Enneagram Type 4 & The Freedom To Be Oneself
Enneagram Parts Work (EPW) is a new modality that allows us to summon the Enneagram types as parts of ourselves and experience them in a direct, firsthand, palpably-felt way.
Recently I gave an EPW session to a client who spoke to me about putting on a mask of inauthenticity to participate in society and hardly ever feeling seen for who he really is.
Though he initially suggested exploring Type 2, I suggested we call up the Type 4 part of him, since not feeling seen and feeling forced to be inauthentic by a world with low emotional intelligence are major themes in the 4 space.
The change in his energy when I had him merge or become this part of himself was dramatic. While his tone of voice had been flat and neutral before, suddenly there was an upwelling of energy. “I want to zing around” - was the first thing he said in the merged state. “I just want to express freedom, I just want to be free,” he would later say.
As we explored this part and let it have its time to voice all it was feeling – which is one of the purposes for merging with it, i.e. getting to know the chosen Enneagram part in a deep and intimate way – the central desire that the Type 4 part kept repeating, and what emerged as the central theme of the session, was freedom. Specifically, the freedom to be oneself. To use my client’s words, speaking on behalf of his 4 part:
I want to run through the nighttime air with a thousand fireflies around me. I want to see the beautiful earth all over… I want to be free. I want to spread my wings and I want to fly.
I notice that many people whose main Enneagram type is 4 – or, articulated in the framework of EPW, their dominant Enneagram part is 4 – might become therapists or counselors, holding space for other people’s emotions. They might be artists, alchemizing their inner world through a favorite medium. Or they might become actors, channeling their deeply emotional nature, as well as talents for expression and dramatization, into a source of entertainment for others.
But in that common thread of energy that runs between all 4’s, there’s always a desire for a certain quality of freedom. It’s the freedom to fully be themselves, the freedom to be fully self-expressed, which can look many different ways depending on the individual. There’s always a draw towards cathartic forms of self-expression and full permission to feel the whole spectrum of emotional life, from devastating grief and heartbreak to unbridled joy and ecstasy. The 4 in us seems to have an affinity for emotional extremes, both positive and negative.
It is eye-opening to consider that we all have a part of us like this. We all have a 4 part, and whether or not our 4 wants to run with the fireflies, we can be fairly certain that this aspect of ourselves wants to feel free in its heart and free to be itself, however that manifests.
Another important finding from this session was that the 4 part had been suppressed by other parts. If you’re familiar with parts work, you probably already know that parts can be in all kinds of different relationships with each other, and suppression is a very common dynamic. An aspect of parts work that we find extremely helpful is that it gives us a way to undo those mechanisms of suppression by working directly with the parts doing the suppressing. EPW, as a particular expression within the bigger family of parts work modalities, gives us a way to do that, while also incorporating the systematic knowledge of the Enneagram. This knowledge helps to facilitate deeper shifts as dots connect in our minds, hearts, and bodies.
After exiting the merged state, I invited my client to express love and compassion to the 4 part he had previously been merged with. This is a similar move to the IFS1 move of having Self offer love and compassion to parts we were previously blended with. In Enneagram teaching and in EPW, what IFS calls “Self” is roughly the same thing as “Essence” or “True Nature,” which is inherently open-hearted and loving. It is the “zero point” that embraces all the other nine points in open arms.
The Enneagram has been historically taught as a system for transcending personality, the ego fixations originally identified by Oscar Ichazo. But EPW is informed by a different wisdom current that is less oriented towards transcending the personality and more oriented towards integrating it. It is a new way of engaging with the symbol that happens to bring about novel experiences of the Enneagram types, which tend to feel deeply meaningful to the person having them. If this resonates with you, welcome to the new way. Welcome to the Enneagram Revolution.
