We did it friends! I am proud of us! We finished the Enneagram and Motherhood series featuring moms from all over the continent sharing what it is like to parent through the lens of their Enneagram type.
Today we wrap up with the Type 9, which we all know they don’t mind being left to the last (“it’s fine, whatever works for you!”) I say that because I am a Type 9 too.
But this is also my 100th podcast episode so it feels like a nice way to wrap up this endeavour I have been on to grow this podcast into a place that serves and empowers women to strip away the distractions and show up well for their lives.
And I think the Enneagram gives us tools to do this because it gives us awareness and language around how we show up in stress and growth – this is great information to help us redirect ourselves in times of stress – and to really pour into our strengths with mindfulness, truth and love.
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In this episode, we hear from two moms sharing their Type 9 Mom experience. Thank you to Lindsey and Angelica for sharing!
The Type 9, we discuss:
- What motivates the type 9
- How they act when in a place of growth (integration)
- How they respond when stressed (disintegration)
- Their approach to dealing with things that don’t go their way (harmonic group)
I also share about my own experience as a Type 9 mom. Ways I look for a connection with my kids, struggling to say YES when it means I’ll be getting uncomfortable, reconciling with the anger I feel in motherhood and my desire to deny or rationalize away the negative emotions, and so on.
I mention an episode and post on When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids? you can read that post here and you can listen to the podcast version of it Episode 16 When Did I Stop Enjoying My Kids
You can bring any of your questions to the Simple on Purpose Community Group
Drop me a line on Instagram to let me know you are listening!
And if you are interested in life coaching with me, book a free consult call here to learn about it and see if it is a fit for you.
FULL TRANSCRIPT
I’m so excited to round out our episodes on the enneagram with the type nine and I know the tight nines hate waiting to be last. But also we’re okay with it. Because we’re a type nine, it’s fine, it’s okay. Being a type nine and always coming at the end of the list is like when your last name starts with a Zed, and you’re always called on last in school. But here’s my special little treat for you type nines. You’re Episode 100, you’re the 100th episode of the simple on purpose podcast. I know this is usually a celebratory episode for lots of podcasters. And maybe I’ll do something for 101. But I’m just glad to make this one about my type the type nine and just make a space for us type nines. This is such a type nine thing to say.
So the type nine is also called the peacemaker, or the mediator, the type nine is motivated by the need to avoid conflict. So that’s why they’re called peacemakers because they want to avoid the opposite of what they feel as peace which would be conflict to them. And they want to maintain peace and harmony and really avoid disconnection from others.
I also want to give you a heads up as you’re listening to the the audio here, there is some background noise, we are doing renovations in our home. So there are some noises you are going to hear. So you’re not wondering if it’s happening on your end just a heads up.
In times of stress, they move towards the type six, the loyalist or skeptic, they become more anxious, they’re looking to others for guidance, they become more passive, and inactive.
When they are in a place of growth. The type three is what they move towards the achiever, they become more focused, action oriented, not looking to others to merge two buttons and putting themselves out there as they step into the truth that they are worth their own time and energy.
The type nine has a reputation for being very sloth like in spending a lot of their time and energy doing doing things but non essential things rather than the things that actually matter. The things that are essential.
Their harmonic group, the way that they deal with problems is that they’re part of the positive outlook or they put a positive spin on things. So just like the number, the type two, they’re going to put a positive spin on their good intentions. The type seven also part of that group is going to put a positive spin on having fun, and the type nine is going to put a positive spin on the world around them and the people around them almost as a way of denying the problem. And it’s a matter of almost saying like what problem I don’t see a problem. All of this information that I shared on the harmonic groups for all these episodes, is from the Wisdom of the Enneagram by Riso and Hudson, so I’m going to share some of my experience as a type nine mum. After we hear from these two moms, I have two moms sharing with us today. Let’s hear from Angelica and Lindsay.
Hi, my name is Angelica. I am a preschool teacher and mother of two children ages 13 and 15 years old. I am a type nine on the enneagram. As a parent, I feel this has made me very supportive and patient with my children. I have always loved listening to their stories, I think I’m a good listener, and I feel good that they are still comfortable talking and sharing their lives with me even as teenagers. As a type nine I often try to see others points of view. And I’ve often shared that with my children, especially in times of conflict. I am hopeful that this has given them the opportunity to understand or at least consider the perspective of others who they may disagree with. One aspect of being a type nine that has been a challenge for me. My whole life is avoiding confrontation, however, has a parent to when I’m parenting from a place of empowerment, I have kind of dug deep and been able to do this for them for my children’s sake, or now that they’re older help them to be able to do this on their own. Something else I notice is that I generally like peace and stability. So this can make me a bit overly comfortable in routine and familiarity. When I’m parenting from a place of empowerment, though, I’m a bit more flexible with my children and supportive of their plans, even if they push me out of my comfort zone. In times of stress, I become overly anxious, I can feel resentful or overwhelmed at what I perceive as all of the demands on me by others needs. As a parent, I definitely can lose my temper and snap at my children when I’m in this state. My goal now is to try and stay present especially in times of stress or discomfort so I can work through a situation instead of just reacting to it.
Hi, my name is Lindsay. I am a mom of two boys four into and I am an enneagram nine so as an enneagram nine I really Love the connection and the relationship that it brings to my mothering. I, when I’m coming from a healthy place, I am really good at getting kind of to the heart of what’s going on why my boys are acting out kind of communicating to them in a really, you know, connecting way about all kinds of different things. And so I really love that aspect of being a nine as a mom, and just just that relationship that my boys and I have is just so sweet. But I have a nine, it can be really difficult when I naturally have a little less energy than some of the other numbers. And that energy that I do have is very turned inward. I like to have lots of time to myself to recharge, I like to but I really need a lot of time to myself to recharge. But these days, it is very, very difficult to get with two very little boys who just love, love, love being around me and how so much energy. So I do find it difficult sometimes to balance my own needs of recharging, and then also the very real, very necessary and urgent needs of my boys to, you know, for me to be hands on and supervising all of that energy during the day. And I can find that when I’m not being healthy when I’m not at a healthy spot that I often tend to turn toward numbing behaviors just scrolling social media watching Netflix, it does a very real thing that I have to stay on guard against. And I also can find myself procrastinating things that I need to do, I can find myself becoming very irritable that that that nine surprise irritability and anger comes out a lot more when I’m not in that healthy place not balancing energy well. So there’s a lot of I love being a mom as a nine. There’s also a lot of ways that I’m working every day, and I can definitely seen improvements. Since I first began my mothering journey four years ago.
So when I learned about the enneagram, this was almost seven years ago, my oldest was three. Man, I’m gonna have a 10 year old soon. That’s crazy. That’s so exciting. Anyways, so he was three and he was in speech therapy. And that was kind of a crazy time of my life, she would come to my house, the speech therapist who was wonderful, by the way. And I had Lenayah who was 2 and Dawson who was a baby.
So she was really teaching me a lot of skills on helping my oldest son interact socially, with his peers, with his siblings. And she would do different assessments on him. And she had pointed out some of the traits, she was noticing with him that he wasn’t engaging and things he didn’t want to do. And he would withdraw if he was uncomfortable. And well, I don’t think my oldest is a type nine. In fact, I don’t have any desire to type him until he’s much much older and more developed as a person. But I remember almost in tears when she told me that’s because I just learned my enneagram type. And I’m like, almost crying. And I’m like, it’s my fault. I’m a type nine, I made him that way.
Because learning my type at that time, it felt so freeing, but also really vulnerable. Like someone shone a light on all the ways I hide, and I struggle. And so I can laugh at it now. But at that time, I was really mourning the ways I was living in this comfort zone. And I wasn’t creating the life and the motherhood experience that I desired.
I just echo so much of what Lindsey and Angelica had to say about their parenting experience. And really, I I definitely relate to the concept of the heart of what I do the most, as a parent as look for connection. And I love that parenting is that place that has this opportunity to connect and that it’s also something that can improve my parenting experience. Because to me, I look to connect to the person to the heart.
If my kid is like, Mom, I have to talk to you about something I will rarely ever say no. But if they’re like, Mom, take me out, I want to go do this thing or let’s just go up and get up and do something spontaneous. Then I struggle to say yes. And if I am in a place of stress, man, I really struggled to say yes, it’s definitely gotten better over the years. like years ago when the kids were babies and toddlers. I turned on that no switch and it stayed on for a long time no to everything. And then I came to realize I wasn’t enjoying motherhood. I wasn’t enjoying my kids anymore. I’ll link in the show notes to a post in an episode on that if you’re interested.
But this desire to connect connect to the heart of the issue and seeing so many sides of the issue. I think it makes me really great at working helping my kids work through their paces. problems at night when I lay with them, I ask them Is there anything you need help with. And they’ll talk to me about their friends and what’s going on. And I really try not to invalidate what they’re feeling, but just offer them different ways of looking at the situation. I think that is a skill and probably bringing in my life coaching here, because especially my eldest, she’s like, of course, Mom, you’re a life coach. Of course, you’ll say that. But I think that is a skill that I can offer them that I hope will help them in life.
As Lindsay said, the type nine is very aware of their energy, they’re constantly conserving it so that they can feel equipped to handle upcoming conflict and discomfort, I’ve really been working to challenge myself here and balance, the true need to restore my energy versus what I tell myself is necessary. And from coaching women of all different types. I think that this is a situation that is unique to the types that withdraw the nine, the five and the four.
One of the biggest challenges I have faced in being a type nine mom is realizing that I was very uncomfortable with anger. Well, also admitting the fact that motherhood really made me angry. Sometimes, my reaction would be normally to dissociate from that anger to ignore it, or put a positive spin on it. The type nine, me spends a lot of time talking themselves out of their negative emotions, rather than processing them, and stepping into conflict resolution, which is something I really feel like I’m on the other side of now, I have a desire to handle conflict head on and grow from it. But for a lot of years, I didn’t and it did a lot of damage to my relationships and to my marriage by just avoiding it and resenting it.
So that is a bit of my type nine mom experience. I’m sure you’ve heard it sprinkled throughout all of these episodes. If you have questions about it, you can bring them into the Facebook group, and ask me there.
And let me just say friends, what a pleasure it was to create this series. Thank you to the moms who shared it was so humble of you what you guys were sharing, sharing what was hard what you notice about yourself, it was also really inspiring to hear you share what works and how you’re empowered. And I think it’s brought such a more rounded view on the inner life of being a mother, I have so much appreciation for all the types this has been one of my favorite things about learning the types is I can appreciate the way that people show up differently in the world.
So I want to encourage you to keep learning about your type, keep paying attention to how it shows up for you use the enneagram as a tool. This is why it’s called a self discovery tool. Use it as a tool to see what patterns you fall into. And then use this information to redirect yourself so that you’re showing up on purpose.
And if this is something you want support on and you think that I could be the coach for you then book a free console call to learn about my coaching programs. I have the Life on Purpose coaching program that’s designed to give you clarity on what you want in the nine areas of your life and get rooted in your personal values, which is what I refer to when I say how do you want to show up I want you to show in line with your personal values with what is important to you in how you show up with Integrity and Authenticity.
I also have the Love on Purpose program to help you show up better in your marriage and the Mom on Purpose program to help you parent with more peace and presence but really, life coaching can handle any obstacle you’re up against any goal you want to be meeting stop by the link in the show notes and book a consult call if you want to learn more. It’s totally in your hands.
All right friends, you know where to reach me Instagram at simple on purpose.ca and the Facebook community group I would love to hear from you there if you are listening. drop me a note let me know I love when I see people’s faces and see their names and I start to like know who my listeners are and connect with my listeners. I just love that experience. So if you are inclined to do that, drop me a note somewhere online. I will talk to you soon.