Alice Wellington, Ph.D. Retired Licensed Clinical Psychologist

Brainstorm Blog

Colors

Ever wonder how many colors there are? I looked it up on Google. Someone proposed that there are 10,000,000 different shades. Holy Moly! That’s a lot of colors! (FYI they used an interesting formula to come up with that number, go check it out: http://www.rit-mcsl.org/fairchild/WhyIsColor/files/ExamplePage.pdf.)

Back when I was in elementary school, I remember being taught that there were just 3 primary colors from which all colors were derived. Pretty powerful that just 3 colors can be combined in different amounts to produce so many different varieties. Just think of the different colors in everyday life all around us, sunsets, flowers, birds. And of course the color wheels on our computers. Personally, I think it’s fun to have such a variety of colors to choose from for creative endeavors, but I’ll admit the choice can be a bit overwhelming at times.

For the purposes of my analogy, I want you to think of people in the same context. I think I read recently that there are about 8 billion people on planet earth! That's a lot of people! And each personality is unique, much like all the unique colors we see. Consider, however, an ancient philosophy that proposes all personalities can be derived from a just a few “primary” personality patterns, nine to be exact. This philosophy is called the Enneagram.

The Enneagram is one of the tools I use during my intake sessions to help me and my clients to identify their hidden motivation (for a brief video introduction, click on this link: https://youtu.be/kURdIlRQjYE). Personality patterns can best be summed up as a protective armor we strategically construct, mostly unconsciously, because of perceived and/or real danger. In our humanity, at a very young age (because we aren’t yet psychologically equipped to deal with the adult world), we all adopt motivational strategies to help us stay and feel safe in our relationships with the adults around us. Universally we all want physical, emotional, and psychological safety. Unfortunately, the motivational strategies we adopt aren’t always healthy or even appropriate given the “danger”, but typically because those strategies are developed in a child’s immature mind. That’s when this tool can be the most enlightening and helpful.

colorwheel1.jpg

The Enneagram is one of the tools I use during my intake sessions to help me and my clients to identify their hidden motivation (for a brief video introduction, click on this link: https://youtu.be/kURdIlRQjYE). Personality patterns can best be summed up as a protective armor we strategically construct, mostly unconsciously, because of perceived and/or real danger. In our humanity, at a very young age (because we aren’t yet psychologically equipped to deal with adult complexities), we all adopt motivational strategies to help us stay and feel safe in relationships. Universally we all want physical, emotional, and psychological safety. Unfortunately, the motivational strategies we adopt aren’t always healthy or even appropriate given the “danger”, but typically because those strategies are developed in a child’s immature mind. That’s when this tool can be the most enlightening and helpful.

If we can understand those young motivations we adopted as children, we can have more understanding as adults of how much they still drive our behavior and our emotions, and have more choice about whether to keep using them or not. And, equally as important, it can give us insight into others behaviors and emotions.

I’ll address these patterns and strategies in later blogs.

Alice Wellington