I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Elizabeth Irias on the podcast Light Up The Couch. Beth and I talked about all nine Enneagram Types as well as how therapists can integrate the Enneagram into their practice.

Listen to the podcast or scroll down for the transcript.

My Start With The Enneagram

Beth: Hello to our listeners. My name is Beth Irias and today I am quite excited to be talking with Joanne Kim. She is a licensed marriage and family therapist in California, and she has a number of specializations but one of them is the use of the Enneagram. Not only just in therapy but the Enneagram as a tool for self-understanding and growth. I'm just stoked having this conversation with her.

Thank you so much for joining us, Joanne.

Joanne: Thank you for having me.

Beth: Before we dive into what I think is a very interesting topic, why don't you tell our listeners a little bit more about yourself and how you came to have this specialization with the Enneagram.

Joanne: Unlike a lot of people recently who discovered the Enneagram through the Instagrams or Facebooks and all that stuff, I've actually discovered the Enneagram in my own associate practice. So as a therapist in supervision. I've heard it through the framework of talking about defense mechanisms and core motivations, core needs, fears, et cetera.

I've come in learning about the Enneagram at the heart of it as a resource to use for personal growth, for healing, to integrate quite well with our other therapy approaches.

I use a lot of Brainspotting and parts work and helping people who are big feelers but have grown up with a lot of emotional neglect or abuse, a lot of invisible traumas that people experience. Instead of making assumptions about what people's experiences are based on the life circumstances that they've been through, really going behind the scenes and understanding how they personally experienced it. That's been kind of the way that I've learned about the Enneagram.

At first, I had a lot of resistance to it because it sounded super hokey and I found out that part of it was some difficulties with typing, which I might describe more later.

Once I found out what my own type was I was like, “Holy crap, this is amazing! How can they know with such detail, the kinds of things that I've never told anybody? There must be a lot more to this.”

That's how I came to discover the Enneagram.

The History of the Enneagram

Beth: Very interesting.

This topic is a very interesting one, and as you and I have discussed having this conversation, this overlap about the Enneagram and psychotherapy, and even my consideration and our board's consideration about the Enneagram really as a cultural element.

It first came to my attention almost a decade ago. Then a number of years ago a friend of mine said, “Do you know what your Enneagram type is?”

I said, “No, I don't. I don't know.”

He said, “I really want to understand that part of you.”

I realized that it was this language that he was speaking that I didn't know.

My curiosity of like, what is this language? Then with social media, more conversation about the Enneagram and more exposure to it. Now you can Google it and come up with podcasts and books and courses and all of these resources that didn't exist 20 or 30 years ago. It's now become kind of this cultural phenomenon, and I think that's part of why it's important to have this conversation so that therapists who are hearing it from their clients understand the framework and the language. So that we're not doing this kind of, “I'm sorry, what?” To kind of get the 101.

With that in mind, why don't we start by you giving us the quick and dirty history about the Enneagram, where it comes from, what we need to know about it. Obviously, there's much more than we can cover in an hour, but get us started and set the scene as you and I jump into this conversation about how it intersects with psychotherapy.

Joanne: First off, I'll say I don't know if anyone can ever find out who created the Enneagram. A lot of the value that the Enneagram gives us, we've seen glimpses of it throughout history in various traditions all across the world. It's been used as a spiritual or personal development framework but passed on mostly through oral tradition across different sects or with teachers with their students, et cetera.

The way that we know the Enneagram today is based on it having been written down since the 1970s and on. In Berkeley, because Berkeley students do what they do best, they go against their teacher's instructions in not writing down about the Enneagram because the teachers knew just how powerful this would be as a framework to do good or to do harm.

Students wrote it down anyway, and from the 70s and on, all the things that we read about, even like books, social media, etc. Anything that's basically written in English probably has been from that point on. So, it seems like it's a recent phenomenon, but it's actually been around for thousands of years.

We see hints of it woven throughout even the ancient traditions like Judaism, Christianity, Islam. If you think about the seven deadly sins like lust or pride, et cetera, and you tack on two more, those nine passions or deadly sins overlap exactly with the Nine Enneagram Types. We can try to find out who discovered the Enneagram but at this point I'm kind of thinking, does it really matter? There has been so much confirmation that these principles have been very helpful for people's personal development.

From then and on the people who introduced the Enneagram to the United States more formally would be Claudio Naranjo, who is an American trained psychiatrist who studied under Oscar Ichazo, one of the big spiritual personal development leaders in South America.

Claudio Naranjo brought it to the States and that's kind of where we see the Enneagram of Personality. The framework that we see today is from that point on. From him there are lots of teachers who've taken that on, including in Palo Alto, we have our local Dr. David Daniels, who recently passed, who was a trained psychiatrist, who was also on the faculty for Stanford's Department of Psychiatry. He is actually a trained therapist and Claudio Naranjo also was the successor to Fritz Perls. He's actually been trained a lot with integrating the Enneagram and therapy for personal development.

My own teacher, Beatrice Chestnut, is one of David Daniel’s pupils or one of his successors as well.

That's how I've come to learn the Enneagram.

I've come from this lineage of having seen the Enneagram through the lens of integration with personal development and psychology.

The Enneagram that you might see on social media has probably been a spinoff of what got sparked in the 1970s because it's fun. It's quick. It's easy. It makes for a quick cocktail party conversation. But I would say that there's a huge difference, maybe even a contrast, of what the Enneagram is meant to be used for versus what how it's generally used or seen nowadays. How it's generally seen nowadays is, “Let's find out what your type is. Therefore, I can stereotype you, put you in a box. And this is why you tend to do the things you do.”

That goes the opposite direction of what it was originally meant for, which is to say that the Enneagram describes the ways that we've put ourselves in a box. And I've lived in a box that we don't even know that the box exists. We need to find out what our box is so that we can grow beyond it.

There are two different branches that go in opposite directions. And that's probably the main warning I would give to people who are learning about the Enneagram. Are you learning from a source that says this is who you are and this is all of who you are? Or are you reading about the Enneagram saying this is how you've been stuck this entire time and how you can grow beyond it?

Beth: That's really interesting.

For you, it's recognizing the potential for misuse. And I could see, “Well, I do this because I'm a type two, and that's just who I am.” And you're saying that's the misuse of it versus the conceptualization of, “This is this habit I learned, this pattern that I've gotten into, and the things that I'm working on for my personal growth.”

Joanne: Yes, absolutely. We see in couples with conflicts, both of them doubling down on their respective perceptions or patterns, not knowing that a whole other way of interpreting a situation exists. And unless each participant recognizes that the ways that they specifically are feeding into this chaotic feedback loop, they're not going to be able to make much headway.

Beth: Very interesting. You're saying that, in fact, the Enneagram has 50 years of history in abuse by psychological professionals, if you will, whether that's psychiatry or therapy.

Why is it that we as therapists haven't been talking about this more?

Joanne: Because it sounds very “woo woo”. Because the Western world, since the Enlightenment period, puts a heavy emphasis on what's visible, “objective”, what's measurable.

It's my personal opinion that science is operating off of its own confirmation biases, picking and choosing whichever data points it finds valid according to what it knows how to use. And then tossing out the rest.

Even within the other cultural pockets of society, there are certain elements that can't quite be measured objectively, like microaggressions. But it's important for people to learn about it because these are the realities for a good number of our clients. There are tons of things about the human experience that can't quite be measured or written down or described. It's kind of more of an intuitive or instinctual experience.

I work with a lot of people who've grown up with emotional neglect. One of the key experiences to describe what they tend to go through is alexithymia, which means the inability to put into words what their emotional experience is. It's these terms like alexithymia that has come up in describing the absence of something that's very amorphous and vague.

I don't know if a lot of scientific research approaches are geared towards validating those experiences. So it's easy for those who have a lot of experience in academia to dismiss a lot of what the Enneagram has to offer because it's talking about the use of intuition and energy and gut types. It can sometimes sound very religiousy, sometimes it can sound very spiritual. It’s kind of tossing out the baby with the bathwater.

Beth: It's interesting. I'm sure you've given this a great deal of thought before. Here we are using things like the MMPI which has been updated through time, and I had the opportunity not too long ago to see not the most recent revision of the MMPI, but the version before. I was reading it and looking at the questions and going, “Oh my gosh, this is so culturally unaware.”

There were so many questions in it that were just loaded and you could read it and essentially know who wrote the question and what they were trying to evaluate about you and what your difference was from the person who wrote that question. Particularly as it related to any kind of marginalization or societal way that one “should be”.

How do you bring together those concepts.

Here you have the Enneagram based in thousands of years of oral and now written tradition. Then you have things that are actually relatively new on the scene, like the MMPI, but are coming at personality historically from a very Eurocentric, white male, cis, heteronormative perspective.

How do you bring together those ideas because they're so different?

Joanne: I would say it's to recognize that our culture itself has a bias and that we're not in a vacuum. Even the things that we learn about in grad school have been filtered through systemic biases and preferences about which things are considered valid and whatever isn't.

Interesting you bring up the MMPI. I had to take the MMPI as part of my graduate school application process and the clinical director at the time sat me down for our interview and said, “Your MMPI is showing that you have Paranoid Schizophrenia? What is that?”

Granted, I went to a Christian graduate school, so there was an opening for the spirituality piece, and that there's a need to translate some things over into science.

I was like, “Yeah, because I'm a very innovative and visual person. So, I see things, not like literally as if the object is there, but that's kind of how I internally process things.”

She was like, “Oh, okay. That makes sense.” Because coming from a charismatic church background.

Since then I knew that yes, some of these questionnaires and inventories are super helpful. But the authors of these inventories, they themselves are introducing their own personal biases. So I don't put absolute weight into these scientifically validated frameworks. But I also make room that there are some things in the human experience that cannot be written on paper. It would be arrogant for us as finite, limited, human beings to assume that we know all of reality when science is constantly inventing itself anyway.

In terms of the Enneagram, just allowing for that openness that we might not have all the answers, and maybe that's okay, allows for a much richer experience. We don't have to, like a certain way according to what science prescribes. We don't have to box our clients in either in dismissing them as having some mental disorder when it actually might be a very personal and culturally specific experience.

Nine Enneagram Types

Beth: Thank you for going over in that little jaunt with me. Just because it is interesting how some of these things are considered valid and some are not. Yet these conversations are happening just as you and I are having it right now. Where it's like, let's look at this as a tool that is used to understand the human experience and a framework for us, I'm going to use very specific language here, to work toward enlightenment, individuation, growth, whatever the wording is, of what any of us are doing when we're sitting on a couch trying to do something in psychotherapy.

Now that we have a little bit of understanding of the history of the Enneagram and its origins, tell me about the nine Types, knowing again that there is a lot here and there's no way that you can cover it all. Give us kind of an overview of these nine Types. How they came to be. You've already introduced some language, but just to understand what the language is around the Enneagram and how it's conceptualizing personality.

Joanne: Sometimes knowing the nine Types helps and sometimes it doesn't help. We're not trying to find out what the nine Types are so that we can reinforce our own autopilot tendencies.

All of the nine Types are archetypes of the universal human experience. So, when a person reads the description of the nine Types, they're like, “Oh, yeah, that sounds like me. And that sounds like me.” Yeah, because they're supposed to describe people's experiences in general. It's just that the nine Types are the ways that each person gets stuck thinking that that experience is everything that life has to offer to them. We're trying to find out what our Type is so that we can grow beyond that Type and into integrate the rest of the eight. I'll start there.

The nine Types, what the Enneagram symbol is, if you look it up on Google, it's a circle with a bunch of triangles and angles inside. If you think about the nine Types as starting from Type Nine down to Type One. If you go in that order, it does overlap with the general human development process.

I'm going to start with Type Nine and I'm going to go around to Type One.

Type Nine - The Harmonizer

Type Nine is known as a Peacemaker or Mediator. The main theme is around fusion. Kind of like a baby in the womb merged with mama. There's no distinct sense of self. It is about union. It's about being together. So when the baby is in the womb, baby cannot tell the difference between themselves and mom. There is no other because there's just one.

Type Nine, that archetype describes that experience, but a person who's Type Nine lives all of life as if that's what's supposed to be the case. There's this merging experience that happens where, let's say, a person who's Type Nine sits in front of another person, they might not be able to tell who's who. So, someone else asked them a question and they reflect back with, “Well, what do you want to do? Or how do you want to be?”

There's this blurring of individuality. There's a core resistance against being one distinct self. Being one's own distinct self. Generally, Nines have a hard time with making decisions, narrow things down with pursuing and even pushing forth their own agenda. They tend to go with the flow because it's more comfortable, it's easier, it doesn't involve energy, and there's this very chill nature about them.

Social media's version or description of Type Nine is they're the peacemakers. They're the ones that go with the flow. They're the ones that are super easy to get along with. And that's not untrue, but what's really going on behind the scenes is the deadly sin of Type Nine, which is sloth. That experience speaks to a person's ability to fall asleep to oneself.

The main defense mechanism of Type Nine is narcotization. Anything that involves them disconnecting with themselves. It might be through eating or watching TV or whatever, but can also be merging with one's own routines. Having the same routine every single day, so that they don't have to make the decision about what to wear differently. Or merging with another person in absorbing their own agendas to make things flow easier.

They tend to be very conflict resistant. So, part of their growth work is to recognize that they are a distinct self. To find out who they are. Find out what they want. Find out what their agendas are, and actually to summon that on purpose, which goes opposite of the peacemaker framework.

They start causing conflict. They start causing problems. Nines think that's like a death sentence, but in actuality, they've had a sense of self this entire time. The proof of that is resentment. They tend to actually push back against other people opposing their agenda.

Beth: I know you have eight more to go through, a question I have just as I'm trying to conceptualize and understand the Nine Types. How do they function over a lifespan? From an adaptive standpoint, what does it mean if somebody came into the world and they tend to approach things like a Nine and let’s just say suddenly they act more like a Four. Is that considered adaptation or are we basically trying to, again stealing language from other models, if our goal is to individuate and have a healthy, whatever healthy is, whoever's describing that, between self and other past, present, future. Are we moving flexibly between these Nine Types and then would be able to see, “I did a little bit more of this over here. And then this thing happened and I did a little bit more of that. And now I see myself kind of not one of the types.”

Joanne: That would come with self-awareness.

I will say up front that a person's likely going to be their Type throughout their whole lives. There's no way to change one's Type. However, how rigid and how stubborn the Type shows up, that can change with personal work.

For the Type Nine, in some moments, they might be summoned to respond in a very Type Three way, in terms of self-promoting themselves. Or in Type 8, in imposing their own agendas, even going against other people, breaching other people's boundaries, instead of making themselves easy and accommodating other people at their own expense.

They will still be a Nine, but in doing their personal work at the extreme, once a person has actually gone towards, I don't know how else to say it, but to say enlightenment, a person who's Type Nine, who's typically known to be the person with the least amount of energy out of all nine Types will actually be the person with the greatest amount of energy in what we call their essence.

There's essence and then there's ego. Essence is what we're born with, how we come into the world, but life happens and so our ego kicks in to protect ourselves. This very ego structure is like a cage. When a bird is small, it helps protect the bird from the outside. At some point, the bird outgrows the cage, and the walls of the cage start cutting into its wings. And that applies to all nine Types. They just, they just have different cages.

Beth: Very interesting. Thank you.

Type Nine, Peacemaker, of the seven deadly sins most associated with a capacity for sloth.

Tell me about Type Eight.

Type Eight - The Challenger

Joanne: Type Eight is the opposite of Type Nine in a lot of ways.

Unlike Type Nine, which is very chill, go with the flow, let's go for whatever's the easiest. Eight is like let me cause stuff. Let me make things happen. It's called The Challenger or sometimes known as The Boss.

Think about a baby, who's really young, but not quite yet ready to walk. They just want things. Boss baby, king baby, like everything the baby wants, the baby will have. Eights tend to live in the world like that in that whatever their instincts or whatever desire, they move straight towards making that happen. Even though there are lots of reasons why a person maybe shouldn't go according to their impulses and desire. The deadly sin of Type Eight is lust, and I don't mean in the sexual sense per se, though that is included. It's like insatiability, needing to fulfill their desires. Even if it goes against other people or against rules, etc.

Eights tend to disrupt things, Nines tend to like to go with the flow. They are extreme opposites.

Type Eight core fear that, by the way, all the core fears the nine Types don't really know that they have. The fear still drives a person, but it's operating in the unconscious, subconscious level. Eights tend to show up with big energy and they tend to go against other people because there's this core fear behind the scenes that says, “I need to make sure that I am not vulnerable.”

They end up becoming very strong, not to be strong per se. They don't necessarily need to be the boss, but they don't want someone else telling them what to do. They don't want to be vulnerable or at the risk of being hurt. Eights are generally those who think that their perception of reality is the ultimate reality, the capital T truth.

Often Eights won't really come into therapy unless they're dragged into a couples session. Because they've steamrolled other people. There's also a lot of projection that happens with each Type and what the Type Eight projects out is vulnerability.  They see themselves as more powerful, more strong than they actually are, invincible even. Like a person being able to walk in front of cars and thinking that the cars are just going to stop.

What they outsource is vulnerability, so they see other people as weaker than other people actually are. A lot of the Type Eights work is to reconcile that picture. Recognizing, my own version of reality is my own version of reality, but it's not the ultimate reality. Other people's experiences actually also exist.

So let me get to know what my partner's experience is instead of steamrolling over them. That is a lot of the Type Eight struggle.

The growth for Type Eights, when they've really done their work, they actually become the exact opposite. Instead of lust and fulfilling their own cravings and desires, they move towards what's called innocence.

It's like they're a young baby that's very tender, very vulnerable, very soft, and, they can access a very nurtured side of them, not just being the ones to protect and advocate on behalf of other people.

Beth: Very interesting. As you're talking about it, I can already almost start to see a shuffling of the DSM in relation to what we're talking about.

I'm sure that that would be a whole separate conversation for another time, but even just going through Type Nine and Type Eight, I can see that I would imagine that this personality type would have a propensity toward anxiety disorders. This personality type may be more prone toward codependence.

Joanne: Let me insert here, I was going to bring it up later, but heads up eight out of the nine Types in their extreme sense overlap with eight or nine of the personality disorders in the DSM. The one Type that's not described is Type Three, because we happen to be in a very Type Three culture, and that is in our shadow.

Beth: That's very interesting.

So you're saying because we've basically determined that Type Three is the most culturally acceptable?

Joanne: It's not standard.

Beth: Interesting. Okay, keep going. I want to get through Type Seven so I get to Type Three. Go.

Type Seven - The Enthusiast

Joanne: Let me just say the main defense mechanism of Type Eight first, just because I mentioned Type Nine is narcotization, Type Eight's defense mechanism or main one is denial. They deny reality. Their reality is the ultimate reality.

Type Seven is the little kiddo who's finally been able to crawl and walk and so the world is their oyster and they're going about and experiencing all the fun things in life. Pursuing pleasure and avoiding pain and that is the Type Seven’s motto.

It's about experiencing all kinds of things in life and not being limited. So, a toddler starts crying when parents say, “No”, and the toddler just wants to somehow make their way around these restrictions and limits that authority figures set.

The person who has a Type Seven autopilot tends to see the positive things in life and ignore the negatives. Really as a way of avoiding the fear of being trapped and being trapped in pain, specifically.

The person who's Type Seven on the surface, they're very fun, very exciting, they're very lively. Really the heart of a lot of parties. However, the people who are most driven crazy by a person who's Seven is often their partners or the parents because they underly take responsibility for their actions. They're always seeking the fun thing and trying to avoid anything that seems uncomfortable or boring, mundane, et cetera.

The defense mechanism of Type Seven is rationalization. They're very good at charming other people and talking themselves out of being limited.

How a Seven often shows up in work, because they have this very tense relationship with authority figures, they tend to smooth that out by befriending authority figures. When they are interacting with a boss, they somehow try to find a chummy way of getting around doing their responsibilities because they don't like being told what to do. When it comes to their own subordinates, they tend to collapse the authority hierarchy and befringe those who are also under their authority, because to be an authority or to be under someone else's authority is very limiting. Limit is like the kryptonite of Type Seven.

The deadly sin of Type Seven is gluttony. It's about having a little bit of everything. And naturally that would lead a person to not want to make a commitment, not want to make decisions. Because what if there's something else that comes up that seems more exciting or fun?

They are super strongly driven by FOMO. Not wanting to make decisions because making decisions gives them the impression that they're going to be stuck and trapped in that. When a Seven has done a lot of work, they reach what's called sobriety, which is the opposite of their deadly sin of gluttony. It’s to be very honest with themselves and about their limitations and how that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's knowing that life is to be engaged by seeing reality for what it is, not what they would like to see it as.

A person who's really done a lot of their work as a Seven becomes very chill, very grounded, very anchored. Compared to their egoed counterpart, which is bouncing from one thing to the next. So that will be a Type Seven.

Beth: Again, I can hear things line up in my mind about certain personality types and if we were going to put somebody in a diagnostic box where you can see there's a vulnerability, if you will.

Type Six, tell me.

Type Six - The Questioner

Joanne: Type six is the kiddo who has grown up enough, is now ready to go to school and all of a sudden has stranger danger and separation anxiety. This is a kid who has explored the world and has found out there's actually very painful things or scary things involved. “There's something that's looming over the surface. I don't really know exactly what it is.” It's the kid that is spinning in a lot of anxiety of not what is, but what things could be, towards the negative.

Sevens and Sixes are the opposite. Sevens think of what things could be towards the positive. Sixes are what things could be towards the negative. The worst case scenario. Sometimes they are called The Questioners or The Loyalists. The main central theme for Sixes is safety, trust, security. The way that that plays out is they're very mental. They have this big mind map of all the things that could possibly go wrong to then prepare for every single scenario.

If you have a Six on your team, they're the best person to troubleshoot things with because they can anticipate when a product is going to go wrong so that you can find out how to bypass it up front.

Sevens are usually like, “That's fine. It'll be fine. We'll figure it out as we go.” Sixes tend to do a lot of that mental churning up front so much so that they get stuck in analysis paralysis. They shut down. With all the nine Types it could be a love or hate relationship in being partners or working with them.

Sixes way of doing so is to ask a bunch of questions like, “Well, what if this goes wrong, what if that goes wrong?” Often, they're labeled as being very negative. But their intention, at least on the surface, is to make sure that they're safe and that everyone's okay.

In terms of relationship with authority figures, since Sixes tend to see authority figures as all good or all bad, their main defense mechanism is projection. They project out their strengths to bring about safety to other authority figures. Either authority figures are the person to give them security and safety, so they align with them, or they follow the rules, or this is called the Counter Type Six, they go against the authority figure.

There's a fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. Some of the Sixes take one of those approaches. Instead of them owning their own authority and saying, I can bring about my own safety and security, they tend to project that outwards and then cower in fear. And that fear is what drives them forward.

If you were to associate Type Six with a personality disorder and the DSM measures a lot of dependent personality disorders, maybe.

Beth: Is there a Seven Deadly Sin type associated with Type Six?

Joanne: Type Six and Type Three are the ones where you add the two. So, it's not part of the Seven Deadly Sins, it's part of the nine. The deadly sin that's been added in is cowardice. The opposite of that deadly sin is courage.

Ironically, Sixes in ego are known as the most fearful types. But when a person who's Type Six has really done their work, they can be more courageous than anyone.

Type Five - The Observer

Type 5 are known as The Observers. They tend to be the ones who experience life through observing from afar. I like describing them as living in fortresses where they're very boundary from the rest of the world, and they live up in their ivory tower overlooking everything.

These are the people, at an extreme, who tend to not really be connected with the rest of the world. They tend to be more detached, and that is the main defense mechanism, detachment. Instead of being in the world, they look at the world.

Fives are likely to be one of the people who come to therapy because they're dragged into therapy for family therapy or couple's counseling.

They tend to assume that the solution to life is to have more knowledge. They tend to overly rely on the intellect, etc. But compared to Sevens and Sixes, Sevens lean more towards positive data. Sixes lean towards more negative data. Fives see data as more neutral. But, they do so by overly relying on their head and then cutting off their connection to their heart center.

Emotions are really difficult for those who are Fives. The personality disorder might be schizoid personality disorder. That's part of their difficulty in that in this Western world that places so much emphasis on rational and intellectualization, Fives are seen as the golden standard in some ways. People don't know that they too are operating out of very reactive patterns because those patterns happen to be what people think is the way to go.

This is also all the more of the case where I am. I'm in the Silicon Valley. Lots of techie people, lots of engineers, but who tend to experience the most stress in their personal relationships because they've closed off their emotion center. They justify that thinking that they need to be the rational one and the partner is the irrational, emotional, sensitive one.

The Deadly Sin of Type Five is called avarice. Sometimes it's known as greed, but it's not greed like hoarding. It's avarice like squeezing and extinguishing out life and living from a scarcity mindset.

It's like, I only have this much energy to start off the day. And because I only start off with 20% battery life, I need to upfront decide how much percent I'm going to allocate to each activity in my day ahead and live with a sense of constriction. So, partners are frustrated because they're like, “Dude, you have more than enough energy to go with.” But, Fives like, “No, I only have this much and I need to make sure to be very careful and stingy with my resources because everyone else is a threat. Everyone else is trying to take my resources from me.”

Beth: I'm guessing if a Five has done their work and understands their Type and then work in the flexibility, then it's more of a standpoint of abundance, like less scarcity, more abundance, more generosity.

Joanne: The virtue of Type Five, where they go when they've done a lot of their work is nonattachment. Not being attached to their resources but recognizing that they are connected with the rest of the world, fully not just from a distance with their head. They're connected with all the ample resources that are in life. So, they don't need to be attached to anything. They can let things move very smoothly because compared to other types Fives are probably the most boundaried one.

And we think that boundaries are good, but in this case, they've done it way too much. So, they need to learn how to loosen up and let people come in and let themselves go out of the fortress.

Beth: The more you talk about this, the more I can hear the overlap with other methods in psychology. That it's like the development of distress tolerance or where's wise mind. It's like I can hear the language start to bubble up and kind of overlap with these things.

Joanne: I hope that when people really connect or explore the Enneagram, that they would come to those conclusions themselves, instead of hearing from someone else. “Oh, yeah, the Enneagram is like the best or it integrates well with psychology.” and then resisting against it.

Beth: It's an interesting consideration, going back to what you said at the beginning, kind of the misuse of the model to walk around the world and say, “You fit in this category and therefore I can basically use that information strategically to control.” Which would probably be its own Type the propensity to do so.

Joanne: I would say in a lot of governing agencies there will probably be more of an emphasis on Types One, Three, and Five. Those are known as the Competency Types and they ignore the other aspects that the other types tend to emphasize.

So, Type Five would be the kid who has recognized that the world is not a very trustworthy place to pass Type Six and then it's like, “Oh I can be my own safety. I just need to learn more things. I just need to know how to do more things.”

Fives are born into the world with that framework and assume that that's the only way to live life. Then they get boggled when it comes to their personal relationships because they can't figure out feelings. And they get super triggered. They double down. So, they reemphasize, “Oh, you're just being irrational. I'm the one who's making a lot of sense here.”

Beth: Interesting. So with Fives it's about finding balance instead of living so strongly in logic and rationality. It's finding balance.

Joanne: We're recognizing that there are lots of things in life that are also rational and have their own rules. Like feelings have their own rules. Fives have determined themselves as the authority in dictating what is good knowledge and bad knowledge.

Beth: That's valid. Interesting. Okay, Type Four.

Type Four - The Individualists

Joane: Type Fours are the moody, angsty teenagers who are super self-conscious. Like in middle school, when the body's changing, a lot of things are fluctuating, lots of hormones raging. The attention goes towards themselves as an individual, towards shame. Their thinking, “Oh my gosh, what's wrong with me? There’s all these things changing. I have so many feelings on the inside. Other people seem to be doing okay, but I'm swirling on the inside here and everyone seems to be getting along really well with each other. But I feel like I'm the outsider.”

Type Four is sometimes known as The Romantics, I like calling them The Individualists because not every Four has a romantic bent to them. It's more of like The Tragic Artists. Everything is really hard for them, but is really good for everyone else.

The Deadly Sin of Type Four is envy. And I don't mean envy like wanting what someone else has. It's thinking something good in me is missing from me. I don't know what it is, but it's as if something is missing in me. It's out there somewhere. I need to go find it. Anything that's super close right in front of the person, they get bored by, it loses its luster. Anything that's far away is super shiny.

The Four is like a horse with a carrot dangling in front of it. It might actually catch the carrot, but then it's not satisfied, thinking it needs to have another carrot to chase. It's addicted to the chase and it resists being satisfied. So that would be the Type Four mechanism. Hence, Fours are known to be very moody, very emotional. There's always something wrong, woe is me and whatever.

They tend to have a loud emphasis on the theme of suffering, that they are the suffering ones. It's as if Fours and Fives are super existential Types, the rest of the nine need to learn how to be more like Fours and Fives in considering the meaning of life. Fours and Fives overly do that. They need to learn how to be in normal everyday life.

Fours tend to be very philosophical, focusing on the meaning of, who am I? Is there any purpose to what I do? Do I matter? Their ego drives them to try to make themselves distinct, or unique, or special, or whatever. It’s as if, if I'm not special, it’s as if I was never here.

I will say therapy is built for Fours. It's a Four’s playground. Because a lot of therapy is about, “Go out, go inward, know yourself better. Find out what happened in your past about why you are the way you are right now. You just need more insight and to connect with your emotions.” All that stuff Fours can do outside of therapy for free. So, Fours can come into therapy thinking, “Maybe this thing will help me.” Only to find out the therapist thinks that the client is the best client ever because they're already doing what the therapist wants them to do. Then the Four’s ego structure is only reinforced.

Fours need to learn how to not do that, and therapists need to recognize that this field has a bent towards Fours and recognize that the reason why Fours are in suffering is not always because of some trauma that happened in the past. It's sometimes because of the person's own making.

The Four has identified themselves with their own suffering as if this is my trauma therefore, this is who I am. These are my feelings. Therefore this is who I am. That is not the case. Therapy tends to emphasize or tends to want to help people move in that direction. So, with every other Type therapists need to learn how to help people connect with the Four-ish way of living because we all underdo the other nine Types. But, Fours overdo that, so they need to have something different. They need to have more of a coaching style, more action oriented, more focusing on the present, on how things are good. How they have things that are readily available instead of thinking that it's out there somewhere.

Beth: Really interesting. And what's the Sin associated with Four?

Joanne: Envy.

The opposite of the envy passion would be equanimity. Which basically means a person recognizes that they have feelings but they aren't their feelings. It's seeing emotions in a very neutral sense, not picking and choosing negative ones to over identify themselves with and then ignoring all the positive things of life.

Fours and Sevens can be opposites in a lot of ways.

Beth: Really interesting.

Okay, Threes. You've referenced Threes repeatedly. Now I want to hear about Threes.

Type Three - The Performers

Joanne: Threes are sometimes known as The Performers or The Achievers. They're the ones who overidentify with their image and the image they project out into the rest of the world.

Threes and Fours are opposites. Fours identify with one's own shadow, what's not so great about a person. Threes tend to identify with what's good about a person. But not good in like morally, objectively good, good in the eyes of other people. Threes tend to identify with the image of success in other people's eyes.

Their Deadly Sin, which is not part of the seven, this is the one that's been added in, is self-deceit. Like, Harry Potter, the metaphor that comes up is a Boggart, a shapeshifter, the one who keeps shifting its form based on whoever it's in front of in the moment. That is what Threes do reflexively without even knowing. So much so that they’ve forgotten who they actually are and what really matters to them.

Threes are very much rewarded for being the image of success because they get things done and everyone thinks that they're having an easy time. Because of that reinforcement, especially in this culture, and again, I'm in the Silicon Valley, so there's a lot of Threes in this environment who somehow know how to convert even a failure into success to the point where they don't get in touch with their own emotions. Often it's frustrating for those who are in relationships with Threes because of that shape shifting nature. Because they themselves don't know, because of self-deceit, that they've gotten disconnected with themselves.

When a Three has really done their work, the opposite of self-deceit is veracity, which means a person is their true self and not some image that they put out into the rest of the world. In living out veracity, it means that a person might disappoint other people because they're living out their truth.

Beth: Interesting.

 So, Type Three is really the chameleon. And to go off what you've said before, Type Three is the one that's most culturally sanctioned.

Joanne: The United States, in the eyes of the rest of the world, is very image focused. It's all about looking good or being successful and then looking good while being successful.

Anything that stirs up shame or how it's failed, the United States doubles down. It's like, “No, we're not. The rest of you are bad.” Three-ish, Eight-ish elements in this culture.

Beth: I was thinking about that kind of overlap when you were saying it.

One of my questions, and I'm just going to ask it now, knowing that we still have a few more types. What about folks who are listening to you introducing this idea of Enneagram, they're not familiar with it before. And we'll get to the last two, but they're listening and they're going, I'm none of those.

What does that mean?

Joanne: It could mean a bunch of things. I can go in a bunch of different directions but, I'll say this. There are nine Types that are universal archetypes of the human experience.

However, each of the nine Types have three versions, according to a dominant instinct. And when I say dominant instinct, this is the stuff that lives in our lizard brain. Anything that in our primal stressed state moves us towards survival through one of three approaches, self-preservation, social, or sexual. These are the three instincts involved. And I can describe each of those instincts a little bit more later. What that means is that there are nine Types about the why people do what they do. Then there are the instincts that show people how they do the why of what they do.

When you combine these two together, this is called the subtype. Nine times three, there are 27 subtypes in all. One of the subtypes per line is called the Counter Type, which is the type that goes the opposite direction of what I just described.

Just to give you an example, I happen to be a Counter Type. I am a Type Four, but I am a self-preservation Four. So anything that I just described about the Four, I've described some of what Fours are known for. Self-pressed Fours tend to resonate with the behind the scenes motivations, but how that shows up, it goes the opposite direction.

Fours are known to be very overly emotional, dramatic, like they pull everyone into their mess and all that kind of stuff. Those are really describing the other two kinds of Fours. The Counter Type of Type Four, like myself, you wouldn't be able to tell that I'm a Four on the outside.

This is one of the main difficulties with using the Enneagram in that people have a harder time finding out their type because, unlike Strengths Finders or Myers Briggs, you can't just take a test. A test tends to focus on what people do, less so the why. The why really depends on the person's self-awareness, whether they've done their work, whether they know what's in their blind spots, etc.

Beth: I appreciate that explanation. I think that's a really helpful way to describe it.

Okay. Two and One go!

Type Two - The Befriender

Two sometimes they’re call The Givers. I like calling them The Befrienders because their main objective in life is to be loved. Out of all nine Types, these are the ones that are the most obsessed about relationships, all things relationships. But it's connecting with another person by becoming what the other person wants and needs.

Twos are also shapeshifters, but Threes tend to shapeshift towards the image of success. Twos shapeshift towards what they think the other person wants and needs. I would say that Twos are often the Types that are described the least accurately when we read about the Enneagram because Twos are very disconnected from themselves.

They don't even know that they're doing this. They disconnect with themselves to be so outwardly focused on other people to shapeshift into what the other person wants and needs.

Whereas Fours are the opposite. Fours are very connected to their inner world and they kind of ignore everyone else, like teenagers. Fours need to learn how to be more outward and consider the experiences of other people.

Twos tend to overly do that and they have difficulty connecting with themselves. You ask someone who's Type Two, “What do you need or what do you want?” It's like they go into brain glitch. It feels like they're fumbling through a very, very dark room inside.

We often think of Twos according to what they do for other people, hence they're known as The Givers, The Helpers, The Servants, etc. That is a very shallow understanding of Type Two. What's really going on is, and why I call them The Befrienders, they connect with someone so that they get something in return. This part is what Twos are often unaware of. Any Two that's listening to this will have a very visceral, allergic reaction. They're going to want to throw up.

The Deadly Sin of Type Two is pride. And it's not pride as in, “I'm being very obviously better than other people.” It's the very quiet version of, “I know what you need more than you know what you need, and I'm going to be that.” But they hate finding out what they need because in order for them to have needs means that they are unlovable. Which goes against everything that they want to happen.

You'll find a lot of therapists who are Twos, but they really get their own needs met indirectly and they don't even know that they're doing it. Often they tend to have a hard time spending time in solitude with themselves. It's like a death sentence to them. If you tell them that they really need to get in touch with themselves, they're like, I don't even know what that means.

The main defense mechanism of Type Two is repression. They repress their own needs and they repress their own emotions because to have either of those things makes one less lovable.

This is the, the kid who's grown up in the family who to be loved, they've become what everyone else wanted at the expense of their own experiences. Similar to Type Nine in a lot of ways, but Nines disconnect from themselves so that they don't have to spend energy. Twos do so to be loved and all heart types, Twos, Threes, and Fours tend to be very image conscious.

The main themes are around their relationships with other people. Nines can have that, in some ways, but it's still more about energy and the flow of energy. Like, I want to take the path of least resistance, independently of how they're seen by other people. Unless there's some conflict brewing, then they'll double down and they'll shut down.

Twos, it's about how they're seen. They swell up with pride when they find out that another person likes them, and then they're devastated when they find out another person doesn't like them.

Beth: Interesting. Okay, Type One.

Type One - The Improvers

Joanne: Type One, I like calling them The Improvers. Other people call them The Perfectionists, but the reason why I resist against that definition is because not all Ones, because there are three versions of each type, not all Ones are very perfectionistic, and how the perfectionism shows up is very different per subtype.

Type One, I call them The Improvers because their main engine, their way of perceiving the world is that there's good and there's bad. Only the two. There's nothing in between. No shades of gray. And what's good is this lofty, ideal standard of perfection, that they sense that reality right now isn't there. So, in that gap between ideal and actual, they fill that gap with frustration. They're so irritable because their anger is a form of energy. Anger propels us towards making things happen, but Ones do so in a very slow and simmering resentful kind of way. Whereas Eights tend to be very outburst-y, and they make things happen with big action. Ones, I like calling Ones The Scalpel, whereas Eights are The Sledgehammer.

Ones tend to direct their improver energy in a very methodical, very precise way, but they're constantly doing so, so that they have a really hard time taking it easy. And allowing things to be and recognizing that how things are, yeah, it's imperfect, but imperfection isn't a bad thing. Ones feel as if you have to be perfect or else you're automatically bad and therefore unworthy.

A lot of people will experience Ones as being very critical and judgmental, and I wouldn't say that they aren't that, but that's not the point. The point isn't to be critical or judgmental. The point is that Ones are really trying to be good. So, they're very sincere in thinking that what they're saying is really to help another person or help improve things. Because of their assumption that there's always something that needs to be improved and them voicing it out, other people tend to take it very personally. So, a lot of relationship conflict between Ones and other people.

The Type One's Deadly Sin is Anger, sometimes called wrath. The definition or the term that my teachers say is, I think it's kind of like a Spanish version, it's called “ira”. So it's not like anger, like, “Oh, I'm so angry and like actually making that happen.” But it's like the slow and simmering version behind the scenes where no one really knows about it. It's seething.

The main defense mechanism of Type One is reaction formation. Meanding what a person presents on the outside is the opposite of what they really feel on the inside.

When Ones are really pissed off, you might actually see them smiling more. Because they also have a way of disconnecting from their own emotions and needs. Because they think that it's about making sure that the thing, the task happens, independently of how I think or feel about it, independently of how other people think or feel about it.

They tend to not be as focused on image, like the heart types do. They are more focused on this is the decision we made, this is how we're going to follow through with it, and we need to stick to our commitments. Ones can be overly rigid because they're living life needing to be the good kid.

The virtue of Type One would be serenity. Because the Type One engine is driving one towards assuming that they ought to have control over everything and restricting the flow of life. Serenity is, there's some things that you can control, do those things. There are some things you can't control, let them be. And finding out what's the difference between the two.

When Ones have done their work, they're very chill. And they're very easy and, enjoyable to be around because they've recognized that not everything needs to be changed. And yes, there are imperfections in life, but there's still a lot of beauty and a lot of good.

That'll be the nine Types in a nutshell.

The Enneagram and Psychotherapy

Beth: Your brain holds an incredible amount of material, and then I can hear how you kind of play within it to understand and put together or separate these different ideas. Thank you so much for that. I think it was so interesting and I want to listen again just to learn it inn the way that you just presented it.

Knowing that our conversation today: number one, we don't have too much time left and number two also is really just kind of scratching the surface, but introducing the Enneagram really as a cultural guidepost that could be used in psychotherapy. You and I had talked before we started recording about some of the pros and cons of the Enneagram and psychotherapy.

Can you speak to that a little bit before we end our conversation today?

Joanne: Yes. Though the Enneagram is a very powerful framework that can help people do their personal work at warp speed. It is not a good fit for every client because it involves a lot of deep personal work and it involves defense mechanisms and ego structures and all kinds of things that people are very viscerally resistant against.

So, the Enneagram is not good for when a client is in actual crisis. There are houses on fire. We need to put out those fires, not philosophize about why those fires came to speed. Not yet at least. You've put out the fire first and do some repair work. Once the dust has settled and the client recognizes, “Hey, there have been burning houses before. I wonder what that's about.” That might be a good time to introduce the Enneagram.

Because the nature of using the Enneagram involves ego structures. The client has to be open to observing themselves in a neutral way. Or at least entertaining the idea that maybe I made this happen. If they're very defensive and they're very rigid, it's probably not a good idea to introduce the Enneagram because that might spin off into, “The therapist is not understanding me, or they're telling me what to do, or they're just trying to find out what's wrong with me.” It can go sideways really quickly.

The way that I work in my practice is I market myself as an Enneagram Therapist. So, people who find me, a good number of them know about the Enneagram. It's a self-filtering process where they've heard about this. They resonated with it. They're wanting to grow using this approach specifically. I have a lot more leverage to be able to interweave the Enneagram, but that doesn't mean that the Enneagram can't be used in therapy. You just might not share with clients about what that is. But it can be very informational for you as a clinician in knowing what is going on behind the scenes for someone and being able to calibrate and attune to them.

For example, if I'm working with a person who's Type Two, who's very others referencing and has a lot of disconnection from themselves, who shapeshifts to be what they think the other person wants and needs. A person who's Type Two will come into therapy because they want to work on how to improve their relationships. So, I cannot just start off with saying, “You need to know your own internal experiences and your own traumas and stuff like that.”

They're going to be like, “This therapist doesn't get me at all.” And they're going to leave.

But a person who's Type Two, who has done some ego work will recognize, “I don't know why I keep finding myself in one sided relationships and I'd like to find out what it is about me, maybe, that is constantly putting me in these situations.” That would be a good time to integrate the Enneagram as a framework. Not saying that there's something wrong about that person. All of us have an autopilot, so it normalizes it. Different people have different autopilot structures, so it helps with self-awareness and putting words to things that were invisible so that the client can go back out into their week and observe, “This is what I heard in therapy about what Two’s tend to do. How about I pay attention to what goes on in my mind when I'm sitting in front of another person?” So the Enneagram can be very helpful in providing a very neutral, nonjudgmental way of focusing on specific key dynamics.

Whereas if I were working with someone who is Type Four where they're overly inside themselves, I might ask, “Did you remember what the other person said in this conversation?” So I might gently nudged them to go outside of themselves.

What I would recommend to each client would be the opposite, depending on what their type structure is. It's even if I never talk about the Enneagram with those clients, I might still be noticing how to gently nudge them to focus on certain things.

Beth: I imagine that therapists, even without the knowledge of Enneagram, are often doing that. We're just using different language to describe it.

For therapists who are listening that want to learn more about the Enneagram and improve their knowledge about how perspective clients might be seeing it or using it or their own utilization in psychotherapy. What do you recommend? Where do they go to do that?

Enneagram Resources

Joanne: This is probably the number one book I recommend to everyone who wants to do personal growth, especially with the Enneagram. It's a book called “The Enneagram: Guide to Waking Up”. This is written by my Enneagram teachers, Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes.

Beatrice herself is a licensed therapist and she is one of the main people from whom I read up on all the behind the scenes defense mechanisms in her other book called “The Complete Enneagram”. That book is very hefty, but I think for clinicians it'd be super helpful of a read.

This book here, “The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up”, it's like a permanent shelfer as a quick manual guide in how each Type shows up, including the three instincts and the specific growth steps. For each Type, the chapter is about 20-25 pages long. Not too long.

If you want a more in depth perspective, “The Complete Enneagram”, will be great. This is what I recommend to clients, what I recommend to other therapists, because it captures things in a nutshell. Not what people do, but why they do the what they do in some concrete.

Beatrice and Uranio also have a podcast called Enneagram 2.0. It's fantastic. People who want to hear about how the Enneagram is supposed to be used, that will be a good place to begin as well.

For those therapists or helping professionals who really want to learn formally how to incorporate the Enneagram into your practice, I highly recommend the Professional Certification Track at Chestnut Paes Enneagram Academy. They have the Professional Certification Track and the Personal Mastery Track. Both involve very experiential approaches to the Enneagram aside from just learning head knowledge about it. Because again, we are in a time in history where there's heavy emphasis on the intellect at the expense of other things. So heavy emphasis on the head center at the expense of the heart and the body center.

I highly recommend that you check out at least one of the workshops or retreats with CP Enneagram. It's like a five-day retreat. That's been very transformational for me. And it will give you all the downlow that you need.

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© Copyright 2023 Joanne B. Kim. All rights reserved.

JOANNE B. KIM, LMFT

Joanne is a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Brainspotting Practitioner in San Jose, CA. She helps people EXHAUSTED by anxiety, shame, and an allergic reaction to anger create VIBRANT relationships where they matter, too.

Many of her clients are:
(1) the highly responsible, conscientious, and empathic types
(2) Enneagram Type Ones, Twos, Fours, or Nines
(3) Highly Sensitive Persons (HSPs)

The most common words spoken by those who’ve sat with Joanne:

“I thought it was just me. I’m NOT crazy!”

“I can finally figure out what to do with all these feelings!”