Category: Two

Enneagram 2

Enneagram Type 7, 2, 9- Can you be too Positive

Posted on by DrToni

The Tyranny of Relentless Positivity

When we ignore difficult emotions, they end up controlling us. Here’s how embracing emotional agility allows us to deal with the world as it is.

We are caught up in a rigid culture that values relentless positivity over emotional agility, true resilience, and thriving, says Susan David, Ph.D., a Psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and author of the book Emotional Agility. And when we push aside difficult emotions in order to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop deep skills to help us deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. In this TED Talk, Dr. David explores why tough emotions are essential for living a life of true meaning and, yes, even happiness.

Susan David, Ph.D.: “In South Africa, where I come from, “sawubona” is the Zulu word for “hello.” There’s a beautiful and powerful intention behind the word because “sawubona” literally translated means, “I see you, and by seeing you, I bring you into being.” So beautiful, imagine being greeted like that. But what does it take in the way we see ourselves? Our thoughts, our emotions and our stories that help us to thrive in an increasingly complex and fraught world?

This crucial question has been at the center of my life’s work. Because how we deal with our inner world drives everything. Every aspect of how we love, how we live, how we parent and how we lead. The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic. We need greater levels of emotional agility for true resilience and thriving.

The conventional view of emotions as good or bad, positive or negative, is rigid. And rigidity in the face of complexity is toxic.

My journey with this calling began not in the hallowed halls of a university, but in the messy, tender business of life. I grew up in the white suburbs of apartheid South Africa, a country and community committed to not seeing. To denial. It’s denial that makes 50 years of racist legislation possible while people convince themselves that they are doing nothing wrong. And yet, I first learned of the destructive power of denial at a personal level, before I understood what it was doing to the country of my birth.

My father died on a Friday. He was 42 years old and I was 15. My mother whispered to me to go and say goodbye to my father before I went to school. So I put my backpack down and walked the passage that ran through to where the heart of our home my father lay dying of cancer. His eyes were closed, but he knew I was there. In his presence, I had always felt seen. I told him I loved him, said goodbye and headed off for my day. At school, I drifted from science to mathematics to history to biology, as my father slipped from the world. From May to July to September to November, I went about with my usual smile. I didn’t drop a single grade. When asked how I was doing, I would shrug and say, “OK.” I was praised for being strong. I was the master of being OK.

But back home, we struggled—my father hadn’t been able to keep his small business going during his illness. And my mother, alone, was grieving the love of her life trying to raise three children, and the creditors were knocking. We felt, as a family, financially and emotionally ravaged. And I began to spiral down, isolated, fast. I started to use food to numb my pain. Binging and purging. Refusing to accept the full weight of my grief. No one knew, and in a culture that values relentless positivity, I thought that no one wanted to know.

Moving Beyond Emotional Rigidity

But one person did not buy into my story of triumph over grief. My eighth-grade English teacher fixed me with burning blue eyes as she handed out blank notebooks. She said, “Write what you’re feeling. Tell the truth. Write like nobody’s reading.” And just like that, I was invited to show up authentically to my grief and pain. It was a simple act but nothing short of a revolution for me. It was this revolution that started in this blank notebook 30 years ago that shaped my life’s work. The secret, silent correspondence with myself. Like a gymnast, I started to move beyond the rigidity of denial into what I’ve now come to call emotional agility.

Life’s beauty is inseparable from its fragility: We are young until we are not. We walk down the streets sexy until one day we realize that we are unseen. We nag our children and one day realize that there is silence where that child once was, now making his or her way in the world. We are healthy until a diagnosis brings us to our knees. The only certainty is uncertainty, and yet we are not navigating this frailty successfully or sustainably. The World Health Organization tells us that depression is now the single leading cause of disability globally—outstripping cancer, outstripping heart disease. And at a time of greater complexity, unprecedented technological, political and economic change, we are seeing how people’s tendency is more and more to lock down into rigid responses to their emotions.

On the one hand, we might obsessively brood on our feelings, getting stuck inside our heads, hooked on being right, or victimized by our news feed. On the other, we might bottle our emotions, pushing them aside and permitting only those emotions deemed legitimate.

In a survey I recently conducted with over 70,000 people, I found that a third of us—a third—either judge ourselves for having so-called “bad emotions,” like sadness, anger or even grief. Or actively try to push aside these feelings. We do this not only to ourselves, but also to people we love, like our children—we may inadvertently shame them out of emotions seen as negative, jump to a solution, and fail to help them to see these emotions as inherently valuable.

The Tyranny of Relentless Positivity

Normal, natural emotions are now seen as good or bad. And being positive has become a new form of moral correctness. People with cancer are automatically told to just stay positive. Women, to stop being so angry. And the list goes on. It’s a tyranny. It’s a tyranny of positivity. And it’s cruel. Unkind. And ineffective. And we do it to ourselves, and we do it to others.

If there’s one common feature of brooding, bottling, or false positivity, it’s this: they are all rigid responses. And if there’s a single lesson we can learn from the inevitable fall of apartheid, it is that rigid denial doesn’t work. It’s unsustainable.For individuals, for families, for societies.And as we watch the ice caps melt, it is unsustainable for our planet.

But when we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be.

Research on emotional suppression shows that when emotions are pushed aside or ignored, they get stronger. Psychologists call this amplification. Like that delicious chocolate cake in the refrigerator, the more you try to ignore it, the greater its hold on you. You might think you’re in control of unwanted emotions when you ignore them, but in fact, they control you. Internal pain always comes out. Always. And who pays the price? We do. Our children, our colleagues, our communities.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not anti-happiness. I like being happy. I’m a pretty happy person. But when we push aside normal emotions to embrace false positivity, we lose our capacity to develop skills to deal with the world as it is, not as we wish it to be. I’ve had hundreds of people tell me what they don’t want to feel. They say things like, “I don’t want to try because I don’t want to feel disappointed.” Or, “I just want this feeling to go away.”

“I understand,” I say to them. “But you have dead people’s goals.” Only dead people never get unwanted or inconvenienced by their feelings.

Only dead people never get stressed, never get broken hearts, never experience the disappointment that comes with failure. Tough emotions are part of our contract with life. You don’t get to have a meaningful career or raise a family or leave the world a better place without stress and discomfort. Discomfort is the price of admission to a meaningful life.

So, how do we begin to dismantle rigidity and embrace emotional agility? As that young schoolgirl, when I leaned into those blank pages, I started to do away with feelings of what I should be experiencing. And instead started to open my heart to what I did feel. Pain. And grief. And loss. And regret.

How to Embrace Emotional Agility

Research now shows that the radical acceptance of all of our emotions—even the messy, difficult ones—is the cornerstone to resilience, thriving, and true, authentic happiness. But emotional agility is more than just an acceptance of emotions, we also know that accuracy matters. In my own research, I found that words are essential. We often use quick and easy labels to describe our feelings. “I’m stressed” is the most common one I hear. But there’s a world of difference between stress and disappointment or stress and that knowing-dread of “I’m in the wrong career.” When we label our emotions accurately, we are more able to discern the precise cause of our feelings. And what scientists call the “readiness potential” in our brain is activated, allowing us to take concrete steps. But not just any steps, the right steps for us. Because our emotions are data. Our emotions contain flashing lights to things that we care about.

We tend not to feel strong emotion to stuff that doesn’t mean anything in our worlds. If you feel rage when you read the news, that rage is a signpost, perhaps, that you value equity and fairness—and an opportunity to take active steps to shape your life in that direction. When we are open to the difficult emotions, we are able to generate responses that are values-aligned.

But there’s an important caveat. Emotions are data, they are not directives. We can show up to and mine our emotions for their values without needing to listen to them. Just like I can show up to my son in his frustration with his baby, but not endorse his idea that he gets to give her away to the first stranger he sees in a shopping mall.

We own our emotions, they don’t own us. When we internalize the difference between how I feel in all my wisdom, and what I do in a values-aligned action, we generate the pathway to our best selves via our emotions. So, what does this look like in practice?

  1. When you feel a strong, tough emotion, don’t race for the emotional exits. Learn its contours, show up to the journal of your hearts.
  2. What is the emotion telling you? And try not to say “I am,” as in, “I’m angry” or “I’m sad.” When you say “I am” it makes you sound as if you are the emotion. Whereas you are you, and the emotion is a data source. Instead, try to notice the feeling for what it is: “I’m noticing that I’m feeling sad” or “I’m noticing that I’m feeling angry.”

These are essential skills for us, our families, our communities. They’re also critical to the workplace.

In my research, when I looked at what helps people to bring the best of themselves to work, I found a powerful key contributor: individualized consideration. When people are allowed to feel their emotional truth, engagement, creativity, and innovation flourish in the organization. Diversity isn’t just people, it’s also what’s inside people, including diversity of emotion. The most agile, resilient individuals, teams, organizations, families, communities are built on an openness to the normal human emotions. It’s this that allows us to say, “What is my emotion telling me?” “Which action will bring me towards my values?” “Which will take me away from my values?” Emotional agility is the ability to be with your emotions with curiosity, compassion, and especially the courage to take values-connected steps.

Emotional agility is the ability to be with your emotions with curiosity, compassion, and especially the courage to take values-connected steps.

When I was little, I would wake up at night terrified by the idea of death. My father would comfort me with soft pats and kisses. But he would never lie. “We all die, Susie,” he would say.”It’s normal to be scared.” He didn’t try to invent a buffer between me and reality. It took me a while to understand the power of how he guided me through those nights. What he showed me is that courage is not an absence of fear; courage is fear walking. Neither of us knew that in 10 short years, he would be gone. And that time for each of us is all too precious and all too brief. But when our moment comes to face our fragility, in that ultimate time, it will ask us, “Are you agile?” “Are you agile?” Let the moment be an unreserved “yes.” A “yes” born of a lifelong correspondence with your own heart. And in seeing yourself. Because in seeing yourself, you are also able to see others, too: the only sustainable way forward in a fragile, beautiful world. Sawubona.”

Don Riso Enneagram Point 2

Posted on by DrToni

THE HELPER
Enneagram Type Two

The Caring, Interpersonal Type:
Generous, Demonstrative, People-Pleasing, and Possessive

Type Two in Brief

Twos are empathetic, sincere, and warm-hearted. They are friendly, generous, and self-sacrificing, but can also be sentimental, flattering, and people-pleasing. They are well-meaning and driven to be close to others, but can slip into doing things for others in order to be needed. They typically have problems with possessiveness and with acknowledging their own needs. At their Best: unselfish and altruistic, they have unconditional love for others.

  • Basic Fear: Of being unwanted, unworthy of being loved
  • Basic Desire: To feel loved
  • Enneagram Two with a One-Wing: “Servant”
  • Enneagram Two with a Three-Wing: “The Host/Hostess”

Key Motivations: Want to be loved, to express their feelings for others, to be needed and appreciated, to get others to respond to them, to vindicate their claims about themselves.

The Meaning of the Arrows (in brief)

When moving in their Direction of Disintegration (stress), needy Twos suddenly become aggressive and dominating at Eight. However, when moving in their Direction of Integration (growth), prideful, self-deceptive Twos become more self-nurturing and emotionally aware, like healthy Fours. Learn more about the arrows.

Examples: Paramahansa Yogananda, Pope John XXIII, Guru Ammaji (“The Hugging Saint”), Byron Katie, Bishop Desmond Tutu, Eleanor Roosevelt, Nancy Reagan, Monica Lewinsky, Ann Landers, Mary Kay Ash (Mary Kay Cosmetics), Leo Buscaglia, Richard Simmons, Luciano Pavarotti, John Denver, Lionel Richie, Stevie Wonder, Barry Manilow, Dolly Parton, Josh Groban, Music of Journey, Bobby McFerrin, Kenny G, Paula Abdul, Priscilla Presley, Elizabeth Taylor, Danny Thomas, Martin Sheen, Jennifer Tilly, Danny Glover, Richard Thomas “John Boy Walton,” Juliette Binoche, Arsenio Hall, Timothy Treadwell “Grizzly Man,” “Melanie Hamilton Wilkes” (Gone with the Wind), “Eve Harrington” (All About Eve), “Dr. McCoy” (Star Trek)

Type Two Overview

We have named personality type Two The Helper because people of this type are either the most genuinely helpful to other people or, when they are less healthy they are the most highly invested in seeing themselves as helpful. Being generous and going out of their way for others makes Twos feel that theirs is the richest, most meaningful way to live. The love and concern they feel—and the genuine good they do—warms their hearts and makes them feel worthwhile. Twos are most interested in what they feel to be the “really, really good” things in life—love, closeness, sharing, family, and friendship.

Louise is a minister who shares the joy she finds in being a Two.

“I cannot imagine being another type and I would not want to be another type. I like being involved in peoples’ lives. I like feeling compassionate, caring, nurturing. I like cooking and homemaking. I like having the confidence that anyone can tell me anything about themselves and I will be able to love them….I am really proud of myself and love myself for being able to be with people where they are. I really can, and do, love people, pets, and things. And I am a great cook!”

When Twos are healthy and in balance, they really are loving, helpful, generous, and considerate. People are drawn to them like bees to honey. Healthy Twos warm others in the glow of their hearts. They enliven others with their appreciation and attention, helping people to see positive qualities in themselves that they had not previously recognized. In short, healthy Twos are the embodiment of “the good parent” that everyone wishes they had: someone who sees them as they are, understands them with immense compassion, helps and encourages with infinite patience, and is always willing to lend a hand—while knowing precisely how and when to let go. Healthy Twos open our hearts because theirs are already so open and they show us the way to be more deeply and richly human.

Louise continues:

“All of my jobs revolved around helping people. I was a teacher who wanted to be sensitive to children and help them get off to a good start. I was a religious education director in a number of parishes. I thought that if people learned about the spiritual life, they’d be happier…The most important part of my life is my spiritual life. I was in a religious community for ten years. I married a former priest, and we both have our spirituality as the basis of our life together.”

However, Twos’ inner development may be limited by their “shadow side”—pride, self-deception, the tendency to become over-involved in the lives of others, and the tendency to manipulate others to get their own emotional needs met. Transformational work entails going into dark places in ourselves, and this very much goes against the grain of the Two’s personality structure, which prefers to see itself in only the most positive, glowing terms.

Perhaps the biggest obstacle facing Twos, Threes, and Fours in their inner work is having to face their underlying Center fear of worthlessness. Beneath the surface, all three types fear that they are without value in themselves, and so they must be or do something extraordinary in order to win love and acceptance from others. In the average to unhealthy Levels, Twos present a false image of being completely generous and unselfish and of not wanting any kind of pay-off for themselves, when in fact, they can have enormous expectations and unacknowledged emotional needs.

Average to unhealthy Twos seek validation of their worth by obeying their superego’s demands to sacrifice themselves for others. They believe they must always put others first and be loving and unselfish if they want to get love. The problem is that “putting others first” makes Twos secretly angry and resentful, feelings they work hard to repress or deny. Nevertheless, they eventually erupt in various ways, disrupting Twos’ relationships and revealing the inauthenticity of many of the average to unhealthy Two’s claims about themselves and the depth of their “love.”

But in the healthy range, the picture is completely different. My own (Don’s) maternal grandmother was an archetypal Two. During World War II, she was “Moms” to what seemed like half of Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi, feeding the boys, allowing her home to be used as a “home away from home,” giving advice and consolation to anyone lonely or fearful about going to war. Although she and her husband were not wealthy and had two teenage children of their own, she cooked extra meals for the servicemen, put them up at night, and saw to it that their uniforms had all of their buttons and were well pressed. She lived until her 80’s, remembering those years as the happiest and most fulfilling of her life—probably because her healthy Two capacities were so fully and richly engaged.

(from The Wisdom of the Enneagram, p. 127-128)

Type Two—Levels of Development

Healthy Levels

Level 1 (At Their Best): Become deeply unselfish, humble, and altruistic: giving unconditional love to self and others. Feel it is a privilege to be in the lives of others.

Level 2: Empathetic, compassionate, feeling for others. Caring and concerned about their needs. Thoughtful, warm-hearted, forgiving and sincere.

Level 3: Encouraging and appreciative, able to see the good in others. Service is important, but takes care of self too: they are nurturing, generous, and giving—a truly loving person.

Average Levels

Level 4: Want to be closer to others, so start “people pleasing,” becoming overly friendly, emotionally demonstrative, and full of “good intentions” about everything. Give seductive attention: approval, “strokes,” flattery. Love is their supreme value, and they talk about it constantly.

Level 5: Become overly intimate and intrusive: they need to be needed, so they hover, meddle, and control in the name of love. Want others to depend on them: give, but expect a return: send double messages. Enveloping and possessive: the codependent, self-sacrificial person who cannot do enough for others—wearing themselves out for everyone, creating needs for themselves to fulfill.

Level 6: Increasingly self-important and self-satisfied, feel they are indispensable, although they overrate their efforts in others’ behalf. Hypochondria, becoming a “martyr” for others. Overbearing, patronizing, presumptuous.

Unhealthy Levels

Level 7: Can be manipulative and self-serving, instilling guilt by telling others how much they owe them and make them suffer. Abuse food and medication to “stuff feelings” and get sympathy. Undermine people, making belittling, disparaging remarks. Extremely self-deceptive about their motives and how aggressive and/or selfish their behavior is.

Level 8: Domineering and coercive: feel entitled to get anything they want from others: the repayment of old debts, money, sexual favors.

Level 9: Able to excuse and rationalize what they do since they feel abused and victimized by others and are bitterly resentful and angry. Somatization of their aggressions results in chronic health problems as they vindicate themselves by “falling apart” and burdening others. Generally corresponds to the Histrionic Personality Disorder and Factitious Disorder.

Compatibility with Other Types

Type 2 in relationship with type:

1    2     3     4      5      6      7     8     9

Misidentification with Other Types

Type 2 compared with type:

1    3     4      5      6      7     8     9

Addictions

Abusing food and over-the-counter medications. Bingeing, especially on sweets and carbohydrates. Over-eating from feeling “love-starved;” in extreme cases bulimia. Hypochondria to look for sympathy.

Personal Growth Recommendations
for Enneagram Type Twos

  • First and foremost, remember that if you are not addressing your own needs, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to meet anyone else’s needs without problems, underlying resentments, and continual frustration. Further, you will be less able to respond to people in a balanced way if you have not gotten adequate rest, and taken care of yourself properly. It is not selfish to make sure that you are okay before attending to others’ needs—it is simply common sense.
  • Try to become more conscious of your own motives when you decide to help someone. While doing good things for people is certainly an admirable trait, when you do so because you expect the other person to appreciate you or do something nice for you in return, you are setting yourself up for disappointments. Your type has a real danger of falling into unconscious codependent patterns with loved ones, and they almost never bring you what you really want.
  • While there are many things you might want to do for people, it is often better to ask them what they really need first. You are gifted at accurately intuiting others’ feelings and needs, but that does not necessarily mean that they want those needs remedied by you in the way you have in mind. Communicate your intentions, and be willing to accept a “no thank you.” Someone deciding that they do not want your particular offer of help does not mean that they dislike you or are rejecting you.
  • Resist the temptation to call attention to yourself and your good works. After you have done something for others, do not remind them about it. Let it be: either they will remember your kindness themselves and thank you in their own way or they will not. Your calling attention to what you have done for them only puts people on the spot and makes them feel uneasy. It will not satisfy anyone or improve your relationships.
  • Learn to recognize the affection and good wishes of others, even when these are not in terms that you are familiar with. Although others may not express their feelings in a way that you want, they may be letting you know in other ways how much they care about you. If you can recognize what others are giving you, you will rest more easily in the knowledge that you really are loved. Love is always available but only to the degree that we are present and therefore receptive to it.

 

 

Posted in Two

Reflections from an Enneagram Two

Posted on by DrToni

 Learning to Receive from Others

When I was first exposed to the Enneagram, I was told that it focused on our core sins. That sounded very threatening to me because I love to focus on positive things. But I was also curious because I knew that with Jesus, we can face our sins and receive forgiveness and transformation. I now see this tool as a dear friend that I greatly appreciate.

Alice Fryling in Mirror for the Soul says the Enneagram exposes our “true self” and our “false self.” It’s been uncomfortable to look deeper at my false self and my weaknesses, but I am thankful for the ways that I have gained greater insight into my life, motivations, weaknesses, and strengths. It has also been helpful for me to understand others who are different than myself.

The Benefits of “the Helper”

I identify as the Two on the Enneagram, which is usually called “the Helper.” Twos are motivated by helping others. We get our personal needs fulfilled by being needed and by giving others what they need and want. We seek out relationships, especially those that give us the opportunity to help.

In relationships and ministry, the Helper is a great asset. It’s easy to find people who focus mostly on themselves, so when individuals who are generous, give practical help, and are willing to do whatever is needed show up, most people welcome and like them.

And everyone needs some kind of help. Ministry is all about helping others. As we minister to people, we find out the needs that they have. We want to help others experience God’s love, peace, and new life in Christ. We want to help comfort them in difficult times. As an InterVarsity staff who ministers to college students and staff, I’ve found countless ways to help. Sometimes it’s practical, like offering food or a ride, or it may be helping someone with a problem by offering advice, prayer, Scripture, or a listening ear. We want to see others flourish in their faith and will do what we can to help them grow even when it is challenging and requires a lot from us.

We also live in a broken world, with homelessness, poverty, abuse, racism, sexism, violence, broken relationships, self-hatred, depression, and much more. Twos will never run out of people to help. At our best, we are loving, generous, and unselfish. We can provide a healing presence for others, reflecting God’s love. With all these positive things that the Helper offers, what can possibly be negative about Twos?

The Blind Spots and Weaknesses of the Helper

Twos need to be aware of our hidden motives. I confess that there are things I do that appear to be loving, but that are actually motivated by selfishness and my need to be needed. When I feel needed by others, I gain confidence and belonging and build my self-esteem. I feel good when I meet someone’s needs and gain their appreciation, acceptance, and approval. Often as Twos, we want to do what people want so we will be useful and they will continue to affirm and appreciate us. We struggle with being people pleasers because we don’t want to disappoint others. This may also cause us to be intrusive, to be overly helpful, to nag, or to even be controlling. We may expect others to help us when we have needs and be disappointed when they don’t. Rejection is difficult for us. When we feel unappreciated, we may continue to help but we may feel angry or bitter toward those we are trying to help. This is a false type of love.

Twos can also believe the lie that to be loved, we must be needed. We may even believe that God loves us more because we are helping others. It’s easy to feel that we are indispensable, and sometimes even the source of love in someone’s life. Twos struggle with pride.

Fryling says in Mirror for the Soul:

Pride is the word the Enneagram uses to describe the compulsion (or passion or sin) of the Two false self. They may be proud of the fact that they know what you need, but you do not know what they need. They may be so proud of their perceived ability to solve your problem that they cannot see that you want to solve your problem yourself. Or they may just be proud of all the things they are doing that are working. How could the world get along without me? Of course, they dare not admit or show their pride because that would not be loving.

Another challenge for the Helper is being in touch with our own needs or making them known. Because we spend so much of our time focusing on others, we may forget about self-care. Relationships can be one-sided and imbalanced because we are always giving and never receiving.

As Fryling writes, “The choice for a Two is, ‘Am I going to love because I am created to love, or do I believe I have to love in order to be okay?’ In other words, for whose sake am I doing this?”

Relating to God as the Helper

It is both easy and difficult for Twos to relate to God. As we live out God’s kingdom purposes and see the Holy Spirit powerfully at work touching lives, we experience great intimacy with God and deep fulfillment. When we partner with God to help others, we can be thankful for his good work, celebrate what he does, and worship him with great joy because we have the privilege of being God’s heart, hands, and feet to those in need.

I know that God is the ultimate helper and that I desperately need his Spirit to work in me to help others. But I have also tried to help others without involving God at all. Sometimes I feel so powerful helping others that I subtly believe I am the savior and forget Jesus. Twos may also just see God as the one who helps us help others and not relate to him as our lover and friend. It may be hard to be honest with God about our own needs because our focus is always on others.

When we feel stressed by all the needs around us and especially those that we are not able to meet, we need to ask God for direction about who he is asking us to help. When we are overwhelmed by the needs of others, we need to remember that we can come to God and rest in his care of us, knowing that we don’t have to meet every need because we have a Savior who is strong and able. We can receive love from God apart from helping.

The Helper on the Road to Transformation

How does the Helper grow and let God transform them? We need to honestly face our blind spots and weaknesses. Pride stops us from admitting our own needs and receiving. We may believe that we have more to offer someone and even subtly believe we are better than others. Pride may be the motivation for not revealing our vulnerabilities because we want to only present our strengths so that we can look good in the eyes of others. If we don’t repent from our pride we miss the joy of receiving from others and of relationships that are mutual.

The path to real love is humility. As we face our weaknesses, we can welcome God more deeply into our life, draw close to him, and allow him to transform and redeem us. When we face our impure motivations, we can confess our sins, receive God’s forgiveness, and ask him for love from a pure heart. If we are unrealistic about what we are expecting from others, we can ask God for forgiveness and give God our desire for control. God can show us how to give and receive from others without expectations. Sometimes we show love to others as a way to avoid our own fear of being unworthy of being loved. In those moments, we need to let the Holy Spirit reveal the deeper motivations of our heart.

When we feel anger or defensiveness, we can ask the Holy Spirit to show us what is really happening beyond the surface. Our negative emotions can also be signals to us that we are needy. Are there boundaries that we need to set on our giving? Is our helpfulness intrusive or controlling to others?

Jesus commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself” (Luke 10:27). Loving ourselves is equally important to loving our neighbor. Our love for others is limited when we cannot love ourselves. Ask God to reveal more of his love to you and show you that your sense of worth and value come from him, not what you do for others. Practice healthy mutual relationships, where you both give and receive. Don’t feel guilty when you pay attention to your own needs. Let others help you even before you help them. Don’t change yourself so that others will like you more, but rather enjoy the freedom and joy of being loved in both your strengths and weaknesses.

After many years of receiving God’s unconditional love and healing, I am still working on being in touch with my own needs. I need to grow in being more honest with God when I’m in need. With God and others, I still fight the pull to focus on someone else’s needs without feeling completely free to share my own vulnerabilities. I need to be intentional about sharing my weaknesses in relationships and let others give to me without feeling like I have to give back to them. But I am on the road to transformation because God is at work in me as I face difficult blind spots and habits.

In an earlier relationship, I was really focused on giving to someone I was discipling. Because I was able to help her in many areas of her life, we got really close and I really enjoyed that relationship. However, she sensed that there was something unhealthy about our relationship because she felt that I was leaning into her to receive my sense of self-worth, and she was greatly troubled by that. It was brought out in community and I repented of my unhealthy leaning in to help her. We had to disengage for a while and God brought healing and restored us to a healthier relationship. I still help sometimes but our relationship is based on far more than that. I also seek out peer relationships with strong people who will ask how I am doing and give to me. I feel the joy of knowing that they know my sins and weaknesses but still love me.

We are fearfully and wonderfully made by God (Psalm 139:14). I am thankful that God appreciates who I am apart from the role I play in helping others. I am complete and whole even if others don’t need my help. I can pay attention to my real needs and receive from God and others. I can say no when appropriate and know that God still loves me. When I give and others may not appreciate me, God sees all things and is pleased with me. He is the one I serve, and he loves me unconditionally and completely. The journey toward wholeness is a process, but I am so thankful that God is so powerful, generous, and gracious!

Brenda Jo Wong

Brenda has spent over 44 years leading, disciplining, and developing InterVarsity students and staff in San Francisco and Hawai`i. You can support her ministry at https://donate.intervarsity.org/donate#17.

Type Two

Posted on by DrToni

Personality Style TWO: The Loving Person

Core Value Tendency: TWOS value and are attracted to love. They want to be generous persons, seeking to make the world a more loving place to live in. Harmonious intimate mutual relationships are what life is all about.

Adaptive Cognitive Schema: The proper understanding of freedom enables TWOS to live within the natural laws and limits of reality. Interdependence, which lies between the extremes of dependence/codependence and an exaggerated independence, is the mature stance of adults. Being free means TWOS can give or not give, receive or not receive.

Adaptive Emotional Schema: The state that accompanies TWOS’ objective paradigm is humility, the virtue which realistically estimates what kind and what amount of love another needs in contrast to giving whatever is believed will bring approval to the giver. Acting as a reality principle, humility acknowledges limits and sets boundaries, enabling TWOS to say no as well as yes.

Adaptive Behavioral Schemas: The actions that follow from an understanding that love involves an ebb and flow of giving and receiving along with the habit of humility include an exquisite empathic attunement not only to the needs of others but also to their own needs. TWOS have an intuitive sense for what others need and are feeling. They are naturally giving, generous, and helpful. They feel fulfilled being able to give to others and are supportive, nurturing, considerate, and appreciative. TWOS are sociable, friendly, and approachable. They naturally move toward people with love and affection. They praise others and build them up, giving compliments easily. TWOS are natural listeners and counselors. They also speak up for others, especially the underprivileged and handicapped.

Maladaptive Cognitive Schema: When TWOS exaggerate their loving qualities, they over-identify with the idealized self image of I am loving; I am helpful. To compensate for their maladaptive belief that others will not meet their needs, they turn their attention toward meeting other people’s needs, hoping that what they do unto others will be done unto them. They believe it is only after meeting others’ needs that their own will be taken care of.

Maladaptive Emotional Schema: Perceiving themselves as helpers in a needy world, TWOS believe they have unlimited resources for serving others that never need replenishing. They are not needy, but they are needed. The resultant disposition is pride. TWOS are proud of their giving nature and seek to be important is people’s lives in order to feel worthwhile.

Maladaptive Behavioral Schema: Perceiving the world as needy, and feeling proud of their self sacrificing nature, TWOS become compulsive helpers, trying to please others to get them to like them and meet their needs. TWOS give strokes to get strokes, doing for others what they hope others will do for them. Habitually moving towards people, it’s hard for TWOS to move against people in anger or confrontation. It’s conflictual for them to give negative feedback because they don’t want to hurt others. It’s also difficult for TWOS to move away from people, leaving them alone to stand on their own two feet, or fall flat on their face. The TWOS’ task is to rescue.

What is Avoided: Because they strive to be loving, TWOS avoid their own needs. To think about themselves or to express their needs would be selfish. They are reluctant to heed their own agendas, feelings, and desires.

Defensive Maneuvers: TWOS avoid their needs by repressing them so that they are not even aware of them. Or they may be aware of them, but choose to suppress them since their job is to lighten other people’s burdens not encumber them with their own needs.

Childhood Development: TWOS got approval for helping and giving and not asking for much in return. They learned how to be sweet, funny, cute, and charming to get attention and win affection. They became the parent in the family to hold things together. They learned that being pleasing and altering themselves to meet others’ needs was a good way to survive and get their needs met. Directly expressing their own needs met with indifference, disapproval, or abandonment. TWOS came to believe that their own needs wouldn’t be met until they first met other people’s needs. They are very vulnerable to rejection and not being appreciated for what they do for others. You’re nobody unless somebody loves you and you’re somebody when you’re needed.

Non-Resourceful State: When TWOS are under stress, they do more of the same, that is, they become more helpful and travel around the “rescue triangle.” On this non-resourceful journey, they first assume the role of rescuer. When they don’t get the affirmation they need and believe they deserve, they feel victimized and play the martyr, reproaching others for not appreciating and caring enough for them. They then lose touch with their gentleness and compassion and become hard and tough to protect their self-esteem. They become bitter, jaded and distrustful of others and become a persecutor, making others feel guilty and desiring to get even with them.

Resourceful State: When TWOS are in a resourceful relaxed state, they get in touch with their own needs, wants, and feelings. They put their needs on the table and negotiate getting them met. They allow others to give to them freely without doing anything to earn their love. They can say “no” even though they feel guilty. They allow others to be more autonomous and don’t foster their dependence on them. They find other ways of expressing themselves besides giving, such as developing their creative, artistic, cultured self and capacities. Now able to say to themselves I am special, they believe they are lovable just because they are. I am therefore I am loving replaces I give in order to be accepted.

 

Posted in Two