Aletheia Coaching: An Evolution in Enneagram-based Coaching
The Enneagram in popular use is a sophisticated typology that maps the kinds of personality or ego fixations into nine Enneatypes. The origins of the enneagram symbol have been lost to history. The symbol was known in Ancient Greece to Pythagoras and to the Sufis of Persia. This symbol was re-introduced to the world by the Armenian spiritual teacher Gurdjieff and used as a way to model living processes. The Bolivian mystic Oscar Ichazo developed the Enneagram into a psycho-spiritual typology. And Claudio Naranjo integrated Ichazo’s Enneagram with insights from Western psychology and brought it to Esalen where it traveled to all regions of the world. Today, there are hundreds of books on the Enneagram of personality fixations, passions, virtues, and Holy Ideas which originate from Ichazo’s teaching.
The sophistication of the Enneagram’s view of personality has made it very popular in the coaching industry. Every method is based on a particular view. View and method are like two sides of a coin. The Enneagram’s great strength is its view, however, the most popular Enneagram-based coaching methods are problematic and usually generate mixed results. Let’s explore why and how this problem is remedied by integrating the view of the Enneagram with the method of Aletheia Coaching.
The View of the Enneagram
The great strength of the Enneagram is its detailed and multi-faceted view of ego fixations. The Enneagram of Fixations clearly articulates the patterns of motivation, thinking, feeling, and behavior that constitute each Enneatype. Widening self-observation and deepening self-awareness is always challenging. There are many aspects of ourselves that are too close to be easily noticed. Using the Enneagram is like a mirror that helps us see aspects of ourselves that we are otherwise blind to. As an analogy, consider how you can’t see the color of your eyes without looking in a mirror. The Enneagram reflects aspects of our personality and ego structure back to ourselves in often astounding detail and clarity. This understanding helps to focus coaching conversations in powerful directions.
Counteractive coaching generates unnecessary resistance to development
The weakness of the Enneagram, as popularly used, is the method that accompanies its view. Broadly speaking, the most common method used in Enneagram-based coaching is what we call a counteractive approach. Counteractive approaches attempt to rebalance the extremes of a fixation through practices that oppose or counterbalance its motivations, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
In theory rebalancing these extremes makes sense, however, in practice attempting to do so often generates internal friction and resistance that must then be overcome to generate development. As you will see, this undermines the effectiveness of coaching and, we believe, is entirely unnecessary to generate development.
Working with this resistance is frustrating for both coach and client, makes development much harder than it needs to be, and generates mixed results. One of the clearest signs that you are taking a counteractive approach is the struggle you experience in getting your clients to do the practices you’ve designed for them.
Let’s look at some example of this. When taking a counteractive approach, we ask:
Perfectionistic Type 1s to let go of comparisons and judgments and embrace their imperfections
Helpful Type 2s to stop being so helpful to others, express their needs more frequently, and learn how to receive the love that is already available
Achievement oriented Type 3s to be less image conscious, allow things to be as they are, and practice emotional authenticity
Individualistic Type 4s to focus more on what’s positive in life and less on what’s missing, especially within themselves, and appreciating their ordinariness
Observant Type 5s to be less withdrawn, especially into their heads, and more engaged with their feelings, especially in relationships
Loyalist Type 6s to have more faith in themselves and their innate guidance instead of being self-doubting and be more courageous in facing life as it is
Epicurean Type 7s to embrace the constraints on their behavior, to savor what’s present instead of always searching for more, and to explore their feelings of deprivation instead of fleeing from them
Challenger Type 8s to let go of the need to dominate and control and embrace their innocence and vulnerability
Peacekeeping Type 9s to deepen contact with themselves, express their needs and desires, and to relish conflict rather than avoid it at all costs
If you are already an Enneagram-based coach, these counteractive strategies are familiar to you. They represent ideals that are of great help if they can be implemented. Yet, time and again, clients resist these antidotes even when they rationally understand the need to address the sabotaging extremes of their personality type. These counteractive approaches are a classic case of attempting self-improvement, which often reinforces the client’s sense of self-deficiency, when self-unfoldment will be more powerfully developmental, and foster the client’s sense of innate sufficiency.
From the perspective of Aletheia Coaching, we can understand how this resistance is generated. Ego fixations are composed of constellations of Parts (both Protector Parts and Hurt Parts). All Parts have a positive intention. They also have a negative unintended side-effect, which the client usually wants to suffer less. Self psychology shows us that all Parts want to feel seen, understood, loved, and valued exactly as they are for their positive intentions. When this happens, Parts will spontaneously relax, release, and unfold thereby also reducing their negative unintended side-effects.
This shows us that the path of least resistance to a more balanced state is not through opposing or counteracting fixations but through practicing self-acceptance, self-love, and self-worth which form the very heart of Aletheia Coaching. When we do this, we create space for ego fixations to simply be as they are and naturally unfold.
The core principle of Aletheia Coaching is Letting Be / Letting Unfold. As we relax the inner struggle, and Parts feel seen, understood, loved, and valued exactly as they are, they spontaneously unfold. This occurs effortlessly and offers a stark contrast to the frustrating struggle experienced by coaches who take a counteractive approach.
A Next-generation Approach to Enneagram-based Coaching
Fixations Don’t Need to Be Fixed
From the Aletheia perspective, there is absolutely no need to oppose or counterbalance ego fixations. Indeed, fixations don’t need to be fixed in order to generate development. Any attempt to do so only serves to intensify the fixation and increase resistance to change and transformation.
Fixations can unfold
Aletheia Coaching offers a powerfully effective alternative. Through practicing Parts Work, Process Work, Presence Work, and Nondual Work in a seamlessly integrated way, you can help clients relax and release their ego fixations without unnecessarily evoking and intensifying their resistances.
Coach the Uniqueness of Your client instead of applying universal antidotes
As stated above, ego fixations are composed of a constellation of Parts. The actual make-up of these constellations differs between people. Therefore, two people with the same Enneatype will have a different configuration of Parts which particular needs. The counteractive approach coaches every person with the same Enneatype in the same way, ignoring the obvious differences between people.
Relax fixations with ease using Parts Work
Using Parts Work, you can work with each client’s particular configuration of Parts and offer the exact love and appreciation they need to relax. This particular focus enables your coaching to be more precise and powerful than the universal antidotes offered by counteractive approaches.
Feel and follow what unfolds using Process Work
When Parts feel seen, understood, loved, and valued exactly as they are, they relax and release. This immediately gives deeper access to bodily felt senses, which can be felt and followed using Process Work. Process always flows toward the experience of innate wholeness. From the Enneagram view, this flow often follows in the direction of the integrating arrows where clients will feel and experience deeper integration. Using Aletheia Coaching, you will seamlessly switch from Parts Work to Process Work, and back again as needed.
Embody Innate Wholeness using Presence Work
Every fixation is an attempt to over-compensate for the lack of particular Qualities of Presence (Type 9 is over-compensating for the lack of Peace, Type 1 is over-compensating for the lack of unconditional appreciation and love, etc.). Using Parts Work and Process Work the client is able to drop into the Depth of Presence/Absence where they can practice Presence Work. Here we directly explore the sense of Absence and, in turn, realize the associated Quality of Presence through Presence Work. The realization of this Quality of Presence helps to more fully dissolve the fixation which was trying to compensate for its absence. This helps the client embody an even more complete sense of integration and live more continuously from Presence.
Counteractive approaches to Enneagram coaching, while theoretically intuitive, don’t offer this ease and depth. For these reasons, we believe that Aletheia Coaching is the perfect method to accompany the sophisticated view of the Enneagram. If you currently offer Enneagram-based coaching, adopting the method of Aletheia Coaching will take your practice to the next level.
In the Advanced Coaching Program Level 1: The Foundations of Unfolding, you will learn how to practice Parts Work, Process Work, and Presence Work to more easily rebalance ego fixations without reliance on counteractive practice, which clients (and their Protector Parts) naturally resist.