Enneagram Overview, Part 1, with Erin Slutsky

In today's episode I talk with Erin Slutsky, an Integrative Enneagram Accredited Practitioner. The Enneagram is a personality system, made up of 9 types. When you understand your type, you better understand what motivates you, the ways you interact and relate to others, and paths for growth. And yet, there is so much more to it than that!

This episode is part one of two. Today, Erin is going to give us an orientation to the Enneagram, by explaining what it is and how it can help you, plus giving us an overview of the nine different types. For part 2, I'll be speaking with Rosemary Hurwitz about how the Enneagram can help us improve all of our relationships.

Erin Slutsky is an expert in helping women who have spent much of their lives supporting others, but still struggle to put themselves first. Erin understands the difficulties of being self-sufficient, and believes that every woman has the potential to achieve the life she desires with the right tools and support.

Through her over 20 years of experience mentoring and coaching women and her expertise in the Enneagram, Erin offers the guidance and support necessary to empower women to prioritize their needs and create the lives they want.

Erin has been married to her husband (Aaron) for over 30 years. They have four grown daughters and a four-year-old granddaughter. She lives in Bristol, Wi, and enjoys nature walks, thrift shopping and wine and cheese pairing.

Erin's website: Erin Slutsky Coaching

Find Erin on IG: https://www.instagram.com/erinslutskycoaching/

Learn more about the Enneagram: https://www.enneagraminstitute.com/type-descriptions

Karin's website: https://drcalde.com

Transcript

Podcast Intro:

[00:00] Karin: This is Love Is Us, Exploring Relationships and How We Connect. I'm your host, Karin Calde. I'll talk with people about how we can strengthen our relationships, explore who we are in those relationships, and experience a greater sense of love and connection with those around us, including ourselves. I have a PhD in Clinical Psychology, practiced as a psychologist resident, and after diving into my own healing work, I went back to school and became a coach, helping individuals and couples with their relationships and personal growth. If you want to experience more love in your life and contribute to healing the disconnect so prevalent in our world today, you're in the right place. Welcome to Love is Us.

Episode Intro:

[00:49] Karin: Hello, everybody, and welcome. I am so excited about this episode. We're going to be talking about the Enneagram. I had the idea for this episode when I was just starting my podcast, and it took me a little while to figure out how I wanted to organize it and to find the right people or the right experts who I thought would be a good fit for Love is Us. So I'm really happy with the way it's come together, and this is part one of two.

I've always been into maps, whether they're roadmaps or personality maps, and personality systems seem like another kind of map to me, but they're maps that help me understand my own landscape and where I want to go. I especially enjoy personality systems when they offer not only a way for people to understand themselves, but also different ways for them to grow. And I have found the Enneagram to be helpful in seeing my own tendencies, blind spots and growth areas. And it's also helped me better understand my partner, friends, family, so that I'm less confused when they make choices that are different than the choices that I would make. But also, the Enneagram is my personal favorite, not only because it has so many layers, but it doesn't pigeonhole people, and I'm sure that there are people who would disagree with that, but I find it to be a really practical tool that gives you a lot of movement and areas to experience all the different types. So I also use this a little bit with my clients, not as a focal point for our work together because I'm not certified in it, but I have found it to be helpful for them.

So today for part one, my guest is Erin Slutsky, who is going to walk us through the nine different Enneagram types to give us a better understanding of it. And then next week, I am going to interview Rosemary Hurwitz, who is kind of a big deal in the Enneagram world, I found out. But Rosemary is going to help us use the Enneagram to improve our relationships. So I hope you like this episode. I hope you'll share it and leave me a review. And here we go.

Transcript:

[03:06] Karin: Welcome, Erin.

[03:08] Erin: Hello. Karin, it's great to be here.

[03:11] Karin: So good to have you. I am excited for this episode. I am just a bit of an Enneagram geek. I have never been trained, but I think it's kind of one of those early signs that I might become a psychologist one day. Because when I discovered it way back in the early ninety s, I was just so enthralled and read the books and talked about it all the time. So I'm so excited to have you here with me and sharing what you know about it today.

[03:46] Erin: Yes, I'm excited about it.

[03:48] Karin: Good. But first tell us where you are in the world.

[03:52] Erin: I am in the Midwest of the US. I'm right between Chicago and Milwaukee on Lake Michigan. I was born and raised in this area. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else except maybe November through March. My husband and I are seriously considering what we're going to do in the wintertime once our nest is empty, which is very soon.

[04:20] Karin: Time for change, perhaps.

[04:22] Erin: Maybe. Or maybe just snowbirds and go somewhere warm in the winter.

[04:28] Karin: Yeah. What do you love about it?

[04:30] Erin: What keeps you there other than familiarity? I do like the seasons. I love being by Lake Michigan. It looks like an ocean. Sometimes it is this turquoise blue. It has a beautiful sandy beach. Sometimes there's huge waves and you'd never know that it was a lake. But there's no salt. Right. And so I need to be by water. It's what I just feel brings me life and keeps me grounded. And so we have Lake Michigan and then where I live there's a lot of small lakes where people go boating or ice fishing in the winter. And so I'm surrounded by different options of being around water. And my family's here sounds really nice. Yeah.

[05:22] Karin: So tell us what you do for a living.

[05:25] Erin: What I do for a living? Well, I support women in their journey of rediscovering who they are. Instead of being told who they are like they have been their whole life, they've usually come to a place where they said, wait a minute timeout. Who am I and who do I want to become? And so I guide them through that journey using the Enneagram.

[05:55] Karin: How did you come to do this work?

[05:57] Erin: Well, I have been working with women, leading them and mentoring them for about 25 years now. And it's just something I've always done. I've always found myself in a leadership position and once my kids started leaving the nest, I kind of said, wait, what do I want to do? I've poured my whole heart and soul into my raising my kids and now it's like it's my turn. Now, where can I take my experience working with women, leading them, loving on them, supporting them and my new love? And I'm a fellow Enneagram geek of the Enneagram, and how can I use that tool to help support women? So I started my coaching business from going into year five.

[06:44] Karin: Excellent. So I'm really excited to have you tell us about the Enneagram. And there's so many layers to it, right?

[06:55] Erin: Oh, yes. You can get really deep into it.

[06:59] Karin: Yeah. And it's been around for how many years?

[07:02] Erin: It's ancient. It's ancient, but I think story has it like in the 70s it started getting popular in the States, I think within the Catholic Church even. It started coming into awareness out in California. And when I discovered it, probably ten years ago, it was hitting the Evangelical Protestant Church and it has exploded. It's not necessarily a Christian system. In fact, a lot of Christians think that it's not a good thing to be aware of. I think the internet and podcasts like these have really made it grow. And people have discovered things about themselves that they couldn't with other personality tests like Myers Briggs or Disc or the strengths finder like that.

[08:02] Karin: Yeah. That's interesting. You talk about it in the Christian Church. I wasn't aware of that. I hadn't known about it in any kind of religious context, but lately I've been hearing about it, what is saying, like Sufi traditions using it, but I could be totally wrong about that.

[08:20] Erin: I'm not super aware of the religious part of it. I think I discovered it within a Christian nonprofit organization I was working with and it just seemed to really fit and it's just grown in popularity.

[08:39] Karin: Yeah, it's fun. Like I said, I was really into it back in the early ninety s. And then it seems like it's hit this resurgence, like you said, in the last 510 years. So why don't we dive in and why don't you tell us more about it?

[08:55] Erin: Well, when I like to talk about the Enneagram, I can give you all the details and the nuts and bolts of it. But have you ever wanted something to give you language to communicate who you are and how you see the world and what makes you tick? Or do you wish could be seen and heard and just understood in a deep way? Do you desire to learn to live according to what you value rather than what other people's expectations are of you? That is what the Enneagram can do