How to Keep Getting More Out of the Enneagram
Here's what most people don't realize about the Enneagram, even when their knowledge of it is deep and nuanced and hard-won: it's a map of a system. A remarkably accurate one. It tells you how the system functions — the core fear driving it, the strategies it runs, the way it moves under stress and toward growth.
And that's not nothing. That's actually quite a lot. But what it doesn't show you is who's inside the system running it.
You have the map. You just didn't know there were players.
There's a concept in Enneagram work around softening the type. Loosening the rigidity of the pattern. Becoming less driven by the core fear/motivation and more capable of moving toward health and the essence of the type.
It's good language. The problem is that it almost never comes with instructions — which gives it a very okay, but how quality that tends to leave people nodding along while privately wondering if they're the only ones who can't figure out the how. (Fold in the cheese, anyone?)
Here's the thing: you can't soften type. What you can soften is how you feel towards the parts of you holding the pattern to whatever degree they do. And, when you soften, they often do too. And that’s not an insight thing - it’s a contact thing. And that's the thing the Enneagram never quite shows you how to do: connect with the parts of you holding the pattern of your type.
The over-giving in a two isn't just a type tendency. It's a part — a specific, identifiable part with its own logic, its own fear, its own reason for doing what it does. Same with the withdrawal in a five. The performing in a three. The positive spin a seven puts on everything so they don't have to sit in something uncomfortable. These aren't character flaws to be corrected or overcome. They're parts that took on a role at some point — usually a long time ago, usually for a very good reason — and have been running it ever since.
Which is why you can't argue or reason a part out of its job. What you can do is get curious about it. You can find out what it's actually protecting. And when you do — when you really connect with a part and listen to who it is, what it's been doing, and why — something shifts that understanding alone never quite gets to.
From thinking about it to actually feeling it
Most people engage with the Enneagram from their head. Even people who aren't head types. Even people who think they're doing deep work with it.
And that's not a criticism — intellectual understanding is valuable. But there's a difference between knowing, conceptually, that your two-ness comes from a fear that your needs make you unlovable — and actually meeting the little girl inside who believes that about herself. (Woof, right?)
That softening — the real kind, the kind you experience rather than think — is what the Enneagram world has always been pointing at. It just couldn't quite tell you how to get there, because it happens toward the parts holding the type, not towards the type/pattern itself.
That's where Internal Family Systems and parts work come in. Not as a replacement for the Enneagram — more like the thing it was always missing. The Enneagram showed you the system. IFS introduces you to the players running it. Neither is quite complete without the other.
What becomes possible when your therapist already speaks your language
A lot of therapy, even good therapy, accidentally treats the pattern as a problem - sometimes even THE problem. The conflict avoidance in a nine becomes something to fix. The perfectionism in a one becomes a symptom to manage. The help-seeking-through-giving in a two becomes a pattern to interrupt. Which isn't entirely wrong, but it does leave out something crucial: there are no bad parts, only shitty jobs.
The parts that hold the pattern of a person’s Enneagram type aren't problems to be solved or fixed or gotten rid of. They developed their ways of being for good reasons and got stuck in roles that have outlived their usefulness.
IFS is the framework that lets you actually appreciate the parts holding the type — to not just understand but listen to them tell you what they've been protecting and why — and that appreciation is what generates the softening. Toward the part. In the part.
The difference when an IFS therapist already/also speaks Enneagram is that none of this gets lost in translation. Type, parts, and your personal brand of “doing the work” (does anyone really even know what that means?) all announce themselves in the room — in what you say, in what you avoid, in the particular texture of your stuck — and a therapist who already knows what to listen for can track the pattern without you having to narrate it. Which means the work can go faster and farther than anywhere the Enneagram alone was ever going to.
Not because it wasn't accurate. But because the map was always pointing toward something, it couldn't actually show you on its own.
What the map was always pointing toward
In its most useful form, the Enneagram doesn’t just identify type, it reveals the parts holding the patterns - the ones inside running the scripts and doing their jobs for so long you just thought of them as “you”. IFS is a way to be in a relationship with them.
If you're Enneagram fluent and ready to meet the players, book a consultation below - you’re who Good Woman Therapy is meant for.
Other Services Offered at Good Woman Therapy
Curious to learn more about IFS therapy? Send me a message! As an IFS therapist, I love helping women and fellow therapists navigate their everyday lives with greater ease using Internal Family Systems Therapy, and I specialize in therapy for stress & overwhelm, inner critics, perfectionism, peacekeeping, and relationship concerns. My office is located in Ballwin, MO and I help everyday women navigate their everyday lives with greater ease by offering both in-person counseling as well as online therapy to clients throughout Creve Coeur, Ladue, Town and Country, Chesterfield, and St. Peters. I also provide online therapy Missouri-wide to clients outside the St. Louis and St. Charles County area. You can view my availability and self-schedule a free, 20-minute consultation on my consultation page.
