Abram
00:00:02Welcome back to Fathoms and Enneagram podcast. Today is going to be rather fun because we're getting into a, I would think, a little bit more confusing, less understood aspect of the Enneagram.
Probably more so, even for people who've been swimming in the waters of the Enneagram for a bit, this is something you hear a little bit later on. Usually, depending though, on which school of thought you listen to, there tends to be more of a focus on this.
We're getting into the instinctual biases or the instincts or the subtypes. Those are not all the same things. But we're going to get into that here a little bit later.
But we are going to get to hear from all of our teachers on this, all their different views and their different perspectives.
And we're going to have a conversation at the end as well that you'll hear a little bit more of our own opinions about where we land and where we're at with all these things. So here we go.
Lindsey
00:00:58Also, you just said we're going to have fun with a confusing topic. I like that because confusing is fun here at Fathoms.
Creek
00:01:10And just a reminder, we have an extensive, we have extensive show notes that include resources, one of which I'm really excited about for your own continuation of this topic, to study this topic because it is a very, very large topic that I think is just, it's still being developed in a lot of ways. But one of the resources that we have is something that happened back in 2020, right at the beginning, actually.
It was supposed to be an in person event, but Leslie Hershberger was hosting a discussion about subtypes with Beatrice Stratznot, Mari Zakora, Peter O'Hanrahan and Russ Hudson. I believe that was the extent of it. But you can find that link. It's a long episode.
You can find that link in the show notes to kind of continue this conversation of how different people approach this topic.
Lindsey
00:02:06So we want to make sure that we're clear about some of the terms you're going to be hearing in this episode. Some of these are going to be repeats and some will be new. So first, let's start with the word model. You're going to hear that over and over.
And the definition we like for model is a simple, simplified and provisional description of a system or process to assist calculations and predictions.
Creek
00:02:29And I think it's really important for people to remember that these, that the Enneagram model is different from the instinctual bias or instinct model. These are two separate models. They are not. The instincts are not apart of the Enneagram diagram.
Abram
00:02:49This is true. At the same time, some people think you can't accurately or more holistically understand one without the other. They must go together.
And other people think, no, you can see them as two separate typologies.
Creek
00:03:04Yes. And we'll get into more of that as we. As we move forward. So.
Lindsey
00:03:09So next word is really important for this episode. So listen up is the word.
Creek
00:03:16Listen to when I'm talking to you.
Lindsey
00:03:17Listen to me when I'm talking to you. Instinct.
Creek
00:03:20Eyes.
Lindsey
00:03:20Give me. Give me your eyes right. Right here.
Creek
00:03:25Need your eyes right here.
Lindsey
00:03:28Instinct. A natural or inherent aptitude, impulse or capacity. An innate, typically fixed pattern of behavior in response to certain stimuli. Love that.
A largely inheritable and unalterable tendency of an organism to make a complex and specific response to environmental stimuli without involving reason. And lastly, behavior that is mediated by reactions below the conscious level. I think those are really important words.
Innate tendency is an important word. Stimuli is an important word below the conscious level. All those are really, really important to keep in mind as we're talking about instinct.
Abram
00:04:16And if you didn't track with that, because there's a lot. It's like reading from the dictionary as a little kid, I felt like. But it's. I think Lindsay is just basically saying that it's.
There's stuff happening inside of us without our awareness.
Lindsey
00:04:33Yeah, for sure.
Creek
00:04:35And I think that's. That's the big thing is I was talking with a buddy the other day. It was just like, what. When I say instinct, what do you think?
And immediately he's like, oh, you know, like automatic behavior or like this. This sort of gut intuition or feeling. And it's like.
Yeah, I think we use it in that way of, like, I have a, you know, hair stands up on the back of my neck kind of thing. And I. I think we. In the Enneagram world, we do kind of use it for that in some way. But it's also so as. As a layperson, that's what they are.
That what. That's what they're familiar with.
But in the Enneagram community, it's kind of describing something different, something innate, something deeper that is giving us some sort of nudge in a particular direction.
Lindsey
00:05:22Right.
Creek
00:05:23To take care of our needs, our.
Abram
00:05:26Biological needs, is part of what it means to have a body.
Lindsey
00:05:29Yeah. And you'll hear our guests on this episode use the phrase psychobiological. You'll hear them talk about survival. So that's really important.
I love that you made that delineation. We're not talking about intuition when we say the word instincts in this episode. Okay, next word is bias. An inclination of temperament or outlook.
A deviation of the expected value of a statistical estimate from the quantity it estimates. Oh, my gosh. We should cut that one. That's not helpful at all in this context. You think so? In this context.
Okay, then let me read it again and not make fun of it this time.
Creek
00:06:09No, that's staying in.
Lindsey
00:06:10Okay, fine. A deviation of the expected value of a statistical estimate from the quantity it estimates.
Abram
00:06:19Huh?
Lindsey
00:06:20Maybe I'm making fun of it because I don't understand it.
Abram
00:06:22And you're.
Lindsey
00:06:23You're seeing my ego at play right now, strangely.
Creek
00:06:28Continue with the other ones and then we'll come back to it.
Lindsey
00:06:30Systematic error introduced into sampling or testing by selecting or encouraging one, one outcome or answer over others. And lastly. Oh, I added this because I wanted to have a discussion about this. A little chat lit. A small chat.
Biases are constructed over time by factors such as. What do you think? What do you think about that?
Abram
00:06:58Okay, for sure, multiple things play into what our biases are.
Abram
00:07:02Yeah.
Lindsey
00:07:03Or developed. Maybe constructed is a bad word, but.
Abram
00:07:06Reinforced, Constructed, innate, reinforced. All of those things I think make up bias. Yeah.
Lindsey
00:07:13I think specifically, I would just like to name some of those factors for our own development of awareness as we're listening, trying to become aware of our own biases. Like, we are influenced. We develop construction reinforced by biases at young ages based on our need to survive our environments. Right.
Like the need to please our families, our parents, to survive in the groups we belong in, et cetera, et cetera, fit into groups as we get older, attract a mate. Like there are all these factors that sort of kick into, like, how that bias gets reinforced.
And I just thought it might be helpful to name some of those things.
Creek
00:07:56Well, and I think this is where a lot of, like, understanding logical fallacies and that sort of thing. And biases such as. I mean, you mentioned the antiquity bias last episode.
Anchoring bias of the thing you learned first is often the thing that you think is most true and just a multitude of different ones out there. I mean, again, we'll leave some stuff in the show notes as well. Some. Some of the resources, if you want to dig into that a little bit more.
Of all the different ways that we try to create a coherent narrative at the expense of not seeing clearly and boom. And I think it's not all bad. But it is. It is. The Enneagram's here to help us see clearer.
And there's other tools to help us see even more clear than just the enneagram. So that's my take. But back to that sort of definition.
If we're talking because a model is also, if we go back to our definition, a simplified and provisional description of a system or process to assist calculations and predictions. The enneagram and the model of instincts, instinctual bias.
These are supposed to serve as, again, simplified and provisional descriptions of a phenomena that we're observing. So the deviation of the expected value. Right. The deviation of what you can expect out of that category of type or instinct.
There's a bias towards your enneotype or a certain instinct or instinctual bias.
That doesn't mean it's exclusive, but it does mean that there is a leaning towards a more maybe statistical likelihood that you will be going in that direction for one reason or another. So that's why I actually liked that one, because it kind of brings it back to that. This is a model describing something that is real.
The model is not real. It's describing the thing that's real.
Abram
00:10:20Bias.
Abram
00:10:21I just think it's helpful to name that. It also sits on a spectrum of awareness.
You can be aware of your biases and you can also be completely unaware or lack awareness around what it is that you're filtering your experience or people through. But it is that bias is a paradigm. It's a lens through which you interpret the world. Type is a bias. There's lots of different kinds of bias. Right.
But there are more scientifically named biases through which we perceive reality or the world. But just going back to what Lindsay said, I heard from some other work that there tends to be maybe four primary.
And there's definitely more than this. But there are at least four primary things that shape your biases. Family of origin. Right. When you named already.
But that's obviously heavily influential. Influential. Your religious experience. So church spirituality, what you grew up with in that space. School and society.
Creek
00:11:18I think religious experience or lack thereof.
Abram
00:11:22Yeah, yeah.
Creek
00:11:23Or the culture you grew up in in that religious space. But. And I think one other twist to the bias thing is these tools that help us see clearly can sometimes be used as tools to help us not see clearly.
So we can use these very tools to cover over or to fool ourselves into not seeing clearly, thinking that we are. And it's just a game that we have to keep testing our hypotheses and theories. And am I actually seeing this clearly?
Is there any other way to see this thing that that is less Advantageous for me that I don't want to see. So anyway, so just a couple things to listen to, think about as we go into this episode.
Probably more than any of the other ones, you're going to see massive, hopefully I did massive differences in the approach in this model. So look for similarities, but more importantly, look for the differences. You may have to listen to this a few different times.
And I would also suggest as you're listening to what is grouped together, don't get stuck on just the behaviors, but kind of see what's behind those behaviors.
Motivation is a tricky word, but just kind of what is the logic behind a person in this sort of subtype with this sort of were inner working of instinct, instinctual bias and strategy or type working together? What, what does that type of person, why would they be doing these sort of things? So with that, have fun. Yeah.
Abram
00:13:14So we want to get into talking.
Abram
00:13:16More about types here in a second, but let's hold off for just a minute because we want to come back to just instincts and hear awareness to actions specific approach. So what are the instincts? Where do they come from?
Abram
00:13:29How do they function?
Abram
00:13:31Get us into your unique view on the instincts.
Mario Sikora
00:13:35Mario. Jose, you want to.
Maria Jose Munita
00:13:36No, you're dying. Go ahead. I will not take away that pleasure.
Creek
00:13:42From you Just gave Mario a big piece of red meat. Yeah.
Mario Sikora
00:13:50Okay. Yeah. All right. Number one, nobody in the broader world talks about instincts anymore. It's an outdated term. It's an outdated idea.
Humans are very, very complicated. We certainly do not have three instincts, okay? That's rooted in a neo Freudian idea about human nature.
And you just won't hear anybody else talking about this unless it's some sort of pop psychology or pop biology book. What we think is happening here is that there is a tendency that we all have to prioritize one of three domains of psychobiological needs.
We call those psychobiological needs or domains preserving, navigating and transmitting. Okay. Other people use the term.
You know, other people will talk about a self preservation instinct, a social instinct, a sexual or one to one instinct.
No, we have a tendency to prioritize and pay more attention to and attend to one of these domains more than the other two and to do them all in a very predictable and understandable way. We have a relationship to these domains now. We call these patterns instinctual biases. Why do we use the word instinctual? Number one?
I haven't found a better word yet. Instinctual means deeply rooted. Doesn't necessarily mean it is an instinct. It means it's Deeply rooted.
So there is this deeply rooted tendency to pay more attention to one of these areas. And that is what we call an instinctual bias.
Creek
00:15:37Great.
Mario Sikora
00:15:38Is it tight enough? I'm dying to know what you guys are texting to each other here. Is he going to keep going on?
Creek
00:15:45I was expecting it longer, so.
Maria Jose Munita
00:15:47Yeah, me too.
Maria Jose Munita
00:15:48I almost got distracted waiting for you to finish.
Creek
00:15:52Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Creek
00:15:53Here we go.
Mario Sikora
00:15:54I'll check back in four minutes.
Maria Jose Munita
00:15:56Yeah, well, that is my thinking. Creek, say more so that we can finish texting.
Creek
00:16:04Yeah. All right. So that explains why you call them instinctual biases. So what are these? What is this phenomenon that you are naming, that you are seeing?
Where do they come from?
Mario Sikora
00:16:19Humans are the product of an evolutionary heritage. Particular drives, impulses, are wired into us through the evolutionary process.
We have inherited what can be called evolutionary adaptations that inspire us, motivate us to act in certain ways, to have certain desires, certain impulses, certain proclivities. They do seem to cluster together, right?
People do seem to, for whatever reason, have a tendency to be more impacted by the adaptations in one of these domains more than the others. So some people are more influenced by these adaptations that make them focus on preserving needs.
Making sure I have enough food, making sure I have enough shelter, making sure I have enough resources, making sure I'm safe. It's all about nesting and nurturing kind of stuff.
Other people have a tendency to focus more on adaptations and needs related to the navigating domain, which is all about understanding group dynamics. How do I orient to the group, how do I figure out how this place works and where I fit into it.
And then others have a tendency to be more attuned to the transmitting domain, which is all about attracting and bonding. It's all about how do I get the attention of others so I can transmit something to them.
Whether it is my genesis, whether it is things that I've created, whether it is my ideas, whether it is my legacy.
So now this again, like Seth was saying earlier about the strategies can manifest itself in very different ways, depending on the individuals, depending on culture, et cetera. But there is a consistency to where our attention goes. Not 100%. Nobody does anything all the time. And everybody does everything some of the time.
So even preservers tend to navigate and transmit at times. Okay, but the trend line is to focus on one of these areas more than others.
Lindsey
00:18:38So for somebody listening to this, they might just be thinking, well, that just sounds like social, self preserving, sexual. It's the same thing. Mj, could you maybe clarify that for Us. Are these terms interchangeable?
Maria Jose Munita
00:18:54They're not. They're just not. They're not simply an attempt to become creative or to make it different. They are referring to different things.
And there's some overlap, of course.
So our definitions of preserving, navigating and transmitting do correlate back to some things that other approaches talk about in self preservation, social and sexual. However, I think that in several cases, we have broaden the scope of what we're talking about.
We have left out things that are described as, for example, with social, navigators do not generally see themselves as social. It's more trying to understand people, not to socialize or be the center of the party or anything like that.
So we are trying to fine tune the descriptions to see what these clusters of adaptations include.
Understanding that not everybody, not all preservers, do Everything that we talk about when we're talking about preserving and talking about preserving, it's not just self preservation, but we're preserving things that relate to ourselves and our families, our friends, our team. So these things apply to more than just the self. And with sexual versus transmitting, this is not just about sex, it's more about reproduction.
And you can reproduce yourself through ideas, values and other things. And it's things that increase the chance of me reproducing in those ways. So it's more. It goes beyond just sexual.
And what we've seen is that it allows people to see themselves more clearly and it's more effective in people understanding themselves and then typing themselves. Because when you understand that part of the model better, the type, it's easier to find, it's easier to see more clearly.
Creek
00:21:10Could you quickly go through the terminology? So you have preserving, you have navigating, and you have transmitting. Can you briefly categorize those a little bit more?
Maria Jose Munita
00:21:20Mario briefly described all three domains, but when we talk about preserving, we talk about the theme is nesting and nurturing. And we have three subdomains for each domain.
And in the case of preserving, we have security, we have maintenance in, and we have well being and resources. So those three are further broken down into three subdomains. But I'm not sure that we want to go into so much detail here.
But it's the three things or the three focus. These are all focuses of attention.
So most preservers pay attention to things related to the nest and to how to maintain it, how to maintain traditions and memories and their homes and things like that. And they want to make sure that they are safe, that they are not subject to threats that will not let them go on with their lives.
And then we have well being and behavior. They want to well being and resources. They want to feel comfortable, feeling healthy, and they want to have enough resources. And it's enough.
It's not a lot. They want to monitor how many resources they have and for how long they will last. So it's kind of broadly that. Would you add anything, Mario, to it?
Mario Sikora
00:23:01No, I think that's it for preserving. And like you said, they each break down more. There's. There's a whole plethora of things happening in each of these domains. Right.
And the important thing to point out is that not everybody does all of them equally. Right.
So you'll find some preservers who are really focused on their finances, for example, and others not necessarily, but they're really focused on their health or they're really focused on resources, et cetera. So it's not kind of a universal expression, expression of any of these things. It's patterns that play out uniquely in each person's life.
Creek
00:23:43And as I understand your school of thought, the instinctual biases are quite a lot of your work. You have a lot of language and things to say about the instinctual biases.
And we're not, unfortunately, we're not going to cover it all here, but we'll of course have. Yeah, of course we'll have links in the show, notes for people and reaching out to you and all that.
Maria Jose Munita
00:24:08So, yeah, we do have a lot to say. And it gets more and more over time because we keep applying it and we keep seeing or finding new applications of it at different levels.
So it's quite interesting and useful.
Creek
00:24:26Great. So, Maria Jose, could you hit navigating and transmitting for us?
Maria Jose Munita
00:24:31Yeah, so navigating, the theme is orienting to the group. To me, it's like understanding the map of the people around me and understanding first who to trust and reciprocate with.
So trust and reciprocity is one of the subdomains. How do I exchange information there? And that's gossiping, but also information exchange in general. What are the social rules here, et cetera.
Now, power and influence dynamics, it's the other one.
So here is understanding who is who here in this map of the people, who has the power, who is part of the subgroup and who's the boss, who is an outlier, et cetera, and how to navigate that. And where do I want to be seen in this map. So status and identity is the third subdomain.
It's if I'm leading this group, what messages do I need to send? What's my role? How do I manage my reputation? So those are things that navigators more naturally pay attention to. It's not all about being social.
It's about understanding and navigating that the group. And we haven't said this before, but in this podcast in a way that has to do more with the strategy than the instinctual bias.
So if I'm a one, I want to navigate the group perfectly and Mario wants to navigate it in a powerful way. So that's how you combine both aspects of the model. Transmitting. The theme is attracting and bonding.
So we have three subdomains, asserting broadcasting and narrow casting and impressing. So in asserting we have ambition. And it's like with transmitters, you are more focused on what your needs are and how to satisfy them.
They're generally more ambitious and they have low inhibition. They're not looking to the side to see how am I being perceived or any of that. They just go after it.
And communicating in a way that sends signals and that's what we call broadcasting. So I send signals out without a specific purpose or targeted at a specific person.
But then when I get that person's attention or that group's attention, I do the narrow casting. And transmitters tend to be more, I mean, seductive and send signals and have these one to one more intense sort of relationships and communication.
Finally, it's impressing and they want to leave a legacy. They want to leave an impression on the world. And that's something that most transmitters relate to. So it's not about.
This is broader than just sexual.
Abram
00:27:46Thanks for taking us through that. So y'all decided it wasn't enough to change the name. So you also wanted to add a fun pattern of expression, as you call it.
And I think this is a really. It is unique to Yalls work and I definitely want to get into that.
Can you take us through the pattern of expression for each of the instinctual biases?
Mario Sikora
00:28:10Yes, I'd be happy to dying to do that. So I want to start off by being very clear about what we're claiming here. Okay. Because we do take a different approach to this, to other people.
Other people will say that you have a stack of instincts. Okay. And there are six potential stacks. One can be self pres. Social, sexual. One can be self presexual, social. Right. First, second, third, et cetera.
In our view, there are three patterns of expression. We don't use the term stacks because what we're interested in is the relationship. We each have to each of the three domains.
And our relationship to those domains results in particular, patterns of priority and behavior which are helpful to understand.
And something I started noticing years ago is that people of a particular instinctual bias tended to have the same challenges over and over and over again.
And we see this at an individual level, and we see it at a team level, we see it at an organizational level, we see it at a cultural level in the same way.
And what that is is that we each, if we think about this pattern of expression, what we're saying is that one of these domains is what we call a zone of enthusiasm, meaning it's the one we think is most important and it's the one we tend to get most enthusiastic about. Right. You want my attention? Talk to me about navigating stuff. Okay. Because it's more interesting to me.
Now, another one is what we call a zone of inner conflict. And what we find is that people have one of these domains that they're kind of drawn to, but kind of feel embarrassed about being drawn to.
They have an ambivalent love, hate sort of relationship with it. And there's another one that they just tend to be indifferent about. I do it when I have to, but, you know, my attention just doesn't go there.
And what we have seen over and over and over and over again is that despite how people identify their stack, the pattern of expression goes for somebody who's preserving. Their zone of inner conflict is in the navigating domain.
Meaning that they like to navigate up to a point they want to be out connecting to a small group of people, but then they want to go home. Okay, so they like the idea of going to a party.
Mario Sikora
00:31:06Yeah.
Mario Sikora
00:31:07But then they want to leave and go back to the nest. And what they are indifferent toward is the transmitting domain.
They just don't care about being the center of attention and drawing attention to themselves for the most part. Now, we all have moments when we do, you know, look, if it's your wedding day and you're preserving, you want to be the center of attention.
Okay, I get that. Right. But most of the time, it's just not something that's interesting to them.
So what we find in the people that we coach, the teams that we work with, the companies that we advise, is, is that if they have a strong preserving culture or strong preserving bias, they're not going to be good at promoting themselves.
Maria Jose Munita
00:31:45They will not see the need to do it.
Mario Sikora
00:31:48They just won't think it's important. Yes. For navigators, the pattern of expression goes. The zone of inner conflict is the transmitting domain.
There's part of Me that wants to be in the spotlight. There's part of me that feels uncomfortable doing it. There's part of me that wants to transmit.
I can transmit, you know, when it's part of my job, when it's not about me stepping into the spotlight, but it's about me doing what I need to do in the spotlight. But then they start to think, yeah, maybe I'm overdoing it, right? Yeah, maybe it's too much. Okay, maybe I shouldn't wear that.
And when it comes to the preserving domain, it's just, meh, eh, I'll get to it. I had this over and over again. I had two conversations today with people I was having an initial coaching session with. They were both navigators.
And I asked them, they're both guys, and I said, do you like to do things around the house? Do you like to fix things? Do you like to repair things? Do you like to garden? And what navigators always will say is, eh, not no, I should.
My wife really wants me to, but I don't. You know, I wish I wanted to do this. I wish I wanted to do it, but I just don't want to really care.
Okay, so it's the zone of indifference and with transmitters and so if we go back to coaching and working with navigators, it's almost always around the administrative stuff and the execution stuff and the organizational stuff that they struggle with. When it comes to the transmitters, the zone of inner conflict is in the preserving domain.
They talk an awful lot about preserving stuff, about their health, about money, about resources, et cetera. They talk about it like a transmitter, not like a preserver does. But they never feel quite satisfied there.
They're always talking about how bad they are at it, for example.
But when it comes to the navigating stuff, when it comes to reading social cues, tracking office politics, keeping up on the gossip, they just couldn't care less about it. So again, the pattern is there. Now somebody can come along and say, well, that's not my stack. And I've had people say this to me.
I've had people literally say to me, well, you know what? When you describe that pattern of behavior, that's absolutely me, but that's not my stack. All right, great. I don't know what your stack is.
I don't care. But what I do know is this is how people behave and teams and.
Maria Jose Munita
00:34:19Organizations, as you said before, and countries, right?
Mario Sikora
00:34:22You go to a navigating country, for example, Egypt, one of my favorite places. Okay, absolutely. A navigating culture, right? Nothing works Right. I mean, it just, you know, nothing.
It's just, you know, things don't run on time, all this sort of stuff. Right. And you see this, you know, always.
Now, of course, you know, it's not always going to be that there are refinements to it and so forth, but it just happens over and over again. The Enneagram tells us that we don't see ourselves clearly. We don't see what we're doing most of the time.
So I don't care what somebody says they are. I care what I can see them doing. Now, that also includes emotional patterns and patterns of thinking, but I don't care what somebody is.
I care what they do.
Maria Jose Munita
00:35:14Yeah. And they do include what they feel, the beliefs they have. I mean, it's not just the actions, the visible actions that we're talking about here.
Mario Sikora
00:35:27Right.
Maria Jose Munita
00:35:27It's how they filter the world and how they interpret it and how they react emotionally to things. So it's not just. We're not talking about just simple actions here.
Lindsey
00:35:45Awesome. Well, I am loving this so far, you two. I want to shift gears a little bit from lineage and history.
We want to get into the narrative model of the Enneagram and really hear from you about the details of what sets this model apart. So can you start us off by talking about instincts? Can you define that word for us and tell us what they are?
Christopher Copeland
00:36:06Yeah, so the. The instincts are three primary biological drives, and they're necessary for survival. And they.
They've been developed, we might say, over millennia of human development. And so it's these kind of three ways that we survive and have survived and do survive in the world. And we also can think of it as like three ways.
The life force, energy, that is the kind of like the energy in us gets expressed and experienced in these three distinctive ways. And in the narrative, we call those self preservation. One to one. Sometimes folks will call that sexual. We've called that one to one and social.
So self preservation is really about physical needs and material resources. So it's like assuring safety, protection. It's things around money, financial support, warmth, home, food. Do I have enough stuff? I always joke that.
And my lead in the instinctual drive is self preservation. Running out of stuff is like the great moral sin of my household.
So it's like always want to make sure there's enough, whatever it is, those kind of resources that bring a sense of security. And it's also about kind of the daily rhythms of life, activity and rest and self care and that sort of thing. And the Language.
Each of these has a kind of phrase that we use in self preservation is the right to be alive. So it's the right for humanity to be alive. Then the one to one, this is about intimacy.
It can be about sexual intimacy, but it can be about intimacy with Divine. It can be about intimacy with important others. It can be about pair bonding.
And it can be more than pairs, but kind of this kind of intimate bonding with others. It's also about creativity, this sort of like creativity that comes and this union with the greater whole, the greater reality.
And often where we experience it most with, in terms of relationships is this kind of intensity of relationships. Sometimes we call this hot, we use some temperature. Sometimes where we say self preservation is warm and one to one is hot.
Because there's this intensity around relationships and relating and there's a tension toward a personal attractiveness, a kind of charisma that you find in one to one. And the phrase we use here is the right to be loved. It's like we all want to be loved. And this is we have the right to be loved.
And then the social instinct is about. We talk about it as participation, group membership, group participation.
Sometimes our colleague Peter Hanrahan talks about this as social systems or social structures. It's a better way to get at it because we often tend to think of social means. I am a social person and I like to interact with people.
Or I might be extroverted. And we really talk about this as participating in groups. What's my role? Where's my status? How do I fit in to?
Is there a sense of belonging or a sense of acceptance here? Being included, participating with other people, Kind of, you might use the word fellowship. Community is a big word here.
So what are the rules and norms of the social structure? How do I fit in? What's my status? What's my role? And then the phrase we use here is the right to belong.
So you have the right to be alive, the right to be loved and the right to be along. And that's the self preservation, one to one. And social instincts.
Creek
00:39:49Wow, thank you. I know. There's also, as many of our listeners know, right. The instincts you have, you have all of them.
It's just kind of what your relationship with each one of them is. So can you talk about how the narrative approaches how a person who has a type interacts with these instincts?
Christopher Copeland
00:40:09Yeah, sure.
We do have all three and we teach that whereas type doesn't change over the lifespan, we kind of are always leading with a particular enneagram type Our primary instinctual drives can change based on circumstances and based on where we are in life. But we tend to have one that is stronger. Some people will say, you know, two of them are stronger and one is less.
So it's, there's a lot of kind of freedom and flexibility here. And I guess I should say this, we often say this in the, in the narrative tradition.
It's like we teach the theory and then we say and what's your story and how does it work for you? Because that's actually more important than the theory that we would teach. So I just want to offer that.
But we use this image of a stool, like a three legged stool. And you can think of each of the legs as one of the instinctual drives. And one, one of those legs might be a little shorter.
And if you can think about if you're sitting on a stool, where do you orient your body? You would orient your body toward the shorter leg as a way to kind of bring some balance so that you can sit on the stool.
And so that shorter leg might be thought of as the primary instinct, the one that's sort of the one that is the most dominant.
And when, let's say you're a parent, that can shift because attention needs to be towards for example, self preservation or when you enter into a partnership of some kind, the attention might shift then more to the one to one. So there's a lot of kind of movement and flexibility here and interaction.
And I think there tends to be most people say one dominant instinct or one primary instinct which then leads to the subtype. And then the cool thing is, is that we can actually work to cultivate these other instinctual derives.
And so as we actually teach in some of our courses, like here are some real practices you can do to cultivate the one to one instinct more. If that one's sort of less for you, not as strong for you. Here's some ways you can cultivate the social instinct for, et cetera.
Abram
00:42:12To ask a clarifying question, you said the maybe set condition stack of the instincts that can change depending on a life circumstance. Did I hear that correctly?
Christopher Copeland
00:42:24Yeah, I think what I would say is, and we don't typically use the word of stacking, but we, we talk about like we have a primary instinct and when a certain thing happens in life, you more attention may go to or more energy may go toward because you can think about the instincts as behavioral, whereas we really talk about type as motivation. It's like, what's the driver here? Instinctual drives are really Behavioral, experiential. And so it's like when life changes.
Sometimes the energy and the practice and the experience shows up differently. In other words, another instinctual drive becomes more active that maybe wasn't before. And so I think there can be.
Abram
00:43:09Movement when the primary instinctual or instinct changes or a different one maybe comes to the surface depending on the life situation, does that become the new primary instinct or does that revert back once that situation has now calmed itself?
Christopher Copeland
00:43:24It's a lovely question, and I don't know the answer to that question.
My own personal experience is that one tends to be dominant as a theme through life and in circumstances another one may come up and sort of be more where the attention energy goes. And then when the life situation changes, it kind of quiets back down or softens or the dominant one reasserts itself.
That's been my personal experience. But again, I would kind of defer to folks lived experience on that.
Creek
00:43:57I also just want to name.
I really appreciate how focused you guys are on people's individual experience and are willing to say I don't know, instead of force it into the model. That's beautiful.
Terry Saracino
00:44:12So I'd like to say a little bit more about how we work with the instincts in the narrative tradition. So once you know these three dominant instincts, it can give you a lot of information about where you spend your time and energy in your daily lives.
And we're not going into this in the podcast because if we got into 27, we'd be here for from a week from Sunday.
But when you add the behaviors for the nine types that go with each of the instincts, it gives you a powerful way to see where you're spending your energy in daily life. Are you more in the self preservation realm? Money security? Are you more in the one to one realm, wanting that lock on intensity with someone?
Are you more in the social arena where you want groups and a sense of belonging? So these instincts both serve us and how we act them out can get overused.
So we may spend way more time in our dominant instinct and ignore the other two. We need all three as functioning human beings in this lifetime.
So one of the ways we invite people to work with the instincts is just to notice, notice how much time and attention you are spending in each of these arenas. And if you notice that maybe one is missing, we talk about having active practices and receptive practices.
So an active practice might be, let's say I'm a self pressed subtype. I know I'm ignoring my primary one to one relationship.
So I might choose to spend more time engaging with my partner, with a friend in that one to one connection.
Or I may notice that I'm just completely on my own or taking care of my household needs and or my partner and ignoring and not participating in the larger arena of the group feed field. So I might join a group or a club or find some way to contribute.
So it's a way to consciously choose to participate in the areas of life that don't come naturally, so to speak. You can also do a reflective practice in terms of engaging what in the narrative we talk about is the inner observer.
And we can engage our inner observer in see what happens if I don't. Let's say my dominant subtype is social. What happens if I don't engage in that arena of life?
What if I notice I'm going on automatic and I'm working on belonging and how do I fit in and where do I fit in? What if I didn't do that? What if I could just pause and notice I'm about to go into this group function, do this thing? What if I just didn't do that?
And just as you're listening to me right now, just even pause if you know your dominant instinct and see what happens. And usually something uncomfortable might come up. Often these are.
They feel like survival mechanisms and in a certain way they were, but now they're not anymore, although we may feel in our somatic experience like they are. So can I meet the energy that comes? Maybe it's fear, maybe it's some kind of upset if I don't act on automatic.
Helen used to talk about there's a lot of energy that we expend in keeping these subtype behaviors, these instinctual patterns going. If I don't go on automatic with them, there is a lot of freed up energy that can be used in other ways.
Another way we focus on the instincts in the narrative is to look at how they show up in relationships.
Years ago, Peter O'Hanrahan and I were doing a talk at the Teachers association conference for the narrative and we did panels of different combinations. A self pres and social. A social with a one to one, a one to one with a self pres. And then people that are the same instinct.
I was leading a panel on self preservation and social and I'm a self pres and my husband is a social.
And the people on the panel, the couple on the panel were speaking about how the self preservation cares about things, being nice in the home, hostess hosting things like that. The social like Travels all over the world.
In this case, I swear I thought they had, that my husband had spoken to them about the dynamics that come up in our relationship. A lot of issues in relationship are more related to differences in instinctual variants, instinctual energies than type.
So exploring your relationships with this lens can really help you know where you clash, where your time and attention goes. Self preservation may not want to go out as much, may not want to be part of the social scene.
The one to ones may want to just lock on and spend only time in the one to one relationship. And if they have a partner that's a self pres.
That cares about all the nitpicky details of the house and all those things, you can see where there might be a clash. Because these instincts tell us how we spend our time and energy in daily life. So how do you negotiate that when you're in relationship?
So we often look at, invite our students to look at this, look at these patterns, look at folks in their lives and see how can they support each other when they're different. And what challenges might come up when they have a different instinct than their partner, friend, colleague.
And a third thing I want to talk about in terms of the narrative is when we first learned, When I first learned the Enneagram Helen used to talk about this is how the instincts and the subtype behaviors are how we keep the passion of our type out of our awareness. It's a way to cover up. It's a way to manage the energy so that we can get through life, so that we can be productive as human beings on this planet.
But there's a part of it that's compulsive, that's keeping away, say, the fear underneath for the six, or the pride underneath for the two, or the energy of the passions or the emotional drives that we talk about. So the instinctual work is very powerful in terms of both being something we all need because we're human.
And when that gets overdone, we act as if it's still necessary for my survival. For example, for me as a self pressed to have everything when I travel or meals regularly.
And it's not a matter of life or death anymore, but it might feel like that inside. So on that side of it is where we want to work with loosening it a little bit with seeing what else is there.
If we don't go on automatic and spend all this energy in these ways, we really want to bring our consciousness to it as we do with everything related to the Enneagram. Can I be aware of what I'm doing, where I'm spending my time and energy.
And there's a really powerful transformation that can happen when we apply that to work with our instinctual energies.
Creek
00:52:56That's beautiful. There's so much more we can talk about with instincts.
There'll be resources in the show notes books, all those sort of things for the listener to go and really dive into all that the instincts have to offer. Quick note here. Next up is Rizo Hudson in Institute, and you may notice that the conversation sounds a little weird.
We had to record Gail and Michael separately. Michael recorded by himself. Gail was recording with just me. I compiled their two takes into something that I hope is cohesive.
If you want to hear their full takes, that would be on our private podcast feed. Again, there's a link in the show Notes if you want to hear their full description of how they teach the instincts.
And speaking of which, if you want to hear the entire uncut interview with each of the schools, that's also going to be on our private podcast feed that you can sign up through a membership tier link in the show notes.
I think it's really interesting to compare and contrast them as we're doing here publicly, but also just hear just straight up what they are talking about, in what context they're talking about it. And we left a few little gems and bonuses for those that signed up for the private podcast feed tier. So without further ado, back to the podcast.
So Gail, can you kind of give us how the Rizo Hudson Enneagram Institute talks about instincts? How do they define it? What are they? And we'll go from there.
Gayle Scott
00:54:33Sure. Well, we talk about the instincts really and literally as animal instincts. It's our instinctual nature that makes us really part of life on earth.
And it's also the part of us that allows us to survive on the earth, to survive our life. Human beings are mammals, right? So this is our animal nature.
And calling these instincts, these energies instincts really emphasizes that connection to animals, to mammals, to our instinctual nature.
You know, we recognize animals instinctual behavior when we're around animals or when we watch animals nature shows and we see them doing all that instinctual behavior. But human instinctual behavior is more complex now, certainly more adaptive.
But it's really the same underlying instincts at work in us as in the animals. And all three instincts are in us. Everybody has all three. And all of them are about survival. You know, we don't survive without any of them.
So the self preservation instinct is the oldest, most primal instinct. And it's all about literal survival as an entity. Right. And survival of the species.
And the sexual and social instincts are both further iterations or developments of the self preservation energy. And so they're all three are drives for survival, literally, but three different kinds of survival.
There's the physical survival, you know, keeping the life form operating. There's the energetic survival and then there's the affiliative survival that comes with bonding and relationships.
And these instincts are hardwired, they're habitual, they're the most unconscious parts of ourselves that keep us really stuck in habitual patterns and concerns and what draws our attention. And they're really. Instincts are really a powerful source of our energy. It's where we get our energy for running our personality, the ego.
Creek
00:56:52Awesome. So what are those three instincts and how do you define those?
Gayle Scott
00:56:58Well, okay, the first one is the self preservation instinct. And in terms of biological development, the self pres instinct is in the core of our reptilian root brain. And rule number one is survive.
Survive as an entity, survive to as an individual and as a species. And so this in human beings, this is the awareness of the well being of our body or lack thereof, right.
It's what notices, it's what registers if we're not feeling well, if we're tired or exhausted or thirsty or hungry or in pain or discomfort. It's like the basic needs of the organism.
And in animals we also recognize that we see this as nesting and making dens and burrowing and gathering nuts and moving to the shade when it's too hot, regulating temperature, things like that. This instinct is the most basic fundamental life force.
It's the drive to survive, the drive to preserve our life and everything alive has this, has this self preservation instinct. Because to survive we need safety, we need a level of health and well being and if possible, a certain amount of comfort of the organism.
So it's about seeking shelter and food and nourishment, maintaining a certain homeostasis of the body, you know, not being too hot or too cold. It's that protective instinct, you know, for shelter and food. And in humans it's also.
And in animals, some animals, it's also about conserving stockpiling, you know, saving, saving resources, money, also conserving our body energy, which is very important. Of course there's a concern with financial resources, very aware usually of money and as a resource.
And it doesn't mean that they're necessarily good about handling money. They can be, but they can also be, you know, not great at it. But there's an awareness.
There can be an overriding awareness about money as a resource and how valuable it is. So often they are very practical with money and tend to be more conservative with resources, but can still have some bad money habits.
If you are blind in self preservation instinct, right. It means that you don't usually consciously put your attention on self preservation matters.
You know, you still have the instinct, we have all three instincts, but you don't prioritize it. And if it's your blind spot, you might actually be quite unaware of it, even as a need.
So people who are blind in self preservation, they often lack a certain kind of regularity and consistency in their life. They haven't established like healthy routines in their life.
Like even simple things like, you know, brushing your teeth or eating regular meals or you know, getting enough sleep, things like that. And they tend to be kind of domestically challenged.
They might keep either a very messy house or you know, there's nothing in the fridge or, you know, they don't know.
Creek
01:00:30That's a new. That's a new insult for me, you know, you're domestically challenged. I'm just thinking of a few people that are messy in my life that I need.
I might call them that.
Gayle Scott
01:00:41Okay.
Gayle Scott
01:00:42Yeah.
Michael Naylor
01:00:42How does somebody become a self pres dominant person? Well, here's how. We have theories. Certainly one theory is that we mimic our mother and father. Well, I've seen that one disprove many times.
Some people will say it's a learned behavior. I don't know. My experience has been that I grew up in a family of four self pres people. Mother, father, sister, brother.
And my self pres except for zone one was off. Located close, close to Pluto. Just a kind of non existent form that my attention was not drawn to.
Or if I was forced to look at it, made me feel very bored.
Creek
01:01:31So that was the self preservation. Can you give us a brief overview of the social and the sexual.
Michael Naylor
01:01:37The second one, the second instinct we call the sexual instinct, located in the invisibility in the sexual organ area. You're not going to be able to look down at these instinctual centers and see anything, but you might feel them.
So for the sexual instinct, there's three zones. Again, one has to do with pushing the edge.
The evolutionary impulse, this kind of real need and sensual need to always be stepping over the line of what's habitual and into the zone of the unknown. It's the creative energy. I want to see what I can discover. I want to invent something, I want to experience something. I've never experienced before.
So there's a certain inspiration that a sexual instinct type feels when they're in this zone.
I know for myself as a sexual dominant, the need to be engaging things that are new, interesting and stretching me into new areas of understanding is primary to me. And if it's not happening, I start to feel like I'm dying.
By people who don't have dominant self sexual instincts, you know, that's not what calls forth their survival. But for myself as a sexual dominant, it does. So the second zone is broadcasting or how I, how I display my ha cha cha my.
Whether it be erotic or juicy, energetic being to the world, there's a natural orientation towards, you know, stepping into that energy with and around people to be very conscious and aware of, of the attractability of other people. And my own attractability, a sense of sort of experiencing my fire being lit on the inside and needing to come out in some kind of charismatic form.
Which as a dominant sexual seems to be what cheers me up. And if things get dull for too long, well then my type 4 patterns of sadness and meaninglessness can be activated.
That's often a wake up call for me when those kind of feelings of meaninglessness, purposefulnesslessness, well, we need to get spelling right on this. But either way, when the energy dies, when it goes down, when there's no charismatic juicy energy flowing, I start to feel like I'm dying.
So my dominant instinct says get in action because we don't want you turning into a piece of gravel on the side of the road and hanging out with all the self presence who had planted themselves there and are cheering for their existence. So then the third zone is a sense of laser focus merging deeply with whatever I'm encountering or attending to.
So if it's sexuality, it's a sense of just immersing myself completely in the experience, in a sense kind of losing my individual self and dissolving into a unity with another person. It can have to do with something that gets me excited in terms of my studies.
It can come through art, it can come through conversations with somebody where suddenly you're talking about something that moves you both deeply and you know, you're transfixed in the conversation. And eight hours later your wife calls you and says, michael, what are you doing?
Oh well, I'm just having a casual conversation with another sexual type. And we got lost in time.
Creek
01:05:24All right. And finally, how about that, that social instinct?
Gayle Scott
01:05:28The social instinct, yeah. So the self preservation instinct evolved another step to include now nurturing, caring for the young. Right.
Which is necessary for the species to survive. The social instinct, importantly in understanding it, it's both adaptive and reciprocal, right?
With the social instinct, especially when it's dominant, there's an awareness and a concern for the state of the other. Not just for its own sake, but in order to take care of myself.
Your survival in the group, in the tribe, in the couple, in the family also enhances my survival, right? It enhances my well being and your well being. So the herd instinct as we know it, you know, that we all need each other to survive.
So emotion and nurturing developed to support the need for that human bond, for that really mother child bond, right? Caring for the young, participating in the tribe, then the herd, the clan. So.
But yeah, that social instinct, it's affiliative, it's about bonding, it's about adapting, it's about reciprocity also, you know, it's about reading the room.
It's about being aware of who is trustworthy, you know, who's going to, who's going to get out front, you know, who's going to do their part, who's gonna, who's going to reciprocate, who's gonna pull their weight, who's gonna, you know, take care of me, you know, and the group. So I, I it, it.
There's a, a very special kind of discernment, talent, understanding superpower that social dominant people have of being able to, so that I, and I need this so that I can choose people who will, you know, reciprocate. I'm very aware if I'm social dominant about how the group perceives me and as well as how the group affects me.
If you get a few cards on your birthday, they'll most likely be from your social dominant friends. Important concerns. They also tend to be, you know, they like to chit chat and they also like to gossip.
They're basically the biggest gossipers because you know, from their point of view what they're doing is they're exchanging important information, life, life and death information about, you know, who's going, who can we trust, right? And who do we not trust and why? So there's this desire for the, you know, for mutual support.
It's just knowing that I have a better chance of surviving if you survive.
Creek
01:08:14Too and we can help each other.
Gayle Scott
01:08:15So I might give you something now, you know, do a favor for you now because it's within my power and resources to do so. But I'm also trusting and expecting, you know, and filing it away that at some future point, your date, when I need something.
You're going to show up for me, and if you don't, I'm going to. I'm going to log that. I'm going to, you know, I'm going to know about it and I'm going to let other people know, too.
Creek
01:08:39Awesome. Well, thank you for that. So, just one final question. So you've talked about. We have our dominant instinct and the blind spot.
What about that sort of third one? Do you guys have a name for that? How do you talk about the relationship with that third one?
Gayle Scott
01:08:59One, the secondary, the middle instinct. This is obviously the one that's not dominant, but it's still on your radar. It's not neglected. It's in the middle.
And so this is the instinct that expresses itself the least neurotic way. Right. We. We tend to take care of our. Our secondary instinct in a. Just in a more natural way where we don't. You really have to think about it much.
It comes naturally to us. We don't over focus on it. We don't obsess on it. And we also don't have to struggle to remember to take care of it. It's just kind of there.
It also, interestingly, can provide a kind of relief from the dominant. From the compulsion of taking care of the dominant instinct always, all the time. It can be kind of an area of respite. You know, it's easy.
It's a way to kind of get away from yourself, you know, to kind of free up the ego when you're hanging out there, when you actually start to track and see how much of your obsessive attention is magnetized to your dominant instinct and how much you are ignoring your, you know, your blind spot. It'll. It will change your life. It will absolutely.
It's as impactful, it's as profound as understanding your enneagram type because it, in a way, it really affects your behavior as much, if not more than your type. Of course, you know, the instinct and the type combine.
Your dominant instinct combines with the passion of your type to create all kinds of, you know, neuroses and problems and everything.
But what we usually start with is to address the blind spot by sort of bringing it, you know, putting it on your radar and noticing how much you either overlook opportunities to express it or even have judgment about it. Because we tend to think that whatever's in the purview of our. Of our blind spot isn't important or isn't necessary.
Michael Naylor
01:11:18So the other thing, you know, I think is important about this particular model.
I think that Russ was really the first one who brought this up is the idea that we tend to have one dominant instinct, one middle instinct and one blind spot or repressed or unaccessible instinct.
I've seen all different kinds of variations, but the one that appears to be the most growthful is if I become aware, if I have one particular instinct in one zone that I'm particularly out of contact or out of touch with consciously, and I could begin to do conscious work to try to enlist the capacities of that particular instinct and zone.
Now what I've experienced is the blind spot is called the blind spot because even in the face of understanding all this information, the blind spot doesn't care. It just when it comes to life situations, it's asleep and snoring while you read another article or essay on your blind spot, the self pres point.
So it's elusive. It feels to me like a kind of deep conditioning around not being able to bring my attention to the vital aspects of a particular blind spot.
Unless of course, my life depends on it. And sometimes we will say that the self preservation instinct comes online for people when they've had a heart attack and almost died.
And then suddenly they get interested in exercise and diet and if they're successful, you know, they live a longer life. But there's other people that I noticed that don't really have a strong blind spot.
They have a less strong third, third instinct, but it's not blind, it's just a little less access. And the same way I have found that there are many people who have two instincts that are almost equal in terms of dominance.
And you know, the politically correct approach to that is to say, well, you know, there is a dominant one, but they just don't see it. Or with the blind spot says, well, they have a blind spot, but they're just too blind to see the blindness of it. I would say the jury's out on that.
And I just invite people to begin your own exploration, to really find through your own lived experience what is true for you. Because then this information will have value.
If you take it as dogma, well, you're going to be in trouble because then you're going to go to three or four other dogma schools and you're going to see that there's some pretty strong differences between schools and where they put their emphasis. I know that there's been a big to do around the instincts being more important than the type. I think that's kind of a bit of rubbish.
But you know, we get onto a new thing and that becomes the most important thing and then it becomes a fad and the next thing you know, some other thing will come into light and that will be the most important thing. So with that, my 45 cynicism has come through. And that said, may the force be with you and hope you got something useful out of this.
Creek
01:14:35Bye. Well, congrats. You made it to the other side. As we mentioned, mentioned multiple times. This is not exhaustive by any stretch of the imagination.
There's a lot, a lot to talk about and I think in the broader, like the broader Enneagram community, this is something that is not talked about as often. I mean you see type specific stuff everywhere but like not as much subtype instinctual bias stuff.
And so just wanted to name if you're confused, that's okay. This is a lot of new information for some of you.
Lindsey
01:15:25I'm confused. Yeah, yeah, I'm still confused.
Creek
01:15:29Yes.
Lindsey
01:15:30Lots of questions.
Creek
01:15:32So once again, a reminder, we're going to be stepping into a different role here where we're going to be naming a little bit more, more of our opinions and what we relate with what we don't. This is not in any way disparaging other schools or it's just what we find most useful and what makes the most sense for us personally.
So with that in mind, Lindsay, tell me, what was your as as we recorded these episodes? What was something that you walked away with?
Lindsey
01:16:06I love when you ask me first because then I don't have that anxiety of people thinking I'm just copying somebody else.
Creek
01:16:13Perfect. This is good to know. Thanks for communicating your desires, Lindsay.
Lindsey
01:16:19I'm learning. Yeah, I. Sorry, what was the question?
Creek
01:16:26Okay, what we. What. What did you relate to? What didn't you in each school?
Observations of the differences and similarities as you were listening and recording with them.
Lindsey
01:16:42I really, really liked. You know, when we were listening to ATA talk and Mario talked about instincts, meaning deeply rooted.
I feel like that's really helpful, especially in light of our conversation that we're talking. What do we mean by instincts versus like intuition? I think that phrase deeply rooted is really helpful there. And it doesn't mean.
I think the reason I like it is because sometimes when we talk about an instinct, it's like, well, this isn't something I can change, you know. But when we talk about it being deeply rooted, that gives us a little bit more access to this idea of like Abram. I mean, your help here about this.
Abram
01:17:23What's the Viktor Frankl quote between stimulus and response? There's the space and in that space is our power to choose. I mean, there's more to it than that, but.
Lindsey
01:17:31Yeah, yeah, essentially. And so that's what that. That quote was coming up for me. When we were talking about the definitions and that word stimuli, I thought of that quote.
There actually is a lot we can work with with the instincts.
You know, there's a lot of freedom that we can gain by noticing our biases and learning to pause and ask curious, nonjudgmental questions of ourselves in those moments. So I really, really liked that.
I thought it was interesting that he, you know, he started out talking about how it's outdated to talk about instincts from a scientific perspective.
And I think the question that's emerging there for me is, is there something similar still useful about talking about instincts in this way, even if it's outdated? So I'm kind of. I'm kind of holding that tension right now. Like, I almost feel like I'm reaching my arms in both directions.
Like, I want to be forward, moving toward accuracy. That's the only way forward. Like, we have to have good science. We have to adapt. We have to adjust. That is the only way to forward.
And at the same time, like, I'm just not a person who's willing to leave anybody behind.
So I'm like, if I need to use some language here, that's helpful for you while you work with it and while we kind of move toward something better and more accurate, I'm willing to do that. Maybe not everybody is, but I am.
Creek
01:19:02Yeah.
Creek
01:19:02I think for me, the. I was actually. I was talking with Leaf, our friend Lee Fields the other day, and she's.
She studied in all of them, all the big ones, all the ones on this show. At least, you know, she knows everything. So. And I was trying to. Because I was.
As I was listening, every time I listened through it, I realized how much different ATA is from the other two schools and how kind of based on first principles. And Lee said something along the lines of ata. When they are talking about whether it's the enneagram or instinctual biases, it's more naming the.
It's an expression of logic where it seems like the other two schools are more categorizing behavior. And yeah, I can see that in. And both have strengths and weaknesses.
And then traditionally, when we think about, like, Reza and Hudson, they talked about instinctual drives as almost separate from our type. Like, these are. These are animalistic limbic system things, which even limbic system is kind of an antiquated phrase at this point.
So it becomes more about there's this thing and then there's this thing. And ATA is more along the lines of.
It's in the slippage of these two models, like the rubbing against both type and instinct, where the, this psycho, these psychobiological needs and how you get them kind of become this expression of you. And I don't want to misrepresent the other two schools, but it seems like it's more.
The instincts become an additive thing instead of a separate model that informs each other. They both inform each other. Where narrative and Rizo Hudson see the instincts as an actual, almost as an actual thing.
I see ATA seeing it as we do these things for some reason and this is how we categorize those things.
So it's like retroactively categorizing versus starting from a place of there's a self preservation instinct, there's a social instinct, there's a sexual instinct. And from that is expressed this thing, this thing, this thing and this thing. Does that make sense? Does that track?
Hopefully I'm not misrepresenting any of the schools, but that was my takeaway of. There's just a fundamental difference. And it's such a nuanced. There's such a nuanced.
It feels the same on the surface, but then you start picking things apart, then it starts becoming more and more different.
Abram
01:22:17Yeah.
Creek
01:22:17Thoughts? I said a lot.
Lindsey
01:22:19Some I would love to hear from Abram.
Abram
01:22:21This is a lot that's been said, Abraham.
Abram
01:22:23Yeah.
Abram
01:22:26I mean, I just want to come back to. I mean, in my mind I layered a little deeper than each of our perspectives on what was communicated here.
And so Lindsay, you were talking about Viktor Frankl and it actually made me think of another thought he's had around. He said that when your circumstances don't change, you must change.
And like coming from this guy who was in Nazi prison camps, his circumstance was one of the worst you can experience as a human being. And his circumstance was not changing. And on some similar level, I don't think our instincts do.
I don't think the ways in which we were biologically, physiologically, whatever shaped as kids and the ways that we were formed, those things don't change, but we can change as we come into a better, a more conscious, aware relationship. And so I just, I wanted her to say, like, that's the value of talking about this stuff now.
Definitely we're getting into how these things are communicated, which can become complicated and I just think get in the way of doing the work. And I just want to name that.
So I think there's obviously major value in how this part of our human experience gets communicated in their operation within us, the instincts. But I'll just say in my years of working with.
Working through navigating, not the navigating bias, but navigating what my dominant instinct or my instinctual bias is. The ATA approach maybe is the most up to speed scientifically, but there's still ways. Classic nine here.
Creek
01:24:13Yes.
Abram
01:24:13But there's still ways for me to find helpful languaging in how the instincts look and show up in the other schools and especially how the subtype comes together in its operation.
Creek
01:24:24Yeah.
Abram
01:24:26So for me, I tend to.
I'll say personally, I feel most confident at this point as a navigator, having gone through understanding the ATA approach, but I still use the other schools as ways to complement and enhance my understanding of. Of how this shows up in. In my experience as well.
Creek
01:24:50Yeah, I think that's obviously the.
The most important thing about all of this is growing, and if something is getting in the way of that, then that needs to be dealt with, whatever that is. Right.
Lindsey
01:25:05Yeah.
Creek
01:25:06I think the. I mentioned, like, there's strengths and weaknesses on. On both sides of think.
The strength of, like, narrative and Riso Hudson model is there's a lot more description, there's a lot more exampling, very thorough. There's a lot more emotionality to it, which can really work for people that are trying to understand themselves and that sort of thing.
However, the downfall of that, I think, is it can end up in some ways, some things may be missed, some things may be simplified or misidentified, because the more specific you get about a phenomena, the more possibility that it's going to be misidentified, misinterpreted, oversimplified, that sort of thing. So I think where with ata, it's like concretized. It is, yes.
Abram
01:26:04Yeah, yeah. If you know one John, you know all Johns.
Abram
01:26:07No, Right, right, right.
Creek
01:26:09But. So that's the strength of ata, where it's like, here's the core nugget and then the human expression from that.
But it also leaves a lot of blanks for people that are in the beginning stages of like. I don't. I don't know what I'm allowed to put into those blanks. So it's like, it's both in some ways, looking for more.
More accuracy without limitation.
But then sometimes we need to start with a little bit more limitation in order to kind of get the concept before we can move into the complexity of human existence. So strength and Weakness is on both sides. And I mean, you just look at the teachers that are teaching these things, right?
You got a eight and a one for awareness to action. You got a four, four and a six for narrative and a four and a one for a reason in Hudson. So there's gonna be like eight.
One is gonna be, you know, here's what it is like. And I don't see why this is complicated.
Lindsey
01:27:18Yeah, right. You're naming. You're. You're naming biases right now. It's really important.
Creek
01:27:23Right. Exactly.
Lindsey
01:27:24How this stuff gets presented has a lot to do with our biases, our own.
Creek
01:27:29So I think. And also with these models, it is. And the other difference that I really noticed is.
And again, this is probably a little oversimplification, but is it nine types of three or is it three types of nine? And I think awareness to action would probably lean towards.
There are nine types of three versus the others that would be, you know, type first and then instincts second. Not exclusively. And there's probably exceptions to all those things. But I do think when you. When you approach it as. Oh, even. Oh, I was listening.
So Christopher Copeland said. Let me try to do a direct quote here. Okay.
Well, he said something along the lines of type is motivational and instinctual drive is more about behavior and experiential. Ata would. If we had to kind of simplify their stance. And I did double check this with Mario. It would be. If we're. It would be the.
The instinctual bias is more of what we're looking for, what we want, and the strategy is how we get that. So a strategy isn't a behavior. It's a. It's a plan towards a theme.
So even that, in and of itself, the definitions of what these two models are are just really different. And when you're working with, like, with the relationship of those two, you're going to come up with different sort of what this therefore means.
So I just think there's. There's a lot. I wouldn't want to do a disservice to any of the schools by saying these are exactly.
They're all talking about the same thing, because I don't think they really are. There's some similarities, there's some overlaps, but they're not talking about the same thing.
Lindsey
01:29:30Yeah. And I think that I also just want to. Finding value. That's one of the reasons we brought all this together is. Is for the value factor. Right.
Like, there's so much value in power. I think when you're on a growth journey. And you're like, where do I need to spend time right now? Like, where.
Where do I need to draw energy, inspiration, knowledge, wisdom from right now? And these schools all have such an important role to play in different parts of your journey.
So one specific example I can think of is like, for those people who are like, I need a way to explore the. The overlap between like my spirituality and my enneagram or my sexuality and my enneagram. Right.
Like, there are ways to do that with some of these models that are going to be less accessible with other models. Does that make sense? And it doesn't diminish the value or heighten the value of one over the other. It's just like this is what I'm needing right now.
And here's a beautiful explanation for that or some ways that I can explore that with this model that I can't with this model.
Creek
01:30:47And I do think again, naming the bias here. I mean, ATA is a thing that. And we'll get into some more personal examples here.
But I didn't know what to do with the instincts until I started learning with awareness to action other than notice it. Okay. And do more or do less of that thing. It's like, I need to work out more. I need to eat less sugar.
Like that was the extent of working with self preservation. Not inaccurate, not a bad idea. But it wasn't. I was just like, but what. How does this actually it was just fuzzy, wasn't. It was non tangible for me.
Lindsey
01:31:31Fuzzy wuzzy.
Creek
01:31:31Fuzzy wuzzy.
I think that's where the pattern of expression is really, really helpful is you're able to see more clearly the relationship with these domains of behavior. This, this underlying logic of the things that you want and how you go about getting them.
So it immediately becomes a little bit more tangible to do something after you do the observation and the awareness work. The bringing to consciousness of I'm overdoing this or under doing this or ignoring this again, all of those are really important.
I think the other schools do that really great us how. How to see these things. It's just the then what That I felt when I was first learning these things. I was.
I still don't know exactly what I'm supposed to do with this.
So yeah, I'd be curious for you guys, your personal experience with learning the instincts and sexual biases and your sort of your journey of how you've grown with them.
Lindsey
01:32:39Well, I.
I just got be Chestnut's book and just started reading it because I just did a deep dive and I'm like taking notes and highlighting it and writing in the margins and bookmarking things and dog tagging the ears and like, it was not sinking in. It was not sinking in. It was not help. And I think I just kind of overwhelmed myself.
So going through ata learning that model really gave me some handles that I could start to work with and grow with right away.
And it's interesting to me now, going back to the other material, going back to BE's material, I feel like I can actually absorb it better and use it more productively. It doesn't feel as overwhelming now. Maybe that's just time.
But I also think just working with a not any less powerful system, but a simpler system to kind of reframe some of these things. For me, it gave me a path to where I can, especially working with clients or people new to the Enneagram.
It's like, I feel like I can hold all of these things a lot better now. Whereas before, I was really, really clumsily holding, holding onto the subtypes and trying really hard to, like, memorize all the names for all 27.
And, like, I had my flashcards.
Sure, it was just kind of crazy and chaotic and not sticking, but being with it in a different way has helped me return to it in a better way that can hold it better. I can hold all of it better.
Creek
01:34:13And of course, again, naming the bias that none of us have done. We don't know what we don't know about reason. That's in a narrative. Like, we've done different trainings, but we haven't done complete training.
So maybe there is more actionable stuff. But at least in what they presented in the episode, I had a hard time seeing a clear action step other than do more, do less.
Lindsey
01:34:38Yeah.
And I imagine they would probably out of a sense of, like, wisdom and being ethical, like, that's stuff you have to work on with the coach one on one, you know?
Abram
01:34:51Yeah. I mean, one thing I have heard from all three schools is that the Enneagram, on its own, as a typology, doesn't come with methods for change.
You have to partner the tool with some other things.
And I think for the most part, that's a deeper part of going into any of the schools having methods for how you use the Enneagram, methods for method, chip change. And my sense is certain people or certain schools tend to be better at that with the type.
But when it comes to the subtype or the instinct, because it's fixed, in a sense, there's less you can do about it. It's more just another typology which I don't find super helpful, to be honest. Like, oh, I understand you now. Okay. You know, I just.
You like to drink a lot of water and think about the temperature in the. Oh, so that's what you do. Oh, you know, I don't find that personally super helpful.
Maybe it gives me a little compassion or understanding, but that's. Which is not nothing, it's just limited.
If the urenagram type paired with your bias is meant to bring transformation, then there needs to be understanding of how we use it is all. And yeah, I do think there is some value in some of the other schools that I've heard talk about like from the Risa Hudson approach.
The passion and the instinct mixture, you know, it's different, it's just kind of hard to understand. I think like the passion is the emotional reaction to being identified with your instinct. But what does that mean? You know, I think that's cool.
Or I do in my instinct in the style of my type. But I still don't hear what I'm supposed to do with that.
You know, how that's supposed to help me besides become present to it, which maybe that's all you can do.
Creek
01:37:02But at times perhaps.
Abram
01:37:04Yeah. I will say there seems to be more actionable options within awareness actions approach when it comes to their change process.
For how you take the information of the subtype and do something different now. And I might be completely biased.
Lindsey
01:37:21Well, that's what we're naming here. We're trying to be honest about that.
Abram
01:37:24And I don't like being biased publicly.
Lindsey
01:37:27You hate it. You don't like being biased.
Is it that you don't like being biased, you don't like the feeling of it or you don't like being others perceiving you as being biased?
Abram
01:37:36Both. Both. Because if you don't include all of it, it means something is more important or more valuable than the other. And that's not true. Sort of.
Lindsey
01:37:50Okay.
Abram
01:37:52It's. It's confusing. Someone's inaccuracy for their value.
Lindsey
01:37:57Yeah.
Abram
01:37:59And I don't like that unless you talk about it and make sure that's not what's happening. Right. You don't think that's what I'm doing?
Abram
01:38:05Right, right, right.
Creek
01:38:07The difference between ideas and people. Yeah. Certain ideas are better than other ideas. This is the way other people have an inherent value. We're not questioning that.
Regardless of what I don't know.
Abram
01:38:25I've heard you question that.
Creek
01:38:27Fair enough. Yeah. So I think all of these people, I would be honored to sit under them and hear what they have to teach me.
But if we're talking about the idea, the ideas of enneagram of instincts and sexual bias, there's. There's our understanding and what we experience in this episode, like we're limiting our as much as we can to what was said in this episode.
Lindsey
01:39:01Right, right.
Creek
01:39:02So we are limited in our ability to properly depict everything that we are feeling. So. So something else we wanted to do. I mean, there's a lot of information here.
And these days we have this little thing called AI that helps us summarize information. And we were just kind of curious to see if we fed it through AI, what would it.
How would it differentiate, how would it kind of articulate the positions? So obviously one bias to note about GPT, you know, is partial, partially, is there is a discrepancy on the length of how long each school talked.
You may not have experienced that in the episode because I cut down things so that it was even. But Seth, why don't you go ahead and just kind of read through the GPT response and we just kind of talk about it and see what happens.
Abram
01:40:03Yeah, yeah, I. I mean, first off, I just think that it's amazing that I can take so much content and it just spit it out immediately. Yeah, that's why. Oh man.
That's why so many things, but.
Creek
01:40:15Yeah, so that's why so many things. But that's on Seth's headstone.
Abram
01:40:22It's all just overwhelming.
Yeah, but no, the narrative tradition, it, you know, what it's says is that instincts so self preservation, social and one to one are behaviors tied to survival, shaped by life experiences. And so they shift based on circumstances, though one usually dominates.
And the strengths of the narrative's approach are that they focus on personal stories, they're flexible, and they offer practical tips for balancing instincts. Whereas the weakness might be that they can. They can feel vague or hard to standardize.
And then we take a look at the Ingram Institute of the Rizo Hudson approach is what it says is that instincts are primal survival drives. So again, we have the similar language. Just one difference. Self preservation, social and sexual.
And this approach combines with the enneagram type to create subtypes. I mean, all the, all of the schools do that.
But the strengths here would be that they are clear and very structured in their framework, grounded in biology with detailed examples. Whereas.
Lindsey
01:41:31Very detailed.
Abram
01:41:32Yeah. Whereas actually the weakness, this is saying that it can maybe overdo that.
So if it can feel rigid and Then overly focused on categorization, and then finally the awareness to action approach.
GPT said what it says is that instincts are renamed as preserving, navigating and transmitting and so focusing on needs or values rather than survival. And it avoids ranking or stacking instincts and instead it explores how we prioritize them in different ways.
And so the strengths to their approaches is that it's practical and detailed and it's designed for. For personal growth and teamwork, whereas the weaknesses are new terminology can be confusing and it feels less personal.
But the key takeaways from this is that all of the approaches agree on the fact that instincts shape behavior and priorities, but they differ in focus. So this just simply says the narrative focus is personal, personal and focus flexible.
The Rio Hudson focus is clear and structured and awareness to action is focus is practical and dynamic.
Creek
01:42:48That's fascinating.
Abram
01:42:49Yeah. You guys feel like that's a good kind of summarization of what, what we heard.
Lindsey
01:42:56I mean, awareness to action, we know is not simply renaming the instincts to preserving, navigating and transitioning. So that's a misunderstanding there. That.
Creek
01:43:05Right.
Abram
01:43:06And they warrants. Maria Jose got into that in the beginning. Yeah, yeah, right.
Lindsey
01:43:11So just to be clear again about.
Creek
01:43:14That, the other thing that I was going to bring up, and it's interesting that it picked up on this as well, is narrative and Rizzo Hudson talk about like more narrative talk about balancing the instincts. Riza Hudson I don't know if balancing ever came up, but it was like it was, it was still in that vein. I don't know what word they would use there.
But then awareness to action just like, no, there is no balancing them because I think part of it is they don't think of those things as. They don't think of the instincts as things to be balanced. But more category categorization.
I can't speak today of behaviors that then you can choose a behavior in that domain to work on. But balancing it isn't really part of their model at all.
So that's a, that's a huge difference of just how they think what, how they all think differently on how work can be done with this model.
Abram
01:44:28Yeah, I mean, I did find it interesting to hear, you know, some of the strengths and the weaknesses around kind of having like a complete description. Like the Rizo Hudson approach has what sounds like a complete description. And so I find that can be a bit problematic in that.
Well, if I'm a person who has different life experiences than this guy over here, but we potentially have the same instinct. Well, we're not going to both fit perfectly into that complete description. And so how do I know if I'm that or how do you know if you're that?
So you know what I mean?
I just find that if there's like a complete description of how one of these instincts shows up and I don't like adhere to it well or perfectly, then I don't know. One of the things that was named was just the idea. I think I heard from Gail that socials, she didn't use the word only, right?
But socials are the ones sending birthday cards. I have gotten Christmas cards and birthday cards from, you know, from everybody. Not only people that are social.
And so I just think when there's too much description, there's more likelihood for stereotype. So I think that's just something that I noticed. And at the same time you look on the flip side of that. Right.
If you look at the awareness to action approach I've said for years, the person is what contextualizes the type. And we were just talking about a little bit ago, awareness to actions approach is maybe a little too open ended if you look at it that way.
Do you know where I'm going?
Creek
01:46:24What I'm hearing you say is it's easier because it is open ended and open to expression of the human that contextualizes the type. That it requires more work and more clarification on what the original terminology means in order for you to be able to categorize.
Yes, absolutely, certain behaviors retroactively.
Abram
01:46:46Yeah.
Creek
01:46:47And I think all of the teachers would say yeah, none of these things they'll use often or sometimes or yeah.
Abram
01:46:56Definitely all of, of that.
Creek
01:46:59No one does all of this all the time.
But I think it's so easy for especially someone who's new to take those as like biblical level truth of what these things are instead of an invitation to discover what it is about them that fits. I don't even like that word but like that expresses themselves in these areas so well.
Lindsey
01:47:35I think it just brings up, it brings up a point for me about how tricky it is to.
I just have a lot of appreciation for people developing these models because people crave to know and understand themselves and, and so obviously there's an impulse to like I want to give you all these details so that I can help you do this work better. And I think it's really hard to just like hold back and let people sort of self discover.
So yeah, I just, I have a lot of appreciation for the time and energy and work and intention that's Gone into all of these models. I do think it's interesting. Like, the Rezo Hudson model has a test that you can take online. You know, the narrative tradition says no.
Like, we want to hear from actual individuals and panels and hear the stories. So.
Creek
01:48:32And Warner's to action does. They do have online tests, but they've put very minimal effort into it because they're just like, people keep asking us.
Lindsey
01:48:39Well, yeah, it's more of, like, here it is. Give the people.
Creek
01:48:42That's dumb. But.
Lindsey
01:48:45Yeah, and it's fun, you know, like, I. I enjoy an online test.
Creek
01:48:50I think that's a starting point, perhaps.
Lindsey
01:48:52Yeah. But the narrative tradition. One of my questions has always been, what if you get. What if you have people on your panels who are mistyped?
You know, like, what. What do you do about that? I. I trust that they do a good job of vetting people before they put them in that position.
But I can also see how, you know, if people are just trying to sort of copy that model because they find it to be really profound, they may not be doing it with quite as much rigor. And so therefore creating panels full of mistyped people.
And that's one sort of caution I have about that approach, while at the same time, like, it is lovely and wonderful to hear someone sharing experiences that you are like, whoa. I resonate with that. And then such freedom can come from that.
Freedom to explore parts of yourself that have felt scary to explore because now you're not alone.
Creek
01:49:52You know, it's very human first. And I think I said that in the interview, that I really appreciated them. Yeah. Highlighting the own human experience and what does this mean for you?
Creek
01:50:04And.
Creek
01:50:05And that sort of thing. I think that is good. And again, the flip side is sometimes we don't see ourselves clearly, and a model needs to be consistent on some level.
And just because you don't relate with this thing, that shouldn't affect the model. That means we need to relook at how we're categorizing.
Not that it needs to be rigid, but it needs to be dependable, or else it's not a model we should be using.
Lindsey
01:50:38Yeah. And. And it's a value we share, too, which is why in the episodes ahead, we have people for each of the. The nine types that we've talked to.
And I don't. I don't know if I should say this or not. You can edit it out, but, like, it's on.
Because sometimes you have those conversations and then you get off the call and you're like, whoa, Like, We've had those conversations where we're like, are they the type that they think they are? And then what do we do about that?
You know, as people hosting this platform and saying, this is what this type sounds like and these are their experiences, how do we handle that in an ethical and responsible way?
Abram
01:51:18Right.
And I think it's that opportunity for us as well to just ask ourselves, well, is this person just expressing what we know about the type differently than what we've seen before? You know, it's an opportunity for that too, because I like to say, like, it's.
You know, you could fill this room with 50 different type nines right now, and every one of them will understand peace in their own way and express what peace looks like. Like, and getting peace, it's specific to them. Even though they're all after peace, what does it mean for them? And I don't, I don't know.
All the different ways in which everybody in the world that's. That identifies with type 9 does that. You know, I haven't seen all that yet.
Creek
01:52:02I. I swear I'm going to get better at remembering what these are called. But, like, that is availability bias of like, we.
We will define a type by the data that we have available to us. So when someone transcends that data, we're like, it's hard to see what.
Abram
01:52:20Or we don't think it is true. Right, right.
Creek
01:52:23So that's where we have to hold all these things loosely and kind of get behind the thing again. And it's not about behavior, it's about the thing behind it, whatever we want to call that. So some other observations for me, I will say, like, with.
With narrative and with Riso Hudson, it's a great place for introspection and new ways to see yourself calling out all the different ways that these instincts express themselves.
So, like, things that you may not think about, like, I mean, to kind of use the example again, like these, like, birthday cards, you know, it's like, oh, yeah, I do send a lot of birthday cards. Why is that now? So there's a lot of data there for you to kind of question, what is. Why am I doing that? What is this thing that I'm experiencing?
And is there a better way to go about that, or am I trying to fill some sort of hole that I don't think that needs filled, you know, that that could be better used elsewhere? And it's still just so interesting to me.
I've listened to this episode probably 25 times now, like, just trying to grab something More that is interesting. And trying to put myself in different mindsets as I listen to get different angles and trying to read myself into the different schools explanations.
And I. I see myself differently every time and. And can make and find a story that works for whatever it is that they're talking about.
And that's why these are just so complicated. And like with the Rizo Hudson approach, it is like it's a pretty dead split between social and self pres.
Of the categories of behaviors that I engage, I see myself hardcore in both. It's like, well then maybe one is first, one is second.
But then the relationship that is described about first and second doesn't work for me very, very well. And that doesn't mean that it won't work for other people. But it's. But it's just interesting.
Again, just more pointing to how the lines are drawn and how we categorize different behavior.
Abram
01:54:52I just remembered one of the distinctions that's definitely different between two schools or even all three schools actually is I remember hearing from Gail, I believe from the Reheuso Hudson Enneagram Institute approach is that the secondary instinct is the one that is most. What was the languaging like unobstructed or like not having Natural. Yeah, Dang it. But whereas the. Or it's like supportive, you know.
Whereas the awareness to action approach in their pattern of expression calls that space, that zone, your zone of conflict where there's. So there's a big difference there. The awareness to action approach is saying this is conflictual for you, this behavior acting this way in the world.
This is hard to do because it's undermining if you perceive it's going to undermine you being able to act the way you want to act. Right. In your zone of influence, enthusiasm, there's no influence.
Lindsey
01:56:04It's not a word in this model.
Creek
01:56:06Zero things on influence.
Abram
01:56:08I'm getting an ab workout right now your zone of all this is going to rule all three schools right now.
Creek
01:56:17Enthusiasm, inner conflict, indifference.
Abram
01:56:19I'm trying to just remember everybody's stuff right now and they're all getting mucked up anyway.
Creek
01:56:27Such a nine thing.
Abram
01:56:29You're such a nine thing. And yeah, but that's obviously that's a different thing. Like it's. What I hear the institute saying is that it's not a conflictual space.
It's actually the one that's.
Creek
01:56:45That's true.
Abram
01:56:46Yeah. Right.
Creek
01:56:47Yeah. And I'm curious, like. Yeah, and this is why we can't compare the models. Because I'm like a non conflictual space.
Would that be indifference or would that. It wouldn't be the inner conflict. That wouldn't be conflict. So is it indifference? But that is often blind spot.
Abram
01:57:02And indifference is the. Is where they're talking about. Yeah, maybe the two schools have some meeting place. But indifference and blind spot. There's similarities.
There's probably a few.
Creek
01:57:14I see more blind spot and inner zone of inner conflict.
Creek
01:57:19But.
Creek
01:57:20But then like 25% also fits in the indifference, right?
Abram
01:57:27Yeah.
Creek
01:57:28Really interesting.
Abram
01:57:28Yeah, definitely.
Creek
01:57:30And I apologize if these are too simplistic. I'm still kind of working out how to differentiate these things. So I may think I'm wrong next week. Who knows?
But this is the scary part about putting my voice on the airwaves.
Lindsey
01:57:47Be brave. Be brave.
Creek
01:57:52For differentiating. What I'm seeing is Narrative and Riza Hudson seem to be talking about.
There are these three instinctual drives inside of us that compel us to do specific things in the world.
Where ATA seems to be saying that they've categorized three systems of behavior and or prior to priority prioritization that comes from a set of complex psychobiological processes and phenomena that shape our values, needs and desires. That's a lot of big words. But how I'm seeing it in my head at least is Rezu Hudson and Narrative see these. These drives as the things inside of us.
And then they. And then from these things inside of us, we do this category of things where ATA is like, we don't know. Necessary.
We know it's just really, really complex things that are happening. Combination of a lot of different input and data and story and whatever.
But we do see that there is a pattern that happens in our behaviors, in what we seek that we are calling, preserving, navigating, transmitting, and then. But tracing it back to us. The only claim that they're willing to make is that it is coming from inside of us.
Creek
01:59:30Us.
Creek
01:59:31But it's not three things inside of us. It's a combination of a bunch of complex processes that then seem to express in three categories.
Abram
01:59:40Yeah.
Creek
01:59:41Does that make sense?
Abram
01:59:41And is it less specific because it's less scientifically able to be proven and because. I mean I.
The one from the other side of it is like one school is saying, actually there's three things and they can be found in three areas in your body.
Abram
01:59:57Is it. But is it.
Abram
01:59:58Is the awareness. I'm just. I am. I feel like, you know, most of this point about them. I'm just asking if is. There's.
Is their lack of specificity because it's actually not scientifically there's not enough science around naming it that way so they don't go there.
Creek
02:00:15I mean.
Creek
02:00:15Yeah, I think so. And that it's just so incredibly complicated that to make a claim around where these.
Creek
02:00:28What.
Creek
02:00:28What are the originations of these behaviors is just impossible to put a name to at this point, you know. But. And I think we talked about this in the history episode is war action is a lot more unwilling to make statements sense of.
Of why something is happening unless it is verifiable, falsifiable and that is unsatisfactory. Sometimes it doesn't feel we like. We like tidy things and unfortunately most of life is not.
That doesn't mean that we can't make up stories that are meaningful and are helpful full.
But I think that's just a really slippery shaky ground to start making to, to start assigning why to things that can't be proven but only experienced. That's a whole other philosophical conversation.
The other difference that I'm still messing around with is we're talking about the why, the what and the how. I see narrative and Riso Hudson speaking a lot to why and to what with varying levels of certainty and you know, clarification.
And we, we don't know that but we think of why we do what we do of the different layers of complexity, you know, object relations or wings and, and like how. How things evolved in, in us.
So the, there's, there's again that I think that the how ends up being a lot more observation, self awareness based of okay, so what are these things? And let's observe those things and, and adjust our story about it.
And then I see ata more sticking with what and how because why is really, really tough to define and it stand up over time as science and psychology evolves.
So it's like all right, so what is it that you're doing or experiencing or feeling or thinking and then how are we going to take a specific action towards altering that behavior so it's more, more adaptive, mature and skillful. And I think the, the, the weakness I suppose of that is for people that need more tools of self exploration and understanding just how to.
How do I even begin to categorize my behaviors or see more deeply into myself and self inquiry and self observation. I think for ata there's an assumption that like you should know how to do that. There's, there's a.
If we're going to do this work that's, that's part of the work. Like you can't observe yourself. Like you can't do Any growth if you don't know what's going on inside of you.
And I think the other schools are more in that sort of. This is how you observe yourself.
But I do see it falling short in specific ways of enacting the data that you've just collected outside of again, doing more or doing less or just continue to observe thoughts.
Lindsey
02:04:08No, that was a lot, a lot to synthesize.
Abram
02:04:11I feel like, you know, it is hard for me to feel like I'm leaning publicly one way because then it feels like I'm talking negatively.
So I feel the need to like balance the scales and you know, like, I'll just say like I, you know, to balance the scales a little bit from my own heart and other nines. Listening. I.
I also, you know, in what I said earlier about like the over categorization, this is, I've talked about this, these concepts on Fathom seasons before. But the monastic tradition, right, the Christian monastic tradition has these words of cataphatic and apophatic.
And cataphatic is a way to label something to be in relationship with it, because you have to have handles to understand something. Whereas cataphatic or, sorry, epiphatic is when, in the way that Kierkegaard said, to label something is to negate something.
To negate me, to label me is to negate me. So I at the same way, this is not relativism in my mind, this is me saying you also have to have category to understand something.
You can overdo it, but what the monastics knew is the best way. How they did this was the best way to understand God was to hold both cataphatic and apophatic.
I used labels, I used categories to be in relationship.
But if I overdo them, I only have the relationship with the concept that I'm limited to to think through, you know, So I just still think that the categorization here is really important. It's pretty vital. You have to have category of.
Abram
02:06:09You have to be able to put.
Abram
02:06:10Shape to these biological experiences so that you can find yourself in them, right? But you can't go to the length.
You have to be careful of going to the length where you've filled that categorization so much that you've completed it. And this is where now if you don't see yourself fully in it, well, then you're probably not that, you know, you can.
Again, this is like when you've turned something into. You've negated it now because you've conceptualized it too far.
Creek
02:06:43I think all of the schools are saying, here's a category. It's just where does the category stop is?
I think the key difference of each of the school is where they draw that line, taking into account the complexity of human nature. So I don't think any of them are saying categories are not helpful. Yeah, but what fits in that category and where do we stop categorization?
Abram
02:07:09Right.
Abram
02:07:10Because humans can't be.
Creek
02:07:13To a certain degree, to a certain extent. Yeah, yeah.
Lindsey
02:07:18One primary difference too, I think, and I remember I'll fact check this so we can cut it out if I'm wrong. But Christopher was talking about.
One of the questions we asked that I wanted to highlight here as a key difference was about if the instincts can shift around based on your age or circumstance in life. Like you can find yourself, you know, flowing in one more than the other.
And I'm pretty sure, disagree with me if I'm getting this wrong, but the narrative tradition is really the only one that. That really says like, yeah, they can shift around, they can change over the course of your life.
I think the other true traditions just say you can develop skills in the other areas, you can pay attention to them differently, but the way that they show up is fixed.
Creek
02:08:07Yeah, that is a difference as well. Interesting.
The only other thing that again is in the category of things I'm thinking about and processing through, but I may disagree with myself later is there's a. I might have already said this, but Riso Hudson in Narratives seem to indicate that instincts are more of.
And I got this word from Stephanie Spencer who is also kind of processing this, but she's like, I wonder if it's more of like an alchemical how they see the type in the instinct interact. It's like almost. Maybe this is a good analogy or not, but like, like baking where they're throwing a bunch of things in.
And then what emerges is the subtype where ATA is more co. Emergent properties like a steak in a pan sauce, you know, so like there's a. They're co. Emergent and they're.
They're more distinct even though they are directly interacting with each other. It's not an additive thing. It is a separate thing altogether.
Lindsey
02:09:27Gotcha.
Creek
02:09:28That are intermingled, intertwined that make the thing that you're eating, you know, but they're not the same. They. They don't. It's not just the subtype that emerges. And I think I said this in another place of.
It's in the slippage between the type and the instinctual bias. Is where this subtype lives.
Lindsey
02:09:55That might be a good metaphor.
Creek
02:09:57All right, so moving into a little bit more personal stuff, I'll give a brief history of my own journey of the instincts and single biases. I think I read Beatrice Chestnuts book first. I think that was my first exposure to it. And self preservation spoke the most to me.
And still when I was listening to Gail talk about self preservation, I'm like, yeah, there's still some stuff there. Like, like I really see a lot of that behavior. And so, so how would I work with that is just kind of.
Yeah, it just, it's like, oh yeah, this is the thing I do and sometimes I'll overdo it. Then the other ones like blind, like blind spot. And they didn't really have a.
They didn't really have Rezo Hudson didn't really have a name for that middle one. Secondary or secondary or something like that.
But I did again, I didn't really do much with that at that time because I didn't know what to do with it. Just like, oh yeah, these are harder for me. Like the, the sexual instinct is harder for me. Or no, I think actually. So then it's.
It's funny, like looking back into my teenage and early twenties, self external self expression was a lot more of a thing for me. Like I used to have guys. I used to have a faux hawk. Okay. And it was bad.
Lindsey
02:11:28What we'll be linking pictures in the show notes.
Creek
02:11:32I used to wear red and blue pants.
Lindsey
02:11:35No, you didn't.
Creek
02:11:36I did. I did. I used to wear fake glasses that were like from the dollar store.
Creek
02:11:42It was hyper cringe for me.
Creek
02:11:45Yeah, no, I think you.
Abram
02:11:47I think, I think I blocked it out.
Creek
02:11:50So yeah, we all go through different phases of that and it's just really interesting how much more comfortable I was externally expressing myself in that period of time.
Abram
02:12:00But was that more society societally, like culturally the norm? So it wasn't.
Abram
02:12:06It was less of that maybe.
Creek
02:12:09But I do remember like having a little bit of an issue every time, you know, I put my hair up, you know, or like just I was. It was still is an attempt to me to find my place in the group. I mean, looking backwards like, oh yeah, I was still navigating.
I was trying to find my role. I was trying to try different, literally different outfits on to figure out which one's me.
Abram
02:12:35Yeah.
Creek
02:12:35How do I uniquely fit in?
Abram
02:12:38Well, I'll just say real fast. I think I tend to think when we're younger we do more extreme things than we do as Adults to fit in.
Creek
02:12:44Absolutely. So yeah, and then getting to know Mario and then he would, he's just like, I think you are a navigator. And so we had a long discussion.
I fought it to the bitter end. But after a while, again going back to his model is more about an expression of logic, not just a category of behaviors.
And once I took that position, I could see how much navigating is that, that expression of logic. And so the preserving things that I did were always in service to navigating.
And so, and then, since then, it's just so like in his, in his model, navigating is my zone of enthusiasm transmitting his zone of inner conflict and preserving his own of indifference. And with those labels, it being able to identify what is 4ness here, what is one of those three zones and what do I.
What's the chemistry that needs to happen in order to get the result that I'm looking for, what's in my way and how do I get to the next step? And I can give an example, but I'd love to hear from you all first.
Lindsey
02:14:04I think that your example is highlighting really well how, you know, ATA emphasized. Maria Jose was like, these are not alternate names for the subtypes. Like this is a different way of looking at it.
So yeah, I think that I really struggled between social and sexual. I was like, but in ata, I'm very clearly navigating and knowing those things. I think for you, knowing you might be self pres.
Or social blind, you know. But in ata, your zone of enthusiasm is navigating.
Same for me with I think I might be a sexual subtype in the traditional subtypes model, social, definitely self preserving, blind. But I, or maybe not. See what I mean?
Creek
02:14:58That's the thing is like how do you define these categories? And whoever is placing the lines on these categories is going to determine how you identify. So these things aren't set in stone.
It just depends on where the lines are being drawn by who. So. And sometimes it's just not as clear cut, depending on the model.
Lindsey
02:15:22Right.
But one thing that I think is clear for just across the board for me is that whenever you tell me, kind of like Terri was saying this advice from Helen Palmer, resist the instinct that first comes up and see what happens. Get curious, notice what kind of energy is freed up for other things.
So is there energy that's freed up for building skills in other areas of my life when I resist that urge to navigate or to reach forward like that is the same for me in any of the models. And I Think it's. That alone is wildly useful.
Creek
02:15:58It's just a big what if question. Like, what if I don't do this? Or what if I do less of this this or do more of this?
Abram
02:16:05Yeah, yeah, I've been. I forget. I don't know exactly how long at this point I've been looking into the Enneagram thing.
But yeah, as I've said before, I've read pretty much the majority of the content out there on, you know, the Enneagram and Instincts. And I have attended many conferences and workshops and all the things, you know.
And I'll say instinct, because it's so old in us and because it is what it is to a large degree. These parts of our biology tend to be very hard to see. Right. Like our bias tends to be quite hidden on purpose. That's kind of the point of it.
It's meant to go into the background so that we don't have to keep thinking about what's important. So the tricky thing is what I've had to try and navigate over the years is this behavior seems to align with this model well.
And that same behavior seems to actually align with this model. And so, well, what the hell, which one is accurate here, which one's correct? And that's been hard to navigate.
And for me, at some point I just had to land somewhere and see which one is most. For me, it was about which one's most practical and which one's going to help me have some more clarity and which one is easier to work with.
And so after a lot of years of looking through all the schools in which I still do in some regard, but, you know, I did land with the awareness to action approach. And as a navigator especially, it's just easier to.
With the pattern of expression, it really is just easier to locate yourself and to see how, you know, one of the things that.
I forget if they mentioned this in the episode or not, but how you are, what kind of relationship you have with all three of them, because that is the totality of what makes up kind of how you express yourself in the world in different ways. And for me, I just landed on which is the most practical. I think an example is really looking at the pattern of expression.
As a navigator, I have had such conflict with transmitting myself and putting myself out there and telling people about me, but I need it to happen. I want it to happen. I just don't know how, and I don't want to, but I really do. But it's how I belong, not how I fit in. But it's how I belong.
And so recognizing, finding myself in that pattern, it made a lot of sense. But it's also especially the zone of indifference. I used to run as fast as I could away from anything that had to do with structure.
And I realized through understanding this approach, structure is actually what gave me more freedom and ways to actually belong in the social milieu that I was trying to fit into.
It's how I was able to structure and organize myself in valuable ways that that made more sense, that made more practical sense for attending to all the things.
Creek
02:19:20I guess for me, just real quick, the action, the practical action steps for me have been once I kind of landed on navigating, I could see, all of a sudden I could see some strengths that I hadn't seen before of connecting people, of being able to easily work within a group and be able to identify roles and potentials and all this other stuff. But then a lot of it's just like, oh, transmitting zone of inner conflict. That explains so much why I have a difficulty.
Creativity is always an emotional thing for me and not positive. It feels like a fight every time. Promoting myself on Instagram or doing shows with my music, I love it when I'm up there.
I feel the most alive ever, right? But it is also the most nerve wracking thing I could do. No matter how many times I've been on stage, it's still really hard and difficult.
And so that, that work of like, oh, I'm pulling back because I have some emotional charge around this sort of transmitting idea. When it comes to preserving stuff, it's like, oh, these things are getting in the way of me being able to navigate better.
So I'm going to automate things. I'm going to make things, rituals, routines. I'm going to outsource this. I'm going to get some level of accountability for this.
Whether it's working out or eating better or finances or taking care of my car.
You know, I've had too many instances where that's cost me navigating because my car was not doing the things it needed to do because I didn't take care of it. So that's to me that's been just really, really honestly more helpful in the past few years than working with type.
Leaning into the instinctual biases. So again, naming, once again, this is a lot of ata. And I think this is probably because this is.
There's such a different model, such a different approach. We obviously find ATA more practically helpful. Obviously that doesn't mean that the rest of them are not useful, doesn't have anything of value.
That doesn't. That's not what we're saying.
And I think in in the episodes to come there will be a lot more similarity than difference between what things are going to be said. So with that, thank you everybody for showing up and making it through yet another longer episode.
Hopefully the episodes become more not be nearly as long as this, but hopefully you found this helpful. Make sure to speak for yourself.
Lindsey
02:22:13I hope they're longer.
Creek
02:22:14Okay. All right, make sure you check the show notes for all the resources and links for further conversation.
Also signing up for our membership portal we're going to be doing. You'll get more behind the scenes stuff. There will be some more extra instinctual bias content on private podcasts.
We may even get some of our teachers back on to do like a live Q and A zoom call for those that are a part of our membership portal. So all of that can be found in the show notes and we will see you in a couple weeks.
Lindsey
02:22:51Bye.
Creek
02:22:56Thanks for listening to Fathoms in Anagram podcast. If this episode affected you in some way, we'd love it if you would share it with a friend or family member.
Don't forget to check out the show notes for ways to connect with us and continue your serious work as an unserious human.
Abram
02:23:28Whereas the the awareness to action approach actually calls that in their pattern of influence. Whereas the awareness action approach in their pattern of expression right in your zone of of influence enthusiasm.
Lindsey
02:23:53There's no influence. It's not a word in this model.
Creek
02:23:57Zero things on influence the AB workout right now.
