Enneagram Type Two Interview (Part I)
I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Jordan Leigh on the podcast Something Worth Saying. In part one of our conversation we talk all things about being an Enneagram Two.
Listen to the podcast or scroll down for the transcript.
Transcript
Jordan: Welcome to “Something Worth Saying”. I am your host and conversation guide, Jordan Leigh. Join me for authentic and uncensored conversations from the yoga mat about joy, wellness, and relationships.
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. This is “Something Worth Saying”. Today I have Melinda Olsen with me, who is one of our wonderful Enneagram volunteers and Melinda is a Type Two and I'm laughing because I've had a number of Twos volunteer because we're just so helpful.
I found a lot of similarities in what you were saying, and we had Jason Champion on the show, he is a Two, as well. But again, that manifests differently for the masculine energy versus the feminine energy. And of course, you guys have different wings and supporting things. So, what is your wing?
Melinda: So, I actually don't subscribe to the theory of wings. I have both wings, I say, just because I view them more as growth paths for Types. So, I am both a One and a Three wing.
Jordan: Okay. Awesome. And then do you do the subtypes, or do you not do that either?
Melinda: I do. Subtypes I find to be really helpful. I'm a sexual or one-to-one dominant subtype, social secondary.
Jordan: I think, just hearing you conversate the way we're talking or the way we were talking in our original conversation, I really did identify with a lot of what you were saying with the sexual subtypes. I love the one-on-one and the relational, I mean, that's why I do this. The podcasts are basically that--connecting with people. It's a very natural process for me. If this was hard or difficult, I probably wouldn't be doing it. It feels so very natural.
But you are an Enneagram coach? Do you coach?
Melinda: I do some coaching, but primarily I'm a therapist. My degree is in marriage and family therapy, and I specialize in therapy with millennials and professional Gen Zers.
Jordan: Is that a specific niche that you've had a lot of success with?
Melinda: It's just a niche that I'm super passionate about because, you know, I am an elder millennial.
Jordan: Have you seen that comedy special?
Melinda: I have. That's where I stole that from.
Jordan: Oh my God. Yes.
Melinda: Yeah. So, I feel like we have gone through the ringer and back again. It's just such a difficult time in life. I find that given everything that millennials and I mean, professionals, just out of college professionals, have to deal with in general, all the transitions. Especially right now. I've found a pretty important niche in that area. I'm really passionate about it.
Jordan: That's beautiful. We need it. We really do need it.
I think we did some math and some numbers and based on when I graduated college, you're like, “Oh, great. Yeah. You came right into like the guts of the recession.” And I chose a career path of being a photographer. That's like the worst thing I could have picked.
“No, mom I’m not going to be a nurse. A schoolteacher? Come on, I’m going to be a photographer.”
And actually, I spoke to numerous people, and they were like, you know, you don't really get started until you're like 40 when you're a photographer. I'm like, all right, I got a couple years yet. But you know what? I think it was low expectations that saved me this whole time. I knew that I wasn't going to be making a lot of money until I got older, but I committed to that for myself. I knew that if I could live modestly, I could remain free and keep doing what I wanted to do. And I have been for, I mean, let's just say 15 years. That's pretty impressive. So, there's hope for elder millennials out there, for those of us born into recession.
Melinda: I think so. I believe so, too. And I find that the Enneagram has been incredibly helpful with this population as well, which is one of the reasons why I decided to get trained specifically in the Enneagram.
Jordan: Yes, so you are enrolled with Beatrice Chestnut, is that correct?
Melinda: I am. Yeah. It's in the Chestnut Paes Academy, CP Academy. Beatrice is one of my teachers.
Jordan: That's so cool. She was on the show to kind of kick off a lot of the Enneagram explanations, but I think we'll have her back again to go a little bit more in depth. She just gets right to the heart of it. I think she's a great teacher, very thorough when explaining, which is very helpful. Because there's so much to the Enneagram Types, they unfold in so many different ways.
So, how does this whole system help with the practicalities? Your life, your personal life, your work life with your clients.
How Does the Enneagram Help in Your Life?
Melinda: Great question. I think I'm going to talk a little broadly and then I'm going to go specifically into just being a Two. I think broadly the whole Enneagram, I feel like has been so helpful in so many areas of my life. It helps me to understand people better, especially when they view life differently than I do.
In my work, I feel like the Enneagram, it's just such a deep system. A lot of times I see the Enneagram used pretty shallowly. It can be fun, right? Like, this is how I work. This is how I am. But really, I find that its efficacy goes so much deeper than that. It's really helped me to more deeply understand my clients and where they're coming from, where they're getting stuck, the patterns in their lives that keep cropping up and getting in the way of them really growing and having the kinds of lives and relationships that they're deeply wanting. The Enneagram helps us to understand that we do these things in autopilot that sometimes we don't even think about. We don't even know why we do it. Then we think we're going for what we need, when in fact, the thing that we think we need is not what we're actually needing. That really helps me to get to the heart of things with my clients pretty quickly. I don't force the Enneagram on my clients. They tend to seek me out because of the Enneagram now. But I find that that work can really help me get to the heart of what's really happening with my clients.
Of course, I always tell my clients I never do things with them that I haven't done myself. So, I think that's also true with me. As a Two, I feel like the Enneagram has really helped me get to the heart of what I'm truly needing. It is so different than what I thought I needed, and what I was going for in my life when I was in autopilot. Of course, I still get into autopilot like all the time. But it has just been so helpful in terms of me growing and breaking some of these patterns that I've held all my life. I love the Enneagram.
Jordan: It's so intriguing. It really showed through in our initial conversation how much this has helped you personally and how eager you are to continue to learn and grow and expand. I think that's the one tying thread that I've felt from everybody, from Fives, from Sixes, from Twos, from Ones, from all these numbers. They love the Enneagram. They love it because it's given them real results and to highlight those real results on the podcast and say, this is what it does. This is how it expresses in this number, that number, which is, let's face it, we're all the numbers. I've repeated that numerous times, but I can't say it enough because it's really about integrating all pieces of these parts to a whole person.
As a Two, you being a therapist, that's a very Two thing. You're right in alignment with where a Two would be. I think it's good to hear those platitudes, like you're exactly where you need to be. And I say that laughing because I posted something about, what is for you will never be withheld from you. Divine timing. That is important. But to say that over and over again, it gets a little annoying. So, to have these real things expressed in real ways, in the way that you live and work and thrive, correlate to your number, it helps you. It's a confirmation. You need that little nod from the universe sometimes saying like, yep, this is you. You're right where you need to be.
I have an example like that with the podcast. I was very curious as to if I'm reaching anybody with this knowledge. I was very upset thinking that I was just talking out my ass. That's I think my fear that I'm just talking out my ass and that people aren't listening. I'm like, who gives me the authority? Then imposter syndrome comes in. I went to a yoga class on Sunday morning with beautiful people that I met through the podcast. It was all very perfectly lined up. I thought the girl that was next to me, I thought she was my friend because they both have the same yoga mat. So, you're laying out your mat and like, Oh, that's probably my friend, Karen. I sit down next to this mat. This woman comes over, we start just chitchatting and she says, “You have the podcast? Oh my gosh, I've been binge listening to all of your stuff. It is so good.” She's like, “I never come to this class. Oh my God, you're right here. This podcast is like changing my life right now.” And I'm like, what? It's just me talking into a microphone.
So, the universe was like, hello, hello, you're here. Do you need more? But it was that nod saying you are where you need to be. Keep going. And those are really beautiful.
So, do you mind getting into a bit of detail about your Two-ness?
Life as an Enneagram Two
Melinda: Not at all. What specifically would you like to hear about?
Jordan: About your personal life and even how you deal with your clients. Maybe not details or anything like that of your clients, but how being a Two and relating to your clients and relating to your family or your friends, how does this knowledge help change or break the patterns that you were talking about? What we think we need versus what we actually need, like those types of Two things.
Melinda: Initially I got into therapy and this profession fully based on the Two pattern, I call them autopilot patterns, but the Two pattern based in ego. Which is, you know, I like helping people. I have this, it's almost this pride, like I'm so good at helping people, I'm so good at reading people, I'm so good at this. And it's very sincere. I really do love helping people. I love being in relationship with people. But it's almost this idea that I'm just going to dedicate my whole life because I can garner my warmth and my love to help other people.
Of course, what happens is me, my needs, myself, my feelings kind of get pushed aside or just not even acknowledged. I would say that is probably the pattern that I can kind of track throughout my entire life.
The need based off that pattern in my mind and my heart was if I can make myself as… So, as a sexual Two, as attractive as possible. As charming as possible. As, I guess in some ways, competent as possible. But just super attractive, super helpful, I will get what I'm needing, which is for other people to love and affirm who I am. Other people to help me know who I am, my worth and get what I'm needing. I think initially being a therapist kind of fell perfectly into that pattern, which is not so great. But I think because of the Enneagram what has changed, and it's been a hard transition, but it's been so good. It's been this idea that I can only give what I have. And I need to realize that if I'm operating from that Two pattern of this external focus like, what do you want? What do you need? What can I do for you? And out of that pride of, I have no needs. I don't know what I need. I don't know how I feel. And that doesn't really matter anyway. I burn out quickly. That's just a recipe for burnout. It's a recipe for burnout with my clients. It's a recipe for burnout with my family.
I think I can mark it right after I had my kid. I have a four-year-old. There were just a lot of demands on my husband and me. With the business and with my kid, I burned out. I flamed out pretty spectacularly and started to realize I can't do it like this anymore. From there I really started digging into my Fourness and with the Enneagram, this all kind of coincides like getting into the academy.
I really had to start thinking through, even down to like elemental, how am I feeling right now in this moment? That's a hard question for me to answer as a Two. Or like, what am I needing right now in this moment? From there building up to, how am I feeling, what am I needing, how can I get that for myself instead of trying to be helpful and getting other people to do that for me.
It has started to revolutionize how I view myself in the world because I'm constantly trying to be internal and inside of my own experience instead of trying to define my experience via others. Does that make sense?
Jordan: It absolutely does, because never before, never ever, ever in the history of ever has it been more important to understand that your mind, the thoughts you think, the climate that goes on inside there, that creates your whole world. Sometimes you can't bring someone else out of their universe into yours and help them understand why what you're doing that looks crazy is actually best for you. There's no way. Even your husband who lives with you isn't within your world. Right? Within that there's this beautiful separation but then this deep understanding that we're all doing that exact same thing and there are so many similar things going on inside our internal universes. So, it's a separation, but a togetherness, as well.
I hear what you're saying. As a Two you're running around, you're saying, “Okay, what can I do for you?” “My husband. What can I do for you?” “My child. What can I do for you?” “My clients?” “Me? Um, I think I need to pee. Yeah. Let's pee. Okay. I peed. Now what? I don't really know. Maybe I need to eat. Okay. I'll eat something.” Like the basics. We got it. But then what? I don't know. I don't think about these things. I think about how my husband is feeling. I think about how my clients are feeling because Sally is normally more chatty than she was and I'm still thinking about that. You don't do that for yourself, and you actually have a hard time doing it for yourself. It's not even like, oh, I have some quiet time. Now I know what I'm thinking and feeling. No, it still takes time to like.
Melinda: No, you're like, I have quiet time. What TV show can I watch? Or what thing can I externally put on to stimulate me? Not like, oh, I have some me time. I'm going to think about how I'm feeling.
Jordan: It is really funny. To continue to go on this journey here, I'm breaking up with my lovely boyfriend, Dustin. I told him that I needed him to move out sooner than when he was officially going to be moved out. I said, if you're here, I'm not going to be able to exhale until you move all your stuff out and walk out the door. I'm going to have been holding my breath the whole time and then go, “Okay, now what does Jordan need to do? Um, I don't know.”
For some reason, while I was in relationship with him, I was so focused on him that I could not focus on myself. The more he was physically away, it was helpful for me. So as a Two, it was like, okay, he's away. Okay. He came back to pick up some things. How are you now going to stay within yourself even though he's here? It was so hard for me. It wasn't natural at all. The one time I did that, and I really thought about what I had done, and I patted myself on the back. It was the first time that I've done it, I get very excited. Like, yes, I did it! Now to do it a million more times.
Melinda: It's such a deal. I mean, it's so hard.
Jordan: It's so hard. Damn it!
Melinda: This is something I try to explain. So, my husband is a Five. We are double opposites. Which has been very growing for the both of us. But I try to explain this to my husband because I feel like he can go isolate super easily. He's very internal. It's very easy for him to shut out the world. It's so hard, and I so relate to what you're saying about Dustin, because it's just so difficult to, with other people around, tune into that internal world. I just feel like, and I remember Beatrice talking about this too, it's almost like any time there's somebody in the room, and if they're closer to you, I feel like it's even harder. Emotionally closer to you or relationally closer to you, it's just so hard to stay inside instead of automatically taking all myself outside and focusing on that other person.
Jordan: Yeah. Because it's your natural inclination to “Bloop”.
Melinda: Yep, exactly.
Jordan: What are your needs? Do you need water? What store do you want to go to first? Well, how are you feeling about that? Are you tired? Are you hungry? What do you need?
Melinda: Yep, absolutely. And I remember one of the biggest breakthroughs in my own therapy as I was doing this work, this Enneagram work, was realizing that every time I did that, I abandoned myself.
Jordan: I've heard it as you can stop looking at it as this act of grace that you're doing for people, which is how Twos look at it like, “Oh, well, here, let me help you.” It's more like, are you doing this because you care or is it a compulsion? And I'm like, ew, a compulsion. That's gross. But that's the way you got to look at it. You actually have to look at it like it's something icky so that you can separate it out and go, okay, I'm only giving when it's really juicy and it feels really good, and it feels right. That you're filled up and then you can give because the energy of that's so much cleaner and clearer anyway.
Melinda: Yes, absolutely. In the same manner, I almost had this experience of grief around this idea that I just kept abandoning myself and that I had ever since I was little. What's so interesting is that it was exactly the opposite of what I was really wanting, which was somebody to be with me and feeling this deep feeling of abandonment from others, but then realizing the person who has been abandoning me is me. And I need to learn how to come back to myself every moment. It is so hard, but I'm worth it and I need to do that because nobody's going to be able to do that better than me.
Jordan: That's the secret ingredient, I think, for all of this. For Twos particularly, I think that having more alone time. It's probably important.
Melinda: It's huge.
Jordan: I mean to literally make time to be alone on a consistent basis.
Melinda: I get very excited when I talk about solitude and Twos, that's such a big deal because it's something that I feel like we tend to be allergic to, but it's so important.
In fact, I feel like things started changing for me once I started once a quarter, I leave my husband and my child together. “Have fun, you guys.” I'm going away and I am spending two days alone, just by myself in an Airbnb.
Jordan: That's beautiful. That's a good way to separate it out and make it very clear. It's a scheduled thing, it's structured, and it's continual. It's not like, oh, well, I'll figure out when I have time to structure it.
There's something really beautiful about being where we are in the world, in history, that some people would say scheduling all these things, blah, blah, blah. No, I do think that our lives as they are right now, unfortunately, it's really hard for us to naturally go where we need to go. Life is too far away from its natural state of what it really was intended, I believe, to be. Unless you're living on a farm and life is a lot slower and that is beautiful. But um, you live in California. You need to schedule these things. It makes sense.
I am newly single, I am alone most of the time, or I'm with a client, or with some friends, or on the phone with a friend, but I am mostly by myself, and it's been very healing for me. Although I do get a little impatient with it sometimes. But in your world, let's say, scheduling that on a consistent basis, four times a year, that's something that you need. And I think, to go a little bit “woo-woo”, it follows the seasons four times a year, four changes of the season. You need time to process that. You need time to process what that means in your life, what it means in your body, what it means for your emotions, all of that. For me, I have really been getting into the time of the year that you’re born is your time, revel in that. So, I am coming into that. My birthday is on Friday. It's really for me about getting into my time of the year where everything just clicks and flows. I can already feel it. It's like everything's been prepped and I'm like, oh yeah, here we come. We're going into it, right? I just feel better, I can flow better, and I can find my natural flow. But for you, I see and feel it, four times a year, that leaving and pulling away, pulling out of or unhooking from those people that you love more than anything. But you have to pull the cord, cut the cord just for that time, and then reconnect. In a lot of shamanic ceremonies and things like that, there's like cord cuttings. And when you cord cut, the whole idea is that you actually cut every cord, you sever every tie, so that you are a lone individual self in that moment. The healthy connections will reconnect naturally, you don't have to do a damn thing. It just naturally happens. Cord cutting ceremonies being done once a season is actually really natural. That's kind of what you're doing without even knowing it. I just thought I'd share that “woo-woo” fact with you that might interest you.
Melinda: That's amazing. I feel like that's such a deep message for Twos as well, because we spend so much energy going out and towards maintaining those chords, maintaining those connections. Being able to just cut that, get the solitude and time with ourselves that we're needing. Then not spending so much effort reconnecting those severed cords but allowing them to naturally grow together is a really important message for us as Twos.
Jordan: And to trust truly that the connections that are meant to stay are going to stay.
Melinda: And that you don't have to be the only one to do it.
Jordan: Right. Yes. That's hard for Twos because we really do like maintaining those connections. We can get lost in maintaining those connections, I think.
Melinda: Uh huh. And I think it can be compulsive, to use your word.
Jordan: I remember I was reaching out to a friend, and we hadn't been that close. I remember almost feeling like the compulsory, “Hey, just checking in. How are you doing?” And I thought, do you really want to talk to this person right now? I was like, well, yeah, they're my friend. Do you really though? And I'm like, maybe I don't for right now. Because my heart wasn't really in it. Then later we reconnected, and it was great. You know what I mean? It wasn't the friendship; it was just the energy of that time for me and maybe for her. Who knows?
Melinda: I do think that that's such an important question that we never ask ourselves though. Do I really want to? Do I really want to do this? Do I really want to connect with this person? Do I really like this person or am I supposed to? Do I really want to connect with anybody right now or do I feel like this compulsion too?
If we're talking about the practicalities of what the Enneagram does for me as a Two, I think that's a huge one. It's checking those compulsions. That me being outside of myself, my putting more energy into relationships, me just existing in this constantly depersonalized state. I'm not in myself. I'm external. The Enneagram really helps me to remember to return to myself, to get to know that inner universe I'd never had before.
Jordan: Now, did you find that you were really getting into these hard things, was that with the training or did that kind of come when you first learned about the Enneagrams?
Enneagram Twos and Pride
Melinda: That has come in stages. I first learned about the Enneagram in college. I graduated in 2005. I learned that I was a Two when I was maybe 20, I'm 38 now and it really resonated in a lot of ways, but I think it was specifically hard for me to relate to this idea of Twos struggling with pride. Our passion of pride. I took it in, and I took it in shallowly. Five years later I realized wow, I spent a lot of energy outside of myself maybe I need to check in with myself more. So, I tried to make a concerted effort to do that, I think it was around the time that I had my child, and it was also around the time that I started looking into Beatrice Chestnut and then they had just started their academy. I think they just started their academy maybe three years ago when I started really getting even deeper into what Two-ness really looks like. What pride really is in the Two. It's been a journey as with everything.
Jordan: The thing that I need to express here is Pride, within a Two, doesn't look like your definition of pride. It's different. Do you mind explaining that a little bit?
Melinda: Of course. For me, pride manifests itself in a lot of ways. When I don't check in with myself about my needs, because it doesn't even occur to me that I have any. That's prideful, right?
Because how much better do I think I am that I don't have needs or that I'm not human? It kind of comes down to that. When I get mortified about human things that I do, or things that aren’t attractive, that’s pride.
Jordan: My soul felt that. I'm just like, I'm not human. I don't need help. I don't have hard days. I'm the one that helps people. Yeah.
Melinda: Or like whenever I'm talking to my Enneagram coach and I'm like, oh, I feel so bad that I have this human feeling of jealousy. I'm a sexual Two. I feel jealousy a lot. Like a lot. I always feel so much shame and my coach reminds me like you are human. This is human. This is pride, right?
Jordan: I was going to ask this question of you, and I want to be very selective with how I ask this. The people that are listening to this podcast know that I get very raw and very personal, and I invite you to do the same only to the degree to which you're comfortable. I had a friend, and I felt like this friend connected with me because of my inner wisdom. Then when I started to show that friend, and we worked together, and then when I shared parts of myself with that person that were human mistakes that I made it was like she didn't want to spend time with me, or she didn't like or want to accept that part of me. That wounded me. I've never ever talked about it, but I think it's really pushed that Two-ness, that already inherent thing within me where I say, if I'm a spiritual teacher or helper, you don't get to show people your human side unless they're on your inner circle. Even those people, you do it sparingly. That hurts me. It's tiring. I don't know who to share my human parts with. That sounded really weirdly sexual, which I didn't mean it to, but I don't know where and who to share my humanness with because I am thought of as a helper and a leader. Who can I share my vulnerability with? Who are those people? I struggle. I struggle with that.
I'm asking you out of curiosity, as a therapist, do you have something like that? I mean, obviously you're not friends with your clients because there are certain things there. It's a little different, right? If you're someone's yoga instructor versus their therapist, but have you struggled with that humanness with anybody? It doesn't have to be work related just with your family, you know, even to feel like that vulnerability with your family, your siblings, your husband, your parents. I feel like I can't show it to them, or they'll think less of me. And I feel like I've actually gotten confirmation of those things, but I don't know if that's in my head or that's actually happening. And so, I try to be fucking perfect all the time. How Two is that?
Melinda: Very. I really relate with that too. Because in my mind, I feel that what I'm needing are these people to approve of me, or love me, or like me, and that will only happen if I am a certain way. And if I show any of these ugly parts of me, or my needy parts, or my human parts, if I show those, then they will run screaming, or they won't like it, or they'll be disgusted. That has definitely been the case. When I try not to show those things, it can be very difficult.
Jordan: We still have bad days like everybody else and even when you have strong shoulders and you're used to hiding it, there's going to be that two percent of the time where you're just like, oh my gosh, I need somebody.
Melinda: For me, I think that this has shown up in varying degrees in my marriage. My husband is a sexual Five. Sexual Fives, for those who don't know, in their autopilots, they're trying to find that one perfect connection to put on a pedestal. As a sexual Two, I am all about that. Let me be that person for you. So, when I started to step away from this idea of me just striving to be that perfect partner, I talked about that like it was entirely intentional. I think some of it was intentional, but I think a lot of it was just me starting to withdraw more. Me starting to say “no” more. Me starting to show my upsetness or my frustration in life more. Me getting depressed. Me not doing well. I feel like that kind of threw our marriage for a loop because I was not working as hard to be the perfect partner that I really worked hard to be. I let more of my humanity show. I think when I say that it might sound so great, but it's not because my humanity is all the ugliness. It's my neediness. It's my grumpiness. It's my depression or anxiety. It's my selfishness. Whether or not it is selfish to focus on myself, I would say no, but true selfishness. Letting that show. Letting all my humanness show. It was hard. It was really hard. We're still adjusting.
Jordan: Yeah. Anytime you make a switch, a change to a dynamic that has been established previously, you're going to shake something up and you're going to make everybody feel uncomfortable because they're like, whoa, who are you now? Who's this person? You're like, hey, didn't you know, we get to like change as many times as we want? Thank you, Madonna! That woman has changed her identity and her look and her everything so many different times. And I think that's supposed to happen. You know what I'm saying?
I was briefly dating somebody. Lovely person. Wonderful person. But we were on our way somewhere and I was running late. It was for a wellness panel. I was really frustrated that we were going to be late because I am always on time or early. It had me that frustrated, and I was really showing my agitation in the car. He was like, I thought you were a yoga instructor. Aren't you supposed to be calm? And I'm like, I kind of want to punch you in the face right now. I'm still a human who's late for something. Even if it's a wellness panel. Do you know what I mean? I've had these traumas echoed back to me where it's like, hey, when you're human, we don't like that. Stop that. And I'm just like, okay. So, I have to go back to trying to be perfect all the time. Like this sucks.
Melinda: It's so hard and actually something that has been a big deal for me is just letting that show. Before I think it was such a switch, like me going from attractive Melinda to human Melinda. Now I'm trying to work with my Enneagram coach on just becoming Melinda. Just becoming vulnerable Melinda. Authentic Melinda in every interaction so that it's not this switch from perfect to vulnerable. It's me. It's just authentic me, congruent all the way through.
Jordan: Integrated.
Melinda: That has been so hard but really good because I find the more I do that the more feedback that I get is, I mean, of course I get feedback like, oh, uh, yeah, that's weird or we don't like that. The feedback from the people that I'm closest to, and I count myself very thankful is, the more we know you the more we love you.
Jordan: That's healing to have those people allow you to show them your ugly bits. That's beautiful.
Melinda: I'm just so thankful. And my husband is one of those people. He is on that same journey. He is becoming so much more connected with his feelings and doing such great work. I find that as we grow together, he has just been, of course his Fiveness lends to this too, in the sense that he can make a study of my changes and how I am and get to know me it's been kind of amazing. I'm really thankful for the people in my life who have not only hung in there with me, but who have encouraged me to dig in and connect with my humanity. My friend and I call this front row seats to the show. If you back in the day used to go to SeaWorld, though I know that's not a thing that you do now because it's not ethical and then they don't treat the animals well, but if you get close enough to the show, sometimes you get splashed. So, we get privileged front row seats to one another's lives and when things blow up, sometimes we get splashed. That’s just a reality. That's part of the price of admission.
Jordan: Correct. You're in the splash zone. But I think the people that go with you on the journey, the most intimate journey, to be able to witness front row seats to each other's lives, to really be able to witness, that's a gift.
I was just talking to one of my best friends in the whole wide world and she was sharing some things with me. I shared some things with her. Hearing you say that I'm lucky to be in her splash zone. For every positive, every negative, I want to be there for that person and she's there for me.
Melinda: Exactly. It's so huge. I feel like a lot of the intimacy that we have in relationships happens as we're working out what happens when we get splashed by their stuff, and vice versa.
Jordan: That's amazing.
Melinda: I think part of the challenge of the pride of the Two is recognizing that we have stuff that splashes on people, and that is human.
Jordan: We've got goo.
Melinda: We've got so much goo. And we're going to get it all over people sometimes. Obviously, we want to mitigate our negative impact, but how can we do that when we don't even recognize that we have the goo and that it gets all over people.
Jordan: Or people that are just that close to us, right? That they're going to see the indecisiveness, the messiness. I'm going to do this. Oh, shit, that backfired. Now I have got to go do this.
Melinda: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Or anger, the possessiveness. I'm again speaking to the sexual Two, but just like all of the ugly, I wouldn't call any feeling ugly, but you know, just these unsavory, very human things that come out of us and they could splash on other people. Sometimes even our trauma. Our trauma can come up, right? And that this is all a part of who we are, and people are in the splash zone and it gets messy. We are messy.
Jordan: Humans are messy. That's why we're here. To play in the mud.
Melinda: As a Two, I think it's just so important to understand that we are messy, that we are not always attractive, that people won't always like us. And the people who are the most important are going to be able to be with us as we splash each other, and we'll work it out.
Jordan: That's beautiful. This conversation is so different than the other Enneagram Two conversations. I love that we’re bringing up all this different stuff. We're just blowing the lid off the can here with the Twos. It's really beautiful. I love it.
Besides the beautiful example that you gave about taking that time for yourself, two days to recharge, what other things do you do that help you come into balance? And this could be specific to you or something that really speaks to your Twoness.
What helps you balance?
Finding Balance as an Enneagram Two
Melinda: So, I’m finding, and I think this is a continual journey for me because I'm always trying to figure that out because it's such a foreign line of questioning. There are three things that really help to balance me out.
First, nature. Something that I can stand in awe of. It always directs me back into myself. I just got done with a week with my family in Oregon. That's where I'm from. And I'm just constantly in awe of how much nature can help me to balance internally.
Second is, I mean, the first exercise my Enneagram coach ever gave to me was something that I've dubbed the Tertiary Check-in, because I'm so bad at even just asking myself basic things about how am I doing. How do I feel in my body? How present am I in this moment? So, the Tertiary Check-in is I take five minutes to check in with all three of those things. Other numbers, I think, just do that naturally. That's just how they live. Twos, not so much. So, that often brings me back into balance. Because I'm never thinking about that.
The third thing which I just automatically do not do and never think about. I literally have to spend a day planning this out is, I try to have rhythms of solitude and self-care. I tell my clients about this because I feel like they need to see that it's also difficult for me to do this. I try to do something for myself self-care wise, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly.
Weekly means that I'm coordinating my schedule so that I have open spots for me to do things like work out, plan meals. I pay attention to all those things that I never pay attention to. Get time for me.
Then monthly, I try to do a day away with the time that I'm not working. So, I do a day at a silent spa retreat where I am just with myself in nature again to kind of recharge and recenter.
Quarterly, I talked about how I do my solitude a couple days away. I also make sure that I'm taking a week off every quarter from work. So that I'm able to recharge.
Then yearly I take a small retreat for myself to kind of check-in. Check-in with my year, plan my next year and how I want to make sure that I'm in balance.
As a sexual Two I'm really bad about planning and systems. I do what I feel like all the time. I get really passionate about it, and I kind of vortex, and then I drop it when I'm done. So, I find that rhythms are a really helpful way for me to stay in balance. It kind of goes against what I normally do, and I find that it's a helpful thing for me to stay in balance.
Jordan: I don't know if it's easier for other numbers. It might come a little bit more naturally, but as humans, I don't think that people take the time that they need, like you're talking about. To schedule these things is necessary I think for anybody. For a Two, it might just be necessary to be like, hello, remember, you have to do this. It might express a little bit differently, but we all need to do what you're saying. All of these self-check ins are amazing. And to not be afraid of what you find. That's like one of the biggest things. Once you find it, what are you going to do with it? Now what? Shit.
Melinda: Exactly. And I mean, I tell you this schedule and this is my ideal. This is what I try to do. Let's put that out there.
I can go weeks without checking-in with myself and feeling scared to know how I'm really feeling. It's really hard. What I do find is that when I understand what I'm feeling and I tell my clients this, when we don't check in with how we're feeling, or when we're too scared to know how we're feeling, or we don't give weight to our feelings, we are missing such a critical source of information about what we're needing. This is probably why I have such a hard time knowing what I'm needing. If we don't check in with how we're feeling or with ourselves, how can we know what we're really needing? We can't.
Jordan: You really don't know what comes next. That's kind of what I meant when I said when Dustin's here, I would be helping him do what he needed to do to move out instead of looking at once he's gone what are you going to do? And I go, I don't know. So, doing the actual physical splitting up the way we've been doing it has allowed for me to clean up my space, reorganize, and take back my space, not in like an aggressive way, but just in an okay, now what are you going to do with this space that had his things in it. Okay, now what are you going to do? And he's been moving out slowly. And I think by the universe's grace, it's working out better that way for both of us. Because he said, what I normally would have done, is pack up all my shit in one load and just blow out of there. That's like my mid-twenties self-breakup plan. Well, now you're in your mid-thirties. So, let's upgrade. And he's like, now it's like, I have to write you out the last of the half for the bills and then I need to get another load and pack up boxes. He has a daughter that we created a room for, so we packed up some of her things and you know what I mean? We're unpacking a life even though we were not married, we are really undoing a marriage. That's really what it comes down to.
Melinda: You've grown together. So, it takes time to grow together, and it takes time to kind of unwind from that.
Jordan: Yes. I think it's one of the most fulfilling processes of my entire life besides my actual divorce from my husband and I said, I'm very tired of breaking up with people. I really want this next one to be it. Can we please universe, like I can grow in other ways. We don't need to have a breakup to do the growth. I hate moving my shit around. I'm in my mid-thirties. I'm getting old and cranky. It's so exhausting. And poor Dustin. I mean, he's the one moving his stuff out. I'm still in the house that I've been in for years. But we bought it together. Now it's like, okay, now it's mine. What's your game plan? Well, my game plan is not to stay here, but I have things that I need to do. That's been my focus is actually putting a lot of time and energy into the house because I have a very weird loving relationship with my house. I bless it. I talk to it. It's got its own spirit. This is not a place where I'm going to stay forever, but I do want to do some sprucing of the actual physical house before I would move out.
The whole process, it's just been very healing for me. So, I keep thinking about, with him being gone, I think about, okay, what's your next move? Let's not think a year out. Let's think like two months from now. Let's think four weeks from now and that's been helpful for a Two to help balance herself out is don't look so far ahead. Start with baby steps and just say, okay, what, what about this week? What about this month?
I'm going to just kind of laugh and say that we have some powerhouse questions that I wanted to go into and ask you, I feel like we could have another conversation. I wanted to talk to you about the wellness collective that you're starting. Some things with your marriage counseling, therapy practice, the Brainspotting, all of these things I think would be better for a whole separate conversation. So, if you're okay with being on the show again, I would love to dive deeper into that juiciness because again otherwise I think it's too much. I think we've had this beautiful conversation and I think we can have another really juicy conversation and kind of tie your practice into it as well.
Melinda: I would love that.
Listen to Part II here.
Are you Interested in learning your enneagram & growing through enneagram counseling?
Hi, I’m Melinda
I’m a therapist who uses the Enneagram and Brainspotting to help 20 & 30-somethings understand and change unhelpful patterns, love themselves, and navigate all the big transitions and emotions that come with where they are in life.
What my clients often look like:
1) Empaths and “HSPs” who feel deeply and are afraid that something is “wrong” with them or have been told that they are too “sensitive”
2) Helpers or “over-givers” who want healthier relationships with themselves and others
3) Enneagram enthusiasts who want to grow
4) Premarital and young couples wanting to start their marriage off on the right foot