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The Dynamic Enneagram 2
How To Work With
Your Personality Style
To Truly Grow & Change
By Thomas Condon
Volume 2-Summer 2001 $14.95 / 260 pages
ISBN: 1-55552-102-9
Browse:
The Dynamic Enneagram 2
How To Work With
Your Personality Style
To Truly Grow & Change
By Thomas Condon
Volume 2-Summer 2001 $14.95 / 260
pages
ISBN: 1-55552-102-9
| Table of Contents  Introduction Chapter 1, FivesChapter 2, SixesChapter 3, Sevens Chapter 4, EightsChapter 5, Nines - excerptChapter 6, The Trouble With Typing - Free About The Dynamic Enneagram 1Browse
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Carol Erickson and I were once doing a training workshop for therapists. A woman in the audience who was plainly a Nine said that she really wanted to work on a problem and be a demonstration subject. The problem, she said, had to do with resolving the grief she felt over the death of her husband.
She came up in front of the audience of 80 people and we began to gather information. She said she was having trouble getting on with life and that her grief was inhibiting her on many fronts. She knew she had to take a new focus in her job and set new goals but she felt too stuck. She also reported that her friends wanted her to meet someone new but she was so mired in grief that she didn't want to bother. The grief also affected her relationship with her teenage children; they were always pleading with her to get on with her life but she felt unable to.
So far the problem sounded reasonable enough. People do get stuck in grief and if the process is unfinished they often feel depressed and uninspired. People who try to hurry grief usually find that their emotions have a different and slower schedule.
Carol then asked the woman, "When did your husband die?"
"Seventeen years ago," was the answer.
Suddenly the problem was something entirely different than it first seemed to be. I asked if she had worked on her grief very much. With a tiny smile at the corner of her mouth she said, "Oh yes, a lot of really famous therapists have tried to help me." While apparently pleasant, the woman had a subtle, implicit anger in her manner. If you listened closely, her words carried a stubborn, challenging undertone.
On one level Carol and I had been suckered. The woman was up in front of the audience in a beside-the-point attempt to fortify an absurd and neurotic position she had taken. She was punishing her friends and children for having expectations of her while refusing to take responsibility for the passive-aggressive way that she resisted them. She was stuck in cement and trying to stay that way. She was inviting us to try to change her against her will. Once we inevitably failed she would have a new plate in her defensive armour.
Gestalt Therapist Fritz Perls used to say that 99% of the time people who go to psychotherapy just want to "improve their neurosis." Perls was an Eight and meant it as an accusation but the truth is that when people go to great lengths to prove that their world is limited it stems from sincere conviction.
Within the trance of Nineness the deepest conviction is, "I can't have my own life." Remember that people with this style carry around and reproduce a wound of neglect. Early in life many Nines come to the sad, depressing conclusion that what is most unique and individual about them will never be recognized. This leads to both anger and a kind of resigned fatalism, a petrified grief.
Inside most Nines there is a little voice that says, "Why bother? Whenever I've truly tried to do my best nobody noticed or understood; or they took my creation and claimed it for their own. If I do something well I'm expected to do it well every time, like a performance. My actions don't count for anything; to try is basically heartbreaking. Since I can't hope for much, why put in the effort?"
The defensive strategy for this style is sometimes called "going along to get along" and when a Nine gives up on their own life they then become preoccupied instead with accommodating their environment. I don't really want to play, but I also don't want to offend people around me. I will go along with what is tangibly expected of me in this or that circumstance. But my real goal is to do nothing and go nowhere while seeming to participate.
Someone with these convictions can easily descend into an attitude of pleasant indifference; not caring becomes their principle defense in life. In the meantime, everyone close to the Nine is saying, "For God's sake, please get on with your own life" and the Nine replies, "Yes, I know I should. I will someday. Just let me get over this grief about my husband." The person's sense of initiative and responsibility is projected outward; everybody else has responsibility for her problem. She then firmly, if invisibly, resists their efforts to make her see an obvious course of action.
Knowing all this, Carol and I decided to not directly work with our client's presenting request but instead try and stir her up, to disrupt her hostile, lazy homeostasis. The audience contained many friends of hers and we thought it would be useful if she and others could see that the grief was something more willful and stubborn. Technically her problem was grief -- not for the loss of her husband's life but her own.
Carol continued to interview the woman, and ask her questions about all the different ways she felt stuck and unfulfilled. After the woman described her dissatisfaction in rich detail I said something like this:
"You know, I'm sitting here listening to you talking about your life and I think I'm beginning to understand the scope and extent to which your unresolved grief over the death of your husband 17 years ago is affecting your life now. Because of it, you can't have a new relationship with anyone, nor can you focus on your professional goals.
Your unresolved dilemma drives your kids crazy and though you wish you could change your feelings to help them you really just can't. You say that you need to get a new direction in your life but somehow you can't because of this grief. I'm guessing that there are many other ways you'd like to feel fulfilled but can't because you're stuck with this grief."
I said all this in a reasonable, sympathetic tone of voice. The woman nodded with a faint aura of hostile satisfaction. In a slightly more cavalier way I continued:
"As I'm sitting here thinking about this, I'm comparing the two of us -- you and me. I'm trying to figure out how it's even possible that we are living in the same world. You're describing a life in which you're totally limited and sweepingly stuck. You're stuck and will have to remain stuck in your grief which, by the way, isn't going away anytime soon. You can't have relationships, your connection to your children is fouled by this grief, you can't have a professional focus, or a general direction -- hell, you can't have a life at all.
Meanwhile, I'm sitting here thinking about how happy I am in my relationships. I've got a lot of friends whom I really enjoy. I'm generally effective at what I do, and I find my work incredibly fulfilling on so many different levels.
I listen to you and I hear a story of someone completely and hopelessly stuck; it's like you're my exact opposite. It's like you're stuck to your chair with superglue. You can't have relationships, can't have friendships, can't be effective, can't have a focus, nothing.
And then I wonder: how is it that I, on the other hand, feel so good, so thoroughly fulfilled? I have all these interests that I'm pursuing and I enjoy my life in general. When problems come up I handle them and continue on. I think I mentioned how much I enjoy my relationships, my work -- everything is just going really well."
I went on and on like this just building up the tension; the technical term for this technique is "rubbing it in." By now the woman looked uncomfortable and annoyed. The audience had grown visibly nervous and many people were leaning forward in their seats.
Adopting an openly arrogant, unbearably smug tone I concluded my remarks:
"I just keep coming back to the same idea to explain how you could be so stuck, so limited, so unable to do anything with your life, while I am so happy, so fulfilled, and can so effectively make my way in the world. I hate to say it, but the only possible explanation for why this is true is because you're a woman and I'm a man...."
In a split second the woman turned in her chair and punched me hard enough to knock me sprawling. I came to a stop about six feet away from my chair.
She was actually going for my jaw but missed and hit me in the shoulder. She was absolutely furious, just livid. When she realized what she had done she tried to recompose herself but by that time about 80 people in the room had seen her anger. The room was filled with shocked laughter and soon the client started laughing too. She was out of the closet, her hostility and frustration exposed. This had nothing to do with grief about her husband and now everyone, including her, knew it.
* * * * *
I had a workshop not long ago where I interviewed a panel of Nines. There were 11 people on the panel and 10 of them had vision problems. Most wore glasses or contact lenses. One woman had been in a car accident and had an eye patch, another had a stray eye, another had astigmatism.
Eye problems are not uncommon with this style and metaphorically it makes a certain sense. Internal vision is what gets most deleted or disordered within the trance of the Nine style. There's a defensive tendency to haze out or go blank, to not see the troublesome, unpleasant aspects of existence. As with Eights and Ones, the basic sensory strategy of Nines is auditory and kinesthetic -- a loop of talking to yourself and getting feelings. The visual field is usually the least conscious and most disordered. When Nines have personal breakthroughs it almost always involves seeing more clearly.
If you have friends who are Nines it may be important to do a couple of things. One is to recognize them, to remember that their defensive tendency is to impersonate someone with no needs, to seem a pleasant, flesh-colored presence floating in the air. If a Nine acts amiable and says they have no preferences it's sometimes helpful to ask, "Are you sure about that?" You might have to search them out, pay them extra attention and not give up on them even when they are giving up on themselves. One Nine said that the best birthday present she ever received was from her husband, who gave her 24 hours of his undivided attention.
If your Nine friend is impersonating someone with no needs and you fall for it, they will unconsciously hold it against you; it's a way they test others. Most Nines have a hidden part of them that stands back and watches events and relationships; it's like a camera in a bank, recording what happens for later evaluation. If you are willing to overlook them they will know it unconsciously. They might then be outwardly pleasant towards you but somehow not trust you.
The sense of touch is also important with this style. Nines are highly kinesthetic but with a wrinkle; within the trance of their style they have a strong tendency to translate emotion into sensation. When they have strong emotional reactions Nines will often somaticise, turning their emotional feelings into physical body sensations. So instead of being angry a Nine might get a headache; instead of feeling scared, the hair on the back of their neck could stand up; when needing to cry their skin could instead erupt in a blemish.
Part of what this means is that the modality of touching can be an indirect way to reach a Nine's emotions. Depending on your relationship it may be especially important to embrace Nine friends or to punctuate expressions of affection with touch. With some Nines - not all - when you touch them physically you touch their emotions.
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