The Partnership Path to Self-Knowledge

(From Margaret Frings Keyes' The Enneagram Relationship Workbook)

1. Falling in Love: Infatuation marks the first phase of relationships, when the floodgates of the unconscious are opened and we glimpse a possibility of our own wholeness. We project our unconscious positive images of the opposite sex onto the other person and we feel spiritually and mentally alive, because each sees the other only in terms of desired aspects and traits.
2. Adaptation to Power Roles: Now we begin to divert attention away from our own unacceptable traits, urges, feelings, etc., and project those that are negative onto the partner. We also endow our partner with collective authority, and thus rebel or conform to what our partner expects. The relationship shifts as we create rules, roles, and expectations. To some degree we suppress ourselves for fear of losing the partner. Liveliness and compatibility are reduced as we begin to operate from our defenses. 
3. Darkening Conflict: In this phase our unknown and unconscious aspects demand to be seen. We may become depressed, angry, and/or hurt, and one or both will engage in fantasies of separation, longing to ESCAPE! Positive aspects of life are projected onto the outer world (e.g., new career, new associations, new interests), so now everyone but the partner looks attractive. Our feelings and perceptions about power, betrayal, and abandonment deepen as our unconscious issues are reflected in even more negative projections onto the partner. Transformation depends entirely on our conscious involvement in our own drama, the decision to focus on our own need to change. Depending on our level of consciousness, we can:
   • Refuse to recognize and deal with differences (and later repeat the problem with someone else). 
   • Try to control the partner by anger, disapproval, withdrawal, or pouting. 
   • Experiment with separation (this can be positive if the goal is to achieve consciousness and choice, but remember that eventually even our work on ourselves will have to be completed in relationship). 
   • Begin the true work to integrate the Shadow. Although uneasy and ambivalent about it, we move our attention away from how we and our partner should be and toward who we and our partner are. 
4. Remembering Self and Completion in Union: If we have the courage to deepen our own self-awareness and take personal responsibility for the relationship, we accept and integrate parts of ourselves that we have not wanted to know and see. We examine how our partner has characteristics that we have been unwilling to acknowledge in ourselves. We feel the pain that results from knowing ourselves, as we recall not only of the pain done to us, but also the pain we have created. Our gifts and strengths are heightened as we re-own our Self, instead of reacting solely to our partner. We develop the ability to observe our interactions without judgment and see our prejudices as distortions. Our love becomes based in reality, and the well-being of the other becomes essential to our own as we forgive our partner, our parents, and ourselves.

Playing a Bigger Game

Remember Games People Play? The relationship games described by Eric Berne are so familiar from our own interactions, it's relatively easy to notice when someone else plays them. In truth, though, if you're in a game, you're a player, too. When we view relationship interactions as systems, we can see how all players contribute to the pattern.

The popular "Why don't you--yes, but" game is described in 50 Psychology Classics as beginning "when someone states a problem in their life, and another person responds by offering constructive suggestions on how to solve it. The subject says 'Yes, but...' and proceeds to find issue with the solutions. In Adult mode we would examine and probably take on board a solution, but this is not the purpose of the exchange. It allows the subject to gain sympathy from others in their inadequacy to meet the situation (Child mode). The problem solvers, in turn, get the opportunity to play wise Parent."

The Parent, Adult, Child references are from Transactional Analysis, popular since the sixties and still highly relevant.


Now look again at the players in "Why don't you--yes, but." Either party can start the game. The problem solver might be in the role of wise Parent, or might be playing parent, period, whether reacting to the other or initiating advice. How many times have you described a situation to a friend, co-worker, or life partner where you wanted a listener or someone to brainstorm with as you talked it through, only to have the other person jump in and tell you what you should do about it?
 
When you re-read the above example of "yes, but..." notice the assumption that one player (the "Child" in this case) creates the pattern, and the "wise" Parent is the blameless bystander. Looking at our interaction patterns this way promotes blaming and judgment. Yes, we all play games, and yes, sometimes one party is less emotionally healthy than the other, but by definition an interaction takes two people.
 
Instead of judging the interaction games in your relationships as someone else's fault, notice how a pattern is perpetuated, by either or both of you, and look for inventive ways to interrupt the pattern. If asked for your opinion by someone who's typically responded with "yes, but," for example, say "I'm not sure what the best thing would be for you," or "What have you considered?" or "What do you think might work?"
 
And, of course, pay close attention to the games you initiate. They wouldn't be games unless both people wanted to play.

Parenting From the Inside Out

Implicit mental models that cast shadows on our own decisions and the stories we tell about our lives can be made explicit through focused self-reflection. We are active shapers of our own construction of reality. (Siegel and Hartzell, Parenting From the Inside Out). 

If you're reading this blog post, you probably want to be a good parent to your young children or perhaps have issues with adult children you'd like to resolve. One way to view these issues is through the lens of attachment theory.

Childhood Attachment	Adult Attachment
Secure Distress when mother leaves Greets mother when she returns	Secure Comfortable in relationships Able to seek support from partner
Avoidant Does not seek mother when she returns Focuses on environment	Dismissing Greater sense of autonomy Tends to cut self off emotionally from partner
Ambivalent/Resistant Very upset at departure Explores very little	Preoccupied Fears rejection from partner Strong desire to maintain closeness

A child's security of attachment is strongly connected to parents' understanding of their own early life experience. Whether you had good parenting, good enough parenting, or even traumatic parenting, making sense of your childhood can lead to healthy relationships with your children. The universal cure-all in any personal growth approach is to develop nonjudgmental self-awareness -- in this case, mindfulness of your own childhood dynamics and consequent worldview.

Siegel and Hartzell introduced the concept of mind-sight, the ability to perceive the minds of others as well as our own. Resolving issues with your children means mindfulness about your own personality and mind-sight about your child's personality. Research further indicates that intention, when followed by changes in behavior, can change how our brains function. I'm particularly heartened to know this can be done backwards. No matter how old you or your children are, you can re-live your own childhood and your child's, affecting brain chemistry in a way that heals long-held wounds. 

All personality styles have strengths and challenges as parents, whether you had a secure or insecure attachment when growing up. Barbara Whiteside, in "Seeing Your Child" (September 2009 Enneagram Monthly), gave the example of a mother at Enneagram point Three who "had a very easy time with her point Seven daughter because they both had assertive energy and enjoyed lots of activity (but) struggled in understanding her point Four daughter. . . ."

Many of you with grown children will believe you could have done a better job as a young parent. However, thinking If only I'd known then what I know now will be wishful thinking unless what you know is based on deep self-reflection about your own personality style along with mind-sight about your child's, especially if very different. This is a potent exercise recommended by Siegel and Hartzell:

1. Think of an experience from your childhood when your reality was denied. How did you feel?
2. Think of a time when you and your child had a different reaction to the same experience. Now try to see the events from your child's point of view.

When my daughter's personality was barely forming, I naively assumed she would be like me. This was long before I learned about the Enneagram, and I had little capability as a young point Nine mother to be present to a daughter at point Eight. My poem "Swamp Magic" likens my daughter as a baby to a tadpole, sleeping face-down with knees bent outward, "still swimming in the amnion," ending with these lines:

What could we talk about?
I was brought up to behave,
bewildered by a frog princess
who could be heard for miles.
A ring-tongued, Mohawked 
Tarot reader, a hefty bike babe,
she teaches me computer skills,
and I accommodate the real.

As do all families, we had good times and bad times over the years, but I tended to forget the bad times and reacted defensively when my daughter's recollections were different from mine. then she decided I'd never see the world through her eyes and we became politely estranged. I labeled this as her problem until I finally dropped my defenses and invited her to join me with a mother/daughter therapist duo. Only then did I develop retrospective mind-sight about my daughter.

Among many insights was accepting the reality of myself as an unaware young mother. I could see I'd shown little of point Nine's healthy attributes (I encourage her differences from me and we co-create a playful environment), was mostly average (I see myself as nobody special but see my child as idealized. . . not the actual person), and to some degree unhealthy (She needs my full presence, and she doesn't have it). Because of my young self's lack of awareness, my remoteness and blindness to the significant differences between us, I truly did not know who my daughter was.

When we first started therapy together, I knew no words would convince her I could be authentically present to her worldview, and I'd only gain her trust by hearing and acknowledging what her childhood was like for her, not what I wanted it to be. During our second session, she was beginning to accept that maybe I'd changed. Then, in a long phone conversation outside therapy she said, true to her personality style, "It's clear you've worked your ass off, Mom." 

Affirming that both of us had matured significantly, we joked about the Work Your Ass Off School of Coaching, a playfulness long missing from our relationship. I hope my story, and Parenting From the Inside Out, will help you get your own you-know-what in gear.

Making sense of life can free parents from patterns of the past that have imprisoned them in the present. By deepening our ability to understand our own emotional experience, we are better able to relate empathically with our children and promote their self-understanding and healthy development (Siegel & Hartzell, Parenting From the Inside Out).   

"How," not "Why," is the Question

To more fully understand the couple in the Plus ça change blog entry, it helps to know that people with the husband's personality -- point Nine in the Enneagram personality system -- tend to go along with others' ideas yet feel unspoken resentment when they stifle their own agenda. At the same time, they are peacemakers and want to be reassured that even their unexpressed annoyance has not created a disruption.

Thus, the husband wanted to snuggle up to his wife, who was very aware of his "pouting" and didn't feel so inclined.

Those of the wife's personality -- point Eight in the Enneagram -- typically have plenty of ideas but often succumb temporarily to their enthusiasms and/or forget to include their partners. This couple might have been drawn together initially because of their mutual comfort with the wife providing structure, then both began to feel some pain from that same dynamic.

What's fascinating about this couple is that we did not spend time exploring their personality patterns so they could understand why they were having difficulty. Instead, I asked questions to help them look closely at what each of them did and said, so they could see how they were unwittingly feeding their interaction pattern. This works in the same way as interrupting a personal pattern. You look carefully at how the pattern operates, then find a way to playfully interrupt it, so it loses its "juice."

A Partnership Model

A business executive with point Six Enneagram patterns met with her team to define a leadership model reflecting their values as supporters of abused women. They made explicit the characteristics of a traditional power-based system, contrasted with their own vision of an equality-based system -- a true partnership:

Power-Based Systems (control behavior)* Don't share feelings  Don't take a stand Don't accept criticism Don't listen to others Don't depend on others Don't admit mistakes Cover up skill deficiencies      (or fear of them) Break promises/agreements Withhold information

Equality-Based Systems (resilience, harmony, meaning) Be self-disclosing  State opinions openly Share accountability for problems Acknowledge what others say, feel Give importance to all agendas Admit mistakes, fears, not knowing Be consistent, honor agreements Give time to process:     - Descriptive feedback    - "I" statements

*Control is a form of addiction, used to deny our fears." 

See also Riane Eisler's Partnership Politics ("The partnership and domination systems not only give us names for different ways of relating but also explain what lies behind these differences.")

A Parallel Universe

When I was coaching, I had great zeal for helping my clients learn how to interact more effectively instead of vying for power and control. But frankly, we often don't see how our own behavior plays a role in the difficulties that arise in relationships. Instead, we tend to blame others for their behavior. We lose sight of the fact that the very act of "blaming" makes us players in the power game. 

In The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge describes how the underlying structure of a human system "causes its own behavior." We have the power to alter these structures and create new patterns, but our interaction systems are subtle: we usually don't see the structures at play. In particular we don't see how our own behavior helps maintain the status quo in relationships.

Changing such patterns requires a complete change in context--we must step into a parallel universe of human interaction where the old, unexamined rules no longer compel us to act in certain ways, where we ask new questions:

• "What's behind this other person's behavior?"
• "What am I doing that keeps this dysfunctional pattern of interaction repeating itself?"
• "What could the pay-off possibly be for me to have things remain the same?"
• "How might either of us do something different?"