So, before I begin my brainstorm, I just want to make clear that I'm open to discussions about my argument or thought. Feel free to comment, and I would appreciate any.Everyone passes through a hard time discovering one self; searching for our own values, choosing the ones we carried along the way and freeing ourselves from a past that doesn't belongs or defines us anymore. And so, that can happens in many different occasions, once we fulfilled a dream or just woke up from the trance of the past.Bringing the enneagram to the discussion, we have here one of the many "quizzes" or "Tests" that, perhaps, will make us know more about ourselves. I think enneagram is one of the best tests, but it is, like everyone, pretty much limited. The reason for that is pretty straightforward: we cannot write up and describe the life of someone and, the same way, we can't measure all the variables of the world in a scientific model. Enneagram is limited, but that's not really a problem here, because the enneagram does not pretend to define us, but to, ultimately, free us. The ultimate objective of this tool is to free ourselves from things that we didn't choose at all. Whichever type you identify most, your objective here is to free yourself from the things that YOU want to free.Like pretty much any test or theory like that, we have, in general, a model about the behaviors that we learnt in the past to cope with our reality, and so, the patterns are knowable, even if we do not manage to know the details of it. We can understand how the addiction of a teenager to drugs relates to early physical abuse, but we can't know every single event in her/his life that reinforced this belief that led him to drug addiction. The conclusion is that a same event can lead to, ultimately, many different types of defense mechanisms. A child can deal with early parental loss being aggressive and controlling (type 8), serving other people (type 2), build a facade of achievement (type 3) and so and so...The thing is that the details just matter for two persons in the history of the self-knowledge: to ourselves and to our (if we have one) therapist. But the therapist need the details to organize the web of behaviors and beliefs about ourselves, like someone trying to write an novel according to facts. But, most import that anything, WE are the persons who GIVE meaning to our history. Pay attention to the fact that the therapist will never be able to give you a sense or a purpose: all he can do is to organize your thoughts and stopping you from crisis and etc. That is, again, because of the multitude of meanings that the same event can have to other people. All that is left is a choice. Let's suppose you are child who lost your mother too early: you can choose to overly control your environment to avoid losses, serve other people because you felt guilty, being a high-achiever in order to fulfill the void in yourself, sulking in your own imagination and feelings to escape from reality and pretty much any type from the Enneagram.So, what the Enneagram does is not telling us what is our purpose: it tells us what we choose when we were just kids dealing with things.Some people does not need to deal with heavy things too early, and so they manage to, consciously or unconsciously, change and choose the things from the past they want to maintain in themselves and the others that they don't want. But, when people are at hard situations, that usually demands a maturity that they don't really have yet, they don't manage to recognize the fact that many, if not all, of their behaviors are something that they past choose to them, not themselves. It's hard to recognize this, but nearly all of the coping mechanism from the enneagram are just a way children used to run away from the reality.What is left to us, adults, responsible for ourselves, is to make another choice. What are the things (habits, values, behaviors, beliefs) that the past has chosen to you and, the most important, which ones you want to keep? You can either free yourself completely, or maybe you want to keep some of them, maybe it all, but with a different meaning; it's all left to you. And that's why I said that there's some usual advice given to type 2 people.Type 2's need, in general, to free themselves from the past by learning how to love themselves, establish boundaries to people and to themselves and being more humble, avoiding the pride of thinking that we are capable of everything for the others and that we have the capacity to live without taking care of ourselves too. We, type twos, are not God or Jesus, and knowing this is one good way to start making progress. But people usually tell to us "You need to love yourself more!", but we do not generally understand what means loving ourselves.The easy way is to think "We should love ourselves the way we love the others" but that's a good way to reverse the order of things: you're a "other-centered narcissistic", but loving YOU like your 'love' others will transform you on a normal, more common kind of narcissistic. So that's not a good answer. The answer, for me, is the same I've shown earlier in this post: prudence, responsibility and the willingness to make a choice.Loving ourselves means taking care of our health, but of the others we love too. To dedicate ourselves to work, but helping others with them, too. So, it's just a balance that we need to find and choose to follow. You can't tell or even convince a too that they need to stop helping others, because helping other is, too, a way that type Twos take care of themselves; it just need to do it with responsibility and maturity. If a medic is exhausted from taking care of so many patients, you can't simply tell him to stop taking care of them; more preferably, you can help them with assistance or telling him to take more care of himself. I think that 95% of the type Two's likes, at least, one of the values that the past choose to them: the diligence, helpfulness and compassion. You, an adult, need not to just choose others, but to act on your previous values in a more mature and prudent way.So type twos, don't stop helping others, but remember that you need to take care of yourself too. Trying to do both, you will recognize that you do not have infinite love and energy, and that do not means you have to choose helping you or helping others; you can balance your energy between the two, as you like and as you need. The best example is one behavior that I usually had. I used to gave all my energy to new and interesting people at my life, like friends or girlfriends; but, by doing so, there was no love and energy left for those who had loved me ever since. That was a form of accomodation and was pretty much bad. I'm currently fighting with that behavior and that's nothing more than pride: I thought I had enough energy for everyone, but that's just a beautiful lie.(I hope you guys forgive my english errors, I'm not a native english writer and speaker) via /r/Enneagram https://ift.tt/2FTUiil
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