Enneagram Two: "Why I Suddenly Went Missing": August 4, 2004

Simply put, Enneagram Twos are all about love and pride. At their best and finest, Twos exemplify altruism, the humble and selfless giving of the self to others (think Mother Teresa). They can be valuable teachers of humanity and love (think Leo Buscaglia, Ann Landers). At their worst, they are manipulative, histrionic, possessive, and self-deluded (think Princess Diana, especially during her unhappy marriage; many would classify her as another personality type, but I found in talking with other Enneagram enthusiasts over at the Enneagram Institute discussion board that those who had actually met her in person say she's a Two, and I believe it).

Obviously, most Twos fall somewhere between the two extremes :-)

The key here is helping; Twos are the helpers, driven to see themselves as helpful people. They want people to depend on them; they need to be needed. Twos are all about emotional (heart) energy projected outwards, with very little directed inward to the self. They can be uncannily skilled at "reading" other people's emotional states and responding accordingly, but they often can't "read" themselves and their underlying motives. To other Enneagram personality types, average-to-unhealthy Twos can come across as insincere, even ridiculous, in their desire to be helpful, needed, and loved (think Richard Simmons).

Fulfilling other people's needs gives the Enneagram Two a sense of pride (sometimes even a false sense of entitlement), something that most Twos would hotly deny because it conflicts with their self-view as "helpful". Average-to-unhealthy Twos hate looking at their real motivations, which essentially are pride in what they do for others. Usually they cover it up to others (and often to themselves) as "being helpful to others" as a goal in itself... but it's the ego strokes that Twos get for doing this work that are the real payoff. Pride can run rampant in unhealthy Twos, and the unhealthier the Two the more they try to repress their self-knowledge of what drives them. The unhealthiest Twos are extremely manipulative and also completely self-deluded about how "good" they really are; they can casue immense destruction and still think of themselves as "saints".

The problem with pride-serving people-pleasing is that, ultimately, the Two does not know whether he/she is unconditionally loved for who he/she is, or loved just for what she/he does for other people. This fear of being unloved can lead to manipulative behaviour as the Two seeks appropriate "tokens" of love and gratitude from others in order to calm their fears. Ironically, just like every other Enneagram personality type, the Two can bring about the one thing most feared as they become more stressed out and unhealthy: people will resist the manipulation and possessiveness, and will begin to pull away.

The following story, which I came across in The Globe and Mail newspaper, serves as a good illustration of a classic Enneagram Two:

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Why I suddenly went missing
By JENNIFER AMEY
The Globe and Mail
Tuesday, May 13, 2003 - Page A20

It had been a rough month. It had been a rough couple of years, actually. My aunt had a heart attack. My tumultuous relationship came to a tumultuous end. So did my job. I had a strange feeling of lightness, as though there was no ballast left to keep me from drifting away, nothing to anchor me to the ground. A friend had gone to Europe to teach, and I thought I might look into that, too.

Then my dad had a stroke, a reminder that I can't think about moving to Europe, or anywhere else that's more than a day's drive from my parents' place. They're getting on in years, their health isn't great, and I visit once or twice a month, at least, to help take care of them.

Taking care is what I do. I take care of my parents, my boyfriends. It's a reflex. If something needs doing, I offer to do it, whether or not I have the time and energy. Much of my life is spent tending to the needs of others, worrying about their health, worrying about their relationships, working late and stressing out; taking care of everyone but myself. I was on my way to an ulcer, my stomach was telling me. My stomach was the only part of me that rebelled against all of this responsibility. I was literally nauseated by stress.

I guess something just clicked. Just turned on, or off, or over. I was another rung on the madonna/whore scale of female stereotypes: the goody-two-shoes who wants to be bad. It was right after the second big blizzard of the season. During the first one -- 24 hours of solid snow -- I paced around my apartment like an animal. I felt claustrophobic. The second blizzard was just ending, and I decided I needed warmth. I wanted to stand on a beach and feel the warmth of the hot sand soak up through my bare feet and fill my body with the heat of the sun.

So I got in my car and drove to the Gulf of Mexico. It was 1 o'clock in the morning when I left home.

They look at you funny when you cross the border in the middle of the night. I claimed I was trying to avoid traffic, trying to avoid the line-ups on the bridge. It was 1 o'clock the next morning when I crashed at a motel in Georgia. And it was after sundown the following night when I found myself on a road that wound down through Florida swampland, a road which got narrower and narrower, until there was no stripe down the middle anymore; eventually it was nothing more than dirt. I stopped the car, face to face with an armadillo.

That was the only moment when I had second thoughts, when I imagined headlines a few weeks in the future, when my body was pulled from a swamp, when I imagined people shaking their heads at the tale, thinking: What was she doing? Driving down a dirt road with no map, not telling anyone where she was going?

I pulled a U-turn then. But the rest of the trip was filled with a delicious calm excitement. No one knows where I am! No one can say, "Will you do this for me?" No one can say, "I have a job for you!" No one can say, "Don't forget to . . ."

I don't think I've ever done anything so self-indulgent in my life. I loved it.

People often think they're doing you a favour when they try to cadge a ride. But I love driving alone. Going where I want, when I want. Stopping to look at silly things, or not stopping for six hours if I don't want to. And being alone with my thoughts, finally. Able to unwind; to think, without interruption, about whatever I care to. Sometimes it feels like time spent driving is the only time I really have to myself. A few minutes grabbed on the way to work. A few hours of quietude on the way to visit my parents. A few thousand miles of uncharted territory, a drive with no destination: this is the ultimate luxury. If I felt like talking, I could talk to strangers. I met a lot of people on my little trip, people who looked at me like I was crazy, but also looked at me with admiration. Like they wished they could run away, too.

And despite a road diet rich in black coffee and indeterminate fried objects, my stomach felt fine. I hadn't felt so relaxed in years.

I remember discussing smoking with my mother (we're both quitters) a few years ago. In high school, I had been shocked to discover that my mother still smoked when the family thought she'd stopped years before. Why did she keep smoking, just a few cigarettes a week?

"It was the only thing I did for me," she said. Everything else she did for someone else. Not only was smoking hers, it was something that [offensive term] off other people (or would if they knew); so much the better.

I'm planning another road trip for this summer. This time I'll head west. But planning it takes some of the fun out of it. People will know where I am. They'll expect postcards, rather than being shocked to receive them. No one will worry or wonder where I am. It's much less selfish this way.

But still, everybody needs to be selfish now and then.

Jennifer Amey lives in Toronto.