Moving from Stress to Self Awareness

This week on the podcast, I am re-sharing an episode on the Enneagram, highlighting how it shapes the way we think, feel, and do life—especially during times of stress. It is such a powerful tool for self-awareness. .

We each process life differently—through our body, heart, or mind. These are called Centers of Intelligence.  We each use all three, but one is our primary way to process life's experiences. 

Here are 3 key takeaways:

Types 8, 9, & 1: Experience and process life somatically through the body. Emotions like anger serve as important signals, helping us identify when boundaries are crossed. Notice the difference between healthy anger and unhelpful rage or contempt.

Types 2, 3, & 4: Live life through feelings. Learn to distinguish between guilt (a signal to reflect on actions) and shame (a harmful belief that “I am wrong”). Self-awareness helps us access the truth of our value and maintain healthy boundaries in relationships.

Types 5, 6, & 7: Engage life through thinking and strategizing. The central challenge here is catastrophizing—imagining worst-case scenarios. Fear serves a purpose, but learning to focus on “what’s the best that could happen?” can rewrite our patterns.

The gift of self-awareness is understanding why we think, feel, and act the way we do—then putting loving boundaries in place.By using the Enneagram, we can see that everyone operates from their own core motivations and patterns. This insight allows compassion for ourselves and others, encourages healthy boundaries, and supports living a more vibrant, purpose-filled life.

Links 

• Join Kelly's Group Coaching Program
• Join Kelly’s Free community on Skool

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Transcript

0:00

Hey friends, I am going to be giving an overview of the different ways that we all think, feel, and do life and what happens during times of stress. Welcome to the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I'm life coach Kelly Kibbitz, and each week I'll be here to encourage and equip you with the tools you need to grow in self-awareness and invest your best energy in your dreams and your purpose. I believe self-awareness changes everything. Let's get started. When we're in relationship with people it might be great for you to have some tools in your toolbox on what to do when that person that you care about is thinking, feeling, doing life differently than you would prefer for them to do. If we were together in person I would have you take out a piece of paper and draw a circle, and just like you would number a clock, we're going to number around the circle from the number one through the number nine. The number nine is at the very top, and then the one is where the one normally is on a clock. We're going to start with the eight, nine, and one. Enneagrams eight, nine, and one, process life through their body. They process life somatically. What you might notice if you are an eight, nine, or one, or you're in a relationship with eight nines and ones is- depending on the level of health, you'll notice how they respond with anger all the way over to rage or contempt. Anger is one of those good pieces of information that our body can give us. When a boundary is crossed, we feel angry. Nothing's gone wrong when the anger is towards you holding a boundary. That's a really good thing for you to notice if a boundary has been crossed, and for you to decide, I will do this. I won't do that. I'm feeling something in my body that says that that boundary that's important to me. It's not being honored. And so that's anger, and that's a really good feeling to notice. That's different from rage and contempt. Rage and contempt happen when we no longer value the other. I like how in yoga we say the light in me sees and honors the light in you. As a pastor and a person of faith, I believe that in the Book of Genesis, when God said, let us make humans, the father, son, and spirit, let us make humans in our image, men and women made in the image of God. I don't think it was the flesh, you know, I don't think it was the put on the flesh and dwell with us part that we see in Jesus. I think it's this energy. Right. The ability to love one another is the part that we are made in the image of God. So when you know that you are a hundred percent loved, a hundred percent valuable, and you are connected to love, then when a boundary is crossed and you feel anger, you don't need to make the other person less. When I think of road rage, I think of somebody driving a car, which is a very powerful weapon and not caring about the human life that's in the other car, right? That's what happens during road rage. That's so different from anger. So anger is noticed in the body. Eights, nines and ones. You process life somatically through your body and you might notice anger now. Depending on how connected you are to yourself, you might not notice anger. And that's a really interesting thing, especially for Enneagram ones. They don't want to get angry, and so they might not even notice when they are angry. And Enneagram nines will work so hard not to feel anger. They will do anything within their power to maintain peace, even at the loss of what's important to them. Right? And so eights, nines, and ones. What you might notice is if you take the time, right, we talk about this all the time. Notice, notice, notice, be in the present energy. What are you thinking? What are you feeling? What's your body presenting to you? Notice what happens when there's anger in your body. Are you able to notice it? Can you allow it to move through you? And the reason that there's anger, it's all tied to this idea of justice. And to understand as an eight, nine, or one, that it's your thoughts and your feelings that are creating this idea of justice in your body. It might feel circumstantial, like there's a standard in the world, but the more self-aware you become, the more you're going to notice this is something inside of you. You believe this is right, this is wrong. And if others are not complying, you might notice. Anger in some form. When we go to the twos, threes and fours, they're in the heart center, and so twos, threes, and fours. We just have an easier access path to our feelings. Are we happy? Sad, scared. Uncomfortable. Frustrated, enthusiastic. Again, one of the gifts of the Enneagram is to give us language for how we think, feel, do life, why we think, feel, and do life the way we do, but it still takes self-awareness. Very few people are able to notice why they think, feel, and do life the way they do without some intentional work. The words that I like to talk about when people are in the 2, 3, 4 energy is the difference between shame and guilt. Guilt is a word that a lot of Enneagram twos in particular use. I feel so guilty that I wasn't able to help somebody, but the reality is you're not feeling guilty. Guilty is a feeling we feel when we do something wrong. What we are mistaking guilt for is shame. And shame is saying, you are wrong. I am wrong, and I just want to offer you again, if no one else has said this. You're a hundred percent valuable, a hundred percent loved. Any gap between where you are in the ideal version of you has already been covered in love. And so shame is not true. Shame is losing that access that Jesus talks about when he says that he's the vine and where the branches and when we're connected, there's love. And when we lose that connection, we move over to shame and we don't value who we are. A hundred percent loved to a hundred percent valuable. Now guilt. On the other hand, just like anger is a really good emotion to notice in your body. If you're feeling guilty because you said you would do something and then you were unable to do it and you feel some feelings in your body, right? Maybe it will help you not to make that offer again. Maybe it will help you not to say yeses when you should say no. So guilt and anger are not bad emotions. They're important emotions in us becoming emotionally healthy. Shame keeps us from being able to access the truth of who we are. So again, nine ways of thinking, feeling, and doing life. One or two of the things that I'm describing to you, you might notice that you have pretty easy access to, and one or two of them you might think, I'm not really sure. I'm not sure what I think. I'm not sure what I feel. I'm not sure what my body information is giving me. I don't know what I wanna do and what I don't wanna do. Nothing's gone wrong. But the Enneagram is going to help you understand your why. Why are you thinking, feeling and doing life this way? So again, if you are in the Enneagram two energy and you are noticing your feelings and you are fighting against shame'cause that's your battle. And you have someone who you love, but you find that relationship exhausting and draining. It could be because you notice their emotions and their feelings even better than they do. When someone is not connected to their heart center. They might not even know that when they're feeling scared or frustrated or angry that other people even notice because they're not aware. The more you grow along this path of self-awareness, you may understand some things that even the people you're in close relationship don't understand. How are we going to hold grace and love for them? Because the gift of being an autonomous human is we all get to think and feel and do anything we want. And then you and I as loved, valued humans, a hundred percent loved, a hundred percent valued. We get to decide where the boundaries are in our own life. Hey, I'm more than happy to be in this relationship under these conditions, and when we're in a conversation and you are coming at me with some of this, you know, strong anger, frustration, swearing, whatever it is that your boundary is, you have the right to say, I'm no longer engaging. So boundaries can never be put from us upon another person. They are the fence we put around our own life. I will say yeses and nos that I wanna say, and you get to do and think and feel anything about that, that you want. So eights, nines, and ones, you're processing life through your body. You are somatically deciding what you wanna do and what you don't wanna do. You're noticing that the more self-aware you are. Twos, threes and fours. You're processing life in your feeling center. You're having, um, you know, that ability to notice what you feel. And one of the most interesting things about the Enneagram is the fact that. Even though we have these centers of intelligence, and the Enneagram would say we have the access to it, many of us live unexamined lives. I know I did for a very long time. When I began to even look at the Enneagram, I wasn't sure if I was a nine or a one or a two because I had paid so little attention to myself for so many years. I didn't know what I thought or felt, what I wanted to do or what I didn't wanna do. And part of that was because one path to self-awareness is through journaling, and that was just a habit I had never created in my own life. Mostly because even though I'm a very smart woman, I don't use my thinking center first. I use it third. And so it just wasn't easy for me to notice and it still isn't. It takes a lot of work for me to notice what I'm thinking. Eight nines and ones in the body center, twos, threes, and fours in the heart center, and that leaves us with the five sixes and sevens, and they're in the thinking center, and what they are fighting against is catastrophizing. Now that is different than fear. Fear is a really good emotion to feel as a human. When something dangerous is about to happen. If you are walking in your neighborhood and a bear comes walking towards you, it is good to be afraid and to do something different than go towards the bear, right? Fear is good, but what's not good is this idea of catastrophizing, and this is something I've struggled with my whole life when I have a thought. About someone that I love and I can't instantly use my phone to affirm that they are where I think they are. I can easily catastrophize. I can think of the worst possible solution to what is a problem or question in my mind, and I don't know. I don't know anything about the future, but my brain has gotten really good at filling in the future with things that are unpleasant. And the work I've been doing is to try to say, well, what's the best that could happen? Five sixes and sevens. Notice that. Notice what you do in order to avoid catastrophizing, and again, fear, guilt, anger, incredibly important emotions. Part of being human. It serves us to get angry when our boundaries are being crossed. It serves us to feel guilty when we do something that we should stop doing, and it serves us to feel fear when something scary or not healthy is about to happen. What doesn't serve us though is catastrophizing, thinking we can go into the future and predict what will happen. What doesn't serve us is shame. Forgetting that we are a hundred percent loved and a hundred percent valuable, and what does not serve us is rage. Losing our love and value of the other, seeing the light in them, just like we see the light in us. The Enneagram, again, just helps us understand there are nine ways of thinking, feeling, and doing life, and one of these ways. Is your way of thinking, feeling and doing life. It's impossible to be a human and not have a reason for why you think, feel, and do life the way you do. And so if you'd like to learn a little bit more about yourself, I encourage you to go to kellytibbitts.com/why and I'll put my Enneagram resources there. And why is WHY. Enneagram is at the core a way for us to understand ourselves, to grow in self-awareness. For the next few weeks, I'll be hopping on to Facebook and Instagram, sharing some of my tools, sharing some of my favorite teachers. I'll be linking to podcasts where I've been a guest and talked about the Enneagram, and I hope that you and I are able to connect, that you can notice when you're in your state of health and notice perhaps when you're moving away from health. So that you can do those small practices that allow you to stay in that mental, emotional, physical, spiritual health that gives us the ability to live a vibrant life. I look forward to talking soon. Thank you for joining the Live A Vibrant Life podcast. I hope our time together encouraged you and equipped you with some tools to move towards your vibrant life. To learn more or join my coaching community, you can visit my website@kellytibbits.com or follow me on Instagram and Facebook. I look forward to connecting soon.