Peter O’Hanrahan gives a masterclass in the Enneagram of Personality—the system that helps us understand our core beliefs, motivations, and fears so we can break the patterns that keep us stuck.

Peter starts with his decision, in the upheaval of the 70’s, to drop out of college and work as a counselor at a crisis center. That led to burnout. Moving to Berkeley, he studied holistic therapies and bodywork, and eventually opened a wellness center applying these modalities.

Enneagram pioneer Helen Palmer invited him to attend the first Enneagram class, which became a turning point for Peter. The insight into behaviors that the Enneagram gave him provided a window into the processes of trauma. Peter embarked on a lifelong study of the Enneagram system, teaching it to thousands in diverse parts of the world, and training over 800 practitioners.

Laying out the basic principles of the system, Peter walks us through the 9 personality types. From there, he turns to the adjacent types (wings), 3 centers of intelligence, and 3 instinctual sub-types. Collectively, these inform how we think and feel and relate. We cover the strengths of each type, as well as the shadow tendencies and obstacles. Peter emphasizes that while we are more than our patterns, knowing them is a starting point to understanding what drives us.

Moving onto practical application, he provides everyday examples of how using the Enneagram tools deepens the relationship to self and others, improves group dynamics, enhances collaborations and partnerships, enables conscious parenting, and advances intentional leadership.

The Enneagram helps us stop fighting our instincts and habits, and build awareness and emotional intelligence so we can manage them, responding mindfully with respect and empathy.

This conversation with Peter offers powerful strategies for leaning into “It Has To Be Me.”

TESS’S TAKEAWAYS:

1. The Enneagram system maps human psychology via nine personality types.
2. The Enneagram looks at core motivations, fears, desires, patterns, not just behavioral traits.
3. The nine types are grouped by their dominant centers of intelligence: body, heart, and head.
4. Influencing each type is its adjacent types (wings)—personality shifts in stress or security.
5. The subtypes (self-preservation, one-to-one, or social) inform personality expression.
6. Each type has a superpower and a shadow. Growth comes from integrating them.
7. Understanding your type can shift automatic reactions to conscious responses.
8. Psychology, culture, and family background shape the expression of your Enneagram type.

ABOUT PETER O’HANRAHAN

A leading Enneagram teacher and trainer in the United States, Peter O’Hanrahan began his Enneagram study in 1978, when Dr. Kathleen Speeth taught the first class in Berkeley.

Peter has facilitated hundreds of workshops for businesses, nonprofits, universities, and churches all over the world, and is a certified teacher with the Enneagram Professional Training Program. He serves on the faculty of the Narrative Enneagram School, and as a member of the International Enneagram Association, has presented at many conferences.

Using the Enneagram in his practice as a holistic counselor and body therapist, Peter has developed further approaches and applications. His programs and articles can be found at: TheEnneagramAtWork.com.

He lives in Northern California with his wife—and fellow Enneagram practitioner—Pat.

CONNECT WITH PETER

Website: https://theenneagramatwork.com/

Enneagram Workshops: https://theenneagramatwork.com/teaching-schedule/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peter.ohanrahan.52

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theenneagramatwork/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/peter-o-hanrahan-9078486/

MEET TESS MASTERS:

Tess Masters is an actor, presenter, health coach, cook, and author of The Blender Girl, The Blender Girl Smoothies, and The Perfect Blend, published by Penguin Random House. She is also the creator of the Skinny60® health programs.

Health tips and recipes by Tess have been featured in the LA Times, Washington Post, InStyle, Prevention, Shape, Glamour, Real Simple, Yoga Journal, Yahoo Health, Hallmark Channel, The Today Show, and many others.

Tess’s magnetic personality, infectious enthusiasm, and down-to-earth approach have made her a go-to personality for people of all dietary stripes who share her conviction that healthy living can be easy and fun. Get delicious recipes at TheBlenderGirl.com.

CONNECT WITH TESS:

Website: https://tessmasters.com/

Podcast: https://ithastobeme.com/

Health Programs: https://www.skinny60.com/

Delicious Recipes: https://www.theblendergirl.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theblendergirl/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theblendergirl/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/theblendergirl

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tessmasters/

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Oh, Pete, after our sessions, I am so excited to have this public conversation about the Enneagram. So take me back to that. It has to be me moment when you decided that you wanted to go into counseling all those years ago.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, that's an interesting question. Gosh, I was, you know, I'm an old guy now. So I was, I mean, in the early 1970s and so there was a lot of turmoil going on. You know, there was an American war in Vietnam. There was, you know, the Women's Liberation Movement, the gay, I mean, you know,

racial issues. There was all that going on. And so I actually dropped out of college and dropped into what I call community mental health. So I got a job at the local peer counseling and Crisis Intervention Center where I was trained as a peer counselor and someone who could get on the

phones and also meet with small groups and and promote and teach people do some counseling myself, but also teach other people how to do peer counseling with one another. It was just that time and so and I just kept going because it made a lot of sense to me, and also because, you know, a lot of the turmoil

we had back in those days. You know, people had good ideas, and they had certain values and they wanted to, you know, of course, we did want to end the war in Vietnam, but there was a lot of kind of problems. I mean, people just didn't know how to cooperate and get along. And I realized, you know, we need some

psychology here.

This is that sounds, that sounds familiar. Pete, yeah,

Peter O'Hanrahan: I'm sure that comes up to other people too. We need some psychology here.

We're in some turbo right now in the world and people screaming at each other, we did a lot more listening

and collaboration. So this is very much speaking to my heart and resonating. What about the it has to be me moment where you decided to move to California and Berkeley specifically? Yeah, well,

Peter O'Hanrahan: I we had kind of burned out, and this was in 7475 and and my partner was actually quite ill. She had she, she's type two on the Enneagram. She had absorbed a lot of other people's emotions and tension and stress, and she was very ill. And at some point I kind of looked at her. I went, we got to

move. And so we went to Berkeley, California, to study the holistic health, you know, Chinese medicine, body work, all the new stuff that was happening out there in Berkeley, California, says we needed healing for ourselves. And fortunately, we connected with the right people and the right

teachers, and we got it, you know, I mean, I she got better. I got better and and we opened up a holistic center and a large dance studio in Berkeley and launched ourselves into a new place.

How did you get better?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, I started taking care of my body, more, eating, better, eating, exercising, de stressing, and also working on my own psychological and emotional issues. Because I was a pretty I was not in great shape. Let's put that way. So I had a lot of work to do. So I started,

started out with getting counseling. I'd already started in Maryland, where I was from, but there were just wonderful teachers and counselors in Berkeley at the time so

and then this next iteration, where this opportunity came up to be part of the first public class about the Enneagram what? What did you think when you saw that come up?

Peter O'Hanrahan: I thought it was, you know, I'm a California guy at this point, but it had a kind of a weird name to it, and a weird diagram.

And what is this hippie California, a

Peter O'Hanrahan: little bit, you know, there was a lot of stuff that wasn't really solid, or was a little too out there, you know, too will even for me and so I but we the house I was living in, the group house, we got a call from Helen Palmer. And Helen Palmer was our kind of mentor. She was a teacher of

meditation psychology and also teacher of intuition, and she used to give people readings. And I, you know, I kind of, again, was resisting any kind of psychic whatever. I didn't believe in any of that stuff. On the other hand, Helen was really psychic. That's all I can say. She was just incredibly

intuitive. And so she would, you know, Coach people or give them readings and and so she was very much respected by many of us in Berkeley at the time. She called the house and say, Look, there's, there's this class happening, and you should go this Enneagram class. And because it was Helen, we went.

And we went to a neighborhood in Berkeley, and there was this bunch of houses, and this house with a bunch of people, and the line went all the way down the block. We're like, what's going on? And again, we had no idea what we were getting into, but she, the person teaching the class was Dr Kathleen. Spieth,

who became our Enneagram teacher, therapist, fourth way teacher. I mean, she was just a tremendously brilliant person who had been close to the beginning of the Enneagram system with Claudio narano in Berkeley. And this was the first public class there were, there were classes, you know, Claudia

and Ronna was using it in his group, a seekers after truth group called sat he also gave a couple classes up on the holy hill where the seminaries were all gathered and and that's interesting, because some of those people went took the Enneagram pretty quickly out around the world through the

particularly through the Catholic network. But here we were watching people talk about their the way they saw the world. There was a panel every week for one, you know, an evening panel. And there were nine panels, because there were nine Enneagram types, right? Enneagram is nine. And, yeah,

yeah. And I thought this was a cool way to learn psychology, because people were talking about themselves in a very intelligent way, in a guided way. And Kathy, Kathy Spieth, was just a brilliant interviewer. But then it came to my night, you know, chair, you know, like so all of a sudden I

was, you know, I became an enthusiast on the spot.

Oh, so tell me about going from resistance to persistence. Is that a good way to say it? How? What was it that's, you know, besides hearing other people speak about themselves with insight and clarity and vulnerability, what was it about your personal interaction and intersection and

experience with it that really invited you to really lean into this.

Peter O'Hanrahan: You know, it right from the beginning, it was such a great map of human beings, and it really, it is kind of just a map, and it's been used in centuries past to map out different kinds of information. That's another story, but it's actually the nine type structures that the

Enneagram described are all found in the psychological literature. In other words, Enneagram didn't make up these personality types. They're out there, and people knew about them, but they were scattered in different places and different books. And also, because the Enneagram kind of brought that

together, brought a lot of knowledge together into this organized system. And so it was just a great way to understand ourselves and the people that we were, you know, living with, you know, at home and at work. And I was in a very at the time, there was this very strong, what we call transpersonal psychology

community in Bay Area. And you probably know about that yourself, but

Well, one of my one of my therapists, is a trans person or somatic therapist, so yeah, Pete Coles, who I've had on the podcast, dear listener, you would remember myself.

Peter O'Hanrahan: So this combination of spirituality and psychology, and it just spoke to it just I felt like I had a part in the human community. Oh, right. My Type, Type eight, can kind of feel somewhat like, you know, I don't really fit in here, but, but now I had a place. And it just was very

precise, not only about the problems and the work to be done, but it was also very good about kind of celebrating the strengths.

Yes, that is what I really love about it. So it's one thing to embrace it on a personal level, and then another to then begin incorporating it into your work and seeing how it really helped you see and hold others, but also be able to to shepherd others in this really beautiful way. So take me inside

that, that progression.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, we had a center. As I said, there was an expansive time in Berkeley. I just put that way. We didn't realize we were going to expand to that degree. But we had, we had a lot of groups, we had clients. We had the center, healing center. It was, we had a big dance studio. We could do

gatherings. And it was, it was a lot of fun and dance and Tai Chi and, you know, body work and dance jam, I mean, was, was great and, and, of course, even then, with all of the good intentions that we had to build this community, there were a lot of difficulties interpersonally, right, as there often are. And

so when we got the Enneagram, we were like, Okay, I get it you see the world differently. I see it this way. You see it that way. And we don't have to make it so personal. You know, it just or it just helped us sort out our relationships. It happened so quickly and so effectively that it really

changed our scene, and it also changed our changed my life. Basically, I wanted to get along with people. I didn't want a good relationship.

Gosh, wouldn't that be lovely?

I mean, it's it's wonderful, isn't it, when we have a common lexicon and there's a shortcut to finding common ground and listening to each other. So we're all going from the same lexicon now, listener, we'll bring you in. Let's just go over the basics of you've touched on this a little

bit in our conversation so far about exactly what the Enneagram is, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Okay, well, in this use this Enneagram of personality types, because it's used for other things but the Enneagram personality types. So there's a nine pointed diagram, and then the diagram illustrates nine different ways of seeing the world and nine different ways of forming a personality.

Right? We need a personality in this world. We need an ego structure. I'm not one that says the ego is bad, and, you know, whatever I mean, even you know, terms of working in a spiritual way. It's like it's good to have a, you know, a healthy ego and a personality that gets us to able to participate in the world

around us. And there are patterns. There's patterns to that. And again, this is, this was not new, but that we the fact that we could identify these, these structures, these type structures, we could say, personality type structures, or character structures, really goes even deeper than

personality and and it made sense. It's like we knew, you know, we were kind of, you know, we were involved in psychology and holistic health and trying to understand all this stuff. And here was an incredible map, and so, and of course, it's been developed over the last 40 or 50 years. You know, all we got was

like these brief outlines from, you know, the originators and, you know, the guys that started this, but we were able to kind of fill in, and it just made so much sense to our personal again, personal relationships, work relationships, and this Enneagram describes people in the three centers. That's the

other thing I liked about it. It was a holistic system, and I'm a young holistic counselor. It's like, okay, here's the interview. I'm talking about head, heart and body and and how our types, our personality types, and our character structure is based in all three centers. We have a certain way

we see the world. We have patterns in our heart center around, kind of our primary emotional experience, and we have patterns in our body, and particularly, we could say neurobiology, so and all of that fit together in a way that was just extremely helpful. And again, it's not to say that we

are only our patterns. We're more than our patterns. We're more than our Enneagram type. We, each of us has a unique, you know, a kind of core self, an essential being, we might say. But in terms of personality, it's just so spot on. In terms. Yes, the patterns in themselves are good. We need patterns, but

yes, and it gets stuck in the patterns. And we've talked about this. Yes, you lead from one center, I lead from another center. Well, right there, there's some fundamental differences. Yes, I'm a body based type. You lead with your head center.

So, so within the nine and the three centers, there's three within the three, three within the three, yeah, yeah. So because I'm a seven and then you're an eight, you sit in Yeah. I'm very much a heady person. What you said something a while back that just sort of struck me, the difference

between personality and character. How would you define the difference between those two things? Because I think they often get blurred, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, first of all, when we say character, there's at least three different meanings to that. Our English language is not very precise when it comes to psychological terms. I'll just say that. So when I say character structure, I don't mean that like someone has a good character, or not so

good character, or good ethics, or I'm thinking more about the deeper patterns inside of us that kind of how we are organized in terms of a structure. And, you know, we talk about the Enneagram as a system of personality types, but again, that's just kind of the outer reflection. And

personality actually can kind of change over time. I I would say I have a better personality now than I used to all that work I did. But my my type structure, my Enneagram type, did not change. It just got kind of better. You know what I mean? Got healthier and so underneath personality, or a little further

deeper inside of ourselves. It's kind of the way we know who we are to ourselves. It's kind of like our patterns of emotion. And you know, again, thinking and emotion and being in our bodies, now how we respond. And to situations. Sometimes, how we react, you know, automatically to situations and all that's

going on. And it's, and it's, again, it's, it's all we're all the those three centers are all working together. It is a holistic system, but yes, they each have a particular function that's a little bit different from the other.

So we've got these nine basic types. Can we just go do a bit of a just a quick overview of the nine?

So should we go one to nine? Or, do you want you do whatever you want

Peter O'Hanrahan: to do. This is, this is the quick version, right? Yeah, you stop me if I'm going too quickly. So we start at one, which is called the perfectionist, sometimes called the reformer. And also a good term is the improver. There's no one word that is we're completely committed to, you

know, it's just, we're just trying to have a word or phrase that describes these types. So number one is like the improver. They have their body based type, and innately in their bodies, they have a sense of how things can fit together in the best way. And they're here to help us understand what that is, and

they're going to work really hard to get things organized and and be a good person. They organize themselves. And it's not that the rest of us don't want to be a good person. It's just for once that's like their number one goal, and they want, and they look and see things that are that need better,

organizing or sometimes correction, or getting put in the right place, you know? And, and, which is a tremendous value in this world. You know what I mean? If you're if you're putting up a bridge or a highway or big building, you want at least some of those structural engineers to be type ones,

because you've got right, yeah, you know. And so getting it right is really important. And any trade, any any aspect of the types which can be overdone. And so that's where ones get in trouble, because now there's this pressure on them. They got to get it right all the time. And they have what's called a

critical mind. They can kind of see again, how things fit together and when things are out of place and where things need improvement, which is a tremendous asset. But if you overdo it, it's hard. You know, you're seeing the flaws all the time. You're not seeing the good stuff, yes.

So it's that shadow thing again, like in Union philosophy or or the way I say it is your superpower can be your Achilles heel when not held in

Peter O'Hanrahan: balance, right? Yeah. And so, because they have this critical mind and their tendency to be judgmental, they are the leaders in self acceptance, because that's where they need to go to accept themselves and and, you know, the Serenity Prayer comes to mind. It's not just yes from a

it's also Yeah.

And I'm in Al Anon, yes, yes.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Change what you can accept what you can't, and have the wisdom to know the difference. You know what I mean. So for ones to be able to access some level of acceptance and hold both, yes, you can make things better. You can also accept that things are in some way, at some higher level,

they're perfect the way they are, you know, in God's, you know, plan. So, so next door to ones are the type twos. Now, these are heart based type people, because twos are like the helpers, the givers, and they have this tremendous ability to to feel into other people and what's happening in

other people, other people's feelings, other people's needs. And they're so good at that that they can lose themselves. So the irony is, they cannot know their own feelings, but they're there. There's a lot of feelings going on, but it's not clear whose feelings are these. Is my feelings, somebody else's

feelings, I kind of, you know, taken into my body. And so there's a big challenge for twos, but their tremendous gift is that they invite connection. There's this invitation. They reach towards people, and they invite us to connect. And I love the twos for that, I try to meet that invitation, because my

tendency would just be to kind of like, oh, okay, you know, who are you, and what's the deal here? And like, well, you know, I'm saying I'm a different type, so I want to, like, you know, meet that invitation.

Yeah, it's a beautiful invitation, but it is. I mean,

Peter O'Hanrahan: it's not that the rest of us can't do this at times, but that's where the twos live. And they, they have what's called a tremendous abundance of mirror neurons. They have neural networks,

so they spend a lot of time in parasympathetic Is that what you're saying

Peter O'Hanrahan: not necessarily they get pretty worked up, but they what happens is that they can duplicate, as we all can, to some degree, other people's emotional and physical experience in their bodies.

So. So somebody that describes themselves as an empath, right? Could be a two, yeah.

Peter O'Hanrahan: I mean, don't have to be a two, but yeah, but could well be, could well be a two. I mean, let's say it differently. All twos are empaths to some degree, and there are other types that can be empathic, but twos, not only are they empathic, but they want to move forward to connect and

help.

They will come to you. They will come to you to seek out the connection.

Peter O'Hanrahan: That's right, okay? And some empaths will, they'll be very empathic, but they won't necessarily come forward in the same way. Oh, yes. So anyway, yeah. So that's the twos. And they have a lot of big hearts, you know? And it's there, it's clear, you know? I mean, it's classically more of a

women's role, but there's a lot of guys who are type twos also, and there's very that is very sweet and feeling full. And if they but if they don't take care of themselves, not so great. So next, yeah,

no, sorry. I just, I want to just ask you about when you're dealing with the two what's coming up for me is that the shadow part of it is that it's hard to differentiate what's yours and what's mine, like you said before, and that can, yeah, okay, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: And they can, they also want a lot of response from us. They want, they need. They thrive on approval and recognition and and for the most part, I'm happy to give approval and recognition. But sometimes it's again, it's like, well, you know, like it's too much, or something, you know what I mean.

And then, or I don't know what they want or what they need, because I'm not a two. They have to say it directly, and they have a hard time doing that, you know. And I'm like, Well, come on, what do you need? How you feeling? Well, you know. And they get like, you know, so and so they get mad because we're

not, we don't, we don't feel out what they need. And once they learn the Enneagram, it's like, you know, we're not as empathic as you are. We don't know. You got to tell us, well, I don't know. Well, we need to have a conversation, and we need to have repeated conversations. Put the attention on you. How are

you? What's going on? How do you feel? And so, so there's this wonderful tips for people in relationships based on the type or whatever, you know, and it's just such a big help, you know. I mean, I don't need a lot of approval and recognition. So that wouldn't come to my mind, you know, saying

yes, but they wouldn't even occur to you to give it because you don't need it. If you're not aware of what the other person needs, you're

Peter O'Hanrahan: not aware of what the other person so such a big help, yes. So anyway, hey,

what about the threes?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Okay, threes. They're the go getters. They're, they're the three and, you know, they they're, they're also heart based types, but they The irony is, they tend to put their feelings aside in order to get things done, to accomplish things, and mostly it's about getting the work done sometimes,

not sometimes it's just about having a great image and making an impact on other people, like if you're a performer in a certain way or whatever, but they are very tuned into other people's expectations, and they'll meet those expectations in order to be successful and and they their their

neurobiology, they're just on the go. You know, they're Go, go, go. The original term for them was ego, go like the Energizer Bunny, if you have that in Australia. But the energy keeps going and going and going. And they're phenomenal. They have all this now, of course, if they overdo that,

they can become exhausted. Even they have, you know, limits to how much they can go. But you know, three say, Yeah, I wake up in the morning. The first thing that shows up is my work list. When I go to bed at night, the last thing I look at is my work list. And if there's something I accomplished during the day, I

check it off. If it's not on the list, I write it down on the list and then check it off.

Just because, I mean, we thought I might have been a three in the first five minutes, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, there's some, you know, other high energy types too, but the threes, they're just like, so tuned in to expectations, and they'll meet, they'll perform. They're the performers. You know, you could say the performers so any and you know, in many countries, particularly

in the United States and other places too, three has got a lot of positive feedback. It's like, hey, we like that. You can work so hard and yes,

achieve, achieve, achieve, right? We're just going

Peter O'Hanrahan: to give you a lot of recognition and money and approval and just keep working for us. Okay, which, of course, is can be a trap for threes. Like, wait a minute. Are you taking care of yourself? Is this the. Work you really want to be doing. So threes have to work on slowing down. And not all, not

to become slow all the time. Their fast pace is fine, but to balance that with some slowing down and some breath and getting down below that diaphragm into the, you know, they carry a lot of energy in the chest, and then they're very assertive about it. You know what? I mean, it's kind it's kind of like support my

program of success or get out of the way. So sometimes they're pretty aggressive, and sometimes they're not very lovely and nice. I mean, it just depends on the person. But yeah. So anyway,

so those are the three heart Well, there's four, number four this so, so if there's, so there's, it's not three and three and three

Peter O'Hanrahan: and three, but type one is part of the body group, okay, sorry, okay, type four is also part of the heart center.

Okay, so it doesn't go 123, and that's the 3456,

Peter O'Hanrahan: okay, yeah, all right, but it is organized because they're all close to women, yes,

yeah, okay, right. So four, four is a heart,

Peter O'Hanrahan: and the fours are really art. They're just full of emotion. What can I say?

Dear Lisa, our friend, she's a four this one, yeah.

Peter O'Hanrahan: But if you're, if you have trouble with your own emotions, you're gonna have trouble with fours, because they just so have so much emotion, and they want to have deep connection with everything and anybody and you know, and they invite us to come inside twos and twos and threes, their

attention goes out to other people so much of the time fours. They want to be connected. They want to be seen and recognized. But they also want their interior selves and their deeper emotional selves, and they go there. And they are no strangers to the joys and sorrows there. They have very

intense, emotional lives and and there are no strangers to, let's say grief, because they know that sometimes they can get caught in that there's a kind of melancholy about for us at times, not always, but traditionally. You know, we look in the English literature, for example, it's like the fours,

you know? It's like walking out on the Moors without a

Oh, yeah, the four wrote Wuthering Heights. For sure,

Peter O'Hanrahan: they're seeking that deep, wonderful connection, and they're idealist. They're romantic idealist. So we say the romantic better. I say the romantic idealist because they have these ideals about how deep and wonderful it could be, and they can be disappointed by ordinary

life and sadly by the rest of us, because we're not, as you know, available or connected, or deeply you know, connected to our own feelings or our heart. And so it's good to know this so we can work it out. You know?

I mean, you're talking about this, and I'm thinking, Gosh, I've got lots of four qualities. I've got lots of three qualities. As you say, there's this crossover, and we've got all these different things, but it's what you lead with, what you're Yeah, it's dominant sort of view. And needs

are,

Peter O'Hanrahan: yeah, so, so. But forest we I mean, everybody loves a forest when they're on stage, when they're performing, singer songwriters, the actors and actresses, the writers. It's not like they're all fours. I'm not saying that. But the but for is dominate the world of artistic expression and

esthetics, you know, in high fashion. And, I mean, it's just some, you know, and when they're doing their art, we love them, but when they're up close, that it's challenging. And of course, I I've been living with forest for the last 40 years, so I had something about that, and it's been great. It's been turbulent,

but also great. So, I mean, because they invite us to come into our hearts, deeply into our hearts, and have things matter.

So is part of the shadow of a four resentment when others can't meet you in that deep, transparent, it's, I think it's

Peter O'Hanrahan: well, it's less resentment and it's more disappointment. Okay, because there's a longing enforce, you know, that longing for for depth and and wholeness. It's like they're, they're the ones that feel they get it, like we've been cast out of the garden, you know, trying to get back there

and, and it's hard to do in an imperfect world with an imperfect you know? So, so they so kind of like the ones, they can be very critical, but it's not about right or wrong. It's about whether something is authentic or not. Have a high standard for authenticity. And if they're in a relationship or

they're in a job situation that doesn't feel authentic to them, they're out of there. Yeah, they could be very successful in many ways, because they're next to the threes, and they can kind of do that, but, but if it doesn't, if it's not authentic enough, they're out of there.

So there's no hiding with a four.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Not much and, you know, so anyway, there's a lot I could say, but we need to move on, I guess. Yeah, yeah, okay. Fives All right. Now we're leaving the two the hard types are over there. Now remember, everybody has a mind, everybody has a heart, everybody has a body set. We have all three

centers, but we have a Lead Center, so now we're crossing over. There's a kind of a space in the bottom of the Enneagram. Sometimes we call it the existential hole in the bottom of the Enneagram, you know, and the fours and fives are kind of on either side of that, kind of looking down, going, hmm, it's

appealing, but it's also scary and, you know, but that's where a lot of our existential philosophy comes from. Fours and fives anyway, fives are head based types, and these are the deep thinkers and the observers. And the key to understanding fives is they have a very sensitive nervous system, very

sensitive many people do, but the fives is a very sensitive nervous system, and if that's not valued or protected, which often is the case, because people just don't know about this stuff. And so fives can kind of go up into their heads and detach. So it's easy for them to feel intruded upon or be

invaded. Their space is invaded, or the too muchness that the for the rest of us, it's like, hey, you know, great party. Let's get Let's keep it going. And they're like, When can I get out of here? You know? So, and they need a lot of privacy. They need a lot of space so they can kind of relax that nervous system and

also think about everything, you know, review, and it's not in a lot of five say, you know, I have feelings. I just don't have them at the moment. I have to, kind of want to feel safe in my own space I can, you know, so fives are observers. It's easy to easier to observe and participate. But doesn't mean

they can't be great participators. You know, I guess I think it was young who talked about, sometimes our Inferior function when we work with it and develop it, it actually becomes a more pure expression of who we are, less distorted our usual shtick. So, but five, so, yeah,

yeah, no, I'm just, I'm just thinking about how the four and the five sit next to each other. So when a five chooses to participate on their own terms when they've had time to process it, and then they they show up to a four who's demanding this, this deep connection that would be

extremely fulfilling for both of them, when a four allows a five to find their time to meet them, right? Would that be a good, sort of great way to understanding and, okay, yeah, yeah, wow. I mean it just you going through these nine types like this, you can see how knowing your type and knowing

the type of the the person you're in an intimate partnership with is so constructive and helpful to create more understanding of each other and allowing the space to find your way into each other and so forth. It's so incredibly valuable. What's the the shadow of the five? Again?

Flesh that out for me a

Peter O'Hanrahan: little bit. Well, the shadow of the five is becoming overly detached. That's their major defense. You know, they go up into their heads, kind of shut down on the body, shut down on the feelings, shut down on the body. And and they can be brilliant in their minds. And if you're, you know, really,

that's your whole purpose in life, is to be a scholar, you know, a scientist or a physicist or whatever. I mean, you you can really do the mind, you know, a life of the mind, and contribute so much to our knowledge as a human species. But if you're in relationships with people or you or want relationships, you gotta

work on, you know, gotta have at least some of heart and body online as well. And they can do that if they choose. The thing for us to know about fives is they need a lot of privacy. So if they go off by themselves for a while, or a long while, or whatever they're, you know, as long as they say, Hey, I'm going

now come back later, you know, I'm not breaking the relationship. I just need the day off or the evening off, you know. And they come and go, they can be very good at relationships, but you have to give them their space and not be banging on the door all the time or intruding on their space.

So yeah, four to five in a relationship and some of these other things. I'm just thinking, My goodness, you know, and a seven and a five. I mean, oh my god,

Peter O'Hanrahan: start seeing how. I mean, right, what? You know, the times you can start kind of predicting to some what's going on, conflicts gonna happen, right? Exactly, you know, you're not giving me what I need. You're often, you're, you know, or the parents of a five child who and they

themselves, maybe they're three and one type one, right? And they're like out in the world, and they're making things happen, and they've got a son who's up in the room reading books that's like, What's wrong with him? What's wrong with us? How do we screw up? We this guy? You just want to, you know, it's

not, there's no it's just He's different. Yeah, buyers do want to be invited, by the way, they say, I do want to be invited. I do want you to reach towards me. I really appreciate. That. And I might say no, but I will also say yes, and I want to be invited. And so the problem, of course, is through all of us, we

sometimes signal from our type structure a message that doesn't adequately represent us. So the fives, for example, might you know, they might have a message in their nonverbals that say, Don't bother me, you know, or don't disturb my you know. And that may not be the full story there, because they say, No, no,

I do want to be in contact. So this is also something to be aware of. You know, it's like, sometimes we got to go a little further than what we're picking up, you know, through the non verbals,

yeah, ask questions, not be leading with assumptions about what people are thinking and needing, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Oh, all right, so five, six and seven are the head based types, folks. They got to figure things out. Now, the rest of us, we can appreciate that we could do that, but it's not as important, or it's like starting there. You know what I mean, my brain doesn't come online in the

morning until I've had, you know, at least a couple cups of coffee, it's like, but with the five, six and seven, they got to figure it out. You know, we were joking about this the other day, you know, we talked about our friends who are type six, you know, the loyalist, the loyal skeptic. And these are people of

the questioning mind, and so they're always asking questions and and sometimes the questions are like, enough with the questions already. You know what I mean? There's, it's a very common, you know, friction point between sixes and their family members and sometimes colleagues, and that questioning

mind takes things deeper, like, what about the cinema system? Really? You think that stuff works? Let's talk about that. I'm not so sure. And and they'll get into it, right? And so anyway, so sixes are the people who, we say, the loyal skeptics, or the questioner, loyal skeptic, meaning, on the one

hand, once they've invested in a relationship or a project or a group or a cause, they are going to be loyal through thick and thin, and they're going to be responsible, and they're going to do what they said and and it may take them a while to invest, but once they'll be loyal. And I value that about sixes, because

they're willing to be direct about issues, in fact.

And so a six and a four together when they're meeting would be whoosh, amazing if they were, if you were being an authentic six,

Peter O'Hanrahan: if you were being authentic, right? But if the sixes aren't in their hearts, if they're also kind of up in their heads, a bit much, the fours are going to be unhappy.

Can it be disappointed?

Peter O'Hanrahan: But imagine the Great, the compliments that can happen. You know what I mean? It's like fours and sixes can kind of complement one another, as long as we they, in this case, work it out. And instead of saying, You're just as terrible human being, they can say, you know, I understand

this is not your strong point. But would you be willing to sit down with me for X amount of time, and we'll, you know, so, yeah, but they're also skeptical. You know, they're scared that so

is that the shadow of this, what's the shadow of the six? The shadow

Peter O'Hanrahan: of six is doubt, doubting mind. Questioning mind turns into a doubting mind. And so they doubt themselves, they doubt other people. And, you know, occasionally they overcome that by signing up for something like, now becoming a true believer. It's interesting

paradox, you know, like, oh, now I'm signed up to be on this program, and they're all my doubts have gone away, but doesn't necessarily last, because this, you know, is this going to be okay? And sixes are the people that look out for us. They are the people that have the most sensitive alarm systems

there are so quickly alarmed to the presence or the possibility of threat or danger or even problems, and they can see that stuff coming, you know.

So a six with a one. If we're on a project in a in a in a system where we've got to build something, and the ones are getting the infrastructure and figuring it out, and the six is going to tell them, wait a second, wait a second. What if this happens, or this happens? I can see how those two people,

right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Yeah, six is always want Plan B, and sometimes Plan C really not just plant. They'll go to plan C, because they want to be prepared and that, and they feel safer that way, and because they have this tremendously sensitive alarm system, they're the ones that guard safety of the family,

of the group of the community.

I'm pretty sure my mom is a six I'm going to send her to you to talk to you, because I but I'm fairly certain she's a six, but maybe not, but we'll see. But yeah, okay, yeah. Because so so sixes, they, they, they hope for the best, but plan for the worst.

Peter O'Hanrahan: And, well, I'm not sure they hope for the best. They hope for having a good plan. So anything that goes wrong, they're prepared, and then they can feel safer and more relaxed about it. Yeah, and by the way, because this fight flight or freeze response, which we all have to some degree, and

the sixes really have it, they can, they can respond to perceived threat either by freezing or fawning, they might say, but anyway, but kind of like, you know, and they withdraw, you know, or they're getting very careful, or they can go into fight mode. And so the external behavior is

completely different, and that's important to know about the Enneagram types, that we can't always tell somebody's type from their external behavior. Sometimes we can, but there's, there's sixes, you know, like Mel Gibson on the one hand, Woody Allen on the other, just saying, yeah. Like, wait a

minute, that can't be the same personality type. But you know, sixes know this, because oftentimes even the most careful, cautious sixes, you know the anxiety and questions, when in certain situations, all of a sudden, they come forward like a tiger. You know, there are people threatened. So

there's movement back and forth there, but there are some people who are more at one extreme than the other. You know what I mean. So external behavior, you got to be a little careful. But sixes do need to figure things out. And they might figure it out by asking questions, or they might do it by provoking you just to

see what will happen. Oh, you know what? You know. What are you doing here? You know? What are you about? Why are you here? You know?

Oh, so do sixes thrive on that intellectual sparring and that spirited debate? And they do, they do and Yeah. And, anyway, yeah, because I could have had a six wing. I remember we spoke about this. So, yeah, okay, all right, so I'm a seven.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Come on. You know something about this now,

intimate connection with seven, right? As you said to me, you're a raging seven, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: You are. You're indeed, high energy seven, sevens. It's like we're, we have some of the flavors and characteristics of the people next to us on the Enneagram. And so sevens and sixes, there's a lot in common in terms of when you wanting to figure things out and but, but yet so close, but

so different, because where six is actually going to see okay, that could go wrong, and we need to plan for this, and we need more information, and we need to know who's who and who we can trust. And sevens are like, Wow, a new possibility. Let's go. So sevens may tend to err on the side of being overly positive,

if that's possible. So, but sevens, again, we talked about the fast pace of the mind of the seven. It's like leaps forth into the possibilities, the realm of possibilities, having options and possibilities and future plans. And it's also wonderful, because sevens want to enjoy life fully. That's

their number one goal. And they want to be part of it. They want to enjoy it. And with some salmons, it's more the life of the mind. And some sevens is maybe more the life of the physical activity. Some sevens, it's maybe more like good food, good drink, good company, depends also on the body type.

You know, that's another story, but sevens are there we you know? Helen Palmer, you say that it's the sevenths have like champagne in their veins, blood. They have champagne. It's just bubbling, you know? And, and so they're, they're the can be the life of the party. And, of course, the problem there is

they overdo that they may go to a party at some. Myself. Gee, I don't feel like it tonight, but too bad that's the deal you've sold yourself. It's being, you know, everybody, what's wrong? You're being quiet. What's wrong? Oh, that

happens to be all the time, right? So, so

Peter O'Hanrahan: if your sadness to kind of calm down and also get down, you know, because they tend to be up here, and you know, the life of the mind is unlimited. Unfortunately, the life of the body is limit, is limiting. And sevens don't like that. They don't want to be limited.

Yes, I do not like to be limited. It's all about freedom. It's all about freedom

in every sense of of the of the world, for me.

Peter O'Hanrahan: So, yeah, somebody trying to tell you, you know what you can't do?

Yes, oh gosh, that that's like a that's like a red rag to a bull for me, I'll show you. You want to bet. So, sevens are visionaries.

Peter O'Hanrahan: There are visionaries, yes, especially the smart ones. There are visionaries, because they look out to a better future, and they're very creative in their thinking. And they, as we mentioned before, Sam, is the way they think. Is there. It's associative. They're not linear.

Is if they start here and then they associate, oh, well, that takes me there, and then, oh, that takes me to another idea before you know it. They're across the universe, like, if you're trying to have a conversation with a seven, that can be challenging. We were just talking about this, and now

you're talking about, you know, it's like the it's like the internet, you know. And, I mean, it's links, and you hit a link in your you know, before you know it. And salmons can also bring those very disparate links or associations and find connections that weren't there before, right? So, and sevens

want to avoid pain. They really don't like pain because, you know, that's the hedonists,

right? Yeah, yeah. It's all about pleasure.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Why would you have pain? If you can go to something that's fun, if you

can look to well in possibility and jump to the next possibility, if this one's not doing it for you. So the shadow of the seven is we burn out. Tell us about the shadow of that

Peter O'Hanrahan: shadow, the sound it's, you know, if you just run to the next fun thing you can miss, actually miss out on life, because parts of life are, you know, like, if you think about the heart center, you know, it was just so important in terms of being fully present in life. You know,

heart center will take you places that you can't get otherwise, and and sometimes it's joy, and sometimes it's it's sadness, and all that happens in the heart center. And sevens, sevens know that. I mean, you know. I mean, you know, they get it, but it's just really hard to stay there when

something is sad or painful and and so they move away. And then that doesn't they don't learn how to kind of get there and be with it and handle it and hold it, unless they really make a an intention out of that. And many of them do, you know, like in a relationship, when there's a problem or there's some loss.

You love people give them experience loss, you know. I mean, so instead of just reframing it like everything you know, it's all a new opportunity, which, you know, there's truth in that, but to stay a little longer with

and deeper. So would you say that sevens can be and I know the we're really generalizing here, because there's so many nuances in and around this. But would you say that sevens have a pre asking for a friend, asking for myself, have a predisposition to go into toxic positivity because they

want to bounce to the next possible that

Peter O'Hanrahan: can be their defense, because, again, any strength of the type can also be used to kind of protect us. So, yes, and sevens, they're built the neurobiology. Again, to me, I'm body therapist, so, and I've seen it in hundreds and 1000s of people, you know, over 50 years. I mean, it's the sevens just

have this amazing quickness, and they can think fast, and they like a lot of stimulation. They go for the pleasure and the good stuff. And by the way, sevens can work very hard and be successful as long as they're having fun with it. It's interesting, right? So we all want to dismiss the capacity of

the sevens to get things done, but it's got to be at least interesting. But you know, our the goal for all of us, really, is to be able to kind of work with our patterns, so we don't get stuck, you know, and that we can open up, we can have some functioning in each of our three centers, so that we can have our

full life, right?

So tell me about your. Full life. Mr. Eight, the

Peter O'Hanrahan: body types. Okay, this is a different kind of people here. We're the body types. And it's just kind of maybe some ways, well, the center of gravity is different. You know, you can just sense this in people. Sometimes, you know, you

can sense it between you and I, yeah, right now, the energy, the difference in energy, you

Peter O'Hanrahan: know, so I'm like a

balloon, I'm like a balloon, and you're like, the ground dig force, just inviting me to come back into my body, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Yeah. Oh, and I have to, like, wake up to more perception. And, you know, my head type friends are, you know, you're Miami. It's not that I'm unintelligent, you understand. But anyway, body type, so I'm

with you specifically. I don't think we're ever gonna say that it's unintelligent. What's an eight? No, you better not say it's unintelligent. Yeah, I'm not going to.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Don't mess with me, you know, yeah, now the eights tend to be like,

what do they call? What's the eight type call? Oh, thank you. It's the protector

Peter O'Hanrahan: so and there's a high side and a low side with all of the everybody, and the high side is eights. We protect our not only ourselves, but the people we care about, the people that are colleagues. We protect people who are the underdogs, who are being treated, you know, poorly, so we extend our

protection and and sometimes there's a demand behind that, you know, it's like The Godfather, you know, You gotta pay up. But when the heart is open, it's it's great generosity of spirit. And again, if a if the hearts are closed, eighths could be pretty dangerous people, because there's a lot of

energy in the body. Comes up very fast. Conflict is not a big problem. You know, we generally see conflict as necessary light conflict, but we know ready to go. And in the neurobiology, there's a quickness to not only respond, but sometimes retaliate. You know, when I was young and somebody bumped into

me going down the street, you know what I mean, I'm ready to, like, throw them on the ground. And of course, I had to work with that, obviously, because that would I end up in jail. And of course, lot of eights do end up in jail. But you know, you can't. You gotta work. Most of us figure out at some point we

have to work with that physical reactivity. So anyway, innates are hard. There's a lot of big energy. We want to do our own thing, like the sevens. God bless the parents of the eights, the little lates, because they just want to run around. I'm in charge. You can't boss me. I'm you know, like you hear that

from a three year old, you're kind of like, Excuse me, I'm the parent here, then the trick is not to say you're a bad kid. It's to say, Honey, you we live together. We have to work this stuff out. You know, you're going to school now, you've got to follow the rules, because otherwise they won't have it.

You know, it's not because you're bad, it's because you have to work it out with people. And that's kind of the message to everybody, in a way, you know? I mean, if you want, if you want to work it out with people, you gotta, in some way, mediate or manage your own type, certainly your own reactivity.

So we say eights are great in battle, but they have a harder time in peacetime, because we're so geared for battle that somehow conflict seems to follow us around. I say that with some Rue and some regret, because I'm not what am I? You know, what's the problem? I'm being friendly around here. Well, you know,

people are just kind of getting, you know, it's like, well, sometimes the energy is is overly forceful.

Gosh, I can see how a SIX and an EIGHT, the questioning coming from the head and the body sent and, you know, the two of them ready to battle could be very fiery.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Now you're talking about my work life, yeah, colleagues. I mean, ironically, in my part of the Enneagram world, our two leaders were both sexes, Helen Palmer, who was one of the foremost authors and pioneers of the Enneagram and then later her colleague, Dr David Daniels, who

was a psychiatrist and a professor at Stanford, and when the two of them got together, they could create this school of work. Was brilliant. And I you know, I mean, they were my leaders. Of course, they had me to back them up. So that was.

So when you were referring earlier on in our conversation, when you said I had a lot of work to do, so are you referring to that? Wanting to battle, wanting to take someone down to the ground if they maligned,

Peter O'Hanrahan: that was part of it, and also because I had a pretty unhappy childhood experience, and as many of us do, you know, families, even loving families. You know, there's issues, there's stuff. You know what I mean? Parents aren't perfect. They do the best they can. And but you know, I

was the the eldest of five boys, and you know, I was in Catholic school for eight years, and that was an unpleasant experience. So I, you know, basically I was, I had a lot of stored up anger, yes, body and that's what brought me, just to a large degree, to doing body based therapy, because I needed to

release a lot of that pent up anger and also get to my sadness and other feelings. Eights are like, Well, I have feelings. I'm mad about this. That's the feeling, right? It's like, well, yeah, but probably there's more, you know, yeah, getting to the grief, getting to the grief, and even getting to the fear. And we

say eight, we have to work our way up to fear, you know what I mean, and it's important that we do, because otherwise we go bashing around in the world and we won't register. I mean, fear is there for a very important reason, right? I mean, to keep us safe and alive. And whatever

you keep talking about fear and safety, and it is this, you know, making fear based decisions when we don't feel safe enough. And when you were saying that a lot of eights end up in jail because they haven't processed their fear, and, you know, they're not able to hold well, they

Peter O'Hanrahan: don't have it as a reminder of consequences, you know, and I'm saying it's just like they just react and get into it with people, and they don't stop and pause and think, think it through, you know, and be a good friend and say, Whoa, hold on. Wait. Maybe this is not the right time or

the right the right fight. I mean, eights and ones. I'll include the ones here. We have to pick our battles, because otherwise we'd be there's the quality with the body types of being against things, because things are not right, and we're here to tell you how they ought to be. And so there's kind of

this against the way things are, and that's not a fun way to live. There's always things that are for the ones. There's always things that are out of place, that need improvement, and for the AIDS. There's always things that aren't fair or aren't being done right, and we have to like work with that.

So all of this body work that you found your way into when you got to Berkeley that must have felt like rain in the desert for you,

Peter O'Hanrahan: it was a great healing process, and it also put me on a path of being a body based therapist. The unigraphs kind of take over my life in recent years

and and Lucky us that it has so we talk about the types existing next to each other. So lovely nine who gets along with everybody sits right next to the eight. This is fascinating to me. Yeah, so what's the nine?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Called the nine is the peacemaker, the

peacemaker sitting right next to the eight. That's ready,

Peter O'Hanrahan: because nines blend. This is their neurobiology, by the way, and this is lovely quality that nines can blend. They can blend with people, with the environment, with animals, with machinery, with computer. I mean, they can just kind of blend because their boundary

system is different, and that can get them if they don't manage that well, particularly in a high paced modern society. They can it can be overwhelming, or they can blend with the wrong situation or the wrong people. So if not, if the nines are hanging out with the eights, they can start kind of blending

there. And if they're hanging out with the ones, they can start blending in that direction. Thing about nines is they actually can show up like any type on the Enneagram nines. They can be kind of withdrawn, introverted, kind of like the fives. They can be very people oriented and empathetic, like

the twos. They can be directive and then leadership roles like the eights, they can do all that stuff. And so the nines, and because they have this very unique position, we say at the top of the Enneagram, right? My teacher said it's imagine as life is like a big pinball machine, and we're all kind of

being knocked out to the sides this way, and that the nines, they're right in the middle. And. They kind of fall right down into checking out, and they remind us of the basic human condition that we tend to kind of fall asleep to what's important. And nines have trouble staying with that and

focusing on what's important to me. You know, if they're in a good work structure, they can move mountains. If they're in a leadership role, they can be tremendously because they're so fair. They include everybody. The nines are the glue of the human community. We didn't have nines. We don't fly apart

nine so you talked about mirror neurons. Sorry, I interrupt you. Go ahead. I'll ask you about the mirror neurons. No, I just wanted to, it was coming up for me. So do nines have really active mirror neurons as well?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, some do and not. Some don't. Again, it depends on, on their orientation. You know, a lot of the women who are nines can look on surface like they're type two. Again, they do have a lot of empathy, and therefore they do have a lot of mirror neurons. Other nines are more oriented

towards, you know, the crops and the transportation system, and how are we going to get this house built?

And so they're more ones. They could look like a one, they could

Peter O'Hanrahan: look more like a one. And they can also be more they're not blending with people as much. They're blending with nature, they're blending with something else. And that's not the same as mirror neurons, actually. So Right? So they're all over the place. And so when they meet the Enneagram, they

can go, oh, well, I see myself in all of these. It's like, well, you know, what? If that's your reaction, have to consider the possibility of being nine, you know.

So, so if you can be anything you know, and you can morph and transition and take on qualities of all these different things very easily, and identify in a comfortable way, what's the shadow of the nine? Just not knowing what you want and your needs, getting lost in other people's

Peter O'Hanrahan: they can lose track of what's important, you know, like steering their own lives. Nine, they're so good at going with the flow, which can be a lovely quality, you know, but if you don't make the effort to go. Now, wait a minute, where am I in this and what's my priority, and what do I want for

myself, and what are my goals? Then you just, you can kind of just float down the river of life, and, you know, maybe that's okay for people. I mean, I, you know, I would suggest that the world being in the condition it's in these days, maybe not so much okay, because we really got to take some

action because we're so overloading the circuits. But, but there's plenty of places in this world where nines are just they are going with the flow. They're embedded in their in their families and their villages and their communities, with nature, I mean, and they're just living pretty simple life

in that regard.

And there's Yeah, so, so for someone who's a nine, would this be an accurate thing to say about about it? You know, I know it's, again, how long is a piece of string? There's a lot more nuance to this. But I mean a lot of women specifically, and I want to ask you about the difference between men and women

in just a minute, people that say, I people, please, I spend all my time taking care of others, and I get all the crumbs, and I don't take care of myself. And I know that we could say that any, any type could be doing that, but a nines specifically more predisposed to be nine

Peter O'Hanrahan: women are more predisposed to that. Yes, okay, yeah, because yeah. Again, we can talk about women's gift. We can talk about women's roles. We can talk about the expectations. And so, you know, and so nines, who are women like the twos, they can get to a point all of a sudden where they kind of wake

up and go, Wait a minute. This is not me, you know. How did I get here? You know, just kind of blended so and so that then there can be anger there. By the way, nines are nine to have anger in their system. It's not the the quantity of the anger that's the issue. It's the it's the placement in the system. Is

they not like body types. We have this kind of layer of anger. We got to get through the anger, and knives avoid getting angry. And so they it's hard for them to get down to where they the other parts of who they are and what's important. I mean, they kind of bounce off the the discomfort or the disagreement

or, you know, they kind of bounce off of that. And so they have, ironically, for nines, to be able to access their anger is a very important step in their development. Anybody relationship with a nine if they don't get angry at us a little bit. Uh, at least a little bit. They're not going to be fully

there. Recognize my family. I got to go after them, because I know all of a sudden they're just not talking to me, and they're not looking at me, and they're not even really, I realize, okay, you got to talk to me about what, what? What did I say? What did I do that made you upset her? Yeah.

I mean, it is that again, like the Jungian thing, you have to you have to befriend your shadow, you have to be in relationship.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Yeah, they hate conflict. It's just hard in their bodies. They're not deficient as human beings. It's not even a neurotic issue, although it could become neurotic. It's existential, not. Nines are built that way. They're built for peace. They're built for comfort seeking.

They're built for, you know, and it's very disturbing, you know, like they can barely even get it out. Sometimes, like, yeah, I disagree, or I like it when you said that, or, and then sometimes they blow up, which is not fun, you know, sleeping volcano blows up.

Yeah, so you talked about a nine needing to get in touch with their anger, and an eight needing to get in touch with with the vulnerability and fear and the sevens with pain. Is that what you would say?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Right and limitation? Oh,

okay, thank you. I needed to know that for myself so pain and limitation, okay, I'm going to come back to this male males and females thing in just a minute, because I think it might be a more productive way to go into it after we've learned about these subtypes and these wings. So we've got these

basic nine, so we've got this foundation now and then we start getting into the subtypes and and the wings, and so how does that get fleshed out?

Peter O'Hanrahan: You know, what I love about the Enneagram is a number of things. One is that I really appreciate the when we understand the structure and the organization. Maybe that's part of my way I see it, and how I teach it. But there's, there are structures here, and they're all connected. And so once you

understand that the pieces and how they fit together, it's understandable at first. It's like, it's overwhelming. You know what I mean? It's because it's complex. But we can, we can get it at the first level of learning and get a lot of value out of it. And for people who want to go further, there's

just, there's just levels of further learning. When you mentioned the the wings, you know that we say the types on either side of us, on the circle are what's called the wings, you know, like we're, you know, I don't, it's a good word, you know. And those are pretty close to our type. We share a lot of

things in common with the wings, and we have two wings on both, one on each side, but one of them tends to become more important or predominant. Well, don't ask me why. It's just, you know, it's what we see. And so that gives our type a certain flavor, right? So, you know, for you, you have a strong eight

wing, right? So you lean in that direction. And so as a seven, you, you like to be in charge. You like to be the leader. You like to make things happen. You I mean, you know you can say better about that yourself. And I'm an eight, but I have a nine wing. So I like being able to go to my nine wing. I can hang out

and relax and sit under a tree for a while and blend a little bit. It's not easy, but I can, you know, believe it or not, I can actually mediate some some things.

So that would be very helpful for you. When you're dealing with a lot of sixes in your work, right? And you're getting rubbed up. You need to, you need to lean into the no,

Peter O'Hanrahan: there was a couple of years in the narrative. There were the Enneagram professional training program. When we had there were three teachers in addition to me, there were three sixes and the office staff were three fours. And who became the mediator? Well, I was the

director for a while. I had to make this stuff work, so I had to access the nine wing to be the mediator, and because otherwise it was just like, you know, crazy. And we hung in there and we made it work. But I'm just saying it's helpful to know what your wing type is. And also, I look at my seven wing

and say, hmm, I need more of that. And so it's a reminder that I can actually go there and access some of the not get stuck in the overly obsessive. It's all got to fit together in a certain way. I can say, just like, take that piece and this piece and let yourself, you know, think in an associative

pattern and make it more fun. I'm like, fun, fun. It's like, yeah. Then

let's get into the subtypes, right? So then we so I'm a seven with a strong eight win. Thing, right? And a one to one subtype, can we go through those subtypes, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: And just question the people who are listening to this? There's, there's some stuff available, if you want to, you know, I have an article on my website, there's, there's places to go for more information on this, because it's a lot of information to try to take in but,

and I will put all of Pete's links in the show notes, so you can go an end to his world and all these amazing articles. But, yeah, let's, let's, let's just, dear listener, if you're getting over in

the body center, I can listen later, but I'm just loving all of this, so I want the information.

Peter O'Hanrahan: So in the body center, there are three powerful instinctual drives. And call them instincts. Can call them drives. And the common to us as is as animals. You know what I mean? It's like basic stuff. Animals have instincts. Human beings have instincts, and we've evolved them over a long, long

time in human evolution. So our instincts are now kind of active in our current society and civilization. Sometimes they do well, and sometimes, actually there's some big problems, but in any event, three powerful drives, and one is self preservation, which is food, warmth, shelter, family. It's

the material resources that keep keeps life alive, keeps us alive. Self care, it's our daily rhythms of sleep, work, play, relate, coming. You know, it's just basic body wellness and capacity, and it's a certain aspect of the life force of the Qi and and there's a way actually to kind of identify

this stuff. But I'll keep going for the moment. So self preservation can be very when, when in hard times, things really can kind of collapse into self preservation, because you got to have food and you got to stay warm, and you need a roof over your head. When, when the situation is is better and when

the heart is more involved, self preservation has this quality. We're going to take care of everybody. We're going to make this world work well. We're going to make the buildings, we're going to get the factories, we're going to grow the crops, we're going to everybody has a place in this

So, and that's lovely. So, self preservation, and of course, you know, I'm thinking of, let me, let me just complete the three. So self preservation instincts. So we all have it with some of us, it's a big deal. Some of us, not so much. This the second instinct is the sexual instinct. And of course, this is also

about survival, because we wouldn't be here as a species, as I think about all my ancestors and having sex and creating babies? I'm like, thank you. Bless you. You know, I don't even know their names, but I have a connection to them and so, so it is the sexual instinct. We call it one to one,

because when people hear sexual instinct, they think it's all about sex, which not necessarily, it's something about a certain intensity, a certain vitality that has a certain charisma, pizzazz, it's, it's, and so we say one to one, because in relationships, the this, this instinct takes us

into more like you and me. You know, it's not that we're not just part of the family. We're actually here two people, and we're making direct contact. And you know, it's self preservation is the right to be alive. This one to one instinct is about the right to be seen and loved. You know, it's like our human rights

that come with these instincts. So there's that. And everybody has the one to I mean, everybody has a if you don't, you have a partner, you have a close friend, or you, there's somebody that you, you know, you're just looking for kind of lining up that one to one connection space. And for some people, it's

one to one with in their spiritual practice, you know, so and then the third instinct, powerful drive, is the social instinct, because we are social creatures, and we made it. We survived. It's also survival, because we wouldn't have made it if we hadn't been able to organize ourselves in first, in

in small bands, to cooperate, and then look at us now, you know enormous civilization. You know eight or 9 billion people on the planet, and so, so social is, is it's not about how many friends we have. It's about social structure. Dollars. Where do we fit into the social structure? What's our role in

the community and and again, there's very few people that live in a cave in the mountains or take the path of the monastic let's say there are people like that, but most of us, however we feel about it, we are part of a society and a community, and we're all functioning more or less together to make things

work so and the Enneagram says we have all three, but one of those is highlighted. So that gives us what's called an instinctual subtype, meaning you're a type seven, but your subtype is one to one, and so you're a more intense, seven and more seeking one to one connection and personal

excellence, and the expectations you put on yourself and others are maybe higher. And I'm a social subtype, so I'm more I like my intensity. I like the one doing friends, because they're intense. And I like that. And after an hour, I'm like, okay, so drink.

Yeah, you don't want to be killed by me at a party for three hours.

Peter O'Hanrahan: I know, captured by a one to one. I mean, it can be fun for a while, you know?

Yeah, oh god, it's just so interesting. I mean, I just could talk about this forever. So once we've got our type, our, we know where our wing is, our, we lean towards a strong wing in this regard, and we've got our our subtype, talk about the the different manifestations and how this

plays out between men and women.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Let's put it this way, intersect all of this stuff, the psychology stuff intersects with culture and family, and it's all that forms how our our type and our subtype is expressed. So it's really important to understanding kind of the environmental situation we're in, and again, the culture

and so on. And oh, the

culture would play such a huge role. Yeah? So, like a woman in India or somebody in France, you know, to someone in Australia, you know, different ethnicities and so forth, and upbringings and social norms and so forth, yeah,

Peter O'Hanrahan: you know, so we could say, like, say, for women in many cultures, there's a background is changing, some now, but women are supposed to be the helpers and the and feeler people who feel and take care of and they're kind of like the twos, you know what I mean? And they're not all twos, but

they kind of get pulled somewhat in that direction. And, you know, different. I mean, I've taught Enneagram on six continents now, and there's a cultural overlay in every country. You know, we used to joke and say, Well, you know, the Brazilian in Brazil, they're all sevens, they're not. But you

know, you know why I'm saying that because the Brazilian party, they dance. That's not the, you know, the French, you know, it's not the Germans. It's not, you know, anyway, so, yeah, makes a big difference, you know. And in fact, the fours, in a lot of cultures, the forests are very difficult for people.

It's like feelings are not welcomed, and you got to kind of withdraw and hold it inside. And that's not a good you know, that doesn't feel very good. And then in other cultures, there's a lot more room for to be expressive. Even the guys who are forest can be more emotionally expressive. You know, I remember teaching in

Mexico, and there's just more room for emotional expression. You know, they're not, I mean, I, of course, they called me a gringo, and meaning I'm one of those uptight northern people, you know what I mean? And I it's true, I know, I get it, you know? Yeah, they're just more fluid emotionally. Or in

Portugal, you know, the whole, the whole, I forget the name of their their folk music, you know? I mean, there's a certain genre folk music, and it's so for so deep and it's drawing upon the suffering and yet the possibility of love. And it's just

soul singing they do in Portugal. It's just riveting. There is a Portuguese singer that I absolutely love that collaborated with Moroccan II, and I've never heard anything like it in my life. I mean, it was truly from a cellular place, extraordinary.

Peter O'Hanrahan: That's the forest stuff. So, I mean, yeah, yeah.

What's it like for you? To working with somebody who's done a lot of work. So, you know, they come to the Enneagram later, and they've done a lot of psychotherapy, a lot of spiritual work, a lot of body work. They really know themselves, and then when you know yourself, you can tend to

mask some things, or sort of hold yourself back because you are more aware and you're not wanting to swim around with your shadow, so to speak. What's it like for you then to to to be working with somebody who's, you know, more evolved in terms of their understanding, but that the Enneagram can help magnify

that?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, it can't. It's a combination of strengths and challenges. So if there are problems that show up, the Enneagram is great for that. But if you also want to develop your strengths, the Enneagram is great for that. You know, I mean, so, so it's a we say it's good for not only personal

growth and relationships, it's good for professional skills. We talk about we, you know, we take it into the workplace at times for teams and communication and leadership development, it's especially important for leaders because their personality, their blind spots, or their reactivity, or whatever. I mean,

they've got their strengths there. They wouldn't be in a leadership position. But if you want to even expand that possibility of being a great leader, you can develop other parts of yourselves, or you can notice what what might be still be holding you back. Because a lot of us, we reach a plateau,

even if we've done a lot of work on ourselves, there's a point at which we kind of plateau out and and again, it's up to people. You know, personal choice,

yeah, when we talk about, you know, all of the different types having value, we need all of them, right? And when we're working in a team, we need all these different types on the team. We can't just be in a group of ones, you know, we never know where the risks were. And, you know, we can't just be

sevens, or we'd all flame out, have any downtime, and never be embarrassed and pathetic, you know. So it is. Yeah, I just want to hear a little bit more about you working with teams you know, to understand each other and what you need as a team member, if you're leading somebody, and you've got a team

of people you know within your team, how you can all work together and understand what each other needs and give each other what you need in order to work collaboratively in the most

Peter O'Hanrahan: well, the most single, most important for a team, as the success and productivity of a team, is emotional intelligence. The research has been done. It's just not my, you know, positive idea about it. You know, it was done 20 years ago by Daniel Goldman. He, I mean, I usually

did the research. And he, you know, if you're working by yourself somewhere, you don't necessarily need a lot of emotional intelligence if you have this job and you're good at it, and that's what you do. And But companies, of course, have been moving towards teams, because in this world, in this

current environment, teams are faster and more adaptable. And, you know, kind of anyway, there are reasons why teams are important these days and so but you put people, get people together. A lot of companies, do they get people? Yes, now we're going to, we're going to have you as a team now you're going

to operate as a team. And people don't know how to do that. They just don't understand. They haven't had enough training to know how to do that. And so the Enneagram is one of the many approaches that help teams. But the Enneagram is also a really great one, because it increases emotional intelligence, you know

more, like you were saying, you know more what's going on for that other person. You don't have to react as much. You can kind of respond like, okay, we're different, but let's talk you know, because we know that everybody has a contribution to make, and we want to bring that contribution forward. What does

that take? We know something about our own reactive patterns, like I get plugged in every time so and so does this? You know what I mean? And so I got to work with that. And but even at a deeper level, we understand people's motivations and their deeper concerns and what theirs are, and we can be empathetic

with it. I mean, we can go, well, all right, you know, I don't have that, but I get it. I mean, you know, I'm not a six, but I learned like, Oh, I get it. You know, there's, there's, your system gets worked up around what could go wrong? And you really need a plan, and you need all those questions

answered. And okay, I could get there at least for a time. Rather than saying, What is your problem, you're nuts, you know. Let's just move into action, like where, you know, I know how to get, get there with them, and all of a sudden, we're allies, you know. And we don't even always have to like each other

all the time, that's, it's but be able to go, you know, I recognize. That your way is a valid way. And and you have a contribution to make here, and and you get upset about certain things, you know what? I mean, the builds don't want to have a lot of fighting going on, or they have to approach it slowly.

And you can't just go pushing the nine around, because they'll just kind of smile and retreat and go, Okay, whatever. You know they have their defenses. Or with the two, they need a lot of recognition and approval. Threes don't like you to slow down their success, but if you could talk about the teamwork actually

will lead to bigger success that gets their attention. And if you give the forest recognition for their depth and their emotional depth, and you know, kind of don't take offense over sometimes, their affect is a little too emotional for what I might be comfortable with. But okay, we can work it out. And

the fires, you don't just go jumping into their space. You you let them know. Can I talk to you later today or maybe tomorrow? You know? Well, what do you want to talk I like, I like, 20 minutes of your time, and I like, you know, or even if you have to go knock on the door, you don't go barging in

and look over their shoulder. You kind of knock on the door literally, or, you know, metaphorically, and say, you know, give them a chance to kind of adapt to your presence and so on.

Yeah, a seven and a five, you know, try to figure out a meeting. It's like, I want to have it now, and the five just needs more time to come when they're ready.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's big help for teams, you know. And again, it's not the only system, but I'm just saying it's, it's the best, my opinion, is the best system to develop emotional intelligence

and and I was just going to say before we build community based on shared humanity, not shared opinions. And so it's so incredibly valuable. What about in romantic partnership? Right? You've obviously pat your partner is also very adept with the Enneagram and teaches it, and so

you've been swimming around in this world together for many, many years. How does that play out for you in a relationship? And you can speak from your own personal experience or just working with the many, many people that you have. Well, the benefits of knowing,

Peter O'Hanrahan: yeah, we have to, we generally have to compromise on stuff. Now, if you're with somebody of the same Enneagram type, which is not actually usual, you know, usually we, we find ourselves with someone of a different Enneagram type, because what they got is attractive, or the

the complimentary Ness kind of fits in some wonderful way. You know, there are people who are with the same Enneagram type, and of course, the the problem there is that they can kind of, you know, reinforce one another's patterns. So they have to be aware of that. But most of the time we have to be willing

to kind of negotiate. We're not going to get everything from this one imperfect human being. And we have to be able to, you know, negotiate that, and, and, and, and sometimes it means letting people be who they are, you know, like, okay, that's who that. I mean, it's not abandoning people to their

pattern. Okay, we have to reach out. Sometimes we have to invite not just we have to fight back. I mean, all that's part of it, but a lot of the time we just have to let them be, you know, and they're different.

It's such a beautiful notion that you speak of letting them be, and yet it's easier said than done, particularly when letting them be, maybe in direct conflict to letting yourself be, or at least that's how we see it, when we're not surrendering to the the ability and the capacity for us

to hold each other in balance, particularly when you're triggered by something, right?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Yeah, well, we, all of us, get triggered and get reactive at times, and so knowing that, managing that reactivity is a big first step. You know what I mean? And sometimes it's like, I mean, sometimes I'm sitting there like, okay, just don't say anything. Just they said, it's

Band Aid therapy. You know, you get a band aid, and you wait half an hour until your state changes, and then you can say something with some love or some kindness. You know what I mean is, you don't just, you know, and, and I'm and then sometimes relate by withdrawing. I mean, excuse me, react by withdrawing.

So it's not always, you know, explicit. Sometimes they just like withdraw and, and so you got to know. Is that when you when you're reacting with a withdrawal pattern, pattern. And it's not like, you should never read withdraw. It's about being able to manage, or at least participate with these patterns.

It's like, okay, you know, Can I can I breathe? The basic method? By the way, the Enneagram doesn't come with any method. It's a map, and it empowers whatever method you got, because you can adapt, you know, couples work or, you know, cognitive behavioral therapy or body therapy, or any of that can be

tailored more to the particular individual in relationships and primary relationships. There's some of that that we need to apply. You know what I mean? It's like, what do I need to understand here about this person? And how can I sometimes challenge, sometimes let be, but do it in some form of kindness,

and know my own reactive patterns. And so the basic method is pause and take a breath. It's basic mindfulness. I would just add the breath, you know, like, pay attention, notice what's going on, and take some breath. Sometimes take some, you know, deep breaths, and that will start to shift.

And at least, you know, if I'm angry about something, I get to pay attention. Is this something I need to say? And maybe it is, but at least after I paused, and I've kind of been with my you know, I can say it a little bit differently, right?

And this dance of wanting to respond rather than react. And as I've been in conversation with you and then in sessions with you, the awareness of what the core motivation is, the awareness of knowing what the shadow part of my type is and what I lead with, and what I need and what happens

when I don't get it, or I'm afraid of it, or, you know, feeling limited and having that sort of fear around it, about not being free. It does allow you to catch yourself more quickly in consort with different modalities that you may be working with, like you said, with a system, and it does

give you that map to go, oh, there it is again. You know, to understand it better. How does that play out with parenting? You have touched on that throughout our conversation, but I imagine it's just so incredibly useful in family dynamics.

Peter O'Hanrahan: I think it is, yeah. And again, you don't need the Enneagram to do this. It's just the Enam is. It's just, it's so effective and efficient, you know what I mean? Because you get a profile of the other people in your family, and you know, your own, you know? And so you can understand why there

would be wonderful ways of connection that are easy and that happen, and then there are other times when there's just this innate difference that can lead to conflict or disappointment and and so. And of course, as parents you know, to understand, to see our children for who they are. I

mean, that's the kind of the task of parents, right? Is to love and support as best we can, but also to see that child's potential and support that potential. And so the Enneagram allows us to see kids a lot more clearly without our own. You know, parents, we we project. I mean, we want the best for our

kids, but we do tend to kind of project or, you know, put our own expectations in there. And that's not necessarily wrong, but I'm just saying it to be able to kind of see who that little person is. So it's like being a teacher. It's like being a parent and and allowing them to be different. You know, the

little kid who runs around it with constant questioning and is anxious all the time and very thin skinned, and it's just like, yes, that could be, that could be problematic, that could be very frustrating, and you could even get angry. But if you know how to breathe, you know what I mean, and see her for

herself, and that's part of her type, structure and and that you can actually support her in developing more capacity. If you know what's going on, you know what I mean, you could speak to her concerns and her fears. Yes, it's a lot of work, but you know, if you love your kids, you we work on their behalf? We

judge them for being different. So and there's some books out now about parenting with Enneagram. There's even one by a colleague in Australia. Pretty darn good.

So tell us about how. We determine what our type is, our subtype, our wing take me inside a session with you. Obviously, I've experienced it that I didn't even have to do any preparation. I just made the hour appointment with you, and we just had a conversation, and you asked me questions, and we

did it by a process of elimination. Was how I would describe

Peter O'Hanrahan: it to somebody, yeah, we knew pretty quickly what types you weren't, right?

Yeah, it was very quick. Was it was like 10 minutes, and it was like, oh, yeah, here we go. I know

Peter O'Hanrahan: it's supposed to last longer and promote these people. It does. And so in the narrative Enneagram school, I'm part of the narrative Enneagram school. Then, you know, again, kind of developed over 35 years, past 35 years, and we, we have programs and training certification for people who

want to become teachers and practitioners and all that good stuff, but our, one of the things that we teach is how to do a typing interview. And Dr David Daniels, the Stanford guy who was also a psychotherapist, and he was big on this, and I think therapists could understand, you know, it's like

there's an interview, and in this structured interview, we ask questions around all nine types around the Enneagram, not just, do you ever it's, how important is this? How big a deal is that a place where you're really strong and if you're really good with that, do you overdo it? And you know

because and people kind of know that about themselves, and there's no guarantee we're going to have a typing interview and you're going to get your type right, because it's not my job or our job to tell people what their type is, but an interview can go a long way to narrowing it down to at least a couple of

possibilities. And we say sometimes it takes time. Sometimes people have to take time. They can get it down to a couple possibilities, and then it takes them a while, and that's okay, because the exploration is part of the deal, and self awareness that develops as part of the deal. And now

there are tests and questionnaires that are available online, and some of them are pretty darn good, and none of them are going to get 100% accuracy, so you have to hold them a little bit lightly, you know. And if you've done a lot of work on yourself, or you have a particular thing going on

in a particular day, you could answer those questions differently, yes, you know. So there's no but, but as long as you understand that, you can hold it lightly, then sometimes those questionnaires can be helpful. And there's a lot of them now, because everybody wants to have a questionnaire,

and I don't, I haven't been able to try them all out, so I don't know, you know,

I prefer to go to a really great Enneagram practitioner like yourself and do the one to one interview. We did it on Zoom, and we were face to face, and it was just the process of it in and of itself, as you say, was incredibly

Peter O'Hanrahan: rewarding. It's a great conversation. It really,

really was a great conversation. And our subsequent conversations as well. And just knowing that you have the freedom, that there is no right or wrong, that all the types have benefits, and they all have the shadow, and that we need all of them, and that we can dance, you know, in various aspects of

them, but your core motivation, your dominant tendency, you do narrow it down to, I remember, you know, when we were talking about the the subtypes, I went, Well, I can relate to all three of those, you know. Well, shit, I maybe, maybe I'm this, maybe I'm that, you know. And then as we drilled further, it was just

so very clear that the most important thing to me was the one to one. And it was just, I just felt it in my body. I had a somatic, visceral reaction to it when that's right in my heart, my body, my spirit, I just knew that that was what it was. Yeah, and one of the things that really surprised me when I was

speaking to you was your work with religious groups, and I had this limiting belief that I couldn't understand, or I had a bit of a block as to how, you know, it found its way in and was so deeply embraced in seminaries and so forth, and you touched upon that before. So do you mind sharing that again, so

that we can share that with everybody about how that came about?

Peter O'Hanrahan: Well, first of all, let me quote Helen Palmer, you know, my mentor and friend for many, many years, and she said that the obstacles in her type structure, the obstacles to her knowing herself, the obstacles to having good relationships with people, were the same obstacles that showed

up in her spiritual practice. It's like she there were obstacles, places where she was shut down or not available or defended. And of course, we need some defenses. So I you know, it's not quite so simple. It's always just open up and whatever. Love everybody. I mean, you know, there's work to

be done, but she understood that. But when you work with those obstacles and those defenses, you become more available, and it strengthens your relationship and connections, not only with the people that you love, but also with perhaps a greater presence. And so even people who are not

religious, per se, can have a spiritual experience in doing this deep work. And again, even without the Enneagram, people have done deep psychological work or deep somatic work. Oftentimes they'll go, oh, wow, it's like, there's a greater presence, or there's some spiritual whatever I mean,

again, however you define that so. But the Enneagram is the map. And of course, in the early days, or when it began, the Enneagram was bringing a lot of traditional wisdom from, in particular, the Christian tradition and the some of the really fundamental things in Christianity, kind of were

precursors. Sometimes the language actually, kind of actually showed up in the way we were first learning Enneagram. So we talked about the holy ideas, you know, the way we get stuck in our mind, but then there's this greater presence, this greater knowing. And we talked about the virtues of the

heart and the passions, or the Now I call them the emotional habits, but basically, passions were the seven sins plus two, you know what I mean? There's a history there that goes way, way back. And there's even been some Christians who, you know, some centuries ago, who were using it to talk about the dignities of

God, the way God's blessings show up, and they come through kind of these nine doorways, and they're all a little bit different. The aspects of a greater wholeness. And so at the beginning, it has continued to this day that people in many congregations, it's been fascinating to see how it's

become popularized, and then it kind of went away. There's been pushback. You know, Pope Benedict sent out a warning letter about yoga meditation in the Enneagram, you know. I mean, he didn't forbid it, but he was warning people and so that kind of, you know, and now a lot of the Protestant congregations and

even the evangelical groups have become interested in the Enneagram because it works. It works for relationships. It allows us to love people better, but it also does something in terms of our connection with a higher power. And if that's okay in your religious construct or context, it can be very helpful.

Mm, gosh, I find it incredibly helpful. What do you love the most about teaching the Enneagram and sharing this map

Peter O'Hanrahan: with people? I love to meet people who are working on themselves, and you know, they don't have to be advanced in the work. I just it opens my heart when people are saying, Okay, I'm willing to take a look at myself. I'm I'm having trouble with my kids or my spouse or work, you know, I'm

willing to kind of take a look at, you know, my patterns, and that just opens up a channel for me. And I just love meeting people who were and I've had the advantage of meeting people in so many countries around the world and making new friends and because we understand like each other. You know, I was in

Australia five times, and I have friends there, and I just like and how would I be? I would never be friends with them if we didn't have the

Enneagram, yes, and Lisa and I dream of bringing you to Australia again, so we will have to make that happen. I could talk to you about this all day long. I always close every episode with the same question, and I'll ask it to you for someone that has a dream in their heart and doesn't feel

like they have what it takes to make it happen, what would you say?

Peter O'Hanrahan: I would say that you have resources, and you may not know what all those resources are, but that you have inner resources, and you have also potential external resources in the forms of, you know, basic practices and new skills and also people. And that to me, there's, there are ways,

not just the Enneagram, but there are ways we know now how to look at those resources. And maybe I can't do it all from where I'm sitting, but I can look to what are the resources that could be available to me. And with those resources, whatever they are, I can, you know, more much more likely to

be able to achieve what my goal is.

Thank you for how you show up in the world and this, this beautiful work that you're doing. I just, I can't wait to talk to you more about it.

Peter O'Hanrahan: Okay. Thank you for being so enthusiastic.

Yay. Thank you so much.