[WHITNEY]:
If you’re starting your own private practice from a faith-based perspective and wanting to help, please reach out to me. I’m looking at starting a new mastermind group beginning of 2021 for the Faith in Practice mastermind class. To apply you can go to practiceofthepractice.com/apply or if you have questions, send me an email, [email protected].

Welcome to the Faith in Practice podcast. I’m your host, Whitney Owens, recording live from Savannah, Georgia. I’m a licensed professional counselor, group practice owner, and private practice consultant. Each week, through personal story or amazing interviews, I will help you learn how to start, grow, and scale your private practice from a faith-based perspective. I’m going to show you how to have an awesome, faith-based practice without being cheesy or fake. You too can have a successful practice, make lots of money, and be true to yourself.

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[WHITNEY]:
Today, we’re doing the third episode in a four part series all on the enneagram. So if you did not catch the first two episodes, please go back and listen to those because they’re awesome. And they do kind of build on one another. And today I have, again, James P. Owens with me. This is not only an enneagram expert in my mind, but also my husband so it’s exciting to be able to do a series with him. Today we’re going to talk about triad number two, or the second triad, I guess, which does include the number two, which is the heart triad. And so, James, thanks for coming on the show again today.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, I’m glad to be doing this again. The enneagram is awesome and there’s so much interesting stuff to talk about with it. But like you said, we’re going to get into the heart triad or feelings triad today. That’s enneagram types two, three, and four. And each of these types are characterized by the way they deal with or don’t deal with their feelings. All of these types are looking for love, looking to be fulfilled with love. Certainly, we all want love but these types in particular are characterized by the way that they seek love from others.

[WHITNEY]:
Great. All right, well, let’s go ahead and just jump in because I think we have a lot to cover on each one. So I guess we would start with the number two.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, absolutely. Type two would be the first type of the heart or feelings triad. Type two, you might remember from the intro episode is sometimes called the Helper. Type twos are characterized by the need to be needed. As I mentioned in the first episode, somewhere along the way, in their childhood, twos internalized this message that the way to be loved is to be indispensable or helpful to others. So, twos are seeking love in the world by seeking to help provide for, nurture, care for, be a good friend to other people. So for this reason, twos bring a lot of really awesome gifts to the table; they’re kind, compassionate, they tend to be servant-hearted. Twos have a great ability to put the needs of others before their own. But, of course, that also creates a shadow side.

In addition to all these wonderful gifts, twos struggle in a variety of ways; one of them is with setting boundaries. And you can kind of see how that follows from what I’ve said already about those who are dominant in type two, that if your personality is built around meeting the needs of others, then you’re going to struggle with setting boundaries, knowing when to say ‘no’ to other people. That can be very hard for a type two because their basic fear is to be lonely, or unloved. And so they often find themselves in an endless cycle of trying to meet the needs of others, in order to win love, thus ignoring their own feelings in many cases.

Twos are great at feeling the feelings of others, knowing what other people need before they need it, even themselves, kind of meeting those emotional needs. But often they struggle to express their own emotional needs, to ask for help when they need it. And many times, twos find themselves standing around thinking, well, gosh, can’t everyone just see what I need? And isn’t someone going to come and help me? Obviously, I need help. Can’t you see that? Because they can see it in other people, but the rest of us may not be so good at pointing that out.

You know, we’ve talked about in the triads, the ways that the different types take different stances as well. And so twos take the compliant stance. This means that they move towards other people. So that seems pretty natural when you think about the two personality. That a two is going to be a type that moves towards other people, that seeks out community, seeks out teamwork, and wants to kind of build that really communal atmosphere. Twos are great friends and naturally become friends with those they work with. So I guess, I would say if you are a group practice owner, if you supervise employees in any way, or you’re a counselor of any kind as a two, some things to be aware of are that you might be overly focused on just making people happy. You might be overly focused on making your clients happy, making your employees happy. And in that way you might miss out on something that they really need that might be a little harder to get at. You might just be focused on making people happy, and not on the real kind of growth that they actually need.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, all really good thoughts there. We have a lot of twos that are therapists, as everyone can understand, trying to help people. It’s one of the most common numbers that I find, honestly, not so much in my consulting work, but more so with my clinicians. I have a lot of twos. I guess, twos might not necessarily want to own the practice, but they want to kind of support people and support the business, I guess. Would you say that?

[JAMES]:
Yes, I think that’s right. Twos often find themselves sort of attracted to support type positions, or maybe not being the one in charge, but being the second in command, the trusted advisor to the one who is in charge, a good employee. So yeah, I think you’ll likely have two employees if you are building a counseling practice, and you’re looking to hire counselors. Certainly, as you said, lots of counselors are type twos. And, you know, I imagine that they’re excellent at it because that personality lends itself so well to it, to the work. But you might not find twos as much being in charge. Nevertheless, type twos are great at all kinds of things, and can certainly be excellent leaders, and be in charge as well, if they are self-aware enough to kind of do the hard work that they need to do.

[WHITNEY]:
Sure, I do have employees that are twos. And so one thing that’s really been important for me as their boss is to acknowledge when they do good work because a lot of times, twos feel like people don’t see what they’re doing or the good work they’re doing, like you were talking about their needs. It’s really being able to verbally say, that was really great, what you just did, or I really trust you, I really appreciate you, like, they get a lot of growth and a lot of… I don’t know. Just the affirmation is really important for them more so than some of the other types that I’ve noticed on the enneagram.

[JAMES]:
Yes, that’s absolutely true. Twos are very image conscious, like threes, but they also very much respond to that positive feedback. They’re not necessarily the ones to take the rewards in terms of money or material possessions, but they absolutely want to have that kind of positive feedback, receiving words of affirmation, receiving love in that way.

[WHITNEY]:
Another thing I’ve noticed with twos – and this is for my employees, but also the clients we work with – is they don’t seem to do the best job at verbalizing their needs. Because they spend so much of their time noticing everyone else’s needs, they either don’t notice their needs, or they just don’t know how to ask for things. And so a lot of times I need to speak up for my twos there and say, hey, you think you might need this? Or just provide them with something that I think they need, without them having to ask for it. I also find that my twos tend to kind of lay their needs down for the practice – whatever the practice needs, I’ll do it – which obviously makes me super happy. But ultimately, it’s going to make them burned out, drained, and then they’re going to come back and set a boundary. So it’s helping them see hey, yeah, I love your attitude, but let’s set some healthy boundaries for you so this can be a little bit more long term and that you’re not just giving up yourself all the time. It’s not sustainable.

[JAMES]:
Exactly. It’s not sustainable. But boy, let me tell you if you know a two, and you can find what they need or want and give it to them before they have to ask for it, that two will be your friend forever because that is exactly what they want. They do struggle to voice their own needs, but love it when other people can meet those needs. And they really do need that because twos do spend so much time giving to us, and serving us, and loving us. And they need us to step up and give back a little bit. But like you said, helping to create those boundaries. Setting boundaries is one of the things that twos struggle with the most. There’s kind of that danger of codependency, often. Twos are certainly not the only type that can develop codependent relationships. But that is a particular struggle when you have a type that does struggle with setting boundaries in the ways that many type twos do.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, that’s what I see mostly in the clinical work with clients, that they come in with those codependency issues. And then when you show them the enneagram and what a two is, they all of a sudden everything makes sense, and then they can start setting those boundaries.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, absolutely.

[WHITNEY]:
Great. Okay, let’s move on to threes.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, so type three is called the Achiever or the Performer. These are success-oriented types, who want to do their best, avoid failure and win in all situations. Somewhere along the way, threes got this message that the way to get love is to be successful. And we talked about three as being in the feelings triad or the heart triad. You know, now twos externalize their feelings, they look to the feelings of others, and they sort of feel the feelings of others. Fours, which we’ll talk about in a minute, internalize their feelings, they feel their feelings very deeply, internally. Threes, on the other hand, ignore their feelings. So while they are in the heart triad, characterized by how they deal with their feelings, they’re characterized by ignoring them. Threes are too busy to feel things; they’ve got too much to do and they do do a lot. Threes are very active. As I said, very success oriented, they can achieve so many wonderful things. A three is a type of person who can win others over, can sell just about anything, can be the upfront, charismatic leader, speaker that you need, is someone that will always do a good job because they are so success-oriented. They’re a three, the achiever, the performer.

And so their basic desire is to feel valuable. So kind of as you said with twos, it’s pretty similar with threes. And if you have a three working for you, in your practice, tell them about their wins, tell them how good they did. If you’re going to give them some correction, or tell them something they didn’t do so well, start off with… lead with some wins, like, hey, you did this really well, you really killed it here, right? And then follow up with, but here’s some things you can continue to improve upon. Because their fear is that they would be worthless, or a loser, or not to win, not to be successful. So that’s a little bit about managing threes.

Now, some of the other pitfalls that threes might deal with, are that they may tend to exaggerate their own achievements, tend to deceive themselves into thinking that they’re more successful than they are, believing their own hype, so to speak. Threes also will adapt to whatever situation that they find themselves in, they’ll just sort of become whatever they need to succeed. This is good because they can succeed that way, but it also often leads to an underdeveloped sense of who they really are, personally, you know what I mean? Threes become sort of chameleons, and don’t have a strong sense of their personal self. They’re just being whatever they need to be to win, or to achieve.

And finally, I guess another pitfall would be that threes can struggle to name and connect to their feelings. Like I said, they ignore their feelings, almost more than any other type. Threes really struggle to feel their feelings. So one of the things that is really helpful, if you are a type three, or if you work with type threes, is to slow down, reflect, take a deep breath, and connect with your feelings, connect with what’s going on emotionally. Because if you’re a three, you’ll find that the things you are doing, and you are probably doing a lot, are really coming from your feelings; you just may not realize that. Threes don’t so much feel their feelings as they do them. And it’s important that they do that work of growing in their self-awareness in order to realize how their actions are really being motivated by the feeling.

[WHITNEY]:
So great, thank you. I’m thinking about some threes right now.

[JAMES]:
Yeah. So, if you…

[WHITNEY]:
Threes are so likeable, like, they’re so charismatic and the whole chameleon thing, like, they can adapt to any situation so people are really drawn to them. And I think about different people, I’m thinking you’re probably a three because you’re so likeable, and then they take the enneagram and they pop up as three – threes and sevens.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, sevens are very likeable too. We all love sevens, they make us laugh and smile. So I would say, you know, if you are a three practice owner, you’re probably doing awesome, so I probably don’t have to say a lot to you. Just be mindful of the feelings of your employees or the people that work for you. Because you’re not naturally attuned to feelings, you’re naturally inclined to push feelings aside and move on. But you may be supervising employees for whom that’s not how they want to do things. Your two, your four employees, sixes, other employees may need some space to feel their feelings, to be a little bit more emotional than you’re typically comfortable with. And as a three, it may be hard for you to give them that space but it’s really important that you do.

If you have three employees, like I said, make sure that you are publicly acknowledging their successes. This is what threes live for, to be praised as winners, you know, not in an excessive way or in a gloating way or in a way that puts down other people, but in a way that affirms them and really builds them up, and says, you know, hey, you did a really great job for me and I really appreciate that. Threes generally appreciate the typical kind of rewards; bonuses, raises, the corner office, all the things that people typically look to in work as rewards or motivations, threes are going to, generally speaking, eat that up. Of course, I would say sometimes the kind of work, businessman type three is a stereotype that’s not helpful because all threes have slightly different definitions of what winning or success is and so they may look really different based on what their own personal definition of success is.

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[WHITNEY]:
The Faith in Practice podcast is part of the Practice of the Practice podcast network. A network of podcasts seeking to help you start, grow, and scale your practice. To hear other episodes like the Imperfect Thriving podcast, Bomb Mom podcast, Beta Male Revolution, or Empowered and Unapologetic, go to practiceofthepractice.com/network.

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[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. One of the other pitfalls I’ve noticed, and you kind of touched on this, but I’ll speak a little bit more to the part that I see, is they’re always moving, like, taking on everything. So they’ve got to run a practice, and then they need to have two side hustle businesses on the side. And it kind of becomes difficult for them to do anything super well, unless they really systematize and have detail-oriented people because they tend to see things big picture. They see a lot of excitement, and hey, I’m going to start a podcast or, hey, I’m going to do this consulting on the side, or, hey, I’m going to do I don’t know X,Y, and Z. But then it’s hard for them to know all the details of what they’re doing. So then they get super overwhelmed, super fast. And so when I’m consulting with threes, I’m like, okay, slow down, and really think through these things. Because, yeah, that’s just kind of your movement, you need to pay attention to how you feel and what’s going on in your current phase before you move on to something else.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, absolutely. I think threes totally get jazzed about new, big ideas. They are absolutely big picture people. And so they get excited about, you know, these new ideas, these sort of inspirational things. And this is awesome. It’s one of the things I love about them; I have often said that if I were not a five, you know, if I could choose my own number, I would choose to be a three. I wish that I could be a three, and to have the capacity for doing all the amazing things that threes can do, to have the ability to not be as awkward as I am in social situations so often, to really win others over whenever I want to inspire others in the ways threes can. I would love to be a three, I’m just throwing that out there.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, threes are good people to work for too.

[JAMES]:
Oh, absolutely. Yeah, tend to be great leaders.

[JAMES]:
But threes do need to keep, around themselves, other types to kind of keep them grounded. You know, like I said, a three might get really jazzed about some new idea. But they might need a, you know, like, a type six, or a type one, or type five to say, hey, you know, wait a minute, have you really thought this through? Like, let’s really think about the logical details that you’re going to need to accomplish in order to get this done. And we may, you know, may find working as a team that you’re able to do that.

[WHITNEY]:
They’re successful.

[JAMES]:
Another thing real quick about type threes. We’ve talked about the stances as well. So type threes, of course, they’re in the feelings triad, but they take the assertive or aggressive stance. And that means that threes move independently, or move against other people. So threes are kind of out there – I think ‘move independently’ is a great way to describe what threes do. Threes are doing their thing, and you can jump on board, they certainly want you to, but they’re going to do it, whether you’re on board or not. Threes move independently of other people. So you’ll see them doing all these great things. But they may not seek out teamwork and team building as much as, say, like a two or a one or a six might. So that’s important if you’re a three, and you’re a business owner or a practice owner or whatever. You may need to be aware that your employees might need a little more from you than what you’re giving them. They might need a little more guidance, a little more teamwork, a little more community, than what you’re naturally going to provide.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. I actually found that ones and threes work really well together because the threes see the big picture, and the ones see all the details. And it seems like it would be a three owning a business and one being an assistant, but actually I am a one and then my assistant is a three, and she is incredible. And so I love the compliment of those two numbers.

[JAMES]:
Yeah. I would think threes and ones would work really well together because they both want to do things very, very well. They both want to do things excellently. Motivated a little differently, you know, ones being motivated by that desire for moral goodness and perfection whereas threes are motivated a little more by success. Sometimes those things may bump up against each other a little bit. But in general, if your goals are aligned, yeah, three and a one are both gonna go hard for the same goal.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah. All right. So how about fours.

[JAMES]:
Okay, yeah. So, the final type of the feelings triad or heart triad is the type four, the Romantic or the Individualist. As I said earlier on, type twos externalize their emotions and feel the feelings of others, type threes ignore their feelings, and type fours internalize them. So, type fours are feeling a lot of feelings all the time, very deeply. Type fours do tend to be sensitive, and emotional, are often very artistic, a little bit prone to kind of this, you know, sort of melancholy, bohemian kind of attitude. Somewhere along the way, romantics, or individualists – type fours – got this message that the way to be loved is to be unique. So fours are on this quest to be themselves, to be unique, to be different than others, they generally see themselves as being very different. No one is like me, no one is quite like me, I’m unique, I’m different. And that’s motivated by this fear of having no significance, this fear of kind of having no identity, if you will.

Now, type fours, a little differently than twos and threes, they take the withdrawn stance. So type two is the compliant stance in the feelings triad, type three is the assertive stance or aggressive stance in the feelings triad and type fours take the withdrawn stance. This means that they move away from other people. So type fours might appear to be a little bit more introverted, a little bit quieter, they’re generally kind of doing their own thing a little more than twos and threes.

Some of the gifts of type fours are that they are artistic, they have a great eye for beauty. But in terms of thinking about a four as a counselor, or in any kind of helping profession, the real gift there of type fours is their ability to understand emotion, and to be comfortable with the emotions of others. Fours have an amazing capacity to sit with others in emotions that are extremely difficult for other types to feel or to understand. Emotions that we think of as negative, that we may want to kind of push aside or ignore, feelings of sadness, grief, loss, failure, pain, all of these things, type fours are a little bit more comfortable with than the rest of us because they felt them in themselves deeply and as intensely as anyone. And so when someone is feeling emotions like that, one of the best types that you could go to is a type four because they will sit with you and not judge your feelings and let you feel them. Fours have great gifts in that regard.

Some of the pitfalls of fours are that they may be overly sensitive to criticism, they may play the victim a little bit. In their desire to be themselves, to be unique, fours may kind of force themselves into a role where they’re not part of the group. But this is kind of one of the pitfalls for fours is that they want to be unique, they want different. So they make themselves so different that they don’t fit in. They think, well, I don’t fit in, I’m different. And so it kind of becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, if you know what I mean.

[WHITNEY]:
Mm hmm.

[JAMES]:
Yeah. And so enneagram teachers often say that the deadly sin or the main pitfall of type fours is envy or jealousy. So fours feel like everyone else has it so much better than they do. So if you’re a type four, and you’re a group practice owner, a business owner, counselor of some sort, you know, be aware of those feelings of envy or jealousy, that you might feel like other counselors, other business owners have it more together than you do, that they’re doing something so much better than you are; that’s probably not true, you’re probably doing just fine. And you have your own unique way of doing things and are contributing really positively to the world. If you have four employees, be aware that they will come across to you perhaps as very emotional. They may need a little more emotional space and other types do. Be aware that they may be overly sensitive to criticism. And be aware that even though they will do their things in their own unique way, they have tremendous gifts for this kind of work that we’re talking about here.

[WHITNEY]:
Yeah, in my consulting that I do, I don’t really encounter too many fours as business owners. I’m sure they’re out there… maybe threes with some four traits sometimes. But I do see a lot of fours that come in for clinical counseling. And it’s a lot of what you just said, like, helping them to understand their uniqueness and like affirm that within them, and giving them that place of identity is a lot of that work. And then also helping them to manage their emotions because they experience so many emotions they, unfortunately, are throwing them all around, you know, saying inappropriate things or doing inappropriate actions to try to deal with their emotions, when really, it’s totally unhealthy. And so helping them to learn, even if it’s DBT, or other coping skills to be able to manage those emotions is really helpful for fours.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, absolutely. So those are the types of the heart triad – type two, type three, and type four.

[WHITNEY]:
Great. Well, I’ve loved doing this series with you, not only cuz you’re James, and I love you, but I also liked doing the series with you because, you know, it’s really cool. Like, we’re able to talk about different parts of the enneagram and how it actually happens within the counseling setting. So I feel like we can get a lot of information about the enneagram but here, we are able to really talk about what it looks like managing a practice. So I’ve really enjoyed doing this series.

[JAMES]:
Yeah, absolutely. And of course, the enneagram goes so deep and there’s so many aspects of it that we’re not going to be able to get to in these episodes. I’ll mention again, I encourage your listeners, if they’re interested in this, to begin to explore the enneagram for themselves. If you’ve never identified your dominant type, maybe take a test, you can check out… There’s free tests online, there are some ones you can pay for – The Enneagram Institute on their website has a good test that you do have to pay for. Of course, the tests are not the end all be all. They’re not the only way that you could identify your type; you should read about each type and decide for yourself which one you think fits you the best, which one you’re dominant in.

Some really good books, places to start in terms if you want to go a little deeper in reading about the enneagram, The Road Back to You by Ian Cron is a great way to start. It’s a great overview of the enneagram. It’s written with a Christian audience in mind. Ian Cron is an Episcopal priest and so he writes with the perspective of both a psychotherapist and a Christian. And of course, one of the most popular enneagram teachers over the last 20-30 years has been Richard Rohr, and his book, The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective is still a really great overview. Very deep, very spiritual, as you would expect with Richard Rohr. So you can take a look at either one of those books if you want to go a little deeper, but the enneagram has provided me with such a great way to understand myself, understand others, to be compassionate towards others. As I’ve said, and I’ll say again, all of this is not intended to judge or to criticize anyone. It’s all intended to invite compassion towards others. Compassion for ourselves and compassion toward other people. To grow spiritually, to be the kind of people that God would have us be. That’s what the enneagram is all about.

[WHITNEY]:
Well, yes, thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. In the next episode, we will talk about the head triad so you’ll get to know James a little bit more and his fiveness.

[JAMES]:
Absolutely. Can’t wait to talk about type fives.

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[WHITNEY]:
Thank you for listening to the Faith in Practice podcast. If you love this podcast, please rate and review on iTunes or your favorite podcast player. If you liked this episode and want to know more, check out the Practice of the Practice website. Also, there you can learn more about me, options for working together, such as individual and group consulting, or just shoot me an email [email protected]. Would love to hear from you.

This podcast is designed to provide accurate and authoritative information in regard to the subject matter covered. This is given with the understanding that neither the host, the Practice of the Practice, or the guests are providing legal, mental health, or other professional information. If you need a professional, you should find one.