#ELbookclub August 2021 pick
Early on in the pandemic a sweet friend sent me two books on the Enneagram. She had been a long time advocate for the Enneagram and I was a skeptic outsider. If weâre talking about our personalities this most certainly describes each of us to a T. Her the achiever, gregarious and outgoing. Me the perfectionist, introverted and always questioning. Words are so deeply meaningful and valuable to me, and I love being able to articulate why I do the things that I do, or how I receive things in my life based on the way my brain works. So when Becoming Us: Using the Enneagram to Create a Thriving Gospel-Centered Marriage by Beth & Jeff McCord came up on the book club list, I was excited to see how this tool could intersect with our marriage and faith.
In college I did Gary Chapmanâs 5 Love Languages, and while it certainly confirmed my love of words and my need for affirmation in those words, it left a little in the way of describing why my brain seems to work the way in which it does. Donât give me wrong, The 5 Love Languages is a fabulous tool in relationships to understand how your partner or best friend desire to be told they are loved, and how they show their love and appreciation just as much it as it is a dynamic tool in the workplace when providing feedback to colleagues and supervisees. I can tell you it is immensely helpful to know that ’employee A’ wants a written sticky note of good job whereas ’employee B’ would prefer a snickers bar and ’employee C’ prefers a high five. Many of you were likely familiar with the Myers-Briggs and Iâve likely even had to take this in your workplace. A lot of companies have now moved away from this in towards the Enneagram for similar reasons.
A bit of backstory on the Enneagram, itâs actually based on:
The Enneagram of Personality, or simply the Enneagram (from the Greek words áŒÎœÎœÎα[ennĂ©a, meaning “nine”] and γÏÎŹÎŒÎŒÎ±Â [grĂĄmma, meaning something “written” or “drawn”]), is a model of the human psyche which is principally understood and taught as a typology of nine interconnected personality types. Although the origins and history of many of the ideas and theories associated with the Enneagram of Personality are a matter of dispute, contemporary Enneagram theories are principally derived from the teachings of the Bolivian psycho-spiritual teacher Oscar Ichazo from the 1950s and the Chilean psychiatrist Claudio Naranjo from the 1970s. Naranjo’s theories were also influenced by some earlier teachings about personality by George Gurdjieff and the Fourth Way tradition.Â
As a result of such history, the Enneagram has become wildly popular within the millennial Christian community. So as with anything with words carrying such wait for me I was curious to see where I fell upon the Enneagram and S the words chosen to describe my number were at all accurate to how I felt. And man, did I feel seen. Itâs amazing to me how accurate a simple test can be to help me to articulate some of the ways that I feel about things or why I think what do what I do from a core of reasoning. As a behavior analyst itâs quite easy for me to discern the purpose, the function, or the why people behave the ways in which they do , however itâs often so difficult to ascertain past history of reinforcement without knowing more about a persons background. Because letâs be honest, our childhood, our travels, our schooling, and every interaction throughout our lives shapes the way we view the world in the way in which we behave.  Family may know that and we may understand that the Enneagram has proven to be a useful tool in describing to others those core  beliefs of why we do what we do.
Wikipedia
Iâve talked a lot about the Enneagram and shared things on my Instagram, plus if you know me in real life this will come as no shock. And while Iâve known for a while what most of the important ladies in my life are characterized as, I had only been guessing as to what number my husband was. Before reading Becoming Us, which essentially is about the Enneagram in regards to your marriage, I had my husband finally take a test for me. We often view things from different perspectives and while I know him very well, I was curious as to my assumption in comparison to what he answered in a quiz. While I had it narrowed down between two, I was a little surprised to learn that he was a Six. But after reading through this book in the lens of a One married to a Six, itâs a beautiful thing how you can begin to understand your spouse a bit more.
This book is not at all a book about counseling, marital drama, or even conflict resolution. More so, itâs a story about a couple and their journey to understanding the Enneagram independently and together as a unit. Itâs real life situations and how they chose to view those situations from a different perspective and how it changed their worlds. As Iâve shared some of this with my husband, I think itâs been eye-opening to each of us to better articulate our rationale, and to better understand the other persons thought process. As with anything, this is simply a tool to utilize to step back and understand things from the other persons perspective. For me itâs helpful because itâs validating. It makes me feel less like Iâm a crazy person to know that hey, Iâm not the only one! Anxiety and OCD also explain a lot of my rationale for certain things, but the enneagram is a much more of a fun tool. For him, it helps me know when heâs not so great at putting to words what heâs really thinking or his rationale.
We’re in year 10 of being married and every year is different. Every year we have an opportunity to learn more about each other, to learn more about ourselves, and to learn how to better work together as partners and as parents. And it is, work. Just like any important relationship in your life. If youâre interested in the Enneagram I would certainly recommend this as another avenue to create conversation with your significant other, and to continue to learn to be in relationship as an infallible human with another infallible human seeking to point others to Christ.
