Episode 108 - The 27 Subtypes of the Enneagram - The Heart Center

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[Music] hello my name is hilary mcbride and welcome to the liturgists podcast this episode in the enneagram subtype series is all about the heart type in just a few minutes i'm going to be handing you over to a conversation between mr science mike and annie diamond and their conversation about these numbers within the heart type numbers 2 3 4 and the subtypes within each of those numbers for those of you who are just joining us or those of you who are new to the enneagram the enneagram represents nine different archetypes or ways of seeing the world or motivations within which we use to interact with or make sense of the world within us and around us and those nine types can be clustered or grouped based on instinctual centers so the head type heart type or gut type you can go back to the first episode in this series to listen to annie and mike talk about the gut type which is numbers eight nine and one and the episode that just came before this one which was all about the head type numbers five six seven and today their conversation is going to be covering the heart type numbers two three and four so although that might seem simple enough things get a little bit more complicated or perhaps clarifying when we think about subtypes within each number and that's how we can make sense of how there are so many people in the world who see the world so differently but all can fit within one of these nine types so we've got three subtypes and that means that within each number of the nine numbers of the enneagram there are three variations on how people move through the world or make sense of things around them and these subtypes are all based on our evolution as humans and what we've needed and what kind of survival strategies have been useful for us that shape how our number shows up for us or which kinds of elements are drawn out or repressed these subtypes are self-preservation which tends to be about responding to perceived threats as well as needs the social subtype which is about creating social structures within communities and then the one-to-one subtype which is all about primary relationships or coupling today's episode is all about the heart type numbers two three and four and if you're not familiar with the heart type these are types that are centered around feeling which emphasize the heart for positive and negative feelings empathy concern for others romance and devotion for people within the heart type the focus tends to be on success and relationships performing up to expectations in jobs or in relationships placed on them by themselves and others this is sometimes also known as the emotional center and if you're just joining us for the first time you can head back to some of those other episodes to get an overview of the subtypes of the other numbers as well just a couple of reminders for you before we get into the interview between mike who is in la and annie who is all the way over in scotland these episodes are featuring the incredible music by ryan o'neill also known as sleeping at last and his songs are put in the episodes as an opportunity for you to reflect on the experience for each number this could be a really good time for you to meditate in these moments and to allow yourself to enter in to ryan's music as a way of perhaps creating more empathy more understanding more compassion for what it's like to be each of these numbers and to broaden perhaps your connection to each of these numbers sometimes people say that they are a certain number but my sense of the enneagram is that the numbers are in all of us we just might have over developed or underdeveloped certain of the numbers and it could help expand our sense of identity our way of moving to the world to connect with each of these numbers and perhaps to see where we're missing some of the strengths that each of these other numbers have to offer us that is it for me for now and i'm thrilled to be able to hand you over to the conversation between annie diamond and science mike [Music] i'm an enneagram type number four and if there's any enneagram type out there that feels misunderstood when talking about enneagrams it's definitely the force because we're special but honestly um always feeling misunderstood and with my enneagram whether it's about creativity or just the unique way i view things it's almost always related to emotional responses or reactions when i'm feeling misunderstood some people see me as far too sensitive or childlike in a way and that's almost never it i am sensitive and maybe that does seem childish to some but i'm just very in touch with my emotions and i feel deeply i feel intensely not just for myself but for other people and for things that bother me and when someone doesn't understand that it kind of makes me feel like i need to run and hide in a hole or at the bottom of the ocean and maybe then down there i could find some peace and understanding but it is nice when someone does understand me and does feel the pain i feel and does see through the darkness and gets it [Music] i am a four and i'm also an artist and uh being an artist is a vulnerable career choice regardless of your number um but i feel as though when people know my number i am so exposed and vulnerable all the parts of me that are tender and soft are just sort of put out on the clothing line [Music] my struggles with depression my tendency to think thoughts that are on the darker deeper side uh paired with the with my artwork with images that i make um i feel as though i'm seen through this lens of oh she's delicate or oh she's too much and it's something that i i'm very careful of who i tell my number to [Music] i think the biggest struggle i've had in terms of feeling misunderstood as an enneagram four revolves around my comfort with and my love for hanging out in the darker spaces of life i think especially in the west we live in a culture that glorifies light levity and extroversion now this is not to say that these aren't beautiful ways of being and that forest can't be right don't demonstrate levity and aren't extroverted i just find that personally as a four i'm more often drawn to darker more melancholic often hidden spaces and my love for these spaces breeds a certain degree of inwardness that i'm quite comfortable with and yet i've often struggled against the perception that this is a heavy and negative way of being in the world i wish that broadly speaking we could shift many of our cultural views around darkness but as it pertains to any grand fours i suppose i wish that people would understand that by withdrawing and spending time in the darker spaces within i'm actually more able to see myself and others with more clarity tenderness and light one of my favorite writers and poets the late john o'donoghue spoke to this by referencing our need to cultivate the art of inwardness for when we draw back inside ourselves we'll find immense resources there this has always felt deeply true for me and i choose to see this as a strength to lean into rather than something to be afraid of [Music] what about those fours so as i said earlier i am a four um and we fours have a fear of being insignificant and and unloved for our significant significance as a way that we get love that we want and so we have a passion of envy or longing that energizes the pursuit of connection through like achieving authenticity and meaningfulness but where do we direct our longing how do we envision authenticity where is the connection that we seek these are really different these are really different for each four and actually i think fours are some of the types well maybe this is just because i am one but that look really different to one another as well specifically so for the self press for here the passion is for tenacity which maybe sounds like a strange word but it's like long suffering so um these types of force find connection and we direct our longing towards the authentic life so wherever that is um these fours are driven by a longing and a wanting for that and even if you hear the authentic life you hear that's a very singular thing which is different than what we'll hear in the sexual and the social for um this is a four that has an idealized notion of what their lives could be like and so we are hardworking types that are sort of fueled by that notion i like beatrice chestnut says endurance is a virtue for them and that we are more masochistic than melodramatic so often you will not find self pres4s being quite as dramatic but you will see us um submitting ourselves to quite a bit of pain and trying to not wince so we try to achieve material security and that can sometimes become a replacement for desiring like the other things that we might desire or want so we're moving kind of quickly towards those things energetically towards material satisfaction even if it's a replacement of other kinds of satisfaction and i mean if you think about it this is logical right like as we'll get we'll get to the sexual and the social force but if your desires are limited to the material world that's those are pretty easy desires to get you won't see these kinds of force longing you'll just see them going out and figuring out a way to get the things that they want because those things are very like possible in a sense but they can become replacements for other things that the four really wants and so i even actually on my instagram oh yeah my instagram enneagram for wholeness i recently just posted because i'm doing a lot of things right now and they're all things that i really want but some of them i didn't necessarily take the time to discern that maybe i wish i had and so i'm running around and in the past thankfully this has only happened just a bit in this season but in the past i would get caught up in the midst of doing all these things that i chose and that i love i would be like ugh kind of like the authentic life is eluding me so i just need to like work harder but actually it's the working hard and moving towards my desires that's keeping me from the ability to enjoy my desires or like the things that i've chosen to do and so actually i just wrote about that um a bit of a reflective post but it's still desire and longing that's driving these types they're just not being dramatic about their prac they're figuring out practical ways to achieve those things which of course is easier when you limit your desires to a certain realm so that's the self press four the sexual for is quite different from that because they have a passion for their well they're comparing themselves not to the authentic life but to other individuals because they want to be significant and special and they want to have a kind of intense uniqueness they have a passion for competition and so they can be more dramatic people and emotionally very intense which makes them direct and very available for one-on-one relationships also they intensely connect with their own creative projects partner god they show up with a lot of sincere energy and passion but this sense of comparing themselves to others can create a sense of deficiency but they don't want to feel that sense of deficiency so they kind of strive to be the best so that they don't feel less than and sometimes in that process they can make other people suffer and and that can take the form of anger so it's that like hyper focus that we saw in the sexual as we talk through the sexual type it's that hot it's the hot four the hot four i'm a hot four well i'm not a hot boy um but it's that like drive for connection and intimacy mixed with a sense of like envy about like a connection that they're they're missing and really wanting to and because they don't want to suffer because they don't really want to be in pain sometimes they can sort of project that outward onto other people and so these types are going to be more dramatic than say the self-press type and if they're suffering you'll know more about it which again not one of these is better than the other they both enable different kinds of things and different kinds of relationships yeah so they can also look like an eight sometimes or sometimes a sexual two yeah oh and self press fours can look like actually we can look like ones we can look like threes we can look like sevens this can this type can go a lot of the subtype can look like a lot of different ways yeah the social four they direct their longing towards having like a special role and so they're when they do their comparison they're kind of comparing their status and abilities to to measure how they fit in the larger community they have a passion for honor really they want to have an honored and special role and that's how they feel like they'll achieve a sense of belonging so they feel a sense of deficiency and shame as well but of the three fours this is the type that is probably most willing to look at that sense of shame directly or they're more attuned to it naturally and part of that is that they really want to be an insider to a group but they feel like an outsider my understanding is that they can kind of see what's missing and so sometimes they'll want to speak up about it and they will speak up about it but they're also kind of aware of how they're seen and how maybe how they're speaking up about it doesn't meet social expectations so they get kind of caught up in this like this is a thing i have to give but it's a thing that's rejected and so they're kind of a more paralyzed stuck type that can be a little more shy than the other two as well because they don't feel like a necessarily a sense of support from the group and the group is what they're focused on yeah sometimes they're called the critical commentator which i don't really love so i've kind of renamed them the insider outsider kind of like straddling that line in the group yeah but really yeah bringing really fresh insight often to the group i think that's force obviously i live so much in this world so um i could talk about it for forever yeah and again like i think i don't want to talk about this too much but i do just think it's really important like it would be really easy culturally to look at um the intensity of a sexual for and to be like that's unhealthy and the self-press that's healthy because they're like they don't look like they're in pain but actually that's not looking like they're in pain is part of what keeps them from dealing with the fact that they're afraid us from dealing with the fact that we're afraid of our insignificance which keeps us working hard and moving without really looking at that and asking questions about our envy and our longing and how it's driving us so yeah i think sometimes we're just afraid of some of the types and the sexual for might be one because it's all sort of externalized in a way that sometimes there's a great place for us to appreciate that maybe that's in the arts but otherwise like we're just kind of afraid of that and it feels like we don't know what to do with it and we'd rather run and hide which of course just makes it harder for the sexual for to feel seen and known and loved and received as they are so yeah those are the fours any thoughts on force i mean i don't know my my own i just want to hear the most interesting podcast host right because um i should have some interesting comment or anecdote and instead i just feel so open towards fours right now as you describe that yeah and yeah my only thought is like as soon as we're done recording is i'm gonna send text messages to some four friends and tell them i love them yeah great and i appreciate them and as a nine uh imagining that sense of separateness or isolation is very difficult for a personality type that merges by default right right we don't imagine ourselves as separate we don't imagine ourselves at all yeah uh yes yeah i'm very different you know some of the friends i have who are fours even when they're hot fours so to speak that awareness of separation it just it opens my heart and provokes a lot of empathy yeah yeah thank you for that yeah [Music] hmm i'm turning [Music] take [Music] as if god hit the building of every beautiful thing in this game of hide and seek i can't help but think that ordinary i swallowed the king [Music] bodies [Music] sand castles maybe my heart needs to break [Music] the insignificant i lost my balance when i needed [Music] it's been forever since i came [Music] to try to describe [Music] we get to be glorious [Music] get to be glorious get to be glorious [Music] what if we already [Music] reflection of magnificence hidden in you maybe even in me it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love betterhelp will assess your needs and match you with your own 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betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists [Music] so i am an enneagram three with a strong four wing so when it comes to communication especially hard conversations success and effectiveness are very important to me but authenticity is also really important and what this means is that when i have something difficult or sensitive to communicate i tend to be really reserved and cautious with my words i think them through carefully because my goal is to share my heart in a way that gives the other person the best chance of truly understanding me and receiving the information well however this approach of mine has been treated with suspicion and labeled as insincere by some of the people nearest and dearest to my heart i feel really misunderstood and hurt when that happens [Music] so i'm a type three otherwise known as the achiever or the performer and i think with that title i feel like others have this misconception on how threes would like others to respond to our achievements i think it's known that threes really crave that external validation from others but it should be understood that a lot of those validations are fleeting for us kind of like how the excitement of achieving those goals are fleeting i feel like in responding to a three reaching their goals the comments and validation should be more of a reflection of the work that we put into achieving them because although we'll never admit it to you we want you to believe that it was effortless but threes probably put in double the amount of work that you would expect from them and by you telling us how great we are kind of sets up this new expectation like you're proud of this person that we put on for you rather than who we really are behind the mask so maybe instead of saying you're amazing you you worked really hard to achieve this and i bet you're proud of yourself [Music] let's talk about the threes so obviously we people often talk about threes as like chameleons and that's actually not all threes would identify as that but i do think it's important to say about the threes with regard to the subtypes different kinds of characters with who are looking in different directions in the world will have different kinds of costumes right so it's it is actually i mean it's true of the three and it's true of all of us so they fear being disapproved of because of failure and so they become performers or deceitful so that they can be successful and get this approval that they want but where they go for approval how they envision success and who or what gets deceived in the process is really different for each of the threes yeah so i guess starting with self press threes these types actually wouldn't think of themselves as deceitful not and i'll share why i mean not that any of them would necessarily think of that as a reigning quality for the self-press three if they have a passion of deceit or performance their passion is for security so if any kind of deceit that they do is towards a kind of material success they're sometimes called the company man or woman and they work really hard and well for material and financial successes they care more about being like practical and good than just be being seen as good because again these are people who are oriented towards the world their attention is more inward and singular it's not just about connection or their place in a group there's really just a sense of identification with material success so they want to do high quality work well model the best way of doing it and that can create kind of an anxious character underneath because it requires a lot of work to well anxiety is attached i think to to our material security especially in this day and age so the deception is generally like a self-deception it's like what do i want outside of what i thought i wanted but there's there is a person that i know who like has worked really hard and is really successful and at a certain point when asked kind of why they wanted to do what they wanted to do it was largely because it provided financial security for their family and even the moving up in the company that they wanted to do when asked if they actually wanted to do the job the answer was no and they actually didn't care that they were seen as having the job they just wanted like the job provided a kind of material success that within their family would provide a security and how they saw themselves was as the provider of this material security that was what made for a successful person in their role in the family and again self-press this is home oriented so that means that the family is also can be a big deal for these types they can often be really devoted to one company over time as well i mean i don't know if that really happens in our world today but if we look at kind of the people that are our parents now they're happy to stay in one place they're not trying to just be seen as successful they the success is defined by what comes from their work in the world so that's a self-press three the sexual three they envision success as attraction and intimacy so they have a passion for like charisma and charismatic relationships sometimes they're called masculinity femininity or um the movie star these are like people who become enticing appealing beautiful to win attention and approval from others like success is about not just material success but it's really about the approval of special others and they're not getting that through providing material things for those others they're getting it through really like that attention and intimacy and this could be with one person or even with audiences like the movie star role actually kind of implies it's like they can kind of one-to-one with an audience they are compelling personal magnetism yeah and they can be real promoters of others as well their deception in in that case can be of themselves and others it's like the question of like who is this person who wants intimacy and they can look yeah they can look like twos and sevens interestingly they can also be kind of they can be kind of quiet for a while they were called like it was assumed that like men were playing up their hyper masculinity and women were playing up their hyper femininity but it's interesting i know a lot of sexual threes who are also in the queer community so they're actually doing like masculinity and femininity together in this really interesting cool way there so there's a real um you can kind of be also just today in our in terms of performance in our world there's more of a space for you to be both and so that also leaves more weirdly like performance space which can be a really good thing for people and also in this case depending on how that performance is being used it can be a way of blocking kind of what you really want and engaging with who you really are if it's all about performing the being the most masculine or feminine or mixture so that's the sexual three the social three these types they envision success sort of in terms of group leadership they have a passion for prestige often we call them the politician i think sometimes this is the type of three that we identify as being kind of the archetypal three they sort of easily often win social admiration and influence um they can be out in front and competitive they're really interested in group success because they identify as wanting group belonging and so they they really want their group to be successful and efficient and achieve their collective goals can find a lot of ways around barriers to that kind of achievement sometimes it's hard for them to see the flaws in the group because they're they're really identified with it and they want it to be approved of so they they want to see it as as good the social threes very unlike the sexual threes at times they can keep people at a distance because it's hard to sort of both manage your image in a group and let people see who you really are especially if you're not quite sure who you are and that might throw off kind of your role in the group so yeah i think we kind of think of that often as the classic three but it's just important to remember that the the social three really sees themselves in light of the group the sexual three really sees themselves in light of special others and performing for those special others and the self press 3 sees sort of performance as a way to material success and in all of those cases the sort of deceit that keeps you from that fear of failure keeps you from those parts of yourself that you don't really want to look at because if you look at them maybe you will be a failure and then you won't be approved of but it's important to sort of take back the veil for them and for all of us it sounds like it's hard to be a person sometimes it's really hard to be a person sometimes you know i mean like what i hear consistent across every type so far is this need to be loved and accepted and a fear that we won't be and and then i just hear like in this moment a lot of different strategies for managing that dynamic psychologically yeah there are and that's why i like the link between the word passion which is sort of like this energy but also literally like i mean when we think of like the passion of the christ we then think of like the suffering right so this energy which is also a suffering and then if we think of compassion it means literally to suffer with and i think that's really important and i think that even bringing this back around to our conversation earlier about the way people use the enneagram if you are unwilling to suffer with someone in the tension and the difficulty of their type you should not be talking about it with them you just like there's just no way because they can't do anything about their their type or work with their type until they're there for it right and when we're there for it we see oh this is oh wow this has caused some pain or there's a there's a suffering here there's a and it's it's hard for me to wake up to this part of reality i'm really afraid and we don't help people by saying oh there's nothing to be afraid of not just that's not how we learn to not be afraid courage is is not by someone telling us that it's our type structure that keeps us from knowing that that there's nothing to be afraid of right we just don't learn things that abstractly so we have to be careful we do we have to be compassionate and i think in a way a rule would with with enneagram stuff is like compassion is way more helpful than knowing someone's type just because you have a helpful map that might help someone understand something about themselves understanding without compassion just doesn't work it is not going to be helpful on the path of transformation yeah gotta learn to suffer with or maybe that's just me being a four will you ever know yes you will it's true i think it's a pretty sure it's a universal truth um i think that's the path we're all on um learning to one admit that we suffer and then at the same time learning that others suffer too and and learning to suffer with them without necessarily centering our experience of their suffering yeah i think so [Music] maybe i've done enough and your golden child grew up [Music] maybe this trophy is in real love [Music] and with always without it i'm good [Music] enough maybe i've done enough finally catching up for the first time i see an image of [Music] maybe [Music] ready and i finally see myself through the eyes [Music] [Music] amazing story i'm ashamed to tell but i'm slowly learning how to break this spell and i finally see myself [Music] now i only want words for you to let my heart feel what it feels go to her bones hold no value here where we can [Music] i set aside the highlight reel and leave my greatest failures on display listen as to risk worthy of love in any way [Music] my name is tyler i'm an enneagram type 2 and as a two i'm pretty tuned in to the needs of other people and pretty out of touch with my own needs so i guess i feel misunderstood because i fear that no one will ever be able to meet my needs in the way that i'm able to see and try to meet the needs of other people [Music] i'm a two on the enneagram and i am open and huggy and joyful and friendly and some people have interpreted that to be a little too close a little too intimate so i've learned to reign it in but a little bit [Music] i think the times that i feel most misunderstood as a two or someone dominant in type two are the times that people assume that i am not a strong person because of my enneagram type the people that have this stereotypical image of twos as overly emotional or kind of pushovers people that are so concerned about if others love them that they're just willing to to do anything to confirm that they're needed by this other person and i don't think that's true i definitely think that we have the ability to fall into trap kind of like that but especially when twos are coming from a healthy and kind of integrated place and we're not requiring others respond to our acts of service with something of their own or we know that we are loved and worthy of love we have the ability to empathize and care and love other people in a way that not many other people are capable of doing and that requires an incredible amount of strength um it's like a superpower that we have that we can serve and care for others this way i think we would be remiss to not remember that eights this very powerful number go to twos when they integrate and are super healthy um and draw on some of those aspects of [Music] it [Music] twos have a fear of being unloved and they think that that if they're needy that that fear will be realized so they develop this sense of pride that can energize caring for people or behaving in certain ways so that they can get the love that they need without having to ask for it so each of these subtypes is different where they seek love and care is different how they give to get is different kind of the image that they take on is a little bit different the self press two they're so interesting so these these types can become like little nurturers and i say little actually really intentionally because these types are kind of their warmth this self-preservation warmth creates a youthful character and because they're self-press types and they have this focus this inward focus or like this attention that is on like their singular experience but they also want to be they also need to be taken care of without asking for it they become a youthful character who gets their needs met like indirectly through creating a childlike sense of warmth and like cuteness so they have a sort of fresh-faced way of being in the world that elicits a sense of needing to be protected and secured which is kind of like a child like children don't always have to ask for help they just get it right i mean not always not all children do but often children just naturally receive they should they should get it please they should and so yeah these are people that help in very practical and on-the-ground ways they're very like side-by-side friendship and family-like but they often feel less powerful and more dependent than other twos they do feel like they should get their needs they they are focused actually on some especially their material needs they don't want to ask for them and so they kind of adopt yeah they adopt this sort of powerless position sometimes and it from this place they become tender and they look a little bit less prideful because children don't really look prideful yeah sometimes these types these subtypes i remember one of my teachers said that they looked like the self-prez types looked like prince or princesses like they're all kind of like royalty they all carry the sense of like pride of being royal but prince and princesses have this like sort of childish way of holding that whereas like the sexual subtype the way that they seek love and care is through cultivating desire they have more of like a passion for seduction they're sometimes called the lover the way that these sort of get broken down sometimes they're like the queen or the king they're more intense their emotional expression they're drawing in of another person they want individuals to be attached to them and to need them that's how they get their needs met is like other people need them and they're pretty aware of their power they and they wield it through being charming and compelling and these strong bonds are are where they get their needs met without asking but sometimes they don't get their needs met they just assume that they will in those relationships if they give more yeah they kind of believe that others will take care of them because they've been good to them and that they love them so well so they can yeah they're energetic passionate really hyper focused like other sexual subtypes and they yeah they know their power i've got a lot of these people in my life and sometimes yeah it's funny we'll laugh because i obviously with some of these friends um we we have this shared enneagram language and when we talk about like if they're getting their needs met in a particular relationship it's like i'll get this sort of intense look where where they are like it's clear that they haven't asked but they like are like oh i will like they know like i have delivered this excellent service um and yeah that's that's really that's interesting so yeah that's the that's the sexual too i think this is one of the types of two that we think of when we think of the archetype of two generally yeah those sometimes may be a little bit more intense than than we think when we think of kind of like sweet twos yeah so then the social two this type is interesting they seek love and care through giving to like the group and a group functioning so sometimes they're called the ambassador they have a passion for ambition and the way that they get their needs met is by them having an influential role in a group they're often second in command they're pretty impressive and highly skilled and sometimes more intellectual and definitely more cool of a type two definitely more cool than the the sexual subtype but again this is a two so they're not going to be like they're still interested in relationship and heart connection so they're not going to be cold but but there is a sense of that they're a little bit cooler than these other types in fact if we were to put them in this sort of prince princess queen king they'd be the emperor or empress type with a little bit more distance but they get close to power and and they become indispensable and that way they assure that they'll have their needs met through their indispensability they can be a little bit more strategic in their service to other people and they create like powerful webs behind the scenes and that's that's where they work hard to get approval they're also more aware of their their power in this way they can look like a three or an eight for that reason but in all of these cases again it's the the pride is what keeps them and wherever it gets sort of wherever they take it to try and get their needs met it's the pride that keeps them from really asking generally for what they need and sometimes they don't necessarily need to do or to be certain things in order to get their needs met but since they don't feel like they can ask for what they need then they feel like they have to be or become these things which can make it hard to get outside of that image of themselves and really take a long look at themselves and and what it is that they need in the world yeah and to receive two yeah that's the twos you know it's interesting to me and it might be an la thing but most of the eights i know are women and most of the twos i know are men yeah um and i think that's probably counter to experiences in some other places and i i feel such a kinship with twos in all three instinctual centers uh i merge and vanish and twos can end up serving and vanishing and the way they do that's going to vary based on their instinctual center but i think anyone who's in a relationship with a two or nine should always be mindful that these are friends who will very often be there for you but will also utterly fail to make their needs known over time and you as their friend or their partner may have to be really proactive and seeking out what they need and where where they're disappearing to themselves and where they're not showing up there's a lot of twos and nines in the liturgist organization and i'm learning to not only be affirmative with myself but be affirmative with them to say hey what do you need how are you how is this process or this conflict or this season of really busy work affecting you and is there anything i can do to support you and show up for you and that doesn't always come natural to our instincts but i think it's really helpful to remember that's also going to be true of all types by the way but maybe maybe especially true of twos and nines yeah the interesting thing there though too is that it's really hard to help someone if they don't know what they want or need because they habitually like self-forget or they have they're invested in not having needs and so it's really important that the questions be asked and then again that we don't be forceful with these people and be like well you're a two which means that you won't accept my help and you know like whatever because that can happen too i mean it's possible for twos and nines to just say no i don't want your help and you might have an opinion about the fact that they should know what they need from you or want from you but if they don't they just don't it's another place to sort of practice compassion and also speak from your own place and even if that's hard for you to you can you can say something like the imbalance in this relationship feels hard for me i'd love to help you or i'd love to be there for you but i don't really know how and it's possible that they don't know how because they don't practice receiving so i think that's another learning point for how we interact with the enneagram is instead of just taking our knowledge and sort of applying it to people we really learn to utilize it and really understand the logic of it like the logic of what happens when habitually someone is not open to receive is that i don't get to give oh maybe i'm frustrated because i don't feel like i get to give in this relationship so instead of sort of saying well you need to work on giving me needs or what your needs are i can say like i can speak from my position instead of speak from what you need to do which is less pressure and again less coercive but really speaking from a vulnerable place in yourself that's wisely said annie thanks thanks i do spend a lot of time thinking about how we best do this i don't do it all the time um yeah sweetheart you look a little tired when did you rest eat call me to make yourself right at home stay as long as you need tell me something wrong if something's wrong you can count on me [Music] you know take my heart clean apart [Music] it's okay if you can't find the words let me take your code and [Music] with is it's okay if you can't catch your breath you can take the oxygen straight out of my own chest [Music] i know exactly how the rule goes put my mask on first no i don't wanna talk about myself [Music] [Music] i don't even know [Music] i just wanna i just want to learn like a force to be reckoned without any strange what a privilege it is every single thing i [Music] is [Music] and i think we've made it through all 27 subtypes all 27 subtypes and it's oh my gosh that's a lot annie i'm so impressed with your ability to not only know all that but literally run through it all hey i i mean i made notes because you gotta have those so you don't get on too many tangents and my brain is all about interconnectivity so i do that i really i gotta stick to them or it's bad or really good but just many hours i hope that as people listened they heard um they were able to hear themselves and people they know and people they love and in doing so i hope that they were able to maybe get a taste of or a glimpse of how the instinctual centers and the 27 subtypes can bring some additional depth to the enneagram can help us escape the kind of caricatures that we all get caught in when we distill people to one of nine numbers and maybe help them see how the enneagram can be a really amazing tool for growth and self-understanding annie where would you recommend people go to learn more to dig deeper i mean of course we have a an enneagram course with the liturgists that we did together that goes into this even deeper uh but where you know what books would you recommend and where can people connect with you online i'd say two of the best resources as we talked about today we can't lose sight of the passion or the energy that creates the suffering of each of these types and so the best book i know on that is actually sandra maitri and as i mentioned earlier beatrice chestnut complete enneagram which outlines the 27 subtypes and really fun takes you through a look at the passions as they show up in the odyssey and then dante's inferno so if you're a lit nerd love that and that will be fun so those are two books i was trained in the the narrative enneagram so if you're someone who's like yeah i gotta i gotta really get into this um nothing in my opinion can replace the kind of learning that happens through the sort of structured storytelling that that is the the way that we teach actually the enneagram in workshops and retreats through the narrative enneagram so actually i do that that's something that i love to partner with communities to do but the narrative enneagram also offers that and in many cities there are narrative enneagram teachers who facilitate these kinds of things i think you can actually find a list of those on the enneagram worldwide website yeah and then to connect with me you can find my website is enneagramforwholeness.com and my instagram's enneagram for wholeness and my email's enneagram for wholeness at gmail so find any way really i yeah i do teaching and coaching and currently i live in scotland so that can't happen all the time but it can happen at certain times during the year just gotta plan ahead i think that's that i mean i just wanna say one more time that the project that each type and person is stuck in however differently it gets expressed in each of the subtypes still can't be accomplished with recourse to the personality so just because i as a self press 4 look sunny doesn't mean i'm able to receive reality with gratitude or that longing isn't still driving all of my behavior um and i'm still missing the authentic life even because i'm doing all these things and not complaining about it so the goal is not what looks like health right health means that we can show up to reality as it is with receptivity knowing our own truth and and worth and security and belovedness and we all need that so that's important and we have to be compassionate with ourselves and each other as we pursue that and if we aren't using the enneagram that way then we should stop using it there i said it literally there have been days where i'm just like yeah i'm pretty ready for this to go like i want this fab to be over with because then maybe we can get around to like using it well but i've also you know i've been helpfully um trained in a tradition that in a sense has kind of like the roar mentality of everything belongs and so i understand how some of this conversation belongs and the kinds of learning that can happen through just like developing a language community around the enneagram but as long as we're still open to the deeper invitations because that's where the real richness is and that's where we're invited to learn compassion and not just understanding which is a weird thing that western culture self-help thinks will transform us wrong yeah just wrong that's what i gotta say except i also got to say thank you thanks so much you've been just it's been fun to explore this with you over time and just to be supported by you and i learn a lot when i when i talk with you and i when i hear you reflect on what it's like to be a self pres9 to be mike and also just you know from your online presence as well which is generally uplifting in all the good ways so thank you thank you annie it's always a joy to talk with you thanks let's do it again [Music] we really hope that you enjoyed listening to this episode of the enneagram subtypes series here on the liturgist podcast if you wanted to hear a little bit more about who you've been listening to this was a conversation between mike mccarg and annie diamond annie diamond is a teacher of the enneagram and a phd student of practical theology at the university of aberdeen in scotland you heard her and mike dive deep into the enneagram in this series by talking about the enneagram and its 27 subtypes now you can use enneagram as a map for healing and self-acceptance in your own life to learn more about any diamond visit her website enneagramforwholeness.com and for more about ryan o'neill and his music visit sleeping last to learn more about the enneagram subtypes check out the book by dr beatrice chestnut this is one of my personal favorites it's called the complete enneagram 27 paths to greater self-awareness if you haven't had a chance to listen yet make sure you go back to the other two episodes in this series that cover the head type and the gut types today's hosts were hilary mcbride that's me and mike mccarg the guest today on this episode was annie diamond editing and sound design was done by jayden lee the music you heard was from ryan o'neal of sleeping at last and thanks so much to ryan for allowing us to feature his music on this episode production managers corey pig producer victory palmisano and talent management brent cradle thanks everybody bye for now [Music] you