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The Sidekick | When "helping" becomes hiding · The Wholehearted Enneagram Podcast

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Over the past few weeks, you and I have walked through the core roles that you play in your wholehearted story.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: I talked about the victim where pain is named honestly, the villain where protection hardens into control, the hero when agency awakens and you realize I can choose differently.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then I shared about the guide where wisdom sustains the wholehearted journey.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: But before I have you move into the type-specific series that I'm going to start this month, in fact, next week, I need to talk about a pattern that I see constantly, especially in women of faith.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_00: It's a place where women like you and I get stuck before we even step into our hero moment.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And honestly, it's one of the most culturally acceptable ways to stay small.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: So today I'm talking about the sidekick stuck point.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be clear from the beginning.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: This is not about diminishing your service.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's not even about calling faithfulness as hiding.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, it's not about making you feel bad for being helpful.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: But much like the victim role, where I invited you to distinguish between being a victim of circumstances and living from a victim mentality, there are two perspectives you need to consider with the sidekick.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: Am I in a sidekick season because I'm resting and not needing to be center stage?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: Or am I purposely hiding from the lead role in my own story?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: So this conversation is about helping to recognize when you're in a I'm just here to help mentality and when you are using that as a way to avoid stepping into your own agency, your own calling, and your own story.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: Because here is what I've noticed.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Some women move from victim or villain straight into sidekick energy or the best friend role.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And they never leave it.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: They continue to serve, they support, they show up for everyone else, but they never claim their own hero moment.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Here is where you'll find conversations where faith meets story and strategy for lasting transformation.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Amy Wicks, here to help you find wisdom and wholehearted rhythms for moments that matter most.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Whether you're learning your type or deepening your spiritual formation, these conversations will remind you that the Enneagram shines a light, but Christ is the transformation.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: It can sound like I'm just here to support, or other people need it more than I do.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't want to take too much time or space.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: And who am I to want more?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm content.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: I'm happy with the way things are.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fear of being seen, fear of failing, fear of wanting something and not getting it, or even fear of being selfish.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: The sidekick stuck point is when you champion everyone else's dreams but dismiss your own, volunteer for a lot of things, fill your time so you never pursue your calling, show up for others, but feel invisible in your own life, and maybe even use being helpful as a way to earn worth and skillfully avoid risk.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: You are probably incredibly useful in this role, but you might be hiding.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Before I keep unpacking this sidekick stuck role, here's something that is really important.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: Not every sidekick or best friend season is a stuck point.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: There are two completely different ways to live in the sidekick role, and the difference matters deeply.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_00: Before I give you a biblical reference point, let me compare the two for you because the sidekick as a stuck point, what it looks like is using service or helping to avoid risk.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you don't ever step into or claim your own agency.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: You choose to stay invisible because visibility feels scary and dangerous, and you tend to serve from a place of depletion because it's the only way you feel valuable.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: But here is what the sidekick role looks like in a faithful season.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you celebrate someone else's wind without it needing to be yours.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: You support a project you believe in without needing to lead it, you observe and learn without needing to be the authority, and you rest in a season where you're not the main character, and it's totally okay with you.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Here is a key difference between the two.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: The stuck sidekick has never stepped into her own story.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: The faithful sidekick has stepped into her own story, and now she's choosing to step back.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: One is avoidance and the other is maturity.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the biblical frame of reference I mentioned earlier.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_00: I want to look at Moses' sister Miriam.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: You read early in her story when she shows up, she is a faithful sidekick.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: She watches over her little baby brother Moses.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: She speaks up at the right moment.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: She even later on celebrates the Red Sea crossing with a prophetic song.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_00: In that faithful sidekick role, she is present, contributing, she's essential, and she has no need to be the primary leader.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: But later, when she and Aaron challenge Moses' leadership, we see stuck sidekick energy.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: There's resentment that she's not center stage.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: She's stuck in comparison and criticism.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: It seems as if she forgot her own calling and is stuck measuring her worth against Moses' visibility.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Now, to be fair, friend, I'm extrapolating a little bit from what we have in the text, but if you read the arc of her life, we see some of this play out.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: I also think about Martha.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, as in the famous Martha, Mary, and Martha.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke 10, she is the epitome of stuck sidekick energy.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: She says, Lord, don't you care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: She is serving, right?
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_00: But she's serving from a depleted place.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: She is simmering with resentment.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: She's keeping score, at least it seems, and it seems like she's measuring her worth by her usefulness.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, she comes across that she's angry, that her service isn't being honored.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: And that is what this duck sidekick role looks like.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Useful, but perhaps bitter and resentful.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: But this is what I love about Martha's story.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: She doesn't stay there.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: In John 11, when her brother Lazarus dies, Martha runs to meet Jesus and she makes one of the most profound confessions in Scripture.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Lord, I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: In that moment, she has found her voice, a voice of love, of belief, of belovedness, her faith, and her own agency.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then in John 12, we see her serving dinner again.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But this time there is no complaint, no resentment, just present.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: I believe this is a beautiful illustration of what it looks to move from stuck sidekick to faithful sidekick.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: There's the same actions but different heart.
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: The difference isn't in what you are doing, it's in the posture, the belief of who you are, and what comes before it, that you were responding, not living with the heavy yoke of responsibility.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right, so for the rest of this conversation, I want to focus on the sidekick as a stuck point because this is the pattern that keeps so many women like you from stepping into their calling or the fullness of their calling.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because the sidekick role or the best friend role, I like to call it as well, it tends to come out of fear rather than choice.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's when you're supporting in a way that sidesteps your own calling.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: I understand stepping into it feels risky, it's vulnerable, we want to be validated.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: That hero moment doesn't always have the outcome we want.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so sometimes we have the hero moment and we think that did not work out how I wanted it to.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna go back into hiding.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I want you to consider where do you need to exercise agency or where have you had agency, but then you've decided to just help everyone else instead.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now I can look back at many chapters in my life when I was living in sidekick stuck point energy, or when I was the best friend role, not because I had done the work and it was time for me to step back, but because I didn't know what else to do.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I was afraid to exercise agency, and I wasn't sure I had what it took to live into the hero and the guide role.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was really easy at times to show up for others and celebrate their wins and help their needs and just be the behind-the-scenes gal.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And none of those were wasted, to be sure.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Helping and learning along the way has definitely contributed to where I am now and has contributed to my hero moments.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't living into that role because it was life-giving and it was coming from an abundance.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was coming from a place of fear and hiding.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: I was worried that stepping into my calling would be presumptuous or indulgent, or even being really clear about what I desired and going after it, it would mean that I was discontent or ungrateful, or I was wanting too much.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now, there have been many times that I needed to be called out and called up out of hiding, but I can think of one point in particular.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was the end of 2020, and I was making some plans for 2021.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: I was wrestling with decisions about helping and serving and working for other people.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: I remember how scary it felt to put how I felt, all my eggs in one basket, to put a pause on working for all these other ministries and organizations or all these other little side jobs that I was doing while doing simply wholehearted, and to go all into this coaching and this ministry work.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: And that would be my main focus.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It was nerve-wracking.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: What if it didn't work out?
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: What if the Lord wasn't going to bless it because I was focusing on this dream instead of helping everybody else's dream?
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it sounds so good.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds holy, and maybe even sounds like the right thing to do.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: But I sought the Lord and it was pretty clear at one point where he told me, put those opportunities aside to say thank you, but not this time.
• 11:57
  SPEAKER_00: And he invited me to give myself wholeheartedly to this work of Simply Wholehearted and what you all know as wholehearted Enneagram.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_00: That year, something shifted significantly in me and even in the business.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: There wasn't any radical overnight shift or growth, and it was super scary.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: It was difficult to say no because there are people I loved and I loved to help.
• 12:23
  SPEAKER_00: But in the end, that was an important shift for me.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: A moment where I stopped just playing the sidekick role or the best friend role, and I stepped in fully into living out the mission that the Lord had placed in my heart exactly as He wanted me to in that moment.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: There have also been so many other seasons after that moment that I've been able to walk as a guide and live into that sidekick energy.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love doing it now with my coaches in particular because it's easy to celebrate their launches without needing it to be mine.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: I love supporting their projects without needing to lead it, or contemporaries who are launching books or other amazing programs.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: And it's such a wonderful place to be in where I can observe and celebrate their wins and their successes.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: And that is the help that I offer, the sidekick energy of support and encouragement without giving up the dreams and the calling that the Lord has asked me to focus on that is directly related to me.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: There's no sacrifice or exchange of putting aside my dream and my calling to celebrate theirs.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it took me stepping and claiming my hero moment about this role in particular in my life.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, I love living in sidekick energy.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: It is so great to be the enthusiastic best friend, right?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: We all need one of those.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really important to know that that and those moments, they came from freedom, not fear.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, I've been teasing about it for a little bit, but for sure I want you to know this month I am starting the type-specific series with the Enneagram 9.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're gonna spend a month on each type.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's going to be amazing.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: And here's the reason why I wanted to start with the Enneagram 9, and I wanted to make sure that you heard and learned about this sidekick role before we jumped in, because sometimes nines in particular are the poster child of a sidekick stuck point energy.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: And it is no less love to you, my nines.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the thing: the nine can very easily be the peacekeeper who merges with others' agenda.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: The nine can be a supportive presence who forgets their own priorities.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: They can also be the one who says, I'm fine, what do you need?
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_00: This type, yes, we love you nines, but you can be most prone to self-forgetting.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: I've known a lot of nines who have lived their entire life in sidekick energy, and they show up for everybody else, but not for their own story.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: And now to be clear, this sidekick role is not just about nines.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: I just talked about mine and I'm a seven.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's about you and I, all the types, to learn to recognize the pattern.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a great place to start the conversation, especially as we continue to dive in about the Enneagram 9 this month.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now you might be asking, or hopefully you're asking, how do you move from sidekick steck point to the hero role, or to make sure that you're staying steady in your role as a guide?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it starts with one important question.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: Am I serving from a place of wholeheartedness, or are you serving to stay safe?
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_00: And that makes all the difference.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: When you're serving because you genuinely want to, because it's life-giving and it flows from rest and freedom, that is a beautiful thing.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: But if you're serving because it's the only way you can find value or to feel valuable, and you're afraid of risking your dream, and maybe perhaps it feels better to protect you from being seen, then it is time to ask, my dear friend, what am I avoiding by staying here in this role?
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Remember, the hero moment isn't about being selfish.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's about being honest.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's about saying that you have agency, my story matters, I can choose differently, and my calling isn't optional.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, dear friend, the most faithful thing you can do is step out of the wings and into your own story.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: So as I wrap up this conversation, I have three questions for you to sit with this week.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna try to say them slow, and remember, you don't need to answer them all right now and all at once, but consider these questions.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: One, am I more comfortable championing others' dreams than pursuing my own?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: Two, does the idea of investing in myself with coaching, training, or resources, does that feel selfish?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: And three, if I'm in a sidekick season now, is it because I'm afraid to step forward or because I've already stepped forward and I'm choosing to step back to support and celebrate?
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: Again, you don't have to have all the answers right now, but pay attention if anything stirred.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: As I've promised, next week I am diving into the Enneagram type 9.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot wait to spend this month with you.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you've recognized yourself in the sidekick steck point pattern, the nine conversation, well, the four conversations are likely to give you language, clarity, and a very clear path forward.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: And also, even if you're not a nine, hopefully you will join the conversation to see how this pattern can show up in all types and all of us in different ways, and how to love the nines in your life really, really well.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: If you found yourself realizing that you've been living in sidekick stuck point energy, useful but invisible, helpful but hiding, I want you to hear this.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You are not selfish for wanting more.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_00: You're not being ungrateful to pursue your own calling, and you're not prideful for claiming agency.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_00: Your story matters, your calling is real, and the world doesn't need another hidden woman serving from depletion.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: The world needs you, dear friend, whole, visible, and fully alive.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_00: And now, if you're in a faithful sidekick season, the one that you're choosing after claiming your hero moment, may you rest in the freedom of not needing center stage.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: May you celebrate, support, and observe without your ego demanding visibility.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: May you honor the faithfulness of your service while releasing the fear that keeps you small.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: And may you step out of the wings and into your own story when the Lord says it's time.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can also visit simply wholehearted.com to take the free Enneagram quiz and also get your personalized podcast playlist specific for your Enneagram type.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_00: And remember, friend, your starting point doesn't have to be your stuff point.