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The Living Room Part 2: Why We Leave Ourselves · Echoes & Edges

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Echoes and Edges, the Broken and Beautiful podcast.
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: I'm Patria, and I'm really glad you're here. We've been
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: spending some time together talking about this idea of integrity,
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: but perhaps not in the way we most commonly use
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: the word. I'm not primarily talking about integrity as honesty
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: or morality, although of course those things matter. I'm talking
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: about integrity in its older and I think richer sense, integration, wholeness,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: becoming a person whose inner and outer lives increasingly belong
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: to one another. In the first episode of the series,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: we went into what I called the courtroom and That's
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: the place where we can find ourselves when someone else's
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: experience of us, disappointment in us, accusation against us, or
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: just simply interpretation of who we are becomes the case
• 1:06
  Speaker 1: we have to suddenly answer. Instead of simply asking what
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: is true for me, we can automatically begin building a
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: defense or perhaps even more painfully joining the prosecution. But
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: the point is that Ultimately, we are human beings trying
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: to make contact with the biggest version of reality that
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: we can connect to. In part two, we left the
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: courtroom and entered the living room. The living room has
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  Speaker 1: become an image for me of something quite different. It's
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: the place where I can remain seated in my own
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  Speaker 1: life while making room for someone else. You can come in,
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: you can sit down, you can tell me something I
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  Speaker 1: don't know. You can challenge me. You can be disappointed
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  Speaker 1: in me. You can even tell me that I've hurt you.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: And I can listen carefully enough to discover that maybe
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  Speaker 1: you're right. But you aren't the judge, and neither am I.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: We're just two human beings trying to make contact with reality.
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  Speaker 1: The living room isn't a place where I decide that
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  Speaker 1: my own perception is infallible. It isn't where I say,
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  Speaker 1: I know myself and therefore no one else gets to
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  Speaker 1: tell me anything. That's just another closed system like the courtroom.
• 2:29
  Speaker 1: The living room is where I can listen to you
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  Speaker 1: without automatically leaving myself in order to do it. And
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: as I've continued thinking about all of this, another question
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: has become interesting to me. If I know that I
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: want to move from the courtroom into the living room,
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: why can't it be so difficult to actually get there?
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Because it's one thing to understand the metaphor. It's another
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: thing entirely to be in the middle of your actual
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: life when someone you love or someone that you trust
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: is angry with you. It's different when your boss is disappointed,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: when your spouse says something that hits you right in
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  Speaker 1: the tenderest place, when a friend withdraws, when your child
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  Speaker 1: doesn't need you in the way they once did, when
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  Speaker 1: somebody misunderstands your motives. When you've failed at something that
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  Speaker 1: matters deeply to you. When someone questions your goodness, your competence,
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  Speaker 1: your loyalty, your strength, your contribution, your lovability, or your place.
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: That's where I want to put some meat on the
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  Speaker 1: bones today. And I'm going to use the Enneagram to
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: help us do that. If you aren't familiar with the Enneagram,
• 3:44
  Speaker 1: you can still listen. You don't need to know your
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: type for this conversation to be useful. And I certainly
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: don't want you spending the next half hour trying to
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  Speaker 1: diagnose yourself from nine little tiny descriptions I'm going to
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: be using here. Now, the Enneagram is simply the structure
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: I'm using today because I'm familiar with it for one thing,
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  Speaker 1: but because it gives us these nine different windows into
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  Speaker 1: the ways human beings learn to organize themselves around what
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  Speaker 1: seems necessary for love, safety, belonging, value, autonomy, security, safety,
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  Speaker 1: those kinds of things. And there are many other structures
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  Speaker 1: and frameworks that we could use. This is, again, one
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  Speaker 1: I'm very familiar with. You could approach this, though, through attachment.
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  Speaker 1: You could look at your family system, your culture. You
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: could look at your faith formation. You could look at
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  Speaker 1: your story, your childhood experiences. You could listen to your body.
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: You can look at the history of your relationships. You
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: can think about your temperament. I love Myers-Briggs. It's another
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: really helpful tool and strengths finders. Those are options. Your
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: trauma history and the roles you've learned to occupy in
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: your family or simply the patterns that you've begun noticing
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: over the course of your life. The point is not
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  Speaker 1: to find the perfect framework. The point is to find
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  Speaker 1: something concrete enough to help us get granular. Because stay
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  Speaker 1: with yourself, quote unquote, sounds lovely until I have to
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  Speaker 1: figure out what leaving myself actually looks like for me.
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  Speaker 1: That's where good frameworks can help us get unstuck. They
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  Speaker 1: give us a place to put our finger and say, oh, there, there,
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  Speaker 1: that's a page I know. That's a page I live on.
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  Speaker 1: That's something I recognize. The Enneagram happens to be one
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  Speaker 1: of those frameworks. I know well, and I think it
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  Speaker 1: can be particularly helpful here because it doesn't simply ask
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  Speaker 1: what we do. It asks us to become curious about why.
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  Speaker 1: So as we move around the Enneagram today, I'm less
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  Speaker 1: interested in describing nine personalities than I am in asking
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  Speaker 1: one question nine different ways. What might make leaving my
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: own chair feel necessary? And then perhaps more importantly, What
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  Speaker 1: might help me find my way back? So let's begin
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  Speaker 1: with type one. If you're a type one, the courtroom
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  Speaker 1: may be particularly compelling because you already have a fairly
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  Speaker 1: sophisticated internal courtroom. There's often a strong relationship with what
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: is right, responsible, ethical, appropriate, and good. You may be
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: remarkably perceptive at what could be improved. And that capacity
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  Speaker 1: is an extraordinary gift. Ones often bring integrity into systems
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  Speaker 1: simply because they notice where something is out of alignment
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: and care enough to do something about it. But imagine
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: what happens when relationship collides with that internal standard. Someone
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: is disappointed in you, and the question may quickly become
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  Speaker 1: not merely, did I hurt this person, but did I
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  Speaker 1: do something wrong? And those are not always the same question.
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  Speaker 1: Sometimes we hurt people by doing something wrong, certainly. Sometimes
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  Speaker 1: we disappoint people because we've made a mistake that needs repair.
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  Speaker 1: But sometimes another person's disappointment is simply the cost of
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  Speaker 1: making a choice that they don't like. For a one,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: moving into the living room may require noticing how quickly
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  Speaker 1: the inner judge takes the bench. So a good question
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  Speaker 1: for type ones, can I listen before I sentence myself?
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  Speaker 1: Or another question, can I discover that I was wrong
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  Speaker 1: without turning I was wrong into there is something wrong
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  Speaker 1: with me? Can I also discover that I acted with
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: integrity even though someone else didn't like what I did?
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  Speaker 1: The movement toward the living room isn't abandoning goodness. It
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: may actually be allowing goodness to become larger than perfection.
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  Speaker 1: For Type 2, leaving the chair may look very different.
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  Speaker 1: If so much of your attention naturally moves toward other people,
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  Speaker 1: their needs, their feelings, their experiences, what would help, what
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  Speaker 1: would make things better, then leaving yourself may not feel
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  Speaker 1: like leaving at all. It may feel like love. That's
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  Speaker 1: what makes this complicated for Type 2s. Being attentive to
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  Speaker 1: people is a beautiful capacity. Generosity is beautiful. The ability
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  Speaker 1: to walk into a room and notice that somebody is
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  Speaker 1: standing alone, that someone needs encouragement, that another person could
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  Speaker 1: use practical help. Those are true gifts. But somewhere along
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  Speaker 1: the way, the question can become, must I? Do I
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  Speaker 1: still have a place if I'm not needed here, if
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  Speaker 1: I'm just a person like everybody else? And now imagine
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  Speaker 1: somebody you love is upset with you. How quickly do
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: you move toward their experience of it? How quickly do
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: you understand and accommodate their point of view? And at
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  Speaker 1: what point do you realize you haven't asked yourself what
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: you experienced? The living room for a two has a
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: chair with her name on it. She doesn't have to
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: stand at the door greeting everyone. She doesn't have to
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  Speaker 1: fluff all the pillows, refill all the drinks, and make
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  Speaker 1: sure everybody else's person has somewhere comfortable to sit before
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  Speaker 1: she notices she has been standing for three hours. She
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  Speaker 1: gets a seat because she lives here. Returning to that
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  Speaker 1: chair might mean asking, what do I need? What do
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  Speaker 1: I want? What happened to me in this interaction? Am
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  Speaker 1: I giving because I'm genuinely wanting to give or because
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  Speaker 1: giving has become the way I secure my place? The
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  Speaker 1: answer won't always be either or, but learning to ask
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  Speaker 1: is a part of coming home. Type three. For you,
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  Speaker 1: the courtroom may organize itself around value. Am I succeeding?
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  Speaker 1: Am I contributing? Am I effective? Am I someone? worth respecting? Again,
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  Speaker 1: these capacities are not the problem. I am deeply grateful
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  Speaker 1: for people who know how to get things done. The
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  Speaker 1: ability to see what is needed, organize around a goal
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  Speaker 1: and move toward it is a genuine gift. But when
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  Speaker 1: our worth gets tangled up with our effectiveness, feedback becomes
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  Speaker 1: more complicated. Failure isn't simply failure anymore. It threatens identity.
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  Speaker 1: Someone's disappointment may feel like evidence that we are not
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  Speaker 1: who we thought we were. A professional setback can become
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  Speaker 1: strangely personal. A relationship in which our contribution is no
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  Speaker 1: longer needed can leave us asking questions that seem disproportionate
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  Speaker 1: to what actually happened. And sometimes we become so skilled
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  Speaker 1: at becoming what the situation requires that we lose contact
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  Speaker 1: with the person who entered the situation in the first place.
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  Speaker 1: For the three, finding the living room may mean slowing
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  Speaker 1: down long enough to ask, what do I actually want
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  Speaker 1: when there's no audience? What is true about me when
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  Speaker 1: nothing is being accomplished? Who am I when I cannot
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  Speaker 1: point to what I have produced as evidence of my value?
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  Speaker 1: You don't have to stop accomplishing. You don't have to
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  Speaker 1: pretend success doesn't matter. You are simply discovering that achievement
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  Speaker 1: can be something you do without becoming evidence you submit
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  Speaker 1: to prove you deserve your seat. For the type four,
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  Speaker 1: the challenge may be less about leaving feeling and more
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  Speaker 1: about becoming so deeply identified with an emotional experience that
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  Speaker 1: it begins to define reality. Fours often have extraordinary access
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  Speaker 1: to nuance, meaning, beauty, grief, longing, and the emotional textures
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  Speaker 1: other people move past too quickly. There is tremendous wisdom
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  Speaker 1: in being willing to remain with what is difficult rather
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  Speaker 1: than rushing to make it prettier. But feelings are information.
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  Speaker 1: They aren't always the whole story. So when something happens relationally,
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  Speaker 1: The courtroom can sometimes be built from meaning. This feels
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  Speaker 1: like abandonment, therefore I have been abandoned. This feels like rejection,
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  Speaker 1: therefore I am unwanted. This feels painfully familiar, therefore I
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  Speaker 1: already know how this story ends. Coming back to the
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: living room may mean allowing emotion to have a very
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  Speaker 1: large chair without giving it every chair. The questions, what
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  Speaker 1: am I feeling? What does this remind me of? What
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  Speaker 1: story am I telling about what this means? And what
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  Speaker 1: else might also be true are good questions for fours.
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  Speaker 1: Integrity doesn't ask the four to become less emotionally alive.
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  Speaker 1: May it never be. It asks her to remain open
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  Speaker 1: to a reality that may be larger than the emotional
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  Speaker 1: truth she can currently feel. Type five is You may
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  Speaker 1: leave the living room in an entirely different direction. Rather
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  Speaker 1: than moving toward another person or toward emotion, the five
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  Speaker 1: may move back and away from it. Observe, understand, conserve, think.
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  Speaker 1: There's wisdom here too. The ability to step back from
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  Speaker 1: intensity and see what others cannot see is enormously valuable.
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  Speaker 1: We need people who don't immediately get swept into every
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  Speaker 1: emotional current moving through the room. But observation can eventually
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  Speaker 1: become distance. When relationship feels demanding, when another person's needs
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  Speaker 1: seem endless, or when the five doesn't yet feel competent
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  Speaker 1: enough to respond, retreat can create a sense of safety.
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  Speaker 1: The courtroom may therefore look less like prosecution and more
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  Speaker 1: like analysis. If I can understand this well enough, perhaps
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  Speaker 1: I won't have to experience it quite so directly. The
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  Speaker 1: invitation back into the living room isn't to surrender privacy
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  Speaker 1: or become endlessly available. It is to notice when the
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  Speaker 1: protection of your resources has become the protection of yourself
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  Speaker 1: from participation. What do I know because I have studied
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  Speaker 1: this is a great question for fives. And what can
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  Speaker 1: I only know by actually being here is another great
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  Speaker 1: question for fives. Sometimes integrity asks us to remain in
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  Speaker 1: our bodies, in the conversation, and in relationship long enough
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  Speaker 1: to discover that we have enough to participate even when
• 14:44
  Speaker 1: we don't have everything figured out. Moving on to six,
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  Speaker 1: and for the six, the courtroom metaphor may feel especially
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  Speaker 1: familiar because courts promise something sixes deeply value, enough evidence
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  Speaker 1: to know what is true. If I can just examine
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  Speaker 1: this from every direction, maybe I can finally be certain.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: What did she mean? Why did he say it like that?
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  Speaker 1: Am I missing something? Who else should I ask? What
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: happened last time? What if I'm being naive? What if
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: I'm overreacting? What if I'm underreacting? There can be tremendous
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: intelligence in this. Sixes often see contingencies that the rest
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  Speaker 1: of us miss. They ask the second question and the
• 15:33
  Speaker 1: third question. They notice the loose stare and wonder whether
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: someone should fix it before somebody gets hurt. But discernment
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: can become outsourcing. At some point, I can gather so
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: many opinions, so much evidence, and so many possible interpretations
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  Speaker 1: that I become actually less able, not more able to
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  Speaker 1: hear what I actually know. For the six, the living
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  Speaker 1: room may involve discovering that certainty and self-trust are not
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: the same thing. You may not become certain. You may
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: not get enough information to eliminate risk. You may still
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: have questions. And you can remain seated anyway. You can
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: seek wise counsel without handing someone else the deed to
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: the house. And type sevens. Here we are with you,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: which is obviously familiar territory for some of us. The
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: seven has a remarkable ability to find possibility. There's another door,
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: another interpretation, another opportunity, another way through. There's something else
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  Speaker 1: we could try. And I genuinely love that capacity. I
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: don't want to lose that capacity. But I've had to
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: become curious about the moments when possibility stops being freedom
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  Speaker 1: and becomes escape. And this is true for type sevens
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  Speaker 1: because sometimes the living room contains things I cannot make
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  Speaker 1: more pleasant. There is grief there. There is limitation. There
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: are endings that I just hate. There are situations I
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: cannot fix by finding the next opening. There are moments
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  Speaker 1: when the most integrated thing I can do is stay.
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  Speaker 1: And sometimes I leave myself not because I'm afraid of
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  Speaker 1: another person's opinion, but because remaining with myself would require
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  Speaker 1: me to encounter something I would rather move past. Sevens
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  Speaker 1: can reframe remarkably quickly. Sevens can become useful. Sevens can
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: create something new. They can find the lesson. They can
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: make meaning. They can find the next beautiful thing. And
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: sometimes all of that is absolutely real. But sometimes integrity
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  Speaker 1: asks a seven not what else is possible, but what
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: is here? What is actually here right now? Can I
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: stay in this here-ness long enough to find out? Will
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: a seven... Allow sadness to be sad without making it
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: hopeful by paragraph three. Can I encounter a limitation without
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: immediately turning it into an opportunity? Another good question for seven.
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  Speaker 1: Can I discover what I need before I decide what
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do? For the seven, staying in the
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: chair doesn't mean giving up freedom. It may mean discovering
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: a freedom large enough that I no longer have to
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: run from anything inside my own house. Type 8. For you,
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: Type 8, leaving the chair may not look like anything
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  Speaker 1: like disappearing. It may look like becoming even more present,
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: more forceful, more certain, more ready. If vulnerability has come
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  Speaker 1: to feel dangerous, then strength becomes a remarkably effective way
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  Speaker 1: of remaining protected. And strength isn't the problem, of course.
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  Speaker 1: I want to be very careful about that, particularly with AIDS.
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  Speaker 1: Because strength is too often treated as something that needs
• 19:10
  Speaker 1: to be softened out of people, especially women. I don't
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: think that's integration. But strength can become armor. The moment
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  Speaker 1: another person has enough power to hurt me, I may
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: need to regain the advantage. If you misunderstand me, betray me,
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  Speaker 1: control me, or threaten someone I love, the safest place
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: may seem to be the strongest position in the room.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: The courtroom can be useful because it tells us who
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: did what and who needs to answer for it. The
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: living room asks something more vulnerable. Can I remain powerful
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: without needing to control the atmosphere? outcome? Can I tell
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  Speaker 1: you that you hurt me without first making sure you
• 19:54
  Speaker 1: understand what I could do to you? Can I allow
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: someone trustworthy to see what matters enough to me that
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: losing it would hurt? Can strength include receptivity? For an eight,
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: coming home doesn't require becoming smaller. It may mean discovering
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: that tenderness doesn't evict strength from the room. There is
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: enough space for both. And finally, last but not least, nine.
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  Speaker 1: For the nine, the metaphor of leaving your chair may
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: be particularly literal because one of the ways peace can
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: be preserved is by becoming deeply attuned to what everyone
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: else wants and gradually losing contact with what it is
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: that you want. Not necessarily because anyone demanded it. Sometimes
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: it happens so quietly that nobody notices, including the nine.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: Where do you want to eat? I don't care. What
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: do you want to do? Whatever. Does this bother you? Ah,
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  Speaker 1: it's fine. And perhaps it really is fine. Until it isn't.
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  Speaker 1: The nine often has a beautiful capacity to hold multiple perspectives.
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  Speaker 1: They can understand why this person feels this way and
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: why that person feels another way. They can lower the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: temperature in a room simply by refusing to make every
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: disagreement a crisis. But there is a cost when peace
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: requires absence. If your own knowing continually becomes the least
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: urgent thing in the room, eventually it can become difficult
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: to locate. So the nine's return to the living room
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: may begin with surprisingly ordinary questions. What do I want?
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  Speaker 1: What do I think? What actually does bother me? What
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: matters enough that I'm willing to disrupt the peace to
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: say it? And perhaps most importantly, what happens if someone
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: else doesn't like my answer? Integrity may require the nine
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: to discover that conflict doesn't necessarily mean connection has failed.
• 21:56
  Speaker 1: Sometimes disagreement is evidence that there are actually two people
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  Speaker 1: in the room and we need both of you. Now,
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: if you know the Enneagram well, you already know that
• 22:07
  Speaker 1: what I've just done is necessarily incomplete. Nine types, a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: few minutes each, an enormous amount of human complexity compressed
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: into blurbs of language. Your subtype matters, your instincts matter,
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: your history matters, your culture, your family, your level of health,
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: your particular relationships matter. Two people of the same Enneagram
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: type can look remarkably different from one another. That's why
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I don't want you leaving this episode thinking, well, I'm
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: a six, so apparently I outsource my knowledge, or I'm
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: a two, so I don't know what I need. That's
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: not the point at all. The Enneagram is giving us
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: a place to look. It's not telling us what we
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: will find. What I'm interested in is whether something in
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: this conversation helped you notice the moment when you tend
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: to get up from your own chair. Maybe you leave
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: because goodness feels threatened. Maybe you leave because someone needs
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: you or your value feels threatened or your emotional story
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: becomes more compelling than anything else or you retreat into
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: observation or search for certainty or reach for possibility or
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: move towards strength and control or disappear into peace. And
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: maybe none of those descriptions quite fit you. That's okay.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Find another structure. Look at attachment or your family story.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Look at the roles you played growing up. But either way,
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: talk to somebody, especially if you're confused about which of
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: this kind of leaving yourself applies to you. Talk to
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: your therapist, your coach, or a good, wise friend. Pay
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: attention to your body. She has a lot to tell you.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Notice what happens the next time somebody is disappointed in you.
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: The framework isn't sacred. The noticing is sacred. You are sacred.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: Because we're trying to get granular enough to recognize ourselves
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: in motion. I don't think most of us consciously decide,
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: I'm going to abandon myself today. We simply feel the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: old relational cost rising. Something in us remembers that this
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: is the moment when we become useful or good or
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: agreeable or impressive. And remember, it's black ice. It's not
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: a choice we're making. So before we know it, or
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: standing outside our own house trying to figure out how
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: to get somebody else to let us back in. The
• 24:33
  Speaker 1: work isn't to shame that adaptation. I keep returning to
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: this because I think it matters. Those strategies often developed
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: in service of something incredibly important. We were trying to
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: preserve connection or safety or belonging or worth or freedom.
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: And I have much more compassion for myself when I
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: understand that. But what once protected something really precious and
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: fragile as a child can eventually become so automatic that
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: we continue paying a price that's no longer required and
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: that we're more robust to be able to handle than
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: we were as children. And this is where integrity gives
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: us another possibility of remaining, listening, being wrong, apologizing, changing,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: needing help, disappointing other people, discovering that something I believed
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: about myself isn't true, discovering something that you believe about
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: me isn't true. And through all of that, I can
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: practice remaining in relationship with myself, not because my perception
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: is always right, but because I am one of the
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: people whose experience belongs in the room. Next time, we're
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: going to talk about what does your living room look like?
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: And that's where I get really excited because again, we're
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: going deeper into the granularity or the particularity of you.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: We've talked about the courtroom. We've begun imagining the living room.
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: And today we've used the Enneagram to explore some of
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: the different ways we might find ourselves leaving that room.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Sometimes before we even realize we've stood up. So next
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: time I want to do something a little more playful.
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: I want us to imagine what our living rooms might
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: actually look like. And yes, we're going to go around
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: the Enneagram again. What might a living room look like
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: for a one who no longer needs to correct everything
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: before she can rest? What kind of chair belongs to
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: the two who has spent years making sure everybody else
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: has a seat? And so on and so forth. I
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: already know that this is going to be imperfect. It
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: will be exaggerated in places. It will be hyperbole because
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: sometimes exaggerating the picture lets us see something we couldn't
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: see before. I don't want anyone walking away thinking there's
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: an official Enneagram Type 5 sofa or that all twos
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: need a particular chair. We're creating pictures of possibility. The
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: real living room will be yours. Your history will furnish it.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Your relationships will shape it. Your body will live in it.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: Your faith, your losses, your desires, your strengths, limitations, and
• 27:31
  Speaker 1: the things you're still discovering about yourself will all belong there. Eventually,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: every framework has to give way to the actual human being.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: That's where this becomes really interesting to me. The Enneagram
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: can point toward the door. It can help us notice
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: why we keep leaving. It's a profoundly helpful map to self-understanding.
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: It can give us language for what returning might require.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: But sooner or later, each of us has to walk
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: into our own house, look around and ask, what would
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: it mean for me to actually live here? That's where
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: we're headed next. And until then, perhaps just notice your chair.
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: Notice when you leave it. Notice what seems important enough
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: in that moment that leaving yourself feels necessary. And instead
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: of judging yourself for getting up, maybe become curious about
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: what you were trying to preserve. Then see if you
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: can come back and sit down. And I'll meet you
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: here next time. Music If this episode resonates with you,
• 28:38
  Speaker 1: follow or subscribe to Echoes and Edges on your favorite
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: podcast platform. Leave a five-star review and share with a
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: friend who might need a gentle invitation to self-understanding. Echoes
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: and Edges is produced and edited by Stephen R. Sanders.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: Music promoted by Envato.