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The basic emotional posture for the gut type is anger. Depending on your specific type, it may come out as aggression, passive-aggressive, or resentment. Bill shares how the Enneagram has helped him to process anger as an indicator of stress and find pathways for relaxation.
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SoulTalks
154 — Enneagram — Relaxing Your Control (Gut Types)
Bill and Kristi Gaultiere
Kristi
Hi Friends, Welcome to our home. We are so glad you’ve joined Bill and I today for Soul Talks.
Bill
Yipee, it’s time for another Soul Talks.
Kristi
Yay.
We love hearing from you and your comments.
Martha, we were so encouraged by your comment on Facebook, where you said in response to our Instagram posts, “I love this. I appreciate you taking the whole rage with the Enneagram to a more personal and spiritual level. Thank you for sharing and encouraging us to be more like Christ.”
Bill
Thank you, Martha!
Friends, if you’re not following Soul Shepherding on Facebook, we’d love to have you in our community.
We’ve got lots of Enneagram video clips — all kinds of video clips — but recently, they’re about the Enneagram.
And you can also get those on our YouTube channel.
Kristi
And we love it when you’re an ambassador with us for Soul Shepherding and share those.
Last week, Bill, we talked about the burden and blessing of being a Heart Type.
So this week, we’re going to talk about irritation and the impact of being a Gut Type.
Bill
I’m a Gut Type so I have a feeling that we’re going to be talking about me.
Kristi
I hope so.
Yeah, and you actually had coffee last week with two other Gut Types.
Bill
Two of my favorite Gut Types are my son David and daughter Briana.
We were having coffee together, and they were picking my brain about the Enneagram.
They had lots of questions and were sharing some things from their personal lives and their work lives that they wanted to understand better through the lens of the Enneagram.
Kristi
And it really is a great tool. So helpful.
Bill
Yeah, so we just want you to pull up a chair and sit down and have coffee or tea with us as we talk about the Enneagram Gut Types.
Kristi
You know, it’s been so helpful for me to understand the Enneagram and the Gut Types, having a mom who is a Gut Type, and being married to a man who’s a Gut Type.
You know, I used to experience this energy from your bodies and your presence.
I felt the impact and the power of your presence when you’re in a room.
And so then when I started reading about the Gut Types on the Enneagram, it articulated that experience for me.
Bill
So if you’re not familiar with Enneagram, our promise to you in all these podcasts is that we are not going to fill it up with jargon so you don’t understand.
We’re going to explain the terms and just let you see how this is a tool for self-awareness and your relationships.
It’s a great tool for integrating Christ-centered psychology and spirituality.
That’s what we love about it.
So there are three basic core Types.
They’re called triads because there are Nine personality Types in the Enneagram.
They go by the numbers One through Nine, and those break down into three groupings.
There are the Heart Types, which we’ve talked about last week.
Kristi
The Twos, Threes, and the Fours are the Heart Types.
Bill
They are especially sensitive, compassionate, caring, and helpful.
They tune in to other people and might struggle with guilt and shame.
They take a lot of responsibility.
They’re also very winsome people who can really make a positive impression and like to accomplish a lot.
Kristi
They care about what other people think of them.
Bill
Yeah, they’re image-oriented.
The Gut Types are also known as the Body Types. That’s the Eights, Nines and Ones.
The Eights are also known as the Challengers.
The Nines are the Peacemakers.
We did a couple of podcasts with our daughter, Briana, who’s an Enneagram Nine.
Then the Ones who are the Perfectionists or Reformers.
So those are the three Gut Types.
The people who are in the Gut Triad like a sense of independence and control.
And we do carry this energy to get things done, to want to be in charge, to lead.
Like we talked about with the Peacemaker, it’s often a more quiet energy, but there’s a presence about the Peacemaker.
They’re solid, they’re there, and they’re grounded.
They can really hold a lot as they listen to people, absorb other people, and then collaborate with people.
So their energy is a little more hidden than with the Eight Challenger and the One Perfectionist.
The Eights have got energy because they give you a firm handshake or a big hug, they’ve got a loud voice and they’re going to speak up, they’re not afraid to disagree, and they’ve got a power.
They’re often leaders with people following them and they champion the underdogs.
There are so many wonderful things about the Enneagram Eights.
Kristi
You feel their power.
Bill
Sometimes you feel their anger, and that’s why they can be Challengers and they can get a bad rap for anger.
The unhealthy Eights are difficult to deal with.
Kristi
Yeah, really unhealthy Eights can be bullies.
Bill
Yeah, because they’ve got this anger and they just want to take charge.
They’re very quick to disagree and they don’t wait for somebody else to lead.
They step out and they get people to get in line and go where they’re going.
They kind of like you to disagree with them if you disagree because they’re always up for a good fight or a good argument.
Kristi
They want you to be direct with them, they want you to shoot straight with them.
Bill
The Heart Types, on the other hand, are not necessarily that way.
The Threes may be a little bit — anybody can be at times — but the Heart Types can be more indirect, and more intuitive, which can frustrate some.
The Eights say, “Let’s get to the bottom line. Let’s get this done.”
Thank God for that orientation.
You look in our organizations and our churches and so many places in our society, and you will find the person in charge is probably an Enneagram Eight.
Kristi
One of the things that really helped me to have compassion and understanding for the Eight was when I heard someone say that the Eights are sensitive to feeling punched in the gut.
And they experience things in their life as a punch in the gut.
So they are often either punching first or punching back because they’re just experiencing life as this punch in the gut.
Bill
Yeah, so the theory of the Enneagram is that our personality type largely comes out of our developmental history, including stresses and wounds, as well as out of our own sin.
Of course, genetics play a role in the formation of personality.
But typically Eights have had a hard time with being vulnerable.
They’ve gotten hurt, or taken advantage of, or controlled as children, and they don’t want to experience that anymore.
So they learn to find their power and to take charge.
With all the Enneagram Types, we’re talking about unconscious defense mechanisms.
So we’re not aware of doing these things, and we don’t mean to be harmful or prideful.
It’s just sort of how we learn to cope in the world.
Fortunately, the Enneagram is a tool that helps us to become aware of these unconscious coping patterns, and how they can be destructive for ourselves and the people that we love, and the people that we work with.
Kristi
On the positive side, the redeemed side of the Eight can be angry for the person who’s hurting the underdog, for victims, and for the vulnerable.
They can use that anger to really champion them and to really care for them. They can be incredibly generous.
Bill
So the Eights are protectors and they can be teachers with great wisdom and speak out.
In many areas of society, they can lead.
Now any other Enneagram Types also lead.
Just a couple of examples — the Enneagram Threes are often leaders, very inspirational leaders, in the Heart Type we talked about last time.
Enneagram Ones, Perfectionists, teachers, are leaders.
Sevens often lead with a lot of positivity and enthusiasm, and in other Types too.
Kristi
We were talking about the Gut Type, so let’s get back to talking about the key gut response and basic emotional posture of anger because we’ve been talking about how it manifests in an Eight a little bit more directly, a little bit more obvious to everybody.
But in the Nine and the One, it’s not so obvious.
Bill
Yeah, the Nines will tend to internalize their anger the most and so they can be passive-aggressive, where they’re placating and accommodating up front because they’re so good at merging with people and sensing what people need and feel and wanting to be caring and encouraging and so forth.
They don’t know right away what they feel and what they need.
That’s also true of other Enneagram Types, especially the Helper Two and the Loyalist Traditionalist Six.
That’s where it can get confusing because the Enneagram is not boxy.
It’s really good at accounting for the many variations in personality types.
What we’re talking about here and last week, and then next week also with looking at these triads, is a key way that you can discern, “Well, which type am I?”.
If you’re new to the Enneagram, and you’re trying to understand what type you are, stay with it, because it is so worth it.
It’s such a useful tool, once you really settle into knowing “This is my type and the one that best describes me.”
You’ve got a whole map now that the world of the Enneagram opens up to you and you begin to get the benefits of the theory.
It’s a very ancient theory with a lot of Christian input in it, that predicts for you what you do in stress, and what you can do to grow.
It gives you a whole scale of unhealth to health within your personality type.
It’s really worth it to find out what type you are.
But discerning the difference between these three triads of types helps you find your number.
Kristi
So Bill, talk to us about what it feels like for you to be a Gut Type and to have realized this.
How has it been helpful to you to learn that you’re a Gut Type and that your basic emotional posture is anger?
Bill
Well, when we were first reading about the Enneagram eight or more years ago, I thought,
“I don’t want to be that. That’s not me — angry, a perfectionist, critical, controlling.”
It’s like, “Ahhh!”
So I looked over there at the Enneagram Threes — inspirational and winsome and I struggle with image and always want to succeed. “Yeah, that’s me, I’m a Three!”
You’re like, “I don’t think you’re a Three, Bill.”
That’s a common reaction that we have with Enneagram because it’s not like other personality tests.
It’s not just looking at your preferences or your strengths.
It’s giving an X-ray into your soul, and it’s looking at your dysfunction and your destructive tendencies and so forth.
So it was hard for me to accept.
Kristi
I would say, you don’t come across to me as an angry person.
I would not say anger characterizes you even though you are in that triad.
Because anger can manifest in some really different ways.
It can manifest like you talked about often as it does with the Nines as passive-aggressive, or with just a real firm stubbornness of “This is where I stand and I stand here!”
It’s kind of really digging in my heels, and it can be principled.
Things that maybe we wouldn’t look at and label as anger because we tend to associate anger is such a negative thing, even in the Christian church sometimes as sinful.
But anger can be a positive thing, too.
There’s such a thing as righteous anger.
Bill
Yeah, there’s energy and anger, being assertive, and speaking the truth in love are really important qualities to develop.
I think that Eights and Ones can be really good at that.
Nines may be the best at that when they’re healthy, in a very gentle and loving way, but being direct and asking for someone to look at something.
So as a One, and just as a Gut Type, for other Gut Types listening, you would likely resonate with some of the things that I’m sharing.
But we carry this load of responsibility to lead or to be right.
It’s heavy.
For me as a perfectionist, I’m just always trying so hard to do good and to do better at whatever I do.
It’s just an over-the-top earnestness.
When you’re with somebody who’s a One, you can start to get kind of tired, because they’re trying so hard at whatever it is they’re doing, or explaining.
You’re trying to track them and it’s like, “Whoa,” it takes some energy.
They’re just working at stuff.
I didn’t realize that for many years I was doing that to people.
I couldn’t even totally articulate that was my experience.
It was something that I was beginning to get a sense of in my 20s and you know, more in my 30s, particularly through our studies in psychology, and my own experience going through therapy.
Then in this last decade, the Enneagram has given a whole other layer of understanding.
Because once I accept, “Ok, I am the Perfectionist, that is my Type,” and then I get continual reminders through the daily Enneathought email I sign up for, or you and I listen to a podcast or we read a book and we talk about it.
As we’ve gotten to know the Types, and we talk about our personalities, I began to really see, “Yeah, I’m carrying this weight, where I’m just working so much to do better at everything, and my soul starts to sag under that.”
Kristi
Yeah. And sometimes it seems like you can slip into feeling some resentment over how hard you’re working and feeling like you’re the only One that’s working that hard or cares that much.
Bill
Yeah, because the energy that a One has to do it better is boundless.
Different Ones have different things that they’re focused on.
For one perfectionist, it might be keeping the house clean or cooking a great healthy meal.
For another One, it’s writing an amazing blog, leading a great small group, preaching a fantastic sermon, being the best medical doctor, or the best teacher.
Whatever it is that we’re doing, and is important to us that we value, we want to do it really well.
And it can always be improved, we want to do it better.
The other thing that happens now is you’re taking on all these responsibilities and trying so hard in life and there is the resentment that you mentioned.
Anger is building, but you don’t realize it.
This is true with all the Enneagram Types — whatever your basic emotional posture is — for the Heart Types, it’s guilt and shame, for the Gut Types, it’s anger, for the Head Types that we’ll talk about next week, it’s fear and anxiety.
Whatever that basic emotion is, it’s like the last thing on earth you want to feel.
Bill
So you’re denying it and it’s hidden to you. Other people can probably see it quicker than you can.
So that’s where when you land on your Type, and you begin to say, “Okay, now where am I angry?”
And you really pay attention to that and find that it can be really helpful.
So this snuck up on me last week.
It was a stressful week. I was trying to meet a deadline with a writing project, and I have trouble doing something halfway.
When I’m writing something, it’s important to me. I want to improve it and make it really good.
And this particular project was a much bigger project than the weekly blog that I write.
It is a notebook for one of our Institute weeks.
I was really working on this because we’re all going through five days together of Soul Shepherding community and training. I wanted this notebook to have the diagrams, the illustrations, and the questions.
Kristi
It’s a pretty robust curriculum.
Bill
Then we had other things on our plate that we needed to work on.
I was behind in addressing something really important for our ministry, so I was under stress.
I knew that and I thought I was taking care of myself with that. But then we were in the garage together and we’re working on a project that was important to you.
Kristi
Plumbing leak.
Bill
I wanted to be helpful with it. But I felt pressure to be back upstairs, finishing my writing.
So I was internally torn, and I was doing the right thing and the loving thing and I wanted to, but there was a big part of me that felt this burden of pressure and responsibility— I have got to get that curriculum done. It was pulling me back there.
Then we had some problems with fixing that hose and the leak and everything, and all of a sudden, I just hit the car in anger and realized, “Oh, I haven’t done that in years.”
Yeah, I used to do that all the time. I remember I’d get frustrated, and yelp something out, or hit something like that.
It’’s like, “Oh, wow.” I felt guilty about that because that’s the other thing, you know, I’m trying to do the right thing and trying to be responsible, I want to be Godly.
And also, “That probably didn’t feel good for Krsiti.”
So then I’m feeling bad about that, and if I just go into sinking into discouragement and turning that anger inward, having my own shame, then I’m not able to have empathy for you.
So it took me a little while to sort that out and recalibrate so that I could then say, “Well, how did that feel for you?”
Kristi
Thankfully you did.
It was actually good for me, because you said to me right away, “I am under so much pressure.”
When you said that, it helped me to have empathy for you, because I could see that that was true.
It also was helpful for me because it helped me to realize, “Well, I am too. And I’m feeling that too and I’m actually putting pressure on you because I’m so pressured.”
So you were experiencing that.
It was actually helpful for me that you were able to be honest and expressive about that, and for both of us to be able to realize and confront that.
Bill
Yeah, this illustrates the power of self-awareness.
We grow in self-awareness by being vulnerable with somebody who’s emotionally present and safe and gives us empathy.
In order to really experience our own emotions, and be able to describe them and unpack what we’re stressed about, or what we’re hoping for, or going through, we need someone who’s doing that with us.
Of course, the Lord does that. But on average, we need someone in the body of Christ to also do that for us.
By being more aware of my emotions, something I’ve been working on for many years, fortunately, I was able to just talk to you about what I was experiencing and you listened.
Then that helped me to get really dialed in more into the empathy mode of “Well, how was that for you in this stress?”
So we were able to repair.
The big thing in any relationship is the ability to repair because every relationship has disappointments, conflicts, and stressors.
Not just in marriage, but friendship, working together, and in business and church, we have conflicts.
And the issue is do we know how to talk it through in a way that’s appropriate and fair, and do we understand each other?
Kristi
We’re almost out of time here.
First of all, I want to thank you for your vulnerability in sharing about this.
For you and your journey with this and sharing with courage how the awareness of anger in your body and being honest about that has helped you.
And it’s been helpful for us in our marriage for you to be honest about that and helps me to have empathy for you.
And I see that and understand where that’s coming from, or why you’re feeling that.
But then also, I want to say that there are some hidden ways that anger can manifest that might be helpful for the Eights, Nines, and Ones and those in relationship with them to be aware of.
Sometimes anger can take the form of an attack, but it also can take the form of a withdrawal. And we can withdraw in anger, and cut people off, or shut down and go to sleep to avoid. That can actually be an anger response.
Bill
Controlling behavior is an anger response. Judging, blaming, projecting, scapegoating— just perfectionism — tends to be an anger response.
Kristi
Yeah, so if you’re Gut Type, doing some soul-searching around the discipline of confession is really a grace.
Because as we become aware of these things, and we bring them into the light of God’s grace, it’s how we grow in transformation.
Bill
Even if you’re not a Gut Type, some of the things that we’re sharing you might relate to, and Enneagram-wise one of the reasons for that might be because you might have a line to the One, Nine, or Eight.
The power of the Enneagram is these lines, arrows, and dynamics that have to do with where you go in growth or where you go in stress.
Just really briefly, for me as a One, my growth line is to the enthusiastic, positive, spontaneous Seven.
So the more I’m able to have fun and lighten up, it really helps me just feel better and more joyful and it helps my healthier One come out — the principles, the integrity, and the work ethic to be able to say, “Good enough” now.
The Enneagram is teaching me and always reminding me, “Bill, remember to have fun. Get around some people that are light and playful and spontaneous and get with your granddaughter Juliet and get on the floor and roll around and play with her.”
Then what I’ve seen is that as I incorporate more of that growth line, that healthy seven for me, that helps other people around me so they don’t get weighed down.
Then I need to watch the stress line which for the One is the Four where I can go into melancholy and self-pity. And the real sweet spot is when I go to the healthy Four of self-awareness like I did in the garage there after I lost my temper.
Kristi
Yeah, well, for me as a Two I, have a line to the Eight. So when I’m really super stressed, I can find myself powering up and getting bossy and controlling.
When I find myself doing that I can think, “Whoa, where’s the stress? Why am I turning to that? Where am I not depending upon the Lord and not bringing my needs and my true self to the Lord, but trying to take control myself?”
Bill
We had a conversation about that just today, which again, illustrates the power of the Enneagram for relationships.
That is why we’ve gravitated to using it in the counseling office, in our coaching, and in our teaching ministry because it gives us a language and a context for a conversation with somebody.
We can take all the things that we have learned as doctors of psychology over the decades and so much of that we can put into the Enneagram theory to explain to people what they’re experiencing, personally, spiritually, and in a relationship so it makes sense for them.
Then give them a map and say, “Okay, here’s what’s going to help you to grow and to change.”
So you were sharing with me about that new level of understanding about yourself as a Helper Two, how you will go to the Eight line of anger and stress because it’s so uncomfortable to feel needy or to feel powerless.
So you can be like an Eight in that sense.
Kristi
Then we also had a conversation today after a meeting when you said, “You were great in that meeting, you went to your healthy Eight.” In that case, you were talking about how I was assertive, I was engaged, and I was bringing power in that form.
So it’s a great tool that can help you grow in your awareness and it can help you grow in your Christ-likeness.
Bill
That’s the most important thing, that we become more like Jesus.
Kristi
Yes, Jesus. Thank You that You are the wonderful counselor. That you’re the one, Holy Spirit, who knows us completely, who loves us and is at work in us, redeeming us. Continue this work of redemption we pray by your Spirit, for Your glory. In Jesus name, Amen.
