Host: what is an example of tensions creating conflicts using the Enneagram?

Chris Wright: Let me give you an example of showing how these tensions can create conflicts using the Enneagram personality types. So, let s say for example, that I am married and my wife is a one with a strong lined of four. One means, remember that she is a perfectionist, that she is always scanning moment on moment to make sure that everything is done right and when it's not done right, it puts her in touch with that emptiness inside and creates an aggravation and that being a strong line to four and she also has a reference point of always evaluating every situation am I special here, do you care about me? For it is a very sensitive and very emotional and the need to feel special.

So, she walks into the kitchen and she merely notices that there is some water on the kitchen counter and there is some drops of water on the floor below the sink and then she sees in the sink there was some little food particles that are still in strainer, that aggravates her it's not done right and so she calls me in the kitchen and accuses me of that, I thought you cleaned it.

Now, when I looking my world, I don t have those pressures, I don t need the kitchen to the perfect for me to feel whole inside. It doesn t generate an experience of bliss for me, for me 80% is good enough. After all the pressures that I am dealing with I thought did a fine job and so when I look in my world I don t get why she is upset, I don t get why she is making me wrong, I am not wrong. So, if I start to defend that she starts feeling not heard, that she is not special, that I don t care about her.

Next thing you know the whole thing escalates, because she asks to come on stronger now, to break through to get me to get it and off course I don t get it and so the things turns into an argument. So, even though we love each other when these pressures come up our whole consciousness contracts and we start to feel this agitation. So, you would think that it might be in a different needs but it's not. The real focus of tension comes from, how we were communicating those needs and how I am responding to those needs? So, we need to learn frameworks, and tools that enable us to communicate our needs and respond to our needs in a way that s honoring in each others world.

That s how you get your needs met.