“Enneagram and Marriage” with Christa Hardin

by on August 29, 2025

What does it take to thrive in our relationships—not just survive—and how can the Enneagram help us along the way?

In this episode of The Allender Center Podcast, Rachael Clinton Chen sits down with Christa Hardin, founder of Enneagram + Marriage and author of “The Enneagram in Marriage: Your Guide to Thriving Together in Your Unique Pairing.” Christa brings years of wisdom from her own relationship, plus her expertise as a marriage coach and therapist, to offer a hopeful, honest perspective on why personality awareness matters—but why it’s never the whole story.

Together, Rachael and Christa explore:

✔ Why joyful feelings (and even celebration) can feel harder than conflict—and what that reveals about us.

✔ Christa’s concept of the Glow Stages in relationships—what they are, why we can’t live on the mountaintop forever, and how to navigate the necessary valleys with grace.

✔ How the Enneagram helps us honor our gifts, name our shadows, and stay curious about ourselves and each other—whether in marriage, parenting, dating, or our spiritual lives.

✔ Why love, when nurtured well, not only transforms a marriage but becomes a force for calling, courage, and blessing in the world.

Whether you’re single, newly married, in the trenches of parenting, or decades into a partnership, you’ll find wisdom here for becoming more wholehearted—and more deeply connected. We invite you to listen to discover how your story, your marriage, and your love can grow through every stage.

About Our Guest

Christa Hardin is the host of the popular Enneagram and Marriage Podcast. In addition to podcasting and writing books, she runs the Enneagram and Marriage Instagram and runs her counseling practice, Reflections Counseling Center in Lakewood Ranch, Florida. For fun, she co-creates mystery dinner games with her husband. Most of all, she loves spending time with her family. Christa earned a Master of Arts degree specializing in Clinical Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and also has a degree in Communications. She is married with three children. Her Enneagram and Marriage website is www.EnneagramandMarriage.com and her team’s local coaching website is www.ReflectionsCC.com . Her best-selling book, Enneagram in Marriage: Your Guide to Thriving Together in Your Unique Pairing, is available wherever books are sold.

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Transcript:

Rachael: Good people with good bodies. It is hard work to be in a healthy relationship with yourself, let alone another human being, especially if that human being is your spouse or someone that you have committed to in a loyal, committed, romantic partnership. And I just feel like we need all the tools and resources at our disposal, especially resources that are accessible and can help us get into some of that deeper work of growing in knowledge of who we are and who another person is so that we can grow our capacity to love, to give love and to receive love. So today I am thrilled to invite Christa Hardin to join us on the Allender Center podcast. She’s a therapist, coach, author, and podcast host. She’s counseled and coached couples all over the globe for two decades. She is the author of Enneagram and Marriage: the Guide to Thriving Together in Your Unique Pairing, founder of Reflections Counseling Center and host of the popular Enneagram and Marriage podcast, which has helped thousands of couples find refreshment, joy, balance, and connection together. Christa uses the Enneagram and other research-based marriage tools to give couples deeper insight into their strengths and shadows to help them to determine how they can shine brightest in the world together. She lives with her husband, Wes, and their three children in Florida. So I want to give a hearty welcome to Christa Hardin. I so like value. You’re deeply studied, yet playful wisdom and your generous vulnerability bozen, how you bring yourself to the podcast, but certainly how you write. So welcome. Thank you for joining me.

Christa: Rachael, thank you so much for that glowing review. I’m so grateful it’s already been such a warm time getting to know you and have you on the Enneagram and Marriage pod. You are awesome. Thank you so much for having me today.

Rachael: Well, I’m just thrilled because we don’t have to convince anyone that marriages need support and marriage takes growing and learning, and you’ve been doing marriage work for a long time now, but you have done this beautiful thing of weaving in the Enneagram into marriage work. That’s such a powerful intersection and I would love to hear just how you got there, what initially drew you to explore how the Enneagram can apply not just to personal development and not just to friendship and relational development, but marriage relationships.

Christa: Oh my gosh, this is a funny story because I was this arrogant couples therapist who thought that I was so much healthier than my husband and I’ve been doing marriage work for a decade kind of vibes, especially later learning my Enneagram type was a seven, it comes as no surprise that I thought I’ll just pull forward, be joy filled, do cognitive behavioral therapy where we layer upon layer just new ways of thinking positively in reframing to every problem we had in our marriage. And let’s take another date night. And my husband’s ringing his hands out, what is this woman doing? And so when a type four therapist friend, very deep friend, I was just actually Marco Polo-ing with her last night, she was sharing about the Enneagram almost a decade back now. She said, did you take it? I said, absolutely. Of course I did. I’m a seven, I do all the things. And she’s like, did you give it a deeper look? This would be such a great intersection, like you said, Rachael with couples work and she knows how passionate I am about couples work, and I have never looked back once I gave it that look. So I have to give a shout out to all of our deep thinkers out there to all of our people who sit in patience, our fours, our nines, our fives especially, who just brew over things because I wouldn’t have been able to build this outreach had it not been for a person who said, sit with something longer than you did. And so that was a gift to me. I had done a ton of psychological assessments. I was for a time in the master’s level psychologist on my team back in Michigan and in Illinois I was more of a marriage and family therapist, but I had started my own practice in Florida where I live now. And at that point I was just coaching and getting the Enneagram and pairing it with all of these other pieces, not leaving those other pieces behind, but pairing it in has just been a huge game changer for our marriage. Wes is like, thank you Christa for learning your type and your own version of crazy and his as well. And then also for all these couples since that I’ve been working with and researching for the last decade. So I’m really grateful.

Rachael: Well, I’m really grateful. And your book, The Enneagram in Marriage: Your Guide to Thriving Together in Your Unique Pairing. I’ve just so enjoyed reading through it and I’ve just been reading and taking my time and then shouting to my husband Michael, Michael, listen to this. I’m sure he is kind of like, can I just read it and spend some time with it? Because you do such brilliant work talking through the Enneagram, talking about the types, talking about us as humans and process and relationships and process. One of the things I think is so cool is that you have a glossary in the back that kind of talks through all the different Enneagram pairings that could be possible in a marriage. And so I just think it’s such an incredible resource and I hope those of you who haven’t had an opportunity to spend time with it, it’s something you consider. But one thing I always love to ask people who become specialists in something… So many people are familiar with the Enneagram, like many things when something becomes kind of familiar or common imagination, I’m thinking about trauma is a really common language now, narcissism, things that we think we know or we know something of but can become really oversimplified or even misused at times or misunderstood. What do you wish most people understood about the Enneagram? Like when you’re working with a couple and maybe they haven’t had any encounter with it, what is helpful for them to know before they even begin engaging? Or what are some of those things that you would say, that’s not really what it is or it’s a part of that, but it’s something more?

Christa: That’s such a good question, Rachael. It’s always maddening when a couple comes for their sessions at the beginning. And of course I’ve done this too when I’m on the other side of the couch, so I get it fully, but it’s still from a practitioner’s perspective, maddening because you want to help people. When people come in with a sense of I’m way healthier than them and I don’t have any work to do, it’s that fundamental attribution error I talk about in my book. And it’s really big for couples because we, in the honeymoon phases, we always think that we’re just glowing and we realize we’re shining together. They bring me so much. But after we hit these later stages and we hit that dark night of the marriage soul, which almost every couple will hit at some point after about five years usually, but it could happen any time we tend to do that… what I mentioned just, Hey, I’m the healthy one, they’re the one who’s messed up. And the Enneagram is so much more than just a quick guide that you heard me say, I made that mistake at the beginning too. It’s almost like a layer, like onion layers where you can go as deep as you want and even just with your one type. And I do now do wings and arrows and tri types even, and instincts and all these deeper layers and triads. But even just my basic work every day as a type seven is so valuable to my marriage because it puts me back into that space of humility that I have work to do too. And that also lends us hope because the other thing that happens in marriage is we feel like, oh, I’m healthier and there’s no way out because communication is why 60% of couples divorce. And so it’s like communication stinks. Also, we know 50% of the couples divorce, 40% of the ones left usually don’t have the best marriage. And then there’s this little 10%, and this is the 10% actually pausing, reflecting and finding a program doesn’t have to be Enneagram, but here we’re talking Enneagram, something that really shows, oh, I have stuff too. And that is a very or honestly rare perspective because most of us think it’s just that other person, if that makes sense.

Rachael: Yes, it does make sense.

Christa: I hate that but…

Rachael: A human instinct. I think especially for those of us in healing called to healing work, if we’ve been invited a lot of times through schooling and trainings to actually get to do some deeper work, it’s almost like you get enough clarity and understanding of both yourself and something to really think like, oh, I’ve arrived, or surely I know I haven’t arrived, but I mean I’ve arrived like 90% and you need to arrive a lot more. So yeah, I can relate to that instinct so very much. And just thinking about, obviously don’t want you to feel like you have to give an Enneagram 101, but for people who, yeah, maybe they know the Enneagram exists, they hear people talk about their types. How would you describe what this resource is and maybe even a little bit of how long has it been around? Where did it come from?

Christa: Oh yeah, that’s a really great question. I think that we don’t know how long most measures have ultimately been around because people have been using various pockets of this or that. But we know that the Enneagram has its roots in ancient geometry. And so we can see very old Pythagorean drawings. We can come up that there’s been modern psychologists to use it as well and even get it so much more pronounced much later, such as the 1960s, seventies Oscar Ichazo and others. But we also realize that when you’ve had centuries and decades to work on a measure that is longer than any of the other measures out there, and when I say measures, I mean anything that’s measuring personality, temperament, the nuanced people-ness versus just this general, this is what you do in marriage. Because of course I learned in my first decade of doing the assessments, you cannot absolutely say anything about all marriages really. You just can’t because if you say, oh, they love sleeping in, the next person’s an early riser, or they love sexual intimacy, the next guy you talk to with his wife hates it. And so you have to be able to nuance that. Everyone is different, and this is a great measure that’s been around for so long and been worked upon. And now like I said, it’s very layered and it also has a spiritual lens in the sense that when you study the Enneagram, you’ll learn quickly that we do have something called virtues that we want to get towards. Every type has their virtue and their gift. Every type also has their vice, their struggle, their fixation mentally. And we can’t do that all by ourselves. We need the help of God. And most systems, again, don’t offer that, and the Enneagram doesn’t prescribe, you have to be this or that faith, but it leaves room and just acknowledges coming to virtue has a bit of a mystery to it, and here’s a clue for every type to get to mystery. For me as a seven, having this issue of being joyful can also come with overdoing. So I need to come into sobriety and allowing for God’s planning. And each of the types that I talk about in the book has their own route to these paths, which can be very healing. And of course the spouse gets that hopeful. Oh my gosh, I’ve been trying to tell you that. And then the good news is, guys, we’re not making it very hopeful for you. You also get to do that with your partner and your family. You also get to say, absolutely. Oh, no wonder I struggle with you. You also have… like my husband being a one, you have a fixation on resentment and anger. And so that’s why I’ve been feeling that vibe of being judged. And then he actually said to me, not long ago, can you give me an example? I’ve been told that my whole life that I can come across as conceded or better than. And he’s like, you know that about me. I want to know so I can correct that. So it gives us a new language versus just like, I’m up here, you’re down there, or vice versa.

Rachael: Right. Yeah, no, that’s so helpful. I mean, I do love any kind of framework that makes space for beauty and brokenness that there’s a sense of, and that’s one of the things I really appreciate about the Enneagram in the, I mean, I’ll confess, I think I am someone who needs to go much deeper. I know I’m a two with the one wing. I know my instinct is self preservation. I know that in a weird way because I do think this is where there’s such an intersection with the work we do here at the Allender Center around story and trauma. I can relate a lot to a six because of my parents, or one of my parents I think actually is a big six. And then therefore fear and loyalty and kind of needing to have a plan and these things in place. That’s something very familiar to me. But it’s like the two and the one don’t really have, there’s not this kind of like, oh, I’m a two with a six wing. So there’s some, I think more discovery for me. But you bring this notion of layering, not just that like, oh, with our spouses, our types are interacting and there’s some layering there, but also with our family of origin and with our ancestors, really multiple generations of coping mechanisms and ways that we’ve survived, which are certainly shaping where we might find ourselves on the Enneagram, how we’re negotiating what we’ve inherited and how we relate to the world around us. Could you share a bit more about what you mean when you talk about layering or just kind of in some ways this Enneagram overlay? Mostly I’m asking personally for myself as I discern.

Christa: Yeah, I love how you named that the family of origin. Just as a reminder to everybody, often we’re pretty particular about that past generation, that’s the one nearest to us in the rear view mirror, but as you so well named Rachael, we are just many, many, many generations and we share a lot of traits with the people ahead of us, the ones before them and so on and so forth. Because in the good way, our family has taught us how to survive and we’re here. So there’s been something breathtakingly beautiful about the journey that we have to pull forward. I remember the African term Sankofa, come back, don’t forget what’s in the past. But we also need to realize the things to let go of acknowledge with our partners. Hey, yes, I do have a six overlay. Sometimes I get caught in my worry. And I think I just heard a couple saying that to each other not long ago in my virtual office, just, Hey, I hear that six and you can release that a little bit. But we also then came back, I came back as the helper to say, here’s what I love about your wife’s six. So like you said, there’s a beauty and a brokenness from each piece we carry from our predecessors. And we don’t want to just say I’m nothing like them. We want to give some honor to the journey, but also say, I’m also realizing I don’t want to carry forward any of my Enneagram traits or as you said instincts when you name the self pres, we don’t want to carry anything forward that’s not healthy. So this is a great way for us to be more intentional with that, right?

Rachael: Yeah. Yes. And that takes time. That actually takes taking the time to understand how someone has come to be who they are. And we see story as so central to who we’re and how we love. And so how have you seen or experienced couples and maybe even have some things come to mind, but how have you seen them use their understanding of each other’s Enneagram types to become better listeners to each other’s stories, especially those painful chapters that shape how we approach intimacy and trust or even our capacity for those things?

Christa: Yes. Well, so many stories need to be told that are not, that are just, Hey, we’re busy, we’re moving on. Maybe I told you this at the beginning of our marriage. So even just coming together with your partner, and we always use those words of course, showing curiosity and showing compassion for your partner story, those things will help your partner to open up more to you versus most of us are not feeling super safe when we’re in past the honeymoon feeling and it’s like, I don’t want to tell you my story cause you’re going to use it against me. So first, just some self-evaluation. Am I safe for my partner to tell their story? And that can be in the little stories or the big stories. And we’re still doing that, Wes and I, after almost 30 years together and almost 25 years of marriage even this week. So just know that it’s an ongoing process where he even said to me, this is the story I was telling myself. And I said, I’m sad that you told yourself that story, but I can understand why you did and I’m safe. And you don’t have to tell yourself that story. So just know that that’s appropriate language for you to use is it’s a little bit messy, it’s a little bit tricky. But once you start learning your partner’s stories, the stories you’re each telling selves about your survival needs, then there’s more safety created. So some of my couples, for instance, an eight and a one I remember working with that had this dynamic change. These are two big personality types. So if you don’t know your Enneagram type, you can go to my site, enneagram marriage.com, get my typing guide, or you can go to trudy.com or many others, Ian Cron has a new test. But find your types and make sure you read them to know that they’re accurate. And this couple, for instance, they found out they were the male, an eight, the female a one. Those are very big, like I said, personality types. And so together there was a lot of combustion, a lot of anger. These types tend to both deal in judgment and anger when they’re upset, and it’s also their way of reading the world. So they’re like, okay, I know what’s right. I know what’s wrong. And they were just hitting each other. But when they discovered that this was actually a shared gift, not just a tragedy, they were able to say, we found each other. And for the first time ever, the type one has permission to have anger. They never used to have it. And their eight partner gave them permission to explode a little bit, to let it out, to occasionally let out a swear word and just know you’re covered. I love you. I’ve got you. And the eight learned that there was goodness that they did have a chance again, to be listened to because the one was an excellent listener. They let them be vulnerable in a way they didn’t expect in the world. So they were shocked by each other’s goodness. And they ended up having such a wonderful recovery through the Enneagram that they became one of my model couples. And then one time even spent a very awkward Valentine’s Day with me because I was like, why are you here? And they’re like, we just wanted to celebrate. And I’m like, okay. But I feel so awkward that there’s no problem to solve.

Rachael: I love that. I feel like sometimes as healers, sometimes we need to be reminded. There’s a lot of goodness. We’re often problem solvers or being containers and making space for the painful and the kind of agonizing questions and the gritty work that sometimes feels worse before it feels better. So I love that you got the, we’re just here to celebrate. We want to witness.

Christa: And I had to sit with my own stuff at that point of like, oh my gosh, joyful feelings are hard, but I love it. Joyful, laughter’s great, but the big feelings work. You would’ve been perfect in that session, Rachael, as a two, you would’ve eaten that right up.

Rachael: It’s really funny because I keep trying not to be a two. I think that’s part of my instinct is surely if I just take the right test, it’s going to tell me, no, you’re really this or you’re really that. But I just, yeah, at my core, I just want to be helpful to be loved. And I do love the pursuit of love. And when I was talking with Michael about, I was reading the book, I was like, again, I’ve done this so many times. Maybe I’m not a two. Maybe I just got this wrong. And he was like, yeah, but where do twos go in their shadow? And I was like, oh, they’re really aggressive, kind of shadowy parts of the eight. And he was like, don’t you think that that’s kind of true of you? And he was not being judgmental or rude. He was genuinely… and then he was like, and how do you feel about fours? Fours, the artists? And I said, I don’t like them. And he was like, aren’t you supposed to grow in your fourness as a part of strength? And I was like, I’m just not going to talk to you about this anymore. Because it’s that sense of almost, again, nothing gets to be so prescriptive that we’re bound to it in a way that if it doesn’t resonate or doesn’t feel helpful, not every part of something’s going to feel helpful. But it’s almost like what I felt in that moment was that part of me that’s like if I could just not have these struggles, I think I want to have someone else’s struggles for a season that will feel cooler or less familiar. And that is one of the things I appreciate about the Enneagram is there’s not some sense of like, oh, healing means you’re no longer that type. It’s like, no, there’s really good gifts and really beautiful strengths. There’s just also shadow realities. And you get to also grow into the other types. It’s not like you’re supposed to become more rigid in your type. You’re supposed to grow in deeper capacities. Similarly, so it’s like probably I’m feeling a little bit, maybe in this particular season, especially in marriage, we’re about to enter our sixth year of marriage. We have two teenagers and a toddler, he’s about to finish a PhD program. It’s like we’re hitting those places where we actually have shared language. We’ve been in similar healing work. And it doesn’t matter how much language you have, it doesn’t matter how much resourcing you have. Life is life and growth is growth. And you talk about this in your work as these stages of Enneagram glow or these stages of even a relationship, and you use this language of glow. Would love to hear a little bit more what you’re talking about there, because I do think some of us, myself included, can be deceived that because we have tools and resources, we’ll be able to keep the ebbs and flows at bay. Because what can just always be doing enough work to never have to enter those waters that feel like, wow, okay, there’s more work for us. There’s more healing.

Christa: Yes. And that is such a deep yes, because even those of us, as you alluded to earlier who are helpers, we still have to do that work too, to say there are seasons and stages and the death of a relationship is at times a reality. But the good news is there can be a resurrection, but to not acknowledge the hardship doesn’t give the weight that the relationship work deserves. And so I come back to that space again and again with my couples who are disillusioned, who want to come into the light and stay in the light and often through the guise of, oh, I found an affair partner. And they’ll keep it going. And at the time of this recording, we’re just after the world phenomenon of the Coldplay incident. And it’s a hard truth that sometimes people do an emotional bypass and no judgment against all the layers of all that goes into those experiences. But it’s just an important part of relationship work to acknowledge that at the beginning we have that glowy, shiny relational truth that we are just in sync. We are in enamored spaces. There’s a lot of hormones that are flying and it’s all good. It’s a lot of dopamine and oxytocin.

Rachael: Yeah, really good. Really good. My goodness.

Christa: You’ve got this girl, you’re closer to it than me. Let it waft on me. But then we get into that space of even better healing, deepening just really, oh my gosh, no one ever heard me before and you’re the first one to validate these gifts that my family of origin and their own traumas and wounds missed. And now I’m doing the same for you. And we’re rising up even higher. And after we’re at such a height, I think of the mountain analogy a lot for this and for my next book as well, especially that we want to be on those peaks all the time together. We want to be at the top of the mountain. But as we hear from, I saw Sylvester Stallone’s Netflix drama that he talks about his life and everybody else, top of the mountain is lonely. You cannot stay up there a lot. It’s not relatable to people. It’s we’re made for ups and downs, peaks and valleys. We’re made for community. We need each other to help. We have to be humble with that. And boy, do we get humbled in marriage. And so those places, that’s what I consider that shadow, that throwing shade, that dark night of the soul moment where you could go into full darkness at that point in divorce. And sometimes that’s the necessary step. Sometimes, however, it is this place of we are in the darkness, we’re acknowledging it. Let’s try to find a light. And that’s when we can find the Enneagram or as you said, another tool doesn’t have to be the Enneagram. If it’s a fit, it’s a great tool, like I said, extremely robust considering the other tools that don’t usually lean into such compassion and self-reflection. And then you find that and you also hopefully find the Lord and you find a place where it’s not just all on you, but you can also rely on God. And then you come out little by little from that rubble admitting, here’s my flaws. Okay, this is my work to do. And that immersion space can usually be also done by your partner. Sometimes it’s just you and then your partner sees you doing the work and that rubs off on them. But whatever capacity you’re both starting to turn, you’re both starting to get a little lighter. And now you can really come into the next set of deeper love. And that’s the good news. You need the committed love, you need the deeper love, and you can still, and this again is where my next book will be going. You still need that sexual instinct. You still need the vibrancy, the attraction, the wooing, the surprise elements. You still need the deep conversations. It doesn’t mean we leave all that behind and we just, every Friday night we have our same ritual. We need our surprise elements, et cetera. But we also have to realize life is hard. Sometimes we’re just knocked down. We have to pull and drag each other along a little bit on the thirsty road to redemption. And then that is where we find our true deeper love together and we can influence other couples and our community because we know these dark roads have led to some light and we have found some paths that we can now say to others, oh my gosh, I’ve done this work and it was worthy and we found each other and we were stronger and better at the end of the road.So that is the hope. And then one last thing is this. One couple challenged me in a funny way, this seven guy, and he said, I don’t want to, you’re telling me that, but I feel like that’s when I’m in the nursing home when I have all of that after glow stage. And I’m like, no. He’s like, are you talking about sundowners? And I’m like, no, you’re going to have a lot of ebbs and flows. You’re going to come back through the stages. And that later stage doesn’t mean wrap it up. It means let’s be at peace. Let’s let each other be the oasis we know we’re meant to be. Let’s use our tools. Let’s regroup as needed, but let’s bless others with the wisdom we’ve learned. Let’s use our gifts in tandem. Like we said, we didn’t even talk about it much yet, but the glow of our love together, our gifts together now we can use them more in tandem. So that’s the fullness of it.

Rachael: Yeah, I do want to get there because I think it’s really important, especially as such a time as this in our world where especially as Christians and those who identify as Christians, it’s feeling harder to see the image of Christ in relation in people in the way we talk, the way we love or don’t love. And I do think healthy marriages have impact on calling and legacy. I know I could say being married to Michael has made me braver. Love changes you. It’s made me take more risks in my calling in some ways because in some small way, at least for now, I know he loves me and he is like, keep going. One of the ways I knew he was right for me is I’m a preacher lady, and my experience of a lot of men, especially from the church as a preacher lady is kind of like a bracing away from that. And I actually met him. He came through some of our trainings and we were just friends, but at the time, but I was going to be teaching, and it was a particular teaching in our training where at the end of the day, I teach, but I preach. It’s just how God made me. And I was like, this is when he’s going to be like, that lady is too much. And he actually moved closer to the middle of the room and I was like, this guy’s crazy. He’s crazy. But it was so healing for me to encounter someone who was like, keep going, go deeper, take bigger risks, love more boldly, even if it’s costly for us. So I do want to talk more about how marriage work is not just for us, though. It is. It’s not just for our marriages though it is. It’s not just for our kids or our families or the larger community, though it is. It has tremendous power to just release gifts and even combine gifts in a way that they just become something more. So we can talk about that, but before we do, I want to hear from you, or if you’re like, no, let’s talk about that for a minute and then we can just be non-linear and come back to other things. So you tell me where your impulse is before I jump into more questions.

Christa: No, go ahead. Jump in. I’m ready.

Rachael: Yeah, I’m just thinking about you’ve probably worked with so many different people, and as someone in… Michael’s previously divorced, this is my first marriage, but I didn’t get married till much later than I anticipated. I just think sometimes when we hear a lot about marriage work or marriage support, a lot of times it is coming. And there’s nothing wrong with this from people in those later stages of marriage where they have adult children. If they’ve made it and they’ve done work, they have really deep roots. I think about Dan and Becky’s book and Steve Call and Lisa, Deep Rooted Marriage. It’s so beautiful. It has such deep wisdom. What are some of the ways you’ve seen the Enneagram, let’s say, help people like me who are in this weird stage where they have teenagers and toddlers or yeah, maybe there’s what comes into the marriage is not just family of origin trauma, but previous marriage trauma or even, this is kind of a secondary question, but let’s say for people who are listening and going, I’m not married, so what does this have to do with me? How does Enneagram work actually speak to some of these different places and located that couples and people come to healing work? What have you seen? Because I know that you’ve worked with so many different types of marriages and people.

Christa: Yes. Well, I’ve seen, and I think this merges well with your other question about particular pairings also that sometimes it looks like noticing together that it’s easy to forget our partner’s gifts or to encourage them. And I know you noticed, you said with your husband, it was so obvious at the beginning, but later we have to really rally around each other and it gives us a center point to do that. And that same thing is true with our teenagers. I love the book by Ainsley Britain about the Enneagram for teens because she has lived out the story of me and my kids’ work that they are phenomenal humans and will need to grow and all that, but they’re seen as pillars of their community, let me put it that way, as exemplary figures, because they started doing their work pretty young, although we haven’t figured out my son who’s 13, his exact type, yet the girls learned even before they were 13, and now they’re 17 and 19, and they’re not to say without issues, but the paths they get to take, the lens we get to look from is so much more nuanced because we do know their main types. And it’s been such a gift for all of us to be able to remind each other and ourselves with God at times when our family can’t do it for us. This is who I am and this is my gift, and I’m not losing sight of that, or this is who she or he is. And I’m not losing sight of that in my parenting or in my spousal support of them. I have a bit of a lens for what they need, what they do. And it’s neat to be able to do that. For instance, with my type nine, I know you’re married to a nine, and to be able to have that lens when she was walking through the awkward middle school and high school years of people forgetting her even down to the community college where she was taking dual enrollment, losing test scores, I’m not kidding. The amount of people who forgot her or who left her out was exhausting for both of us. But having this space that we could keep coming back to, wait a second, you’re a peaceful nine. People aren’t trying to forget you, but you’re just so chill that they are, we need to get you into action. We need to use that voice. We need to take rest and fun in between. But having this roadmap just helped her to fly, and now she’s singing on the team is 17. She has graduated with her AA already. She was in the highest dance in theater companies, just an exemplary person who mentors other youth because she’s had this excellent tool to build her up. When I could kind of see her flailing before, and even once, she said to me, mom, I’ve had a leg injury. I think I’m just handicap. And I remember knowing that wasn’t going to be her story probably, but also not having the lens for how to get her through that. And when we found the Enneagram, it was like, okay, and if you are going to have this leg injury your whole life, we’ll work with that, but work with, I think this is going to be a matter of empowerment action, using your voice, finding solutions. And she came into that. And just briefly, we can’t force our family to come into that. And I think anyone listening who’s now getting excited like, Ooh, I’m going to put my kid on the Enneagram treatment plan. We have to pace. I am the example of somebody who went a little too fast, too hard with it. So let me remind you and myself at the same time, slow down, take a deep breath, little by little inch by inch. Use the tools you’re learning about you and your partner, your kid, so they don’t feel lambasted with the Enneagram. And I remember pushing my four a little too fast. She wasn’t as ambitious as my nine. My nine ended up being a social nine. So she’s a very three-like-nine for those who understand subtypes. And if you don’t just understand, there’s different varieties of each of the types. And my four is more of a self pres four. So she was ready to graduate early from college, and because I had kind of said, oh yeah, yeah, you can do all this. You can do your dual enrollment. And she did it all. And she’s like, I don’t want to graduate college in two years in need my time. I’m a four. I’m an artist, artist.

Rachael: Existential crises to have.

Christa: Literally. So although we’ve learned, she, as you mentioned, the arrow system and the Enneagram, there’s this beautiful system of growth she knows. She goes, mom, this week, even after our trip to Europe after our girls’ weekend, it is time to buckle down to get back in. I need my one arrow. I have to get moving or my mental health will be off. I’ll be in my melancholy, I’ll be in my anxiety and we have to get her back up. And she went with it, but she knew the treatment, she knew the program, and we had a good conversation about it. So it doesn’t mean this is a one size fits, it all fits all, or that it’s like, oh, once you figure it out, you’re good. Like you said, it’s ongoing work, but think about how many of us are otherwise. I used to be flailing. What do I do? Where do I go? It just gives such a nice start for the actual path you’re on.

Rachael: Yeah, I say this a lot when I’m working with people in story work, which is a different framework, it’s more story, non-linear. And I think that’s part of what I love about the Enneagram in partnership with story is that it provides some tools and resources that can be really practical, but that doesn’t mean without nuance. But I always tell people that understanding and awareness doesn’t always lead to transformation in a one-to-one correlation. It’s not like, oh, now I have this framework of understanding of how I came to be. So when you start getting into your story and you’ll start understanding attachment frameworks, which can also be really helpful in conversation with the Enneagram. Like, okay, here, I’ll just give an example. When I started doing story work or intentional healing work, this language of codependency came into the, which is not too surprising as a two, that codependency came into the atmosphere and there was something so relieving about I have this understanding, I have this framework to make sense of, it’s not like this just happened. I just am codependent. This was something that formed in the soil of my world and my relationships and also and my gifting, right? I am a healer. I am a helper. I actually do love bringing goodness to people. Just I also did it out of necessity and out of a deep seated fear that I would disappear and I wouldn’t be loved if I wasn’t helpful. So there was also a lot of manipulation that I would never have said was manipulative. It wasn’t like I was like, I’m going to manipulate this person to get my needs met. It was just like, if I don’t offer this, then I won’t get my needs met. There was kind of like a, now you owe me something. But that awareness didn’t lead to instant transformation. And I think that’s some of the work that we get to be in is like, okay, I understand these things about myself. What does that mean? What’s possible for me? What does healing look like? What are some of the ways in which someone’s maybe be more shadowy parts of the Enneagram get invited into the more beautiful parts, and could you maybe put some words to what some of that process looks like when people are growing awareness in a marriage relationship or even in anticipating being in more intimate relationships, they’re doing that work. How do they get from, I’m really bound to these kind of more shadowy ways this comes to be into, ah, I’m having more liberation to bring my gifts in a different way.

Christa: Yeah. Well, I love that you named that. It’s a process. I think that of course one of mine and your favorite parts about it all is it will look a little different and more creative for everybody. But one of the many ways that we can do that is we can look internally to see which of the Enneagram types we resonate least with and what that’s about too. I know many of us are familiar with internal family systems, and if you’re not, just imagine you had all little nine Enneagram types within you if you wanted to merge it with Enneagram and you could look at yourself and say, oh, learning about the basic nine types, I’m learning, this one’s a perfectionist, this one’s a helper, et cetera. And then saying, what is that little perfectionist saying inside of me? What is that part saying inside of me? And just doing some self work? Honestly, that can change your relationships with others. Just this journaling experience where you just notice what are the parts of me inside and what are they acting like and what do I need to shift a bit? That alone could be impetus of, oh, you know what? I don’t have a cheerleader right now. I need to be more of an inner encourager. Or I’m too hard on myself. I’m noticing that I’m really like when I picture my little type three, sometimes me, Christa, I’ll picture a person with a clipboard going, alright, what’s next? More you’ve got to produce more. And it’s just like, oh wait, hold on. I’m going to let that three sit down inside of me. So sometimes the work can look like us resonating with each of the types, and that should help you too, Rachael, in your expansive process of you are a two, but you have so much more to you that is accessible because as you said, the Enneagram is there for us to know where do we largely sit? What is the main character, but what are the other parts of us doing and how can we expand ourselves so we have all the gifts of the fruits of the spirit? And so that’s really a neat frame that I give some of my couples is finding out the access points that they’re missing. I had a two once, actually a seven female once say to me, I’ve never had access to my two and giving her access to the feminine Eve Eden part of womanhood that we think of as a two woman really gave her permission to wear pink and to be feminine and not to be boxed into this seven, eight space of I always have to be the producer in this family of all the money, all the toughness. And I think that just allowing ourselves to sit with what’s missing, what’s doing well, to talk about that. Honestly, with our families, I’ve been able to use the language of, oh, guys, I was in my negative one space. I’m so sorry. I can tell that I came down to critically on you. And that just gives my kids such permission and safety to say, yeah, my nine being the most sensitive. She’s like, mom, I never want to see you ever angry again. And I’m like, well, that’s not realistic, but I’ll work on that. Where as my four? Is like, I love that you express that to us. It’s okay. And I’m like, okay, well don’t be too codependent. I don’t want you matching with a partner who’s super brutal and my other kid is somewhere in the middle. So you get it that these are ongoing conversations, but it gives us, once again, that frame of using a system, which I just think it’s hard to access these places in us that are so deep and to talk about our shadows, but not be able to put any language on what those are. It’s hard for our kids and our spouses to understand. So we can say, my shadow showed up today. I was totally introverted, didn’t talk to a soul. They can say, oh gosh, I love that type five space in you. I love that you observe, but I also want you to know you’re worth it to speak up next time and I’m cheerleading you on. So those are just a few ways we use it at home.

Rachael: Yeah. Well, I think there is such a wealth of knowledge here. You are so generous in breaking it down and making it accessible. And obviously people can find your book, the Enneagram in Marriage, and I’m just telling you, if you’re like, I need to learn more about the different Enneagram types, and I want to understand what are you talking about when you talk about wings and what are you talking about when you talk about instincts? And I highly encourage you to check this out. You’re working on a new book if there’s any language you want to put to that. But I know you also do other work and you train people to do this work. So if someone is listening and they’re saying, man, I think this is work that my spouse and I really need, we need some support. How can they find you? How can they find the people that you’ve been coaching and training? What resources are available? Obviously, you also have a podcast. People can tune in and hear from many, many people in conversation with you. But are there other ways people can find you and find your work?

Christa: Thank you. I think that the best place for you to go is enneagramandmarriage.com or Instagram, Enneagram and Marriage. The podcast is named the same, but you’ll hear me talk to couples of all these different pairings. You already said it too in the book, I have a treatment plan for every pairing type together. Not only so you can look at, oh yeah, we’re not alone in our shadows. Everyone who’s a two and a five together struggles this or that way. But also, where do you shine brightest? Where are your gifts the brightest? Because I do feel that, like you said, we’re meant for more, not just for ourselves. Most couples work is like all about me and you, but really we’re here for each other. We’re here for our kids, et cetera. But we’re also here for shaping the world with our unique gifts and glow. So anything you want to hear more in that direction, enneagram and marriage.com will lead you to all of it. Thank you so much.

Rachael: Oh, so good to be in conversation with you, and I look forward to more down the road and just really grateful for your work and hope this can be a resource, just another place that people can go to get support and help and to really grow and to have thriving marriages and have driving imagination for what is possible for those who find themselves in different liminal spaces, relationally. Thank Christa. So good to be with you.

Christa: Thank you, Rachael has been awesome.