Break Out of the Box: Enneagram Type Three: The Performer – What’s To Be Done?

This series is dedicated to illustrate and explore every day human communications.  It is my desire that hearing the breakthrough experiences of others, that it will present an insight or opening in how you can create conscious communications with everyone in your life.

In my work with my clients who have the Enneagram Structure Three: The Performer; this type has been repeatedly encouraged and validated that their worth is based on what they accomplish, their endless list of things to get done.  Attention is focused on success and what it looks like in all forms.  They are the model for achievement and pressure themselves to live up to their fantasies of accomplishment and reward.  Outside validation is essential, even though others look to them as the ideal model, the Three experiences confusion between “Am I pleasing me or them?”

Threes view relationships in a similar success framework as they focus on how best to accomplish or achieve feelings and empathy with others.  They believe they can attain success through hard work, and this means in relationships too.  A Three can easily imitate the appropriate feelings in any situation, yet sometimes they are not sure what they really feel or want to say.  As a result, a Three misses out on the value a relationship offers for them to access their own deeply hidden wants and needs, and to learn to cultivate the quality of listening to their partner for their needs.

An Enneatype Three client of mine is highly successful in giving money and material possessions in his personal relationships as his known “success” strategy.   His accomplishments in a “doing” sense, was the way he showed love to his partner, because in his perception it validated his worth.  The problem this creates is a perpetuation of the structure that believes love and worth is based on the doing, rather than being.

As the Three is encouraged and often times expected to perform, their personal feelings, wants and desires are pushed to the background.  Threes experienced that no one cared what they felt and it was easier to suppress the personal feelings in exchange for the attention and praise received from doing.

In the case of my client, he entered his personal relationships based on what his self-perception of his worth was – success through doing, rather than the deeper “being” qualities, which for Threes come to light as generosity, self acceptance and being inner directed.

When it is necessary to have conversations involving uncomfortable personal issues, the Threes begin to disengage.  Threes have a hard time just listening, allowing an answer to come, rather than immediately rushing in with the goal to fix the problem, do something.  The discomfort triggers feelings of possible incompetence which is the worst fear for a Three.   In business, Threes are rock stars in fixing problems.  Yet in personal relationships, Threes have not had the models or adapted tools to be okay and stay with uncomfortable conversations and will often become short tempered, irritated, judgmental and arrogant when in one.  The strategy is to retreat from anything that might probe into their own wants or needs.  The risk is great, thinking that since no one cared before, why would that be different now?  Instead, Threes appear disconnected as they lock into the known and comfortable realm of constant activity avoiding anything that gets close to their personal feelings.

My client shared that he had been married four times with each one ending badly.   Though he was highly effective in his professional endeavors, at this stage of his life he wanted success in an intimate relationship and he was ready to look at what the difficulty was in keeping him from experiencing it.  We explored the conditioning and mirroring he received during his childhood and how the Enneatype Structure Three solidified.  It takes great courage for a Three to engage in consciousness work for their entire existence has been focused on the outside, rather than the inside for validation of self.  Threes have a hard time accepting the idea that others could love them for who they are, rather than what they achieve.  It does not occur to them that the most important person who has rejected them is themselves.

Because they become convinced that their real self is undesirable and that only their performance is worthwhile, to give up doing for being is unthinkable. Yet, if Threes never take that risk, never dare to explore the real person they left behind in childhood, they may become successful in the eyes of others, but they will not know what it really is to be themselves, nor will they be able to relate to, much less feel love, from anyone else.

My client needed a tool that was structured and included measurable results.  The power of the Enneagram is it provides a unique map to personal growth with guided steps to shed the behavior patterns, and for my client that was him experiencing mutually loving relationships.

 

Tips to for a Three:  Nurturing Personal Relationships

1. Slow down, focus completely on the person speaking.  Cultivate empathy.
2. Allow some pain and difficult feelings to just be and give them time.
3. Look below the surface for your real needs.  How can you express them with confidence?
4. Experience making and achieving fewer goals.  Do some things just for fun.

 

The one encouragement I want to give for Threes is that it is within your power to let the real you emerge and allow others to support and love you for exactly who you are.  Because we do!