Coaching Type Five

In this episode of the Awareness to Action Enneagram podcast, Mario Sikora, María José Munita and Seth “Creek” Creekmore talk about coaching Enneagram Type Five. This type—“Striving to Feel Detached”—tends to manage interactions with people strategically and proactively by building a wall as a way to defend themselves. They are also known to say what they think which can be difficult for people to read if they're not used to it. Mario and MJ discuss their approach in addressing this type’s challenges and blind spots, such as not saying what’s on their mind, and why they enjoy helping them articulate how they see things without overdoing it.

“What does mark them is this need to engage with the world through a feeling of detachment, which sounds contradictory, but they’re trying to create their way of coping with the world. Their way of interacting is through creating an emotional or an emotion-free buffer between themselves and the world, so they can step back and kind of protect themselves.” -Mario [13:11]

“They want to know more so that they can understand things and not feel overwhelmed. It’s like feeling overwhelmed, it’s something they want to avoid. And they’re very sensitive. So when you think that they’re not feeling, it’s usually that it’s a way to defend themselves, because they’re so sensitive that they need to build a wall.” -María José [21:45]

“I will admit that the Five is a bit of a blind spot for me, still trying to find the edges of it, and so like for that, for instance, how do you determine what’s transmitting and what’s that just the Five found their area of expertise and they’re going. How do you turn those dials? ‘Cause mistyping between Five and Seven happens a lot.” -Creek [29:39]

TIMESTAMPS

[00:01] Intro

[02:21] This week’s adjective

[07:55] Experience in coaching Fives

[12:03] Striving to Feel Detached

[18:33] The coping mechanism is to detached

[23:28] Attachment theory

[27:25] Common problems

[32:44] Pulling the wings off of a fly

[35:20] Other issues

[39:27] Defining detachment

[42:06] Get your hands dirty metaphorically