Waking from the trance of fixed personality

The Enneagram is …

The Enneagram Personality Typology is a profound system of spiritual psychology describing nine distinct yet complex temperaments or “Enneatypes.”   Each “Enneatype” maps a separate-self psyche with its basic desire, basic fear, style of defense, habit of attention, avoidance, virtue, temptation, fixed “passion” and more. 

When people first learn about their Enneatype, they can feel a distaste or discomfort for what’s described in detail are deep unconscious psychological patterns that form a hidden “self-identity” of fixed personality. We suddenly see that there is a kind of character in us with core motivations and beliefs of which we were completely unaware. To see this fixed, rigid self clearly is difficult yet we also know we are NOT this false self. With study, self-aware honesty grows and we gain greater choice over our behaviors. In time, we are able to practice genuine relating with others. New ways of being naturally dissolve negative habits and fixations and we find freedom. 

The true purpose of Enneagram knowledge is deeply spiritual, offering a fast track for dissolving deeply rooted psychological patterns and fixations.  The process itself wakes genuine understanding of self, others and relationships, and develops humility and compassion.  The journey of waking from the trance of self is slow but the direction of truth is sure.

The Enneagram is not …

Enneagram knowledge has the power to change your life and grow your Soul.  Yet, if misunderstood, the same knowledge can reinforce and affirm identity as “type” and label others with false assumptions. Typing leads to greater delusion and fixed beliefs and we lose our capacity for in-the-moment, open perceiving love and awareness in relating.

Historically, the Enneagram was taught in schools of consciousness studies where students would learn the typology from a teacher in a living process not available in books. Working with Enneagram knowledge to undo the false self is useful.

We can delve into our experience and the way we meet life in our relationships, work, family, events – all of it – to wake from the trance of fixation and release core assumptions, false motivations and deceptive intentions that lie beneath our conscious thoughts and behaviors. Truth, love and honesty guide our way to freedom.

The Enneagram Soul Work Package gives you a unique opportunity to work with an Enneagram teacher who understands the dynamic energy and psychological structures of each of the Enneatypes and and the 9 pathways to freedom from type.

Kristen has 25 years of training and experience working with the Enneagram both personally and professionally.  She can help clear away confusion in finding your Enneatype, understand what it means in your life, and create a toolkit of applied teachings. The result is you expand awareness of your inner landscapes and move in freer, happier ways. For more information, please see below .

The Enneatype Soul Work Package

Working with Kristen over three sessions, you will discover your Enneatype, understand how it moves in your life and clarify the direction for personal growth and ways to support your natural self!

The process includes testing where you discover your dominant Enneatype patterns. Sharing with Kristen in a dynamic exchange of inquiry and direct seeing, you explore how these primary patterns move, and begin to clear away past conditioning. 

You study and observe.  Clarity of type emerges. You try it on and bring your insights and questions.  The process experientially confirms Enneatype as you begin to understand the dynamic energies at work, ways to move more freely and specifically apply the teachings to your life.   

1. The Reformer / Perfectionist

 “I am happy and okay if you do what is right.”

Reformers tend towards rigidity, and moralism.  In a towering rage that the world is the way it is, they live on a mission to enforce their brand of virtue.  Unable to acknowledge or forgive mistakes in others, this can sometimes place them in social conflict.  “She doesn’t listen!” her friends may complain, “It’s like having your conscience following you around all day!” Reformers sort reality, exposing incongruities with their perfectionistic expectations; they are always detail oriented.  They may be fiery and loud, or quiet, and contained.

As a child, reformers may have had abdicating or punitive parents.  Their enneatype is a reaction formation against existential uncertainty; absolute rules as a defense for criticism and punishment, or compensation for perceived parental inadequacy–especially emotional distance which showed up as rejection of the child as a sensual, sexual being.  Reformers vow to work hard and be good to avoid comparisons to the inadequate parent.  They may feel a parental disconnect, trying to be their own father figure as a substitute, doing for themselves what they did not feel was provided from this parent.   

A reformer in full awareness is a model of balanced duality; dispassionate but compassionate.  Cheerful. Realistic showing great moral courage.  Tolerant and good-humored, forgiving and accepting of what is rather than what should be. 

2. The Giving Helper

“I am good as long as I am loved by and close to others. ”

Helpers exist in a state of chronic identity crisis. “Who am I now?” they ask.  They identify with others, swallowing the people in their lives whole, deriving a secondary identity that is not their own.  Whatever feeling states and world views encountered in those around a helper becomes an intrinsic part of her own secondary identity.  She lives inside of images, gives till it hurts, resents the fact and then represses the anger.  

As a child a helper may have had needy parent, demanding to be looked after; or may have needed to disarm a domineering, critical figure.  Her parents may have been distant, absorbed in everything but the child’s needs. Often experiencing a distant abdicating father and a competitive, hostile mother, she grew acutely aware of the personal cues of others, responding to gain approval, or to show up in other’s reality.  Child helpers may experience a sexualized parental bond: Daddy’s special girl, or Mommy’s little man–a result of a breakdown in the parental relationship, leading to the child becoming a substitute spouse.  This may be actual sexual abuse or emotional incest.  In adulthood they may become “seductive”–giving attention to get it.  The helper enneatype is a pseudo-self, compensating for a deep sense of neglect.     

In full awareness, Helpers are actually concerned about others.  They may choose genuine service, or find contentment as good friends, therapists and facilitators.   Find more independent identity for themselves, they cultivate a sense of self and their own emotions.  They feel their own body, seeing themselves, taking responsibility for their tangled motives–both selflessness and selfishness.  

 3. The Achiever / Performer

“I am good if I am valued, successful and others regard me.”

Substituting deeds for people, achievers quest for inner acceptance through outer status, appearance and the accumulation of totems such as trophies and awards. Achievers embody a confusion between seeming and being. Adopting a shell-like persona, they may feel shockingly hollow to talk to–all charm and no substance; a quality of impersonation, calculation, and vanity.  They make lists, possessing a “get the job done” quality that takes them far in many professions, while amongst themselves his colleagues may complain, “he is so obsessive compulsive! Everything must be done his way. Worse, he’s practically narcissistic–he won’t give credit where credit is due.  Everything is a competition with him!” An achiever may be genuinely accomplished, or outright fraudulent. His focus is not self-esteem but self-image esteem.

As a child, an achiever may have had emotionally disconnected parents who only  prized him for his achievement, competence and “little adulthood.”  An absent father or overbearing adoration from his mother may propel him to compete with his father for Mommy’s love.  He may be the oldest, experiencing the pressure of setting an example, or he may be an only child–the vessel of his parents regrets and deferred dreams.  Praised and rewarded for being “the best,” presenting a winning facade, his inner-self is deleted. In full awareness, The achiever’s narcissistic hostility gives way to truthfulness.  They allow themselves to be loved.  They can be excellent teachers, inspiring role models, conscientious parents.  They may feel emotionally moved to meaningful purpose.  They explore their inner life, returning with honesty about their flaws. They embody an authentic search for values–true excellence with a heart.  

 4. The Individualist / Romantic

“I am good or okay if I am true to myself.”

Individualists live in the lack, sorting for what’s not present in their life. They tend towards a state of permanent nostalgia, eschewing external reality as a distraction and intrusion. They long for another world, just out of tangible reach but there in feeling.   Individualists see their intimates as part of what’s holding them back from their idealized state of being and, “if only my partner would change I could be happy!” Often demanding and contrarian, criticized intimates may complain, “she’s always nit-picking and whining when I’m present.  When I’m gone, she can’t imagine how she’ll get by without me. She’s never satisfied. It’s maddening!” Both personally and professionally, individualists exist in a stage-play of tragic vanity where they are the star, yet are often envious of what others appear to have.

In childhood, individualists may have experienced early disconnection from both parents although the mother is more active in their awareness, embodying a smothering presence, an individualist’s mother often has trouble with boundaries herself.  Her father may be angry, distant, or plain ineffectual.  The child individualist lives in her own world and measures reality against it constantly.   Often a fall from grace memory motivates the individualist: the love that existed was tragically lost.  A fall into deformity, non-belonging, or a state of terminal uniqueness.  These falls from grace become crystalized as inevitable, holding back individualists from trusting in others, forming true bonds, or finding security by accepting what is uncritically.

Individualists in full awareness rise to the objective world. Less indulgent about own feelings, they become balanced and articulate; able to convey the intuitive and the subjective in ways helpful to others. Living in reality may drive them to creativity–the way of art is available to them, or social utility as therapists, teachers, actors– translators of humanity. Their underdog sympathy and idealism may compel them to sacrifice self-indulgence for an external cause.  They make good parents and forgiving friends.

 5. The Investigator Observer

“I am good or okay if I’ve mastered something.”

Investigators compartmentalize and collect both data and experience.  Often described as exacting, peevish and reductionistic, schizoid habits indicate they retreat into a self-made world of ideas and impressions–constrained of emotion and expression.  Investigators swim in the abstractions behind things, fascinated with realms of often obscure knowledge. Painfully shy, investigators struggle with  appropriate social assertiveness.  This can sometimes backfire in their analytical approach to the messiness of human affairs, “He can be so judgemental and even undependable when I need him to just be there emotionally,” others may confess. Investigators harbor a perfectionism often turned on themselves, particularly in reaction to social circumstance. They may vanish and withdraw,  hoarding time, knowledge, and emotions. This makes them loners and iconoclasts.

Investigators are often only children of a mother with boundary trouble and a distant, ineffectual father.  The parents can be abusive, emotionally and the child withdraws to soften social attack.  “If I come out of myself I will be harassed, double-bound, confused, exposed, abused, or swarmed,” he thinks.  In reaction to being judged and misunderstood, investigators create a fortress of solitude in order to need less from others or the world. 

Investigators in full awareness, are proactive, leaning into the world.  Assert themselves instead of leaving themselves to feel overwhelmed and invaded.  Rearranging their environment and communicating needs instead of hiding or sniping, they approach people and problems decisively as an act of power, rather than passively allowing the world to demand upon them and then withdrawing.  Great at overviews and putting things in perspective for others, investigators are able to entertain a wide range of divergent viewpoints.  They offer the fruits of their interests and knowledge to world in a soft-hearted, kind and generous way. 

 6. The Loyalist Skeptic

“I am good or okay if I do what’s expected of me.”

Prone to self-doubt and suspicion. Loyalist Skeptics operate on high alert, scanning the environment for hidden, imaginary dangers. Sacrifice, and duty are their watchwords and they are dependent on a strict principle.  This may see them cleave to a tradition or authoritarian that embodies this principle, or alternatively rebel against an authority that threatens the principle. This may show up as counter-phobic, as they rebel against authority while remaining fixated on it. “To him relationship means being faithful,” others explain, “but he needs a lot of certainty before taking action. It can be frustrating because I just want him to trust me.”  Natural followers, they glamorize the power of others in order to avoid their own power and responsibility.  Their heightened negative anticipation is tied into negative memory–they have trouble living in the present experiencing a pessimistic “existential” fatalism. 

Loyalists as children often came with domineering, forceful, even infantilizing parent  who cuts down the child’s attempts to take action, or stifles the child’s sense of agency.  This may have been an unstable environment, where alcoholism was witnessed, or the loyalist may have been a premature baby, experiencing lack of safety early in life. Loyalist children can form a strong bond with a tradition, or figure who embodies something time-tested and secure such as a grandparent.  This person becomes idealized as a protective/authority figure.

In full awareness Loyalists begin to claim power, shifting away from dependency into associations of loyalty based on their own choice. They grow into good parents and leaders. They are willing to work long and hard for a cause.  Dependable, trustworthy, modest and truthful, loyalists can demonstrate great courage, vision and fortitude.  Once they embrace taking action, and responsibility for own power, they tend to use it well.

7. The Epicurean Enthusiast

“I am okay if I get what I need and feel fulfilled.”

“She’s so self-interested!” One might offer when describing the Epicurean in their life.  At once grandiose, even messianic, hyper-sensitive to confinement, limits and painful traps, Epicureans can be irresponsible to others, breaking commitments and moving on at the first sign of solemn duty or disappointment.  “She’s distractible, spoiled, demanding… When I need her support she blows me off with some glib slogan as if it’s the answer to everything.” Beneath the dilettantish facade, epicurean fears are hidden from the conscious mind.  When faced with objective limits, a pattern of self-jail ensues, angst channelled into escape, into maudlin appetites–for food, ideas, activity, people, new experience.  All of this is consumed but never digested. A conscious break-out follows, often leaving lasting damage in its wake.

As children, epicureans may have experienced conflict with their mother’s lack of early nurturance, sometimes reporting a confining or smothering quality.  They may be the oldest child forced to do duty as a substitute parent.  They may be child prodigies whose gifts are neglected and just decide to be outwardly cheerful about it. An epicurean may have had an ineffectual, distant father and may have decided in childhood to negotiate away the need of a parent.  Male epicureans may have incestuous ties to mother, and can grow up fixated on rescuing women.  Epicureans of both sexes may take on a partner who is burdensome in order to justify a later escape.  Epicureans will often feel a tension between their own sense of themselves and how they needed to be seen by other in order to move socially. Their parents will often say they had a wonderful childhood whether the epicurean agrees or not.

An epicurean in full awareness must become more contained, digesting and allowing for feelings.  The cornucopia of options and experiences they detect are rendered down to a focused few.  They open up to genuine appreciation; authenticity is finally available to them.  They are experienced as cheerful, open, generous and curious.  Talented, capable theorists, epicurean prodigy shines, bringing their gifts as the ultimate renaissance people.

8. The Challenger Protector

“I am good or okay if I am strong and in control.”

Challengers instinctually view life as a zero-sum game of winners and losers.  What do challengers challenge? The environment.  Their enneatype is often a reaction formation against pervasive threats–real or perceived.  “He always says the best defense is a strong offense,” others may say about him, “deep down, he is afraid of being controlled. You can tell because he always needs to be in control of others. He is very intimidating.”  Challengers can be straight-talking, leading from the front, while also showing up as ego-centric bullies.  Relationships are opportunities to show weakness in a dog-eat-dog world and they avoid being vulnerable.

In childhood challengers were often neglected or abused by their parents.  In reaction to such an environment they decided they needed to be stronger than anyone else in order to protect themselves.  Alternatively, they may have been made into powerful little adults as children; developing habits of internal denial-especially of their compassionate or self-nurturing side– in order to fulfill a role in their family dynamic thus bargaining for a position of relative safety.

Challengers in full awareness are natural protectors, mastering their aggression an tempering it into assertion.  They model confidence and self-reliance, supporting others in standing on their own and  striving for worthwhile goals.

 9. The Peacemaker Mediator

“I am happy and okay when others are happy and okay.”

Peacemakers embody anger in hibernation.  They minimize, compartmentalize and displace, ironically self-deleting as a means of avoiding conflict.   Peacemakers practice a principled inattention to the obvious, willfully missing the point, particularly when the obvious points to their own needs.  One style of this pattern is passive-receptive, while another is active and over-complicating.  “He can be so prone to passive-aggressive, snarky comments,” others might crtiticize “I feel like I am always on eggshells. I don’t want to provoke his anger.”  The unstoppable force meeting the immovable object, peacemakers can wallow in abstraction, rationalizing away their self-deletion, while their emotions go neglected and become stuck.

Often chronically forced, in childhood, to choose sides between two conflicting parents, peacemakers idealize others while discounting themselves.  They may report “happy” ideal childhoods.  Digging deeper reveals a child neglected with his real needs deleted by the whims and narratives of the family.  The peacemaker child understands that unsavory authentic parts of himself are unwelcome.  He deletes these, matching the environment with non-threatening behavior–a state of deep freeze.   Beneath this serene,  icy exterior simmers an anger which he continually struggles to re-freeze.

Peacemakers in full awareness thaw to anger, fatalism and the consequences of years of self-deletion. They embrace the existence of a real self with real needs.  Often through a period of deep grief, they can emerge focused and sensitive.   Developing a strong intuition and a high potential for social contribution and a happy, warm family life.

Enneagram knowledge distinctly defines both ego fixation and truth. The truth sets you free. The pull of fixation gradually dissolves into awareness and pathways open to greater health and harmony. We function at higher levels and learn to embody the best, most empowered aspects of who we innately are.