Why Each Enneagram Type Seeks Therapy | Personal Growth with Enneagram Therapy
Understanding your Enneagram type can provide powerful insights into your behaviors, relationships, and emotional patterns. In this article, we explore why people of different Enneagram types might seek therapy, and how combining Enneagram wisdom with therapeutic support can help you navigate trauma, enhance self-worth, and cultivate healthier connections. Discover how this holistic approach can foster deep personal growth and transformation.
The Rejecting Parent: Therapy for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
In my Asheville therapy practice, I often see the impact of emotionally immature parenting on adults seeking support. One such type is the Rejecting Parent, whose emotional unavailability and dismissiveness leave lasting scars. These parents often view their child's emotional needs as inconvenient, leading to neglect or criticism. This dynamic can severely affect a child's self-worth and ability to form healthy relationships into adulthood.
In this article, we explore the characteristics of the Rejecting Parent, the emotional toll on children, and how therapy can help adults navigate the effects of this upbringing and develop healthier patterns in their relationships.
Understanding the Passive Parent: How Therapy Can Help Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
Adult children of emotionally immature parents, particularly Passive Parents, often struggle with unresolved emotional issues and unhealthy relationship patterns. This article explores the characteristics of Passive Parents and the lasting impact they have on emotional development. Discover how therapy in North Carolina can help you break free from these patterns, set boundaries, and enhance your emotional well-being. Learn more about how therapy can guide you toward healing from generational trauma and emotional neglect.
Healing from the Driven Parent: How Therapy Can Support Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
A Driven Parent, a type of emotionally immature parent, often sets high standards and focuses on achievement rather than emotional connection. This can lead to anxiety, perfectionism, and difficulty embracing mistakes. Therapy can help adult children of emotionally immature parents understand these patterns, set healthy boundaries, and rebuild confidence. If you’ve experienced the pressures of a Driven Parent, therapy with a North Carolina therapist can support you in moving forward with clarity and self-compassion.
Healing from an Emotional Parent: How Therapy Can Help Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
If you’ve ever left family interactions feeling drained or confused, it may be related to the emotional maturity of your parents. This article explores the impact of the Emotional Parent on adult children, helping you recognize common traits and understand how they might be affecting your current relationships. Whether you’re dealing with anxiety, people-pleasing, or boundary-setting challenges, understanding these patterns can be life-changing. Learn how therapy—such as anxiety therapy, trauma therapy, or working with a therapist for adult children of emotionally immature parents—can support your healing in Asheville and across North Carolina.
Understanding EMDR Therapy: A Powerful Tool for Healing Trauma
EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy is a powerful tool for healing trauma. It works by using specific eye movements to help your brain reprocess distressing memories and emotions, allowing you to heal. Trauma can come from many different experiences—like growing up in a toxic family environment, facing emotional neglect, or dealing with loss and betrayal. If you’re struggling with anxiety, depression, or feeling stuck, EMDR therapy can help you release negative beliefs, improve emotional health, and find peace. This article breaks down how EMDR works, what to expect during sessions, and why it can be a transformative approach when combined with trauma therapy.
How Childhood Emotional Neglect Leads to Anxiety: Understanding and Healing Through Therapy
Emotional neglect is a form of childhood trauma that can lead to anxiety later in life. Many people don’t realize they were emotionally neglected, especially if their basic needs were met growing up. Even with a good life as an adult, they still feel anxious and confused. They might feel guilty, unsure of why they feel this way. If this sounds like you, understanding the impact of emotional neglect could be the first step toward overcoming challenges. Get anxiety therapy in Asheville or North Carolina to start moving forward.
Body-Based Coping Skills to Help You Relieve Anxiety
Learn 9 techniques from vagus nerve stimulation, EMDR stabilization, and intentional breathing practices that actually help your body calm.
Understanding Emotionally Immature Parenting: Impact and How Therapy Can Help
Being raised by emotionally immature parents can have a lasting impact on your mental health and relationships. In this article, explore the signs of emotionally immature parenting, the emotional wounds it can leave behind, and how therapy for adult children of emotionally immature parents can help. Learn how therapy can support you in understanding these dynamics, setting boundaries, and healing trauma for healthier, more fulfilling relationships. Available online across North Carolina.
Enneagram for Therapists
The Enneagram is the self-growth system that just keeps giving. Your Enneagram type shows up in every area of your life from your relationships, to your mental health, to how you run your business. Knowing your Enneagram type gives you insight and awareness of how you get in your own way. It helps you understand what behaviors and beliefs act as barriers to running a business and being an effective leader.
What is a Glimmer and How Does it Relate to Trauma?
Glimmers are defined as the opposites of triggers. When you are experiencing a trauma trigger, your nervous system amps up and your stress response activates. The stress response is commonly known as fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. All of these symptoms of the stress response are common to experience when your trauma gets triggered. You may experience just a few or all of them. Trauma triggers amp up your nervous system. Glimmers, on the other hand, calm your nervous system and bring a temporary feeling of peace, joy, relaxation, or safety. Glimmers are small moments that disrupt stress and hypervigilance.
The Power of Cycle Breaking to Heal Childhood Sexual Abuse
Kimberly Shannon Murphy shares her harrowing story of confronting and healing childhood sexual abuse in her memoir Glimmer: A Story of Survival, Hope, and Healing. She, along with many other family members, was sexually abused by her grandfather. She now refers to him as “Him”. Kimberly’s story is the definition of cycle breaking. Her book demonstrates how family members' unresolved trauma gets passed down to the next generation. The trauma of child abuse silenced adult family members that should have protected her. The unresolved trauma of the adults enabled the abuse to continue.
Gifts You Need to Give Yourself To Break Cycles of Generational Trauma
Essential self-care you need to break generational cycles of trauma. You can’t heal your childhood trauma without learning how to prioritize and take good care of yourself. This is one of the big areas that therapy for cycle breakers addresses. Most cycle breakers struggle with this because it wasn’t modeled to them in their family of origin. Experiencing childhood trauma also has the impact of creating beliefs that limit your ability to relax, trust in yourself, and give to yourself.
Cycle Breakers and Traumatic Grief
Examples of traumatic grief cycle breakers experience. Cycle breakers experience deep grief on their journeys to learning how to heal and support themselves. It’s often complicated grief that involves recognizing the depth of what has been lost. This includes what was lost in the past, what isn’t accessible in the present, and what the future has lost. This kind of grief isn’t necessarily about losing someone who has died. It’s about losing relationships, losing your childhood, losing certain hopes for the future, and reckoning with the reality of what is true.
Cycle Breakers and Planting Sustainable Seeds
Being a cycle breaker is painful and lonely. There are periods of massive self-doubt and not knowing what the right thing to do is. For example, what do you do when you’ve emotionally outgrown your current space? How do you know what seeds to plant that will help you grow and thrive? How do you know that the seeds you plant are sustainable? Cycle breakers are having to break away from their family norms and unlearn what was modeled to them by learning brand new ways to operate. This could mean learning to set boundaries, learning how to support and take care of themselves, and learning how to move past the trauma of their past so generational cycles don’t repeat themselves.
When Is It Okay To Ghost?
Navigating dating after narcissistic abuse. When you are ready to start dating after experiencing narcissistic abuse in a romantic relationship, it’s pretty scary. You may have a lot of fear of dating another narcissist. You may not fully trust yourself to make good decisions that help you avoid abusive people. You know how covert and subtle the abuse is when it first starts, and it can be extremely hard to manage and discern this when you are dating. When you learn about narcissistic abuse, you might also come across the not so fun fact that experiencing this kind of abuse once means you are more likely to experience it again. Trauma bonding creates a certain magnetism that draws narcissists to you. This is disheartening, terrifying, and quite frankly, downright unfair. You’ve already been through so much and now you have to work harder to ensure it doesn’t happen again. I like to reframe this for my clients as an invitation to boldly and unapologetically give themselves what they want by getting clear on what their yes’s are and what their no’s are and clearly communicating it.
How to Identify Your Enneagram Type: A Guide from an Enneagram Therapist
Figuring out your true Enneagram type can be challenging, especially with tests that often miss the mark. In this post, I explain why relying on test results alone can lead to confusion and how you can better identify your core type through self-reflection. Whether you’re new to the Enneagram or revisiting your type, I share how Enneagram therapy and coaching can help you navigate the deeper motivations behind your behaviors and foster lasting personal growth.
Enneagram Teachers and Spotting the Green Flags
Watching for green and red flags is an incredibly useful skill for everyone because we will all come into contact with problematic people. For people who have experienced abuse before, it’s an essential skill. Whether you have experienced abuse in your childhood, adulthood, or both (because the abuse cycle tends to keep repeating itself) you may not see or react to red flags. It’s very common for abuse survivors to not see problematic behavior as a red flag. When I work with survivors, we talk about the reasons for this and work together to strengthen the skill of spotting green and red flags.
Problematic Enneagram Teachers and How to Spot the Red Flags
I work with a lot of people who’ve endured narcissistic abuse. I’ve learned over the years how incredibly covert and subtle the abuse is when it first starts. Sometimes people see the signs of problematic behavior and convince themselves (or are convinced by others) that it’s not a big deal. This is especially true if other people don’t see the behavior as problematic or are already caught up in the abuse cycle themselves. Much of my work centers around breaking cycles of abuse. One of the ways to do this is by recognizing the red flags before it even starts. The Enneagram community is not immune to problematic people. In fact, in my experience, it can be very appealing to people who seek to have power over others. The Enneagram can be weaponized as a tool of manipulation just like many other spiritual systems.
Working with an Enneagram Therapist: How Type 7s Can Benefit from Therapy
Core Emotion: Fear (Externalizing),
Filter: There is a world of opportunity and so many possibilities
Energetics: Bouncy, wiry, upbeat, positive
Traits: Optimistic, friendly, fast intellect, hedonistic, run from negativity, hard to commit, busy
Values: Excitement, newness, ingenuity, humor
Childhood: Learned early on that they might get trapped in their emotions- this is a deep fear, often felt that they were “too much”
Not afraid to: Express joy, do what feels good, enthusiastically plan and express ideas
Hard for them to: Sit in negative emotions, do anything that makes them feel trapped, slow down