Feeling, Thinking and (if I'm lucky...) Doing
A practical roadmap for using the Enneagram system in self-work practices.
Quick announcement! My next offering, Practice Not Perfect, starts Thursday, 9/21! It’s designed to help you transition from fall-winter with weekly, accessible self-regulation practices featuring movement, meditation, and guided journaling, all set to music that will make you feel great. Do something nice for yourself, support me/this newsletter and just have a good time. Hope you can join! Now onto today’s letter…
“So, they feel then think, and feel some more about what they think. And then they have more feelings about what they think about how they feel. And that is their world until they bring up doing…and bring balance to their lives.”
That’s what Enneagram expert Suzanne Stabile was saying as my eyes grew wide with a deep sense that she’d just read my mail in front of me. How dare she… If there were any lingering doubts that I’m an Enneagram 4, they were washed away in that moment.
Ben, who was also listening as we made our way around the Olympic Peninsula on a recent road trip, smiled. He smiled because we had just been talking about this exact thing earlier in the hotel room as I spiraled through an emotional temper tantrum fueled by a combination of a) tendinitis in my hand/wrist b) fatigue and overwhelm from travel during what was already a stressful work week c) IDK, hormones? d) being an Enneagram 4, evidently.
Quick PSA: this podcast episode is pretty meandering and a little hard to follow at times. But I enjoyed it (and part two) despite its circular quality because it helped to bring the Enneagram into a new light for me.
I’ve always thought of the Enneagram as just another personality theory. I appreciate that it offers a way of understanding yourself, your motivations and those of others who move through the world in a different way, and that it could be used to help you better connect with others by understanding their motivations as being different from your own.
But I think this particular conversation helped to highlight the overlap and interconnectedness in the types, rather than just how they’re different. All the types started to connect in a sort of web. I’m now able to see the Enneagram as a roadmap for compassion: if you can be compassionate for yourself by understanding the way you approach life, you can use this understanding to develop that compassion for others (or vice versa). It gets to the reality that we are fundamentally the same which is one of the truths that I hold dear. It’s just that our sameness comes across in the world within a spectrum of orientations.
According to Enneagram theorists, there are three centers (or intelligences): Thinking, Feeling and Doing. As a Four Type, my center is feeling, supported by thinking, with doing being suppressed (least likely for me to access).
What this means is that I approach the world first by feeling into something, then I process in my thoughts, then if I force myself, I’ll take action. Now, this doesn’t mean it always has to be this way, it just means that if I’m not intentional with how I’m moving through the world, this order of operations will rule my behavior. And if it rules for too long, I’m likely to fall out of balance. I have to lean into action to make sense of my feelings and thoughts and actualize on their depth.
The hotel room breakdown was a great example: My hand hurt, I wanted to do yoga, and I couldn’t, because a few days prior I had done some vinyasas in the San Francisco airport and it had flared up this tendinitis. It felt like there was nothing I could do about it. We had canceled backpacking plans with my friend Pat because I couldn’t lift a backpack or hike with trekking poles, which left me feeling guilty, resentful, angry and stagnant. Then I felt bitter and regretful about how this was caused by my phone and how these devices ruled my life and what I could have or should have done differently, and what if there was something wrong with me or I was deficient in some vitamin or didn’t workout enough or worked out too much?
Welcome to my brain! Big feels! Also thoughts, just to keep the feels spiraling! In case you couldn’t tell, Fours orientation to time is the past.
I’m fortunate to have a partner who is a Type Three, and his orientation to time is the Future. In that hotel room, he didn’t let me wallow in my feelings. He reminded me I have two perfectly good legs, got us moving, and pretty soon I was on a five mile run through the Hoh Rainforest, where I had my first bear sighting in the wild. That whole experience was so electric, and yet it felt balanced because it was in a mode of action versus rumination.
Type Threes take in information with feelings, but they don’t use that information to process what to do next. They’re just like “Oh, feeling, got it, moving on.” Then they start Doing, supported by Thinking. This is mind-blowing to me and I’m pretty envious of it (but this also makes sense being that Fours spend a lot of time longing for alternative lives they could be leading. Sigh!)
According to the Enneagram, my work in life is something like, “How can I honor my authentic feelings by swiftly taking action in order to inspire empathy and understanding in the world?” Fours can learn from Threes how to stop ruminating and do something meaningful with their emotions.
For Threes, the work is something like, “How can I solve the world’s biggest challenges by tapping into the depth and super-power of my emotional intelligence?” Threes can learn from Fours the power of understanding their emotions in service of their life’s work.
At this point, everything I’m talking about is theoretical, but now I’m going to shift into talking about practice. The Enneagram helps us to see how thinking, feeling and doing are ALL important, and if there’s one we tend to suppress, then perhaps that’s an area we can develop through an intentional practice. Because what you practice over time…you become more comfortable doing.
The important thing here is that coming to know which Enneagram type you are doesn’t type-cast you into that identity, nor should knowing your type reinforce that you’re stuck there. Quite the contrary, the Enneagram gives you a framework to explore how you might practice and bring awareness toward what you’re less inclined to do, in order to help bring balance and wholeness to your life.
Leaning into a Practice Based on Your Enneagram Type
It occurred to me while writing this piece that the three core practices that will make up my Practice Not Perfect series could also be used to help different Enneagram types lean into their repressed centers of intelligence. While I think all three of these practices are powerful when used together (which is why I’m using all three), I also have a theory that certain practices are super helpful for certain types. So, if you don’t know your Enneagram type and this sounds interesting to you, I would recommend reading each of the descriptions here, and seeing which sounds most like you. (Note: It’s very tempting to take an Enneagram quiz, but I wouldn’t recommend it as they are notoriously bad at typing people accurately.)
Onto the practices!!
Threes, Sevens, Eights — Movement to Music
Threes, Sevens and Eights are said by Enneagram theorists to be feeling-repressed. If you are one of these types, there’s a high chance that you already have some kind of movement practice and I’d be willing to bet that it’s competitive on some level. Perhaps you’re into racing or checking off new hiking trails or unlocking new fitness goals around your workouts. That’s great, but I would also encourage you to lean into a movement practice (preferably to music) that allows you to explore feeling in your body. Yoga, tai chi, dancing are all great options, just make sure you set aside inclinations to achieve new postures or dance moves, and instead use the practice as a means to access internal sensations or reactions. A bonus playlist below…
Fours, Fives, Nines — Journaling
Fours, Fives and Nines are said by Enneagram theorists to be action-repressed. If you are one of these types, perhaps you have a rich inner world and are intensely curious, but often feel STUCK. What I like about using a journaling practice for this stance is that it takes what these folks are already good at (thinking/feeling) and adds a “doing” that can run in parallel, cleverly interrupting this cycle. Journaling can get thoughts and feelings on paper so you can sees a forest through the trees. As someone in this group, I know it’s also helpful to journal on the actions that you can/will take and making yourself accountable to those actions rather than leaving them on the paper.
Ones, Twos, Sixes — Yoga Nidra and Breath Work
These types are said by Enneagram theorists to be thinking-repressed. They tend to orient toward other people as they try to earn their way in the world. Often times though, they can orient toward others so much that they cloud their own own internal guidance. Sometimes this leads to folks subscribing to belief systems that aren’t their own. This is why I think more interoceptive practices, like meditation/breath work or yoga nidra, can help develop an internal mental landscape that grows their sense of trust for how their brain works. I think this can help these types to see that they don’t have to seek external support for everything, and to see how insightful and wise they actually are. To practice, I have a free yoga nidra for beginners.
That’s all for today! I will likely be sharing at least once more this week about top of mind things as I prep for this next series. I hope some of this is interesting or valuable. ALSO, if you know your Enneagram type and relate to anything above, please email or leave a comment — I would love to hear about it.
Happy Sunday!
❤️
Kelly
This was especially fun to read given I'm a 3w4.
Hi Kelly! I think I’m a combination of 4 and 5. I’ll have to do some more digging to pinpoint my dominant type. I am more familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality types for which I am an INFP. It suits me perfectly.
Thank you for sharing this!