Beatrice Chestnut - Type 4 Enneagram Panel

[Music] so the last of our three heart types too now we'll have the type four panel and so this is the heart type so if if if this if sadness or grief is the core emotion of the heart types and each of in each triad there's one type that over does the core emotion one type that under does it and one type that's kind of in conflict with it like last week last time we saw the body base types and eights kind of can over do anger nines under do anger they go kind of unconscious to their anger and ones are sort of in conflict with it they experience it more as a tamped down version of anger as resentment or annoyance or self-righteousness whereas for the heart triad threes under do sadness we heard them talking about how they don't really want to be in touch with the sadness it's it's kind of an effort to get in touch with grief although they're very emotional they work hard and part of the working hard is to not feel the the sadness underneath but when they really tune into themselves they do feel that twos are a bit at odds with it to be very emotional very in touch with sadness or grief but tend to feel like they need they don't want to express it because it's embarrassing or it gets in the way of relationship type fours tend to overdo or live more from a sense of sadness or melancholy to some degree what yes already we're hearing the story and it's as if it's as if they almost living in their emotions is part of the defensive strategy of the personality and they can over identify with their emotions to some degree type fours are the most in touch with their emotions of any type on the Enneagram and so they can identify with certain emotions and get too attached to them we heard one of the three is talk about how it's a it's an effort to feel the feeling but the thought that you know if you feel it and learn from it and let it go it actually passes through you quite quickly was a real kind of a relief to her it's important to know that for fors part of their their issue comes from not letting it go so feeling it being in it but not always letting it move on getting more wrapped up in it as opposed to just feeling it processing it and and and letting it pass so fours over identify with some emotions almost as a way to defend against other emotions so there can be a certain comfort or familiarity in sadness or melancholy that actually is kind of comfortable and and so there can when when I was in therapy and I'm a - there was a long period of time where I think I spent a lot of time in a four space and I remember my therapist reflecting to me he that he thought I was using depression as a defense and I think depression or sadness can operate as a defense in other words I'm gonna stay in these feelings because I don't want to move out of them where I might risk feeling another feeling that might be more threatening or more more uncomfortable so that's one thing about fours fours tend to be focused more on the inside than the outside we heard with both twos and threes their outer referencing they're checking the outside world to know how to be because they want to shift their presentation to connect with you or to impress you or to create relationship or rapport with you fours tend to focus more internally their self referencing so they live more in their internal world of feelings and the inner territory and sometimes it can be hard for them to come out of themselves and experience what's really happening and so they can really live their life from their inner sense of how things are or their fantasy or idealization of what's going on on in the inside and they also tend to be more touch with their needs more in touch with what's happening in the inside their emotional life and then say specifically twos or threes fours value a lot being authentic and if you're in a feeling you shouldn't apologize for it if it's authentic and real it's it's okay that's and so in some ways I think fours have something to teach all of us about the value of emotions and the value of being emotionally intelligent fours often their attention goes to what's missing in a given situation and so they can see sort of what's not really working very well or what's missing and needs to be attended to they also have a really good emotional intuition for what's going on at an emotional level beneath the the surface level of interactions so in families for instance they often sense what's the shadow of the family and sometimes speak to it because fours are truth tellers and they're also non conformists they kind of want to speak the truth and bring out the truth as a way of helping people often like look this is what you need to look at this is what you're leaving out that you that that you are gonna suffer from if you don't pay attention to it and so there can be a way of wanting to surface the darker feelings or the shadow and then of course because people the rest of us types don't necessarily want to experience difficult feelings or see the shadow they can then make the for bad for doing this which is one reason why fours often feel like they don't fit into families or like they have gotten unfairly scapegoated or or blamed for the fact that they're just trying to name what's true in their view and so often times fours can suffer from a feeling of deficiency like inadequacy like there's something wrong with me in early life this this stems from an experience in early life where often fours describe an experience of a lost paradise like they were connected at one point and it can be often to a caretaker they experienced a positive connection but then in aspart certain moment they lost that connection and there can be an over focus on that loss and also of blaming themselves for it because as children when we experience something painful we often blame ourselves as opposed to blaming something on the outside simply because we can sort of control it more if we blame ourselves if we make ourselves bad so force an example of this might be even something as simple as being the firstborn and having a good connection with the mother but then another child comes along right after and then that child gets the attention and the tension is someway taken away from you sometimes it can be a real loss like a loss of a parent early on or a loss of a significant if accan figure in one's life but oftentimes this early sense of loss leaves them with a feeling that they've lost something essential that they can't get back for as habit of mind is to have a comparing mind so they automatically compare themselves to others and can either come up on the bottom of that comparison and experience them as in themselves as inferior or not as good as or superior and a little bit better than our more special or more unique and this varies by subtype which one it's likely to be whether they compare themselves and find themselves lacking or or better than the other ends this sense of envy which is the passion of the type grows out of this comparing mind and it's as if they compare themselves to others and sometimes there's a perception of someone else has something good that I'm lacking and so there's something I'm there's a sense of inadequacy that I have because I don't have that thing that scene is good and that other person that that I don't have and there can be a dwelling on that a kind of dwelling on this sense of not having enough or not having what you need or something good that somebody else has and there's a kind of suffering that can kind of come out of that and then a focus on the suffering again or a focus on melancholy or sadness but again a lot depends on subtype with forests because like sixes fours are some of the most distinct among the subtype so the three fours are the most different from themselves from each other of any of the types except for probably six --is so self-preservation four is a type that internalizes suffer that kind of takes it in doesn't talk about it as much gets kind of stoic and strong makes a virtue of enduring puts on a happy face they're often happy and light they can look like twos or threes and holds the the darker feelings inside usually they got a message that it wasn't okay to share their darker feelings that they don't people only around them only wanted to see happy feelings so they actually have the heart difficulty sharing their feelings or talking about with others social forests suffer more they sort of more focus on suffering they tend to be very sensitive and they'll tell you about their suffering as opposed to the self-preservation for that doesn't as much they have a lot of words for feeling less than and can feel more inferior the sexual for externalize is suffering so might make other people suffer in the sense that they can sometimes get angry more they can complain more because when they feel a sense of hurt or deficiency inside instead of feeling that because that can be a bad threatening feeling they it's it's like okay I'm feeling bad because something on the outside world isn't seeing me or isn't understanding me or isn't giving me what I need and I have a sexual for a friend who says that she used to need to go to therapy to talk about what she was angry about for 45 minutes so she could get in touch with her hurt and pain for the last five minutes because there's the first that the topmost response is is anger and so sometimes that's called the angry four but there's also something very energetic about the sexual for because it's almost like they're not afraid of some of the things that some of the rest of us are afraid of in relationship like they're not as afraid of conflict and anger and they kind of say like what's wrong with that there's nothing wrong with it and so they can actually be very present and alive and in creative in relationship for that reason exactly because there there's there's not a holding in and there's a sense of that and that's the more competitive for its envy in its manifestation is competition like I'm gonna show that I'm as good or better than you and all fours have a bit of a sense of wanting to be special or unique whereas three's one of twos want to be liked and loved and pleasing and approved of and threes want to be 16 a successful all fours want to be seen as special or unique as special in some way for who they uniquely are as just themselves okay I think I'll leave it there and start with asking the experts a little bit more about how they experience type 4 we'll start with Annika can you tell us a little bit about how you knew you were four and how you see these four patterns showing up for you and it was a lot of lights in my life because I was very much wanted I was born kind of a little bit late in the merits of my parents and okay the first three years they were wonderful and the war came we experienced a lot of things connected with the war uncertainty threats and whatever and then my sister was born that and that boss I was thrown off the pedestal and that was hard on top of that it was a hunger winter so we didn't have much to eat and there was no heat so I wore about five Ichi stockings of wool not cashmere just very itchy stuff and all that that's death was hard but then I got the measles and I was staying in the living room I remember that distinctly and then we had the bombardments and so you had the curtains very heavy and you couldn't let any light go out and my father down was a very good pianist although not of profession he's and I was staying in the living room and he said ah Nicola listen to the music I'm gonna play music listen to the music and that was so beautiful that I just loved it and he said just wrap it as a blanket around you and I said oh that's beautiful and this day I'm a radio disc jockey at kW mr and I just love my music on top of that I like being anonymous in the studio no one sees me I can have my own realm of music and sort my music and no one is going to criticize me because I hear that it's wonderful anyhow I like it and that is wonderful so that was something very special and sustained me and so that was actually the beginning of just feeling wonderful and I always have felt loved you know even to this day I feel very loved by my friends and my family or the other way around first and yeah that's not a problem so we're not hearing too many dirty emotions from you and you were a self preservation for right yeah I'm a self preservation for it um and it sounds like you went through a lot in your early life yeah a lot of difficult circumstances but what self preservation fours are good at are sort of not necessarily like sort of weathering this being strong in the face of difficulty well that taught me when I emigrated with the father of my children and because immigration was horrendous it was I landed in a country so crude so hard no civilized things in New York in country New York that I thought this is survival I need to survive and I can't whine about it because I'm here with my family and I need to be very very strong and so by the time that's passed when we were in New York we ended up in in California that was wonderful because the Sun was always shining no matter how tired I was and we immediately actually on the rifle separated and then I thought I need to learn all the techniques of surviving strong and this and so then the growth spurt started of therapy groups interested psychodrama this and that and it was wonderful so you love exploring the inner territory yeah so entertaining [Laughter] yeah it's great wonderful so again yeah I mean in the self-preservation for you see an interesting mix of needing to be strong which we hear in your story but also kind of looking on the bright side a little bit - oh like being wait yeah yeah I seem to sometimes she seemed to have that part of the coping strategy is like seeing what's good what's like listening to the music or yeah and I'm have so much to be grateful for I have a wonderful hospital I have great kids and wonderful friends and I discovered here in California nature and nature was so nourishing I have a rowboat I roll a lot on Tomales Bay and I swim nature gives me more nourishment than I can tell you and being alone and so nourishing I cannot talk another thing I hear and just the way you're describing your whole experience it's the passion of the four there's almost an emotion in the way you describe things it's like there's a passion that comes through he just didn't describing your experience yeah yeah and so the radio is great but more the music is great whenever I'm driving I listen to music all the time and outside you know on the bay you hear the music of the birds you know you have no idea how many songs so sometimes people say if you're four you can't be happy so I think that you are giving light exactly right and I think that's a big myth about force and I and so I'm glad we're exploding it right from the beginning and I'm not competitive either no desire to be competitive because then you lose on the experience yeah oh thank you so Patrick tell us a little bit about how you found yourself as a four and how you see the four virginity when I was introduced to any sure yeah that's a good place to start okay I was 18 and naively went to train for the Catholic priesthood and that's 36 years ago I'll be 55 this year so this the spiritual directors had this new tool which was just coming out of Loyola and all the spiritual directors were going there and they came back with these in the old days I don't Australia we called it roneoed sheets you know the sheets that I had that really strong smell and you know so that was my introduction to the Enneagram on these sheets that we all used and for the first probably four months I thought I was a to that what I identify that helping and then just couldn't quite get it and then that whole thing about being different not being enough not being understood oh my god I thought I'm normal and that was the thing I always thought I was odd until I discovered this system and yeah it kind of opened me up as a young man and I suppose for me anywhere's been a constant companion with me along the journey and I think I've been very lucky to have that as a and you know I suppose have been like a long-term lover you know some when you first meet the lover you're quite passionate and you're in there and you want more of them and then you get a bit sicker than myself you know you may be at space and then you read Kindle the relationship and it hots up again and so that's been my experience and you know I yeah I never was ordained but I finished my degrees and then went into education and took Enneagram with me there and I found it really worked well with the kids I was teaching and then with the Stars I was on and you know I became an executive in a school and and so did it with staff and yeah and I think what can I tell you about a fall it not that not the story because we tend to get into story that's that's the thing that's the story you know and I don't know if that's like a 9 but we like the story I think that's important and I think as a 4 and this is what I found in more leadership positions in my life now often well there's a self press for any here we can sometimes come across as pushy or because it takes so long to get what you want to say out that sometimes people cut y'all thank you that's good right hang on I haven't even got to the but it takes so much to get it out for a self press for any hand it's it's hard to get either out that's my experience in the air and so yeah I think I've learnt that it's best sometimes in a group you know not to be the first one to have to tall to actually listen and then just speak because often it's hard from yeah as I'm saying to get it out what do you think's heard about it what makes it hard what are people gonna think is it gonna be enough it's not as bad the tapes in my head anymore but I was trying to Lizzie before and she said I can't you know you know just come up to him dreading this and everything oh I used to feel more of that but I'm sitting there did I thought you know those so eloquent the threes and the twos I thought were amazing I thought not you know what am I gonna say and I gotta think I'm a you know a bit of a loser or or I'm not gonna say it right or and then you know there's this expectation and you know I don't know all this stuff goes through my head and set tape but I find I've got to stop and just stay with it because for me any hair you know being the Hutt's until I tend to here and then go up here bout it and you'll see me thinking and it gets stuck instead of stopping and have to breathe into the gut really ground myself down and say it's okay I'm safe here whatever I say no one knows that like I know it so whether you agree or not this is my experience and it's okay and that's what I've had to come to because I think the self praise for has this thing that you're not going to understand how I'm suffering anyhow so why would I tell you yes and as well it's probably very boring in the big scheme of life so why would you actually want to hear it yeah yeah self-breast for me and make a lot of reasons for why i shouldn't share my feelings with ya so some people would think that all you just disappear you disappear you know I won't say this I feel very close to be we've known each other from but sometimes when things aren't going as well as I think they should be I won't contact it because that way I just want to hear all the stuff that's going on and then I'll probably break down or get upset or you know no you know so if I just say nothing then she won't think anything but I don't realize I'm doing myself out of actually continually building our relationship so yeah and it's that that Envy you know which I heard it said before that with the self prayers for you know we create that other people envy us cuz we appear happy in that but I've found in the last mmm few years had some personal stuff going on that I envy other people now I've really felt that Envy particularly after my mum died you know when I hear people talking about their parents or uh you know my mother I've gotta look after her now she's uh you know she's 94 oh you know and she's in the nursing home I still have to go and visit her and in May it takes me everything in me to say do you know how lucky you are you know do you know what I'd give to still have my mum and my dad and my brother and all those people have died that I was the center of their world ends up being honest I wouldn't let this out normally we appreciate it that's how I feel I think don't you know what you've got but then again it's not what I've come to is it's not my relationship it's not my experience of how they're experiencing their mother or their father they might think that it might not have a good Russia they might think they're a awful person that's okay my relationship was mine and I love them you know I had wonderful time and I wish I would have had more time so it's always that sense of loss and missing and what could have been and and hearing other someone else's story and relating it to yours do you feel instead of saying that's their story that's okay it doesn't have to relate to my story my story's mine mm-hmm I think that's yeah you know I kind about growth but yeah okay no you aren't actually that was a really beautiful description of how Envy works I think and some one more thing about self preservation for sometimes instead of feeling envy they can go into action to do something you know I'm gonna get what I want that I'm envying so that's and yes my life has been about success and go and doing and Trish yeah very much people who have thought I'm a three and I've achieved a lot but this part of me thinks I haven't achieved enough you know something's missing hey beautiful thank you so is he so tell us about how you see that for showing up in your life okay first I have to get over my envy of not being self pres yeah I'm socialism so for their so functional you know hey you're talking about you know not being able to let it out it's like I can't I I can't keep it in yeah so when I'm like agitated this is what he was talking about cuz just out there in the hall and a little bit earlier it's like wow I can really experience all these bodily felt anxiety so what's going on and and it's like I just have to get up there and I'll just have to be confessional and tell everybody what's going on because that's like then I'll be able to like be present and it's like that all the time I mean it's just very difficult I'm a psychotherapist and sometimes I'll be starting my session with some agitation that's going on and on the way I'm walking to work thinking is it okay if I talk about this with and there's like no it's not okay to talk about that and then you know as soon as I start the session the person then I'm you know completely out of my own experience and into theirs which is a huge relief in general so but how did I know that I was before I was in couples therapy and my therapist suggested that my partner and I look into the Enneagram because I was just you know really a pain in the ass I would never feel like there was enough given to me enough attention on me and enough intimacy and was just always since very early huge fantasy life about partnership and marriage and when I was gonna be fully met and find the best person and person of my dreams and that makes it hard for an actual real life partner I would say so it was pretty easy to figure out that I was a four and everything just fit you know I grew up feeling awfully misunderstood and nobody got me and nobody was nice to me and in my family that's all yeah everywhere else in the world I was good good to go and one of the ways that I would cope with my experience you know trying to communicate it with my family which was never a good idea and then it became very internal it would spend a lot of time in my room and then found a creative expression as a way that I could kind of stay in touch with what was true for me and be able to express it without having to take the risk of expressing it to somebody who wouldn't receive it and then there's like this thrill and joy and excitement enthusiasm I have about creating and there's many things that I do in my life that are creative and I get excited and I want to show it but then I'm I'm like oh I don't know if it's good enough you know I don't know I should have used this myth you know this like always coming in like with the yeah I'm what yeah what's doubt and with feeling like well I'll undercut myself so that when you criticize me it won't be as bad you know and what else so can you say anything about how you experience your emotions or how you might over identify with them or be how you live in them or what that's like yes it's only been recent like in the last few years that I've even understood that I had a choice to not go there you know that's a yeah it's been a lifesaver really and yeah so super emotional feeling everything and feeling it strong and and then that becomes kind of the map and who you are and how you orient how I orient and yes if I'm having an experience I'm just much more likely to be caught in the feeling of it and then it's hard for me to mobilize and do something about it and very much like you were saying using depression as a defense yes because it then it confirms that I'm kind of you know a deficient and I can't get it together and I don't have enough and the world's against me in it confirms certain erroneous beliefs that are in there somewhere and what does that do for you because it sounds like there's a function to that they're focusing on what how you're not you know living up to expectations or how you don't feel good well it gives me permission to not do the things that I want to do and also if I can become indulgent and self-medicate because this just sucks and who cares and I just want to feel better and so there's a way that it enables me to be kind of indulgent and selfish and because it's all about me really especially at that point yeah and it's I the Wayner on who puts that I like about social forest it's there's like a focus on an intensification of suffering almost as if it's like calling forests appreciation from people like see how deeply I'm feeling things or see how much I suffer right there's that element and then what I was also tuning into earlier because the internal experience is like a huge loudspeaker actually you know and then it's like we know I have to be I think you know conscious of what's going on around me I was feeling like wow if I get up there and I'm confessional what's you know what's that about and there's a way that it's also serves the purpose of evoking sympathy and so that you'll see me as you know fragile and so you won't hurt me yeah so there's that part as well I think mm-hmm okay okay yes thank you very clear Thanks Arina okay so I'm your one-on-one sexual for I think could be the angriest on the on the whole deal right I understand fit for you is that pardon does that fit for you oh yes I mean not so much now right certainly in my evolution I came to the anagram right when Helen Palmer started and what I knew right away I was a and mostly because of the melancholic very sadness love sadness love it melancholic fabulous and then what started to happen as I notice all these people that were attracted to me and that I was attracted to were fours and I couldn't stand them they were overbearing it was always about them they were very angry they suck the air out of the room it was like oh my god I am that and I think I think that was the beginning of my opening to shifting but I got a mom who was um she was very big personality and she was very invasive and then very rejecting hmm so in the same person I never so I would experience the connection and then it was gone I was definitely her shadow she was she was a seven and my anger and all my feelings were just too much for her too much and so I became bad and I became the identified patient and the family I thought for a long time I was damaged goods I was never enough I was very lucky I want to say about the force and why I was attracted to the force is because of creativity many of my creative partners artistic partners have been forced and I think the thing I love about the four is the imagination I have an incredible imagination and a very I'm very artistic not autistic artistic although sometimes and what happened for me the turning point for me really in my exploration of the anger was very young I was involved in the suffragette movement in the late 60s in New York so I got to be really angry and that was a really justified way to be anything and then what happened was very young into my 30s my whole family died I had to have a hysterectomy and I survived a very brutal rape by a stranger breaking into my home and um you know at that moment it was either you know I'm either gonna die or I'm gonna use the adversity to grow from and I was very lucky because at the time I had been I I was a theatrical clown and a master puppeteer for 20 years so I created a set of a way to externalize my idiosyncrasies through the characters of my different clowns and to come to terms with a lot of the abuse that I had felt in my family so my first character his name was bulu bulu the clown and she traveled with five baby Oh white baby dolls with red noses all named baby Kaka and all of the all of the vignettes that I did was playing out the love-hate relationship between my mother and and myself so I'd be in a room and all these sounds would go off and I'd open the suitcase and I'd throw the babies in the suitcase and then I'd shut the suitcase and I'd see there was one little arm sticking out of the suitcase so I open the suitcase pick up the baby and so it was this this way that I found a way to love myself but I had to go through really externalizing all of it no I I think in the 20 years that I did this work I developed six different characters based on idiosyncrasies and and things from the Enneagram that I began to learn as I studied the anagram so so my imagination was my saving grace and also my doom because story is such a big thing it's kind of interesting I turned it into a profession having a three wing and became a story coach but I could take any anything that I was feeling and I could exacerbate it through my imagination and make it worse and it would go on and on until I woke up to starting to notice the stories and then I could shift the stories but so the the creativity and my love of beauty are the great parts of being a one on one for and and they've also provided me with a way to work through my wounding hmm yes and I think you point to a lot of important things one is that you know fours do have this aesthetic sensibility they very tuned in to what something looks like and and so there is this natural inclination to create art and to which I think is in some ways just like you're exactly like you're saying a way to self express the emotions inside and turn them into something beautiful so I think that's now it but you know it's important not to stereotype like certainly any type on any room can be an artist and it's not like all fours or artists but I think it is something quite unique and interesting about partly I think because there is this deep connection to emotion that it's often part of the healing of like turning that into art you know I think part of the reason the clown work was so incredible for me was that I had two emotions when I started I had anger and I had sadness and I didn't understand any of the shades of grey and so something some way I was attracted to this clown work because I got to meet you know in clown you make the expression physically so big and like I have to make everything so big so that I could get the kinesthetic feeling of what it really was right really had taught me how where the emotion happened in the body and how it got expressed I was able to do through that and puppetry and other characters the externalization of all kinds of characters right right it's interesting that externalization is something that sexual force do and then here you are using it in a positive way but it also seemed it there's also way that it's it's that fours are good at sort of dramatizing certain emotions sometimes for defensive purposes like I'm gonna amp up the drama as a way of sort of like distracting from what's really going on in a deeper level yeah I know I think that the the anger certainly shielded the hurt and the hurt for me was about shame yes deep-seated shame so it was easier for me to to feel the anger and then it I didn't have to feel the other feelings once but it was a tricky thing because because of the relationship with my mom I think when I felt anger for many many years I I was a headbanger because I wanted to externalize yeah hurt that I felt so much I wanted to physically feel it and um once I stopped doing that behavior then I had to feel the shame and I really had to feel the range of the painfulness of feeling I'm not acting it out physically then you right felt it emotionally well that's really clear thank you so much so maybe starting with Annika again let's talk a little bit about the path to growth like what kinds of things have you observed in yourself become aware of or done to grow it as a four you said a little bit about that so far especially with the music and the nature you shake I think the best thing for me is to stay enjoyable to Posehn it like that yeah yeah the best thing is to stay in the body and then I trip out in my head you know I have a tremendous sadness of having left my country and that is still a problem because I like it better but how I deal with that is stay in the body and I remember way back thirty years ago I don't know what happened down maybe my father died at that time in Holland down a friend of mine said just work in the garden work in the garden go into the garden your tears will take the sadness and I've worked a lot in the garden it does it does I don't need to think I don't trip out I have a lot of sadness of that of all the things which runs wrong in the family and all that but [Music] this is hard I go into the garden I go into nature I don't think that way because it gives me peace and quiet that's very much needed I love I love nature here this is the most paradisiacal state I can imagine and we live in a place where being on the bay I cannot describe how beautiful that is it takes the sadness and so that in spite of being lights I definitely have a very I don't call it dark it's natural all the stuff percolates up and then I go out it's very important I go on walks and I go in the boat or swim swim is the most fantastic thing because it brings the child and you and you can play in the water and you see all these people like swim at the JCC and they swim and they come with all their terrible bodies at times and they they go in the water and they have to most be your Tiffin smiles and then I thought what happened to them I always there is not one time and I've gone there for a hundreds of times it always inspires me it is unbelievable how people inspire me how they deal with you know devastation of their body and I had an illness in the last part of the year and I thought definitely I was on the way of maybe dying of it and I I thought ah just go into water and just feel it was wonderful so that's how I deal with and that's my Grosso and especially a technic Anton helps me a lot and being in the now Nishikado is very important to me just be here now and don't go anywhere no sign in the bar and nothing is external I've been thinking about that a lot and it's through it all is inside it's not out there it's in here and so going down just being if you're sad he said it's fine if something happens what I don't like to see happen then that's my gross soup yeah you've said a few different things that I think are really important one is you're still in very much in touch with that sadness that can bubble up it sounds like at times but it sounds like one thing that you do is kind of go into action you know garden go on the Indian culture to exercise that there's a way that you move your body as a way of allowing that another piece so when a highlight is is that being here now I think a lot of times force can focus on the past or focus on losses or focus on like it might be easy to get carried away at times of thinking about Holland or how let's know painful it is to not be where you know in your country and yet being in the moment and seeing what's good and they here and now that is incredibly great practice before yes because it takes the focus away from what's missing or the past as seen as may be either idealized or if something could have happened it would be better and it puts you right into being with what is exactly like you just said you know be here now notice what's positive and what's happening in the moment and you can side of you in the moment yeah yeah so that's right well it's also sounds like a healthy way of being given you know some of these experiences right yeah and I also think it's interesting too that sometimes self press fors in particular will do something by themselves yeah you know I do it a lot from my shop right that there's something comforting in that and being able being even more able to feel free having your feelings when you're by yourself yeah yeah thank you path of growth um I think when I was young I remember having a review done on me and they described me as an angry young man and I think part of that was because of the belief that I thought that people didn't understand me and I think that's been a growth edge for me that people probably do understand me you finally give them the opportunity mm-hmm okay it's really important yeah and the whole concept around ordinary um say more about that please there's a beauty in the ordinary I think that's what I've come to realize and I quote I wrote a write a book and there was a path of growth and I'd written this whole thing about the four and I am show ginger actually and she looked at it and she put a line right through it and two of my major teachers okay Jerry Wagner and ginger Leppard Baabda and I'd put you know how about being special and all this stuff and and it's about embracing the ordinary and being special in the ordinary and recognizing that the ordinary is my friend that's what can release me and in the past as it felt bad to be ordinary yeah you always tried to be something different or you had to be more special or do it differently or make or something if I do something change something or do something in my way it's because I think that is for the betterment of the group or myself or not for doing it differently just for doing it differently I think I used to get in this hang up on you know getting too caught up in how addressed or different and I think when we can come to embracing the ordinary that's our friend or my friend I can drop into myself much more takes the pressure off needing to be special needing to prove yourself I think the other be edge growth for me has been getting in touch with the body so for me for eight years I did one-to-one Pilates I just did that over and over twice a week just because ever did in a group I could con myself and you know kind of pretend I wasn't doing yeah I said I was doing the exercise but I really wasn't because you know I really don't need to do it but but when it was just me and instructor it I have I have to get into my body have to do the breathing yeah you know I've taken up another thing at the moment involves boxing and and I'm not a real I hate I'm not into violence but it's getting that anger out mm-hmm and sometimes I really you know I do it at 6:00 a.m. in the morning and I hate it to think I've got to get up and do it but I know it's good for me to get in touch with that body feel it feel that effort of doing what I'm doing breathing it's very very important for me I think I relate very much to you about nature the garden is I think a metaphor for my life and here my garden you know I've just sold my home and bought another one which has this tiny little garden I had a huge garden you had the place and you know one gun of the year and that was my my focus I worked that garden and I think it's really important to get your hands dirty one of my spiritual directors when I was young said when you're in the stay in the he's because if we clear all the away the I'm sorry to use that word in front but the is the fertilizer of life and so often we Morton for me we want to be cleaned we want to take all the away we want to make it all clean and what I've come to learn is that at times things are messy sometimes it stinks but if we sit with it long enough the smell dissipates and we get the nutrient from that so it's very important that has been for me so you know I'm lucky that I live bright on the water and so and and it is for me I don't know but it's an effort to get up and do it when I'm there it's good and I get overwhelmed with the beauty of the water and the bay and the AH but I know that is what I have to do for me to get moving get the exercise just get the wind in my face to feel it because otherwise it's too much you know it's a head job the whole feeling so I'm Connie myself because I get stuck I can't get out of myself so I've got to get into my body yeah that's the only way I can calm down what about I know that for self-preservation force they can hold feelings in what about talking about your feelings with others is that how are you are you doing that as a yeah it's hard difficult for me I think I know for - there's a big pride but I think for me personally I don't link when you go back up to the - but have a great pride of what people think of what I thought I'd achieved and then perhaps I'm not where I was yeah there's a whole backstory to this but but I'm trying really consciously to be honest with those who I know love me about what the current situation is and just say this is how it is and it's amazing when you do that the people still love you as much if not more so that's you know this has been a tumultuous past four years and just being honest and just trying to you know like I was saying to you like the self press before I think disappears just disappears and so I've been saying to friends and who are close to me if you think I've disappeared can you ring can keep hammering me I'm asking you would you do that for me so that you're in my face and I've got to talk it out please can you do that so that's that's pretty very very beneficial for me very more present of just saying this is what it is of omitting what's going on hmm thank you so I think the biggest growth path or the growth edge is understanding that I have a choice to stay with the feelings or not and in my family no one ever taught me I could be strong in the face of adversity it was like completely fine to just collapse or else have an attitude of like I don't want to and I shouldn't have to and which just perpetuates kind of feeling crappy but I can now I mean and I and it takes work to make the conscious choice to activate and also to get in my body and there's a way where I would just the the old way is to feel bad and continue to feel bad and then you know have a drink or complain or whatever and the new way is like hey wait what if I could actually like get out of the house and go for a walk and like my compatriots here once I'm in nature and connecting with beauty it's completely transformative and then I'm in back in operating from my deeper nature truer self and just popped out of the habits and personality patterns and from there the whole world opens up and I feel like I can really truly be of service and that's through definitely studying the any graham and therapy and I'm in a Sangha Buddhist spiritual group and you were talking about the ordinary piece and I know for me what I remember it was years ago and be your book had just come out and I was reading about it and I was reading about the whole special thing of the four and I'm like the whole time before that I've been like you know I don't really relate to that and then I oh it's like when it finally hit I was like oh my god like my need to be special has been like a neon sign to every other person in my life you know Wow I saw it and then I started playing with okay so what if it's like what's it like if I don't do that what's it like if I don't sit in the front row you know or if I don't you know where this amazing thing or whatever and then to just feel into the anxiety of oh if I'm not special then I'm garbage you know it's kind of what I recognized in Southern okay well so then what's it like to just sit with that and be with that and recognize that now you know years later to recognize like you were saying there's just beauty in the ordinary and also like stripped of anything that I may try to do to get attention or be special I'm not a Wallflower I mean it's like I don't have to try so hard because it's gonna happen anyway and then it's just sort of a byproduct of just being and being myself and so that feels like it just comes from a better place and I've been able to not drive myself as hard to do certain things that I thought I needed to do in order to stand out and be appreciated so that's what I can think of now that's great one thing I want to highlight and what you're what all three of you said is it can be really good for fours because they're so internal to come outside themselves with their awareness and I hear you saying that and especially when you talk about being in nature like all of a sudden my focus shifts from inside myself in my internal world where a lot of the feelings are and like you're saying go I can go around in my head with these tapes out into Wow like how beautiful everything is out here you know and I think that helps for is often to come outside themselves and check out that actually reality is pretty good like you're saying right well and also with that piece nature is so just the beauty is so compelling that it's so fulfilling to the for that that that needs to have that deep deep connection and deep openness of heart and the nature can do that where otherwise if I'm not aware of that I'm just trying to get it from another person you know like oh can we a more intimacy you can we have more attention get me there but then it's like go out in nature and it's like wow there it is you know and I'm completely and I'm at home with myself so there's somebody there - so - appreciate it and you're appreciating nature so what about relationships is what's what's been your growth in relationship I'm realizing that there's another person there besides me realizing that that other person is not an annex of me that other person is not in an annex of me they are slowly to meet my knees and yeah okay tolerating someone else's need for space and then recognizing of course I have my own need for space but um so being in relationship and particularly my current relationship my marriage is maybe the place where I have been given the opportunity to grow the most and I'm so grateful for that and yeah and I'm a relationship I mean I love all kinds of relationship I had a million different like imaginary I had a whole imaginary like community when I was growing up and you know I'm a couples therapist my favorite thing to do and I just you know I love love and love relationship so thank you I absolutely agree with you noticing that there's somebody else there in relationship and it actually has been one of my greatest teachers because I'm with a nine and my wife has a nine and she is doesn't think she really has an identity so what I really got was she doesn't exist so I really got after a while I would just overwhelm her like completely overwhelm her and I would finally look at her and I would see did she already felt like she didn't exist and then I just made her feel worse about that like she didn't exist and because I want I love her and I wanted her to be happy it made a huge change for me mm-hmm I thought okay I better back off I better give this person space so that she can flourish and she can become a whole person and it really shifted so much for me it wasn't just in that and and so in that relationship that was key also just in general I would used to get really angry at service people I mean again the one-on-one for is angry at everybody anyway so I was at the bank one day I waited in line I waited in line I waited in line and i got was getting really angry and i got to the counter and i gave it to this man I mean I just took my stamps and I left and I got in my car and I I drove up the hill towards my house and I got it and we pulled over and I went arena you cannot do that to people anymore and I turned my car around I went all the way back to the post office I stood in the line again and I got up to that guy and I said I am so sorry and he was like and and then every course every time I went to that post office he just was my best friend but I I just finally got that my behavior had an impact on other people so that was a big wake-up call for me yeah I think certainly I've been on a spiritual path and done a lot of workshops and trainings and meditation and I think the big thing for me has been the physical body mm-hm Yoga it took me I've been doing it for many many years and I need it and the breathing I need it and my garden I need it and getting my hands in the dirt I need it and nature is so exquisitely beautiful that it just quiets me down the other big thing that I think really helped me in terms of the forest stuff of not being enough always finding what's missing not being good enough was um I kept a gratitude Journal for a year and every day I wrote five things that I was grateful for and one of the things have to be what I was grateful for about myself that's great that's annalen so that started really to build my I think you know seeing the cat Cup half full rather than half empty and I am happy to say at the age I am now I am actually happy and my anger comes up it's good but I'm aware enough to know that I don't want to hurt other people with it which has also been a wake-up call for me I've alienated a lot of friends over the years because of my anger and lost friendships and when I woke up to that I thought I I can't I don't and now I deal with it all inside I still have all the stories and all that but I don't lay it out on people and I get oh there it is again I'm doing the same story again how interesting so it's just that self-awareness and getting my hands dirty and giving gratitude and breathing um and seeing the ordinary is extraordinary let it be ordinary it's a lot of really clear examples and I think what you're saying about self-awareness there is so clear that when you're self-aware enough to stop the reaction from happening which can happen so quickly for all of us is that's that's a big that's a big key and I hear you all saying that in really great ways a lot of different things beautiful I want to say quickly about the MU arrow movements for for so for going against the arrow goes to one and here exactly like we've been hearing you say for us get in the body and get more grounded and there's a more of a physical foundation to hold the fluctuation of the feelings and to to have more of a sense of ground and containment also getting it in touch with bringing creative visions into practical reality gardening I think might be a good example of for going to one and sort of doing things that are both creative but also require certain processes and are sort of getting in touch with the ground literally getting more grounded in nature I think is a great example of going to one one's will often say that nature ones try to be perfect but people aren't perfect but nature is perfect you know and so there's something relaxing about that I think then when fours integrate one and then go to to two could be more of a difficult place sometimes forests can go there in an unconscious way and get a little more worried about what people think or coat so I've compulsively give to people to be approved of things like that but I think going to for going to - for going to - in a conscious way more intentionally is about balancing the internal with the external so like you said noticing that somebody else is there which I love the way you both said that noticing that there's another person there and really tuning in to that person and having it be a back and forth and a balancing of inside myself and understanding what I feel in need and understanding what they feel in need and I also think that there's a way that giving and receiving get balanced in that way and so learning to be of service learning to be selfless but also connected to oneself and have that be a two-way street I think gratitude is a very big yes grace is huge I think that's one of the main redemptive forces for me really if I think about it second thing is putting myself out into the world I think that's a big thing whether it's with artwork whether it's whatever you create or the leadership position whatever just putting yourself out there that's and I think - for the self press for opening yourself up out there it can be amazing yeah take a risk the other thing I was just kind of just thinking about it a lot of people I think don't it's not for every for but I think a majority for is were actually very practical actually quite hands-on and I think a lot of people don't realize that that were actually very practical what we can do the often we think of the for is this special thing in there they're portrayed as this artistic thing and I get a bit irritated about it actually when I see some of the pictures of you know they're in this little outfit and they're an artist there but [Applause] and I think especially a self press for is very practical yeah yeah was I think yeah I'm very practical and I think that some I think people get amazed at that when they get to know you that you actually get your hands dirty you know you know how to paint you can open I mean paint a house or you can all right so Michael anything you want to add or any comment or question well several things first of all wonderful panel thanks to each of you secondly I want to prepare Jennifer Stoll for the fact that I'm going to ask her to say a few words as director of the retreat center and senior staff when the kissters help program and I will not call on the other force on the commonweal staff because they don't want me to but but I'd love to ask Jennifer to say a few words and then I will follow up on that Jennifer any reflections to speak about being a fourth it's been so instructed so instructive to hear all of hear comments about being for I've learned a whole lot thank you I love the cross-section of differences you all express because your your I agree with you Patrick we're not just the air evision Airy out there that uh can I go to people like Bob Dylan and prints and some of these creative artists that had their feet on the ground and really sang from their hearts and we're to change culture so I just want I guess add to the mix and say I'm one of those extremely lucky fours who is also happy in fact I would say deeper than happy incredible joy there wasn't always that way in my younger days where a lot of the same struggles I felt that you all expressed my sense is if I can just riff Beatrice on some of what you said about some of the in-between places I was very touched about the gap between the four and the five that place of darkness Persephone territory going dark every one of you have been there I certainly have and if one can get through that to then get to what's deeper than the darkness and higher is that incredible joy and the specialness I like to refer to with all my own stuff I like to see as something that happens along the way getting older helps it does really sooner or later you start to get it but this this thing about specialness that if somehow that can large really in your heart it cross translates to the recognition that if if you could begin to see that in yourself you see it in everybody and even as I say this I get goosebumps it's so powerful so these labels that we apply to each other and try to use to understand numbers deeper than the number and the label is this other that may be a way of seeing in the world that's just transformative without even trying well yeah that's lovely ordinary divinity was just contributed the numinous in the ordinary all of that so sort of an as above so below so I'm grateful for this continuing understanding of all nuances of these dimensions that have been helped by understanding the immigrant lots of ground still beyond but it's really been a beautiful afternoon beautiful day thank you let me just say a few more words before we open it up I think I am married to a four now when I say I think I'm married to a four my beloved wife sharp Aten who is not here has not evinced a lot of interest in Enneagram to this point and so she hears me say that I think she's informed but I don't have her first-hand experience of that that said I I think that the evidence is there that she and so a five and a four in a marriage is really interesting because along with twos fours need and want love and connection whereas fives are the most detached point on the whole Enneagram right and so we've been married for about 35 years and we actually love each other and get along but it's been you know I think all marriages all long-term marriages are a very special form of yoga you know the special quote spiritual discipline whatever you want to call it you certainly learn a lot from them and one of the things that so when Jennifer mentioned Bob Dylan yeah you know Bob Dylan Leonard Cohen I imagine this capacity which forests have to move between light and dark in the in an instant and if you really study Leonard Cohen's music or Bob Dylan's music they flip in a single verse between light and dark all the time so you know the language of I don't think I've heard the language is often used for force of individualists on tragic romantic and in your book of course be you talk about this is the Jungian shadow and so one of the things about forests that strikes me is that they may live in darkness a lot but they see the light within the darkness and it seems to me that it is that genius literally that because if you live in shadow if you live in close proximity to suffering what does Carl Jung say about suffering that only through suffering does consciousness evolve and so it seems to me that within the suffering of the tragic Grammatik the individualist there is this individualization of higher consciousness which comes precisely because of the constant presence of suffering so it actually led me to ask you a question B which is because some points on the anagram are out are oriented and others are in you're oriented you talked about how threes can read a room but not read themselves for example is there a relationship for strikes me as a particular point of it between inner focus and intuitive or even psychic capacity are there certain points on the Enneagram that are more open to intuitive or even psychic capacity precisely because they have this deep sensitivity and awareness to inner experience I think so I think of course all types can be intuitive you know in small and large ways I think sixes sometimes have a special ability that might be called psychic Helen Palmer was a psychic of like deciding what's going to happen next and getting so good at that coping strategy that you kind of feel you Intuit what's happening next I think sixes have that in a mental way I think 9s have that in a physical way you often find nines being channels I think there's a certain openness when Errani oh and I do our way of the symbol workshop and we're working on a map Nine's feel the energy of the field more easily and I would say forests have a special kind of emotional intuition mostly of sort of sensing what's going on at an emotional level that's not being talked about you know so I think there's the different types have different kinds of special sort of extrasensory experience and an almost his work isn't for holy origin yes and that strikes me too because my wife has an extraordinarily strong interest in early hominids and and primatology and so there's this way in which for me she picks up the holy origin piece in a very concrete way by her interest in the origins of being human so so for me the and I have many friends whose immense creativity comes out of the suffering of being forced so I have a special place in my heart for the beauty that comes out of the ability to walk in darkness and the strength no inner strength so let's open it up one more thing to what Jennifer said because jennifer and I have been on the on the staff of the cancer help program for about 35 years and we've done 33 years we've done 206 week-long retreats we start our next one the on Sunday and Jennifer has this beautiful line that she says because many of the staff members have been together for over 20 years and Jennifer said about the cancer health program staff that we see each other into being which I find a very beautiful line that a group of people is like a chamber music quartet that's played forever forever but nonetheless keeps rediscovering new things in the music in the cancer help program we have over decades seen each other into being and there's something about Jennifer's sensitivity on the staff of the cancer help program and with and she does the evening on sacred space on this so she not only has created the beauty of the retreat center which is extraordinary and created the chapel at commonweal which is extraordinary but her sensitivity as a four to sacred space I'm just giving these as examples of how this actually plays out in the commonweal community in the one for who would be willing to be called on here tolerated being called yeah so let's open it up for comments Michael I'm just curious to hear if you guys know this sequence of your instincts so what's first what's second what's third for me it's so Chris sexual social sense sexual [Music] well longing is intense and it's beautifulest nature and it also for me at this time of my life is important to let it be so I don't need to reach a goal of the longing like I would love to live in Holland but I made a conscious decision last September that I have to let Holland go and so doubt it is important to concentrate on the present and that was difficult and it was right and no so the longing has decreased for a doubt I still have the feeling how wonderful it would be but the longing has a limit and so that is very important now to realize it's not a negative it's an acceptance and gratitude for being here right now so that's anyone else wanna say anything about longing well I can say in my younger years I in terms of relationships it was crazy making the longing because I would be with one person longing for the other person and then I get with the other person on be longing for the other person and so the more distance I mean I had great international relationships it was better if people were like in another continent much much better than I could really love them any other questions I guess we sports there's a slogan for like emotional like intense emotional connection with a partner and if your partners are more withdrawing or it could be an either another person a person who doesn't necessarily share that desire in unheard couple comments about that Givenchy not giving space or but then there must be the struggle beat you you know you back off completely and then when you do internalize you know you don't meet your guys warning if any of you have any comments about sort of the necessity yeah engage a partner who might not share that same kind of make it known it seems to a certain extent I need to be myself so damn you caps I heard eight years ago and I was on the mother camel in Palo Alto then they said or you have the push and pull thing no no that's not it but then it becomes so much the intensity that is not practical you know there's a life because I was a single mother at the time and you need to be practical so anyone else have issues having a lot of intensity and having a partner who's not really doesn't have that high level of need for intensity you just press it so I feel like in my own path of maturity I've had less of a need for the intensity and my first husband was a five and there was more of a gap there although we had a great mental thing going and my current husband is a two and it's much more fulfilling for me because there's desire for relating and connecting of course I want to get way more into the feelings and the muck and the mire and the vulnerability and stuff you know the intensity but I feel like it's just kind of me learning how to be patient and generous and inviting but not you know clawing and so I think it's if it's coming out like I want it from other and it's getting intense because I want intensity I think now now I know how to work with that internally and then that can be its own experience and then I'm gonna change the dynamic changes dynamic yeah and then I'm much more connected to myself and then I'm much more loving and then I approach my partner in a different way which then Garner's more a connection not necessarily intensity but at that point I don't need intensity I just like yeah yeah thank you because I guess it was Morgan connection it might be a better word and nines like to be invited and asked questions and drawn out to I think that could be another yeah got their questions alright thank you so much [Applause] [Music] you

Channel: NewSchoolCommonweal

Views: 60,406

Rating: 4.861423 out of 5

Keywords: TNS, enneagram, chestnut, palmer, beatrice, helen, gurdjieff, archetype, archetypal, psychology, personality

Id: BySvn_zyTnY

Length: 91min 40sec (5500 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 17 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/shiftyone1]

need to watch this again

[u/unpauseit]

you can only be one enneagram type.

[u/AdvocateCounselor]

2 integrates to high 4. INFJ T2* 2w1