety of sameness within numbers you know you're always red but you're your own shade of it that that helped me right away to get past the whole fear that this was going to be a reductive system that um was just going to be too tight for anybody to take seriously so my name is carlos and i am a four i'm generally very melodramatic and emotional and speaking hyperbole and sensitive and whatnot hi there my name is christy i'm from south africa i'm a number four i'm very much in my head a lot of the time i've always felt like i'm different i think so contrary to the people around me i thought it was just because that was something my mom instilled in us that weird is good weird is good weird is good weird is good weird is good is good and creative i love making music i love being my core motivation is to be authentic i want to be able to be true and honest with myself and with everyone and everything that i encounter the need of feeling things deeply almost in order to authenticate my experiences through many forms of art and really through are people who are wedded to uh authenticity and they're a little disappointed i think in the sell out from all of us to kind of try to be like each other they really desire to have that unique flavor that everybody has to offer there are people who are often called the romantic some people say that they have a need to be special or to be unique i would say that i'm coming to believe they have a need to be known and i'm not sure everybody wants to be known but fours do and i think they're the least understood number on the enneagram i also think they're the most complex number i also think there are fewer fours than any other number in the world they are people who are attracted to unusual things in life be it clothes or food or friends or art fours have a tendency to appear to the untrained eye to be just a little bit depressed but reality is they are people who are comfortable with a melancholy mood and they're careful not to get too caught up in fake optimism or false happiness they rather want to intensify moments of joy and they're comfortable bearing witness to pain in other people and that's very difficult to find ian has uh you know we work together a lot we've been together a lot we've just written a book together and he has the same emotional movement in an hour that i probably have in five or six hours [Laughter] and so it's very difficult when you're with a four to know what you're plugging into because you could have talked to them an hour and a half ago and things were looking uh pretty bright and optimistic and then there's a disappointment that has to be embraced by fours before they can let it go fours don't see you unless you have genuine authentic feelings i think every four i know is driven to make a unique contribution to the world if they entered a contest as photographers i think they would want to have the most unique photo and not the best photo it's like first place is kind of passe and uniqueness is hard to come by fours are loyal they struggle with relationships so they are afraid you'll leave so they push you away and then they're afraid you won't come back so they pull you back in and they do a lot of pushing and pulling yeah because we're terribly self-absorbed i'd like to take the next hour to talk about myself um well apparently most of our listeners are fours and fives so you can take a little extra time just a data point we like reached out and asked people to send in their enneagram stories for people who had heard about it and an overwhelming majority of the responses were fives and fours oh i'm not surprised incredible over representation well that kind of makes sense i think um i would say the big thing for me about fours one is they have this feeling that something is missing and that the sense that's there's a at the core of their being there is this deficiency or this missing piece and so as they look around the world they have this hunch that everybody else has it except them and they don't know why god or the forces of the universe sort of left it out or took it away and and but they feel like until they get that missing piece they're never going to know the happiness that everybody else knows and so as they look around the world they they have this sort of kind of mood scape of envy on the inside of their life because they're always looking around wanting your happiness or or your way of being in the world that just feels like it looks like it's easier for others to to be in the world there heathcliff and catherine in wuthering heights were there got their nose pressed against the glass looking in at their neighbor's party and they they know that they'll never be able to get in and that they'll never enjoy life the way the people on the other side of the glass do and and that's a perfect image for how i think of a four that's not very self-aware probably feels much of the time do you want to go get a antidepressant and come back now that you heard that who are some fours who are fours i'll tell you you got one soon as i go thomas merton oh yeah thomas merton probably the most famous and for those who have some enneagram knowledge on board he was a four with a five wing and that is probably a big piece of what made him so compelling because he appealed to folks head and heart and when you can do that you can really uh gather a following i would say yeah i think um the fours that really resonate with me tim burton would be a classic for the film director you mean you see edward scissorhands and you've really got a four and you're on your bead i think another one i don't know if he's a four he could be a five i guess i don't mean we don't like to type others i'm just sort of doing this you know in a very two-dimensional way but when i hear sufi on stephen's record carrie and lowell um yeah that's a four record man there's a disproportionate number of artists in the world who are forced and sadly when you see the lists of fours that come out you know like sometimes there'll be a list in a book literally half of them did not end their well their lives very well um they often produced great art but tragic lives on the enneagram i am a four uh when i first learned about the enneagram and learned my number i understood it to mean at the time that i was a quote-unquote individualist i thought it meant i was supposed to be this melancholic creative artist type but that didn't bring me any true understanding of who i was and what drove me but through richard rohr's writings and work however i was able to see and understand that my core motivation is to be authentic i want to be able to be true and honest with myself and with everyone and everything that i encounter and now that i see that that's what motivates me i'm also able to better understand why i might have negative visceral reactions to situations that i might have at work or with friends or family and even at church sometimes having a grasp on my desire to be authentic has helped me to better understand myself and also helped me to treat others with more grace and understanding and ultimately with love [Music] okay quick commercial break here what would a two-day liturgical experience led by science mike and myself be like well you could probably expect some fiery conversation some open honest space for dialogue doubt and good old-fashioned nerdery but if you'd like to join us september 16th and 17th in denver colorado or october 21st and 22nd in chicago illinois you may also be pleased to discover some bizarre spiral dynamics infused liturgical meditations music and other experiences a lot of the people who listen to this show would self-identify as spiritually homeless or frustrated people who are wrestling with big questions and hard thoughts we think that this sort of thing happens best around other people who will understand what you're going through and will love you in the middle of it so that's why we get together these are actually the only two events that we have on the books for the rest of the year for the liturgists so we'd love to see you there's still some tickets left get them today if you're interested go to the liturgists.com for more info [Music] my name is dylan and i'm a five live i hate personality tests because they never seem to describe me and instead they only demonstrate a couple of personalities i exhibit because i just told the test that i exhibit those traits i have to ask lots of questions i have to satisfy my curiosity i love the enneagram in part because i'm a five which means that systems of information just fit right into my wheelhouse because they feed right into my desire to see through uh be much more naturally inclined to just sort of sit and think and organize and categorize and come up with models for things instead of just doing [Music] fives are in the mentally centered triad or the head triad of the enneagram with sixes and sevens and they are called the observer uh or the investigator they need space and they need to perceive and our definition of perceive would be to fully understand things they want um usually enough adequate resources so that they don't have to depend on other people they tend to hoard the few necessities in life that would ensure a private existence the fear piece um is interesting because they are kind of uncomfortable in the world and they have a limited amount of energy and it's kind of like mana they get the same amount every day and when it starts to run low they have a need to kind of pull back so lots of fives are described as being aloof when actually they're just managing the energy level that they have so that they can recharge and be back in the world um we could say for the next day and the next day and the next day they manage their fear or they try to control it with knowing so they gather knowledge and information and they don't like ambiguity and of course like the internet but they are a growing they have a growing awareness i think that information is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom and fives are people who want to dive deep enough to be wise so my guess would be in washington dc many of the patents pending and many of the patents for things that were invented were invented by fives on the enneagram for them their mental life is very sustaining they're kind of buddhist-like in their detachment they're the most emotionally detached of all the types and that tends to mean that they are capable of neutrality i'm a as a two on the enneagram i i only understand neutrality in terms of some abject idea that pertains to other people and not to me i have a very difficult time with neutrality they often observe rather than participate and if you want to know a really great five and if you want to read a really great book houston smith's latest memoir which i think he wrote at 92 the name of the book is tales of wonder and it gives you a look at the reality that while everything i just said i think is true they are explorers and they like new things that they want to know about how other people see and how other people think and yet aware that they tend to think differently sometimes they're a little bit sarcastic or a little bit cynical in their responses to life my mom was a five my best friend is five and i had to overcome my need for lots of affection with both of them in order to be able to discover their love for me because they they don't generally like lots of touching and hugging and feeling and personal exchange one of the ways that they manage to not be controlled by life is by not getting terribly involved in life it's almost like they have a magic shield and fives if they're in a group and they don't want you to see them they just kind of pull up this magic shield and you don't see them or we just walk away yes yes or you just go home that's the michael gunger power mode one more important thing i want to say is this i think it is extremely brave of fives to show up for intimate relationships because it costs them so much safety and it costs them more than any other number yep they have to surrender so many of the things that they've they've to they typically hoard privacy space um personal information information yeah information is knowledge i mean power to uh no one believes that more than uh than a five so having to share personal information boy giving that up is so difficult so you're a pretty special person if uh if five kind of throws the white flag up the pole and says i love you it's a big deal we got a five on the phone yeah i'm a five yeah michael did you leave yeah i'm here i'm like the room i think i've got a pretty strong four wing too but five of the four wing yeah there's a lot about both of those numbers that really resonate but the five yeah that uh it was all ringing pretty true yeah i mean the the thing i can almost always i think this is like when the shield goes up you know they have this force field to go invisible but sometimes you'll be talking to a five and you'll be looking in their eyes and you'll think to yourself there's nobody inside that body right now like their brain their brain is somewhere hovering about eight feet above them looking down on the conversation but they're not actually in the body they're actually looking at you with these kind of empty eyes because their brain is looking down from another space kind of analyzing and taking in information about the conversation but they're kind of delivering a paper at a symposium while they're talking to you but they're kind of observing it from a distance oh that's amazing or i mean i mean i've literally watched like if if the if people are taking too much of his mana michael will get this like first the brain floats above the body and then all of a sudden it like puts on a jet pack and flies into the skull and hits a big red button and then he just yeah just bee lines for an exit like in almost a borderline panic uh and i'm like well i'll see michael later that's amazing that that energy conservation thing was a very true thing because i've i hate how i know there's been interactions where people are interpreting how i'm being as being aloof or judgmental or proud or arrogant or some something where i'm like just writing everybody off but it really is is a sort of like the conservation of energy thing is really what it like i don't know how i'm gonna move forward in life unless like i have nothing to say or give at this moment i have to find a way to recharge this battery are just going to lay on the ground in some sort of catatonic state i think one thing we should say about that is that every single encounter costs you energy so every handshake every phone call every conversation every uh time you uh are playing with your little one all of those things cost you and you don't have energy to waste on people who don't have anything to say or who are um unaware that there's a limit you know eights have the most energy of all the numbers on the enneagram and actually while fives have a measured amount nines have the least amount and i'll revisit that again we'll get there but i think it's i think we have to be respectful of five's energy and not ask them for things for energy that we've got you know what you know what because they don't see you know uh one of my closest friends is a five and so is yours that's fascinating no i would say that the the beautiful thing about having a five friend when you're a person who does a lot of feelings you know is they really can look at you after a while and go are we done yet are we are we finished with all these feelings because i i just really need you to be over with this right now so we can talk about something in maybe more objective terms um well we're we're into uh we're still in that mental realm and now we're we're heading into the sixes [Music] this [Music] the sixes are called either the loyalists or often the devil's advocates um they are a wonderful group of people we many enneagram teachers believe that there are more sixes in the world than any other type that more than 50 50 or more of the population are sixes you know it's pure speculation but i think there's a lot of marriage the idea that there's a whole lot of them in the world um so here's the deal with sixes uh i'm married to a six so i'm very very fond of them oh oh you should be and they see their mission in the world is keeping the other eight types from dying well you're they i think that's why god actually put them on the world in such numbers actually i i actually think that sixes are kind of the glue that hold the world together um sixes um have a deep need to feel secure um you they're they are fearful people when they tend to get real the fear that they experience actually is probably closer to anxiety um that's sort of the dominant emotion that kind of runs it kind of buzzes like a you know like one of those like a fluorescent light that's gone bad in the background you know it's just this buzz of of anxiety that runs at a low level or in spikes from time to time they are notorious for um playing out and rehearsing in their minds worst case scenarios as a way of preparing themselves for what they perceive to be is the ever-present possibility of you know danger a disaster happening at at at any moment so the world is a very scary and dangerous place to to sixes they're always scanning around trying to figure out if what they're dealing with is friendly or is it hostile is it always checking it around sixes are very concerned about who's in authority their eyes are always focused on who's in authority so there are two kinds of sixes it's the only number that has two variants the first kind of six in response to authority will submit and the reason they do that is they perceive that the authority is the source of their security now the authority could be a person it could be a pastor it could be a president it could be a belief system a religion um a set of rules you know whatever it is they see that person or thing as being the source of their security so they submit to it they're called phobic sixes the other kind of six which often looks like an eight so they'll get confused sometimes is can be quite aggressive and they are very very suspicious of authority figures so they're always thinking what are you trying to pull over our eyes jenny what promises are you making that you're not going to fulfill or i'm watching to see if you are and so their assumption is is that the authority figure is is not to be trusted and unlike that phobic six a counter phobic six will bring an authority figure down uh in a big way they'll take you down i call them honey badgers yeah well you know yeah exactly you know there's a great expression i think it was churchill says said it uh about uh another nation but this is about six as you can see they're either at your feet or they're at your throat that kind of describes perfectly they're either submissive stance or their more hostile and aggressive stance truth is is that every six is really a combination of both of those things which is reflective of their sort of natural ambivalence that is a hallmark feature of their lives you know this kind of never they're always kind of questioning themselves wondering are they making the right decisions having to do a lot of check-in with other people they doubt and question things and they're prone to pessimism but when they're healthy oh my gosh sixes are awesome they are i think many possibly the funniest number on the enneagram you've got people like larry david would be a classic six george costanza the ultimate six uh because they can they can leverage all that insecurity and a little bit of paranoia and all that stuff into into ways of making you laugh at them it's fantastic i want to say a thing or two that's perhaps a little bit risky and you guys feel free to just edit it out if you don't want it oh here we go we're real afraid of risk on the liturgist podcast we have a hundred days to go oh i thought you weren't going to go here please do i wasn't but after i after i heard you talking about sixes i just feel i i i think it's our responsibility to go here ian and in kind of a all right more serious way than we usually operate um i watched both conventions and i want to say that if we are correct those in our line of enneagram teaching that believe that a high percentage close to 50 of the people in the world are 60s on the enneagram then i think we would have to tip our hat to the reality that what they are longing for is to feel secure that's what they need from the universe [Music] and i'm astonished by how much pandering there is to anxiety which for me would be concern about possible future events instead of fear having to do with what's really happening right this minute that we need to deal with and if i look at my own life and the times in my life when i was afraid i was malleable and manipulatable and i also looked to authority for telling me what was right and wrong because when you're afraid it's so easy to doubt yourself and sixes have a tendency to doubt themselves and to not trust themselves anyway and i i think this is a a time when those of us who have some enneagram wisdom on board need to with all the compassion that i feel and that i can muster think about what it must be like to be listening to all of this talk and thinking about what it would be like to have to somehow find our way through that in order to find a place to stand and to know then what is ours to do and then to know whether it would have any effect on the world if we did it and i'm very sad that i think there's an awareness of people's fear and that people who would be leaders are exacerbating that for their own gain i'm on the road a lot and i'm crazy in love with my husband and when i'm home one of my favorite things to do is just fall into this big sofa that we have and eating popcorn and drinking a dr pepper and watching a law and order that i've only seen twice and all that works really well for me because i don't have to really pay attention and i can be with joe but i'm a little bit interested in the tv and that has been ruined for me here in the dallas metroplex because there's a a news uh station that has this young perky woman come out 15 minutes before the news to get your attention and one night she's on the screen in my relaxed moment screaming that i need to be careful for dishwasher danger your time now is 6 39 and before you start any appliance in your house this morning stop even call your friend you're going to want to see the story lawyers tell me there could be as many as 20 million homes with dishwashers that contain a defective component a component that could burst into flames while running and i turned and looked at joe and said is there something wrong with our dishwasher and he said i don't know i don't think so so to shorten the story about three weeks later i was at home depot with joe and he was buying stuff that he wants to buy and i was headed over toward dishwashers and there was a dishwasher salesman there with his tie on and ready to greet me and he said ma'am can i help you and i said well i'm just looking but i would like to ask you a question have you sold more dishwashers in the last couple of weeks than you normally would in a two-week period and his eyes got really big and he said are you from corporate and i said no i'm i'm not i'm just wondering and he said i've sold more dishwashers in the last two weeks than in any two-week period of my 35-year career regardless of sales or tax-free weekends i've sold more in the last year and i just want that's the kind of malleability that i'm talking about that's the kind of thing i'm saying i think that they people whoever they are creating fear and then we respond and i think sixes in particular respond because they're looking for safety and i think there's a cruelty in that that should be addressed well our media is built on that that's uh that's a real thing yeah absolutely the entire advertising industry is built on the premise of step one is to invent a new problem to make people insecure about so that you can sell them the solution [Music] happy happy life happy happy life being a seven is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of sight i'll take one of everything and let's just keep things light being a seven is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of sight is so much fun you can keep all your pain out of sight sevens uh are so very different than sixes and you can't believe that they're in the same triad five six and sevens uh which are this this mental triad um because they look so different and now the way to think about this is that all three just deal with fear they have different fear management systems so like for example if a six is dealing with like with fear by pessimism the seven deals with it with optimism um sevens uh they are sometimes called the epicures sometimes we like to call them the enthusiasts um every day to a seven is like a school snow day it's like whatever i'm doing now is fun but the next thing that i'm going to do is going to be even more fun and then while i'm doing that one i'm going to plan something that's even more fun it's like experience is never enough i always need more experience howdy howdy my name is melissa and i'm from dallas texas i am a seven that means that i bring a lot of natural enthusiasm and encouragement to pretty much every situation i also know that i then hate all the hard spaces so i have to make an extra concerted effort to do the hard things because the fun things are way better um but i'm learning and every day making space to do something hard even if it's only for 15 minutes i love your show thanks so much [Music] they they just have this remarkable sunny incredible enthusiastic optimistics you know the unlimited possibilities of life they they are um just some of the most winsome funny great storytellers they are always planning the great next adventure they're always thinking about the next escapade they're always the first one to you know if someone says let's go do this they're the first one to yell shotgun and be in the car okay without a doubt i have a seven son and um so does suzanne and uh so we know a lot about sevens what's really going on with sevens for all of their fun and all of their planning and thinking about this wonderful future what they're really doing is dealing with uh with fear for a seven what they don't want to do the thing they need more than anything else is to avoid painful feelings really to avoid uh feelings of anxiety of boredom of grief of any negative feeling or experience they just want to tamp it down what they do is they just overcompensate by just turning on the sunshine as one i think it's helm palmer someone like that said you know they just have champagne running through their veins which i love that that kind of image of sevens but it's really a way of coping with this feeling of uh i just don't i just don't want to feel bad stuff i want to have this very narrow range of emotions that go from ecstasy to to happiness and that's about it i want to go from ecstasy to happiness but nothing below the happiness range that dips toward anything negative they're kind of emblematic figure they're like peter pan they really just don't want to grow up they want to stay peter pan and they just they want to try everything at least once that we assign a different deadly sin to each of the the nine or seven deadly sins plus two to all the numbers and for sevens the the the really their deadly sin is gluttony they just want to eat life alive they want to have every you know you take them to a buffet restaurant and they want they'll just pile their plate up with everything they don't want to miss anything you know if you gosh for bid you go to europe with a seven i've done it i mean they are running all over a city from one exciting thing to the next um just wanting to wanting to take it in they need to keep their options open so that they never have to face pain or unpleasantness or or boredom they've always got to have an escape hatch always being in motion they they're they're very charming the first sort of line of defense for a seven is charm my son is one of the most charming people in the world suzanne's son joel is charming they they'll just capture you they're magnetic but again a lot of that is particularly let's say with an authority figure i am not kidding you i have never seen anyone get out of trouble faster than sevens can they just charm their way out of anything they have monkey mind you know they tend to have lots of scattered thoughts that kind of run a million miles an hour through their head they're typically they have a lot of trouble making commitments because they don't want to feel trapped in anything when they're healthy they are some of the most wonderful fun deep people in the world but if they don't do their work if they don't address the fact that uh you know you can't escape unpleasant feelings forever they can also be the most shallow people in the world and they can you know if you meet a 55 or 60 year old seven that hasn't done their work and is still like peter pan it's it's pretty sad they'll be they're kind of known as diletons or or shallow folks so i'm in enneagram type 7 and what i have realized is that that has allowed me to redeem the idea of being a quitter many years ago someone called me a natural born quitter and it haunted me for a long time whereas now i've realized that me at my very best is someone who knows when to quit and i quit quickly and well and i move on to the things that i know are the things that bring me to life and i do really well [Music] examples of sevens robin williams i suspect stephen colbert don't you think oh colbert is a great seven that's a great example of a seven hey you know what the thing about colbert is when you hear colbert talk about his family and the tragedy of death and his family you can really tell that guy has not run away from his feelings i mean he he he's a man that is well acquainted with grief and it really when you're when you listen to him go to the space of being serious and honest he's very very deep um and you know you don't always get that with older sevens what does sevens go so there's this idea that numbers kind of go towards other numbers in health or disintegration or in stress what do sevens go to in health five right five yeah they go to five okay oh is that i go to seven in in unhealth right or are in stress can you explain that well let me start by saying i really don't think you can take care of yourself without that energy you get from that number that you go to and stress it gives you something in those stressful times that you need and i think it'd be very difficult to experience holistic healing without the number that you go to in security or or when you have it a little more together so um if if we were going to just michael will just do fives um fives go to seven when they are um when they go to seven there is a light-heartedness about them that makes them more approachable so that relationships seem a little more likely it it's like if you are in a relationship with a five and you feel that that pull toward being thoughtful and being heady and you experience that sevenness in them then you know that there's a lighter side there that there's something that you can tap into that's a little more ordinary that maybe is a a little bit more like you are yeah we have like uh usually in stressful times we have like fat kid nights where we just go get like donuts sundaes or you know just binge netflix knives or whatever just it when mike's family came over we we invented something um called post post mates and chill which is sort of like uh our family version of netflix and jail but it was everybody like we have this thing called postmates in la that you can just order anything from anywhere and they'll come deliver it to your house and so we were having a hard time figuring out where to eat and everyone's just like everyone get whatever you want and we'll just bring it to the house and have this like feast of uh of everything and uh yeah very kind of seven-ish uh feeling but that i i really enjoy like kind of letting my hair down as a seven sometimes when i'm when things are really busy or really crazy or stressed out kind of going to i usually gain weight in those faces when we're on tour he goes like seven crazy like it's the most physically exhausted you get and michael's just like hey let's go to this hey let's do that let's drink this let's eat that let's do that and then because i'm a nine we'll talk about that in a minute but like in stress i just kind of want to like completely stop moving at all and so his reaction like to do more in times of stress is completely opposite of my turning into an inanimate object um and it i have to like lean really hard into my peacemaker to be like okay let's go ahead and ice cream because i just so he just drinks heavily right i just want to turn into an inert object i don't even want to move in a while you know one of the things that i just want to say about that that i alluded to earlier is that um ian and i are very different i'm a two and he's a four and when we're traveling together and working together we have different needs just like you guys do and um we on our podcast we interviewed cindy morgan and andrew um career yes and and they're a two and a four and they talked about being on the road together and earlier when we were uh kind of looking at whether or not this is um too restrictive and whether or not it is too limiting i was trying to say it could be that but it doesn't have to be that instead it could be that when we're on the road together we know how to give each other that extra grace so that we can stand to travel together and you go eat ice cream when you don't necessarily want ice cream because you know that that's a place that he goes right and he i'm sure i'm sure michael you're reading mike and knowing that you're thinking you know what the ice cream was good i kind of like to have a little chocolate on top of that but i'm not going to ask because he doesn't have anything left to give me and i i think compassion is built in to the enneagram and that's what the world really needs and that's sure what we all need who are trying to work together constructively to uh make the world a better place so end of that little homily and i'm going to go back to when five goes to aid in security there is a a time when that passivity of fiveness has to be uh overcome with something so that fives can with eight energy just say yes i'll do that no i'm not to do that i have to go home because i don't have any energy left i have to take care of myself and i know you don't get that and i'm sorry but it's not about you it's about me without some eight energy fives don't verbalize self-care needs for one example that would just be one example is that true for you michael yeah yeah for i i had to when i was on tour because because tour usually is one of the most stressful times of my life because it's it's new people all the time new things draining you all the time um and i just had to start implementing like solitude days where everybody just understood michael just disappears for a lot of the day and go off and just charge my batteries somehow in silence and i just had to like make that decision while everybody's like let's go do this and well no it's michael's solitude he's just gonna say no which is uncomfortable for me because i do want to like i would love to be present for everybody all the time uh but i just don't have the energy yeah i think those of us who move to eight you know twos go to eight and stress and without it i i just can't say no to things i just keep saying yes and when i get in that eight space i can say no and not feel like i have to tell you why see this is the beautiful thing about the enneagram um just by way of commentary and that is that unlike lots of other personality typing systems it actually accounts for takes into account the fact that the human personality is fluid it's dynamic it's not a static thing that um you know obviously it's situational if we're you know i'm sitting here in a living room and uh talking to you all on the phone right now and having a ball and my personality is in in one state but if i were in afghanistan right now in a dangerous setting it would not be what it is right now it's very situational how the human personality is constantly in flux and so unlike these other typologies it realizes that look you know in the course of a day there's there's this healthy place your personality can be in this unhealthy place it can be in and this place it can can go to to draw resources and stress or characteristic traits when it's in security so again it it i just love the idea that it takes all this into account makes space for the reality of the human personality is always selfing you know like self is not a noun really it's a verb we're always selfing and and changing and dynamic so that speaks to this whole idea of stress and security and not being locked into some you know trait bound label it's one of the most wonderful things about the enneagram i'm an enneagram eight what that means to me is that i have these strengths that are like effortless superpowers and mine are aliveness immediacy and confidence in fact i can project confidence and strength even when i don't feel them it's just like a superpower but my type has pitfalls too my core need is to be against and whereas that can make me a really powerful activist and advocate for justice it can also make me belligerent forceful and uncompromising when you put those together with my strengths i have to cultivate vulnerability to integrate enneagram too and that's really hard because being seen as weak is basically my biggest fear but i find it safest to pursue that with kids and pets so eights uh if you've ever read cousin zackas's zorb of the greek you know right away what an eight is like um the eights uh are characterized by this tremendous intensity uh they just are let me give you an example of this when an eight walks into the room you feel uh almost like the song hail to the chief should come on you you can feel this incredible energy radiating from that person and it's it's really intensity but what people often experience it as is anger it's like this feeling that this person wants you to submit to them it's this feeling that uh this person has come into the space and it has has just colonized it almost annexed it with this tremendously big presence and it has nothing to do with size like my daughter kaley and and and joey as well these are pretty diminutive people right they're not these are not you know they're not like you know dwayne the rock johnsons i mean they they they're pretty small but i'm just telling you when they walk in a room people's heads turn because they can just feel the intensity and the passion that's coming out of them um aids have a high need to be in control over the environment to create really a sense of safety they're very power oriented they can overdo anything they just this intensity this this lust for life is really what it is this terrible lust for life they'll over eat they'll over drink they'll overwork they'll over exercise they'll over everything um even sometimes to the detriment of their own physical health they don't really they actually feel bigger than they actually are they have like my daughter kelly is always throwing her back out or popping a knee out because she's just overdone it again in some way they're very loyal they have a keen sense of justice they're very concerned about justice lots of social justice advocates they because they're always looking out for for the underdog oftentimes with people experience with aids they feel like they're they're because they are actually combative and always looking for a good argument and if there's not one available they might just pick one uh for the sake of of getting the energy like if a space gets too boring and eight's like okay we got to stir it up in here and they'll say something like you know i can't go for another four years with this president i'd rather go throw myself under a bus than four or half four more years of this president and then they'll just sit back and watch what happens and just mix it up they'll just love to stir it up and see what goes on but you see the thing about aids is what you and i experience as intimidation from them they experience as intimacy like that's their way of connecting it's not combat it's connection for them and they'll because they're so uh concerned about betrayal and so concerned about being controlled by you that what they'll do is they'll sometimes pick a fight because they know that in the course of a conflict that people often tip their hands and show what they're really about and so they're they're trying to figure out if you're trustworthy or not um so i i i really love eights the thing about them that's important to know and i'll disclose this is that all of this intimidation and thorniness and this combativeness at times and this aggression really hides a very tender tender heart in the middle of their person and it's beautiful to see when they feel safe and that tenderness comes out it is so pure and so beautiful when like when my daughter allows you to see her tender feelings they are so treasured and beautiful when they emerge um but ates are really uh wrapping those tender feelings in all of this intensity because they're really afraid that someone's gonna betray them if they wear their hearts on their sides i just wanna add two things to that and one of the things i want to add is that it's real important to understand that aids really don't want to be in control of you that's not their agenda at all they just don't want you to be in control of them and that's a completely different energy and i kind of want to talk about that gender issue for a minute just to say that our culture is really very fond of male aids we like very decisive strong opinionated male leaders who get out front and get it done and show you how and all of that but if you put all of those same qualities in a female then she's just a [ __ ] and lots of female aides particularly young ones are really struggling with that misperception of who they are yeah it's a very unfair system and i've watched my daughter she's come out of college and i've watched lots of aides struggle because there's this natural belief in our in our culture that you know remains which is that you know women should all be these soft two-ish kinds of nurturing types and the moment that they start to exert leadership because that's who they are or aggression people you know particularly men they got a whole vocabulary of things that they call women who have that kind of spirit and it's not it's usually really good nadia boltz weber is innate on the enneagram and we did interview her on our podcast and i think it's a really good look into the window of female 8-ness martin luther king jr eight on the enneagram very integrated healthy eight i think one of our major candidates um that i tweet about that i can't stand all the time is a very unhealthy unself-aware eight yes have you ever seen um the british house of cards the the show house no i haven't i've seen the u.s one but not the british well okay well so you know that frank underwood he says almost the same thing but the british actor uh uh who plays his role in the original house of carr says one might think so but one couldn't possibly comment [Laughter] so i'm gonna say to that you might think so but one couldn't possibly comment eights are i've noticed as a nine peacemaker kryptonite i can deal with the entire enneagram even in my lowest energy state i can make space for everyone but at it takes my best energy my best day to accommodate eight energy in in my world because they have the opposite interesting tell me what you do i go into my most um childlike uh gracious accommodating state in order to make the eight feel like they're successfully you know owning the space and if they say something i i think is absolutely outrageous and ludicrous i go well gosh that's interesting tell me more about that uh oh yeah that's not i mean i think susan i would just well i i'm not advice giving here but just i can just tell you from being the dad of an eight and knowing a little bit about aids like if you really want them to heal and stop it then and this is so hard for nines being married to what i know but you've got to power up and meet them with the exact amount of power that they're throwing out at you and if you do that then they will almost shrink down to their normal size but they they really they require you to they they will actually you're absolutely okay but then you know like nine anger is like a whole different thing and when eights in the past have made me angry i have watched them wither in front of me just absolutely turn two inches tall but that like breaks your nine heart to do that like you can't that's a terrible thing nine see two sides to everything and that's just so problematic it's the best part of nines the worst part yeah so mike i can just tell you that most eights i know if you can make them you know bring them down to size a little bit whatever they feel in that moment if they you know they they'll respect you you're invisible to them though until you take your stand and you they they they they sense that you're a waffle or sitting on the fence about stuff they just they just see through you they'll walk right by and go find somebody that they they think is gonna you know have enough um gumption to be able right that's my goal that's why i'm submissive is they just move on and leave me alone because it like a little bit to spoiler alert a little bit of the nine is a instinctual ability to get the other eight types to kind of do what you want without having to direct them to yes just to add to the spoiler alert here's how nines do that they're passive aggressive and they're the most stubborn number on the enneagram [Music] i relate to every side oh just please dear god don't fight i'll be your number nine [Music] i never met a soul i didn't like except maybe when the a kept trying to fight nihilistic optimistic [Music] about this take the history [Music] maybe somehow all of you are right i'm talking about science mike we love you mr science nines are they called the peacemakers or the mediators they're they have a real need to avoid conflict and they need to avoid conflict at all costs like because conflict can lead to disconnection in relationships and the last thing they want is to feel disconnected from from uh the people they love or just from from people in general one of things i love about nines is that nines can see uh the world from every point of view um there's a there's an enneagram teacher one one of the enneagram teachers i've studied talks about how nines can see the world through the eyes of every number on the enneagram except through the eyes of the nine so you know here they are way up on the top of the enneagram if people don't know that the diagram of the enneagram nines are way at the top and so they have like one foot down on the what's called the compliant side of the enneagram right so down on they got a foot over here on the on three and then they got another foot on six which is on the you know the non-compliant side so you have this ambivalence all the time where nines don't know whether to defy or obey they're always kind of going back and forth in their head wanting to kind of do both in a given situation and so they're like i and then they get stuck in this place of ambivalence um nines are self-forgetting and what they have forgotten really is their anger they have forgotten uh or fallen asleep to these animal instincts that drive other people to to do life it's as though nines have so fallen asleep to their own instincts into their that positive side of anger in some ways that um they never rise up and take hold of their own life and rather what they do is they merge or fuse with the life of someone else who is more defined than they are more what would feel like solid and begin to take on the preferences and the opinions and the priorities of that other person so that they become kind of indistinct sometimes people will describe nines as being blurry or fuzzy i've heard some people say that uh one friend of mine is married to a nine says you know my husband sometimes feels more like an environment than a person and i always find that to be a very interesting um kind of description because nines can get kind of indistinct and they just sort of carry this sort of perfume of peacemaking and of uh coming into a space and kind of making themselves uh merge socially or or with an individual and what they do this for is all in service of avoiding conflict you know because they're worried that if i if i assert my priorities my preferences my opinions my desires what i want to do with my life if i assert those things it might come in conflict with what others want and what their priorities are and what their preferences are and i don't want anything that would rock the boat or possibly make um lead to something that would would be confrontational and therefore create disconnection with another person the the message that nines here growing up where they pick up really is it's not okay to assert yourself and what they hear growing up is your presence really doesn't matter like what you want your priorities your opinions whatever it's just not as important as what other peoples are and so they just say well i'm just gonna go along to get along and i'm just gonna be the guy that kind of is able to you know they just say i'm just gonna go along and i'm gonna get along i'm not gonna cause any trouble and everybody's just gonna perceive me as the nice guy or the nice girl and they'll never see me angry because i never get overtly angry because but when i do get angry as soon says i let it come out sideways and and the way it'll come out is stubbornness stonewalling silence conveniently forgetting things like picking up the dry cleaning as promised or a host of other things so i love nines but uh they they come with their own set of challenges that i will say once they get to do some work on them i think they're the most naturally spiritual number on the enneagram they they really have access to the highest levels of so they're incredible uh well to give you an example the dalai lama is a nine they just once they get this sort of place of health they just access a place in spirituality that is powerful because they understand how to merge they then can apply that ability to merge or to have union with god in a way that i think other people don't have access to i'm a nine and what that means to me is understanding that uh one of my basic i guess weaknesses is that laziness and sloth adhesive old language is one of my biggest advices and to i guess be aware of that and while some people might say that i'm really calm or that i always have kind of a peace about me a lot of times i know that behind that piece is just kind of a laziness of not wanting to deal with problems or deal with anything really i sometimes can shock people by the amount of naps that i can take in a week so sloth is the sin that is assigned in ways to the nine number and i i think that would best be defined as a desire to be unaffected by life and nines can just manage their lives somehow where they don't where they aren't affected i i'm married to one loved one have parented four children with one and i it's very frustrating for me sometimes because i can't keep from being affected by so much of life and the other thing i wanted to add is that there are times when you think uh nines aren't listening to you when you're talking to them and that's because they're not listening and i i hope my wife does not hear this podcast it's absolutely true well i just um i really think it's maybe as much as a third of the time that nines are just not paying attention when things are really important you kind of need to circle back and make sure that everybody heard the important stuff oh yeah because you'll come back later and you'll say to them something like you know well did you such and such and they'll look at you like what are you talking about yeah and you'll say well i i said to you this morning at six o'clock that i was gonna do something at two o'clock and they'll look at you like i have no idea what you're talking about i i never heard you say and you'll say to him but you looked right at me or you answered me you looked yeah you answered me you said and they'll go i did and you'll be like oh my gosh you weren't even listening you were just on autopilot there's this image i've heard some people talk about with the nine of the inner sanctum and i've learned that as a nine i can go into my inner sanctum and just chill there and just leave my like conversational subsystems in my brain on autopilot so i can have conversations with people in which they experience me as present and responsive and i am literally not there and we'll have zero recollection of the conversation yep yep that is absolutely true and you know the the inner sanctum thing actually is a really important thing because one of the things we didn't mention was is that what this is like i mean this is kind of every number uh and this is what makes the enneagram i think you know in my own personal opinion superior to so many other typologies is it's going to tell you who you are at your best and it's going to tell you who you are at your worst it's going to tell you about your blessings it's going to tell you about your blights and so when it when it comes to nines here's here's the thing that people don't see about nines they come off as being the nice gal and the nice guy because they really are you know i mean they they get along with people but what people don't understand is the kind of part of the dark side of the nine is is what they're doing is they're guarding this this terrible need for inner calm and harmony they want that inner sea that that sea inside to be completely calm they don't want anything to disturb that inner harmony i call it the inner hakuna matata i do you know what i mean like i just i just want everything to just to be inner chill that's all i want just don't mess with my inner chill and that's why they're always like like let's not have any problems here let's not have any issues here's the as soon as i tell you you know if i say to my wife ann and she's by the way and he's doing and is doing and has done a lot of work around this and so this is the beautiful thing you know once you know what your stuff is you can start to work with it but in prior years you know 10 years ago i could have said to ann what do you want to do for dinner tonight and the first thing out of her mouth will be i don't know what do you want to do uh if i say do you want to um go and do this i don't i don't know what what movie do you want to see see automatically she's deferring to my opinions and to my desires instead of claiming and owning her own because she doesn't want to cause conflict and because that conflict will disturb her inner harmony and peace and that's what she's guarding you remember earlier when i said nines have the least energy while fives have the most measured energy and that's because nines boundary themselves internally and externally and they try to keep in anything that would cause conflict and they try to keep out anything that would steal their peace and that's exhausting it's just exhausting if they just take a seat and take a break from life they can just doze off i mean life is they took a picture of me i went to israel i went to israel and they took a picture of me because we went to a coffee shop and we'd been in all these sessions with people talking about these terrible terrible stories and i just didn't see any piece was possible and we sat in the coffee shop and in like 20 seconds i fell asleep sitting in a chair with my head against the wall and no one could believe that i was asleep but i stayed there like 20 minutes they had to shake me awake to leave and it wasn't physical exhaustion it was the degree to which i was being affected by these people's stories which i think like is maybe my favorite thing about the enneagram is expressing the vice or passion of each type because i've learned that sloth is like a clacson or a warning sign in my life when i suddenly find i want to play video games instead of read or i'm suddenly interested in watching television and those kinds of activities that are passive and disengaged it means there's something that's pushing me in stress toward unhealth and if i do a little reflection work if i look am i working too much is there a relationship that's in trouble whatever these things are and fix that i start to look more assertive i start to have the ability to know what i want to do as opposed to defining myself in reaction or merging with others uh and that's what i of all the features of enneagram that is my favorite to give you a tool to watch yourself and change circumstances in a way that help you to to grow and to live the kind of life that you want to live one of the things i don't think we talked about is the fact that the enneagram is non-static and so many uh systems that might from a distance look like the enneagram that aren't have that differentiation so in your enneagram number you can be healthy or average or unhealthy or even pathological and generally that move through healthy average and unhealthy is kind of a daily journey that you take or for sure a weekly journey and you're not stuck in any certain place and then there's also movement within the enneagram because of the stress piece and the security piece so i i think the fact that it's it's moving is what helps it both show you the best part of you and the worst part of you and help you find a way to be healthier in all of that i there's definitely a warning signal in every number like you're talking about mike that tells you when you're about to really slide down into some trouble what numbers do they move towards nines each way three and six they're on that central triangle of the enneagram so they go to three in security and they go to six and so yeah when they when they go to three man they're they're their power to behold i mean once once the three gets going on something they can stay on it for a long time they can really hunker down and get it done but man if they stop sues what's the expression nine start off slow and then they taper off they they become subject to the law of inertia right they they you know they just start to slow down and if they stop it takes a lot of energy to get that engine up and going again and but going at the same rate it was before they stopped but uh but they're beautiful beautiful people and i really want to underscore something about nines that so important to me spiritually speaking that that's it's um forgive me if i'm saying twice but you know they're in this body type and so they just have a very heightened sense of the sacramental nature of the universe it is natural to them when they are outdoors if they're taking a walk or they're looking at the stars they have a sense this keen sense of the interconnectedness of all things and this is part of their innate sort of spiritual mind i think in heart because they really do feel right as sort of these merging creatures connected to things and when that's healthy i mean they make incredible spiritual leaders because they have a view of the world they can see the world through every set of eyes and they are peacemakers by the way i would say that um so a lot of people think bill clinton was um a three you know mr achiever mr adapt to whoever he's with he was in in my opinion i think soon as you agree with me he he's nine that guy's a peacemaker um you can't make peace in bosnia or northern ireland uh without being a nine ronald reagan we had a lot of presidents who were nines and um i think it's because of this incredible gift they have for empathy of empathy meaning being able to see the world through all kinds of eyes seeing everybody's point of view and being able to harmonize them and bring together people who have seemingly irreconcilable positions nines just have a way of being able to bring them together and it's fantastic i'm not sure we said that the um in enneagram world the very best the best part of you is also the worst part of you and so you can't truncate yourself you have to wrap your arm around all of that and bring yourself along and i think the best thing about nines is that they see two sides to everything and i think that's the worst thing about nines there's a paucity of self-knowledge i think in the in the world and um because in the church people have focused so much on just knowing god that and have actually labeled getting to know yourself as self-absorption uh actually i think religion is oftentimes used as a defense against having to get to know yourself but that's a separate conversation but really until we know who we are and uh get in touch with what our own needs are as human beings we have a very fuzzy two-dimensional understanding of who god is so you can get to know about your enneagram number understanding that you know you're a person made in the image of god you got to hold on to it lightly and not get yourself all attached in a weird way to it it's not magic but what it will do is help you to see yourself at your best and be able to celebrate that and who you're like at your worst and compassionately compassionately address it and come into a knowledge of god that you couldn't have access to otherwise i would just want to add to that that i've had the gift for the last four or five years of doing some enneagram work with veterans and michael you asked earlier about that stress and security piece and what has happened with a lot of young veterans who have come back from iraq and afghanistan is their families are saying we just want you to be who you used to be and veterans don't even know what they're talking about because of what they've been through and the enneagram using the stress piece really helps veterans to recognize who they used to be because if they've been deployed within recent time they identify as their stress number instead of as their core number and they're kind of messed up around that because motivation is what determines your enneagram number not behavior and motivation doesn't change when you move into stress or when you move into security another place i've had the gift of teaching the enneagram is in hospitals and there's a a real wide range of things that we could do around the understanding that when you walk into a room to deal with a patient michael u is a five and my q is a nine and ian use a four and isa 2 all need to be treated differently and if people can get a sense of those differences and learn to kind of read whether or not people want to be touched or whether or not they want a lot of information or whether or not they need you to sit and talk with them that that's extraordinarily helpful yeah so i've been in recovery from addiction for 26 27 or 8 years this february it's a trip you know a tremendously helpful tool for people who have had addictions to know when they're kind of spiraling down i have one more question about on the journey of personal growth for somebody how is it possible to transcend your number and you know me as a five saying in health moving towards an eight but that's not the only way i feel like when i'm really healthy it's not like i'm just assertive it's not like i never want to be a peacemaker and it's not like i never want to be a helper you know what i mean how does a healthy person transcend the number and and move out of the energies of different numbers and all that i um often start teaching by saying that i'm spend my life teaching people about who they're not this whole thing about personality is covering essence it's covering your true personality or your true self who you truly are and your true nature and we all had to put on personality in order to make our way in the world in order to please the people who are our caregivers in order to keep our jobs and have friends and all those things but um in the second half of life you get kind of tired you know like i shared with you that i'm a helper and i would say that in personality i've kind of made my way in the world by giving and sharing and being generous and helping people and you get tired you get too tired to help all the people who present in front of you and i don't think willpower has much to offer us in understanding and working with the reality of the enneagram because i i kind of think it's a myth that you can clench your fists and grit your teeth and decide not to act like a five anymore or not to act like a two anymore but with some non-judgmental self-observation which is not easy but if you can learn to observe yourself non-judgmentally you can allow personality patterns to fall away and when they fall away that purest holiest part of you the part of you that is most in the image of god is there it's underneath all of that [Music] and it's a matter of allowing it you don't have to create a new you you have to allow the deepest and best part of you to show itself which in its core who you are is not a personality but who you are is love i think as that true self emerges then whatever that self happens to be mirroring or experiencing circumstantially can respond appropriately if it's a moment that love demands peace if it's a if it's a moment that love demands helping assertiveness thoughtfulness whatever whatever it is artfulness can respond it's all at the core there yeah so this is that's it's a beautiful way of seeing the underground that actually makes it even more powerful to me of seeing keep an eye on your ego here's what your ego is going to do and you see it and it kind of takes its power away from controlling every decision that you make and every interaction that you have and enslaving you that you can kind of see it and see it for what it is it gives you freedom you know those moments when you just connect with somebody when there's just a momentary connect that has kind of a mystical feeling about it i'm pretty convinced that those are moments that are void of personality yeah that those are essence to essence moments i mean it's almost like the enneagram is a non-rigorous pragmatic personality modeling system that lets you identify the relative neurological expense of different social interactions and emotional expressions so you can best typify love and grace in a way that's most neuro-palatable in your context that was the most science mic explanation you've ever heard yeah i was just about to say science mike has arrived here he is the thing is he he the thing is he had to translate that into english from ones and zeros in his brain [Laughter] that's the path of least resistance for me that's uh that's my native personality it really is [Music] so we've started off season three talking about the enneagram because it's our most requested episode ever but even with all we've covered i'm sure there's more you're thinking about your processing and you'd like to know about the enneagram so if you'd like to talk with other people in the liturgist community just go to the liturgist.com podcast and click on this enneagram episode you can read a comment read others comments and interact you can interact with michael and i using at the liturgists on instagram or twitter or facebook.com the liturgist now of course if you'd like to dig deeper into the enneagram in particular check out the road back to you an enneagram journey to self-discovery that's going to be out uh october 16th both as a book and a study guide that you could use to find maybe what your number might be and you can also explore the enneagram in a group context of course they also have a podcast where they spend an episode talking about each number on the enneagram as well as a couple of introductory episodes if you'd like to go deeper in podcast form that's available it's also called the road back to you we want to thank all our patrons on patreon who financially make the show possible and tell us what future episodes we should be producing we'd like to thank corey pig for doing production support and project management thanks to greg nordin for the editing help and tyler chester for those lovely piano pieces and of course all of you for listening so good to see you i'm science mike i'm michael gunger thanks for listening everybody