Hey Enneagram Friend! This is Abbi Rodriguez, your certified and IEA accredited Enneagram Teacher and Coach. In this space, I'll give you a sneak peek into real live coaching sessions and teach you how to apply the wisdom of the Enneagram into your life for personal growth. The invitation each episode is to take on a posture of curiosity - curiosity about yourself and others - so that you can shift from merely surviving to fully thriving in your everyday life. Visit my website at abbirodriguez.com and listen into this episode to learn more.
Today in this teaching episode, I want to share with you some practical tips for incorporating self care into your everyday rhythms so that you can move out of this place of just surviving every day. The concept of self care is more and more common in our day and age, but often we talk about self care as pampering or these things that are kind of like self soothing, or pandering to our personality, but they're not taking care of our true self. When we think about self care, we might have a list of these healthy activities or maybe these comforting things that we do, but I want to explore with you how we might intentionally care for our heart, mind, and body with regards to our Enneagram Type. The first part of caring for ourselves is by really knowing ourselves so that we can tell when our Enneagram Type is showing up and have this intention of loosening the hold that it has on us. We have these bad habits of our personality that cost us so much energy and they can cause a lot of hurt or confusion or these breakdowns in our relationship that then cost a lot of time and energy and emotion to restore. So for true transformation to happen, it can't just be listening to and gathering information. We have to do the work of paying attention. Paying attention to the habits of our Type and being present in the moment and noticing what's happening in our experience so that we can move forward in a way that's more balanced.
That balance might be noticing in that moment of stress that we're actually just feeling sad and we need some permission to grieve what's been lost in this season. That balance might be offering ourselves some compassion for everything that we are going through or the things that are happening in our world. That balance might be intentionally tapping into one of our centers of intelligence - head, heart or body - that we're really neglecting in this season or our Type naturally neglects. That balance could also be taking a moment just to breathe, to notice our felt sense to feel our feet on the floor, to feel ourselves present in this moment and to be curious about what's alive for us.
Self care has to start with knowing ourselves so that you understand your typical version of overextending yourself or self sabotaging. Having that self awareness gives you so much more clarity on how to move forward with practices that are beneficial for you and how your Type shows up. I walked through this in depth in the Growth and Self-care virtual workshop series that's coming up at the end of October and I'd love for you to be a part of that. You can register on my website at abbirodriguez.com and it's also linked in the show notes.
For our time today, I want to take a look, take a look at some practices for self care and kind of frame this in regards to stances so we can go through these groupings together. So if you're not as familiar with stances, each of the Nine numbers fall into one of three senses. So the assertive stance includes Types Threes, Sevens, and Eights. The dutiful stance, or sometimes it's called the compliant stance includes ones, Twos, and Sixes. And then the withdrawn stance includes Fours, Fives, and Nines. So these stances, of course, include three very different numbers, but there are some similarities to those numbers that caused this grouping, but also some similarities and how they can take care of themselves as well how they can incorporate the self care practices.
So starting with the assertive stance, I want to walk through some practices for Threes, Sevens and Eights, but I think that you'll find that if you're in the assertive stance, these are relatable in your experience even if the one I'm talking about is for a different number then you are because you're just in this stance with them. So for Enneagram Threes, the invitation for self care is to ask for help when you're in over your head. You know, typically it's difficult for Threes to name when they've taken on too Much too quickly or sometimes even in a space is when they're not fully qualified to do all the things that are now on their plate. Sometimes when you lead with confidence, you end up inheriting more and more responsibilities, whether or not you have fully have the skill set to do those things. When left unchecked, that tendency can get you into huge trouble taking on too much, or having too much too quickly. And so when you know you are slowly drowning, there's too much going on, too much on your plate, you can avoid a lot of exhaustion and stress by being willing just to ask others for help. Sometimes there's formal ways that you can do that by delegating to other people or asking peers for help if it's a workspace, but sometimes you can do that in more personal ways of saying “Hey this is typically the things I do around the house, but I need some help. Can you do this with me or for me? Or can you take this onto your plate to delegate to someone else?” So ask for help when you're in over your head.
Enneagram Sevens, an invitation for self care is to be aware of your tendency to jump in on an idea without fully thinking it through. Sevens think so quickly and so when there's a new idea, whether it's their own or someone else's offered it that they are excited about, it's really easy to say yes to that because there's just this quick thought process that happens around it. There’s a natural enthusiasm for things and so it can feel really easy to say “yes, this is a great idea!” without actually giving yourself some space to consider, “yes, this is a good idea, but I don't have time for this or I don't have the resources for this, or that's gonna be a really busy week if I try to fit this in”. Giving yourself some space so that when you say yes to things, you are able to actually handle it because you've given it the proper discernment space. Otherwise, when those things happen, when you were excited Two months ago and said yes, when you actually get to that week and now have to pull this off, you're going to feel overwhelmed, you're going to feel bogged down, and the excitement that was part of saying yes, won't be a part of executing it because you didn't really discern if you had that the energy space time on your calendar to actually do this.
Enneagram Eights, an invitation for self care for you is to be aware that your intensity can compel you to work yourself to death. Your work is important - it's valuable to those around you and that's amazing! At the same time, though, you have to make sure that you are not so intensely focused on your work that you are denying your physical limitations or your mental capacity or your emotional limitations. Because when you deny those things, when you ignore those limitations, it creates this slow, inevitable burnout and then eventually you hit the wall. For me, it's always this moment of crying in the kitchen - I don't know why it's always there - but it's these moments of the slow build up that was happening over time where I was completely ignoring the fact that I was working so much, or having so little free time or time to take care of myself. And now all of a sudden, I'm surprised by the fact that I'm overwhelmed and exhausted. So establish some boundaries around your work, whether that is just this mental boundary of at this time I stop working, or I don't do work on these days or in this evening space, whatever it might be. Give yourself some boundaries so that you have a reminder to not overextend yourself by having boundaries around your work.
Let's take a look at the dutiful stance, looking at some of these Type-specific practices for ones, Twos and Sixes. I think in a similar way, with the assertive stance, there'll be things that if you're in this stance, you’ll find relate to you even though I'm talking about the other Two numbers that are not your own. For Enneagram Ones, the invitation for self care is to let shortcomings go. It’s a natural tendency to feel stressed out or irritated by others mistakes or lack of responsibility, but your frustration with them will not change the situation, it only results in this built up irritation that impedes your own enjoyment or your own happiness, ability to rest or feel good about the work that's being accomplished. The invitation is to also let your own shortcomings go. That harsh criticism that you have of yourself with the inner critic online, it's not actually helping you improve. It's likely just creating self doubt and making you feel tense and nervous or insecure about what's happening. Talk back to that inner critic - don't let it drive you. I share more about that in Episode 2 “Navigating the Inner Critic,” so check that out if you fall into this Type One space.
For Enneagram Twos, the invitation for you is to take care of your needs too. Keep in mind that if you're not addressing your own needs, it's highly unlikely that you'll be able to meet anyone else's needs without there being an underlying feeling of resentment. If you show up depleted, it just creates these problems because you're not giving out of a feeling of abundance, but rather you’re overextending and over giving past what you have the capacity to do. And it results in this feeling of resentment, which takes away the joy of actually giving. If you haven't gotten adequate rest or had the space attend to what you need to attend to in your life, you're not able to respond to others in a balanced way. And it's not selfish to take care of your own needs first - it’s the whole put on your own oxygen mask first before you put it on someone else. So if you need some support in discerning what your needs even are, start by paying attention to these reactive moments that you have. Notice the moments when you feel really angry, or your feelings get really hurt - those can be really important clues that you have a repressed need in there and your emotion is a symptom of this need not being met. That can be something that you can explore and be curious about on your own, but sometimes it also really helps to have a holding environment, whether that's what the good community or even a Practitioner that's helping you in a one-on-one coaching space.
For Enneagram Sixes, the invitation for self care is to be present with your anxiety. The natural tendency when you feel anxious or nervous or concerned is to avoid that feeling or distract yourself from that feeling by trying to fix it or manage it. Sometimes that is in creating contingency plans of how you can solve this threat that is looming. Sometimes that is in worrying down these rabbit trails of “If this happens, then I'll do this” or “if they say that, then I'll say this.” But all of that is trying to manage or fix or solve the anxiety rather than just acknowledging the fact that you feel anxious and that's a normal human emotion to have. Allow yourself to notice it, to allow it to be, to feel the felt-sensation of it, to be curious about it, and consider why it's showing up for you. You may also consider what you might need, including maybe just some compassion towards your experience and what's going on for you. Consistent mindfulness rhythms are really helpful for all the Types, but especially in this way, that can be a really helpful tool for Type Six, to be able to breathe and to sit with the anxiety and the concern rather than trying to fix and resolve and escape from it.
Last but not least, let's take a look at the withdrawn stance looking at some Type-specific practices for Fours, Fives and Nines. Similar to the other stances, I think that if you're in the withdrawn stance, you'll be able to relate to the need for all of these Three practices to some extent. The invitation for Enneagram Fours with regards to self care is to not wait for an invitation to participate or to start something. Often Fours can get into this mental space where they feel inferior or as though they don't have things sufficiently put together enough to belong or to join in. But the reality is life is passing you by moment by moment, and when you're waiting for the right time, or waiting to be better prepared, life is slowly passing you by. So even if you don't feel fully ready, the invitation is to be brave enough to take just some small practical steps towards joining into or becoming a part of something anyways. Wen it comes to communities or groups, if that's kind of the thing that you are identifying that you're you're hesitant to join into, it's gonna have this tendency to kind of view themselves as separate from and that perception is what really keeps them from fully participating. So don't wait for the invitation to participate, take these small steps to join in and be a part of it.
For Enneagram Fives, the invitation for you is to really be careful of following distractions down the rabbit hole. You can be intrigued and follow numerous fascinating subjects and ideas down the rabbit hole, but they can be a huge waste of time or a distraction from what you really need to be doing in the things in your life that matter to you or these relationships that are of great value to you the doing that you need to participate in as well. And so even if it's a subject that you need to have some knowledge in, maybe it's something practical for your home space or something with regards to work, consider instead if it's a better use of time for you to just make a decisive action rather than spending so much time collecting the information before you begin. If that feels really hard or impossible to kind of make a decision without all the information, sometimes this can be a space were you trust the intuition and the natural giftings of others in making that decision, whether that's in a work environment, or with your partner. Making the decisions with them together and allowing some of their decisive energy to kind of carry you through in that.
For Enneagram Nines, the invitation for self care is to pay attention to what's going on around you. You know, for all Three Types in this withdrawn stance, there's a strong inner world and for Nines, your natural tendency will be often to kind of zone out or withdraw into the internal calmness and internal comfort of your inner world. But in those moments when you do that, you're zoning out from conversations or from work or from community, and so be intentional about focusing your attention on what's in front of you - the conversation that your spouse is having with you about their day or watching your kiddos play or listening to your co workers concerns about what was happening and how they're trying to navigate that. Be present about what's happening in front of you in real time. Sometimes, just practicing recalling what the other has said or what they're communicating or feeling can be really helpful in drawing you back into the present moment. If that that doesn't feel helpful, another practice can be just feeling your feet firmly on the floor and kind of feeling the felt sense of “I am physically here, physically with this other being, and I'm with them. I’m present and I'm holding space for them” being present in the moment.
Friends, this is just a snapshot of what we explore more in depth in the virtual Growth and Self-care series, which kicks off October 25, 2021. Okay Enneagram friends, until next time!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai