Helen Palmer

The Pocket Enneagram:
Understanding the 9 Types of People
Harper & Row, 1988, 90 pages

Point One: The Perfectionist

What helps Perfectionists

• Notice when compulsive thinking or doing takes over. Schedule free time so that real priorities can surface.
• Question severe internal standards. Question the rules. Settle for adequacy rather than insisting on perfection.
• Avoid turning insight into self-attack, "How could I have been so wrong?"
• Get a reality check. When it seems that others are silently judging, check this out with the people involved.
• Get factual information to eliminate unnecessary worry.
• Notice when One-Right-Way thinking limits options and fair compromises.
• Learn to pay attention to the merit of other value systems.
• Focus on forgiveness:"That was then and this is now."
• Learn to request and receive pleasure.
• Question the difference between "should" statements and "want" statements.
• Use resentful feelings ("It's not fair," "They're getting away with something") as a clue to what is desirable.
• Recognize your own anger signals: putting on a happy face while feeling inwardly angry; polite words in a critically sharp voice; a smile and a rigid body.
• Weekends away. A One away from home can relax.

Point Two: The Giver

What helps Givers

• Recognize your own needs rather than meeting others' needs.
• Know your actual worth to others. See the exaggeration of "being indispensable" or "everyone's best friend."
• Identify the desire to flatter and obtain approval as signs of rising anxiety.
• Observe that exaggerated emotional displays can mask real feelings.
• Notice when pride inflates and deflates. See how pride is maintained by maximizing approval and shifting blame.
• Notice when self-presentation alters to become more pleasing.
• Identify an unchanging self instead of the "many selves" that emerge to meet other people's needs.
• See through the strategy of giving to get. Learn to receive instead of overgiving.
• See when overgiving leads to exhaustion and a desire to escape.
• Discern when people really need you and when they don't.

Point Three: The Performer

What helps Performers

• The key word is "Stop." Leave time for emotions to surface before hurrying to the next task. Find the fear of feelings that underlies an urgent desire for activity.
• Learn the difference between doing and feeling. Note when activity is mechanical. Robotlike work suspends feelings.
• Notice when fantasies of success replace actual abilities.
• Stay with problems rather than veering off to new projects, discrediting critics, or reframing failure into success.
• Pay attention to postponement of feelings. "I'll be happy after the next promotion," "We'll have more time after I get a raise."
• Notice when you feel like a fraud. "Nobody sees behind my mask. Only what I do is seen."
• Note unrealistic fears of failure when the work pace lessens.
• Be aware when self-reflection or support group sessions become a task to master or the next job on the schedule.
• Learn to recognize feelings. Threes may have to start by naming the sensations that underlie feelings. "My face is hot" or "My belly feels tight."
• A definite time limit for self-reflection softens the fear of emotionality. Begin with thirty-minute breaks and then back to work.
• Get support in making feeling choices rather than staus choices.
• Allow people to love who you are rather than what you do.

Point Four: The Tragic Romantic

What helps Romantics

• Loss is real. It needs to be properly mourned and then set aside.
• Self-absorbed sadness can be broken by physical activity and service to others.
• Eliminate self-sabotage and incompletes. Finish projects.
• See through push-pull patterns of relating. Romantics desire the unavailable and reject what's easy to obtain.
• Discover a version in oneself of what is enviable in others.
• Quiet the attraction toward dramatic acting out. Inform others about how to handle your mood swings. The steady presence of a partner softens fears of abandonment.
• Focus on the good in what's available rather than on what's missing.
• Build support systems to handle periods of sadness.
• Expect that intimacy may trigger fears of loss and abandonment.
• Recognize the sweetness of melancholy and the ability to help others in pain.

Point Five: The Observer

What helps Observers

• Notice times when thoughts and emotions are withheld from others.
• Observe the hoarding of knowledge, time, energy, privacy, and personal space.
• See the control aspect of censoring information and compartmentalizing relationships.
• Observe that thinking can replace feeling and sensing information.
• Question the belief that feelings automatically lead to pain.
• Note the discrepancy between mental constructs and lived experience.
• Question the three S's: Secrecy, Superiority, and Separateness.
• Learn to value spontaneity and open-ended activity.
• See the discrepancy between feelings that emerge in privacy and the lack of feelings in face-to-face encounters.
• Question the unwillingness to display emotion.
• Find ways to be seen, to disclose, to engage rather than withdrawing.
• Realize that withdrawal forces others to become the active agent.
• Find ways to unite body and heart with mind.

Point Six: The Trooper

What helps Troopers

• Get a reality check. Are doubts based in reality or are they imagined? Name fears out loud. Check conclusions with a trustworthy friend.
• Avoid nebulous agreements. Get clear guidelines for action.
• A support system is important for all types. For Sixes it's imperative.
• Contain procrastination by setting timelines and action checkpoints.
• Give equal time to positive options. Remember that negative possibilities seem more believable.
• Recognize times when thinking replaces action.
• Find safety in step-by-step guidelines for moving through frightening events rather than avoiding or magnifying their importance.
• Identify both fight and flight as fear reactions. Check yourself for hidden projections when others appear to be hostile.
• If attention fixates in worst-case thinking, (a) imagine best-case possibilities or (b) imaginatively exaggerate worst-case outcomes until they "overflow" by becoming ridiculous.

Point Seven: The Epicure

What helps Epicures

• Observe the attraction to stimulation and new experiences.
• Learn how opting for pleasure can also be a flight from pain.
• Note mental evasions: Multiple projects, new options, and visionary plans can herald an escape from difficulty.
• See how substituting pleasant ideas for realistic action creates procrastination and problems with completion.
• Discover how superficial ativities can replace depth experience.
• Gluttony goes hand in hand with entitlement. "I deserve the best."
• Face the scope of real responsibilities and commitments.
• Note the fears that arise when self-worth is challenged. Feeling either superior or inferior to others. Wanting to stay in the superior position.
• Question the belief that opposition can be disarmed with charm.
• Notice the tendency to interpret realistic evaluation as criticism.
• Be willing to close down possibilities and commit to a single course of action.

Point Eight: The Boss

What helps a Boss

• Allow others to initiate. Learn to wait and to listen before acting.
• Note that a desire to escalate the action, stir up controversy, or polarize a conversation may be a sign of rising insecurity.
• Identify boredom or disinterest as a possible mask for vulnerable feelings.
• Focus on the equally valid logic of other people's behavior. See the consistency within other points of view.
• See that confrontation and physical excess can cover actual feelings.
• Note that real feelings can begin with depression. Reframe "weaker" feelings as a sign of progress.
• Realize that a preoccupation with justice, protection, and control often polarizes others into being friends or foes.
• Remember to write down insights as they occur. Work against pervasive forgetting. Review insights to combat denial.
• Learn to channel anger. Both the suppression and the expression of anger can have negative consequences.
• Learn that compromise doesn't mean "quit."

Point Nine: The Mediator

What helps Mediators

• Notice when others become the referent for action. "Do I agree or disagree with them?" "Do I go along with them or not?"
• Use deadlines, structure, and positive feedback to support personal goals.
• Learn to shift attention when obsessive thought about the pros and cons of a decision take over.
• Focus on feelings when obsessive thinking begins. Ask, "What do I want?" instead of "What do others want?"
• Learn to recognize the signals of passive aggression. Nines control by slowing down and refusing to act. Recognize this passivity as anger.
• See anger as good news in disguise. Anger can reveal a previously submerged position.
• Nines decide more easily when they're given choices. They know what they don't want more readily than what they do want.
• Find the feelings that are numbed by inessentials such as TV, errands, and other ways of postponing action.