How the ENNEAGRAM helps you face your anxiety | Nate Punzalan

I’m an enneagram type 7. That means that in my childhood, I didn’t feel that I could get the nurturing that I needed in a dependable and consistent way. My parents are not to blame for this. It’s someone else. But that’s another story.

The enneagram is almost like a personality theory that looks to the wounds you had early on in life, and the way you coped with those wounds or threats. Then, as a child or young adult, you had to adapt and find a way to cope with those wounds, and that coping mechanism eventually grew to influence your personality today.

It’s like, when you were young, you had to put on armor to protect yourself. And you’re still wearing that armor today, and it reflects in your personality.

A type 1 will usually have felt disconnected from the protective figure in their life. That person, whether mother, father, grandparent, or God, seemed too strong, abusive, distracted, overly strict, or overly lenient. Especially in religious households, it probably became a thing to have to work hard or perform in order to please that protective figure, lalo na if that person was God.

To cope with this, type 1s made themselves their own judges and critics. They developed their own black and white list of rules, and it had to be followed or else they weren’t good enough. 1s started to feel like they would never be acceptable if they weren’t perfect. That they always had to try to be better.

Their own feelings and desires were probably always put on hold so that they could be responsible and do their duties or improve themselves. Anger is one of those commonly repressed emotions, but then it’s usually redirected into judgmental or