The Idealized
Image and Stress
I avoided writing about Enneagram stress responses for some time, because when I
research a particular topic I always learn something difficult about myself (a
Nine), and I'm as good at backpedaling as anyone I know. But Sarah Aschenbach's
two-part article in the Enneagram Monthly forced me to my feet ("Relationships
Made Easy: How to Get Along With All Kinds of People," May & June
1999).
Aschenbach wrote that Nines under stress "prefer to retreat. Disengaging from
the struggle gives them a stoic quality ... If their first line of defense does not work,
they may become unresponsive, and then increasingly stubborn. They turn their backs on
people, literally, and give others the silent treatment." Ugh.
But continue putting me under stress and there I am. (In
Transformation
Through Insight,
Claudio Naranjo suggests "no better name for the artificial
peace of E9 than Gurdjieff's
expression: a 'self-calming devil.'")
As you know if you've browsed the
poetry section of this
web site, I believe (reading or writing) poetry is a good way to tease out
some unconscious material. Much to my chagrin, when I read Aschenbach's
article I recalled a poem I'd written only a few months before. It
started out to be about my Nine mother's failure to forgive personal slights,
but ends with the lines, "I wake up nights, remembering all the things
I
don't forgive." The good news?
I am remembering, which
triggers a continuing cycle of shock/humiliation,
observation, shifting to a new reality, and integration.
It's helpful to see how our stress responses arise from our dedication to
the image our particular Enneagram style dictates. As described by
Karen
Horney in
Neurosis and Human Growth, "gradually and
unconsciously we create an idealized image of ourselves, which entails
self-glorification and gives us the much-needed feeling of significance and superiority
over others:"
Because of our fixation on a self-image it becomes not O.K. to let anything
filter in that's incongruent with the image. From the perspective of our idealized
self-images, according to Horney, our primary concern is not what we feel, but whether
we're safe. We develop artificial, strategic ways to cope with others that override our
genuine feelings, wishes, and thoughts:
Like a bad dream, though, when we encounter stressful situations our fixation
seems to invite the emergence of what a friend called "the Evil Twin,"
an exaggeration of our self-image that separates us from others instead of drawing us
closer together (the following chart is based on material from Aschenbach's article and
Riso and Hudson's Personality Types):
Click here for pdf of the following
self-descriptions from participants in my workshop, Stress
and the Enneagram:
-
"I
get really frustrated and
angry when there's stress I can't manage," reported a
One,
"particularly when it comes out of nowhere; for
example when I was driving home yesterday and somebody banged into me from behind.
Whereas with stress I can manage, I'll be rather methodical: if I have 100 calls to make,
for example, I'll do 10 an hour for two hours each day until they're completed."
Another One described a party she'd attended recently:
"I abhor going into a
group of people I don't know, and I found myself making sure everything was
in place on the buffet table, the trays of hors-d'oeuvres were filled, and dirty
dishes were cleared and taken to the kitchen." She became so busy managing
her anxiety this way, several other party-goers assumed
she was the hostess! (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Ones... feel everything and everyone needs shaping
up, and they are impatient and angry with others who seem too casual about doing what is
right.")
-
What causes me the most
stress," said a
Two, "is feeling overwhelmed,
feeling I can't make a difference. I get positive energy when there's a course of action I can take. I tell myself, 'I'm
going to fight my way through this.' When dealing with someone I can't count on, I'll
write them off completely and take care of everything myself. Then anything they do I can
accept as a gift, but I don't have to worry about it." Another Two
realized with some pain how she'd tried to make her kids feel guilty when extended
family was visiting for Memorial Day and she felt burdened with all the
cooking. She saw how she'd taken responsibility for planning the menu, doing the
grocery shopping, and handling everything in the kitchen. She didn't
even know she would have liked help until she felt so exhausted she couldn't enjoy
herself. By then she was stressed and lashed out with a version of,
"after all I've done for you..." (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Twos... can become quite bossy and manipulative, though they don't want to see this about
themselves. They may make others feel guilty....")
-
A
Three described
herself as particularly stressed with "the unknown, when I can't move in any
direction because it's still uncertain. Under stress I'm on
overdrive, and I'm impatient when others aren't. I start pushing. Another Three had been dismayed when two members
of his team resigned within three weeks of each other. Each had distinct
and legitimate reasons for leaving, to satisfy their own
family and career needs, but he had to cover their workload for several months until they could
be replaced. Consequently, he'd not been supportive of their efforts to make the
transition easier for their own teams. Instead, he'd "bad-mouthed"
them for "abandoning ship." (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Threes
compete harder, even with friends and family... they can also... do little things to make
others look less successful.")
-
From a
Four: "It's
stressful for me to feel I have a blueprint in mind to deal with some problem and
suddenly I'm not able to develop it, because it looks to others as if it might venture
out of traditional boundaries. Then I feel I was deprived of the opportunity to
defend my ideas. If this takes place more often than I can tolerate, I start to tell
myself I don't belong in that place or among those people because we think differently,
and I start thinking about how I can leave that situation." (Aschenbach:
"Under stress, Fours begin to feel no one understands or appreciates them for
their unique gifts... As stress increases, they demand the right to do only what they
want to do when they want to do it.")
-
"When my Two wife gets
emotional," acknowledged a
Five,
"I feel as if
I'm in a boxing ring with her but I'm wearing lead gloves!" "I forget things,
don't finish things" said another.
"I know I'm scattered, so I decide
to do something physical; for example, if I'm on the computer I'll print something out and
read it to decide if it's what I want to say." (There was some laughter in
the group when we realized what a Five considers to be "physical.") (Aschenbach:
"Under stress, Fives slow down, putting off what needs to be done until they feel
prepared to tackle it... The more they delay, the more critical their situation becomes,
which makes them prickly and high- strung and even more pressed for time.")
-
A
Six recalled how
hard she'd worked to get a "dominating" supervisor to see the team's
point of view. When those attempts failed, she basically led an insurrection against
the supervisor. Both of them lost their jobs! Another said,
"Under
stress I have a lot of undirected activity; I tell myself, 'You've got to get this under
control,' but I'll still keep doing it. I become short, agitated, abrupt, very annoyed; I
don't pet my dog! I want to be in motion and I don't particularly care which direction I'm
going, just so I'm moving. It's got to run its course. Later I pet my dog and he
forgives me." (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Sixes begin to vacillate
between caving in and taking a tough stand... they may first try to make everyone happy
then suddenly turn on one or both of the forces that they feel are trying to tear them
apart....")
-
According to a
Seven,
"I fragment, find it very difficult to focus. And I avoid doing the thing that's
causing me the most stress. I become disorganized, discombobulated; I drop things, bump
into things." Another Seven (with an Eight wing) had a different response:
"I get very controlling, tell people what to do. Until I learned about the
Enneagram I'd turn on the radio, or listen to spiritual tapes, or read a novel -- actually
several at once! Now I know I have to figure out what I'm afraid of, find out what's
holding me emotional prisoner. I turn off the radio, slow down, breathe, listen,
meditate." (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Sevens try to run away from their
anxiety... as they try to keep themselves 'pumped up,' and they are prone to excesses of
all kinds.")
-
"I believe I can handle most
situations others would find stressful," announced one of the
Eights,
"but there's no air conditioning where I work, and
right now I'm stressed by the 90-degree weather. It took me a while to become aware that
it's because I have no control over it." When asked what he does when he
feels out of control, he mused, "Well, normally I react like the guy in the Far
Side cartoon at the 'Stress Institute,' where he throws the doctor out the window and
says, 'Hey, I feel better already!'" Building on this, another Eight talked
about how hurt his wife was because he'd been flirtatious with another woman: "I
reared back in my chair and told her
'Your self-esteem must be in
tatters If you're going to get so worked up about something this minor! I'd hate to
see you when something really tough comes up in our marriage!"
Both Eights agreed they sometimes turn their feelings inward,
"which eventually
leads to vengeance of some sort." (Aschenbach: "Under stress, Eights
are even more controlling... Because they will not compromise, they are increasingly
difficult to be around.")
-
From
a
Nine:
"It's
a clue for me that I'm under stress when people say, 'Hi, how are you?' and I don't
know!" From another: "I feel really stressed when something
unpredictable happens. When I took karate I loved the forms. It was a
discipline, like dancing. But when we had to do free fighting I was just awful -- I
have no street sense. That's what I'm like under stress: I can take anything if I know
it's coming; otherwise I feel as if somebody's just pulled the rug out from under
me." (In addition to the earlier Aschenbach quote about Nines under
stress, she writes: "Any disruption in the peaceful flow of life offends them, and
they withdraw.")
"Self-knowledge," Dr.
Horney concludes, "is not an aim in itself, but a means of liberating the forces of
spontaneous growth." We can't develop our full potential unless
we're
truthful to ourselves, unless we're able to fully tap and manifest our own resources, and
unless we relate to each other spontaneously and with
mutuality; not
from a defensive, stressed position. It's extremely important for our personal
growth and for the growth of our significant relationships that we first be truthful to
ourselves about how we behave under stress. The question then becomes, how do we
liberate our own resources so we can interact in mutually developmental and
fulfilling ways?
It isn't fruitful to gloss over our feelings or to pretend what's
happening isn't happening. This doesn't mean we need to wallow in negativity
and humiliation. The trick is to find a way to stay with our responses as they arise while
at the same time creating an opening for change.
Focusing is one such approach. Another is
outlined in Doc Lew Childre's Freeze-Frame: Fast Action Stress Relief. Childre's methods are soundly grounded in scientific research demonstrating that feelings
of frustration create excessive wear and tear on our bodies, whereas feelings of sincere
appreciation increase mental clarity and boost cardiovascular and immune system health. As described by Paul Pearsall in
The Heart's Code, "This
HeartMath Institute-researched
process involves mental recognition of a specific stressful feeling, making a mental
effort to shift focus to sensations coming from the area of the heart instead of the head,
recalling a very positive event of the past, and mentally asking the heart for its
insights on what might be a better way of dealing with the stressful situation that could
induce a state more like that of the past positive event (p. 232)."
I can vouch for this method personally. I can't guarantee
it will extend my life, but I can say it helped me shift from my stress state when I was
feeling stubbornly unforgiving of a close friend and giving him the
silent treatment described at the beginning of this article. It was
painful for me to feel so stressed, but I didn't know how to get out of
it. So I stopped, pictured being with my granddaughter (whom I love
unconditionally), took three deep breaths "through" my heart, and
"asked" for a better way to deal with the situation.
After doing this exercise three times a day for only two days, my
feelings about my friend began to change. Instead of focusing on how discounted I'd
felt, how I could never trust him again, and how much safer I'd feel if I didn't have to
be in contact with him, I began to recover my loving feelings toward him. I
remembered all the values we share, how well we learn together, how much fun
we've had over the course of our friendship. And this balance allowed me to approach
him in a nonjudgmental way so we could work out our differences.
See blog entry, "Smooth Sailing"
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