Ep. 42: The Enneagram: Your Number, Your Needs w/ Suzanne Stabile
Show Notes
Episode Summary
“Few people can teach you the Enneagram with the genuine insight, humor, and potential for real growth and change better than Suzanne Stabile, writes Father Richard Rohr. And after this incredible episode, we agree!
Stabile is one of the world’s most sought-after gurus when it comes to all things Enneagram. Today, she joins us to discuss what it means to know your number, to live a balanced life within your number, as well as to recognize when you are either in excess or unhealthy in your number. She explores in detail each of the nine individual types and how each type can be manipulated and abused in unhealthy church communities. Regardless your number, everyone of us longs to be known, to be valued, and to offer our gifts and talents to the world. Suzanne helps you recognize what those gifts are by drilling down into the motivations behind each Enneagram type. She even helps you, based on your number, choose a spiritual practice to grow your soul. Even if you don’t know your Enneagram number yet, this episode will help you recognize those areas in your life where you are out of balance and teetering on pathological behavior. In this episode we discuss the reality that the Enneagram is not just a personality typing system, but is rather a tool to help you over a life-long journey of self-discovery by uncovering the traps that keep you from living fully and freely as your True Self.
Bio
Suzanne Stabile is a speaker, teacher, and internationally recognized Enneagram master teacher who has taught thousands of people over the last thirty years. She is the author of The Path Between Us, and coauthor, with Ian Morgan Cron, of The Road Back to You. She is also the creator and host of The Enneagram Journey podcast.
Along with her husband, Rev. Joseph Stabile, she is cofounder of Life in the Trinity Ministry, a nonprofit, nondenominational ministry committed to the spiritual growth and formation of adults. Their ministry home, the Micah Center, is located in Dallas, Texas. They have many audio resources available, including The Enneagram Journey curriculum. Suzanne has spoken at hundreds of colleges, churches, and conferences across America, and also teaches in the Baylor Health Care System. She has taught at Richard Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation and has taught with Father Rohr to an international audience in Assisi, Italy. You can find Suzanne at her website Life in the Trinity Ministry as well her podcast The Enneagram Journey. Her new book The Journey Toward Wholeness is now available.
Quotables
“Your Enneagram number is determined by motivation and not by behavior.”
“The reality in the Enneagram is the best part of you is the worst part of you.”
“We are responsible if we know all nine numbers for treating people how they want to be treated.”
“The understanding that we are all pretty much the same is so wrong.”
“Gary, you are a four, and that is the most complex number on the Enneagram….Because what you see is not usually what you get.”
“Culturally in the West, we really like male eights…but you put exactly the same gifts in a female eight and she is a bitch.”
“It’s possible at any given moment for any of us in terms of Enneagram wisdom to be healthy, average, unhealthy, in excess in our number, or pathological.”
“When any of us are in excess in our number, we are very difficult for other people.”
“We can all be self-indulgent, and that is what it means to be in excess in our numbers.”
“The goal is, if we can recognize ourselves when we are in excess in our number.”
“When people are in recovery and are about to relapse, they are in excess in their number every time.”
“Twos, threes, and fours are feeling dominant. Fives, sixes, and sevens are thinking dominant. Eights, nines, and ones are doing dominant.”
“Good is balanced. And what we have to balance is thinking, feeling, and doing. When you are balanced in all three, then you are healthy.”
“Ones are born believing that they are not good, that they are somehow flawed in a way they have to make up for, and they have an internal critic.”
“And since ones believe they are not good, they desperately want to be right or correct.”
“For twos, particular for female twos, the Church supports being in excess in your number…and the Church loves female twos because we just fall in line with giving and doing.”
“Threes have this way of being in the world where they intuitively just read the room and know what it would look like to be the poster child for that group and become the poster child.”
“Sixes doubt themselves, and they don’t trust themselves.”
“Every Enneagram number is associated with a sin or a passion.”
“I happen to think there are more sixes than any other number…And it’s pretty easy for the Church to take advantage of unhealthy sixes.”
“For an unhealthy seven in an unhealthy church, the Prosperity Gospel works.”
“Nines don’t think their presence matters.”
“Unhealthy churches are a hard place for ones and sixes and nines to ask questions that they need answers to.”
Timestamps and References
[02:30]—Suzanne Stabile’s background and bio
[04:15]—Suzanne’s own journey out of a hurtful church and abusive church experiences
[06:20]—Why the Enneagram is a hot topic right now
[09:50]—What if Enneagram assessments aren’t all they are cracked up to be
[12:20]—Why it is important to know more than just your number
[14:25]—Why fours are the most complex number on the Enneagram
[15:30]—Why the Church struggles with strong, female eights
[22:10]—The Enneagram, Recovery Programs, and Twelve Step Work
[23:50]—What it means to be in excess in your number
[24:45]—Why every number struggles in unhealthy churches and what motivates every number
[35:30]—The value of having a spiritual director and how to grow your soul through spiritual practices
[37:50]—Her book A Journey Toward Wholeness and the value of doing soul work
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Credits
This episode was produced by The Sophia Society. Music is by Faith in Foxholes.
No amount of faith is going to protect you from deep pain. I used to view faith as this thing that is going to protect me from deep suffering, or make meaning out of it, and I don’t think there always is meaning. Sometimes, it just hurts.