Enneagram Work is Powerful Spiritual Work
For Individuals
The Enneagram is an ancient form of deep psychology. It contains both the positive and the negative aspects of your personality. Working to reduce the negative, there is a need for great courage and humility. Using the Enneagram as a personality test or a fun parlor game to label a person’s strengths is misusing the Enneagram. This is a tool that should be used in the context of a therapeutic, life coach or spiritual formation relationship.
Couples
Would you like to understand your personality, and your spouse’s? The Enneagram teaches you about your habits of feeling and thinking. It is a tool that also shows you your role as a growth partner in your spouse’s spiritual development. It is not a tool to be used with couples in crisis or recovering from relational trauma. Stabilization in the couple relationship is needed to begin the deep work of the Enneagram.
We go over an introduction to the nine personality types or habits. One generally has a main habit, along with a “wing”. An example is a “striver” “3” person who has a helper “2” wing. Or, a peaceful “9”, with an organized “1” wing. Remember this map or system is so much more than a label and a number, that people are complex, unique, and special.
Become more present in your own identity: how you identify your self. During the work you will learn the personality of your spouse which can help you be less reactive to THEIR habits. It could be the beginning of a much deeper acceptance and understanding of yourself and your intimate relationship.
Ways the Enneagram helps a marriage.
- It’ll Help You Understand What Your Partner Is Motivated By
One of the best things the Enneagram can bring to you is helping both you and your partner gain insight into what inspires you and what drives you. Understanding your own and your partner’s desires will help you both navigate your communication and conflict with a clearer picture of what the other person wants and how you can help each other achieve it.
- It’ll Help You Understand What Your Partner Is Scared Of
The Enneagram will also help you gain insight into your fears. Not surface-level fears, like heights or sharks, but the deeper concerns—like loneliness or vulnerability. All humans share a few baseline fears, but the Enneagram posits that most individuals are particularly inclined to one or two specific things that come to shape their view of the world.
- It’ll Help You Understand Where Your Partner Is At Emotionally
It’s easy to become critical of what look like your partner’s mood swings. What the Enneagram can help you and your partner do is recognize what’s going on behind those mood swings. We all have seasons of being in a really good place and seasons where we get overwhelmed with doubt and anxiety, but we’re not always great at recognizing those seasons when they come and go, and we’re definitely not great at recognizing when people around us are going through them.
