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152 – Enneagram: Dealing with Conflict (Peacemaker Type)


Listen to this episode of Soul Talks:

 

Peacemaker types are gifted at recognizing how others see the world but may have difficulty seeing their own needs and wants.  Join Bill and Kristi as they continue to draw from their daughter Briana and how the Enneagram has helped her identify areas of growth and stress points. 

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Enneagram: Dealing with Conflict (Peacemaker Type)

Bill and Kristi Gaultiere with Guest Briana Gaultiere

Kristi

God has given you a wonderful personality, but it’s been damaged by sin, stress, and pain.

Bill

We all have unhealthy and unloving coping mechanisms built into our personality that we need to overcome.

Kristi 

Let’s talk about how Jesus wants to help you repair your personality and grow in God’s grace.

Bill  

We’ll draw on the ancient wisdom of the Enneagram filtered by a biblical understanding.

Kristi

Welcome back to Soul Talks.

We are continuing our conversation from last week with our daughter, Briana Gaultiere. 

Briana is an Enneagram Nine, and she has become her own little expert on the Enneagram. 

We have just had so much fun, Briana, watching you grow in this and then offer this knowledge to other people in such a helpful and beautiful way.

We think you are a great Enneagram coach. 

So we are just giddy to get to be sharing you with our Soul Shepherding community. Thanks for joining us again.

Bill 

And we just need to make sure that you feel included, you listeners that don’t know the Enneagram. 

You don’t have to know the Enneagram to benefit from this podcast. 

It’s about personalities, you have a personality, we all do. So do your friends and family and the people that you work with and go to church with. 

So in talking about the number Nine, we’re talking about the Peacemakers, very relational types, a very strong personality that’s inner directed, actually relationally directed. 

If you are a shepherding type, caring for others, wanting to have harmony with them and be included and include others, and you thrive on partnering with people in situations, you’re probably especially going to relate to Briana.

Kristi  

So, Briana, we asked you last week, how the Enneagram has helped you grow personally and how it’s helped you in your relationship with God. 

We didn’t get time to ask you how it has helped you in relationships with other people?

Enneagram Nines in Relationships

Briana

Yeah, so the Enneagram has made a big difference for me in relationships with other people, because it’s helped me to see that not everybody has the same perspective that I have. 

Something that’s unique about Nines is that we can pretty easily see the world from other people’s perspective. 

It’s important for me to know that other people can’t as easily see my perspective, and I’m not always as good at seeing my own perspective either. 

I’m definitely not as good about sharing my own perspective. 

So that’s been a big thing that it’s helped me with is just to recognize that specifically. 

Just to know that there’s grace in that, and that it helps me avoid disappointment and hurt and confusion from other people because I can give them some grace with that.

It helps me to know what I can and can’t expect from other types and helps me to know how I can love other people well, and how I can give them feedback on how to love me better, too.

Kristi

That’s so good. 

One of the things you’re saying is that the Enneagram helps you to understand how other people see the world differently than you and helps you to feel okay about you having your own perspective on the world that’s different from other people. 

And that that’s okay, even good. 

Briana

Yes. 

Kristi

And it helps you, it sounds like, not to judge them, or to judge yourself. 

Then you said it helps you to offer grace when people have different opinions and that’s really important I think, especially for the Nine, or types like the Nine that find conflict stressful and want to avoid conflict. 

So do you find that to be true? That conflict is stressful, and yet different personalities can cause conflict?

Enneagram Nines and Conflict

Briana

Yes, definitely. 

Nines can sometimes perpetuate conflict, because they’re avoiding it. 

Bill 

Isn’t that an irony. 

Briana

That’s the problem. It’s something I really don’t like.

Bill

It takes courage and sort of prodding yourself to follow Paul’s advice in Ephesians to speak the truth in love and deal with that issue. 

Don’t let the sun go down on your anger, right? Because you maybe don’t even realize that you’re angry, but you’re repressing it. 

So it’s important to have those difficult conversations.

Briana

More important in that phrase that you mentioned from Paul is more than just speaking the truth in love. It’s very easy for Nines to speak love. 

We can effortlessly speak love in most cases. But speaking truth is very difficult for Nines in situations where truth is hard and it’s not something that the other person is going to want to hear. 

So specifically for us Nines, speaking the truth in love is really important.

Bill

Yeah, so I’ve seen with you Briana, how much it helps you to be drawn out. 

 Briana

Yeah. 

Bill

That’s something that fortunately mom and I have learned to do just because of our orientation as therapists and over the years and as parents. 

But we’ve especially seen you flourish and how much you’ve needed that. 

When we ask you questions, you know — Wow was your day? And then go deeper with that — Well, how did that feel for you? What was it like for you? 

Or, it seems like you’re been a little tired or a little sluggish lately.  Or it seems your spirits are a little down. What’s going on with you? 

Drawing you out.

Back to our conversation last week about how much the Enneagram helped you in college, that was where I really saw that. 

You experienced that there were things that were stressing you or conflicts or responsibilities that were overwhelming you as you talked them out. 

It’s like at first you didn’t want to talk about it because it was stressful and conflictual and it wasn’t happy stuff. 

But you learned that as you did that and received empathy, it gave you energy.

Helping Enneagram Nines Process Emotions

Briana

Yes, definitely. 

I think I don’t know if this is true for all Nines, but it’s definitely true for this Nine, for me. If I’m not talking about it, I’m probably not even feeling it. 

For me, I am a verbal processor. 

I need the help of someone else to draw me out, and actually help me understand and pay attention to and recognize what I am feeling and then to be able to feel it. 

And then to have someone else join me in feeling that way so I’m not fully burdened by it, and so that I can actually feel relief from it.

Bill

That’s great wording by talking out your experiences and your concerns.

Hearing yourself say things with someone who’s listening attentively, or they’re putting energy and care into you, that helps you to feel your emotions. 

Briana

Yeah. 

Bill

So now getting in touch with those emotions, you now have options for how to get your needs met and that gives you energy.

Briana

Yeah.

Kristi

There’s been some times when you’ve actually given Dad and I the gift of doing that with you.

Where you have come to us and you have let us know that you think you’re probably having some emotions that you’re not aware of, or shut down, and you’ve invited us and let us listen to you. 

That’s a gift you give us. That’s a privilege you give us as well as yourself. 

It’s also really been helpful because some of our listeners are parents of adult children. 

We don’t want to be too intrusive or controlling. You’re an adult, you’re independent. 

We don’t want to presume that you would need us in a certain way, those kinds of things. 

So it’s helpful when you’re able to take some responsibility to say, “Yes, I’d like to receive this from you.” Or, “Yes, I’d like to invite you to listen to me in this area of my life.” And so that’s been good. 

Briana

Well, it’s kind of interesting with Nines, because sometimes we need someone to initiate for us in those situations. 

But on the other side, we can also be really stubborn, and if we don’t want to face something or deal with it, we’re not going to.

So there’s two sides to that— on one side, I need people to come to me and say, “Hey, I think we need to talk about this.” But then on the other side, if I don’t want to talk about it, I’m not going to let us talk about it. 

Kristi

So you said to me last week in a situation where I said, “You know, I had this vision for you, and I wanted you to do this, but I didn’t want to be controlling about it.” 

And you responded to me and you said, “Well, what was helpful, Mom, was that you asked me and you didn’t tell me.” 

You said, “If you told me to do it, I probably would have not wanted to do it.” 

Briana

Yeah.

Bill

Yeah. Usually people don’t like to be told what to do. We like to be invited. 

We have choice and that’s very deep in the image of God and all of us. 

So that’s a great example, Briana.

Just to see your growth and how initially, like all of us, not just Enneagram Nines, or whatever our personality type is, we all need that experience that the prodigal son has when his father runs out to him and says, “Hey, welcome home. I love you, I missed you. I give you grace. I just want to be in relationship with you.” 

Or the Good Shepherd looks for the lost sheep. We all need someone that is looking to us with interest and with gladness to know us and taking that initiative. 

It’s just very deep in how I think God has created us and how we’ve been damaged by the fall and by sin and being disconnected from God is that we need that reconciliation. 

We need a certain sense of being pursued. 

As you experienced being drawn out and putting words to what you were experiencing and feeling with someone who has given you empathy, you develop an appetite for that and a vision for that.

Then you took initiative and responsibility to begin coming to us. You would realize I need to process and so you would talk to us or you then you begin doing that with your friends. 

Then your friends began doing it with you, because you became this increasingly bright light of warmth and empathy, because you had experienced it, as well as having some personality traits that took you towards others and listening anyway. 

But now having really experienced compassion and tender hearted listening, you saw the power of it, and you had an even brighter, warmer sense of presence to listen to other people and care for them. 

So you’ve become this unofficial counselor amongst all your friends.

They come to you and talk to you to process with you. “I know Briana is going to listen and give me empathy, and I’m going to feel understood and cared for and I’m going to be connected to God who will give me energy for my life.” 

Briana

I guess you hear my side of the conversations I have with my friends!

Bill

Yes, we do.

Kristi

But it does seem, Briana, like you are growing in believing and noticing that your presence does matter. 

I’m so grateful that you’re growing in that because certainly it’s obvious to Dad and I that your presence matters in this world. 

But I think that’s a special lie that Satan comes after the Nine with to make them think that their presence doesn’t matter.

Family Systems and Birth Order Dynamics With Enneagram Nines

Briana  

Yeah, definitely. 

I agree that’s been a big thing. 

As I’ve read about the Enneagram, a lot of times it talks about the childhood wound or you know, just what you grew up believing as a kid as you related to the world around you and people around you. 

Sadly, I can think of moments as a kid in relationships with other people where I felt like my presence here doesn’t matter. 

So therefore I don’t need to show up. 

It would be easier if I just kind of disappeared in the background and let other people be kind of drawn into the spotlight and I can actually help them feel good about themselves. 

Therefore that makes me feel like I’m important, but that’s actually not highlighting my importance. 

So that’s something that the Enneagram has really helped me with and really helped me understand that I do matter. 

God has also kind of come with that to speak the truth, and to me as well, just that I do matter. 

And the very fact that I’m here and alive and breathing means that he has purpose for me, and that there are things in this world that he wants me to partake in and offer to other people.

Kristi

That is so important because as your parents, and seeing your story and seeing that you were a third child, we already had a boy and a girl — strong personalities in our first and second child — then you were so sick as a baby, you’re a miracle. 

You were in Children’s Hospital for a month when you were six weeks old, fighting for your life. 

It is a miracle that you’re alive. 

And it would be easy in any of those things for you to interpret as well, my presence doesn’t really matter or isn’t needed here. 

Satan twists that and really stabs that dagger into your soul. 

It’s very clear to Dad and I that it’s a lie, but we can have empathy to see how if we put ourselves in your position, how you would have felt that way along with other dynamics in the family with the strong personalities of your older siblings and being the third. 

As a youngest child, I have some empathy as I was the third also. 

So I have some empathy there for you with that just from my own experience. 

Bill

So what is it about the younger child, Kristi, because we have some younger children listening.

Briana

This is an older child speaking.

Bill

I’m an oldest child. 

So what is it for the two of you as the youngest child in your family systems that you can feel left out and like your presence doesn’t matter?

Kristi

Well, I think it’s easy to compare yourself with your older siblings, and compare their strengths with your weaknesses or areas where you just feel I can’t compete with that, I can’t enter into that. I’m nothing like that. 

Or they’re getting all this attention and affirmation around these things, and there’s no room for me.

It’s very easy as a third child, in my experience, and I observed it with you, Briana, to feel like you’re kind of lost, kind of a tag-along. 

Sometimes things get chaotic in families and sometimes you just feel like I can’t have any needs here because the family can’t handle another need or another personality or another voice in this conversation that everybody’s trying to get what they want.

Bill  

Older siblings have—they’re bigger than you, they have mental capacities that you don’t have, they have abilities that you don’t have. 

Because when you’re a kid, two years, certainly four years, five years with an older sibling — there’s huge differences. 

So you just feel like you don’t measure up.

Briana 

Yeah, and it’s very overwhelming. Sometimes you just want to hide.

You want to escape. You want to shut down to it all.

Bill  

So the point here is that your whole personality now is forming, being shaped and molded in this kind of a world.

Kristi

Yes, very early on.

Bill

As you were illustrating a minute ago, Briana, it’s forming a sort of defensive structure in the personality or a false self. 

So what you illustrated, Briana, was you learned early on that a way to sort of overcome this feeling of being left out, or I can’t keep up as well, was that I can affirm other people.

I can listen to other people, I can join with them, I can help them feel good. 

There’s a lot of wonderful loving strengths in that, but then there’s also some hiding in that and some false self in that that gets reinforced. Then that becomes your personality, not totally in a positive way, but actually in a limiting way. 

Briana

Well, an example of that, for as a kid I wanted to relate to and participate with my older siblings. 

And being the youngest, it’s easy to feel like you’re behind and like the things that you’re interested in, they’re not going to be interested in because those are childish and those are behind them. 

Like they’ve moved past that. 

So instead, I took an interest in what my siblings had interest in. 

So I would join in activities with them, so that I could participate with the big kids and have a relationship with them. 

But then that’s trained me as an adult to be that way in other areas.

Maybe it’s not not very harmful for me as a four year old to want to play with Legos with my eight year old brother. But maybe as an adult, it’s more problematic for me to only be invested in one-sided situations with other people in relationships, and just partake in their interests rather than sharing an interest.

Bill

Yes, this is interesting.

What a huge difference our birth order can make in our spiritual formation and the development of our personality.

Kristi

We just really respect you for being honest about that, and being courageous to talk about that. 

Giving us the opportunity to validate that we played a part in some of these dynamics that caused you pain, and we’re sad about that, but we want to be a part of repair, and healing, and redemption. 

You let us by being honest and inviting us into the conversation.

Bill

Yeah, another way, I think that this happened in the family context that our listeners will probably relate to is —being the youngest, Briana — you would see situations with your older brother and older sister where there were some conflicts between them, or Mom or I were disciplining them over some issue or we’re having a difficult conversation. 

Especially in being the Nine Peacemaker, you were very sensitive and tuned in to what was going on. 

You would observe some of those stressful, conflictual interactions, and you were having a lot of feelings about that and internalizing all that, so you just started wanting to avoid those things.

Briana

Yeah, well, because as a Nine — which if anyone else out here is a Nine, they can probably relate to this in situations where other people are having conflict — I could see every other person’s perspective. 

I could understand how each person felt. 

So to me, the resolution doesn’t seem that difficult, because I can understand, “Well, this is the disagreement, and this is how each other person feels about it, and why can’t they see that?” 

That is exhausting, to carry all of that, and to not be able to actually make a difference and to see other people have their limitations and ability to see other people’s perspective and give empathy with that and grace.

So instead, I just want to run away and hide and do my own thing in my own little world and not have to participate and be drawn out and have to spend so much energy and emotion on something so difficult that is not even directly about me. 

So why do I have to be a part of it? is how I feel about it more often than not.

Bill

Yeah, on the positive side of that, there’s the Peacemaker role. 

There’s the mediator, the Reconciler in that you are really good at tuning into both sides of the conflict and to personalities that are different or untraditional, or some people might judge them as being wrong or something — you can champion that underdog.

You can see in that outsider their perspective and their feelings and care for them, which is why the Peacemaker types so often become spiritual directors and counselors.

Because you’re just really good at joining with people and seeing the good in them and caring for them, that’s a strength in Nine’s personality. 

But then potentially, the downside is if you’re not caring for yourself in that process, then it becomes really stressful and overwhelming.

Briana

Yeah. 

And if I’m trying to carry the burden solely on my shoulders, that becomes really problematic and really exhausting, rather than understanding that really God’s the ultimate Peacemaker.

He’s the one who carries the burden, and he’s the one that can offer reconciliation. 

It can’t be done only with my strength.

Stress Lines for Enneagram Nines

Bill  

Yeah. And so this is where Jesus comes in and says, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons and daughters of God.”

Unfortunately, I think we hear that and we tend to think, oh, Jesus is saying, “Be a peacemaker.” 

Well, we do need peacemakers — it is a good thing to bring peace. 

But I don’t think that’s what Jesus is saying there. 

I think what he’s saying is that when you are a peacemaker, when you’re meditating in a conflict, that is stressful, that’s not a naturally blessed position to be. 

Remember that there is a source of power and strength and love beyond you, in the Kingdom of God, where you are a daughter of the Lord, you are a son of your Father in Heaven. 

So taking security and comfort and strength from the Lord’s presence with you, that’s what helps you face those conflicts in difficult situations. 

So before we close, we let’s talk a bit about the stress line for the Peacemaker, the Enneagram Nine.

How when there are these situations of discomfort or any kind of stress or pain, the tendency is to fall into an unhealthy Six, which is the Loyalist and struggles with fear and anxiety.

A big part of the power of the Enneagram is these dynamics.

The Enneagram is a very non boxy theory of personality.

First, you’ve got nine different types.

You’ve got three subtypes within each of those nine types.

Then you’ve got all these lines where, as we’ve illustrated with Briana as a Peacemaker Nine, in growth moves to the Three. We talked about that last time. 

But in stress, you’ll tend to take on some of the characteristics of an unhealthy Six. 

So what’s that like for you?

Briana

There’s several things that means for me.

A big one is just living and dwelling in fear and kind of being crippled by that, and being ineffective because of it. 

But another one is being loyal to a fault, like being overly loyal in situations where I probably shouldn’t be, where it’s not to my own health or to my own benefit. 

Then out of that not being able to advocate for myself in situations when I need to. 

So it can kind of translate into a more problematic people pleasing, to where I feel enslaved to that out of this perpetuated fear and anxiety and just kind of feeling stuck in that. 

Sometimes in problematic ways, it also kind of pulls out a need for security and feeling like sticking in places of comfort, rather than pushing myself in courage out of my comfort zone and moving into areas that are difficult, but growing. 

I tend to resist that more because I crave and feel like I need this security when I’m in a stressful situation. 

So those are probably some of the main ones.

You might be able to speak more to some of that, I might be a little bit blind to it. 

Bill

You have a lot of self insight there that you just demonstrated. 

I think that’s really the key point for all of us, is to realize that in our personality, we’ve got these potential ruts where we’ve got this downward slide that we will fall into without realizing it. 

The Enneagram predicts what that is for each type.

For you, it predicts it as a Peacemaker, you slide into the rut of being overly loyal and anxious and fearful and you don’t even realize you’re doing it. 

The Enneagram helps you to see that. And then now you can make choices to go a different direction. 

So you’ve learned to really incorporate some of the aspects of the healthy Three in how you relate with people and how you bring yourself and your inner experiences and feelings into relationships and seek empathy and seek to partner with people to get work done. 

These kinds of things help you to take courage and not just fall back into an anxious, fearful, insecure, unhealthfully loyal pattern. 

Briana

Yeah.

Kristi

Well, we really are grateful that you have joined us in this conversation and I want to pray for you as we close out this episode. 

Lord Jesus, thank you, that you are inviting us each to take courage to let you open our eyes to the truth about ourselves.

To let you, Holy Spirit, the Wonderful Counselor, show us ways where we are stuck in ruts where we’re trying to secure ourselves, and where we’re not offering the fullness of the gifts and talents you’ve given us in love for our neighbor.

We thank You for this tool, and we ask, Lord, that you will continue to guide us in your truth.

In Jesus name. Amen.

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