The Enneagram Guide to Waking Up

Find Your Path, Face Your Shadow, Discover Your True Self

Beatrice Chestnut, Uranio Paes

• Publisher: Hampton Roads Publishing
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781612834696
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

"An Outstanding book that offers precise steps to take to wake up to the self-limiting habits of your personality, get out of your own way, and give yourself the gift of accessing more of your higher – more authentic – self." —Ian Cron, author of The Road Back to You: An Enneagram Journey to Self-Discovery A fresh approach to the Enneagram that encourages readers to embark on their own hero's journey for transformation. This is a personal transformation book rooted in the wisdom of the Enneagram system of personality types. It is a book about waking up and growing into the best version of yourself. It is a book that shows you how to discover who you are and what you can be. It is a book about finding your path, facing your shadow, and discovering your true self. It is a good news–bad news–good news story. The good news: you survived childhood. The bad news: in order to grow, you are going to experience some pain. The really good news: you can use your negative habits as a springboard to move beyond them. With a commitment to self-observation and reflection, you can develop greater self-awareness and open yourself up to a life filled with exciting choices and opportunities.
Each of the nine chapters includes these features:

• The problematic perspective, the process of self-discovery, and the path forward for that type
• How the main issues for that type get played out in 3 different ways—the 3 distinct sub-types of the main type (necessary for pinpoint accuracy in describing your personality and your path of growth)

Chestnut and Paes, two leading Enneagram teachers, frame this approach to personality types in a way that is accessible, practical, and filled with possibility.

Type 1

The Path from Anger to Serenity

Your best teacher is your last mistake.

RALPH NADER

Once upon a time, there was a person named One. He came into this world as a spontaneous child ready to appreciate the inherent perfection of life. Completely serene and accepting, he felt free to experience joy and fun in everything he did. He took things lightly and flowed flexibly with life, with himself, and with everyone around him.

But early in life, One had a painful experience of feeling criticized. When this happened, he felt pressured to conform to others’ standards of good behavior. One unconsciously tried to cope with the pain of feeling judged and punished by proactively monitoring and criticizing himself before others had a chance to. He internalized the standards others applied to him and tried to be good and do the right thing all the time. He began to feel that he had to be perfect to be seen as worthy, and that he had to work hard to control himself in order to be “good.”

In his quest to be good, One developed an ability to notice and correct his own errors, to see how everything he did could be more perfect, and to determine what needed to be improved in the world around him. He worked hard to uphold the highest standards of good behavior and he judged people harshly who didn't follow the rules. He became excellent at making things excellent—including himself. He evaluated everything he saw in terms of how bad or wrong it was—most of all himself.

Over time, One became very good at being virtuous and avoiding mistakes. He found the best ways to do things and adhered to all the rules of good behavior all the time. He criticized himself whenever something turned out imperfectly (which was all the time) and he tried to do better the next time. But in the process of getting better and being better, One lost touch with many aspects of himself. He stopped feeling or doing anything that might have even the smallest chance of being considered wrong. He lost most of his awareness of his instinctual impulses, his feelings, his creativity, and his spontaneity. He lost touch with his own inner sense of what felt right, but might be judged as wrong.

By imposing strict limits on himself, One learned to avoid anything that could possibly be wrong, including his own deepest rhythms, wishes, and dreams. He often became very angry when others didn't follow the rules, but, instead of expressing his anger, he hid his feelings and tried to be nice. He prioritized being ethical, reliable, and responsible in everything he did. He felt compelled to control everything he possibly could to make sure that he got things right every time. And he punished himself when he didn't. His survival strategy wouldn't let him do anything else. And he felt irritated about that too—but couldn't let anyone know that he felt irritated.

What One didn't realize was that everyone around him did know he was angry because, when he enforced what was right, he often stomped around or banged his fists on the table or talked in a sarcastic tone of voice. It became part of the way he operated when in survival mode. He didn't necessarily like it—in fact, it was very hard on him—but he couldn't stop it. He couldn't acknowledge his anger, because being angry was not good. Sometimes he felt tired and sad as a result—almost letting himself feel. But what could he do?

One eventually became completely deadened to any real sense of himself. He “fell asleep” to his own inherent goodness—a goodness that revealed itself in his good intentions and his genuine desire to be a good person. He could only keep following the rules and working hard to meet the highest standards in everything he did. But he also completely lost awareness of his deeper human need for fun and relaxation, as well as his basic human wish to be bad once in a while.

One had become a zombie—a very polite, appropriate, rule-following zombie, but a zombie just the same.

THE TYPE 1 CHECKLIST

If most or all of the following personality traits apply to you, you may be a Type 1 personality:

• You have a harsh inner critic that monitors what you do and operates most of the time; you are sensitive to criticism from others.
• You naturally sort perceptions into “good or bad,” “right or wrong”; you try hard to be good and do the right thing.
• When you look at almost anything, you automatically see how it could be improved; you easily notice errors and want to correct them.
• You follow the rules all or most of the time; you think the world would be better off if everyone did the same.
• You think and talk in terms of “shoulds” and “musts”; most or all of the time, you believe duty has to come before pleasure.
• You place a high value on being a good, responsible, and reliable person; you have high standards for yourself and others; you are an advocate for self-improvement.
• You over-control your emotions because you believe it's inappropriate or unproductive to express them or act on them.
• You over-control your impulses for fun and pleasure.
• You believe there is one right way to do everything, which happens to be your way; you have strong opinions and readily express them.
• You value the rare occasions on which something you do or see feels absolutely perfect; this inspires you to keep striving to make things as good as they can possibly be.

If, after using the Type 1 checklist, you find that you are Type 1, your growth journey will follow three steps.

First, you will embark on a quest to know yourself by learning to identify personality patterns connected to the need to be right, do the right thing, and improve yourself and the world around you.

Next, you must face your Shadow to become more aware of unconscious patterns and tendencies that stem from your need to feel worthy and virtuous to quell a basic sense of anxiety or prove your inherent goodness. This helps you to recognize all the ways criticism and self-criticism are actually holding you back.

The final stage of your journey involves moving toward the “high side” of your type by relaxing your need to be good and accepting your natural human impulses. When you do this, you begin to recognize the inherent goodness in yourself and others, and appreciate imperfection as part of the organic flow of life.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.” —C. G. Jung

EMBARKING ON THE QUEST

If you are a Type 1, the first stage of your path of awakening involves learning to observe yourself more consciously. This means developing the ability to notice your specific habits of judging yourself and others—without judging yourself further for judging. Your growth journey will involve acknowledging how much attention you pay to correcting errors in your environment, monitoring and criticizing the things you do, and resenting what others are doing that isn't right. To further your journey, you will need to work to feel less responsible (or overly responsible) for making sure things happen the right way, begin to respect your emotions and impulses, and develop a greater capacity for compassion for yourself. By learning to recognize when you are overly focused on self-improvement—how you try to be good and avoid being bad—you advance down the path toward greater self-knowledge.

Key Type 1 Patterns

To embark on your journey, focus on and make more conscious these five habitual Type 1 patterns.

Criticizing Yourself

Notice if you have an “inner critic”—an internal voice or sense through which you continually monitor yourself and others. That voice provides critical commentary about what's happening, judging everything as “good” or “bad.” You may tend to be unaware of the consequences of this self-monitoring, especially when your inner critic is harsh—which it will be. You likely ignore the physical, emotional, and mental tension this critic causes when it enforces what it defines as good behavior at the high cost of increased stress.

Requiring Perfection

You put pressure on yourself to meet very high standards and this can lead to tension or procrastination when nothing ever seems good enough. Your focus on imperfection generates a negative attitude about life and may cause you to make people feel criticized or judged. You probably find it hard to relax, enjoy what's happening, and celebrate successes when your judging mind continually dwells on how the results you achieve could be better or more perfect. When you recognize this, you can begin to refocus these thoughts and move toward a more positive attitude.

Following the Rules

Observe yourself to see if you rigidly adhere to rules, routines, structures, and processes, and you create rules for others as well. You may become angry when people don't follow the rules in the ways you think they should or adhere to your standards of correct behavior, though you likely avoid fully acknowledging your anger. You may rather experience this anger as resentment toward people who do “bad” things you would never allow yourself to do. Why are they free to do whatever they want when you can't? Notice if you tend to display a similar rigidity concerning ethics, morals, and work.

Sacrificing Pleasure

You probably work too hard and find it difficult to make time to relax. Does work always have to come before play for you? Observe yourself to see if it feels challenging to try to stop controlling everything and just flow with the rhythm of life. You have likely forgotten or ignore the early experiences that made you feel as if you had to suppress your desires. Notice if you conform to a set of unquestioned rules, but don't fully realize how stressful it feels to hold yourself to such high standards. You hesitate to pursue pleasure or allow for leisure time to just enjoy yourself.

Controlling Emotions

When you do somehow allow yourself to express feelings and instinctual reactions, you likely do so with a lot of self-criticism and self-blame. When you avoid being aware of anger, notice if that anger leaks out as partially repressed feelings like irritation, frustration, annoyance, self-righteousness, or body tension. When you find yourself judging emotions as unproductive or inappropriate, see if you tend to rationalize your tendency to suppress them, citing good reasons to over-control your feelings. Notice if you judge yourself and others as “bad” for expressing anger and other emotions as a way to enforce your habitual avoidance of your feelings.

“At the core of all anger is a need that is not being fulfilled.”

—Marshall Rosenberg

The Type 1 Passion

Anger is the passion that drives Type 1s. It often manifests as a preoccupation with self-judgment and striving to be good. As the core emotional motivation of this type, anger usually appears in a contained or partially contained f...