Exploring the Enneagram Arrows
On what happens when we flip unconsciously into our connected types – and the potential in working CONSCIOUSLY with our arrow points
Image in public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
A central part of the study of the Enneagram is to understand how the archetypes move with the arrows. When we master the arrow layer of the Enneagram, the whole system expands, and each type becomes a doorway to a deep and complex understanding of human psychology. In my view, it’s the arrows that make the Enneagram system… profound.
Getting to know ourselves through our Enneagram type – AND our arrow types
Looking at the Enneagram symbol, you can see that each number connects to two others via the inner lines. These two connected types, are the arrow points.
For example, as a 7, my lines go to 1 and 5. Number 1 is traditionally called my “direction of disintegration”, or my stress point. And number 5 is what's typically called my “direction of integration” – or my security point.
I love exploring the Enneagram arrows. In my view, it’s the arrows that give the Enneagram system the complexity that makes it interesting – and accurate.
Actually, the arrows are the reason I got interested in the Enneagram in the first place. Because when I was typed as a 7 many years ago, I thought it was the silliest thing I've heard. Fun, easygoing, enjoyable - me?
Oh no. Quite differently, I was stressed, rigid, perfectionistic, caught up in labels of rights and wrongs, and very judgmental. There was no room within that paradigm for joy.
Do you recognize the 1?
I had such an aha-moment when I realized that 1 is the stress point for the 7. Because as I read about the 1; I saw myself. And then, as I slowly began trusting the system, I started seeing the outlines of myself in the 7 too. And I realized: I have some serious inner work to do to let go of this stress.
It was such a gift to have the Enneagram to support me through my personal transformation journey. The Enneagram became sort of a map for me, a map of both my shadows and my potential. I more or less rediscovered my own energy through exploring the 7th archetype of the Enneagram. And with my archetype as a map, I felt I got a vision – a direction for my inner work.
It was through exploring the 7 I rediscovered my creativity and joyfulness. But… it was the 1 who taught me the dynamics that kept my joy and creativity IMPRISONED: judgmentalness, rigidity, right-wrong paradigms.
Today, six years later after I started my work with the Enneagram, I'm a typical seven most of the time. But I know very well that the embrace of my core archetype: Could only happen because I acknowledged my painful 1 patterns!
I think it’s quite common when we first come to the Enneagram, that we recognize ourselves more in the direction of stress than in our core type. Many of us live under extreme stress, and when that stress becomes chronic, all that is left of us… is our stress patterns. Because of this, I believe it’s crucial to include the arrow points in our Enneagram study from the very beginning.
Escaping ourselves - Moving unconsciously with the arrows
The arrow points have been under discussion in the Enneagram environment the later years.
Everybody agrees that when we flip unconsciously into our stress point, we draw on the unhealthy sides of this type. But when it comes to what happens when we move with the OTHER line (our “direction of integration”) to our security point - there are much more disagreement about what happens.
As a 7, my security point is the 5. I originally learnt that my golden goal is to overcome my seven-ness and embrace the best qualities of the 5. Basically, I was taught that my goal was to stretch towards my security point, while sort of “avoid falling down” to my stress point.
Today, I see things differently. And I observe more and more Enneagram people agreeing with me on this:
Our aim is not to move with one of the arrows and avoid the other. Both arrow points have something to contribute with to balance our core type. What matters though: is whether we employ our arrow points unconsciously or consciously!
When we unconsciously start acting out patterns of one of our connected types, that’s a sign of us escaping ourselves. And this appeals just as much if we’re moving in the “direction of integration” as if we’re moving in the “direction of disintegration.”
I've listened a lot recently to the Enneagram podcast by Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes. And I resonate a lot with how they approach the arrows. When we move from our core type into one of our arrow points unconsciously, Paes and Chestnut explains, we tend to act out these types’ less healthy patterns. Basically, by switching unconsciously into one of our connected types, we just start drawing on one of those types ego defences, rather than the defence of our core type.
While the unconscious movement in our direction of “disintegration” might come more clearly across as unhealthy than when we move along our line of integration, both the moves are problematic.
For example: when I become stressed: I have a tendency for rigidity and judgement (typical shadow sides of the 1). When there is no stress around me, but I just collapse into a sort-of-relaxed-unconscious-mode, I often become very intellectual: I start harboring mental information, get lost in my inner worlds, and I forget to take care of myself. These are unhealthy qualities of the 5. And while they aren’t AS problematic for me as the 1 traits I take in under stress: they don’t serve to make me happy.
What makes me happy, is always – as I’ve experienced it – to embrace my seven-ness, and learn to master it!
When we flip to our arrow points unconsciously, that’s an escape strategy. The two directions just express if there were stress or collapse involved in this escape. Either way, we’re employing our arrow points as release valves, because we can’t handle staying with ourselves.
And none of the unhealthy strategies of our connected numbers are in alignment for us.
Personally, it helps me to understand this by envisioning how stress and collapse express in our bodies: while stress tend to manifest as tension, collapse can manifest as numbness. Neither of those expressions are my healthy state.
As an Enneagram student, you definitely want to get to know the unhealthy sides of both your arrow points. By doing so, you have some powerful hints to catch yourself when you go unconscious and try to escape yourself! As you recognize yourself playing out the unhealthy traits of one of your connected numbers, check if you're attempting to evade yourself – and bring yourself back!
Conscious work with the arrows – to integrate the disintegrated parts of ourselves
Now: here comes the interesting part! Cause what about moving CONSCIOUSLY with the arrows?
One of the reasons why I've enjoyed Chestnut and Paes work so much, is because of their approach to the Enneagram. Rather than seeing it as a system for putting people into boxes (as I’ve definitely experienced others in the Enneagram environment do), they approach the Enneagram as a powerful tool for spiritual and psychological growth.
Within this approach, the arrow points take on a whole new possibility. Cause when we choose to work CONSCIOUSLY with our arrow points as part of our inner work, BOTH arrow points contain opportunities for personal growth.
According to Chestnut, the Enneagram can be approached like a time machine. Through the type we move to in stress – our stress point - we tend to get confronted with parts of ourselves that we didn’t develop successfully in childhood, typically because our environment didn’t support or encourage us to do so. This is why when we flip into this point unconsciously, we tend to play out our wounded child, who are still ruled by undeveloped parts of ourselves.
The gift of this time machine is: by working consciously with our stress point, we can get a fresh opportunity to reclaim qualities of ourselves that was left behind in childhood!
Now, says Chestnut, when we use the Enneagram as a map for conscious inner growth, it seldom serves us to BEGIN working with the stress point. Because our work here is deep and potentially painful, and our ego will answer with a hoard of defense strategies. To prepare the ground for ourselves, we want to collect some resources first!
To do that, we follow the arrow to our OTHER connected type – our security point– and work to embody aspects of ourselves from this type.
(Obviously, this is different than how I did it… but I understand her point. When we work consciously with integrating our arrow types, it makes a lot of sense to do it this way.)
Whereas our stress point takes us backwards to unresolved childhood wounds, our security point takes us the other way: to our future self. At this point, we can find and work with values that support our core type: to gain more stability and more inner resources to take on our childhood wounds.
For example, Chestnut explains how she as a 2 learnt a lot from integrating aspects of the 2s security point: the 4. While 2s tend to focus on others, and turn into whoever they feel their environment needs them to be so they’ll be loved, 4s naturally have more focus on themselves. By integrating the healthy aspects of the 4, 2s get more in touch with their own needs and feelings – and this helps them a lot in relating in harmony to others.
After collecting our resources from working with our security point, we can then move on to the stress point: to look our most painful issues in the white eye.
Actually, Chestnut remarks, it might be our conscious work with integrating the stress point that contains our greatest potential of spiritual and personal growth! And that’s why this whole naming of “integration” and “disintegration” actually is pretty confusing.
Hallelujah! I thought when I heard Chestnut and Paes speak this out. I wholeheartedly agree!
Let’s drop this whole naming of the arrows as “integration and disintegration” points. Rather, let’s use the terms stress point and security point. These terms doesn’t make it sound like flipping into one arrow type is “better” than the other. They just tell us that the arrow points have different roles to play.
Anyway, either way you work with the arrows, make sure you get to know both your core type AND your two connected types in depth. Getting to know your core type gives you a map of your potentials and traps – and sets the framework of who you are when you stay in alignment with yourself! Then, by getting to know the typical behaviors of your connected types, you know your allies. If you like, you can even try exploring the arrow points like Chestnut and Paes suggest: like a time machine. What can your stress point tell you about unresolved childhood wounds? And which superpowers do the security point have to gift you?
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Wishing you all the best with your (Enneagram-inspired) inner work!
With love, Ida
This essay is a study for my upcoming online course: Awakening Through the Enneagram. You can read more about this course and sign up for information about it HERE.
Or go on and read my essays on the 7th type and 9th type. There are more type essays coming through the winter!
Source: Enneagram 2.0 with Beatrice Chestnut and Uranio Paes. S1 EP07: All you need to know about the Enneagram Arrow Lines.
