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Matt Schlegel presents a framework to explain guilt, shame, anxiety and their opposites using the Enneagrams main triads and the temperament (Hornevian) triads.  Also, this talk explores how these powerful feelings contribute to teamwork and problem solving.

[Video Transcript]

Matt Schlegel:

I’ve been playing around with how the Enneagram might help us better understand guilt and shame. When I asked myself when I was thinking about this, “Well, what’s the opposite of guilt?” What’s the opposite of shame? Because maybe those will also give us some ideas about how this framework might work. I also realized as I was working through this, and my personal… I think was Emily who said that there’s a few instances in her life where she said she felt some shame, but they’re kind of few and far between. And that’s me too.

I also feel the same way about guilt, but I know there’s another thing that does drive me, and that’s anxiety. So really I’m putting in anxiety into the mix of these strong underlying motivators for our feelings and behaviors. And so we’ll talk about each one of those three plus what they look like in the opposite, and then also explore how they play in problem solving. As you know, that’s one of the things I love playing around with is how the Enneagram can be used as a problem solving methodology.

So let’s just explore how guilt and shame and anxiety come into problem solving as well. So let’s look at some definitions. So for guilt, just the dictionary definition of that is a feeling of having done wrong or failed in an obligation. I think a few of you actually mentioned those exact same words.

I thought about, “Well, what would be the opposite of that?” Where I landed on was pride would be the opposite of guilt which is a feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction derived from something you’ve done. So in that same vein, I also looked at shame. So shame is a painful feeling of a humiliation or distressed caused by consciousness of wrong or foolish behavior.

So it’s a little bit different than guilt. Guilt seems to be mostly from an inner sense of having done something wrong where shame, and I don’t know that they’ve captured this very well in this definition, but it seems to be more around how the world perceives what you’ve done. Maybe that’s caught in that word humiliation, because humiliation is, you need to be humiliated by the outside world. You don’t necessarily just feel humiliated by doing something and nobody else saw you.

So I think that that word humiliation in there catches that sense of being essentially assessed by the world for having done something wrong or foolish. In that term, in those terms, I thought about, “Well, what would be the opposite of that?” And to me, the opposite would be being valued or appreciated by the world. So being recognized for one’s full worth. Again, it’s still in relationship to how others are perceiving you. So that seemed to be the better definition of anti shame.

And then I added one more, which is anxiety and that was a feeling of worry, nervousness or unease typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. As a type six, this is definitely me. It doesn’t even have to be an imminent event. It could be about anything.

It could be about something far in the future and I’ll still worry about it. So what is the word for anti-anxiety? There is a word for it. It’s a word I’d never heard of, but it’s ataraxia is anti-anxiety. And this is a Greek term, and some ancient Greek philosopher thought that this was the state to pursue, which is a state of serene calmness. So that seems like a pretty good definition of anti-anxiety. So any thoughts or comments on this so far before we go on?

Scot:

Sure. I’ve got a couple.

Matt Schlegel:

Sure.

Scot:

If you don’t mind me starting. In terms of shame from my perspective, the definition you presented here was a very external focused. It was public humiliation. It was external value. In my case, it’s a very internal thing. It’s me judging myself. It’s me valuing myself. Now, it can manifest itself as the latter, but I think the deep-seated part feels more an internal part. And then in just now anti-anxiety, or I like this new word, I’m also wondering if confidence would be another sort of anti-anxiety. That’s confidence that things are going to work out, that everything is great, that things are okay. That’s one step beyond calmness. It is, “I’m excited. Things will work out.” I don’t know if that could fit in as well.

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah. Good thoughts. I’ll have to think about confidence. Confidence can be used in a lot of different ways and you can be anxious and confident at the same time. Look at me, I can be confident, but I’ll still be anxious.

Fred:

Part of the anxiety, there’s like six defined types of anxiety that’s under the DSM code of psychology, so it’s a wide variety of anxiety.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. Yeah. Even anxiety, there’s a lot of different modes of it. Then I asked myself, who feels guilt, shame, and anxiety most acutely? This is something where… Based on what I’m hearing, I hear the ones that was a very common theme for them. Unfortunately, we don’t have any twos here tonight, but I’ve had conversations with twos and they tend to tell me that they really don’t feel shame, which is curious, but they’re so focused on helping other people.

So where’s the shame in that? Where is the shame? If I am totally focused on helping you, why should I feel shame? That’s the feeling I was getting from them. But why is it that they’re so focused on helping other people all the time? Is it because of that? It’s almost like that is anti-shame in that it’s driving them to avoid that feeling of shame. For anxiety, I would definitely put the six in the category of the three head types, the five, six, and seven, the one that probably feels anxiety the most.

And assuming that it is these three, the interesting thing about these three is that they’re the members of the same temperament triad that it’s kind of the pessimist triad, the one, two, and six. So that was kind of the thought. In that same vein, I was thinking that the anti-shame people might be the optimists, the three, the seven, and the eight who are most pursuing pride, recognition, and happiness.

So I’ll stop here. I wanted to ask the eights about whether they felt that pride. Roger, you mentioned that it was never doing enough. You felt like you needed to do more. And the underlying thing was guilt, but would you also associate that with, when you do it, a sense of pride?

Roger:

So one thing I would do, I would construct it a little bit different in terms of the… I would look at it within each triad, let’s say the seven… I mean, eight, nine and one triad, which is the instinctual triad. The externalized element is the ones that it’s like you said with the two. The twos don’t necessarily feel the shame unless they really have to think about it. They have to come to this process. I think the eights are the same way around guilt. We don’t really think about guilt. Our first reaction is, “I don’t feel guilty.”

But we have to think about it. What is really driving us? And I think the ones that feel the most shame would be the fours. The fours would really… I would line out the triads differently because I do think the guilt triad, the ones that wrestle with the issue of guilt would be the instinctual triads eight, nine, and one. The shame would be the two threes and fours and the anxiety would be the five, six and sevens. The sevens, yeah. That’s how I would probably play it out.

Matt Schlegel:

I agree with that. I think that the eight, nine, and one would be mostly centered on the guilt. The two threes and fours would be centered on the shame. And then the five, six, and sevens would be centered on the anxiety. And then it comes down to is there a role for both anxiety and anti-anxiety for shame and anti-shame, for guilt and anti-guilt? And the optimists tend to see the glass half full and pursue without necessarily focusing, say, on the guilt, you are more focused on that thing that makes you not even think about guilt, which would be pride.

That’s what I was getting at there. Is it really that anti-guilt that’s driving you? Is it that pursuing that sense of pride that is driving the eight rather than just avoiding the guilt?

Roger:

Well, I think when you’re younger, you wouldn’t use this language or these words, but you’re probably more driven by or… It’s about a sense of pride than it is driving away from the guilt. But the two are linked.

Matt Schlegel:

Absolutely. I think they are linked. I just think that like you’re saying, I think the optimists will be more motivated for the anti-guilt.

Roger:

Right. The twos would be, to me the optimist on that second line.

Matt Schlegel:

Oh really?

Roger:

Yeah. And the threes would be ambiguated and the fours would be the pessimists. And then on the next line, I would flip the five and six.

Matt Schlegel:

Interesting.

Roger:

I would put the core numbers at the ambiguated parts and the fives I think have… They’re more pessimistic, I think than the sixes are. The sixes feel it, but they feel… I don’t know. It would be for me as the straight triad dynamics. But I think the twos, they’re going out there in a sense, sometimes the twos could have no shame by going forward and just going ahead and helping. That’s what allows them to do that because in a sense, they don’t have this sense of they’re not tracking this sense of shame.

Whereas most fours, I know they’re tracking definitely their actions with other people to high degree because of this underlying sense of shame. I mean, that’s just how I would line out that chart. I would agree with the top line. And then the next two I would tweak.

Matt Schlegel:

And so I was almost going to put an… I would put, just based on what I’m hearing, especially from the threes, I would almost put the shame, the word shame next to the three as them being driven by that sense. And then putting appreciation as the anti-shame. Just for instance.

Roger:

Yeah.

Matt Schlegel:

And that’s how I started it, but then I’m like I wasn’t sure because I hadn’t talked to any threes until tonight about this, but then since they were very adamant about feeling shame, so I think that’s probably where I’ll end up putting it. But let’s ask the threes for a second here. When you feel that sense of shame, is it something that you’re actually feeling and trying to avoid? Or how is that influencing you and how are you processing and feeling that?

Scot:

Oh, so let me think about that for a second. What I was going to jump in and say first was I can see threes on both ends of this. When I first met Matt, which was many decades ago, I felt no shame. Well, I wasn’t aware of no shame. I would not have said I felt any shame. I would not have said that shame had any role in my life whatsoever. What I strived to do was to be valued and recognized for all the great things that I could do and do.

So very much where you show here, that was who I was. As I’ve gotten older and realized that there were flaws in the system, I’ve realized that, “No, there is this lot of this internal shame and that’s motivating me to seek external value was to compensate for this internal shame.” Once I address the internal shame, I can release that desire to earn external value because I’m no longer looking to justify my shame and to prove that I’m a good person because I can do that internally.

So in that sense, I’m very much on seeing where the two is. I’m very driven by shame. So it really depends on what level you’re talking about on what stage in one’s life for me at least where I sit. That may have addressed your question as well. Does that help?

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah, it does. Sachiyo, do you have any thoughts you want to add to that?

Sachiyo:

Yes. See, you put the three on the optimist, and it’s not for me. So rather than more the pessimist side.

Matt Schlegel:

Interesting. So the optimist and pessimist, and ambiguated, these are Enneagram triads and they’re the temperament triads. So the eight and the seven tend to be on the optimistic side, and the one, the two and the three and the six tend to be on the pessimistic side. And the four five, and the nine are balanced. So these are prefrontal cortex, and this is Peter’s work where you have a dominance on one side of your prefrontal cortex or the other.

And so the interesting thing about the ambiguated people is that they can balance both and they can feel both, but we’ll come back to that in a second. It’s really interesting how I think when we’re young, we look at things one way and then as we get older we do a little self-examination and figure out what’s really underlying that. So I think, Scot, you brought that up, and Roger, you brought that up. But I’m really interested in going back to Sekai at this point and asking you whether you feel like you fit in with the guilt group more, or the shame group, or the anxiety group, or do you feel at all because you’re ambiguated?

Sekai:

I’d say more shame and guilt, but not so much anxiety. Shame is a little bit more… Yeah, I guess it’s situation specific as well, but when I think of shame, I think of it as not over something I’ve done, but just who I am, how I think of myself as a person. So ashamed of myself versus something I did. Yeah, I don’t know if that answers your question. So I feel a little bit of shame and guilt, but I think what motivates me more is probably shame.

Matt Schlegel:

So this is one of the things I want to understand is that does your shame make you feel humiliated because… See, that’s why I’m trying to distinguish between guilt and shame. That sense of, “I should have done it because it’s the right thing to do and I’m mad at myself for not doing it.” I’m calling that guilt versus I did something and now I feel humiliated for doing it.

Sekai:

For me, it’s not quite humiliation because I feel like it’s personal like nobody else would really know, but it does feel like flawed. Maybe there’s some inherent flaw that I have to overcome something within me that’s so deep that I have to fix. Whereas guilt is more like, “Oh, I made a mistake, or oh, this is an easy quick fix, but shame feels a little bit more inherent, less of an embarrassed. It is definitely social. There’s definitely a play social aspect to it more so, but it doesn’t quite feel like humiliation because I don’t think anybody would know that’s what I was experiencing.

Matt Schlegel:

Is it something that you think that you could fix if you worked on it?

Sekai:

Yeah. With focus and attention, yeah, for sure.

Matt Schlegel:

Could that actually be guilt because it’s something you can fix and you’re just not fixing it because that that’s almost how we defined guilt is, it’s that second part failed in an obligation. You feel this thing that’s wrong. You feel obligated. You feel an obligation to work on it, you just haven’t done it.

Sekai:

Yeah. I think I see shame less of an action and more of… It has more to do with less about what I do and more about who I am. So the actions can shift it, but it still feels different. But these are good questions. I haven’t thought of it in this way. These are really good questions.

Matt Schlegel:

I think we conflate guilt and shame, just like we had a conversation about sympathy and empathy and we tried to really distinguish those two things. I think this is another guilt and shame is another area where it’s sometimes they’re conflated and they’re used interchangeably even. And so I’m asking these questions to just see if we can untangle that little bit.

Sekai:

Yeah. I don’t know if this helps, and I’m not even remembering where I heard it might be. Is it Renee Brown? Her definition I think is guilt is about what you’ve done and shame is for who you are. That’s the definition that I’m working from. I’m not sure if it’s Brene Brown, but it is. That’s something I’d have to look into and see.

Matt Schlegel:

Okay. And it would be for the guilt. It’s what you’ve done or haven’t done. You could also be guilty when you know that you should have done something and you didn’t do it, right?

Sekai:

Right. Yeah.

Roger:

Matt, I wanted to comment before we leave this slide, I don’t know if you’re planning to leave it anytime soon, but whether or not where are we lying out the 8, 9, or one, three, fours, and twos or whatever. I think what is kind of helpful just on the chart for myself is when we feel guilty sometimes or we feel shameful or we have anxiety, we don’t know where to turn to move out of that space. And to me, what the chart does is you create a arrow from the right to the left when you’re stuck in this place of guilt.

Pride is usually a term that when I hear it, I think, “Oh, you don’t want to be prideful or you don’t… But I could see how, in a way, this at least gives us a general direction out of that space, out of that space of guilt is to look towards whatever our number is driving towards the pride.” If you want to move out of your guilt or you want to move out of your shame, how do you feel valued? Or you could move towards trying to feel valued rather than how do I move out of my shame?

How do I move towards feeling valued and recognized? It gives us a direction. And when you’re really stuck in anxiety, how do you move out of that? You move towards what makes you happy. So this chart alone, if we just put arrows from the right to the left, that’d be like, “Oh, okay, that’s helpful.” Now, certain numbers, certain Enneagram types are probably more inclined to be in that far left space than others, but at least on this particular topic of guilt, shame and anxiety, it provides at least a directional pathfinder or something to that effect.

Matt Schlegel:

Yes. I think that might be a great topic for a follow-up session is how to move out of these spaces. I think moving out of these spaces for the six to move to seven is not necessarily an easy thing to do. I think there’s easier ways for sixes to get out of anxiety than to try to be a seven. So I don’t know. At least for six to seven, that might be a tough thing.

Roger:

Well, rather than seeing it as six, moving towards a seven. For the six to ask the question of what makes them happy, just so maybe that wasn’t as helpful to say that there’s certain numbers that are closer to those places. It’s not so much trying to be like those numbers as much as just what makes the six happy.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. And so I think if you’re feeling guilty, then you can always ask, “Well, what have you been proud of? What have you done that’s made you proud of yourself?” And then when you’re feeling shame, you can always ask, “Well, what have you done where people around you have really appreciated what you did?” So yeah, I think those are great questions to ask people if they, or we can ask ourselves when we’re starting to feel that way and then get our minds to focus not necessarily on that source of guilt or shame or anxiety, but on things that have put us in a space that’s the opposite of those things. That’s a really good point. Before I move on, any other thoughts or comments on this?

Emily:

This is Emily. I actually think instead of focusing entirely on moving in one direction and that summer naturally in the direction that everyone else wants to move to, I really was struck with Scot’s comments about having started in one place and really done more self-reflection to recognize where there is shame. And so I think that looking at it in terms of having the fluidity to move in both directions, I think would be helpful for all the Enneagram types to say, “If you’re too focused on pride, how can you pay attention to where there might actually be some guilt,” where if you’re too focused on guilt, where can you focus more on? I think there can be value in paying attention to all sides of each of these spectra, I would say.

Matt Schlegel:

Right. I think, if you know asked a seven also that especially a younger seven, they probably wouldn’t necessarily associate with anxiety until they got older and realized, “Oh, that is the underlying thing here.” For the ones, when did you start to associate some of that feeling of that inner critical voice with a sense of guilt? I mean, you all really emphasized that and brought it up. When do you think you made that connection? Very early?

Emily:

Boy, I really don’t know when I would’ve started naming it as guilt. I don’t have a good sense of that.

Matt Schlegel:

How about you, Morgan?

Morgan:

I was pretty young in middle school. If I said something mean to someone, I’d feel really horrible about it or I’d feel like my stomach hurt and I was like, “Oh, I feel so bad. I’m a bad person.” But then it was like, “Oh, so I shouldn’t do those things, so I don’t feel that way.”

Matt Schlegel:

Right. They’re very strong socializing forces, guilt, shame, and anxiety.

Scot:

I like Emily’s point that it’s not necessarily… I don’t want to use the word good, but I will ’cause I can’t think of a better word to use, to be in any one particular corner edge of this diagram because there’s value and benefit all around it. So it isn’t like if you’re on the right, you’re trying to get to the left. I like the thought of if you’re always focusing on the left, it’s good to get in touch with the energy you have that’s on the right. And maybe even up and down. I haven’t thought about that, but clearly left and right I think there’s value in it.

Matt Schlegel:

I was thinking about this in terms of problem solving and for those of you who aren’t familiar with using the Enneagram as a problem solving tool, one of the reasons why the Enneagram types our numbers is because that’s the order in which those dynamics show up in problem solving. So for instance, what’s the first step in problem solving? “Hey, that’s not right. It shouldn’t be like that. It should be like this.” And that’s the dynamic of the type one who is highly aware when things aren’t right and is alert to that and then wanting to go in and correct it.

So it was really interesting to me to see that the first two steps in problem solving, both the one and the two are in the pessimist triad and the glass half full or half empty triad, so to speak. And that one, that strong sense of guilt it with the one is driving that first step and how that drive to help, which I think is shame avoidance is that second step and how it’s predominantly those two that show up first.

For the last about year and a half, I’ve been working on the climate crisis. So I’ve jumped in with both feet and immersed myself in groups that are working on the climate crisis. Now, the climate crisis to me is one of the biggest problems that humanity faces. So it’s a great lab to see how people are responding to solving this problem. What I’ve noticed in working in this area for the last 18 months or so, the people who consistently show up are ones, twos and sixes.

They’ve form the base of the people who are showing up. Okay, well I get it. Ones, they’re kind of the first ones. They’re going to be alert to the problem and show up and twos are going to want to help. So they’re going to show up. But why the six? And it occurred to me that when the six gets stressed out, they move towards the direction of the three dynamic. And so they’re kind of showing up in that anxious state as exuding that three dynamic of wanting to get stuff done and wanting to solve the problem.

So it made sense to me how you had those three types that consistently show up and how each one of those types… I’m getting the sense that guilt probably really drives the ones, and shame really drives the twos and anxiety really drives the sixes. And so you have these really three strong drivers, these three aspects of feelings that are compelling this group to show up.

The other interesting thing about it is you get an internal dynamic, which is the one, the suppressed anger type, and then you get the external dynamic of the two… Or excuse me, if it’s internal for the one, external for the two, and then suppressed for the six. So you also get those three dynamics showing up with this particular set of three. So I put a picture of a very old Prius because I imagine that the first Prius drivers were probably type ones. So then who shows up later? And the types that tend to not show up as much are the threes, the sevens and the eights.

They’ll show up, maybe not in a Prius, but maybe now that it’s cool to drive a Tesla. You’ll see the threes, the sevens, and the eights show up in a Tesla, but in terms of just engaging consistently and working on the problem, I don’t see as many threes and sevens and eights interested in working on that problem. I’m guessing it’s because the three needs to see a path to success and recognition and the seven needs to see a path to fun and happiness, and eight needs to see a path to a prideful accomplishment.

Maybe they’re just not seeing it yet, which is why they tend not to show up. But there is a group that does show up and that’s the ambiguated folks, and they come in and out. They’re less consistent and they will tend to gauge the community. And the fours are oscillating back and forth between engaging and not engaging with the community. And the fives seem to be oscillating back and forth between, “Can I do something fun like a seven or is it I just feel anxious like the six and I want to do something?”

And then the nines, I really haven’t had much experience with nines showing up, but I guess that it would be somewhere around processing guilt and pride that would encourage them to show up as well. What do you think, Scot?

Scot:

I was wondering if that was coming. This makes sense that’s why I don’t have any comments to add. I like the idea and I can sort of identify as a three. Yeah, I want to know that I can either make a difference or that there’s some chance of success that there’s a path to having a successful outcome. And if I don’t see that I’m less likely to jump into the problem. I love a problem where I can see, “Oh, here’s a problem I can fix. I don’t know how to do it, I just got to do it. Boom, I’m on it.” These complex things sometimes can be challenging because they’re complex, but even then they’re usually I can see an endpoint, right?

Matt Schlegel:

Right.

Scot:

For me, that makes sense and the rest of this as well.

Roger:

Matt, when I look at this, the first two slides make makes sense. But the third one I feel like it is the context in which it is applied. It’s the context of people showing up to a group setting to solve this problem. Whereas I almost feel like for the fours and fives and the nines, the fact that it’s a group setting creates a different dynamic at play than trying to solve the problem at hand. Whereas if you were just to talk about climate change, I think a five would deal with it maybe much more individually than showing up as part of a group process to tackle the issue of climate change.

Whereas in the four, I think maybe that might be true too, or the way the type of events that they go to might be different than… And then again, for the nine, it’s a question of what type of group is it? I mean, is there a lot of cohesiveness or is there a lot of contention in that process? So I don’t know if I would lay out the four, five and nine. I think there’s as much, much question about the nature of the group and the fact that it is a group that comes into play with those particular Enneagram types.

Matt Schlegel:

Yeah. Well, I do notice that you will get… I’ll have fours. So I have a climate group and I get fours to show up occasionally. I get fives to show up occasionally. I attend other climate groups and I notice that fours and fives show up there. I know one climate group that’s led by a five and it’s a book club. So that’s the perfect thing for the… That’s like my symbol for the five is a book. Right? So of course the five is going to be doing the book club.

To me, the interesting thing about the fours, the fives and the nines, and I think this is just the pattern with humanity in general is our brain wants to minimize energy. And so for instance, I am right-handed so I do not have to expend any energy at all. When I go to write something, I just pick up the pen with my right hand and I start writing.

It was a very minimal energy decision for me to do that. Left-handed people are the same, but ambidextrous people, it’s not quite as easy for them. They actually have to expend some energy and figure out… Well, my wife Helen, right? When she was learning to play hockey, she needed to figure out do I hold the stick this way or do I hold it this way? And she had to practice both ways to figure out what was the right way for her.

For me, it would have been, I wouldn’t have had to think at all because I’m right-handed. It’s just done. When she was learning to play golf, she had to get some left-handed clubs, she had to get some right-handed clubs. She had to take swings and practice with both. And then she’d talked to a coach and he looked at her swinging and he said, “You know what, you should probably swing left-handed.”

So it took energy for her to get there because her motor cortex is ambiguous. It’s not right dominant or left dominant. Well, it’s the same thing with our prefrontal cortex. So my prefrontal cortex is I am going to be highly sensitive to danger and I am just going to be on the alert for that. That’s just kind of what my brain is wired to do. Whereas the seven is the opposite. They are wired to look for fun and they’re going to be pursuing that. And that’s kind of hardwired into their brain.

But the five is ambiguated. So they have to make a decision. They’ll have to look at like, “Do I want to do what the sevens doing or do I want to do what the six is doing?” Right? And I think oftentimes it’s a lot funner to do what the seven is doing than what the six is doing. So they may end up going and doing what the seven is doing if the six is stressed over some problem.

I think it’s the same way with all the ambiguated types because they have to make a decision of, am I trying to focus on not feeling guilty or am I focus focusing on working on my game so I can have pride of what I’ve done? And then we also see this in politics too. There’s the group on the left and there’s the group on the right. They’re pretty much locked in. And then you have this ambiguated middle that is persuadable and it’s just really comes down to which of those narratives, the right or the left are going to be more compelling for these persuadables in the middle to follow. I think that’s all I have for my slides. Thank you so much.