two
by Mary Lydia, sx/so 2w3 297
"Ce mouvement crée la lumière puisque la lumière est créée à partir de l'Amour en mouvement. L'Amour en mouvement crée une onde, une énergie qui se manifeste en lumière."
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"Ce mouvement crée la lumière puisque la lumière est créée à partir de l'Amour en mouvement. L'Amour en mouvement crée une onde, une énergie qui se manifeste en lumière." 〰️
Entrer
When I first discovered the Enneagram, I skipped the chapters on type two. Grandma who organizes the church potlucks, got it. Well, grandma might be a two (or a six or a nine) but I am NOT grandma. “The Helper,” they call it… it sounds cheesy… a cheapening of the services that I provide to others.
There’s the *pride* - already - right there from the start - right there in everything. Keeping me submerged in my pattern; in my giving, and I mustn’t stop swimming… keeping me blind to the truth of who I am… like a fish, not knowing they’re in water.
Pride shines bright like a light, hiding all shadows.
Pride, that aims to blind, you and me.
My ego does not want me to share this. It feels like my identity will be annihilated. It is deeply shameful. It feels threatening to my very existence to tell you anything but good and positive traits about two.
The only reason I can muster the ability (a little type hack, s’il vous plait) is because it may serve you. Whether you’re finding your heart here in two (come on in dahling, your room is always ready!) or just trying to understand your loved ones… I give to you, the gift of seeing what’s behind pride’s blinding light.
Poupée en Morceaux
To be understood on a fundamental level, free of anecdotes that will always either make it “relatable” or not to others, a type must be looked at through its parts and the unique ways they are fused together to create a single point on the symbol of the enneagram. We then must examine the way they function structurally which then can manifest into various traits and behaviors. Type 2 is constructed of the following parts:
Heart/Image (Center of Intelligence)
Compliant/Superego (Hornevian)
Rejection (Dominant Affect/O.R.)
Positive Outlook (Harmonics)
Passion: Pride
Emotional Kryptonite: Shame
Image (de un) Coeur
Type 2 is an image or heart type. Image types carefully curate a hologram heart projection in the shape of their worth and value. They have a deep sense of shame about the distance between identity and image; being and seeming. Twos are love in action, to show you the contents of their hearts which they believe is where their identity lies. Our identity, our worth, and our narrative of self reside within the heart. What a tender and precarious placement. One of the worst offenses against an image type is to misconstrue their heart’s intent. It is an attack on identity to claim to know their heart better than they do.
When their self-image has not been properly reflected back to them, a 2 will dismiss your inability to see them. This was for you, darling, for your own good… I am uniquely qualified to see the needs of your heart, even more than you can. A 2 will display this again and louder, perhaps…maybe you forgot your glasses and require magnification… Until it is determined that you are unworthy of receiving the gifts or unable to appreciate them. 2 sees its heart, itself, as love, and all of its actions as loving. She can heal all manner of ailments in others except for their blindness to her worth, and she won’t waste her valuable heart on trying.
It is said that image types vibe like plastic. This is not an insult, but the highest form of praise. I shape myself into impossible contortions to get the right angle for a selfie and am deeply unsatisfied with the result unless I look like a bit of an alien mannequin. This is not a striving to look fake, but rather a striving to display myself formed into a mold of my creation as a flawless depiction of my self-concept. The curation lends itself to something shiny, plastic, and not real … something that doesn’t really exist on this plane of existence where everything is covered in dirt and texture, masking and distorting what is me into something that is more like a human, which would diminish my value as an irreplaceable kind of entity.
The passions are created by the ego of personality to compensate for and cover the underlying shame and identity issues in image types. The passion of 2 is pride. Pride is an integral part of their self-image and was born from an avoidance of feeling shame. Pride is an insidious and sneaky pattern. Pride covers itself with pride making it impossible to see. I’m not prideful; they actually need me. They actually can’t live without me. I am actually selfless. I am actually kind. There’s no pride. There is just existence as it is.
La Plan de la Honte
I have experienced moments in life, induced by psychedelics, where I feel I am floating on a higher plane of existence. In this place I feel a sense of perfect love. As close as I may get in this life to a return to essence. Each time as I descend back to this earthly plane, rooted once again in my ego, I feel the ocean of shame rise up to envelop me again. Here on this plane, shame rules everything. The enneagram does not set me free of this; it makes me aware of this. I never knew it was there before; dictating my every move. Pride always ready with its love sword and shield to protect my tender heart from feeling its consequence.
Being a rejection heart is quite the conundrum of sorts. I can never allow you to look upon my wounded places. Even if I try to expose some of my feelings for the purpose of growth, the moment you apologize my heart will immediately constrict. I feel its tentacles sucking back inward like an anemone. “I’m fine.” “Oh I’m fine now I just had a moment and am just expressing what I did feel a bit of.” “I’m fine.” I cannot allow you to see you’ve had an effect on my heart, on my feelings which I want control of but I feel control me. If I accept your apology I’ve lost any leverage; lost my power. You’ll never know your impact. I’ll never say it.
The hurt is felt in secret. Deep rivers of tears. It feels shameful. I am the heart influencer. It’s you who should feel impacted by me. The shame is felt both because of the ways I’ve allowed you to penetrate me as well as the ways I could not penetrate you. Pride protects me from feeling the consequence of the impact of your effect on me… Pride says, “okay my heart was impacted, but at least I have a heart which can feel this unlike the unfeeling world around me.” I milk my pain for art which shares more details than I’ll ever say. And only the worthy can see the meaning. Only the worthy can find the pain in the pink.
For a lifetime I have longed to find true heart connection. Someone who could see beneath my big smiles and dancing. See my heart the way I see the hearts of others. I held onto hope with each new connection. Is it you? Can you see me? I’d keep the intensity of my love secret, only to have it shattered with shame and pain when I found their heart unmoved and mine unseen. The moment of recognition that our transcendent love existed only in my heart, untainted by the reality that these feelings may be mine, alone. That perhaps I, invader of hearts, had actually been invaded.
I’d set out to break my own heart again and again, though. Feeling forever fueled by hope that I could find my heart match. The one for whom I’d subject myself to shame relentlessly, but be spared from it because my heart’s deepest longing would finally be filled, my value seen, unwavering, my love felt... A love which is pure; a love which surpasses every human feeling; every human need. Finally, at long last, truly received, and returned back to me, in kind; heart reciprocity.
As with all planes of existence, this one has revealed itself in layers. Each day I peer inside myself, I peel back another petal in this plane of shame where I have closed myself like a flower. Here I will open for you some of its petals.
How can it be; to feel like a walking hug; a heart with legs; and yet feel empty?
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How can it be; to feel like a walking hug; a heart with legs; and yet feel empty? 〰️
I am often avoiding what feels like an emptiness in my heart. An inability to contact my own emotions. It sounds contradictory because I’m also told I wear my heart on my sleeve. I tear up at TV shows, kind words, the joy and pain of others… it’s like I’m always crying. And never crying. Because I can never contact the wounded places within myself.
When I try to peer inside my heart I see a cavity where one should be. And I quickly run to love you. An effort to fill the gaping hole.
How can it be? To feel like a heart with legs. A walking hug. And yet feel empty?
I wrote a bit about this here:
I claim I am surrounded by the shallow-hearted; is mine the one stuck wading here? I’m trying to explore these crevices, but if I stop for a moment and become the puddle I’ll cease to exist in an instant. Without babies to care for I become the barren mother, empty wombed; seeds that only bleed, I become nothing. Recognition of my need for you disgusts me. I was the one who needed. To even exist. I was the wailing orphan.
And here:
It is an awareness of, but refusal to accept and resign oneself to the tragedies of what is. It is a knowing that I can contain your grief within me too; that I can heal you and absorb it and metabolize it into heart fuel and love that we can both feed on. It took a very long time to see that I am as dependent on you as I told us that you were on me.
As illustrated in these, one aspect of shame that has been brought to light through exploring my type mechanisms is the farce of dependence creation. The recognition that my need for you to receive my love; my need for reciprocity; makes me dependent on you. This goes against the crux of my identity which says that I am the provider; the giver; the needed; never the receiver; the taker; the needy.
Pride tells me others are dependent on me and cannot live without my love, the kind of love which only I can give. This makes me indispensable; irreplaceable; unable to be rejected. Even if I am rejected, pride swoops in to whisper softly into my ear, “they just couldn’t handle your love’s impact.” How many times this whispered lullaby has dried my tears and lulled me right to sleep. This can bring some surface-level shame at times, the knowing that I am too much… but it protects me from a shame that runs deeper and threatens to rip me apart…shame that says… you are not enough.
Another pried open petal has shown me the shame that underscores my forcefulness. The recognition that love that isn’t freely given to me by others may not be love at all. Despite this recognition I am unable to stop pushing, poking, forcing. Now that I see what I am doing, I am more sensitive to the impact in real time. My very identity as heart invader, once a source of pride, now I feel as a powerful source of shame.
My pattern requires that I put my doing heart (term coined by Sofie) on display again & again. As if I am asking my worth to be appraised over and over. This realization was excruciatingly painful. How can I present my value to be assessed by others ad finitum?
And finally, as you’ll find throughout everything I write, a pervasive source of shame is that through my ability to reframe, my compulsion and superpower to always keep moving, that my heart, my love, may be seen as shallow and fickle. That I can never be fully seen in the true heights nor depths of my love and of my grief. Paradoxically, my ego tells me that my heart, that I, will disappear if my true depth of emotion is displayed, and yet, in concealing it, I will never be seen.
"Gravediggress, dig me, a hole I can bury, all of my love & all of my holy."
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"Gravediggress, dig me, a hole I can bury, all of my love & all of my holy." 〰️
Décapiter (Hornevian:Superego/Compliant)
2 is a compliant or superego type. Compliance in this sense does not mean 2s never “behave badly” by conventional standards, but rather that through the fusion of their heart with their gut they always feel justified in their actions. This fusion further supports their self-image of their actions being kind and loving.
Superego types all have a problematic relationship with the guidance function. They therefore all find ways to reinforce the serenity of certainty utilizing their other centers. The head center is isolated because it may inject doubt into the platform of certainty on which heart + gut (intuition) wishes to stand.
Off with their heads; on with their hearts!
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Off with their heads; on with their hearts! 〰️
La Vie en Rose (Harmonic)
The Harmonic Triad outlines how the types deal with conflict and cope with emotional upsets. All types have a strategy which they employ as their primary form of emotional regulation. In other words, this is what restores “harmony” within them internally in times of stress and dis-regulation. Type 2 is in the positive outlook harmonic triad. These types have an ability to positively reframe problems and negative circumstances. These types can utilize a denial of realism and negativity and they’re quite convincing, if only to themselves, of the rosy disposition of all circumstances.
This ability to reframe may vary by core type and fixes etc… For me it appears quite positively oriented in the end because I am a 297, but it could manifest, for example, as nursing one’s pain for art or learning some valuable lesson from the painful experience. It is not turning all of life’s horrors into unicorns, but rather it’s trying to find the unicorns amidst its horrors. There is a kind of unyielding hope at the heart of positive outlook that there is beauty somewhere in everything and that the moments of awe in life can be weighted more heavily than its pain and disappointments and make everything worth it.
Being a relational type, 2s move toward others. They create an emotional landscape and take the focus off of self in order to attempt to get their emotional needs met by others. You may have heard the term “give to get” in relation to 2s. The 2 isn’t consciously aware of this mechanism. All negative feelings are disowned and positively reframed so that the 2 can cope with life. If things are not positive, I’m not okay. And further, if I can’t be positive and focus on others I cannot maintain my pride stance which is paramount to my operating system. Those who are sad and negative are needy. And those who are needy can’t be needed. When a 2 feels stressed and there’s no one to care for, they will seek out others compulsively to fill this void. Subsequently the 2 never focuses on self with conscious awareness and this can lead to further stress which is covered over by more doing and giving.
Ma Chère Maman (Dominant Affect O.R.)
Type 2 is a rejection type. Rejection types all expect to be rejected (below the surface) and in compensation they repress their own needs, weaknesses, and vulnerabilities and offer something instead to prevent rejection. This affect protects the 2 from feelings of worthlessness, not feeling valued, and feeling unlovable. “If I offer you something you will find me worthy of love.”
2 has rejected the guidance function and therefore over-identifies with the nurturing function. This results in disowning half of oneself, and amplifying the half that remains. On some level, deep in the psyche, 2s feel this loss and therefore feel they must offer something in compensation. For type 2 that is nurturing. It provides extra nurturing for what it lacks in guidance.
This means that regardless of what a situation calls for, 2s will bring only nurturing. I often describe this as showing up with a hug when a sledgehammer might be more appropriate. With double the nurturing, type 2s feel like The Ultimate Mother…the only mother. They mother everyone they feel drawn to and find opportunities to take in strays of all kinds as much as possible. They’re certain their love and nurturing can heal all of the broken beings in the world and fill them up and make them whole.
In order to provide nurturing to others, 2s must deny that they have any needs of their own. All rejection types feel they must maintain a stance of power. 2s create this power dynamic by creating dependencies and ensuring you need them, as well as never needing others, which might place them in a powerless role. This type is particularly fascinating because they maintain their power through being of service. On the surface this appears to be a submissive stance, but type 2s are anything but meek and wilting.
2’s are not aware of their transactional approach. In fact, if you give back to a 2 in the way they give to you they’ll feel quite uncomfortable. They feel this is a role they are uniquely qualified for. What 2s are truly seeking through their giving is their essence they’ve lost contact with, which is true love without conditions. They often settle for gratitude and appreciation, though unfortunately it also encourages this transactional approach to relationships.
2 is like masculine energy in impeccable drag. It looks pink and flowery. It’s overdoing the image of femininity. But there’s no true openness and receptivity. It’s forceful, penetrative, and controlling.
The thing I’ve really rejected is my own heart, my own feelings… I’ve offered it to you on a platter “selflessly” but beneath that it’s clear that there’s a vacancy, a gaping hole in my chest that I expect, nay demand, you to fill. My heart is yours, but only so long as I fill the cavity by possessing your heart. With mine estranged I cannot experience my own feelings. I cry over your pain. I smile from your joy. And if any of my own should manage to spill out from time to time I quickly clean them up and hide the evidence. “Honey, may I get you anything?”
And the consequence, one of many, is that you never actually get me. My heart on the platter was actually empty. Decorated with flowers; dripping with honey. I tell you I’m getting the short end of the stick. But I handed you a Trojan Horse filled with nothing. I tell you I give you everything. I tell you that you’ll die without me… that your heart beats because I squeeze it…
I cannot relinquish my power or then you’ll know the truth… (can I even utter it?) that I won’t feel, won’t survive, won’t exist… without you.
Coeur en Mouvement (Scrambled Centers)
Structurally Type 2s are mainly identified with their feelings center. When caught in the traps of the ego of personality though, they are also blocked in this center. In order to make up for this, type 2s demonstrate their feelings (of love) through action. They are always “doing their feelings.”
The personality structure does this in an effort to display an image of who one is. Rather than being able to inhabit a sense of “being” the 2 feels it must continually cast out this image of doing their feelings to show you who they are.
Their thinking center is isolated and separate from this doing-feeling scramble. They immediately act on feeling without pausing to check in with thinking and inner guidance.
I am always showing love by doing. As long as I’m moving… (by moving I mean doing for others/serving/being kind) I feel like I can be seen.
Like a heart shaped neon light… when it’s ionizing (movement) you can see it… it lights the sky. When it stops all is black.
This constant motion feels like all that is me so when I stop. The very moment I stop. I vanish. I cease to exist.
So it keeps me in this constant motion.
Motion directed at you that allows no room for thoughts or self-directed focus. If I focus on me, I can’t focus on you. So I’ll disappear.
And I can’t disappear. Because you’ll die without me.
The way 2 is casting out its image is through the scrambled instinctive center and feeling center. So to imagine oneself - one's very identity... as separate from what one is doing/feeling ... feels... like ego death. More threatening than death itself. I do not know who I am or how to *show* it without casting out this image.
This is so completely central to its structure that to even think of the question “Who Am I?” apart from what I give brings a deep existential dread and shame that the answer is nothing. I am nothing. This is the crux of the 2’s shame. That a heart that wants to be seen as only love and positivity may actually be filled with dark emptiness and completely void of love, and therefore unworthy of receiving love.
Mathématiques du Coeur
What is the scramble doing to each triad?
Heart + Gut + Superego = feeling justified in one’s actions and never checking in with inner guidance or questioning oneself
Heart + Gut + Positive Outlook = Always enslaving the gut to move out of negative experience
Heart + Gut + Rejection = doubling down on actions of nurture toward others without acknowledging one’s own needs
Heart + Gut + Rejection + Positive Outlook + Superego = by always staying in motion, using a rejection offering, not sitting in negativity, and remaining in a state of certainty, a 2 is able to stay in control of impacting her environment and forcing positive outcomes; she never has to feel uncertain of what they may be if she is the orchestrator of her life vs. allowing its natural unfolding.
The sum of these parts equals type 2; an active gut enslaved to do the bidding of the heart mistress, through superego, positive outlook, and rejection.
All of these components together create the perfect storm of an image of selfless nurturing giver, underscored by power, transactional giving, and pride.
Vertu
At the other side of the passion of Pride lies the Virtue of Holy Freedom or Holy Will. The reason 2s are so invasive, always intervening, and inserting themselves is because they feel that they must force positive outcomes. They feel that love cannot bloom without their intervention. To allow divine unfolding would relinquish their power. Remember, that as a superego type, 2 desires certainty which it obtains through heart action. This exerts control over outcomes, wielding the power of the gut center to impact one’s environment according to the bidding of the heart mistress. Holy Freedom for a 2 would be to release their tight hold onto their gut center and become a heart that is relaxed into the flow of life. From heart in motion to love in stillness. A heart which is free and receptive to the organic movements of life and love. They could finally climb out of the mirror, and step into a life free of curation.
Veines de Coeur (Lines)
Prideful parachute says I know
I meant something you cannot show
A guard against your caustic blow
4 soothing me through suffering
You cannot value all you haven’t seen
Never bothered to excavate me
Extra rejection, heavy-weight
Embodied through line to 8
Insuring you’ll never get to me
I’ve just sliced off another need
It is by design that a 2 mustn’t identify with their own feelings. It is contrary to the rejection of needs. Contrary to the focus on other. It threatens to obliterate the image upon which they’ve built their very identity… “my heart beats for you.”
But when they are alone… often the feelings are too free-flowing and too much to bear. This is not an acceptable representation of their image to the point that they reframe and deny their existence.
On one hand the 2 thinks that their tears might transform them into a puddle. Puddles are useless. They’re terrible mothers. Puddles need things. Puddles can’t *do* things. Puddles can only collapse and lie dormant on the floor and be stepped right over unnoticed.
On the other, when alone, they at times become this puddle. Letting the emotions they’ve stuffed down flow freely. All motion stops. But there is a need to deny this, even to themselves, because it goes against their entire identity. Love in action. Heart in motion.
When I allow myself to self-observe in these moments I see myself more clearly, however. As if my tears act as a magnifying glass where I can see the true heart that beats beneath the glass shell.
Can it be? The heart; the me; which I thought could only be seen while in motion, can actually only be seen when it’s still?? Can it be that my heart isn’t lost but is actually found in a puddle??
Does this mean that all I have done for you to see me has only further obscured me? And that the very thing I fear will leave me unseen is the very thing that illuminates me?
I revisited something I wrote during a time I felt most mired in my pattern. A time where I didn’t get any time alone and doing for others and staying in motion went on for an entire year. I described my experience of myself during this time like I was a stage-hand. Everyone was taken care of because of me-but I wasn’t there. I was invisible. Only the result of my actions could be seen.
It perfectly illustrates how counter-intuitive the ego agenda is. And how when I fully submerge into my patterns I fade from stardom and become an invisible stage-hand. The show must go on.
Fin.
Post-Scriptum
As my finger hovers over the save button after the millionth revision/addition… I feel like I have shared only a fraction of what’s me. How can you make a heart 2-dimensional? I convinced myself to write this by framing it as a service, but will you see me? Will you think I am kind enough? Loving enough? Did I give enough? Do you know how much I love you? Can you still love me if you know what lies beneath? I am gripped by shame… should I retract all of the negatives? Maybe at least counter it with more positives? I should delete the whole thing and talk only about the children and animals I care for…. Yet I am compelled by service— I can’t…this will be helpful. I truly believe finding what lies underneath our personality through the enneagram will save the world. An inadvertent type hack this time, my pattern creates a war with my pattern… To write about my type feels like taking my heart out, without the protection of my ribs, and allowing you to see inside it, and so I lay my tender heart bare and press save for a final time. Your gift now wrapped and tied with a pink bow.