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Healing + Human Potential
Is Your Personality a Safety Strategy? Find Out Which 1 of These 5 You Are!
01:04:44
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- [00:00]
Alyssa Nobriga
The five personality patterns break those five down for us. And how each develop it is a.
- [00:06]
Steven Kessler
Way of understanding your safety strategies. The original names for these patterns came out of Freudian psychology, so they were pretty pathological. So I changed them to names that describe simply what you do to try to feel safer. The earliest would be the leaving pattern. People who do that pattern are able to take their attention and their life energy away from their body pretty easily. Second in terms of age would be be the merging pattern. So think of this as the nursing stage. Everything that you need, you get by connecting to another person. So third strategy is something bad is happening and you can't leave. The only thing you can do is endure it.
- [00:48]
Alyssa Nobriga
Okay, and then the last one. Welcome back to the Healing and Human Potential podcast. Today we're going to unpack what are the five personality patterns? These are essentially safety strategies that we learned to develop in childhood, but oftentimes they're still running our lives consciously or unconsciously. And so, as you listen to this episode, I want to invite you to listen to what you think your safety strategy is. What is your personality pattern? And then the people that you love in your life, what are their patterns? So how you can learn to have healthier, more connected relationships, but as you learn it on a personal level, you can also apply it to a professional level in terms of who you work with, or a global level. This is really at the root of all relationships. And joining us is Steven Kessler, who is a psychotherapist and bestselling author, and he's really spent the last 40 years of his life developing and explaining these five different personality patterns. Let's dive in. Stephen, I'm so happy to have you and I know that your work really centers around the five personality patterns. And I am excited to share this work with my audience. Can you just give us a high level context about what this system is and what it's not?
- [01:55]
Steven Kessler
It is a, a way of understanding your safety strategies and the safety strategies of other people. That is what they do to try to feel safer. And it may be that they do that so often that it's become a constant pattern in their personality and maybe even a big part of their personality, but it's essentially a way of trying to feel safer and it's not who they are. So I prefer not to think of it as a typology, but as a way of understanding what people do to try to feel safer.
- [02:33]
Alyssa Nobriga
And I even like the word pattern because then it's less about identity, it's more about this Is just a pattern I go to when I'm stressed. It's not who I am.
- [02:41]
Steven Kessler
It's a pattern of behavior, pattern of feelings, a pattern of beliefs in the mind. So it's self perpetuating. That's why it stays a pattern and doesn't just go away over time.
- [02:56]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah, that's great. And I love that framework. And I was sharing right before we started that I also teach the Enneagram around that. I know you love the enneagram as well. And so just to help people see that it's the personality is. And we'll go deeper into that in the conversation. But it's separate than who we are. So the five personality patterns talk and break those five down for us and how each develops so we can get a sense.
- [03:19]
Steven Kessler
The original names for these patterns were. Came out of Freudian psychology. So they were pretty pathological. So I changed them to names that describe simply what you do to try to feel safer. And if we take them in order of development in terms of developmental age, the earliest would be the leaving pattern. And what the person does in order to try to feel safer is basically leave. Now that might be walking away from the conversation or leaving the house, but it also may be leaving their body. People who do that pattern are able to take their attention and their life energy away from their body pretty easily, pretty rapidly. In fact, many of them spend a lot of their time in other dimensions, which is where they get wonderful ideas and music and all kinds of good stuff.
- [04:17]
Alyssa Nobriga
And I love that the framework around these five personality patterns. There's a compassionate framework where it's like, that was. That was intelligent at the time. I'm so glad you developed that pattern. And is it still working for you now? So. So the first one I hear is leaving pattern. And I know that there's associations also with the type of the body, how it may present or look in the body. Can you share that?
- [04:39]
Steven Kessler
A couple of. One is if you take your attention and your life energy out of your body constantly, your body doesn't get much life energy to grow and develop and become coordinated. So the person has a tendency to not be so coordinated in the physical body. Often thin and often disoriented in terms of time and space. You know, late to the meeting, getting lost on the way to wherever it is. Because frankly, they don't live in this dimension of time and space where you and I are communicating right now. And so it's a little weird to them and a little foreign. And they're used to just like, okay, I think of the dimension of mathematics and I'm there. Hooray. You can't quite do that. If you want to get to your friend's house, just thinking of your friend's house, you don't show up on their doorstep. You have to move your body so and so there's a tendency to be a little disoriented.
- [05:45]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. And I saw in the image there's like that it can be more thin bodied and then looking up and out.
- [05:51]
Steven Kessler
Especially if it's paired with the rigid pattern which also tends to create a thin body. People who do leaving and rigid would be the thinnest. Second in terms of age would be the merging pattern. So think of this as the nursing stage. Everything that you need, you get by connecting to another person. You're cold, you're wet, you're hot, you're hungry, you cry out, you whine, you yell and somebody comes and fixes it. Ideally. But everything you get, you get through asking somebody else for help. And that is what the safety strategy of the merging pattern is. Connect with someone else and get them to do it for you. Get them to help you. There is a feeling of being unable to do anything yourself, for yourself except connect with the other people, which you're terrific at. Another thing to think about in this is that there are basically three ways of referencing in the world. And the way that tells you what you think and feel is to reference your own core, your own body. Think of from crown of head all the way down to the base of your, your spine, the bottom of your torso. That's where you know what you feel, what you want, what you don't want, what you're hungry for. Are you thirsty? Are you tired? It's in here. But if you want to know what's going on with someone else, you have to reference their core. How do they feel? What do they want? Who do they want me to be to make them happy? People who do the merging pattern become very skillful at referencing other people and referencing their core and can often tell another person what they feel before the other person knows because they're not doing it so well. The skill that people who develop merging pattern are missing is the ability to develop their own core or feel their own core. So that's what they need to practice.
- [08:07]
Alyssa Nobriga
And so talk to us about how that was developed, how in childhood, it sounds like there was a wound at that age stage. Is that what you're saying? And that's how it started to develop?
- [08:16]
Steven Kessler
Yeah. Typically if a person doesn't get Enough. Ideally as a nursing infant, when you need food, milk, you need to nurse, or you need attention, you need love, you need someone to come and hold you and soothe you. You cry out, someone arrives, they give you what you need. You get enough, your body gets full of whatever it is you're missing. And then your body relaxes and you feel good. I cry out, I get, I fill up, I feel good. That's what did not happen well enough for a person who does. Merging pattern. They cried out and they couldn't get full. There could be lots of different reasons. Don't have to go through those right now. But for some reason they, they couldn't get enough. They couldn't get full, they couldn't get to that feeling of yay, satisfaction, I've had enough, I'm done. Push away.
- [09:21]
Alyssa Nobriga
And so unconsciously they're merging with other people to still get their needs. Is that right?
- [09:26]
Steven Kessler
And trying constantly to get through the other person what they need and not realizing that as an adult, you know, this is great if you're one year old, but. But if you're 28, maybe it's time to learn to do it yourself.
- [09:43]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah, yeah. Give us just a high level of a few reasons that might have happened so people can start kind of self identifying, like which pattern they go to.
- [09:52]
Steven Kessler
Could be that the parent who was supposed to be taking care of them, father, mother, whoever was ill, was unable, maybe was psychologically unable to attune to the child. Because that's the most important thing that mom is supposed to do for an infant. Right. Is attune to the infant and understand what does this baby need right now? Because the baby can't tell you. And if mom couldn't do that, if mom was self absorbed, if mom was never paying attention, if mom was ill, or maybe it was dad who was supposed to raise you and he was having all those problems too. Whoever was supposed to help you, couldn't help you, you couldn't get any help.
- [10:38]
Alyssa Nobriga
I'm also thinking of parenting, you know, like let the baby cry, self regulate that whole system that we tested out at the society or whoever did. And so maybe it could have been that that generation learned to do that. So there's multiple ways that this could have happened.
- [10:55]
Steven Kessler
Maybe mom is terrified because there are bombs falling and you as a baby fall, pick up that terror and it's in your body now just thinking about it, that would be more likely to cause you to adopt the leaving pattern. Because if mom is terrified and then your body is terrified, the easiest thing to do is get out.
- [11:16]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. Great. And I want to go into all those dynamics. Yeah. But talk to us about the body type or how the energy can run in the merging pattern.
- [11:24]
Steven Kessler
This body type is very different. It tends to be actually more like a baby's body in terms of plump and round. So you, you tend to get people who are more round, more fat. In the history of this understanding of people, the earliest drawings of people caught in this pattern, it was called oral pattern originally, were of people who were very thin and looked like they were starving. So it's interesting that this, in our culture in the United States, very few people are physically starving. If you need love and you can't get love, but cookies are kind of sweet, so it's sort of like love. You eat so many cookies, you get fat. So it seems to be that it's a more round thing nowadays and the.
- [12:17]
Alyssa Nobriga
Energy is moving out towards other. And we'll put images on YouTube so people can see for those that are interested. Yeah. Okay, so we have leaving and merging. What's the third?
- [12:28]
Steven Kessler
So third strategy is something bad is happening and you can't leave, you can't get away, you can't. No one's going to help you. Maybe you've tried that. Nobody helps. The only thing you can do is endure it. And the way that you endure it is to bring your energy into your body, send it down into the lower part of your body and even into the ground underneath you to hide. You learn to hide and weather the storm. It's like going down in the foxhole, closing the lid if there's a lid and just enduring. So that pattern I called the enduring pattern.
- [13:07]
Alyssa Nobriga
And I'm just curious if there's an example of somebody in mainstream society that we can use as a reference so that people can get a sense.
- [13:15]
Podcast Host/Outro Voice
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- [14:36]
Steven Kessler
And not mainstream, but if you remember in the Lord of the Rings movies, Samwise Gamgee, the guy who's helping our hero and carrying all the load, carrying the heavy backpack. Samwise is clearly in the enduring pattern. One of the things that happens when you bring your energy in and send it down into your body is your lower body grows stronger and bigger. You get stronger muscles. You get there's this amazing thing that happens whenever a person puts their life energy into one part of their body rather than another. That part grows more than the others. So if you send your energy down you your lower body grows stronger and you get really I've heard them referred to as thunder thighs. You know, you get really strong thighs, you become able to bear a great weight. And the people who do this pattern are are chronically doing two things. One is keeping everybody grounded because since they're connected to the ground, they're able to do that. Often in an office situation, there is one person, maybe the office manager or a trusted assistant, a clerk or somebody who does this pattern and who just keeps the whole place grounded. And when they're out for the day, things get chaotic and everybody goes, what the hell happened? I don't know what it was, but when you're gone, nothing works. It's energetic. The other thing that people who are really caught in this pattern tend to do is basically bear a lot of burden for everybody else. It could be physical, but their feeling is of being weighed down. It's like, oh my God, I feel so heavy. Life is so hard. It's so hard to move. Movement is slow. They often describe themselves as feeling like they're weighing a They're wearing a coat that weighs a hundred pounds and it's just so hard to keep going. But I do keep going. I always keep going.
- [17:02]
Alyssa Nobriga
Would you say? Because it, when I hear that it sounds like not a victim. But is some of the mindset like so that we can describe and help identify. Because I know there's the energetic, but there's also some of the psychological. Life is hard. This like they've been pushed down in childhood and so that pattern is still playing out in their current life.
- [17:23]
Steven Kessler
Yeah. And they have pushed themselves down as a way to hide and endure, but the feeling is of being pushed down.
- [17:34]
Alyssa Nobriga
And that was the best way they knew how to take care of themselves. Given the situation.
- [17:38]
Steven Kessler
A person will try out all five of these solutions as a child and some of them will work given their culture, their family, their place in the birth order, their gender, whatever it is, and whichever ones work, they do more. Those safety strategies develop into a personality pattern and the ones that don't work for them, they just stop trying it.
- [18:04]
Alyssa Nobriga
And I think that perfectly tees up the fourth one. So can you share?
- [18:08]
Steven Kessler
So fourth one. When in distress, when feeling unsafe, instead of, of bringing your inner energy in and sending it down in the body, the person learns to bring their energy up in the body and send it out and out at other people. So they're sending it out in an aggressive way to dominate other people. So part of what happens is the upper part of the body gets bigger and stronger. If you see people who are professional weightlifters, you know they lift 300 pound barbells, whatever, they probably do aggressive pattern and enduring pattern. So their legs are strong and their chest is strong. That's what you need. Arnold Schwarzenegger is a good example of this. You get a V shaped shoulders to waist kind of body. So what they learn to do is fight. Their safety strategy is I don't feel safe, I will fight, I will get aggressive. I will bring my energy up and throw it at you and get you to do what I want. And I will get as big and as loud and as mean as necessary to get my way.
- [19:33]
Alyssa Nobriga
And what I read in your book is that if it the enduring might have tried to become a fighter and to get aggressive, but if it didn't work, then they would shut it down and push it. And so they would go down versus in a family system where maybe fighting did work, then they develop that patterns because then it, it got, it satisfied their needs.
- [19:52]
Steven Kessler
And in order to make the aggressive pattern work, you have to have organically A strong flow of life energy coming up through your body. If you have a very thin or weak flow of life energy, you can try it. People just laugh at you. But if you have a strong enough flow, you can hit them with enough energy and other people will feel it as a wave of energy hitting them. In fact, you can watch a person who is really doing this aggressively like walk through a crowd and people will feel them coming and get out of the way. It's a whole way of trying to feel safer in the world. And then of course, psychologically what you're caught in is I always have to be bigger, stronger, fiercer, you know, feared by other people in order to feel safe. And this does have a very unhappy effect on romantic relationships and you know, trust relationships in general.
- [20:56]
Alyssa Nobriga
No, that makes sense. And it's. They're scared and so they're fighting to create safety.
- [21:02]
Steven Kessler
That is the purpose of the aggression is to make the other people scared. So they typically feel a little not so safe around you.
- [21:12]
Alyssa Nobriga
Okay, and then the last one, the.
- [21:14]
Steven Kessler
Fifth for the first four, there's kind of an identifiable wound. There's something that happened that really made them feel unsafe. And the person had to find some way to armor themselves or deal with that. Rigid pattern is actually transmitted more from parent to child. The parent teaches the child there is a right way to be and it is to be correct. Now to be correct, stand up straight, look me in the eye, comb your hair. You should not have any spots on your shirt. Your pants should be pleated, your socks should match. People who do leaving pattern, often they don't match their socks. Who cares? Right? Rigid pattern people. The socks have to match. So the child is trained by the parent to behave in the correct way. Now it's important to notice that the parents correct way could be very different from next door parents correct way. You know, the is speaking in political terms here in America. The Libertarian party correct way is very different from the Democratic party correct way. Or, or in religious terms, if your parents are devout Catholics, they have a correct way. And it's very different from the Libertarians or the Democrats or the Republicans. It's the Catholic way. If you're raised in a Muslim family, they have a correct way. The person learns that the way to control what I feel inside and what I express in order to say the right thing and not just whatever I feel is to literally contract around the center of the body. So it's like coming in and it tends to make the body thinner. It also makes the flow of life energy thinner. And moving faster. So the person tends to go fast in terms of inner pace. In contrast, a person who does enduring patterns tends to go pretty damn slow. Like, yeah, let me see. I'll tell you when I can figure it out. Person who does rigid is like, no, I'll tell you when I figure it out. In fact, I don't even have to figure it out because there's a right way. I am following the right way. Remember we talked about three ways of referencing, referencing, self referencing, other. For rigid pattern, there's a third way, which is I'm not referencing myself for what I feel and what I want. I'm not referencing you for what you feel and who you want me to be. I'm referencing the standard set of rules that I've been taught, and I am following the rules. Those could be rules of grammar. They could be rules of behavior. They could be rules of, you know, clothing or how you appear, how you comb your hair. Any kind of rules.
- [24:27]
Alyssa Nobriga
Let me do it the right way. Be the good child, good boy or girl. And then I look. Think of it energetically, like the military. Like if the energy is just coming up, very structured and then out.
- [24:39]
Steven Kessler
Richard. Pattern people fit right in. In the military, it's like, no, you tell me what to do, I do it. In the military, they tell you when you can go pee, right? He's like, not yours to decide, my friend.
- [24:54]
Alyssa Nobriga
Follow the rules. Yeah, yeah.
- [24:56]
Steven Kessler
Rigid and aggressive pattern people can really fit into the military, depending on whether you're supposed to be like a navigator or a frontline soldier, you know, hand to hand combat. Aggressive pattern is better for that than anything else.
- [25:12]
Alyssa Nobriga
One of the things that I love about the way that you've put this together is that these patterns, there's the compassionate lens, that these were the best ways we knew how. But the other is that there's gifts in them as well. So it's not a law. So can you talk to us about the different gifts leaving?
- [25:28]
Steven Kessler
Pattern gifts are the ability to go to other dimensions and get stuff and bring it back here. Composers, musical composers. If you saw the film Amadeus about Mozart, you know, he's sick, he's in bed, and, and he's downloading music and he's just telling it to Salieri, his rival and, and other composer there. And Salieri is writing it down as fast as he can. He keeps saying, hold on, wait, I can't. And what Mozart is doing, he's not making it up in a, in a thinking way or a rational way. He's not doing it by feeling his body, he's going to the dimension. There is a dimension. I'm told I don't have the skills to go to all these dimensions, but the people who do tell me, oh, yeah, there's a dimension of music, there's a dimension of mathematics, there's a dimension of geometric shapes. There's certainly the dream time. We can all go there. But there are other dimensions where there's lots of good stuff. And if you can plug in there, you can just download it here and then poof, you've got something here the world has never seen before. So a lot of people who are doing original creative work do the leaving pattern and are getting it from other dimensions. It's not problem solving. That would be different. It's like writing a novel, composing music, new forms of mathematics, completely original stuff. People who do leaving pattern are also able to feel they're more sensitive to energy fields in general than the average person. And they can often tell what's coming. Like if. If they're married to someone, for instance, who does aggressive pattern and has a big energy field, they may be able to feel that person coming home when they're still a block or half a mile away. And no. Okay. Because their system is designed, set up to detect danger and avoid it. So that's something on leaving merging. Fantastic ability to connect with other people and to know what's going on inside them and to know what they need. Often a very useful skill if you're a psychotherapist. Right. What is this client feeling at the moment? Even if they can't know it, they don't yet know it because they're cut off from their own body. But if the therapist knows what they need and what they feel, the therapist can kind of gently guide them to find it. Like, well, what if you feel into the core of your body? What if you come down all the way down into your pelvis or in any situation, if you go into, I think it's Walmart that tends to have greeters at the door. The person who's the greeter is probably someone who does merging pattern. They're happy to see every single person coming in the door.
- [28:51]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. Really great. With people, there's a warmth about them. Right.
- [28:54]
Steven Kessler
And they throw the best parties. Okay.
- [28:57]
Alyssa Nobriga
And then there's the enduring.
- [28:59]
Steven Kessler
So this ability to bring your energy in down hide gives you fantastic endurance and stamina. You can endure anything. Even if someone who does the aggressive pattern is throwing all their energy at you and trying to beat you down, you can just hunker down, hide, let it blow over and never be moved. If you think of these two patterns, enduring and aggressive, the enduring pattern has the strength of the immovable object, and the aggressive pattern has the strength of the irresistible force. I can make you, I can do anything. And they often marry each other. And part of that, it actually works well as a relationship because the aggressive pattern tries to, to, you know, manipulate and coerce the enduring pattern person into doing what they want. And the enduring pattern person won't do it. And eventually the aggressive pattern person realizes that and they give up and they say, okay, so would you please do this for me? And then the aggressive, the enduring pattern person says, sure, I'd love to. I've been waiting for you to ask.
- [30:16]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah, and I also remember you saying grounded. The enduring brings a lot of ground and stability.
- [30:22]
Steven Kessler
Absolutely. Grounded stability. It's like a building with a really strong foundation. Doesn't matter how hard the wind blows, doesn't fall over.
- [30:32]
Alyssa Nobriga
And the aggressive ungrounded, they may have.
- [30:35]
Steven Kessler
A big flow of energy and a lot of energy to throw at people, but they're ungrounded and tend to be a little wobbly. And that's one reason you often see people who are workshop leaders or political leaders or religious leaders who are running a big organization. Maybe they got thousands of followers. The person doing it runs aggressive pattern, and their right hand assistant runs enduring pattern and keeps the whole thing grounded. There's another assistant following close behind who runs rigid pattern and keeps it all organized. You don't have to do every one of these skills in corporations. One of the great things that they have learned to do from studying people this way is assemble a team in which you've got all the skills represented.
- [31:31]
Alyssa Nobriga
And one of the gifts of the aggressive pattern is the ability to take on a big challenge. The ability to fight, to show up for the big mission and not crumble or collapse in the face of challenges.
- [31:46]
Steven Kessler
There's a strong self referencing in the core and there is a psychological desire to not lose, to be indomitable. So it's like, you may kill me, but I will not surrender.
- [32:00]
Alyssa Nobriga
Often politics, CEOs.
- [32:02]
Steven Kessler
Yeah, politics. CEOs. In the military, it's special Forces, you know, the people you send in undercover at night who go down foxholes and, and, or go down, you know, go through tunnels. Who the hell is willing to call through a tunnel when you don't know if it's booby trapped or around the corner, someone's got a machine gun. I mean, you couldn't convince me to do that.
- [32:28]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. And there's also, like, a loyalty to the underdog, like supporting those who don't have power. And a lot of they have a big heart, too. And then the last one being rigid.
- [32:38]
Steven Kessler
Handling form, handling keeping things in order, knowing what to do next, being able to take this enormous task that we've decided we're going to do and break it down into steps. So, okay, you know, we're going to build a pyramid. And what do we need to do first? You know, first we need to go find the rock quarry and we need to figure out how to quarry rock blocks and make them square so we can build this. So, you know, make it do it. Break it down into steps that are doable, keep everything organized and in order and handle the world of form. We live in a world of form. Rigid people love form, and they really get it. They get a little caught in form, but very good at organizing and very good at understanding the world of form.
- [33:33]
Alyssa Nobriga
I imagine there's people that are listening. They're like, okay, I can narrow it down to two or three. And obviously we have all of them and all the different patterns and we've tried them on. It just was about what really worked in your family, your upbringing. How do people start to identify and understand what their main core pattern is that they go to?
- [33:52]
Steven Kessler
So the way, since these are safety strategies, you do them when you don't feel safe. So the way to find out is to watch what you do and ask your friends what you do in situations where you feel unsafe. So that will start from, I feel completely safe, totally relaxed, fine, everything is great. To a little annoyed, a little frustrated, a little bit pissed off, maybe to a lot more. To like, oh, I'm not happy at all. To like, this is really bad. To, you know, as the temperature goes up, what pattern do you do first? What safety strategy do you turn to first? And people usually have a first choice. And if it goes above a certain threshold, most people will switch into a different safety strategy. You know, maybe they will try leaving, and if that works, great, I'm done. But if they can't get out, they'll go to something different. I've known people that it's common for people who do leaving pattern to also do enduring pattern.
- [35:08]
Alyssa Nobriga
You just flip it to the opposite.
- [35:10]
Steven Kessler
Now, it's important to notice that the one you do first is not necessarily the one you do most of the time.
- [35:17]
Alyssa Nobriga
Interesting.
- [35:17]
Steven Kessler
It could be that you only do the first one 10% of the time, and then you spend 90% of your time in the other one. Or it could be you do the first one for 90% and you don't get to the last one until things are, like, really, really bad. I use the term main pattern to refer to wherever you spend most of your time. If your friends are looking at this map of five different patterns, five different safety strategies, and you say, well, what do you see me doing here? And they say, oh, yeah, this one I see you're doing. They're probably referring to your main pattern, whether it's the first one you do or the second one you do.
- [36:00]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. I like to think of them like a language where you've got your native language and you also have maybe another language that you. That you've learned. And I would love to hear, because I'm imagining you have a lot of insights that you've discovered around how the different patterns relate to each other, whether that at work, whether that in romantic relationships or family situations, if you could share some of the themes or patterns to help people become more aware, I think that would be really valuable.
- [36:25]
Steven Kessler
So with each of these patterns, it's easiest for a person caught in any pattern to relate to someone else caught in the same pattern. And when I say caught in, I mean, it's your main habit. You do it most of the time. So if the two of you do a leaving pattern, most of your communication is going to be on the psychic channel anyway. You probably won't even have to say very much. So you might just say, hey, remember, let's do that again. They got the picture, the feeling, all the extra communication. A person who does rigid pattern and is totally stuck in the world of words and not on the psychic channel listens to that conversation and goes, what the hell are you talking about? Similarly, two people who do merging pattern get together, and it's just, oh, I love you so much. You're so wonderful. Aren't we great together? Let's sing a song. Right? People who do enduring pattern together isn't exactly the right word because they both want a lot of space. It's like people have messed with me before, and I don't want them getting close and messing with me anymore. So let's go fishing. And I'll stand here in the river, and you stand 50 yards down there, and we'll be here for six hours and we won't even say a word. Do people who do aggressive pattern get together and let's have a fight now? It could be we fight each other. That's fun, too. You see, kids fun fighting. Like, yeah, let's go. Or it could be let's be on a team and we'll fight them. It's just that being aggressive and fighting and feeling strong and exercising and moving a lot and using a lot of energy is fun. Let's go do that. Two people who both do rigid pattern get together and they get correct. Now they may have some difficulty in agreeing on which standard of correctness is the one to follow. If one came from the Catholic Church and one came from the San Francisco Free Love Commune, they have different rules. So there may be some, some negotiation and exploration and maybe some fighting about well what's right and what's wrong. But after they get it figured out, everything's easy. I I had to think with my girlfriend many many years ago. I was a young man and I was living with my sweetheart and we noticed that we were having a fight about the refrigerator door. Like when you are taking food out of the refrigerator and putting it on the counter, are you allowed to leave the refrigerator door open while you walk across the room, put it on the counter, come back and get something more and take that over or are you required to close the refrigerator door each time? And what we finally figured out is my mom told me one way and her mom told her the other way and that's all it was. But when you have been initiated into the church of the one right way, you believe there is only one right way and it's the way you were taught. And these other people are clearly just wrong. I mean I don't know what's wrong with them. Why don't they know?
- [39:40]
Alyssa Nobriga
You can start to see that on a macro level too how these patterns can play out globally. But there are nations and yeah it's.
- [39:48]
Steven Kessler
Fascinating framework are strong in different patterns. If you go to Holland, the Netherlands, very much a rigid pattern or enneagram1 everything is clean, everybody's orderly. Soviet Union or Russia a lot of enduring pattern like we don't have any choice, they can't make us. You know we pretend to work, they pretend to pay us. Have another drink. United States very much aggressive pattern. What other country believes that we have the God given right to just bomb anybody else in the world that we don't like?
- [40:29]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah so and so then I heard in terms of the patterns how similar like working with similar types can cause friction or it could either even it could be a blessing or a curse depending on and or challenge or a gift. But also talk to us about some of the dynamics of how they interact with each other.
- [40:46]
Steven Kessler
Yes, thank you. I kind of didn't get back to that. So some patterns are more kind of comfortable or at ease with other patterns and some are less. The most difficult leaving pattern and aggressive because the amount of energy that a person in the aggressive pattern runs just normally, naturally, habitually, it's like, yeah, I just love having a big flow of energy. You know, we, you know, big movement, big talk, loud. It's too much energy for a person who does leaving pattern. They don't have a very good energetic edge around them. They don't have much shielding and that energy comes in and it completely disorients them and makes them want to get away. So that's a difficult connection and combination. And the person who does the aggressive pattern really needs to learn to dial it down. If you're a person, all you listening, if you're a person who has continually throughout your life been told you're being too much, that's what they mean. You're having too much life energy. And other people are uncomfortable with it. Another one, the combination that's difficult is aggressive pattern and merging pattern. Now, they often marry each other because aggressive pattern is our kind of classic definition of masculinity. So a man who runs that pattern looks more masculine and attractive to a woman, a woman who runs merging pattern. Merging pattern is our classical definition of femininity that makes her more attractive to a person wearing a male body, a heterosexual person wearing a male body. So they often get together. And both patterns are a way to deal with needs. So merging pattern is I have a need and I need you to give it to me. Aggressive pattern is I have a need and I'm going to force you to give it to me. Right? So I'm with merging pattern is I'm going to get you to like me and give it to me. With aggressive pattern is I'm going to get you to fear me and, and then, and then give it to me. So they're both trying to deal with needs, but their methods clash. So there will probably be some very dramatic fights. Not as dramatic as two people who do aggressive pattern. I we have stories, I certainly have Helen Palmer's stories from from enneagram class of two people who did Enneagram 8.
- [43:25]
Alyssa Nobriga
The challenger and the Aggressor. Just for people. Aggressive pattern are similar just for people.
- [43:29]
Steven Kessler
They would have a fight and like the whole neighborhood heard it. Other people going, like, I don't know how you people ever make up from this. Like, I heard what you said to each other. And then they go, yeah, we were just fighting it's okay.
- [43:44]
Alyssa Nobriga
Okay. And are there any. Because I'm thinking about this at work, I'm thinking about this in family systems, obviously marriage. Are there any also patterns that it would kind of be set up to be more harmonious as well or less challenges?
- [43:59]
Steven Kessler
A merging pattern. Per person is trying to merge with you and what you need and give you what you need. The problem is they're also trying to get you to give them what they need. They think they can't do it. But for, for sales, right, what you're trying to do is get them to buy your stuff. So the way to get them to buy your stuff is to connect with them, flatter them, get them to like you, get them to trust you, and eventually they'll buy your stuff. Merging pattern is tremendously useful for sales. Think about what causes what seems to be very individual. It seems like not only you have to look at what patterns do the parents do? So what skills are they good at and not good at? And what does the culture require of children and of parents? But also supposing that you believe that an individual comes into a life with some purpose, they want to have certain kind of experience, they want to learn something, they want to try out, you know, a certain skill and see how it works for them. They will find a way in whatever family they're born into to try to get closer to that. So there are an awful lot of factors. I found it very difficult to predict parents and children, although if parents do aggressive patterns, kids are going to have to deal with that. They either have to adopt the aggressive pattern themselves or the enduring pattern because they have to hunker down and hide or the leaving pattern, they have to get the hell away. If parent does rigid pattern, easiest thing for the kid is also adopt the rigid pattern and be good.
- [45:56]
Alyssa Nobriga
It's all helpful just to see it in context. And again, I just love that you bring the frame that these are patterns that we can go to as a safety strategy. It's not who we are. And I think that that changes the game. There's less self criticism guild thinking that there's something wrong with it. There's also gifts in these adaptive strategies. And so have there been any practices or tools that you found helpful for somebody when they're in a pattern to come back to safety and have more freedom?
- [46:26]
Steven Kessler
Thanks for this question. Because ultimately that's the whole point of learning this way of understanding people. The way to, to improve your life is first of all to learn this way of understanding people so that you can see when you have gone into pattern and what pattern you've gone into. And then you can start taking steps to get out of pattern and come back to being present in the moment, because that's the best place to be to live a happy and successful life. Being present in the moment means you are not being ruled by habits and patterns of behavior that came from the past, from some other time and place when some other thing was happening. But you're able actually to be here in the moment and respond to what's really going on here. That makes for the most efficient and elegant response to any situation.
- [47:26]
Alyssa Nobriga
Yeah. And awareness is key. This is first. But we have to have compassionate awareness because if we judge, then we're stuck with it. So we actually identify, and then we can't change it because it's hard to change what we think we are. And so coming back to that compassionate awareness that this, this episode is really helping build and this framework is build that awareness. But having compassion for, oh, of course. This is the best way I knew how to take care of myself as a kid. And then now re investigating is this still working for me? Or do I want to learn new tools or ways of being to create that safety inside and outside?
- [47:59]
Steven Kessler
Yeah. And one of the first steps that a person needs to take in inner work is disidentifying from their own inner critic. It usually has a voice. You usually hear it as a voice, but most people mistake that as their own voice. They're not hearing the voice of their heart, of their essence, their own feelings. From their core. They hear the voice of their inner critic saying, oh, you're such a stupid. I don't know why we even feed you. Right. And they mistake that for their own voice. So the first. Not the very first step. First step is actually getting into your body and feeling yourself. But as soon as you're able to do that and develop the inner witness so you can watch what you do and learn from it, then the step after that is to identify the voice of your inner critic. It might actually be in the voice of one of your parents. It comes from your parents or whoever enforced the rules on you of who you're supposed to be as a child. Because the inner critic is. It's a very useful part that develops for a young kid. It's the part that makes you not run with scissors when mom has said, don't do that, not write on the walls, because writing on the walls is great. I mean, look at that. It's beautiful. Who wouldn't want to do that? I Have crayons and everything, right. Except mom gets really unhappy about that. So the inner critic takes in the rules of mom, dad, the church, the whoever is giving you rules and enforces those inside you so that you can become a good boy or a good girl. Girl. And that's very helpful in sort of learning to get along with other people in your culture and society. But as you grow into adulthood and your desire is to be yourself, you don't want to just be the good boy or girl that mom and dad shaped. You want to be yourself. So you have to identify the voice of your inner critic and learn it's different from your own voice. And. And then when your inner critic shames you or corrects you, or tells you you're worthless or something like that, you have to learn to push back using your life energy so that it gets smaller and you get bigger.
- [50:31]
Alyssa Nobriga
And I think the critic has a bad rap. I know I used to have a fierce inner critic and I run more towards the rigid or leaving pattern, but the rigidity would have such a fierce inner critic. My mom had that, my grandmother had that. Can see it in the lineage. And the way that it actually shifted was bringing compassion to the critic because I could see that the critic wanted me to do better. It thought that by criticizing myself was the way to do better. And so every time it came up, I would just bring compassion to that voice in my head. But what you're saying is like not identifying with it, not judging it, it starts to change. It's like, oh, you're the part of me or that voice that wants to make sure I'm doing good. Thank you. Bringing presence and safety into the, into the body, into the moment, and then taking the wisdom that it was trying to help but updating the approach. I don't need to use criticism to get me to change. I can be engaged and think critically rather than use criticism against myself to change. Which just created shame and guilt and had me be paralyzed, essentially.
- [51:31]
Steven Kessler
Yeah. The mark of the inner critic is that it devalues you in some way. It says there's something fundamentally wrong with you, but it's trying to help in its young way. The inner critic begins to develop in a kid as soon as they can speak and understand language. And then about age 6 or 7, that's as old as it ever gets. So you can think of your inner critic as a six year old trying to help you be a good boy or a good girl, you know, with its six year old wisdom. Mom's gonna be mad. Don't do that. Right. Say, thank you very much. By the way, I'm now 44 and Mom's dead. I can handle this. But I completely agree. Compassion is much better. Anger won't work.
- [52:21]
Alyssa Nobriga
So what I hear you saying, like, we become aware, and this is a great frame to see. I love frameworks. And then to really understand, okay, when I go into, when I don't feel safe, this could be the pattern that go into. When that happens, take a moment to just pause and presence come back into the body. Create safety by noticing that that critic in the voice, the voice in the head, is not you, and just start changing your relationship with it. And to test things out. You know, I find that compassion is really helpful. But, yeah, it's like a little child to say, thank you for trying to help me, and then move forward with the ways that it was trying to help you without using criticism to see if it's more productive. I find that compassion is productive, but I also find that we have to test that out for ourselves. Otherwise, it's a concept rather than a lived experience.
- [53:09]
Steven Kessler
There's more that a person can do, and that is to develop the basic energetic skills to learn how to actually feel into the core of your own body. You want to get a felt sense of your own core, because that's where you can get the information about, what do I want? What do I need? How do I feel? You know, do I want to take this job? Do I want to marry this person? Do I want another scoop of ice cream? All those answers are in here. They're not up here.
- [53:42]
Alyssa Nobriga
They're in the body, the core, not the mind. Yeah, yeah.
- [53:45]
Steven Kessler
Not in the mind, not in your hands or your feet. They're not out there in the ether somewhere. They're in your own body. Another energetic skill that we all need is the skill of being connected to the earth. Grounding. That's what gives you a feeling of actually being supported by the earth. Everybody in therapy who says, I don't feel supported is missing that skill. Support from other humans is good. It's wonderful. But there is a source of Support that is 24 7, all always available, and you can tune into it. But you have to practice the skill to feel that because the earth loves you and the earth will never abandon you. I personally was really surprised when I was practicing this. I had been complaining to some friend about feelings, bad about something or whatever, and they said, well, Stephen, you teach other people these skills and this stuff, like, why don't you ground yourself? And I thought you Know, why don't you shut up? But I went home and I. And I started being much more serious about grounding practice. And at one point these new thought, these new words came out of my mouth. And then the words were, the earth likes me. And I realized I had never had that thought before in my whole life. And I was like 50 years old or something.
- [55:16]
Alyssa Nobriga
Tell us about the grounding practice. I'm imagining people would want to hear.
- [55:20]
Steven Kessler
One way to do it is if you've been able to get a sense of your own core. You simply extend your core down into the earth as like the roots of a tree. And you just go down farther and farther and farther and ask the earth for help, look for nourishment, look for strength, look for support. One of the most amazing things is when you're connected to the earth, you can ask the earth to send you whatever you need. One of the great discoveries or teachings in this is you can ask for what you need. You can ask the earth, you can ask your core, you can ask, you can go up to the divine and ask it. But talking about grounding, you can ask the earth to send you strength, you can ask the earth to send you courage, you can ask the earth to send you wisdom.
- [56:16]
Alyssa Nobriga
I want to speak to this because in case there's somebody listening, I would feel up until recently guilty for asking for more because I feel so blessed. And I recently heard from somebody that was like, there's so much guidance that's waiting to be asked. You have free will. And so the, and, and I had, I had a rupture. There was somebody in my team that I really loved working with and I didn't feel supported. And she had, she. And she had to take off because of a health condition. And I did some deep work. My dad's a shaman and went up to see him in Mount Shasta and he was giving me some of these practices, working with the earth and I had forgotten about it and feeling the support of the earth and how much that did shift things for me. And oftentimes we. I can forget to go outside and really connect with trees or grass or nature. Right in very modern day world. And so I just want to remind people like full permission to ask for the support that you need, you know, in relationship within yourself, within spiritual dimension that's available and wanting to happen for you. And also I just love the, the grounding practices that life being a mirror. If I don't feel supported, where am I not letting myself receive that support, Support that's already Here.
- [57:30]
Steven Kessler
Exactly. I think it's very, very important to know that the universe has, like, an infinite supply of stuff. But there is this rule for humans, and the rule is that the angels, the guides, your teachers, the earth, the divine, they can't help you unless you ask. And that's what prayer is for. That's why we're taught in religions to pray. It's the process of asking for help. And you can do that in all of the energy skills. One of the things I used to enjoy doing is talking to the Earth and saying, so, okay, I would like to feel like a. A bubbly stream of light coming up into my body and, well, let's start with green bubbles, or let's have a yellow stream with green bubbles in it and blue sparkles on. If you make it sensory, if you make it, if you're a visual person and you can envision that, it helps a lot. It's very difficult to sort of imagine, well, what does courage feel like and what does courage look like? But you can ask for a stream of energy. And if you have stuff in your body that you don't want, maybe you're furious with your neighbor or something, maybe you're angry, your boyfriend in a relationship, you can send that energy down into the earth. It's very useful to the earth. The plants love it. It feeds the plants. The plants get bigger and stronger, and they love it. And you don't have to keep that in your own body. You'll need to digest it and get the wisdom out of it. Like, what am I really angry about? And is there something I want to ask for? Is there a change I want to make in this relationship? But you don't have to be. You don't have to carry some enormous torrent of hatred in your body or something.
- [59:40]
Alyssa Nobriga
I love that also the permission to let nature have it and to digest it and to let it go. Beautiful. There's so much wisdom. There's so many. I just really appreciate you, Steven, in the work that you do and the way that you share it in service. It really supported me with my team, and I feel grateful for where I am now with that. Even the woman that had gone, she's back now, her health is fully recovered. And I. I got the lesson of being supported and. And I just know that it will serve so many people in relationship, romantic relationships, families, thinking of systemically, also just globally. So thank you for who you are and what you do. And I know my audience is going to want to stay connected. You have a new book out Talk to us about where they can find you.
- [60:24]
Steven Kessler
It's basically a how to. The first book, the five Personality Patterns, is pretty dense. This one is easier to read. And it's basically, if you want to have a better relationship with another person, figure out which patterns do they tend to get stuck in. What's their main pattern, for instance? And then it gives you very specific guidance on what to do and not do. Because doing the same thing can be helpful for a person who does one pattern and not helpful for a different. For instance, if we have a moment, if you send your energy straight to their core, if they do the aggressive pattern, they will like that. They'll feel you, they'll get you as real. You show up on their radar, they go, oh, this is true. So I need to pay attention to this. If you send it off to the side or something, they think, screw, this is not important. I don't care if the person that you are in a relationship and you want to talk with does leaving patterns, sending it right to their core is too much. It will scare them. They'll get out, send it off to the side, right? So the same behavior can be good in one situation and not good in another. And you need to know what works for the person you want to have a better relationship with. Co worker, boss, spouse, child, parent.
- [61:59]
Alyssa Nobriga
It helps. I mean, I had somebody come in and do a reading on my leadership team, and one of them was a leaving pattern. And. And knowing that I could help set her up for success, set her up to utilize her gifts, give her space, all of that, all of this, and he could just look around and read us. And it was really helpful. So it's helpful, it's practical. And this is, this is. You said how to have better relationships. We'll put the link here in the show notes below as well as your website. And I again want to say thank you. It's such a gift.
- [62:32]
Steven Kessler
I'm really glad that it's been helpful for you. It gives me great satisfaction to know that this work is helpful to people.
- [62:40]
Alyssa Nobriga
It's helpful.
- [62:41]
Steven Kessler
I used to have arguments with the world, with the everything, like, use me. Use me for something. Come on. Like, damn it, I know there's something. I haven't figured it out. And then finally, when I began learning about these patterns and going back and reading the various other people who've helped define these over the last hundred years and realizing how I could integrate all that and put it together and make it more accessible, it's a great joy to me to know that it's actually helpful to people.
- [63:19]
Alyssa Nobriga
It is helpful and it's also a good reminder for people that are in this. Like, use me. I want to feel more on purpose. Like, trust the timing of that.
- [63:26]
Steven Kessler
Trust the timing. And it's okay to get mad and.
- [63:29]
Alyssa Nobriga
Ask them, you know, yeah, ask for support.
- [63:32]
Steven Kessler
It's a way of praying. You say, like, you know your angels and your guides. You say, come on now, like, give me a. Show me something. Thank you for whatever work you're doing, the people you reach and transmitting this to them and all the. All the ways you're helping them become better human beings.
- [63:52]
Alyssa Nobriga
I mean, this is what we're here for.
- [63:53]
Steven Kessler
It is what we're here for.
- [63:54]
Alyssa Nobriga
What a gift. Thank you, Steven.
- [63:57]
Steven Kessler
Thank you so much.
- [63:58]
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