Those who understand the Enneagram know that it’s a valuable tool in psychology. The Enneagram, in its most basic description, describes nine different personality types. It has a wide range of applications that can help psychologists and mental health workers identify different methods of treatment for all sorts of mental health conditions.
The Enneagram is also very useful for helping to deal with addiction. By understanding the different personality types, an addiction worker can figure out how best to approach each individual’s addiction.
The Purpose of the Enneagram in Addiction
Many addiction workers have reported great success while using the Enneagram to treat a wide variety of patients. It’s already well understood that the Enneagram is a vital tool for helping analyze an individual’s psychology.
Some suggest that the Enneagram is of pivotal importance for helping people grow and mature quickly and healthily. It allows mental health workers and patients alike to identify problems that may have arisen during childhood, and to prepare for problems that the patient may be susceptible to developing in the future. It’s great because it points out the most prevalent underlying fears that impact certain personality types.
Understanding these fears provides great insight into the nature of psychological problems such as addiction. This is because, through the identification of these 9 different personality types, the Enneagram also helps to identify certain triggers or factors that cause each of these individual personality types to regress or fall off track. This can be immensely beneficial for helping identify the best ways to help different individuals.
The Enneagram’s Psychological Prowess
The basic foundation of the Enneagram suggests that there are nine different personality types. Each of these personality types has their own strengths and their own weaknesses.
Identifying the strengths and weaknesses of each personality type can be of tremendous importance for helping people overcome all manner of psychological problems. This is particularly useful in addiction.
By understanding their weaknesses, a person becomes able to prepare for situations that they may face, in which they know they will not be able to function at their best. By having an emergency plan should they encounter these situations, they’ll be better able to avoid any unhealthy behavior.
Likewise, by understanding their strengths, they’ll be able to understand where they shine. People are naturally drawn to activities and situations where they’re able to display their strengths, and a lot of addictions take root because people don’t know what their strengths are or they don’t know how to showcase them. Using the Enneagram can help people find wholesome and healthy activities that can fill the void that they may be trying to fill with drug use.
It’s a well-established fact that people have different physical, emotional and psychological needs and desires. These needs have to be met in different ways, and if they aren’t, they will manifest in unhealthy behaviors.
This is important to understand when working with mental disorders. Labeling an individual as an addict simply blankets them with a bunch of symptoms that run commonly between those suffering from addiction. However, it doesn’t take into account the individual’s own psychological makeup. This is the most important thing that you can do if you’re hoping to overcome a problem as personal and difficult as addiction.
The Enneagram also suggests that people have an ideal version of themselves. Even in the midst of addiction, they may think that they’re expressing the best Self they can be. Unfortunately, this isn’t the case. Using drugs or falling into an addiction isn’t the healthiest thing a person can do. However, learning the Enneagram’s definition of personalities can help these individuals recognize where they’re going wrong so they can heal quicker.
The Enneagram and Relapse
The Enneagram can be particularly useful for helping people prevent relapse.
Relapse is a very common occurrence for those recovering from addiction. Statistically, most people recovering from addiction will have at least one relapse during their recovery process. Thinking in terms of the knowledge and understanding of the Enneagram, you can begin to see how each individual’s cause of relapse is not the same. Indeed, each personality type will have a certain trigger that makes them more likely to relapse, and identifying these triggers can help people prepare themselves mentally and avoid relapsing.
Using the Enneagram
The Enneagram manages to identify all three areas of healing that are necessary for an individual to overcome an addiction. Most traditional recovery groups, such as AA, only address two – symbolized by their logo, a triangle within a circle. This symbolizes only two of the three necessary healing factors – heart, body, and mind. The Enneagram’s symbol, by including a hexagram which symbolizes personal growth or stagnancy (depending on the direction a person is working) symbolizes all three.
Since the Enneagram also identifies the nine personality types, each personality type is provided with a basis for each of the three factors of growth and recovery. This allows for a much more comprehensive understanding of how to most effectively help people suffering from addiction.
