Enneagram 2 & People-Pleasing: Finding My Real Self After 40 Years of Performing

You've taken the assessments. You know your type. But what if the personality you've built your whole life around isn't really you — it's the version you learned to survive as?

In this episode, Rachel gets honest about the day she found out she'd been ghosting herself: confusing a survival strategy for her identity for four decades, and calling it personality the whole time. She shares why most of us take personality tests the wrong way — your first answer might not be your truth, it might be your training — what happened when she fed five different assessments into AI and asked where they all pointed to the same woman, and why the joy she spent years apologizing for turned out to be the very thing she was made to offer. Because childlike isn't childish, and being too much, too bright, too playful was never the problem.

This is the heart of Good Girl Ghosting: the socially approved disappearing act — the gold-star-earning, box-checking, don't-make-waves version of yourself that everyone rewards, right up until you realize she isn't you. And it lands somewhere lighter than you'd expect, because reclaiming yourself isn't always deep excavation. Sometimes it just looks like finally dressing like the woman you actually are.

If you've been calling your real self "too much" for too long, this one's for you.

In this episode:

Why your personality might be a survival story wearing your face
The one question that separates what's true from what's automatic
How to take a personality test so you get your answer, not your conditioning
What five assessments plus AI revealed about the real you
Childlike vs. childish — and the joy you were never meant to apologize for
The socially approved disappearing act, and the way back to yourself

A few lines worth remembering: 
"What you thought was your personality was actually your survival story wearing your face." 
"I wasn't managing my personality — I was suppressing my calling." · "Childlike isn't childish."

Next steps:
The founding group for the Good Girl Ghosting Reset is open!! Comment RESET and I'll tell you about it.

For the exact scripts for the next time you go blank or catch yourself saying an automatic yes, comment the word KIT for the Rebel Response Mini Kit or find it on Amazon here: https://a.co/d/0cMYC5fX

#midlifewomen #GoodGirlGhosting #Enneagram #midlifeawakening #selfdiscovery #selfgrowth #christianwomen

Resources:

- Free Play: REBEL JOY Card Deck — Romanticize your life and reclaim your light — one tiny rebellion at a time. Seven print-and-keep cards, each with one brave, joyful prompt. Pick a card, set a 60-second timer, and play. Start Playing Again! https://rachel-harris-online.kit.com/72c327f4a4 

- For the exact scripts for the next time you go blank or catch yourself saying an automatic yes, grab the Rebel Response Mini Kit here: https://rachelharrisonline.com/product-details/product/the-rebel-response-mini-kit

- FREE: Are YOU a Good Girl Ghost? Free Guide: 5 Moments You're Abandoning Yourself (Without Even Realizing It) https://rachel-harris-online.kit.com/e6b737ec08

- Work with me 1:1 on the Rebel Path — a single Rebel Hour, or the Rebel

  Practice 12-week mentorship: https://rachelharrisonline.com/work-with-me

My Substack Page, Goodbye, Good Girl: https://joyfulrebel.substack.com/

Are YOU A Joyful Rebel? https://rachelharrisonline.com/joyful-rebel

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Hey friend, welcome back. This is a rebel practice session, which means we're going a little bit deeper into the actual practical steps of the work. Less framework, more. Here's what I actually did. Today's topic is one that can seem almost embarrassingly simple. Personality assessments. I know, I know, stay with me. Because what I'm gonna tell you isn't really about the assessments. It's about what happens when you discover that what you thought was your personality was actually your survival story by wearing your face. For most of my adult life, I believed I was an Enneagram too. The helper, the caregiver, the one who loves through service, who anticipates needs before they're spoken, who finds her worth in being needed. And honestly, it fit really, really well because I was those things. What I didn't realize was that I was those things because I had learned to be those things, not because it was who I actually was. There's a difference between a personality type and a survival strategy. And I had spent four decades confusing the two. The spotlight adjacent pattern, always beside the light, never in it, that's too energy. Or rather, that's what a woman does when she believes her worth lives in what she gives to others. Because let's be clear, I love me, some Enneagram2 women. We need more of them in the world. But my joy, my childlike enthusiasm, my delight in everything, the way I light up at the smallest things, I spent years trying to train it away, pray it away, believing that if I showed up too bright, too much, too playful, too loud with my joy, people would see me as childish, not childlike, childish. And so I managed it. I dimmed it, I performed the version of me that felt safe, the helper, the encourager, the one who makes everyone else comfortable. And I called that my personality. I wasn't being my true self. I was being the version of myself that I learned to survive. And then I took the Enneagram, not the way that I had taken it before, but slowly, carefully, pausing at the automatic answers, questioning what they meant, going beyond that first response. And I came back a seven, the enthusiast, the one who moves toward joy instinctively, the one who reframes pain into possibility, not as denial, or at least not as denial when I'm healthy. That was something I had to work on too. But when you're healthy, you do it as a genuine orientation toward hope and faith. The one whose gift to the world is literally joy. And I remember sitting with that result and feeling two different things simultaneously. The first was something close to grief because I thought I've been fighting myself all these years of trying to be quieter, more serious, less enthusiastic, feeling like I wasn't enough or wasn't good enough. I was trying to be someone I'm not. I was ghosting my actual self. I didn't even feel like I knew who my actual self was at that point, and I didn't know how to get there. The second thing I felt was something that took my breath away. Permission. Because if joy is the gift, if that's actually how God wired me to reflect him in the world, then I've been apologizing for the very thing I was meant to offer. The thing that came naturally. What a literal relief. See, childlike isn't childish. Childish is being self-centered, mean-spirited, greedy, stubborn, childlike, is looking at the world with wonder, finding joy in the moment, sharing it, believing things can be beautiful. God is joy, and I believe that we honor him when we play and dance and giggle. I've been calling my gift a liability for 40 years. I wasn't managing my personality, I was suppressing my calling. After the Enneagram, I kept going. Myers Briggs, Big Five, Hexacoscale, the DISC model, however you say that. A few others. And then I did something that changed everything. I put all of the results into AI and I asked for the themes. Not what each assessment said separately, but what they all said together. The through lines. Where did five different frameworks measuring five different things point to the same woman? Would there be commonality? Part of me, probably that former too, wondered if I'd done these new tests wrong. And this was like a last line of security to prove if I was indeed on the right track. The results? Across every assessment. The themes were authenticity, resilience, joy, whimsy, creativity, courage. Not the helper, not the selfless one, but the joyful one, playful one, the one who runs toward possibility. And then I took the four tendencies. It came back rebel. I fought that one at first. I mean, hello, I'm a people pleaser. I'm the one who follows the rules. I like my gold stars. I don't cause scenes. I don't make waves. But then again, I paused and I thought about it for real. And I realized there are certain things that I take a stand on. Moments where I just refuse some absolutely ridiculous things in the grand scheme of things, if I'm honest. But I do it. I can definitely be a stubborn Taurus. I have moments where something just rises up in me and says, nope, not this, not here, not me, not today. Sometimes I pick my rebellious moments carefully. Other times they seem to pick me. But rebellion is absolutely in the mix. And so Joyful Rebel was born. Not from a branding exercise and not from a marketing strategy, from two personality revelations that showed me who I actually was under 40 years of survival strategies. The rebellion piece deepened even further when I realized that the very patterns of self-abandonment and shrinking that I discovered in myself and have now named good girl ghosting, that's the opposite of rebellion. Good girl ghosting is the socially approved disappearing act. The gold star earning, box checking, don't make waves version of yourself. Reclaiming rebellion isn't just a personality type, at least for me. It's the answer to everything I've been trained to suppress. The Joyful Rebel wasn't a brand. She was the woman that I found when I stopped performing the adaptation. Hey friend, quick pause. I want to tell you about something that I just put out into the world. Do you know the moment? The one where someone asks you to do the thing, and your mouth says, Yeah, sure, no problem. Before your body has even finished trying to tell you, uh, no, actually, no, that moment has a name. It's called Good Girl Ghosting. And I just released a 27-page minikit with the exact words to say, seven real life scenarios, pinky chow word bank for when you go blank, and a handful of practices that you can start today. It's just $7 on Amazon. Search Rebel Response Minikit or grab the link in the show notes. And now back to the show. Okay, so here's the practical part because this matters. Most of us take personality assessments the wrong way. We've been told, go with your first answer. Don't overthink it. And that advice isn't wrong unless you've spent decades building a survival story so convincing that your first answer isn't your truth. It's your training. Your first answer might be your brainwashed answer. The version of you that learned to be something else, in my case a two, will answer that way. The version of you that learned that your gift, your superpower, in my case, joy, was dangerous or wrong, will answer like someone who doesn't trust that gift. So here's what I'd suggest instead. Go away from your regular environment first. You can go in your closet, nice and easy. You can go into your car, go to a park bench, somewhere that's not filled with all of the roles and the routines that reinforce who you've learned to be. Then read each question slowly. And before you answer, ask, is this true or is this automatic? If something about the results at the end of the test doesn't quite feel like you, take it again. Go even slower. That is not gaming the system. That's learning to tell the difference between who you adapted into and who you actually are. And if you want to go even deeper, take five to seven assessments, put the results into AI, and ask what themes emerge across all of them. Where do these different frameworks point to the same woman? That's where you'll find her. Your first answer might be your survival story, not your true self. So I want to end with something that surprised me. Because after all of that deep inner work, the Enneagram, the Myers Briggs, the four attendancies, arguing about the four attendancies and then coming back around, the AI theme analysis, the shadow work. The next thing that cracked me open was color seasons and personal style. I know, I know. But here's the thing identity work doesn't always have to feel heavy. Sometimes it looks like figuring out which colors actually make you feel amazing, which silhouettes feel like home on your skin, what your style would be if you dress for yourself instead of dressing for belonging or approval or the mom uniform. My old closet used to be pretty much divided between two vibes: trying to look attractive for my husband and trying to blend in with all the other moms. Neither group asked me to do this, by the way. That was my decision. It was totally on me. But neither of those vibes was dressing for me. Now I know I'm whimsical boho next door with vintage flare. And that sentence, as silly as it may sound, is the most rachel thing I've said in a while. Because joy counts, play counts, curiosity counts, even when it's in your closet, especially when it's in your closet. Identity work doesn't always feel heavy. Sometimes it looks like finally dressing like yourself. So here's your rebel practice this week. Choose one personality assessment that you haven't taken, or retake one that you've taken before, but this time do it slowly. Get somewhere quiet first, read each question like you're meeting yourself for the very first time. Notice which answers feel automatic, which ones feel true. And if you want to go further, take two or three, compile the results, ask AI or just look at it yourself and figure out what is the commonality? What are the themes among all of these? Who, what, and how is this woman consistently showing up? And sit back with what comes back. Not to label yourself, not to put yourself in a box, but to see if there's a woman in there that you've been calling your personality who might actually be your survival story and to wonder with compassion who you might be if you let her rest. Next Rebel practice session, we're gonna be talking about core values and not the aspirational ones that you think you should have, but the real ones that have been running your life all along until then. Go find yourself in a quiet room. She's been waiting, and I'll meet you back here.