Podcast - Episode 0267 - Using The Enneagram For Personal Growth (with Beatrice Chestnut)

In this podcast you’ll find:

• • Beatrice Chestnut is an Enneagram expert
  • She has been on the podcast before
  • Subtypes give more nuance to the Enneagram
  • Beatrice has authored two books:
    • The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge
    • The 9 Types of Leadership: Mastering the Art of People in the 21st Century Workplace
  • We are deeply interested in personal growth
  • Some people use the Enneagram model for description only but it is really built for help along the self development path
  • MBTI started out with a more corporate purpose but if you go back far enough to Jung there is some self development aspects.
  • Stories are a great way to illustrate how to use these models for personal growth
  • Beatrice is going to share her story of personal growth using the Enneagram model
  • Beatrice’s journey into personal growth began after she learned the Enneagram
  • It woke her up to who she was.
  • She didn’t understand who she was at the time
  • She learned from David Daniels, M.D.
  • Helen Palmers book on Enneagram
  • Beatrice is an Enneagram 2.
  • The info stopped her in her tracks and shined a light on the things about herself she didn’t understand
  • She was extremely dependent on other people’s approval as an enneagram 2.
  • Helen Palmer says 2s are manipulative
  • Manipulation = moving things around behind the scenes to get things to work out the way you want
  • We see manipulation as bad but in reality it is just one more strategy
  • Our ego is important to help us survive as children but it is limiting when we reach adulthood.
  • Beatrice has worked with the Enneagram for 29 years
  • She is less anxious than she used to be. More peaceful. Happier.
  • The Enneagram is not a stand alone tool. It is a map that highlights your natural strengths and your blind spots.
  • We don’t know what we don’t know
  • Joel’s an Enneagram 6 in the fear triad
  • Initially things gets worse before they get better in personal growth
  • Talking about your anxiety and what makes you anxious makes you less anxious.
  • It helps us understand the sources of our anxiety and we build more compassion for ourselves
  • In search of the Miraculous
  • Existential anxiety awakening to the void
  • 2s lack a sense of self
  • Their attention goes outside of themselves
  • When your attention is focused in one place there’s somewhere it is not focused
  • Beatrice had No idea what she needed or how she was feeling
  • She was a shape shifter and had no idea who she was.
  • Sense of self is the sum total of how we feel from moment to moment
  • She didn’t feel free. She had a thousand strings tied from her to everyone else
  • She couldn’t move because if she moved she might disturb someone else
  • She couldn’t feel secure or confident in herself.
  • She had a lot of friends with this strategy which created a feeling of well being
  • She found some deep sadness within her and when she got reactions from others she realized her happiness was for the benefit of others.
  • Her benefit to the strategy was to make other people like her but she didn’t see the cost
  • “What are you feeling right now?”
  • It helped Beatrice fill in her consciousness around her own feelings
  • These emotions can be scary when you’re first exploring them.
  • “People don’t like angry people so I just won’t be angry.”
  • Eliminate unpleasant emotions.
  • Seeker at heart
  • Self Preservation 2s unconsciously stay young as a way to elicit care from others
  • Beatrice became a therapist as a way to use the Enneagram in her career because she really loved the model
  • She didn’t learn about subtypes until she meet Claudio Naranjo who is one of the seminal authors in the Enneagram movement
  • Subtypes was a revolutionary leap forward for her in the Enneagram model.
  • After learning she was 2 she worked on being authentic and getting in touch with her emotions.
  • After learning she was self-preservation 2, she discovered a basement in her self development territory she didn’t know existed.
  • She was repressing fear, mistrust, and ambivalence
  • She got defensive when she first learned about self preservation.
  • Self Preservations 2s are childlike
  • “When I stand next to you, I don’t think you’re going to protect me. I need to protect you.”
  • Beatrice: “There was an ocean of sadness at the core of my being.”
  • A lot of heart types feel anxious because of the depth of emotion lying underneath everything.
  • Anxiety = unknown territory that can destabilize your life and relationships
  • Always afraid someone was going to get mad at her.
  • Now she is very much in touch with her emotions and sees her connection to her heart as a strength.
  • Beatrice is an ENFP. Her path to growth is Introverted Feeling “Authenticity”
  • That is basically what she did in her path through the Enneagram and therapy.
  • One of the keys to using these models for growth is not allowing the initial ego response to avoid the truth.
  • Value the truth more than your ego’s need to protect itself against critical info.
  • “The truth shall set you free.”
  • Current growth project:
    • Owning her power and strength while also maintaining contact with humility.
  • Humility is the high side of Enneagram 2s.
  • It’s been a challenge for her to not make herself small and still feel grounded in the things she has to share.
  • Striking balance between knowing who she is and how she can help others without getting too unbalanced and fearful.
  • Keep an open mind as you learn new info with this model.
  • Defensiveness and ego can get in the way of learning who you are.
  • Be open to discomfort
  • Let in suffering.
  • Face your shadow.
  • Have a lot of compassion for yourself. Don’t get too critical of yourself.
  • If there is something you don’t like about what you are doing, there is a reason why.
  • Be willing to ask people for help.
  • Alone we can do nothing. We need to have friends on the growth path.
  • Take some of these principals and apply them in your own life.
  • Don’t let your ego get the better of you.
  • Don’t push away the things you don’t like.
  • “I’ll be critical of myself before anyone else can.”
  • Antonia had a story in her head that everything that failed in her life was related to her physical appearance.
  • Overly simplistic and shallow story.
  • The Complete Enneagram: 27 Paths to Greater Self-Knowledge
  • Sexual 3s can come across kind of shallow.
  • As long as you are attractive enough to attract a partner you are fine.
  • Antonia believed if she wasn’t attractive enough that meant death.
  • She knew the programming was bad but she didn’t have the ability to change the code.
  • Even if you’re not the most beautiful person on the planet, does this actually threaten your survival?
  • As an ENTP, Antonia has Extraverted Feeling as her tertiary.
  • She can absorb emotions but only among her intimates.
  • Anxiety is an unacceptable emotion to her and when Joel would go to anxiety she would flee.
  • That is part of his Enneagram journey. He needs something from her but her protectiveness keeps pushing him away.
  • Joel added anxiety to convince her of the importance of what he was trying to say, which only made things worse.
  • Enneagram is a great diagnostic tool and prescriptive.
  • If you have some persistent challenges and you can’t seem to beat them, use the Enneagram to help diagnose what your work is.
  • You need to want the truth more than you want the pain connected to the truth.
  • She doesn’t hazard guesses on people’s Enneagram type but she tries to hold her ideas loosely because it is way too easy to jump to the wrong conclusion about someone.
  • Everybody is the biggest expert on themselves.
  • There’s always overgeneralization on types.
  • Respect people’s boundaries.
  • beatricechestnut.com
  • Uranio Paes, MM

Want to Learn More From Beatrice? Check out:

Enneagram Roadmap